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Articles filed in: Strategy
The Exponential Value Of Being More Than
So I’m standing at the service counter of the hair salon receiving the bad news that my usual stylist is sick today.
“What are you having?” the receptionist enquires. “If it’s just a cut everyone here is capable.”
Of course she’s right. Most clients don’t leave with blue hair they didn’t want. Most shop assistants can process transactions. Most nurses administer the right medication on time. Competence and efficiency are standard now. It’s what we expect but it isn’t what we care about.
Time and again the businesses that succeed find ways to be more than just okay.
Capable might get you to the end of a shift but it isn’t what’s valuable now.
Image by Ned Trifle.
Brand Vs. Branding
Branding is…..
“The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers’ mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme.”
—The Business Directory
Branding in the traditional sense was designed to create recognition and awareness of commodities. It was the way business persuaded customers to decide.
There’s a difference between being branded and becoming a brand. A distinction between recognition and significance.
It’s possible to shift a lot of breakfast cereal through brand recognition. But if your brand isn’t loved then it’s replaceable.
Branding might enable you to be top of mind. Top of mind isn’t the same as close to heart.
Ask Microsoft.
Image by Luke Chan.
The Most Important Question You’re Forgetting To Ask
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
From the outside looking in The Lego Group had a hugely successful business a decade ago. It was a beloved brand that seemed to be surviving the digital age. The balance sheet told a different story though and Lego had more years in the red than in the black between 1998 and 2004.
Part of their problem was doing too much. Lego had over diversified by moving into theme parks and clothing. And the once primary coloured bricks now came in a palette of 100 colors.
In 2005 Lego sold the Legoland theme parks and halved the number of colours of bricks they were making. They began asking their designers to innovate with constraints, but to leverage those to become even more creative. Lego returned to profitability that same year.
One of the first questions the new CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp asked was,
“What should we stop doing?”
The thing you take away leaves room for the things that really matter.
So, what should you stop doing?
Image by psychopyko.
What’s The Point?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Business isn’t about transactions and giving people the thing they want. That box of chocolates, an upgraded phone or the business class flight.
And marketing isn’t about selling them your facts.
It’s about giving people a story to believe in and one that they want to tell. Just like Evan’s.
(Take the two minutes to watch the video below, it’s worth it!).
The point is to take your customers on a journey to where they want to go.
Even if that’s almost to the end of the world.
Image by Palo.
The Second Secret Of Great Marketing
I signed up to an email list of a brilliant and famous author over a year ago and hadn’t hear anything since. No blog posts. No regular email. Nothing interesting or relevant to me. Nothing to look forward to. No connection to each other.
The author had my permission but it wasn’t much of a two way street. Two weeks out from the release of the next book I got an email offering me incentives to pre-order. I began to wonder if the author was excited about the impact the book might have on my life and work, or if I was just making up the numbers on the road to a New York Times Bestseller. I haven’t ordered the book yet.
So the third secret is….generosity first last and always.
If you can’t afford to be generous you can’t afford to be selfish either.
Image by acb.
Why You Don’t Want To Be The Impulse Buy
Have you ever watched people shopping at the airport? They amble distractedly fingering this, picking up that. Nine times out of ten they put things back. Sometimes the packaging, or maybe the boredom gets the better of them and the buy something they had no intention of buying.
It’s a win for the manufacturer of the laptop bag or souvenir chocolate maker in that moment. But not a sustainable strategy for growth.
And yet we often organise our marketing around the hope of being the impulse buy, with SEO and brochures, banner ads and special offers. Hoping.
A far better strategy is to build your brand around being chosen on purpose.
By creating the thing that people really wanted in the first place.
Image by Geir Halvorsen.
Why Is Giving Easier Than Taking?
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
From my first day at school (the day after I turned four,I don’t think my mother could wait a minute longer), we were taught that giving was a great thing. It was a convent school and every day Sister Collette would come around with a box and collect our pennies for babies in Africa. They taught us to share, to wait in line, to put our fingers on our lips so we could listen, to take turns but never to take. And almost never to ask. More than once I watched a barely toilet trained four year old make a puddle on the floor for the want of asking.
I loved bringing in lilacs from the garden at home for May alters and twigs for nature tables. Christmas gifts for secret Santas and homemade cakes on birthdays. I got a great education in taking and a lousy one in receiving, the legacy of which lives on to this day (ask my poor darling husband who despairs about buying me gifts). Maybe the same is true for you too? That’s why I’m sharing Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk video with you again.
In an increasingly freelance world where there is no direct trade of a paycheck for hours clocked in we’ve got to get better at asking. I don’t mean selfishly spamming that high profile person in your industry and asking for a leg up. The key to the ‘art of asking’ as Amanda said (and so many people missed) is the art of building trust first. Being generous. Giving in order to receive.
My book ‘Make Your Idea Matter’ has been nominated in the Small Business Book Awards alongside great books in the startup category. If you read it and got something from it I hope you’ll consider voting for it in one click.
Thanks for making it easier to ask.
UPDATE: Thanks to those who have emailed to say the link is not working in the blog post email.I’ve tripled checked it and it’s been working here all along so i have no idea why that is. I appreciate you tracking the right page down and voting anyway.
Image by Judd Hall.
The First Secret To Great Marketing
The first secret to great marketing is knowing where to start.
“Marketers have to move upstream now. We have to stop being the last step in the process and start being the first step.”
—SETH GODIN
Most marketers start by thinking about what they want their customers to do.
“Buy now”, “click this”, “give us your email address” and “while you’re at it like us on Facebook”.
You however begin with an understanding of what your customer believes and how she wants to feel. Then you work your socks off to help her to get where she wants to go.
Image by Matthew Spencer.
One Trick Pony
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
In the 1800’s small travelling circuses without big headline acts or a menagerie of exotic animals were known as dog and pony shows. The very average acts on the programme were derided as ‘one trick ponies’.
When I was growing up conventional wisdom said that you must strive never to be a ‘one trick pony’. That person who had a single talent, one area of expertise, no other way to stand out.
And yet what was once seen as a disadvantage would today be seen as mastery. You can’t help noticing that the unconventional and unwise, who have just one way of standing out and succeeding, inevitably do.
Image by badjonni.
This Time Next Year
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
“This time next year we’ll be millionaires!”
—Derek Trotter
CEO of Trotters Independent Traders
You probably spend a great deal of time setting business goals, working on strategy and planning for growth. It’s the sensible thing to do. After all how can you get to where you want to go if you don’t know where you’re headed.
When was the last time you thought about your customers goals? What about where she wants to be this time next year? The only way to become a part of your customer’s story is to understand her story. It turns out that viewing your business through your customer’s lens is a great business strategy.
Image by Johnny Vulcan.