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Articles filed in: Strategy
Selling The Facts
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Front row seats. That ring in a certain ‘blue box’. 70% dark chocolate. Business class flights. Pumpkins at Halloween. Botox. iPad mini. Frappuccino. 12 months gym membership in January. Free range chicken. The bestseller everyone is talking about. That black BMW. Vitamins.
The honeymoon suite. Gluten free bread. Wrinkle cream. Overnight shipping. Black stockings.
$50 charity donation. Recyclable toilet paper. Muesli bars. Car insurance. Low fat yogurt.
A trip to Paris. Nike running shoes. Red roses on February 14th. Private health insurance.
The collectible album. Angry Birds. A college education. Fireworks. A kitten. IKEA furniture.
People aren’t buying the facts.
They’re buying how what you do, and how you do it makes them feel.
So why are you selling them the facts?
Image by Pietro Izzo.
What The Cold Caller Forgot
He forgot to think about you and not just him.
He forgot you were busy.
He forgot to work hard to add value and build an asset over time.
He forgot to give before trying to take.
He forgot that you don’t care about his emergency.
He forgot that he can’t buy your permission.
He forgot that without permission he has nothing.
He forgot you don’t like being interrupted.
He forgot that he can’t create demand in a moment just because he needs to.
He forgot to care that it was time for dinner.
Image by Nathan Rupert.
Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
The tiny suburban cafe is full to bursting every day. It’s become more than a cafe really. The early morning cyclists punctuate the end of their ride at the tables on the pavement outside. Their last stop before heading off to work for the day. It’s the place where young mothers grab a takeaway coffee once the school run is done. Where the lone businessman catches up with his email, and tops up with espresso before he heads off into the fray.
The place is buzzing, they’re doing great, but they could always do more. They get plenty of helpful advice about the possibilities. You should do this and that. Why not open another branch? Set up a twitter account? Take SMS coffee orders? Open for dinner and on and on.
Yes, they could do all of this, or none of it, but how do they decide?
The husband and wife owners think about the story they wanted to tell in the first place. About being a community cafe where people come not just to drink great coffee, but to feel that they belong. And they choose. They choose not to scale because scaling will take them away from their vision and further from where they wanted to be. They decide that they are not willing to sacrifice joy and fulfillment for growth.
They choose because they understand what will take them closer to their goal.
There are a thousand and one tactics you can use to grow your business, but each one is useless unless it aligns with your strategy and keeps you on the road you want to be on.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
You get to choose the story you tell.
Image by Peter Morgan.
The Bottom Line
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Strategy
There’s an irony about entrepreneurship or starting a business and it’s this. When you begin you’re obsessed with the starting part. Just starting it seems is enough. You may have a vision for what could be, but there is not so much pressure to get there in the beginning. Once you’ve succeeded a little it is expected that you will find ways to scale.
When people ask you how business is going they generally want to know if your bottom line is heading in the right direction. Are profits up? Are you expanding or growing? And so business success is defined by one bottom line. A single metric.
It turns out though that many successful entrepreneurs don’t begin by focusing on just one bottom line. Visionary leaders, who build lasting brands don’t simply concentrate on revenues and profits. They begin with the ideal. They start with a problem they are itching to solve, or with the will to change something and the desire to make a difference.
If money is your only metric then you lose sight of the reason you’re in business in the first place. If you have one way of measuring your success then those numbers are what you focus on, and while your attention is there you forget what made your business successful in the first place.
The words of Neil Gaiman is his commencement address apply to entrepreneurs, creatives, freelancers, aspirational startups and MBAs alike.
“I decided that I would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn’t get the money, then you didn’t have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn’t get the money, at least I’d have the work.
Every now and again, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me. I don’t know that it’s an issue for anybody but me, but it’s true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn’t wind up getting the money, either. The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I’ve never regretted the time I spent on any of them.”
—Neil Gaiman
Pay attention to the bottom line. Just don’t put your whole focus there.
Image by Becky McCray.
Great Marketing Is Baked In Not Sprinkled On
The most common misconception in business is that you should work on your idea now, and add marketing later…. when you’re done.
Marketing is not just the icing on the cake, or the sprinkles on the top.
Marketing is the whole cake.
The quality of flour you use. The lightness of touch of the baker. The texture as it’s cut.
