Joe PolishFounder of Genius Network and President of Piranha Marketing

How to Leverage YOU and YOUR in Marketing: The Secret to Powerful Messaging

16 Feb 2023 · 1 min

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Wes Kao explains that using the words "you" and "your" is one of the most powerful moves in marketing because it frames messaging around the customer. She demonstrates this with an example (Tucker's book, where "you/your" appears frequently) and introduces a concise positioning/messaging framework she calls "verb your noun" — i.e., identify the noun your customers want verbed — contrasting this customer-focused approach with older brand-focused claims like "established 1926."

Chapters

So two of the most powerful words in marketing are you and your so every single one of you look at your website headlines, look at your social media bios, and see if it says you and your if you grab Tucker's book, the Book in a Box or the Scribe Method and you open the inside flap, the word you or your or you've is like 8 of the or is like 6 of the first 20 words. Because he's really good at this. The framework for explaining what you do, a great place to start, sort of like the atomic element or like the sourdough starter of positioning and messaging for your business, is a framework I came up with called verb your noun. So what is the noun that your customers want verbed? This little magic phrase does a few different things by using you and your you're automatically framing it and talking about your customers, not ourselves. Remember old school marketing? Direct marketing? We used to be so proud of the plaque that said established 1926. The customer doesn't care. They care about themselves.