March 25, 2019
Vegan Pom Pom
Sent by Jonathan Stark on March 27th, 2019
My wife is way into knitting.
So… she makes a lot of hats.
Lots of hats need pom poms.
So… we get a lot of pom poms in the mail.
One package arrived recently, and she said: ”Oh good! My vegan pom poms are finally here!”
To which I replied: “Wait... what?! Vegan pom poms?!”
(I thought maybe they were made out of soy or were edible or something)
Her: “Yeah, it’s basically just a different way to say faux fur pom poms.”
This caused me to LOL at the genius of the name “vegan pom poms”. IMHO it’s way better than “faux fur pom poms” from a marketing standpoint.
Faux fur is a product-focused descriptor, “vegan pom pom” is a buyer-focused descriptor. And I always prefer buyer focused language :-)
But what about non-vegans who don’t want real fur pom poms? Won’t they think vegan pom poms are for vegans only? Maybe, but I doubt it. I think the actual response would be more like:
“If they’re good enough for vegans, they’re good enough for me!”
(And I have anecdotal evidence of this because my wife is not a vegan.)
Okay, so what do vegan pom poms have to do with pricing services?
- Changing the description of your offerings will change the perception, even if nothing changed internally. i.e., How you talk about your business can change, even if how you do your business doesn’t change.
- I have found that it’s more effective to talk in terms of the ideal buyer rather than features of the offering. e.g., Something like “We make highly accessible websites” is probably going to be less effective than “We make websites for people who are blind.” (Yes, I realize that accessibility is not just for people who are blind... sorta like vegan pom poms are not just for vegans.)
Can you think of a way to add language to your website that targets your ideal buyer?
Yours,
—J