One of my favorite analogies that I use in my coaching program deals with eating Watermelon. Eating watermelon is a lot like explaining why to choose your business or service as opposed to one of your competitors. You can feed your listeners the watermelon or you can feed them the watermelon seed. Which is easier to swallow?
Of course, it is easier to swallow a watermelon seed than a watermelon. The more complicated, detailed and involved the message is, the bigger it is and the bigger the watermelon. The more simplified the message, the more streamlined, the more broad and easy to understand, the smaller the watermelon seed.
Every day, I see attempts to jam a watermelon down the throats of cosmetic dentists’ and cosmetic surgeons’ prospects, web site visitors and referral networks. The more you explain, the bigger the watermelon gets. And, the bigger the watermelon, the fewer people who can swallow it. So how do you streamline your message? What does branding have to do with it? And, how can I avoid this in the future?
There are many ways to make your advertising messages into a watermelon seed. I can’t explain it all here because every situation is different but I can give you a classic to mull over. It is the difference between features and benefits. One way to puff up the watermelon is to include a lot of details that are not important to the audience. You have to remember that features are what are important to you. Benefits are what are important to your market. So, for starters, if you don’t focus nearly exclusively on benefits, you are complicating your message unnecessarily.
I recently designed an ad for a client, not a regular client and not a client who is in my coaching and retainer program. I isolated an image of difference, pointed the message to a call to a large call to action and focused the brief content on one idea that a broad audience would understand. The client then insisted I change the ad, reducing the call to action and image of difference in favor of a list of features he understood. This blew up the ad into a full blown watermelon. This is not an isolated occurrence. I see small businesspeople doing this all the time in advertising. Focusing on features in your advertising instead of benefits is quite simply a mistake. When creating or reviewing your advertising, I suggest you consider the watermelon. Is your message a seed or a full grown watermelon? A good way to find out is to run it past an unbiased person who is not educated on the topic.... or an expert who knows what he/she is doing. Or you can ask yourself about your content and message: “Is this something they would be interested in?”
This is one example. There are many more. If you have any questions about watermelons and watermelon seeds, please email me today at donald@dogstarmedia.com.
