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A Reason To Decide
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
She spotted the black dress just as she was about to give up. It was perfect. She imagined how it would cling in all the right places at the party on Friday night. And how she would feel when he spotted her across the crowded room.
The reason you buy the dress isn’t the same as the reason you only wear it once.
The reason you pick up the book isn’t the same as the reason you finish it.
The reason you choose the movie isn’t the same as the reason you’d watch it again.
And so it goes with your clients and customers.
The reason people decide might not be the reason you think. A big part of your work is to tell a story that gives them reasons to decide.
Image by Jason Hargrove.
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Why Bother?
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Worldview
Why bother having a customer care line that informs of a thirty minute wait and asks people to call back later?
Why bother selling an awards based credit card, then capping the points your customers can earn?
Why bother creating cheap for the masses, when you can deliver quality to the few?
Why bother saying you’ll call if you don’t?
Why bother pressing send if you don’t care about the outcome?
Why bother asking if you don’t really want to hear the answer?
Why bother giving your restaurant a million dollar fit out only to cut corners on staff training?
Why bother saying you’re different when you’re clearly average?
Why bother telling me you care if you don’t?
Why bother lying when the truth works just as well, if not better?
Why bother showing up if you’re not going to leave the world better for your having been here.
Why not to be the best to the few and not just average to everyone?
Image by Montgomery County Planning.
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Don’t Worry So Much About Awareness
Just the thought of the kind of marketing dollars the big brands will have invested in advertising for the Olympics is enough to make my eyes water. The result, millions of dollars worth of beautifully shot, feel good commercials that probably won’t sell many more phone plans or gold cards.
Awareness, not sales is their goal. The big brands pay handsomely to keep themselves top of mind. But you don’t have to.
Your goal is not to make better adverts. Your goal is to tell the best true stories you can tell about your ideas, products and services. You need to give people a reason to care, and to act, not just to make them aware.
Just like Ian Schon did with The Pen Project.
Image by Patrick Haney.
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How To Attract More Of The Right Customers
How can you attract more of the customers you want to work with?
Easy.
Tell people who you want to work with.
Tell them with your pricing and your website copy. Talk about your values. Frame your scarcity.
Don’t be afraid to spell it out.
When Tiffany & Co (who position themselves as the world’s premier jeweller), found that they were growing through sales of an entry priced bracelet that was becoming ubiquitous among teenager girls, they withdrew it. They wanted to be seen as an aspirational brand, the place that those girls would come back to years later for a diamond engagement ring.
Leave people in no doubt, like my designer Reese Spykerman does on her website, by getting specific about the type of clients she works with, the time it takes to work her magic and her firm but fair pricing policy.
By closing the door gently on the wrong customers, you free up resources to delight the perfect ones.
Image by Will Cheyney.
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When Will You Draw The Line?
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
When my mother left school aged just 14 she was sent to the Royal Candy sweet factory, to dip caramel by hand into big vats of icing, (pink or white). On the evening of her first day she told her widowed mother (who was raising 11 children single-handed), that she hated it and she wasn’t going back. She pleaded to be allowed to take up sewing, something she loved and was good at. But sewing didn’t pay so well. And four years later, when she turned 18 she was still dipping caramel at Royal Candy.
Years later everything changed.
But most people didn’t. They stayed inside the lines of the factories and gave the gatekeepers permission to write their stories and map out their destinies.
Today the Internet allows you to shape your own journey. And the only permission you need to tell a story that matters is your own.
“It’s important that we all take a breath, look down and realize that the clay is in our hands.
We can make it what we want. Not just the work,
but our future”
– Andrew Keller
What’s stopping you drawing your own lines?
Image by Whole Wheat Toast.
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Apple’s Not-So-Secret Marketing Secret
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Why would anyone buy a 13 inch MacBook Air?
Why not buy the Pro? It’s faster, has more memory, it’s actually only 700 grams heavier and .7cm thicker (or 2.4cm ‘thin’ in Applespeak) and it costs exactly the same.
Why pay a chunk of cash for less of something?
