Search Results: one of the few
Most Marketing
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Most marketing is designed to….
Get attention in the moment.
Make people choose.
Create awareness among many.
Persuade people to decide.
Most marketing is not designed to….
Build loyalty over time.
Make people care.
Create affinity with a few.
Help people to feel good about their decisions.
What makes your marketing unlike most marketing?
Image by Onny Carr.
Different Kinds Of Doing
You have probably sent a few important emails today. Maybe you blasted through a list of to-dos before morning coffee, or followed up on tasks you have outsourced?
There’s no denying that ‘doing’ feels good.
But there are different kinds of ‘doing’. There’s the ‘doing’ that makes us feel like we are getting somewhere and the ‘doing’ that actually takes us to where we want to go.
It turns out that productivity and progress are very different.
Productivity is about getting things done, while progress is about knowing what’s important to do.
What did you do today that will take you where you want to go?
Image by Kailash Gyawali.
Your Secret Weapon
The following email landed in my inbox a few weeks back.
You won’t have any trouble picking holes in this approach and avoiding them in your business.
———
Hi Bernadette,
I was thinking if you need assistance with your cold calling efforts. We have a team focused on setting up appointments and generating leads to help you achieve your sales goals without the hassle of chasing decision makers.
If you need more information regarding our services, I can have our Senior Sales Rep call you to discuss things further. How about some time today?
Please let me know the best number to reach you.
Best regards,
First Name Surname
XYZ Prospecting
———
Of the twenty things on your to do this morning what’s more important than speaking to a potential customer? The day he becomes a ‘hassle’ is the day it’s time to shut up shop.
Yes, it’s possible to find people to outsource the tactics to, but you can’t easily outsource caring—which is every great brand’s secret weapon.
Image by Nana B Agyei.
The Reasons People Buy From You
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
“People tell us who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be.”
—Donald Draper,
‘The Summer Man,’ Mad Men, season 4
Our customer’s motivations have two things in common—they are surprisingly few and they are also universal. What’s driving your customer to buy your product or service?
Does she want to…?
Solve a problem.
Fulfil a need.
Satisfy a desire.
Change how she feels.
Change how someone else feels.
Reinforce her beliefs.
Have a story to tell.
Understanding the story the customer tells herself helps you to tell a true story she can believe in.
Image by MG.Stanton.
Marketing Is How It Feels
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
In a recent article I read that “….aside from a few television spots and billboards here and there, Apple pretty much ignores marketing and advertising.”
This is simply not true. EVERYTHING Apple does, from the massive investment in package design that creates scissorless, video-worthy unboxing experiences, to product names, Genius training, years spent obsessing over every detail of a new product, glass staircases and Macbook screens angled so that you must touch them in order to interact with the product in store, is marketing.
Apple’s $1.2 billion spend on advertising (just 0.7% or their revenue) pales into insignificance when you consider the resources the company dedicates to creating meaningful products and experiences.
Marketing is neither medium or message, it’s how it feels to get close to your brand—which means everything that the customer sees, hears, tastes, smells and experiences (not just your advertising budget) is your marketing.
It really is time to stop confusing the two and to remember that now more than ever before, great advertising can’t and won’t rescue a mediocre product or experience.
Your brand story is not just something you say. It’s all that you do.
Image by Rob Boudon.
Making Things People Want
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
We are buying fewer pairs of jeans and more yoga pants, eating less gluten and more coconut oil. Trends are not simply a shift in behaviour, they are a sign of a change in the story we want to believe about ourselves.
When you develop a product, service or platform it’s not enough to consider how it tastes, works or looks, you have to think about how it will make your customer feel in the context of who she wants to believe she is. Even when the Athleta customer is not practicing yoga, she wants to feel like she’s akin to the kind of person who does.
What kind of person does your customer aspire to be?
How does that person act?
How can what you create help her to be more of who she wants to be?
We make things people want when we understand how what we make wraps around their story.
Image by Matt Madd.
How To Get The Results You Want
In work, as in life we create a sense of balance by understanding what we want and what we don’t.
We prioritize by wanting less of one thing and more of something else.
Less overwhelm and more progress. Fewer things to react to and more results.
Less busyness and more time. Fewer restrictions and more choices.
The irony is that we spend a lot our time on things that won’t get us to where we want to go.
We often prioritize the things we say we don’t want to keep doing.
The trick to getting the results you want is to align your actions with the results you want.
Take time to understand where you want to go.
Create the ‘must do’ list that’s going to get you there.
Do more of what’s on the list and less of what’s not.
The last step is a choice that we each have the power to make.
Image by Benjamin Horn.
Marketing In The Connection Economy
Traditional marketing, conceived for an industrial age asks us to believe in the wisdom of the funnel. Create something for most people, compete for the interest of some of them and convert a handful to customers.
Ironically what works in the connected economy, where our potential customers have access to information and choices, is the reverse. Create something that isn’t for everyone, focus on delighting those and only those people, then give them a reason to spread the story of how you exceeded their expectations.
We don’t win today by reaching the masses, we win by becoming meaningful to the few.
Image by Jason James.
The Awareness Conundrum
Which is better for your business—more people who know about your brand, or fewer people that it matters to?
It’s not hard to make our marketing more urgent with better calls to action, bigger ‘buy now’ buttons or a hundred and one other attention-grabbing tactics that don’t scale. What does scale though is affinity. The magnetic pull a person experiences when they feel like they belong.
Attention and awareness can be fleeting, random and accidental, but affinity if nurtured, endures.
There’s a difference between getting people to notice and getting them to care.
What is your marketing designed to do?
Image by Geraint Rowland.
The Difference Between A Pitch And A Brand Story
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
A pitch is what you tell the world about you. It’s presented as the polished version of your story. The one you hope people will grasp and believe within a few short minutes as they reach for their wallets.
Your pitch and your story are two very different things.
So how is a brand storytelling different from pitching?
A brand story is not told it is lived. Your brand story evolves over time, but is grounded in a purpose that doesn’t change. It’s not just the lines of carefully crafted copy on your about page. Your brand story is communicated in the values your company stands for, how your staff greet customers, that hurried email you sent, in your website design and product packaging. Anything that the customer touches or that touches the customer is your brand story.
Your story begins with culture—your brand’s intention and unique way of being and operating in the world. Just as you’d recongnise the silhouette of a friend in the distance or a close relative’s voice over the phone, your brand has a presence that is greater than the sum of its parts.
We know a Dr Marten shoe when we see it, the tone of an Apple advert and the shape of the Chobani yogurt cup even without the logo. We can sense the culture of an organisation in the posture of the people who work there and the care taken by a manufacturer when we hold a well-made garment in our hands.
The story is what we show as well as tell. It is what customers sense and say (and sometimes what they don’t). It is also things we don’t do or control directly, but sometimes enable. Conversations and exchanges, tiny moments of truth and expressions of self.
We invest a great deal of time and resources in perfecting and telling our stories and polishing our pitches. It’s worth remembering to commit just as much to understanding how and showing why those stories should matter to the very people we hope will believe us.
Image by Sasha Cresdee.