Level Up Your Marketing By Thinking Like Super Mario

I loved playing Super Mario as a kid. I spent countless hours defeating Bowser and saving Princess Peach. Little did I know how powerful of a framework Super Mario would be for marketing when I got older.

Fast forward many years, and I’m listening to an episode of My First Million (shout out to one of the best podcasts around). The hosts bring up this idea of how the simplest framework to improve your marketing is to view your customers as if they are Super Mario and you are selling them a Fire Flower.

The problem is: that most businesses will focus on the flower

If you’ve never played Mario before (is that possible?), the goal is to make it from the start of the level to the end avoiding obstacles and critters while collecting coins and sometimes helpful items like a Fire Flower. In this case, the Fire Flower makes you big and allows you to throw fireballs to make the level easier.

Who wouldn’t want the flower? The problem businesses make is in the framing of their product offering: all they talk about is the flower. They talk about how orange the petals are or the specs of how the flower was grown or the packaging the flower comes in.

Who cares?

Your customers couldn’t care less about the flower.

Your customers care about what the flower can do for them

Imagine trying to sell Mario on the Fire Flower and you manage to not mention the fact that, if he uses it, he will get bigger and be able to throw fireballs which will make his life much, much easier.

What a missed opportunity, yet it is the most common thing I see from businesses. I see post after post on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, etc. from businesses and all they talk about are the awards the company has won, the specs of products, the engineering time behind features, and on and on.

All I can think is: who cares?

Tell me what your product can do for me. How can it make my life easier? How can it solve my problem?

It is a simple framework but so powerful once adopted. It can take a bland social marketing campaign or pitch deck and turn it into something that makes your customer’s ears perk up.

You will help them make a simple decision to solve their problem by using your product and you will start to see the money flow in.

Win, win.