You can’t blame people for wanting something great after you hyped it up

You’re in a café and they give you green tea. You like it, it’s great, but when you ordered tea, you expected the English breakfast variety.

Now you’re disappointed, not because of the quality of what you have. It’s fantastic — better even — it’s just not what you expected.

For a customer to experience satisfaction in the purchase, the reality of your product must equal or exceed their self-imposed expectations.

Celebrity Collaboration

I’ve just witnessed a company partner with a celebrity for a branded product collaboration.

During the beginning of their marketing campaign, they hyped the product with a small teaser image.

People immediately expected something huge. They were wrong.

Unfortunately, the result was far less than what the customers were speculating about in the comments section of Instagram, which ruined the campaign’s overall impact.

Customers were underwhelmed that it didn’t meet their expectations, but the blame and outrage were directed towards the company, for letting them assume incorrectly.

“How could you let us think it was [x]? You guys suck!”

It got me thinking about the right way to sell a product, even if the campaign or ad copy needs to be vague.

Managing Expectations and Being Vague

As a marketing professional, I need to use emotive, captivating language to describe and drive sales. This usually focuses on the features and benefits of that particular product.

However, with one of my clients, in particular, they’re selling the “method” as the product — meaning online tuition.

When selling, I can’t be too specific without letting the cat out of the bag and giving away the secret. The secret is where those customers assume the value is, as that’s what they get when they buy it.

If I’m too obvious in the ad copy, they’ll uncover or discover the secret or method being sold and won’t buy it.

I have to be vague enough to hide the product's method but engaging enough to demonstrate its value. With any sales of online learning, telling a customer exactly what they get creates the risk of losing the sale.

For example, you get a 56-page PDF ebook on the six different kinds of advertising. What do you think most people will do? Correct. They’ll google “six different kinds of advertising” and look for that information for free online.

Regardless of how much value your product can give, they’ll assume they’ve saved themselves the money even if they find something as vague as this on Google:

“The six different kinds of advertising:

• Push

• Pull

• Cold

• Affiliate

• Referral

• Word of mouth.”

Selling what it does, not what it is, becomes the best solution for a sale.

By selling the “effect” that the product can produce correctly demonstrates where the real value lies. Think benefits over features — not the other way around.

Aiming Low

Knowing all of that, you have two very clear goals for marketing a product, especially when executing a teaser campaign:

1. If you need or choose to be vague, sell what it does — not what it is.

2. Try to manage expectations with customers and ensure the reality of the product matches or exceeds their expectations. That way your product can’t ever be a disappointment.

Here’s a practical example: “New durable material, with a balanced ecological and economical formula that’s sourced from nature. The outside is fitted with a space-age sheen that reflects the light from any angle.”

You buy it and you get a new corrugated cardboard box, wrapped in tin foil. Are you happy? Of course not. Was any of that sales copy a lie? Of course not.

The problem was the language used made you expect more than it was.

That, my friends, is the tightrope you need to walk daily to sell either in line with or below a customer’s expectations.