When I asked my Twitter friends who had one they talked about needing something ultra-portable, fast, lightweight (although they weren’t sure exactly how much lighter it was). One had blogged about the Air’s “Awwwww” factor.
The 13 inch MacBook Air is a classic example of the illogical purchasing decisions we make every day. It offers less of everything for roughly the same price. Less memory and less storage. It’s slower and has a shorter battery life. But who wouldn’t want to own “The world’s thinnest notebook”?
According to Harvard marketing professor Gerald Zaltman a tiny fraction of our decisions, just 5%, are based on logic. The truth is people aren’t buying your specifications and your facts.
The path to success is littered with great ideas poorly marketed, but armed with this knowledge Apple succeeds by marketing to the whole customer. By giving us products we love as much as our cat, and making us want them by understanding our heart’s desires, then telling us that story.
Image by rando mix.
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20 Questions To Answer Before Asking How Much Money Can I Make?
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Worldview
1. Why do I want to do this?
2. What do I care about?
3. What brings me joy?
4. What am I good at?
5. What’s scarce?
6. What problem can I solve?
7. Who needs me?
8. How can I make a difference?
9. How can I deliver value?
10.What can I change?
11.How can I make meaning?
12.What do other people care about?
13.How can I start small for next to nothing?
14.Who are my heroes and what would they do?
15.Who would I kill to work with?
16.Who exactly am I going to serve?
17.How can I get from where I am to where I want to be?
18.What’s stopping me?
19.What’s my definition of success.
20.What will be my legacy?
Find the answers to these questions and the money will come.
Image by Brian Mensching.
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They Miss Us Now We’re Gone
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
The shopping malls are empty and the big department store owners are worried. They’ve finally got the memo. They realise that they can’t out-stock Amazon, or price match the guy from Seoul selling wallets on eBay. So they’re trying to woo us back with loyalty cards, air miles and faster ways to checkout our less than five items.
They miss us now we’ve gone, to buy a hand-crafted necklace from Megan, or a one-of-a-kind lamp from Philippa.
We’ve moved on without them, while they kept buying double-page spreads in the local newspaper.
The world has changed. You don’t have to compete with the big guys. They are the ones at a disadvantage now. You have everything you need to bring your ideas to life. To do work you care about, and to tell the story about what you do to people who want to listen.
It might be too late for the big guys to matter, but it’s not too late for you.
Image by eskimo jo.
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We Don’t Have To
We arrived at the restaurant right on time, because we knew they needed the table by 7pm for the next booking. The waitress forgot to smile as we pushed open the door, where the sign still read ‘closed’. “We’ll be open in three minutes!” she barked.
Oh.
The smile never made an appearance.
But that’s not what they promised on their about page.
“Our name (the restaurant), loosely translates to happy, jolly or bright which is at the heart of our philosophy. We aim to deliver the best possible eating experience in a happy and bright atmosphere without compromising the integrity of our home style food.”
What actually happened was the reverse.
The place filled up. People obviously came for the food, and not the experience. My guess is that they left feeling full, but not satisfied.
People experience average, we’ve done the minimum required type service, all day, every day. Average businesses don’t do more, because they don’t have to, (not on a steady Saturday night anyway).
And the brands and businesses we can’t live without just keep blowing us away, by doing the things they don’t have to do.
Image by Sheridan Rose.
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The Sure Thing
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
If you’ve ever watched surfers you’ll know that they spend far more time reading the waves, than riding them. And despite all of the waiting, watching and experience, they still sometimes choose the wrong wave to ride. In the end they take their best guess, commit and go.
And so it goes for ideas too.
Did the Pintrest founder Ben Silbermann know back in 2009, that he was building what would become the fastest growing social network? And did Kevin Systrom have any idea that his Instagram app would be acquired by Facebook for a billion, just months after Kodak died?
Nobody knows for sure. There is no certainty. No such thing as a ‘sure thing’.
So once you’ve done the preparation, there is no reason not to take your best guess and go.
The people who succeed, are the ones that put the need for certainty aside, to focus on riding the best wave they can. They don’t wait for the tide to be perfect tomorrow.
Image by Mike Baird.