GarthBox

The best marketer finds ways to insert him or herself outside of the marketing team.

It’s more than just visiting the sales team.

It’s sitting in on a customer service call. It’s evaluating the intro email the client’s manager sends. It’s taking a look at how the invoice is designed before it’s sent. It’s evaluating the voicemail message. It’s weighing in on the customer training videos and exec presentations.

For a cafe it might be using the customer bathroom.

For a tech company it might be sitting in on every UX meeting.

For a manufacturing company it might be what’s on the walls of the facility or the lighting or the entrance door that the main workers go through.

To think marketing really is just one department…ha.

Stay Positive & Explore, Then Make Better

Photo credit

A restaurant closed nearby. It’s easy to think of all the things they could have and should have done to continue their success.

Offers fall flat. People unsubscribe. Others look inside the shop and then keep walking.

After failure, it’s easy to think of all the things one should have done.

Perhaps the best marketers think about this before the failure.

Anyway, it’s far less stressful to strategize and deploy early than it is to rush and thrash later.

Stay Positive & Now, Not Later

Photo credit

It’s worth taking a few wacks at how we communicate with the costumer to understand what resonates.

After a certain number though (there’s no universal one, sorry), it might be time to invest your energy in making something better rather than trying to make someone understand why they want want you’re selling.

At the end of a very long day, it might not be them, it might be you.

Stay Positive & If Your Value Isn’t Relatively Obvious, Make It Greater

Photo credit

Offering price ranges for your service gives viewers a reason to engage.

A great opening sentence to a book might end with a period, but what it really does is create a gap in knowledge that the reader will want to fill (by continuing to read, of course).

Using flashy tactics gets attention, but it doesn’t always give them a reason to engage. Very few will look at your banner ad and wonder deeply about what’s between your copy and the website the button leads to, unless you’ve designed it that way (most don’t).

This is really a post about giving options.

The coffee house that only sells one size doesn’t give a person a reason to engage in a new narrative about their day. Am I a person who needs 12 ounces or am I one that needs 16 ounces?

The designer that only shares one idea in a room of 8 execs doesn’t set herself up for any form of success. Had she brought two or three, now that team is engaged.

Eliminating options might help us; might simplify things for us; we may even tell ourselves it simplifies things for others, too. Technically, it does. But consider this: would you rather have something simplified or would you rather have a story?

(See what I did there?)

Imagine a “would you rather” statement with nothing to compare it to… no gap… no option…

Stay Positive & This Isn’t Much Without That Nearby

Photo credit

That’s how meaningful work goes.

It’s harder than anticipated.

It’s slower than expected.

It’s less instantly gratifying.

There are more speed humps than we thought there would be.

Even with this knowledge, we’ll still dive into the next project with hope that it’ll be different.

But it won’t, because we’re not doing the work that makes work easier, faster, more instantly gratifying and without adversity; we’re doing work that’s different, impactful and beneficial to others more than it will ever be to ourselves.

Stay Positive & It’s The Work Worth Doing

Photo credit

You could buy an ad in your neighborhood’s newsletter and tout your business.

You could also run your business in a way that your neighborhood’s newsletter writes about you.

Which is advertising? Which is marketing?

More importantly: which one are you doing more of?

Stay Positive & Imagine What Those Ad Dollars Could Do In Marketing…

Photo credit

Chances are pretty good that someone has cold called that person before you dialed their number.

It’s likely someone has knocked on that house’s door before you knocked.

I’d bet that person has dealt with some really bad customer service before they reached out to you to solve a problem they have.

I write this because it’s worth remembering that we’re not the first in line in anything that we’re trying to do when it comes to selling, marketing, connecting, trusting.

Those we’re interacting with have had this experience before, and it probably went poorly, which means a couple of things.

1. You have to set the bar high for yourself. You’re not just trying to delight in this moment; the hill you’re climbing is the one that’s been built with too many low bar experiences and you need to make up for those
2. People respond better to empathy than anything else. That requires us to put the ego to the side before we dial, knock or answer that email.

Stay Positive & Knock Knock

Photo credit