How “mature” is your audience?
It’s a question we need to answer before you can begin to look for your Big Marketing Idea.
In this context, maturity is determined by the types of marketing claims and ideas your prospects have already seen from competitors.
Remember…
A Big Marketing Idea is unique and different from what your prospects have already heard and seen.
To identify maturity, we use a simple tool called The Audience Maturity Pyramid, or AMP, for short.
It’s based on the idea of Marketplace Sophistication first presented by Eugene Schwartz in his perennial book Breakthrough Advertising.
Schwartz demonstrated how prospects evolve over time as they’re exposed to various marketing promises and claims.
Over time, as prospects become more “sophisticated”, they no longer respond to the same types of promises and claims they once did. In order to keep them responding, your marketing needs to evolve as they do.
The Audience Maturity Pyramid allows you to identify what stage of sophistication your prospects are at, so you can ensure your Big Marketing Idea matches.
An idea at the wrong stage — too low for where prospects are and what they’ve already seen — will fall flat. In fact, an “immature marketing message” is one of the biggest reasons for marketing campaign failure. That’s why it’s so important you use the Promise Exposure Spectrum™ to identify where your prospects fall.
There are five stages of the AMP.
AMP 5 Stages
Stage #1: Promise 1.0
When your promise is something your prospects haven’t heard before, they’re at Stage #1.
When you’re presenting your market with a promise nobody else has ever made them, all you need to do is present your promise. And the claim itself serves as the pattern interrupt and all that’s needed to get attention.
For example: When the first fat burning supplement was released to the market, all that needed to be said was “Take this pill and you’ll lose weight”. Since nobody else had ever made that claim, prospects saw it as something new and different.
But, over time, as more and more competitors came into the market and began knocking-off that promise, prospects began to respond less and less.
That’s when weight-loss prospects evolved to the next stage.
As did the messages from savvy marketers.
Stage #2: Promise 2.0
At this stage, developing the claim is needed to get attention.
Here, we see marketers promising more and greater results.
In the case of the fat burning supplement, at this stage, we started seeing promises such as “Take this pill and lose 10 pounds”… “Take this pill and lose 15 inches”…“Chew This Gum And Lose Up To 5lbs A Week”.
It’s at this stage where most marketers remain… trying to compete by enlarging their claims more and more. Shouting louder and louder, and yell bigger and juicier promises, just so they can stand-out from others.
But, over time, prospects no longer respond to simply enlarged claims and promises. Because at a certain point enlarged claims are no longer credible or believable (or true).
If today, for example, we had a fat burning supplement and our promise was “Take this pill and lose 100 pounds”, it would fall on deaf ears. Why? Because the promise has been enlarged past the point of credibility or believability.
Not too mention, beyond the point of being truthful.
This is where savvier marketers evolve their marketing message to the next stage of the AMP.
State #3: Promise & Proprietary Solution
Here, at this stage, the mechanism behind the promise is introduced.
How does the product work to deliver the promised results?
In the case of the fat burning supplement, this is where you see messages like “Take this pill and lose up to 3 pounds every week… as the acai berry prevents your body from absorbing fat.”
In this example, the Acai Berry is the mechanism that delivers the weight loss.
As long as your mechanism remains unique to your product, operating at this stage can be extremely effective.
But, just like we saw with Stage #1, over time, as competitors see your success and knock-off your mechanism for their own product, staying with this message will make it harder and harder for you to get prospects to respond to your message.
The key is not simply having a mechanism behind your Primary Promise.
The key is having a Proprietary Solution.
If you have a Proprietary Solution, you can remain at this stage with your message long-term.
Once your Proprietary Solution becomes just a mechanism, and when everybody and their mother are using it, then it’s time to move on to the next stage on the AMP.
Stage #4: Promise + Expanded Proprietary Solution
Similar to Stage #2, here we’re also developing.
At this stage, we’re expanding the mechanism, not the promise.
In the case of the fat burning supplement, here is where we see the introduction of something like “pharmaceutical-grade Acai Berry”… “Acai Berry from the rain forest”… “Acai Berry blended with a unique protein”… etc.
We’re taking the mechanism and enlarging it, expanding it.
Again….
As long as your “expanded mechanism” remains unique to your product or service, you can operate successfully at this stage.
But, if and when competitors knock it off, you will need to move on to the final stage of the AMP.
Stage #5: Audience Experience
Here, the marketing message no longer focuses on the mechanism.
Instead, you focus on the prospect’s experience.
In the case of the fat burning supplement, your message would become something along the lines of…
“Are you sick and tired of dieting, exercising, popping pills… and not losing weight?”
Now, imagine for one second, what would happen if we rolled-out a fantastic new fat burning supplement today, and our idea and message was simply “Take this pill and lose weight”
What kind of response and results do you think we’d see?
Yeah, barely any!
But why?
Because that idea and message have already been seen. It’s old. It’s too low on the Audience Maturity Pyramid based on where prospects are right now.
So it’s too immature. Like this book…
If you look at the AMP, you can see the idea and message behind this book is based on Stage #1.
Why?
Because it’s simply presenting a promise — Burn fat fast.
It’s not a Stage #2 message because it’s not expanding on the promise (e.g. how to lose 20 pounds of fat a week).
And it’s not a Stage #3 message because there’s no mechanism behind the promise. But, it’s way too immature for where weight-loss prospects are today. Because the market has heard this type of claim. Hundreds of times. For years.
So this type of immature message simply triggers mental opt-out.
What this book is offering is information that is immediately recognizable as stuff that can be found anywhere. It’s offering information which has been available and offered many, many, many times before.
So the market is well beyond this in terms of their sophistication.
Here’s another example:
Another Stage #1 idea and message. Nothing enlarged. And no mechanism. Also, way too immature.
The market heard this type of idea a decade ago. It’s old. Boring. Blah. Garbage.
How about this one?
Again: old, dated, run-of-the-mill, and way too immature for what this market has already been presented with.
All three examples are exactly what NOT to do.
And with all three examples, you should also now see how there’s no specificity, no Proprietary Solution, nothing Intellectually Interesting, and not even a big, bold promise.
At the root of all three is simply a weak idea.
And, no matter what we do with the copy (read the words used in your marketing), the underlying idea will remain the same, weak, ordinary.
Changing “How To Make Money Online” to “Get Wealthy In Just Weeks With Your Own Website” may improve the copy.
But the idea is still the idea. Weak, ordinary, and immature.
Remember, the copy stems from the idea. The idea always comes first. It’s the foundation.
You don’t want to try to spruce-up copy for a garbage idea.
You can put lipstick and a dress on a pig, but you’ll still have a pig.
Start, instead, by developing a Big Marketing Idea.
Then, and only then, dial-in the copy to express it clearly.
Now, let’s look at the B.M.I.P.
[ Back to Table of Contents ]