The tastiest icing, or most colourful sprinkles in the world won’t save a badly baked cake.
Bake your marketing into your business, products and services.
Don’t just sprinkle it on at the end.
Image by Cat Edens.
Adapting Or Shaping
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Strategy
Are you adapting to the current environment, or shaping what’s to come?
The most successful people, businesses and brands don’t jump on today’s bandwagon they design the future.
How are you doing that?
Image by Mark JP.
Stand Out By Telling A Better Brand Story
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The summer of 1980 was a terrible time to own a hair salon on Sydney’s Queen Street. The mile long suburban street had over twenty salons to choose from, and haircuts that were once $20, had been steadily knocked down a dollar at a time by each salon in turn.
The first salon to discount started doing cuts for $19, and very quickly every salon on the street was advertising $12 haircuts just to compete and stay open.
The situation was desperate, and many businesses were going to the wall for want of a better solution. Apart from one smart salon owner who created a big sign to put in his window which simply read:
We Fix $12 haircuts.
You don’t have to tell the same story as everyone else. You actually get to choose.
Image by Michael McCullough.
Give Them A Reason
Half of the products in your pantry now have a ‘like us on Facebook’ icon on the label. Why should you like a brand of mass produced honey on Facebook? Why does the brand manager think you should care?
Marketing is about doing great work that gets noticed. It’s about giving people a reason to care. It takes time, thought and a deep understanding of who you want to serve and how you want to make a difference. Yet we look for shortcuts. We use tactics to make people notice before creating real value. We forget to help customers to understand and experience, before selfishly telling them what to do.
Working hard to make people say your work is great,
is not the same as doing great work.
We spend so much of our energy here. Crafting the tweetable headlines. Writing press releases to help us get noticed. Trying to get on the radar of influencers. Creating print advertising campaigns. Deep discounting and on and on, when what actually works is doing the thing that people want to talk about.
When you do something that makes a difference you won’t have to work so hard to persuade people to notice or to talk about it.
Don’t just ask your customers to care about you. Give them a reason.
Image by Badjonni.
Make Your Idea Matter
filed in Entrepreneurship, Storytelling, Strategy
Make Your Idea Matter is finally available to buy on Amazon. Thanks to the people who bought the book yesterday it bagged a Top 3 spot on the Amazon Bestsellers list overnight!
It’s taken most of our Australian winter (or your summer), to simply get the book edited, formatted, designed and ready for publication. We’ve even completely redesigned the cover in the last three weeks. I love what Reese has done with it!
On Monday I published a post about the the subtle difference between thinking about how people feel, versus making people do. If I wanted to market this book with tactics I’d be offering you a carrot so that you’d go out and buy it. Since I’m not big on writing ‘squeeze pages’ with yellow highlighter, and I’m all about story I’ve been thinking a lot more about how you feel, than I have about making you do.
The path to success is littered with great ideas, poorly marketed, don’t let yours be one of them.
I hope that you’ll buy Make Your Idea Matter and begin using it today, to help you take your ideas out there into the world and make them fly. I hope you’ll use it to help your business stand out with a better story. I hope you’ll share it with ideas people, entrepreneurs and business owners that you care about who you know could use it too. I also hope you’ll tell us how it’s helped you in the reviews section on Amazon.com.
Lastly, without readers there would be no writers.
Thanks for making me care enough to show up every day.
Image by Sian Richardson.
Thinking About How People Feel Vs Making People Do
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Every one of us is a marketer.
We spend our days persuading people to do what we want them to do.
“Buy now.” “Click here.” “Please retweet.” “Only 5 4 left.” “Don’t drink and drive.” “Eat your greens and you’ll grow big and strong.”
My friend Mark and his wife Cindy own and run a tiny bakery. If four whole wheat buns in a batch of two dozen don’t rise they look each other in the eye and ask, “How will we feel if someone takes these home?” And then they simply don’t sell those four buns. Mark and Cindy are in it for the long haul. Yes, they have to balance the books at the end of the month, but they don’t make that happen by putting all of their energy into persuading people to do something.
They spend their days wondering how what they do can make a difference, and how it will make their customers feel.
You could spend your time working out how to make people act in the moment. Or you could think about how you would like to make them feel in the long run.
Image by Quan.