Point of View Marketing: Five Case Studies

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As I get ready for my next Point of View Lab, I’ve been reflecting on some recent examples I’ve been uncovering with clients.

Over the past few months, I’ve been working with a lot of people around their point of view and I keep being amazed at the power that this has in our marketing.

Whereas niche helps to immediately establish relevance, point of view establishes credibility.

Niche gets them in the door but point of view convinces them to stay.

The pay for the niche. They stay for the point of view.

I see it all the time. People figure out what they want to do but then realize how much competition there is.

They become a life coach, yoga teacher, permaculture practitioner etc. and then they realize how many other people there are offering the same things. They decide to sell Spanish galleons and then go down to the harbour and see hundreds of other people selling the same thing.

One of the things that can differentiate you from others doing what you do is your approach to it; your take on it.

It took me over a decade but I finally realized that my core message was that “Marketing can feel good.”

So simple and yet my entire daylong workshop is based on it. 

We’ve been diving into this a lot in my Mentorship Program.

One of my clients in that program, Alysa, helps people with chronic pain. Her particular angle is the emotional aspects of chronic pain and how to live a full life in spite of it. During one of the calls she shared her idea for a URL: www.PainIsNotTheProblem.com. I loved it. The website isn’t ready yet, but the core POV here is very strong. She’s offering a whole other approach to dealing with pain by suggesting that, in terms of your quality of life, pain is not the core issue.

Another participant, Pamela runs her Brave Love programs and, while working with her on her POV, this gem emerged: “you must be willing to risk every relationship if you want truth and real intimacy.” What a mind bomb. In order to have a real relationship you have to be willing to risk it? Every time? That, without the willingness to risk it it will never become what it could be? More than anything she wrote, this grabbed me.

When I asked Pamela about the impact of doing this POV work she said, “It grounds me in something I know for sure. Between the risking and the not jumping ship, I find that everything I do revolves around these core beliefs. It is empowering and exciting to uncover what I’m all about.”

18342682_10155165607550586_8481781063627981696_nAnother participant Karen uncovered the overlap between Sex, Love, Genius and represented it in this venn diagram. She’s written more about it in this article.

When I asked her about the impact, she said, “For me I’m surprised at how it makes people connect with me. I’ve had a close colleague contact me to want to know more about what I do…and then the new client yesterday who just easily invested in a 6 month 1-1 commitment because I’d spent so much time articulating a POV that resonated with her. That it has a shocking effect of really drawing people closer.

Outside of my Mentorship Program, I worked with a fellow Michael Talbott-Kelly whose work is built on the foundation of this idea: your problems have a purpose. This idea that every symptom we have in our life carries with it a message for it, that our symptoms are purpose-driven not random happenings to us. Looked at in this way, our symptoms happen for us not to us.

And then there’s Brad and Andy of The Great eCourse Adventure who I spent a day with delving into their point of view around helping people develop home study courses. We talked about a lot of things but, the strongest thread I saw was in their realization that most people never complete the home study courses they sign up for. As a result of this, they don’t get the results they paid for. As a result of that they don’t rave about it to their friends. Word of mouth is the dominant force in marketing and when people have a mediocre experience with something they don’t talk about it. Brad and Andy realized that the best way to make your home study course profitable was to make sure your course was worth sharing. And so they created an entire site dedicated to making their case around that point of view called coursesworthsharing.com 

On the surface, these phrases and ideas might not seem like much and, the truth is that, on their own they aren’t but they can open the door to a fresh perspective that they’d never considered before. Each of these people would be able to stand up in front of a crowd and unpack and articulate these simple ideas for hours revealing layer upon layer like Russian stacking dolls.

I believe that an intro workshop can and should be based around simple and clear ideas like this. A distinct, clear and compelling point of view. Something provocative.

You can read more examples of people with a clear point of view here.

Want help crafting your unique own point of view?

Here are three options:

OPTION #1: Join my next POV Lab. It’s a 30-day program for twelve people where you will be guided to dig deep into your own unique perspective and be asked over and over again why you do what you do the way you do it. This includes a lot of handholding and feedback. You can learn more here: marketingforhippies.com/events

OPTION #2: Get my Point of View eBook. This is my treatise on the subject and includes an incredibly useful workbook. You can get your copy here: marketingforhippies.com/povbook

OPTION #3: Get my workbook Don’t Market Yourself, Market Your Message. This is a sister piece to my POV eBook. You can get your copy here: marketingforhippies.com/messageebook

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