The Superhero Solution PR Strategy: Become an Obvious Answer

The super­hero solu­tion PR strategy is simple yet powerful.

The strategy is inspired by Derek Halpern, former blog­ger on mar­ket­ing psy­cho­logy at Social Triggers.

The gen­er­al idea: By intro­du­cing (and nam­ing) a spe­cif­ic solu­tion to a com­mon prob­lem, online search­ers will come to you in droves.

The chal­lenge, of course, is to devise a solu­tion potent enough to get the job done.

Here goes:

What Is a Superhero Solution?

The basic premise of a super­hero solu­tion is simple: ¹Indeed, the “super­hero solu­tion” concept is itself a super­hero solu­tion with a catchy name.

Derek Halpern, who wrote about mar­ket­ing psy­cho­logy, named this approach the super­hero solu­tion. To demon­strate its use, he iden­ti­fied that the most valu­able real estate on a web­site is above the fold (i.e. the part of a web­site front page vis­ible without scrolling).

Halpern argued that all busi­nesses should push their exist­ing front page con­tent down and insert a “fea­ture box” (the name he gave his super­hero solu­tion) accord­ing to a few easy-to-fol­low guid­ing principles.

By insert­ing a high-con­vert­ing fea­ture box con­tain­ing the organ­isa­tion’s most crit­ic­al CTA (call-to-action) above the fold, con­ver­sions would skyrocket.

Halpern then offered a series of high-pro­file YouTubers (who often neg­lect their web­sites to focus on their chan­nels) to do a live review to improve their con­ver­sions. As a guest on their chan­nels, he walked them (and their audi­ences) through insert­ing a fea­ture box accord­ing to best practices.

The concept of a “fea­ture box” is today the wide­spread nam­ing con­ven­tion of this per­vas­ive fea­ture that almost all web­sites use.

Superhero Solution Case Study: Inbox Zero

The ori­gin of Inbox Zero can be traced back to Merlin Mann, a pro­ductiv­ity expert and cre­at­or of the pop­u­lar blog 43 Folders.

In 2006, Mann intro­duced the Inbox Zero concept dur­ing a Google Tech Talk. The talk, titled “Inbox Zero: Action-Based Email,” was aimed at help­ing people reclaim con­trol of their inboxes by imple­ment­ing a series of habits that would enable them to pro­cess and organ­ise their emails more efficiently. 

Inbox Zero gained pop­ular­ity as many indi­vidu­als and organ­isa­tions recog­nised the neg­at­ive impact a cluttered email inbox could have on pro­ductiv­ity and over­all well-being. Inbox Zero provided a prac­tic­al solu­tion to this prob­lem, help­ing users regain con­trol of their inboxes by imple­ment­ing a series of best prac­tices focused on effi­cient email pro­cessing and organisation.

Many soft­ware applic­a­tions, such as Gmail, Outlook, and vari­ous task man­age­ment sys­tems, have integ­rated fea­tures that sup­port the Inbox Zero meth­od­o­logy. This wide­spread adop­tion has made it easi­er for indi­vidu­als and organ­isa­tions to put the prin­ciples of Inbox Zero into prac­tice, res­ult­ing in an increased focus on email man­age­ment as a crit­ic­al com­pon­ent of over­all pro­ductiv­ity and time man­age­ment strategies. As a res­ult, Inbox Zero has become syn­onym­ous with effect­ive email hand­ling and con­tin­ues to be a pop­u­lar approach for man­aging digit­al communication.

As such, Inbox Zero was Mann’s “super­hero solu­tion” that awar­ded him massive traffic and inbound links for an exten­ded period.

The Challenges of Devising a Superhero Solution

A super­hero solu­tion can be many things:

And so on.

A super­hero solu­tion can offer a com­plex tech­nic­al ser­vice, such as Pingdom’s Website Speed Test or OpenAI:s free ver­sion of ChatGPT.

Or it can be a simple organ­ising sys­tem such as Inbox Zero.

Whatever the super­hero solu­tion should be for your industry or niche, it must rep­res­ent a simple and reward­ing fix for an actu­al chal­lenge that exists in the real world. ²Many web­sites focused on con­tent mar­ket­ing use lead mag­nets and con­tent upgrades (also known as “opt-in bribes” to boost con­ver­sions, and these can often be mis­taken for super­hero solu­tions. But the … Continue read­ing

And while a super­hero solu­tion should be able to pro­mote itself via word-of-mouth (and some­times built-in vir­al loops), it typ­ic­ally needs to be heav­ily pro­moted ini­tially to gain the neces­sary traction. 

PR Resource: How To Write a 1‑Page Strategy

How to Write a 1‑Page Strategy

My inspir­a­tion for writ­ing “no-bull­shit” strategies comes from the clas­sic Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. The 1‑page strategy focuses on how to win.

Here’s how you can write a 1‑page strategy that fits one page — using the myth­ic­al battle between David and Goliath as an analogy:

1. Analysis

• David can­’t beat Goliath using his size or raw strength, but he has an advant­age in speed and accur­acy from a distance.

2. Guiding Principle

• David should­n’t engage in close com­bat but rather use tools that will allow him to strike from a distance.

3. Coherent Actions

• David should­n’t use any heavy armour because that would slow him down.
• David should use a sling­shot, a weapon he is famil­i­ar with and can strike from a distance.
• David should lever­age the sur­prise ele­ment and not advert­ise his advant­age beforehand.

If you write 1 – 2 clear sen­tences per bul­let, your strategy should fit nicely on one page.

Read also: The Easy Street PR Strategy: Keep It Simple To Win

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