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Articles filed in: Marketing
How Change Happens
The success of whatever we make, serve, sell or advocate for is dependent on creating and sustaining change. The same rules apply whether we’re trying to change perception or behaviour, get people to buy our software or stop using plastic straws.
7 Steps To Making Change Happen
1. Acknowledgement
The problem, unmet need or dilemma is recognised by the prospective audience.
Awareness of the solution is not enough
2. Acceptance
Recognition that change is desired and possible
3. Adoption
Agreement about the solution to the problem.
4. Agency
A deep conviction that we have the power to create the change
5. Action
A perception or behaviour change takes place.
This change doesn’t always lead to overnight success or an immediate resolution to the problem.
6. Adherence
Sustained behaviour change, habit creation, compliance at work or loyalty to a brand.
7. Advocacy
Evangelists spread the word because of a sense of belonging and affinity with the brand or cause.
As ethical marketers and passionate activists, we spend a lot of our time working on awareness—believing that once people see our solution, they will immediately adopt it. We couldn’t be further from the truth. Making change happen is hard (and worth it). We need more time and patience than we realise.
Image by us mission
Not Just Anyone
Most often, the goal of our marketing is to be found. That goal dictates our marketing strategy.
If you’re trying to be found, you’ll seek out opportunities to interrupt everyone, anywhere.
But there is an alternative.
What would it take for you to be the brand people intentionally chose?
How could you become the one the right people seek out?
Being craved and coveted by that someone, right there, trumps being stumbled on by just anyone.
Image by Anastos Kol
The World Inside Your Customer’s Heart
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
There are few better lessons in the art of storytelling than those learned by watching a great real estate agent auction a good property, on a chilly Melbourne morning. Last Saturday, I looked on as an agent sold a million dollar home by reminding potential buyers how they would feel every weekend as they strolled to the cafe on the corner to have a delicious pastry with their flat white.
Having gone through the legal formalities, he didn’t waste much time talking about the quality of the construction or the fixtures and fittings. Instead, he painted a picture of what it would be like to live in that home, in that location. He reflected the story already in the buyers’ hearts back to them.
The young couple who bought the home (with the help of their parents, who stood by their side), had grown up in the area. They wanted their baby son to grow up there too.
Contrast this first agent’s approach with that of the one whose client’s property was passed in at auction later that day. The second agent led with the facts. He gave details about the land size, the distance from the city and statistics on property values in the area. Information that without meaning or context made little emotional connection with potential buyers and their worldview.
It’s believed that marketing is an unethical attempt to motivate people to buy through the back door of their emotions. Of course, storytelling in the wrong hands is a powerful tool that can encourage people to make decisions they later regret. Our job as ethical marketers is to help people to do things they want to do today and won’t regret tomorrow. We can only do that by understanding what’s in their hearts and by being able to say hand on our hearts that this is what we did.
Image by North Charleston
You Don’t Need Everyone
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Keeping a customer is more valuable to your business than courting one. Fred Reichheld, from Bain and Co, points out that return customers buy more products and refer more friends. Yet the majority of our marketing is devoted attracting more customers.
When startup Dollar Shave Club launched in 2011, the brand had some stiff competition in Gillette—the brand that had dominated the razor blade market for more than a century. The startup founders knew they’d never beat Gillette at the consumer awareness game, but they could shoot for customer affinity. That’s what they did by launching a subscription razor blade service at a competitive price.
Mass awareness isn’t working so well any more. Thankfully, we’re moving beyond thinking about how we can win the battle for every customer’s mind and recognising that the future of business is about understanding how to get closer to a particular customer’s heart.
You don’t need everyone to succeed. You need to matter to someone.
Image by Roberto Trombetta
The Downside Of The Comparative Advantage
A new cafe opens in Melbourne every other week. Our city is full to bursting with every kind of cafe you could wish for—from holes-in-the-wall doling out espresso to morning commuters, to leisurely brunch places in the suburbs where friends linger and city lunch spots where business deals are done. So how does a new cafe establish itself and get a foothold in the market?
