Yesterday, we left off with my assertion that Planned Parenthood’s strategy of focusing its marketing messages on the person who will make the purchase decision – the pregnant woman – gives it a significant competitive advantage over most Pregnancy Help Centers that have a tendency to focus their marketing messages on the plight of the preborn baby, who is not the person who will make the purchase decision.
I once read something by a marketer, whose name I can’t recall right now, claiming that creating a successful business was a simple two step process:
1. Find out what your customers want
2. Give it to them
Most business people reading this would say “Duh!”
But then ask them to prove that their companies are actually doing this, and you’ll find them say that they have to run because they’re late for a meeting, and they’ll get back to you on that.
You likely won’t hear back.
Product marketers, yours truly included, have a tendency to create what they think their customers should want, not what they actually do want.
If you’re thinking that this “should want” approach to product development applies to most Pregnancy Help Centers, you would be right.
PHCs, and their investors, believe that a woman facing an unexpected pregnancy should want to choose life for the human being growing in her womb.
From a moral perspective, they are right.
However, from a product development perspective, they are completely missing the point.
What do women experiencing fear because of an unexpected pregnancy actually want?
They want to go back to the state they were in before they became pregnant.
They believe that if they can get back to that state, then their fears will disappear.
Planned Parenthood’s product, abortion services, is so attractive to women because it gives them exactly what they want: to return to the time before they became pregnant.
Planned Parenthood offers a woman the opportunity to rewind the clock, so to speak, like a time machine that can return her to the state she was in before she became pregnant.
Again, 1) Find out what your customers want, and 2) Give it to them.
Planned Parenthood’s brand promise to a woman is that their product, abortion services, can restore her to the time before her unexpected pregnancy happened.
That is an extremely powerful brand promise.
If you doubt that, think of moments in your life when things didn’t turn out like you had “planned.”
“What if someone offered you a product where you could “undo” what had happened, and try, try again?
Do you remember the movie “Groundhog Day” starring Bill Murray?
He keeps reliving the same day over and over, learning how to correct errors he had made in previous days, until finally, after a very long time, he appears to live the perfect day that he wanted to live.
Successfully competing, meaning winning market share, against a “rewind the clock” product like Planned Parenthood’s, is exceedingly difficult.
Planned Parenthood’s product wins in the market, as measured by market share, because it clearly answers the question on the woman’s mind: What does ending the baby’s life mean for me?
How can PHCs develop a product that effectively counters that?
It starts with answering, in a compelling way, another question that is on the woman’s mind: What does preserving the baby’s life mean for me?
We’ll engage that question next week….
Regards,
Brett