New Math: 7 – 1 = 3. Stick with me here all you quant types!
How many times have you seen this drawing in a piece of marketing?
And the pitch goes something like this, “We are the only ones who can give you D, which is super amazing, because only we have A, B and C, everyone else only has A and B. ”
This logic seems OK, but it is very susceptible to the simple counter attack, which goes like this, “Our A and B are different, and we get you D too, just a different way.” Now we are in a total “she said, he said” argument. And for no reason, we’ve missed a key opportunity to make our differentiation.
The trick is the power of the intersections. Here’s what I mean, we need to name the 3 other intersections in our diagram, as shown here:
So, you see that 1+1+1 = 7, 7 not 4 items on the drawing. Then we can say, to get D, you need 1, 2 and 3. So if you take C away, you only get #3. Hence, 7-1=3. You not only lose C, you lose 1, 2 and D.
OK, this is a bit confusing, so let’s look at an example from my book Launching to Leading. In Launching to Leading I describe the Modern Marketing Machine as a Racecar, with Marketing Automation the Engine , Content Marketing and Programs the Wheels, and Messaging and Positioning the Fuel. It looks like this:
Notice the labels of Relevance, Effectiveness, and Efficiency. And now I quote with editorial liberty from the page 26 of my book, “As we see from the diagram, being great at content marketing and Marketing Automation and Content Marketing will make you efficient, but it will never get us to relevancy and effectiveness, and to be a market leader we need all three.” Given that my business is helping clients build their Racecar, and my secret sauce is my messaging and positioning frameworks, you can see exactly how the subtraction of great messaging and positioning is a 7 – 1 = 3 scenario.
7 – 1 = 3 is a powerful way to differentiate and deposition your competition. Read more about this and other messaging and positioning strategies in Launching to Leading, or contact me and we can see if we can put some new math at work for you.