A customer who is guided through five clear stages doesn't need to be pushed. They arrive at yes on their own.
A messaging framework by Billy Broas.
Every customer is standing somewhere before they find you. They have a problem they live with daily, and a way of describing it that is theirs alone.
The first Lightbulb turns on when they feel understood. Not sold to, not educated. Understood. Get this right, and they'll listen to everything that follows.
They've already tried to solve this. They've read the books, hired the person, bought the tool. Some of it helped, but most didn't.
The second Lightbulb turns on when you name those attempts with honesty. Your customer already knows what hasn't worked. When you say it plainly, their trust deepens.
Lightbulb 3 is not your product. It's the idea behind it. It's the reason your solution works where others fall short.
The third Lightbulb turns on when the customer thinks, "This makes sense. This is the right way to solve this." Conviction in your approach precedes interest in your offer.
Your offer includes your product, but isn't limited to it. Lightbulb 4 is the full picture of what someone gets when they buy. Only after you turn on the other Lightbulbs does the offer make sense.
Present it too early and it feels like a pitch. Present it here, and it feels like the obvious next step.
Your customer needs to see the destination. What does their life look like after success with your product?
Without this, you may earn interest and trust, but not action.
I created the Five Lightbulbs after years of helping businesses figure out what to say in their sales and marketing.
Before this career, I was a scientist and engineer. That background taught me to think in structures. The Five Lightbulbs is the structure I kept finding underneath every piece of marketing that worked.
I wrote a book about the framework's philosophy called Simple Marketing for Smart People. More recently, I wrote a manifesto called Marketing Is An Argument that goes deeper into the morality and ethics behind marketing.
I work with businesses one-on-one to apply the framework to their messaging.
The ideas behind the Five Lightbulbs are explored in full in Simple Marketing for Smart People, the book that started it all.
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