There’s no shortage of small businesses trying to market like big ones.
No shortage of medium ones still marketing themselves in the same way a small would.
A handful of large businesses market themselves in the same way they did when they were half their size.
The best agencies and CMOs might still document the marketing tactics and strategies they’d like to do if they were larger than they are, but they don’t devote budget and energy to it. Not yet anyway.
People don’t like it when you take time away from them.
They do, however, love it when you give it to them.
It’s something to consider the next time you give someone a task. Do you do it in a way that they feel like time is stripped from their day? That they have more important things to do? That the things they could be doing matter more?
Alas, this isn’t about not delegating or assigning tasks, but rather 1. the way in which we do and 2. whether or not we gut check ourselves.
Breaking that down for a moment…
People feel like they are given time (an opportunity to prove themselves or be part of something bigger than themselves) when we ask someone to do something and we share the meaningful reason behind why the task needs to get done. “Hey can you do X” feels like time is being taken away. “Hey can you do X so we can have a productive meeting tomorrow?” feels like time is given.
Ego can often be the enemy, and even more often when we’re giving feedback, which is a cute way to say we’re asking others to do more work. In an effort to feel like we’ve contributed, we often give feedback for someone to do something that at the end of the day, won’t make a difference. Have you heard (or said yourself O_O) “I like it like X, can you make it that way?” <– That’s taking time, not giving it. The flip being, “I know the target is going to love it if you did X.” <– That feels like time is given.
All this to say: be careful. Relationships are built on trust and trust is built on respect for someones time. Time in the work day. Time with family. Time on this earth.
I’ve written about the way to climb a corporate ladder is by doing everything you can that helps someone else. (Of course, this is good practice on or off the ladder.)
At the core, it’s about exceeding expectations.
Whether it’s climbing the corporate ladder or creating a coffee shop that people talk about or designing a tricycle. If you want to stand out, you have to exceed expectations.
Fortunately, the bar is fairly low. There’s a lot of companies in motion to keep the bar average, mediocre, and banal.
When someone goes to your website, walks in your store, fills out your contact form – their expectations are pretty set for the experience. They’ve been to a place like this before, and that’s a good thing because now you have your chance to surprise and delight.
The alternative is to make something so wacky that someone can’t have any expectations because they haven’t experienced anything like it (LingsCars for example…). Alas, it’s noteworthy but it doesn’t exceed expectations, it sets new ones (a topic for a different blog post).
So go ahead and give them something familiar. Use that template. Do something others already do. But don’t forget to figure out how to exceed expectations.
p.s. Sell tricycles with baseball cards. Give your best content to someone who fills out a contact form (not a gated content form). Oh, and what if you put a red carpet once they entered the door rather than before they do. Just a few ideas.
I recently sent a video to a journalist. She was in the video. Not the main focus, but she was the MC of it. She responded with an apology about how fidgety she was. 10+ people had already reviewed the video, including myself, and no one noticed that detail.
Seth Godin accidentally wore two nearly identical – but still different – shoes on stage and it’s all he could think about. Did anyone who attended his speech notice? Nah. They were enamored with the speech he showed up to give.
If you’re selling sedatives, the fidgeting might matter. If you’re selling shoes, wearing a matching pair might matter, too.
But most of the things we focus on about ourselves don’t align with what others are focusing on us for.
Don’t let the fidgeting distract you from what you showed up to actually offer.
