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Articles filed in: Strategy
What The Best Marketers Do
I’m not sure when our attitude to marketing shifted. But it’s likely that it coincided with our ability to buy attention. The price of reaching more eyes and ears on flyers and billboards, radio and TV, seemed cheap compared to the effort of earning customer loyalty day after day.
The great marketers of two generations ago knew a reputation could not be easily bought—but it could be quickly destroyed. They didn’t try to be seen. They devoted the majority of their time helping their customers to feel seen.
That’s what the best marketers still do. They don’t shout, ‘look at me’. They whisper, ‘I see you’.
Image by Jeff Stvan
Create The Future You Want To See
The best investment I ever made in myself and my business was buying a copy of Seth Godin’s book, Purple Cow. Seth taught me that remarkability was a choice. Just as business owners don’t work just to pay the bills, writers don’t write just so they can eat. They write to create the change they want to see in the world. That’s what we’re all here to do.
My new book, Story Driven: You don’t need to compete when you know who you are, published a few days ago. It’s my most important work. That’s why I’m launching the Kindle eBook edition at the special price of 99 cents this week. I’m not only inviting you to invest in yourself by buying a copy. I’m encouraging you to invest in your friends and colleagues by gifting the book to them.
You can buy and gift Story Driven today on Amazon.com, or if you’re in Australia, Amazon.com.au and the UK, Amazon.co.uk
(It’s available in all international Amazon stores. Search your local Amazon store by title and author).
We get to choose the future we want to see and the chance to create it together.
Thanks for giving me a reason to write.
Image by Kieran Jiwa
How To Craft A Powerful Message
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
The acceptance speeches are the highlight of every Oscars ceremony. I’m a sucker for them. It’s fascinating to see how the best communicators in the world share their personal message in a just minute or two. This year, actress Frances McDormand stole the show. This wasn’t an accident. Frances knew how she should craft her message to create the change she was seeking. And while our delivery may not be as fabulous as Frances’, we can get better at crafting more powerful messages by following these three steps.
Three Steps To Crafting A Powerful Message
1. Determine the who
Who is your audience?
Why are they here?
What do they care about?
2. Work out your what
What do you want the audience to know, think, feel, say and do as a result of hearing your message?
3. Work on your how
How can you craft and deliver the message in a way that helps you to achieve your goal?
All great storytellers begin with the end in mind.
Image by Kevo Thomson
Make Fewer Promises
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
It’s a Saturday night. Jeff, the on-call Planning Enforcement Officer for the local council, is just about to sit down to a takeaway meal and a movie with his wife when his phone rings. Residents close to a new nightclub want him to come and assess the noise levels at the venue. Even before the conversation starts, Jeff is not primed to listen. What he thinks is a good outcome—getting the caller off the line in the quickest time possible, doesn’t align with what the caller thinks is a good outcome—Jeff dropping everything and getting around to the nightclub in the next thirty minutes.
Misaligned expectations are the greatest source of dissatisfaction in any service interaction. You can’t begin to satisfy or delight your customer unless you are prepared to meet his expectations. Two things need to be in place to make that happen. Firstly, you need to understand the customer’s desired outcome. And secondly, you need to have the resources and the willingness to meet it.
If the last thing Jeff wants to do when he’s on call is get in his car to investigate complaints, then it’s unlikely he’ll satisfy ratepayers. The way he handles incoming calls is affected by his desire to enjoy a quiet night at home. His tone will be defensive and his manner abrupt. The organisation does more harm than good by having a 24-hour hotline that sets the expectation that an officer might visit in an emergency if that’s unlikely to happen.
Excellence is about making fewer promises that you always keep.
Image by Nathan Rupert
Choosing To Be Better
Every business begins with a choice to be better. Not necessarily to be better than the competition, but to be a better option for the people it hopes to serve. As we become mired in the day-to-day work of business building, we can lose sight of our original intention.
Nike’s Bill Bowerman chose to be better at creating innovative shoes that would enhance every athlete’s performance. The company is still making the same choice today.
Kate Reid chose to make better croissants. She’s gained international recognition and built a thriving business by staying true to that intention.
What did you choose to be better at and why? How are you staying true to that choice?
Image by eMeow
Why Do You Want To Tell A Good Brand Story?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Why do you want to get better at storytelling?
When I ask clients and potential clients that question, I get a mixed bag of answers.
