Go “All In” On Your Niche
Knowing your niche, embracing it, and going all in is key to crafting a truly alluring vibe.
The third way to crafting an alluring vibe (be sure check out parts one and two!) is all about embracing your special sauce.
You may feel pressure to create something familiar to what already exists in the market. However, let’s be real: You’ll never stand out if your goal is to blend in. If you have a truly distinct niche, the last thing you want is to miss the chance to attract your IDEAL customer - as in, that soulmate type of customer in the perfect mindset and/or moment for loving what you offer.
If there’s one sure fire way for nailing an alluring vibe your most ideal customer can't resist, it's to embrace your special sauce and go all in with a bold and specific message.
Take Snowbird ski resort for example. Instead of sounding just like every other ski destination in Utah, they leaned into their advanced terrain niche by boldly highlighting bad reviews from novice skiers who came to the resort for all the wrong reasons! NO EASY RUNS!
This helped attract expert skiiers, snowboarders, and thrill seekers, who now flock to their Utah slopes in droves!
What's YOUR Secret Sauce?
Snowbird realized their secret sauce was the exciting difficulty of their runs. What is it about YOUR product that makes it especially badass?
This is your Secret Sauce.
Instead of trying to make your product sound like everything else out there, embrace what makes it special, distinctive, and effin’ cool.
The city of Austin, Texas, did just this with their slogan "Keep Austin Weird," which has been instrumental in the city's historic rise as a top living destination and cultural juggernaut. Forget the bland “visit Austin!” ads with people eating vanilla ice cream and shopping. Keep Austin Weird showcases all the kooky, fun, wild, and creative fun to be had in Texas’ capital city.
From The Specific Comes The General
It seems counterintuitive, but it's 100% true: the more you try to appeal to everyone, the more generic your product will seem, and the less people will be interested. The more you embrace your unique badass-ery, the broader your appeal will be!
Case and point: In & Out Burger has three things on its menu: burgers, fries, and shakes. Yet, it has a cult-like following and literally any In & Out you drive by in California will have cars lined up around the block, all day long.
Another great example: Tann-X is a spot carpet cleaner specifically designed for coffee stains. They could talk all about how well their product ALSO works on wine, tea, all the things … but by getting hyper-specific they not only cut right to the heart of a BIG problem someone is feeling at any given moment, they also imply a solution for other tannin or tough stains by association. In other words, if it works on coffee why not wine?
So don't run from your niche, embrace it. What makes you unique is the backbone of your alluring vibe and will get the right people to perk up, take notice, and embrace your product wholeheartedly!
The Power of a Great Rallying Cry
Fire up your audience by showing you understand their frustrations
One of the quickest ways to an alluring vibe is to isolate the BS your customer faces and then create a compelling rallying cry that fires up your audience!
To spur your consumers into action, you need a strong rallying cry—a reason for consumers to get excited, take action, and buy your awesome product. And to make an exciting, authentic rallying cry, you need to intrinsically understand the BS that your customer faces.
This is what we mean when we say a product needs an alluring vibe. This is when an ideal customer can immediately sense what’s in it for them, and having a thrilling rallying cry is one of the proven ways to nail that vibe.
Because when a product taps into something we already feel passionate about - especially when it just shouldn’t be that way … we don't choose it. It chooses us.
How to Craft a Kick-Ass Rallying Cry
The road to a rallying cry starts by honing in on a primed mindset your ideal customers are already in when they find you (or you find them). There are lots of brands who do this well, and all those examples bucket into one of three strategies.
This article will tackle the first of those strategies: the Universal BS.
Universal BS is when marketers tap into an existing belief about something unfair or just plain wrong in their product category. Something that's straight up BS!
Here are three of our favorite examples of brands that have isolated the BS and made compelling rallying cries to solve for it:
Southwest Airlines’ Bags Fly Free campaign: It's BS that we get hit with a bag fee on top of an expensive flight!
Dollar Shave Club’s buy direct model, aka "Shave time, Shave money": It's BS to pay so much for stinking replacement blades!
The Savanah Bananas baseball team’s "We make baseball fun” approach: It’s BS that baseball games are so long and boring!
(As you can see, the Savanna Bananas brand is a trip - check out more here!)
