07/27/2020
is not a battle of , it’s a battle of perceptions.
Marketing people are preoccupied with doing research and “getting the facts.” There is no objective reality. There are no facts. There are no best products. all that exists in the world of marketing are perceptions in the minds of the customer or prospect. The perception is the reality. Everything else is an illusion.
The only reality you can be sure about is in your own perceptions. If the universe exists, it exists inside your own mind and the minds of others. That’s the reality the marketing programs must deal with.
There may well be oceans, reverse, cities, towns, trees, and houses out there, but there just isn’t any way for us to know these things except through our own perceptions. Marketing is a manipulation of those perceptions.
Most marketing mistakes stem from the assumption that you’re fighting a product battle rooted in reality. All the laws in this book are derived from the exact opposite point of view.
Only by studying how perceptions are formed in the mind and focusing your marketing programs on those perceptions can you overcome your basically incorrect marketing instincts.
Truth is nothing more or less than one expert’s perception. And who is the expert? It’s someone who is perceived to be an expert in the mind of somebody else.
Minds of customers or prospects are very difficult to change. With a modicum of experience in a product category, a consumer assumes that he or she is right. A perception that exists in the mind is often interpreted as a universal truth. People are seldom, if ever, wrong. At least in their own minds.
What’s the different between Honda in Japan and Honda in the US? The products are the same, but the perceptions in customers’ minds are different:
If you told friends in New York you bought a Honda, they might ask you, “What kind of care did you get? a Civic? an Accord? a Prelude?” If you told friends in Tokyo you bought a Honda, they might ask you, “What kind of motorcycle did you buy?” In Japan, Honda got into customers’ minds as a manufacturer of motorcycles, and apparently most people don’t want to buy a car from a motorcycle company.
Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products. Marketing is the process of dealing with those perceptions.
What makes the battle eve more difficult is that customer frequently make buying decisions based on second-hand perceptions. Instead of using their own perceptions, they base their buying decisions on someone else’s perception of reality. This is the “everybody knows” principle.