Join me in this podcast with Michael Hyatt.
WOW!

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In this episode, I talk about “The How of Wow.“ If you are going to be successful in getting the attention of the market, you will need to start with something remarkable. In this episode, I define wow and how you can create it by answering five questions.

If you have read my new book, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, you know that the first section of the book is called, “Start with Wow.” This is the first step in building a platform. Why? Because of something David Ogilvy said two generations ago: “Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.”

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EPISODE OUTLINE

The purpose of marketing is to prime the pump. But if people aren’t wowed by your product and want to use it, they won’t recommend it to their friends. In other words, you won’t get word-of-mouth promotion.

You can’t spend enough money or be clever enough to overcome a lack of word-of-mouth marketing. It just won’t work. This is especially true in the world of social media, because it accelerates the word-of-mouth process. Why? Because of two facts:

1. Everyone now has a megaphone.
2. Everyone is connected to everyone else.

So what is wow? Here’s how do I define it:

Wow is the gap that exists between your prospect’s expectation and his or her experience.

• If that gap is negative—your customer’s experience doesn’t live up to his expectation—he is disappointed. This is the opposite of wow.
• If that gap is positive—your customer’s experience exceeds his expectation—he is wowed.

I first noticed this a few years ago when Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone back in 2007. As I reflected on his presentation, I came away with three insight into wow:

• Insight #1: Create products you would personally use.
• Insight #2: Create products that solve problems in unexpected ways.
• Insight #3: Create products that exceed your customers’ expectations.

My premise for this episode is this: Wow can be engineered. Not perfectly. Not every time. But once you understand what wow is simply a function of exceeding your customer’s expectations, you have a much better chance of making it happen.

You can create wow by asking five QUESTIONS.

• Question #1: What is the product or experience I want to create or transform into a wow?
• Question #2: How will the customer or prospect feel as a result of this experience? (In other words, what is the specific outcome you want to create?)
• Question #3: What specific expectations does the typical customer bring to this experience?
• Question #4: What does failing to meet customers’ expectations for this experience look like?
• Question #5: What does exceeding customers’ expectations for this experience look like

Here’s the bottom line, if we want to win in today’s competitive marketplace—if we want to build a powerful platform, we must start with wow. Without it, we can’t achieve our full potential.

LISTENER QUESTIONS

1. Question #1: “Blessing Mpofu asked, How do you constantly create new and fresh material to become a thought leader?”
2. Question #2: Claire Dias-Ortiz asked, “How can you best turn blog content into the early draft of a new book?”
3. Question #3: J.D. Smith asked, Where should the Wow be located, on your homebase or in the outposts? Should it be from the author’s perspective or the listener or readers’?
4. Question #4: John Richardson asked, “Is there such a thing as too much wow?”
5. Question #5: Joseph Lalonde asked, “When you are releasing a new product, how do you gauge what your customer’s expectations are?”
6. Question #6: Mary DeMuth asked, “How does creating wow tie in with doing your one thing well?”
7. Question #7: Rebecca Livermore asked, “How can I come up with ideas that are creative and unique?”
8. Question #8: Tor Constantino asked, “How do you know when you have created wow?”
9. Question #9: Wanda Ball asked, “If I am not getting comments and traffic, how do I know if my content is wow?”