By far the most common reason is to increase brand awareness. Conventional wisdom argues that the more people who know about your product or service, the greater chance you have of selling more products and services. The simplest way to make everyone aware is to buy the attention of the most people. But the downside to that strategy is that you’re wasting resources speaking to people who have no interest in hearing or buying from you.
The second most common answer is to speed the process of attracting more customers. This mindset can lead business owners down the path of compromise, which presents its own unique set of challenges. You can’t do your best work when you start appealing to customers who don’t share your worldview. When you do, you attract the kind of customers your business is not designed to serve well.
Another reason commonly offered is to make sure to be seen in the right light by the right people. And while it’s smart to think about the audience you hope to engage with, you need to be mindful of telling a story that isn’t true just because it resonates with the people you’re speaking to.
Three Lessons From Great Brand Storytellers
1. Allocate resources where they have the most impact.
2. Get clear about the kind of customers you do and don’t want to attract.
3. Be as good at turning off the wrong customers as you are at attracting the right ones.
Your marketing motivations will ultimately inform your brand strategy and marketing tactics. That’s why it pays to know not just what you want to say and how best to say it, but also to understand why it’s important to you to say it at all.
Resonance begets belonging and belonging scales.
Image by rotesnichts
Now Vs. Next
We’ve come to believe that the ability to focus on the future is the cornerstone of achievement, success and progress. But we’re in such a hurry to get there we often sacrifice the opportunity to do our best work in this moment. The irony, of course, is that tomorrow’s success is dependent on the groundwork we do today. Begin where you can. Start here.
Image by Javi
Who Will You Impact?
filed in Storytelling, Strategy, Success
The bus headed back over the Golden Gate Bridge as we neared the end of our tour of Sausalito. The driver pulled over at the second last stop and turned off the ignition so that he could ‘address his guests’. Then Dwayne Johnson (the man who had the name before the celebrity who made it famous), stood facing us, looking out towards the iconic bridge in the background.
He explained that he loved the city he had called home for almost sixty years. He told us he regarded his job as both a pleasure and a privilege. And then he began to evangelise about the stunning monument we’d just driven across.
‘This bridge will be the standard for every bridge that will ever be built,’ he said. ‘They say Disneyland is magical. No, this bridge is magical. Even guys take selfies on this bridge.’
Dwayne explained that although it was a cold day, we were in San Francisco at a beautiful time to experience it. On foggy days much of the bridge is obscured from view. He told us that he drives across it every day, but he walks across it at the weekend whenever he can. And then he invited us to get off the bus and do the same, even though we didn’t have to because the bus was going back across it anyway.
‘Maybe you think it’s too cold or you’ll do it next time. But you don’t know if you’ll be back. And one day, when you get home, and you’re showing the photos of your trip to friends they will ask you if you walked across the bridge. Your trip will be defined by that.’
Then Dwayne stood back and gave us a moment to decide. Half of the passengers (many of whom would have left a tip in the tip jar on the dashboard at the end of the trip), left the bus to walk across the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge, as our guide got back in his seat and turned the ignition.
Dwayne Johnson doesn’t own Big Bus Tours. But he does own the power he has to touch people’s lives every day. Who will you impact today?
Image by 305 Seahill
Who Cares?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
It’s easy to assume that a delicious meal is about the magic that happens when the chef, who we think has the most skin in the game, directly influences the end product. Is the perfect plate of pasta a result of the quality of the ingredients or the skill of the chef? How much does the ambience of the restaurant or the waiter’s service influence our perception of how good the food tastes?
In any well-oiled restaurant or company, every individual understands their role in the value chain. But efficiency is only one element of a great product or experience. We know that meeting an expectation is an end to end process, which begins before the customer arrives and finishes as she leaves. But we have the opportunity to make it more of a virtuous cycle by caring.
The things that delight us are born in moments when people who care bring their skills together to create a future they want to see. Care first. Strategise later.
Image by Bruno Cordioli
Marketing 101
The queue outside Chinatown’s Golden Gate Bakery extends all the way down the street. More people join as customers are served, so the line never gets shorter. Sometimes people show up hoping to buy the famous egg custard tarts through the front door even when the bakery is closed. Locals know to come early and bring cash. Puzzled tourists wonder what they’re missing out on when they see the lines and delighted customers clutching bright pink boxes. Many join the queue and come away with a dozen egg tarts too.
The Golden Gate Bakery is an example of marketing 101.
Marketing 101
1. Make something people want.
2. Consistently deliver on your promise to your customers.
3. Give them a way to spread the story about the thing you made.
If you tick all three boxes, then you’ve got a marketing plan.
Image by Gary Stevens