The owners of the little cafe that’s just opened opposite a busy tram stop have decided to come out from behind the counter. They’re spending time during their opening week getting to know the locals and engaging with people waiting for the tram every morning. They’re paying attention to the prospective customer’s story so they can understand how they might fit into that story.
For years conventional marketing wisdom taught us to find customers for our product—to build it and then make them come. Many marketers still start there, by trying to differentiate with features and benefits. They work on having and sustaining a comparative advantage, by aiming to be closer or faster, cheaper or rarer. The thing is the businesses that thrive don’t set out to make a comparable product or service. They aim to be in a category of one—to be the product or service that fits into the customer’s life.
A thriving cafe doesn’t sell coffee by the cup—it sells the ritual for a lifetime.
Image by Margaretes
Easy Isn’t Always Best In The Long Run
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
The billboard outside the old cemetery read like a real estate advertisement.
‘Last remaining graves for sale.’ It seemed to scream inappropriately at the traffic roaring past.
In the past, these local burial plots would have been acquired by neighbouring families who were getting their affairs in order. Now even essential products and services have competition.
There’s no doubt that a billboard is a great way to capture everyone’s attention. But it may not be the best way to engage with the people you want to matter to.
It’s important to prioritise best above easy whatever you’re selling—especially if your customers will be around to do business with you again tomorrow.
Image by Natash Ramasamay
More What?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
All marketing is an attempt to amplify.
The story we tell and the marketing we do depends on our priorities. Do you want to be more visible, more trusted, more respected, more desirable, more loved or something else?
Begin with that end in mind and craft your message accordingly.
Image by Jason Ogden
Done Right Is Better Than Perfect
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Last week, someone—a person with a business, a living to make and maybe mouths to feed, took time to find the contact form on my website to send me this message.
Hello
Are you an online marketer, do you own a business or businesses?
I was just looking at your website.
Do you want real visitors to your website or SEO for social marketing?
-Visitors Come From Facebook
-Real Traffic Will Come From the USA and Europe 24/7
-This Is Lifetime Traffic
==Just for reference, you can see our work here== [hyperlink removed]
Behind this message are business goals, hopes and dreams that have little chance of being realised because the sender opted to take a shortcut.
You’ve probably heard Sheryl Sandberg’s sage advice to entrepreneurs; ‘Done is better than perfect’. I think we need to qualify those words. Done right is better than perfect. If you haven’t got time to do the groundwork to tell the right story to the right person, then that’s a wasted opportunity. Your work is worthy of the effort it takes to go the long way around.
Image by US Embassy
Attention Is A Byproduct Of Affinity.
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
The truest words ever spoken about storytelling were those of one of the greatest storytellers of our generation. J.K. Rowling once said—’No story lives unless someone wants to listen.’
As people who are anxious to change the world, what we try to do is make people listen. But there’s another equally important truth about storytelling that’s often overlooked. No person listens unless they care about what’s being said. Our job then is to tell stories that help people to care first so that they might listen later.
We can’t tell stories that resonate unless we understand the worldview of the people we’re hoping to help or change. We do better when we remember that attention is a byproduct of affinity.
Image by Dima Barsky
From Average To Exceptional
The menu at Fumi’s restaurant is identical to every other sushi restaurant in town. The ingredients come from the same fish market, and the prices are similar. On the face of it, there’s nothing to set the restaurants apart and no reason for a diner to favour one over another. The difference is only apparent after you’ve eaten at Fumi’s place. It isn’t just what the chefs cook that creates a line out the door every lunchtime. It’s how it’s made and the way it’s served that changes everything.
It’s hard to put your finger on what makes an experience memorable, but that doesn’t stop us and marketers the world over trying to do it because we want to recreate that kind of magic for our clients and customers.
What takes something from average to exceptional is surprisingly simple and consistently hard to do. The attitude of everyone who touches the product and creates the experience is what matters most in the end. When the people who make, serve and sell things believe and act as if it’s a privilege to do the work, they can’t help but create better experiences.
We do work that matters by believing that it matters.
Image by Jeena Paradies