The art of the offer from Kay Allison via Rusty Blazenhoff:

How to craft an offer. And, as it turns out, an offer isn’t just telling people what you do. No, no. As I’ve learned, people don’t buy what you do. They buy the promise of transformation.

a great offer doesn’t just describe. It shows you the outcome. It paints a picture of what life looks like after you say yes.

People don’t buy a widget, they buy an emotion.

They buy their way to an aspirational state.

They buy a future in which they’re a different version of themselves than the one of now.

[A business] is defined by the want the customer satisfies when she buys a product or service. To satisfy the customer is the mission and purpose of every business.

-Peter F. Drucker

Business don’t exist without customers (at least not for very long).

Everything is customer service.

The DO Lectures sent an email last year that I keep coming back to about a framework for writing better.

Hook > Story > Close

Which is, of course, a framework for marketing better.

Hook

This is where you appeal to the reader / watcher to catch their attention.

The offer will tell them about the transformation that this will give them.

Stop the scroll / swipe / page turn long enough to get them to stay with you.

The hook is at least 40% of the reason you will be successful.

Story

Sharing your perspective. Doesn’t need to be about you, but needs to answer why you.

Here you can share your one belief about this offer.

Why are you unique? Why should they keep giving you their time / attention? Why should they give you their money?

Close

This is the part where Alec Baldwin yells at you about coffee and Cadillacs.

The questions DO recommends answering:

What’s in it for me?
How do I know this is for real?
What’s been holding me back?
Who is to blame for that?
Why should I trust you?
How does it work?
How can I get started?
Why now?
What do I have to lose by NOT doing it?

It’s almost about pushing your potential customer away so that you only pull in the ones your offer is truly for. And you put them in control of the decision so they don’t feel tricked later.

(Not in the framework, but understood, make sure to deliver what you promise. Doesn’t matter how good your messaging is if it turns out to be a lie.)

Set the hook.
Tell the story.
Close the deal.

YouTube Shorts are commonly viewed as a vehicle for clips to function as marketing / awareness tools for longer form content. Looks like Netflix wants to expand this thinking with a dash of UGC.

Last fall, Netflix released “Moments,” a new feature that lets users clip and share parts of shows they’re watching via links that point back to Netflix. Now, the company is considering expanding that effort — perhaps with more prominent billing in the product itself — according to a new job listing.

On consumer modes:

People respond far better, purchase more often, and remain more loyal when marketers design campaigns that are targeted to their situations. Not to their personalities. Not to their preferences. And not necessarily to their past purchase behavior.
…
A mode is a mindset and a set of behaviors that people get into temporarily
…
The brands that understand consumer modes can effectively target the mode and support the buying process of anyone who is in that mode.

Seems a much better model than personas and funnels.

More from EMARKETER about tariffs but really about brand building in any economy:

as a brand you can no longer rely on undercutting your competition and tariffs only underscore that. You need to make sure that you have a loyal customer base or you’re trying to have a loyal customer base because you’re not going to be able to slash prices forever.

It used to be: better, faster, cheaper; pick 2

But faster and cheaper is pretty much impossible to achieve now, so you need to be better in some way.