GarthBox

Treat different people differently.

Not every brand you represent can appeal to the same people in the same way.

Bernadette Jiwa encourages marketers and business owners to ask “Is this product or service worthy of my customer and why?” at every point possible.

While, like me, you may want to say every customer of every brand deserves the best of the best, “the best” of one is not the same as “the best” of another. Our worldview is not their worldview.

Something wouldn’t be right about McDonalds providing wine and a croissant with their McNuggets.

There are a lot of remarkable marketing ideas, ways to over-deliver, ways to improve a product or service, but they don’t work if the product or service isn’t worthy of the customer or we can’t answer why they would care.

Stay Positive & Food For Thought

I read about a lot of different marketing tactics. From the long tail to the tipping point to the minimum viable product and so many more.

I’ve misinterpreted these concepts like many before me. I thought they were safe, pain-free cutting-edge strategies that would allow me to achieve my business goals. I think it’s a hope we all hope: we read about the Purple Cow and GTD hoping it’ll be an easy way to exceed our expectations for business.

What I’ve learned is what makes all these concepts work is those behind them committed to thinking about things differently, to stepping out of their comfort zone, to flying blind in an uncharted territory.

We read, I think, about a new tactic each time someone commits to the scariest, riskiest, potentially painful (not quite fatal) new tactic. We believe that since they did it, they made it through, they succeeded with a certain tactic, that it’s all the sudden safe.

As it’s been said before, you can’t do good marketing if you’re risk-adverse. Moreover, you can’t do marketing (period!) if you’re risk-adverse. That’s what makes us marketers remarkable. We’re willing to commit to doing personal work that requires guts and grit and gumption.

Stay Positive & You’re A Marketer Right?

With so many stories being told and so many shiny objects for consumers to be distracted by, it goes without saying telling your brand story is more difficult than it ever has been, right?

Quite the opposite.

Just over 5 years ago, we had to tell our stories for a longer length of time, we had to hold customers hands and walk them through everything, hell, we had to spend two hours with one customer in a brick and mortar shop – that, to me, is tough storytelling; it’s both time and energy-consuming with no guarantee of making a sale.

Now it’s so easy to insert a piece of your story into the consumer’s daily life: a tweet of appreciation here, a FB photo share there, a care package on their birthday, a beautifully designed bag their item is placed in, over-night shipping, Fan of The Month, location base, testimonials, the personalities of staff, the style of your customer service employees, and so on.

While long television ads and 20 paragraph “about us” pages can tell your story, there are so many other (small, quick, cheap) ways to help carry it further.

Stay Positive & The Best Stories Are Digested Unconsciously By Customers (Impact>Attention)

It’s difficult for a person to ignite interest in a product.

Primarily, the consumer finds a product and notices how it fits their worldview first. That’s why design of the product and the branding elements around it matter so much. Only then does it function for an associate to engage in conversation about the product.

There’s two ways a pitch can go. You can either be calling to introduce a product and try to shape it to fit the receiver’s worldview or you can be calling to add a cherry to the sundae that is the receiver’s preconceived interest.

The best product to pitch is the one you don’t need to list all the reasons why they should be interested in it. They already are.

How are you building that into your product? Your packaging? Your imagery?

Stay Positive & Know When To Shush And Let Your Customer Fall In Love With The Product