Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
Everything you share says something about who you are.
Content is social currency.
It’s not what people think of you when you create content, it’s what others think of those who share what you’ve created.
Are you building people up? Breaking them down? Getting them to think about things differently? Encouraging them to follow the status quo?
Stay Positive & Create Something That’s Value Increases When Shared
Clients care about measuring success with numbers. Your boss cares about numbers. You’re evaluated by the metrics you share each quarter. Every rating is a stat.
Stats provide a lot of direction. They can show you what’s working and what’s not. They can make you smile and they can make you panic.
While I’m a lover of stats, I think the greatest stats are the ones we don’t need to see; the one’s we only need to stop and think about.
Are people being moved by our message?
Would you open the email if you saw it in your inbox?
Are you receiving thank-you letters that tell of you for exceeding expectations?
Stay Positive & Don’t Get Lost In The Numbers, Get Lost In The Movement
Consider every New York Times best seller ever. Not everyone loved it.
Think about the greatest fashion designers in the world, Olympic winners, Victoria Secret Models. Not everyone loves them.
In the fight for attention we rate our quality of work by poor metrics.
When I took an Uber to Boston airport, my terminal was backed up with traffic and the driver said, “some people are shocked, did you think you were the only one flying today?” He’s right and clients and marketers and business owners fall into the same mental trap.
Did you really think everyone would see what you offered? Did you think everyone who saw what you offered would click-through, would fall in love, would want more? Of course not.
I bring this up for one very important reason. When we only think “just one person” or “every person” we lose out on the some people.
It is some people who love the book Daring Greatly. It is some people who love Chuck Close. Some people who lift Karlie Kloss up.
Are you rewarding the “some” of the attention you’re getting? Or are you leaving them behind in hopes to get all the people?
I’m a firm believer that no campaign is a poor campaign that shines light on some people. Whether it gains you 5 new Twitter followers or 5,000, as long as you respond to them when they say “this…this is for me.”
Stay Positive & It’s Also Okay To Say “This Isn’t For You”
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I stopped at a Verizon store the other day to handle a billing error. When I walked out of the store, I knew I was out of their minds. They thought they had permission to stop caring.
I exited an Uber vehicle the other day and knew the driver (Uber as a business?) didn’t care about me anymore.
It is no longer okay, no longer good enough for marketers, for sales associates, for artists, for Uber drivers to call it a job done when they get a customer to the establishment. Nor are they done when that customer exits the establishment. Nor are they done post-purchase. Nor are they done post-Amazon review. No.
Infinity marketing; it’s the marketing people want. It’s the caring people deserve. If, as marketers, we’re not doing it, then we’re not holding up our end of the bargain, of the business, of why we’re in this field.
Stay Positive & Always Be Caring, Before, After And After After
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When you’re delighted, you’re at a high.
When you open a package and see something amazing in addition to what you ordered, that’s delight. When an author signs a book for you, that’s delight. When you get given a larger tip than expected, that’s delight.
If you’re in the business of delighting customers, then doing this over and over again works, but if you’re in the business of retaining customers, of creating brand loyalists then it pays to note that the feeling which delight ignites is temporary.
Going the extra mile doesn’t make the customers more loyal. What makes them loyal is you live up to the promise you’ve made.
An airline can buy pizza for all the passengers who are stuck in the plane on the tarmac and this will create a lot of delight, but it’s not creating loyalists. The promise made is the airline would get these people to where they needed to go on time, to their families, to their events, to their job interviews. Which is more important? Pizza or keeping a promise? (I know, tough choice, right?)
What about a situation where delight is so easy to do?
A record store puts on a by one get one deal for the weekend. That’s great from a delight standpoint, but not a loyalty one. When people expect crap products, crap service, it’s quite easy to delight.
Then what builds loyalty?
It’s not only keeping your promise; it’s keeping it in the easiest most sincere way possible.
What if Delta, instead of Pizza, owned up to their failed promise and spent money on a fleet of taxis that we’re ready to take every passenger exactly where they needed to go. What if they managed to get a police escort to ensure people got where they needed to go as quickly as possible. Pizza doesn’t help them fulfill their promise.
What if the record store didn’t advertise a buy one get one, but instead asked every customer about a close friend of theirs, what music they liked, and hand-picked a record for the current customer to give to them? It fulfills their promise to spread music, to care, to be knowledgeable.
As a marketer, when you want to put budget toward something special, ask yourself if you’re creating temporary delight or if you’re creating brand loyalty. They look a like, but with totally different results.
Stay Positive & Spend More Energy On Fulfilling Your Promise Easier
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I’m not a perfect marketer. I don’t play out to be. I’m all about failing often, failing fast, and holding dear to the trial & error mindset. So when I talk about the marketer’s two clicks of disgrace: copy and paste, it’s not that I never do it; it’s that I try not to and recognize the action as a check in point about the work I’m doing. Is it remarkable? Personal? Human?
When we copy and paste we’re most likely…
Coming off as a robot
Not attributing credit where it’s due
Removing the emotion
Taking a shortcut that gets you ahead but not in the direction of your goal
Not caring
Next time you copy and paste, think about what you’re doing. It’s likely you’re doing (or not doing) more than a couple of clicks.
Stay Positive & Original, Caring, Honest
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The worst argument a marketer can make in a meeting about creative, about ads, about marketing is that something won’t work because it doesn’t appeal to them.
Another way to look at it: I don’t use Pinterest, so why would the target use it. Screw Pinterest.
Another way: That ad doesn’t speak to me, show me something different.
Why are these examples so wrong? Because the marketer is considering herself part of the target when she’s not. As marketers (often egotistical ones) the story we tell ourselves is that we know best, so if it’s marketing that moves us, then it will obviously speak to the target.
This story is a lie.
Just because we don’t use a platform doesn’t mean the platform’s not getting used. Look at MySpace. It has more than 50 million (!) active users on it.
Just because it’s a book we didn’t enjoy, doesn’t mean it won’t make the bestsellers list. More than 600 readers of the book Outliers have taken time to give it a low star review on Amazon, yet it’s still on the list.
Just because we don’t have clunky polaroid cameras anymore doesn’t mean Polaroid isn’t still relevant.
Stay Positive & You Are Not Your Target
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