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Go Where The Others Won’t Go
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Have you ever watched someone learning to ice skate? Perhaps you’ve been there too?
When people are starting out, hopelessly uncoordinated and a bit scared they do what all the other fearful learners do, they cling to the sides for dear life. It feels a little safer there in amongst the pack. Not standing out, but blending in.
The thing is it’s probably the worst place to be. The spot where there is no room to maneuver. The place that feels safer but actually isn’t, where there is every chance that someone will skate over fingers, or take the others down with them when they fall.
No, the best place to start is more likely away from the pack where the more confident skaters are. There’s just more room to move there. Perhaps more room for error too, and that’s what scares everyone. But there’s also more room for growth. More room to spread your wings and fly.
Most SEO company websites look and feel the same. Most florists sell exactly the same flowers, wrapped in slightly different paper. Most gyms have the similar training schedules. And most real estate agents run the same adverts.
If there’s a formula that looks like it’s working we’re happy to follow it.
Most people don’t take the risk of going where everyone else isn’t. That’s why it’s the best place to be.
Image by Marcovdz.
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Selling The Benefits
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Tell stories, don’t write descriptions.
Speak to hearts, not minds.
Paint a picture of the effect.
Tap into the senses.
Illustrate the impact.
Describe the joy, the relief, the pleasure.
Give people a reason to care.
Show them how you’re different.
Then let them know why it matters.
Image by Cliff Ravenscraft.
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The Best
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
The best teacher isn’t always the one who has a class full of students that get the best results.
The best designer isn’t always the one who knows the exact amount of white space to leave.
The best brand isn’t always the one that makes the most money.
The best athlete doesn’t always win.
And the best ideas aren’t always the ones that succeed.
Far better then to focus on being ‘the most’ you can be to the people who matter, than to work on being that little bit better, using a yardstick created by somebody else.
Image by Michael Goldrei.
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Create What People Want
When Ken and Nick lamented the passing of old-style pastrami and then decided to do something about it, they probably had a hunch that there were people who felt just like they did. Once they set to work tasting and testing and re-inventing the ultimate American comfort food they knew they were onto something.
Their artisan pastrami took them from a little farmer’s market, to a standing room only brunch at Ken’s old restaurant, to their hugely successful delicatessen called Kenny and Zuke’s.
Kenny and Zukes succeeds by creating what people want, by making food their customers will love, not by trying to make customers love their food.
It’s far easier to remind the right people of what they love, than it is to make everyone and anyone fall in love all over again.
Image by Allison O’Connor.
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Make More Room For Bravery
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
When you’re itching to do the thing you really want to do, but don’t, what stops you?
The answer is usually fear. Fear has a habit of getting in the way. Fear that people might laugh at you. Fear that your success so far was nothing but luck. Fear that you’ll fail. Fail in whose eyes?
If you’re spending the majority of your time worry about what the world will think about you, and the rest working out how to make the world think the ‘right thing’, then what’s left for the story you can tell yourself about what’s possible? What’s your allocation for imagination?
What if you made more room for bravery? What if you nudged worry aside for the few seconds longer it takes to just go? What if you didn’t need the map? What couldn’t you start then?
Image by Zilverbat.
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Why Startups Stall
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Strategy
It’s easy to start something today. Now that the gatekeepers are leaving their gates and the barrier to entry is lower than ever, anyone with an idea and an Internet connection can start a business. You don’t need a big staff on payroll or a factory to get the work done.
So more people are starting things.
There is no shortage of great ideas. The path to success though, is littered with great ideas poorly marketed. One of the biggest marketing mistakes new businesses make is neglecting the intangibles. Fledgling entrepreneurs and startup founders often concentrate all their effort on the tangible —the product, the business model, production, funding, and on and on. What sometimes gets forgotten are the ideals on which the business is founded.
While they are busy focusing on execution they neglect the fundamentals and forget to find ways to communicate that unique purpose to the people they want to reach.
A great product and a good business model can get you so far, but a purpose around which to build a brand framework is what makes businesses and brands thrive.
It turns out that what distinguished the 50 fastest growing and most valuable brands of the last decade was an ideal. A reason for being. The intangible that was the foundation of the brand’s culture and story.
“Great brands and businesses do more than make great products and services. Great brands and companies change peoples lives.”
—Jim Stengel
Former CMO Proctor & Gamble
Apple, Zappos, Starbucks, Amazon, Innocent, Red Bull, Pampers, Google and Coca Cola are all on the list, but tiny emerging brands made the cut too. Even empires of one can succeed because they have a purpose beyond what they sell. And huge ones can fail when they forget the reason they existed on the first place.
Image by Mike Ambs.
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10 Things To Do With Happy Customers
1. Treasure and thank them. Then work really hard to keep them.
2. Connect them to each other.
3. Reward their loyalty.
4. Give them platforms and places to engage with your brand.
5. Listen to their ideas.
6. Watch how they interact with your product.
7. Ask them what you could be doing better.
8. Harness their enthusiasm.
9. Ask them to tell others about you.
10.Never take them for granted.
Image by Vanessa Shaver.
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Why The Price Doesn’t Always Matter
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
At the start of the last school year as I stood in a queue I overheard a mother asking an assistant if the $200 calculator she was holding would be coming down in price. The assistant replied that this had been the price for a while, pointing out that the calculator was only required for certain levels of maths. Of course the mother bought the calculator. “Oh well we’ll take it then, because he will be doing advanced maths next year,” she said.
For a long time marketers thought that rational human beings made decisions based on the facts alone. So advertising was designed to help us to weigh up the benefits versus the costs. The truth is that being human means we rationalize all the time, and that most buying decisions we make have little or nothing to do with price.
That’s why we stand in line for twenty minutes at trendy cafes, to pay $4 for a cup of coffee served in a paper cup. It’s also why we spend $23 billion a year on vitamin supplements even though we have no idea if they work.
Value for money then is subjective.
The price of your product or service is part of a story that your customers want to tell themselves. I’m worth it. He cares. Our kid’s success matters.
What story are you enabling your customers to tell?
Image by Apun Pital.
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Marketing Is All About Values
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
In 1997 Steve Jobs was unhappy about how much Apple was spending on marketing and about the message the company was communicating. He realised that in an increasingly noisy world the chances for any company to be remembered were diminishing and that Apple needed to get really clear about what it was they wanted people to remember.
So he asked himself these three questions.
Who is Apple?
What do we stand for?
Where do we fit in this world?
And came up with this elegant answer.
“What we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well. Apple’s about something more than that. Apple’s core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.”
—Steve Jobs
From this starting point Apple’s ‘Think Different’ advertising campaign was born and it’s said that this also marked the company’s re-emergence.
When you’re building your business. When you’re busy being good enough from day to day, it’s easy to forget who you are. Sometimes what you stand for and where what you do fits into the world gets lost along the way.
That’s why it’s so important to understand and declare your values at the start. And why working out what you’re not is as good a place as any to begin.
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Story Is The Universal Marketing Tool
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
Story doesn’t discriminate. It’s not dependent on a big advertising department or celebrity endorsement. It’s the universal marketing tool available to anyone.
That includes you.
When Target had a store in every suburb. Zappos had a story about delivering ‘wow through service’. When Borders had floor upon floor of books you could touch. Amazon had every book in stock and available to order today. Now Sappho has books you’ve forgotten and long to touch again. When Gillette had celebrity endorsement Dollar Shave Club had the truth.
The big guys might have a marketing budget, but you have a story.
Don’t be afraid to tell it.
Image by Pixelmaniac.