GarthBox

I love a marketing campaign I’m working on. More so, I love the spreadsheet I’m working with. I love what my team does with it. On a regular basis, the sheet gets ran through and people get highlighted, not so much as top priority to contact (even though they are), rather they get marked as insiders. They are the 20 percent who bring 80 percent of the influence to the event. They are the insiders.

Evaluate your media list, your list of clients, your list of followers.

Where on your spreadsheet are the insiders? The people who you have made feel they matter?

Find them and care for them first.

Stay Positive & Let Your Insiders Bring In The Outsiders

We’re thick into the marketing belief that if we get seen by enough people, if our SEO is tweaked regularly, if we push out enough content, if we buy enough ad space, then we’re bound to be successful. The more we’re seen, our product is seen, our service is seen, the more we’ll sell – or so the thinking goes.

Real marketing, however, is about seeing others. It’s about consistently showing and telling someone who you see them, that you are listening to them, that you care about them – you make them feel they’re being seen, not you.

If there’s a way to tweak SEO to show others they’re being seen, if we give content that matters specifically to that one person, if we buy ad space and fill it up with the target instead of the product, then we can say we’re doing marketing the right way, the relevant way, the way that resonates.

Think back to a time you were happy to be seen, to be recognized for who you were. Are you making your customer, client, target feel that way?

Stay Positive & You Do See Them, Right?

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It’s been more than six years since I’ve been to Boston. I’m here for #INBOUND15 – a fairly large (10,000+ people) marketing conference. I stayed traditional and took a taxi from the airport to where I’m staying.

The 20 minute drive was filled with the driver telling me all about UberX: how most drivers lack insurance, how they don’t actually make much money, how so many of his taxi driving friends switched over to the darkside.

I’ll be UberXing to the conference and back to the airport when it’s time to leave. None of what he told me convinced me not to.

In his rant, he forgot to say anything that mattered to me, the customer. At the end of MY day, UberX is cheaper, so why not?

If Taxis, UberXs, anyone, really, wants to make it in business, they’ve got to consider what’s in it for the customer and not get lost in the battle of what’s in it for themselves.

Stay Positive & Brag To Your Customers, Don’t Rant To Them

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I’ve heard the suggestion made often.

Outsource this. Hire a virtual assistant for that.

For things that can be rated as efficient/non-efficient, this tactic works.

But we’ll never be able to outsource the things that matter like caring, loving, trusting.

That starts and ends with us, and us alone. Businesses trying to shortcut it, outsource it, virtualize it are wasting their time.

Stay Positive & You Either Care Or You Don’t

Think of that beast that’s holding you back from the success you seek.

Complete this statement: You can’t achieve success because…

You need funding? Approval from a boss? An introduction to someone influential? A forward written by a previously famous author?

Now complete this statement: You can achieve your success if…

Turn “you can’t” into “you can if…”

Stay Positive & Because You Can (As Long As You Think Of Things Differently)

We often cut ourselves slack when we know we’re doing something for the first time.

When most work pressure is self-produced, it’s nice to have projects where we give ourselves a break because it’s our first time.

I wonder how your work would change if you kept that mindset with every project you take, every task you start, every new idea you start working on.

Aren’t you doing what you’re doing for the first time anyway even if you have done it before? You’ve taken the lessons learned from that first time and are applying them to this first time, right?

Confusing? Yes, but ultimately worth sorting out in our mind.

Stay Positive & Take That Weight Off Your Shoulders

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