Marketing’s Secret Sauce

In an ocean of words, how do you make your words stand out? Somehow, you must. It’s impossible to express a value proposition without them. And if words can be optimized for search engine robots, they can also be optimized for people. That’s what marketing is all about: increasing the likelihood that the target audience will actually: a) be personally engaged with what you say; and b) will respond the way you want.

That is marketing’s “secret sauce.” And once you have it, you should pour it all over everything you want people to read or hear. Words are pervasive -- so pour it on as many as you can.

Most writers don’t have any sauce. (That's why most blogs mostly rehash things other people have already said.) The best they can do is be factually correct or derivative -- or both. These days, facts are easy to find, and derivative writing blends into the background. The secret sauce is, well, a secret.

Every professional writer claims to have some secret sauce. Here are a couple of ways to find out if one does:

• Make the writer talk. Any competent writer will already know a lot about you before showing up at your door. The web really has made the world flat for research. What’s potentially distinctive is how much the writer actually engages you (the target audience) in a meeting. One way to tell is if you find yourself reaching for a notepad. A few writers have “it.” Most don’t.
  
  
• Make the writer write. Once they pass the talk test, ask them to write a short abstract (say, 500 words or so). Trust me -- it’s a small investment any pro will gladly make. The right words just have to go in the correct order -- yes? There is no downside for you. The upside is that you may get a connection to your target audience that you didn’t expect. With some sauce on top.

Thanks to Doug Savage for permission to use his great cartoon.