Firing Up Your Audience
So you’ve isolated the BS and you think you’re closing in on a great rallying cry. Fantastic! Here are two simple exercises to use when brainstorming ways to fire up your audience:
If you're going up against big established brands, consider a problem your competitors create. Zoom in on solving just that. Check out how Clevr's Sleeptime SuperLatte goes after the crappy side effects of melatonin:
2. Consider if there is a villain worth conquering. A villain is not about bashing your competitor. It's about conquering the root cause of an emotional problem you know your audience really feels.
For example, CarMax knew the sleazy used car salesman was a “villain” of their consumers and created an exciting business model that nixed the need for ol’ sweaty Hal and his plaid jacket.
They fired up their audience by promising an easy buying process with no haggling, or "The Way Car Buying Should Be".
Ultimately, if you want your target audience to notice your message and lean in, there’s nothing better than an exciting rallying cry. So sniff out the BS, find a creative solution for it, and then fire up your consumers! Believe me, they’ll thank you for it!
For more on this, check out what Donald Miller - author of Building a StoryBrand - has to say:
VIDEO: This is How You Turn Your Brand Into a Movement (2-minute video)
ARTICLE: Your Brand Should Pick a Fight (2-minute read)
PS:
Working on a product concept or brand message but don’t feel like you’ve nailed the right vibe yet? We’re looking for 4 innovative marketers who want to feel so confident about their offer that they’d invest their own money in it.
We’ve got a way to help people do exactly that in as little as one week, guaranteed!
If this sounds good to you, BOOK A CALL and we'll see if it's a fit!
What 3 Craft Beers Can Teach Us About Crafting An Alluring Vibe
It all begins with an idea.
Nailing an alluring vibe starts and ends with one thing:
Message Clarity
A clear message will beat clever, every time (even in craft beer where it's a race to be the most quirky, clever, and twee-mustache friendly!)
Picture this:
It's a sunny summer morning. You're about to head out for a weekend of camping and boating with friends. You've made a quick stop to pick up some beer and load up the cooler.
Now, if you're like me (and 46% of craft beer drinkers) you head straight to the IPAs.
But juuusst as you reach for your go-to (BrewDog's Elvis Juice anyone?) you pause. Elvis Juice is great, but it has a high alcohol content and you don’t want to be toasted by 1pm and not able to enjoy the full day of fun.
You briefly consider getting something lighter instead, like Red Stripe or Rolling Rock. But that feels like a bummer, because you LOVE your IPA taste. Damnit, why can't any anyone figure out how to make a good-tasting IPA without the precariously high alcohol content?
And then, like a glowing treasure, you see it:
Yes. This. I'm in.
All Day IPA. Simple. Clear. Direct. The problem it’s addressing (not being able to drink IPAs all day) is instantly solved by its messaging. And consumers have appreciated this clarity; Founders All Day IPA was the #2 selling IPA in 2020, just behind Lagunitas.
Now, let’s take a look at two other beers in the fridge that have a more…complex message.
Okay, so it’s a tree but it’s angry? Is it a cider like Angry Orchard? Wait, it says IPA. That’s confusing. And it rambles? How does a beer ramble? Do they mean “bramble”? And 106 calories? Is that good or bad? Or wait, does that say 706???
There’s so much going on here, your eye doesn’t even know where to begin.
Pass! Onto the next one:
Let’s see… “Summer Love.” Dig that name. But wait, what will it taste like? Is that hot sauce on the label? And ice cream? Does it taste like spicy ice cream?
Even a split second of hesitation is distraction you can't afford to have happen in market.
Here are a few reactions we got when we tested the vibe out for this concept:
“I think it'll work. There are other brands out there for summer, but it needs to have something in the flavor that sets it apart.”
“I like the Summer part, but I’m not sure what this is going to even taste like? I would only try if someone told me it’s good.”
“Wait, is this made with ice cream?”
Moral of this story:
When a brand feels alluring, we do not choose it. It chooses us.
Creating an alluring vibe that cuts straight to the heart of what your customer really wants doesn't start with clever copy or beautiful branding. It starts with a clear message.
Ask yourself not what my product does, but what it does for my ideal customer.
PS:
It’s easier than you might think. We’ve seen how changing one word can turn distraction into wild attraction. When you have passion for an idea it's easy to develop blinders and miss the little fixes that could make all the difference. If you want a fresh look at your concept, we know what to look for!