#037 How to Stand out in a Crowded Market - Crafting a Marketing Strategy that Works!

Leveraging the Cocktail Party Effect for Creative Business Marketing Success

In this episode, discover how the 'Cocktail Party Effect' can transform your marketing strategy and help your creative business stand out in a saturated market. By understanding how to connect deeply with potential clients and filter through the noise, you can attract ideal clients who resonate with your unique message. 

Learn how this concept, originally coined by cognitive scientist Colin Cherry, applies to modern marketing and can be used to build a successful and thriving creative business.

Cocktail Party Effect - Colin Cherry

00:00 Introduction: The Cocktail Party Effect in Marketing
01:02 Understanding the Cocktail Party Effect
01:51 Applying the Cocktail Party Effect to Your Business
03:06 Creating Genuine Connections with Clients
03:55 Fine-Tuning Your Marketing Strategy
04:46 Standing Out in a Crowded Market
06:28 Conclusion: Embracing the Cocktail Party Effect

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Transcript

How does a crowded cocktail party become part of your oh so very successful marketing strategy for your creative business, helping you book clients like crazy and stand out in a saturated market? Stick around and I'm going to tell you how. 

Imagine that the average person looking to book the creative service that you offer gets exposed to dozens if not hundreds of options for a similar service when they do an online search for what they need.

So how do customers make that decision to stop on your website, your socials, and reach out to you? Our brains are able to block things, all the noise and clutter, And laser focus on something that speaks to us, that grabs us, that stops us dead in our tracks. This something makes someone want to take the action to contact you because that little twinkle, that little feeling of connection was activated.

Something you said or something you did rose above the noise of all the other creatives that do something somewhat similar to what you do, but they connected to you.

Today I wanna bring up a concept for us creative business owners, the cocktail party effect, and how it relates to marketing in your creative business.

Ever since I heard of the cocktail party effect, I have been infatuated with this concept because it is so obvious yet so ignored by me for years when I look back, and so many that I work with.

The term was originally coined by Colin Cherry, a cognitive scientist at Imperial College in London in the 1950s. And in more scientific terms, it refers to our ability to focus our attention on a single stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli such as noise.

I'll link to the source in the show notes below.

I know you're probably wondering how on earth does this relate to marketing for my creative business?

After reading about this incredibly cool study several years back, I began to think about how that related to photography, my creative field, and specifically marketing for our business.

And then the light bulb went off. Most of the success in our photography business is due to the fact that we are able to stand out in a crowded market, to connect with our clients that loved our message either through our stories and maybe our stories through our photos.

 Understanding how our potential clients could resonate with us and somehow manage to ignore the sea of other photographers that might be doing the same job became the center of my marketing focus and the key to our long term success, in my opinion.

 Using the original study as my premise, I began to analyze my clients that were, quote, the guests at the cocktail party and the other photographers in my niche that are the cacophony and background noise that my clients ignore while only focusing on our business.

And guys, this works for all businesses, not just photographers just substitute in your creative niche where I say photographer. These potential clients can only see us. They only want to book us and they aren't just clients. They are ideal clients.

But why? Because we understood our customers so deeply we could position ourselves as the photographer they wanted to work with by serving them with relevant information that they wanted. As it related to their photography needs, we can speak directly to them through storytelling, strong images, and integrity.

We engaged with them and invited them into our cocktail party. Our marketing strategy was all about them. And they only had eyes for us. And I just find this fascinating.

It took a while, but once I finally recognized that the wrong messaging repels clients and the right messaging makes you stand out, our calendar filled with clients that were such a great fit

because we paid attention to what we were putting out for the world to consume,

but it took me years to recognize this as a tool in my marketing tool belt.

We began to use the cocktail party effect as the photography marketing roadmap in our business. This is just a surface level description of what my discovery was. And this is the basis of my easy marketing framework. The cocktail party effect is about selective listening.

Basically, your client can be at a crowded cocktail party, but a certain voice, a certain topic, a certain story or person can be heard by your potential clients through the noise. In this case, the cocktail party, of course, is the internet and sea of other creatives that your potential clients can choose from.

We all want to grow our audience, grow our reach, grow our client base. To stand out to your potential clients, for them to be listening to you, you have to offer something more meaningful to that client, something that they resonate with. That is how you'll stand out.

A genuine connection. What does a cocktail party effect mean for those of us that need to market to potential clients? It's all about getting noticed. Tapping into that Bing moment when something clicks for a client, when they see your socials or your website, that aha moment when you stand out to them in a sea of like people, 

This is how you draw people in to engage with you

once you recognize what matters to your potential clients, what makes them pay attention, that's when you can fine tune your marketing messaging so that you can be heard over all the others. I know how busy the life of a creator is. We have to do a million things and focusing on stories that our potential clients will relate to Often ends up on the back burner. So we get overlooked. We blend in with the masses. We may put out a better product than our competitor, but if our competitor told the story that resonated with the client, that client wants to know more and we get glossed over for some other creative that quote gets this potential client more than you do.

They are a better fit.

And that's fine. We aren't meant to work with everyone. But the unfortunate thing is that many of us don't try because we don't even know we need to try. To survive in today's climate, we need to put out a unique message that stands out and stops potential clients like a lightning bolt that stops clients in their tracks, that makes them want to work with you and only you.

Once you understand the psychology between what your customers want, and you recognize that each customer is unique, then you need to figure out an engaging way to get that message out there to get them tuned into your channel so that they not only want to interact with you, but they want to book you as well.

 That's how the cocktail party effect captured my attention, and I knew I needed to add it to my marketing strategy immediately.

Once I recognized that my clients could hear me above the noise, the game changed.

Do you want to make more money doing what you love? Then you are in the right place. Join me next week for a lovely interview that I cannot wait to share. I'll see you then.