The law of perspective: marketing effects take place over a long period of time
Is alcohol a stimulant or a depressant?
If you visit almost any bar and grill on a Friday night after work, I would swear alcohol is a stimulant. Noise and laughter are strong evidence for the stimulating effects of alcohol. However, at 4:00 in the morning, when I see some happy hour customers sleeping on the street, I would swear that alcohol is a depressant.
Chemically, alcohol is a strong depressant. But in the short term, by depressing a person’s inhibitions, alcohol acts as a stimulant.
Many marketing movements exhibit the same phenomenon. Long-term effects are usually the exact opposite of short-term effects.
Does a sale increase the business of a company or reduce it? Obviously, in the short term, a sale increases business. But there is growing evidence that sales slow down business in the long run by educating customers not to buy at “regular” prices.
Aside from the fact that you can buy something for less, what does a sale tell a prospect? He says his usual prices are too high. After the sale is over, customers tend to avoid a store with a “sale” reputation.
In order to maintain volume, the points of sale find that they have to make almost continuous sales. It is not unusual to walk through a block of stores and find a dozen stores in a row with “Sale” signs in their windows.
Have Auto Rebate Programs Increased Sales? The rise in auto rebates has coincided with a decline in auto sales. Sales of US vehicles have declined for five years in a row.
There is no evidence that coupons increase sales in the long term. Many companies find that they need a quarterly dose of coupons to keep sales in balance. Once they stop using coupons, sales decline.
In other words, you keep those coupons rolling out not to increase sales, but to prevent sales from falling if you stop. Coupons are a drug. Keep doing it because the withdrawal symptoms are too painful.
Any kind of coupons, discounts, or sales tend to educate consumers to buy only when they can get a deal. What if a business never started offering coupons in the first place? In the retail sector, the big winners are companies that practice “low prices every day”; companies like Wal-mart and K Mart and fast-growing department stores.
However, almost everywhere you look you see yo-yo prices. Airlines and supermarkets are two examples. Recently, however, Proctor & Gamble made a bold move to set uniform prices that could become the start of a trend.
In everyday life there are many examples of short-term gains and long-term losses, crime being one example. If you rob a bank for $ 100,000 and end up spending 10 years in jail; or earned $ 100,000 for one day of work or $ 10,000 a year for 10 years of work. It all depends on your point of view.
Inflation, or the recent government stimulus (junk cash comes to mind), may shock the economy in the short term, but in the long term, inflation leads to a recession or major deflation as described. is experimenting in the US circa 2010).
In the short term, overeating satisfies the psyche, but in the long run it leads to obesity and depression.
In many other areas of life (spending money, using drugs, having sex), the long-term effects of your actions are often the opposite of the short-term effects. So why is it so difficult to understand that the effects of marketing take place over a long period of time?
Take the extension of the line. In the short term, the extension of the line invariably increases sales. The beer industry clearly illustrates this effect.
Look what happened to Coors. The introduction of Coors Light caused the regular Coors collapse; that today sells a quarter of the volume it used to sell.
In the short term, both brands can coexist and do well. But in the long run, the extension of the line was bound to undermine one or the other of the two brands. Once the decline begins, it is almost impossible to stop it.
Unless you know what to look for, it’s hard to see the effects of line extension, especially for managers concentrating on their next quarterly report. (If a bullet took five years to hit a target, very few criminals would be convicted of murder.
In other areas of marketing, short / long-term line extension effects occur much more quickly. Let’s see what happened to Donald Trump. At first, The Donald was successful. Then he branched out and put his name on whatever banks would lend him money for; hotels, casinos, condos, an airline and a shopping center. Many asked, what is a Trump? What does Trump mean?
Fortune magazine called Trump an investor with an eye for cash flow and asset value, a smart trader, a crafty wheel trader. The Donald has been on the cover of many magazines.
At various points, Trump filed for bankruptcy. What made The Donald successful in the short term is exactly what made it fail in the long term: the extension of the line.
It sounds easy, but marketing is not a game for amateurs.
It takes a while, but many internet marketing entrepreneurs recognize that the effects of marketing take place over a long period of time, and as a result, they use various methods and tools to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that build trust. They collect names and email addresses using an Optin form on a landing page. They use email systems with autoresponders and relay capabilities to send messages to their prospects and clients. These emails frequently send information, provide insight, and occasionally promote an offer. Many internet marketing entrepreneurs learn that potential customers and customers don’t like being sold, yet they search and buy. Over an extended period of time, Internet marketers can use their hypnotic writing skills in their marketing campaigns to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to add value and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Perspective.
Marketing is not a product battle. This is the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Perspective, since the effects of marketing take place over a long period of time and require not only perspective but persistence as well.
You can learn more about internet marketing and home business by reading the updates that will be posted on my blog in the coming weeks.
Finally, a great book to read is “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.