Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
People connect on vulnerable terms. Progress is most effectively made in short bursts. Keeping it short is taking away the fluff, the cushion, the safety net. Short is hard work. Hard work is valuable work. And valuable work is always the result of people becoming vulnerable.
Stay Positive & Worth Watching… don’t worry, it’s short.
After someone makes a transaction, makes their purchase, opens the book, follows through with your call to action, it’s all tweaking at that point for you.
If you see most people don’t read blog posts longer than 2,000 words, that’s easy to tweak. If few people opened up your press release, the title is easy to tweak. If no one is sharing your YouTube video, making the share button more visible is easy to tweak.
The place analysis is most important is in the conversations leading up to the transaction. How did they get to your blog in the first place? How is their email on your list to begin with? Why would people want to share the video anyway?
No transaction is as simple as “this for that” anymore. There are conversations going on before every transaction. Conversations customers have with themselves. Conversations they have with you. Conversations they have with their friends.
Maybe the focus needs to be less on tweaking and more on reaching the right people to begin with.
If you don’t analyze the conversations before a transaction, you’ll be at the mercy of always tweaking, always making adjustments.
Stay Positive & Hard To Move In The Right Direction When You’re Moving In All Directions
Photo credit to my awesome friend Krista Ledbetter
Words from a work colleague after my boss brought back tubed meat and tuna from Switzerland. (Yes, we joked about using it as toothpaste.)
Everything about the tubed food seemed and looked disgusting. I use past tense because they finished the tubes. Nothing new to talk about or cringe from now.
However, a bit of wisdom that managed to squeeze itself out of the tubed food talk is this: why is book cover design so lucrative if we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover?
Answer: Because we do anyway.
Apparently if you put dog shit in a tube and make it look presentable by design, my coworker will try it. It’s the truth, really. To some people canned tuna doesn’t make sense, but tubed tuna does. Consider yogurt and gogurt. Consider toothpaste in bottle verses in a container you dip your brush in. Design matters.
The first step in design (or for any effort to impact people) is to know your audience.
The first thing to know about your audience is they will judge a book by its cover; that’s how you get people to try something, consider a service, open a book, read your blog.
My one defense to this truth and favorite aspect of design is you often get more than one chance to make a good first impression. If the book cover doesn’t engage readers to open it up, then redesign the cover. That simple and most people won’t notice.
And my last design tip. Don’t forget the weird. Because there are weird people who will eat tuna out of a tube, and, yes, as disgusting as it is, there are people who could be persuaded to purchase dog shit in a tube. Maybe not eat it, but at least purchase it.
Stay Positive & It’s Actually Sounding Like A Pretty Good Gag Gift To Me
HT to Chip Kidd for being an idol.
Are you open to it? Thinking about it? Considering the wildest idea others may have?
I tested a new interface of EatStreet‘s website earlier today with Rob, VP of marketing there. His last question for me was what my wildest idea is that could make the experience better, more remarkable? No boundaries, no wrong answers, no restrictions. It could be anything.
Really, though, he didn’t need to ask. He could have ended the trial without ever asking. The feedback up to that point was safe, it was logical, it was feedback that would benefit the mass number of users. But he didn’t stop there. He asked.
It’s great to think of where the wild ideas are. They represent forward thinking, they represent risk and potential failure, but also potentially wild success too.
Stay Positive & So, What’s Your Wildest Idea? Can It Work?
Photo credit
Funny how things come up again, but have a different meaning the second time around.
A tad over a year ago I wrote a short essay on the big sort. The big sort, according to Bill Bishop, is a political, geographical theory. Actually, theory might be too weak. It’s the truth. Americans are sorting themselves out. Moving to places where like-minded people live. Thing is, Bishop (author of the big sort) focuses on such a small part of the big sort and is far too pessimistic. The big sort couldn’t be better for marketers.
In terms of marketing, there’s no need to push anything down anyone’s throat, no need to shove a product into customers’ hands of which are already full, no need to create an ad that appeals to the masses anymore. We finally have a new (dare I say, better) way of reaching people, because that’s what they are now, people, not eyeballs, and they are gathering around other like-minded people, creating tribes.
Marketing is marvelous when the message is received by the right people at the right time. Now people are sorting themselves and as a result making each individual and each tribe more reachable. Best of all, the walls people had to put up from years of brute advertising are becoming more transparent.
When you look at it this way, marketing seems pretty easy. Then again, while it is easier to market, it’s ever more difficult to create a message that’s remarkable. Yin and yang. Ebb and flow. So it goes.
Stay Positive & Rainbow Chasers, In One Neat Place For You
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Some go into marketing and only work on accounts they are passionate about. Others go into marketing merely for the money. That’s alright.
Some consume products because it makes them feel good, builds their ego or gives them something to talk to friends about. Others consume with the mindset “our wants our many, our needs are few.” That’s alright, too.
That’s not just the way the cookie crumbles, that’s how we like it.
Some love the cookies, some love the crumbs.
Stay Positive & In The End, We All Feel Fat, But Happy, Too
Isn’t that what life is about? Being happy?
Photo Credit
Are you on a magnet on a fridge? Are you the starred name in a CEO’s roldex? Does that waitress, Nicole, have your favorite drink ready when you walk in? Has everyone who matters seen your name and profile photo on Twitter? Are you that guy who is always at the coffee shop drawing, taking shots of espresso?
People are assessed and judged by where they have been, where they are now, and where they will be.
The difference between them is your story.
When they’re all the same place, it’s not that remarkable is it? People die standing still.
So let’s quit standing still. Let’s hang out somewhere different tomorrow. And maybe the day after too. Let’s build our story.
Where you hang matters a ton. And don’t get me started on how important who we hang out with is, either.
Stay Positive & Better Get Out There
