Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
It’s difficult to follow someone who you know you are better skilled than. It’s a universal condition. It’s exactly why we need to work on ourselves before leading at something others are better at leading.
On a happier note, nothing moves you up quicker than bringing those less skilled than you to your own level. Growth happens when you teach who you can, not just who you want.
Stay Positive & There’s No Division Between Leading, Teaching And Learning
It feels good when someone tells a friend about a particular product or service and then notes that you were the first to introduce them to that product or service.
Businesses have a grand opportunity right now to leverage word-of-mouth marketing like this. Think of your business as the friend who was the first to introduce them and instead of to a product or service, to a definition, a way of doing something a certain way, a style.
Think what your customers Google and go to YouTube for, then create that content for them. YouTube is great for “How Tos,” but if they don’t need to leave your page to figure something out, you and them both win not only in that they stay on your page, but they will refer to you later.
Lands’ End does this by having a link to definitions of terms they use. Now when I’m out shopping with a friend and they touch a pair of pants saying “Wow, this fabric feels pretty high quality,” I can say, “Yea, those are chinos. It’s a twill fabric made 100 percent of cotton.”
“How do you know that?”
“I read it on Lands’ End’s website.”
This tactic is proficiently used by writers. Just about every writer’s website I’ve been to, no matter what they write on, they always have a blog post about “how to be a writer,” just in hopes to have some reader somewhere share a writing tip with someone else, referring to where they heard of the tip.
Of course, this isn’t exactly a tactic directly for making profits off your product or service, it’s more of a tactic for branding and getting your name out there. For some reason, though, there typically ends up being some type of correlation between your profit amount and the number of people who know about you.
Stay Positive & Do You Really Need Proof?
but not as much as the product.
It makes sense when you consider what the audience, not just wants, but is paying for.
Sure, you can work your way to presenting like Steve Jobs, but until then, it’s better to work on delivering a product people can truly care about. If you asked Jobs, he would say it’s not worth presenting if you don’t have a product in your pocket that steals your show.
Last night my team pitched our media strategy to Lands’ End. We worked up to the hour before our pitch perfecting what we had to offer (the product). With no time to practice, our pitch was rough around the edges. There were plenty of places we could have improved, certainly, but our strategy, our “product”? Nailed it.
Lands’ End chose our agency over the other, who, in my fair judgment, had one hell of a presentation. Everyone knew it was rehearsed well. The Lands’ End marketers (judges) noted their pitch was great, but our product was better. After all, that’s what they showed up for; not our pitch, rather, what we had to pitch.
Stay Positive & Product First, Show Second
1) Rules for marketing in the new economy (read)
2) Start somewhere (read)
3) Warby Parker 2013 Annual Report (read/click/havefun)
4) What we already know (read)
5) Creativity inspired productivity (read)
6) Starting social media from scratch (read)
Most of the time, it doesn’t need to be about what add-on you put on the product or what extra app you create for it or even using a bit higher quality material. When you think of what more you can offer someone, think of how you can be more generous.
What makes people happier?
Getting more of something or getting a meaningful gift along with what they ordered.
Stay Positive & Think This, For Example
Forget the Error 404 page. No matter if you can be goofy, a moments laughter still doesn’t answer the question of “Well, when will the page be back up?”
University of Wisconsin’s main servers went down today. Website and all services were broke, down, inaccessible. Once they got the power restored, instead of seeing a 404 not found page, the university redirected all site links to the DoIt technology service twitter page for all updates on campus website and online services.
Sometimes answering the question everyone wants to know is better than making light of an unexpected error.
Stay Positive & Responsive With Transparency
I’m working with a group to write and create a new marketing/branding/insert-buzzword-here strategy for a 2 billion dollar a year profiting business. I don’t have an issue sharing the biggest problem with working with this client because my group is doing it for free.
The problem with free services like what my group is doing is you may – and it’s very likely you do – care more about the success of your effort than the client does. From your perspective of having nothing to lose, you can push boundaries, dance on the edge of remarkable and generally roll with any interesting idea you come up with.
From the client’s perspective, if they have nothing to lose, then why waste their time digging up extra information for you, loaning a few of their products to you or giving you a trial of their service.
I’ll show a perfect example below (spelling mistakes kept) from an email I sent to the client asking questions my group needed to know the answers to so we can reestablish the brand. Two takeaways. First, if they were memorable answers, you would be able to guess the brand, but I bet you can’t. Second, the client has given us nothing more to work from.
Is it stopping us? No. Is it holding us back from doing the best we can do. Definitely.
Stay Positive & Read On (founder’s name and business’s name altered)
Q1. Can you elaborate on Benjamin Gray’s statement that Le Croy makes customers feel “a little like coming home”?
Benjamin Gray just wanted to treat our customers like family and make them feel that Le Croy was a place for them to depend on for quality apparel.
Q2. What do you think is the “extra mile” you go for customers?
We make sure their products are top quality, we answer their calls, emails and social messages, if they have an issue we try to resolve it as quickly as possible, and sometimes we find someone that is not expecting to hear from us and surpise/delight them with new product or special items to say thank you.
Q3. Who are some influential people who wear your brand? Who in pop culture would you consider partnering with?
I don’t have the answer to this one today.
Q4. Can you list some causes your brand supports?
insert link to website
Q5. What are you currently doing with the email addresses you have of customers. Just a newsletter? Can you tell us more how you decide how often to send out an email regarding sales?
We send email daily, segmented by Men’s, Women’s, Kid’s and School Uniform. Home is a secondary message on many emails. We focus majority of contacts on driving sales for the business. Highlighting products that are relevant for the time period. We share promotions when they exist, we usually have 2-3 promotions a week.
Q6. What does wearing Le Croy clothes make people feel?
Clothes that make me look great, good quality, preppy dependable style, ties to nautical.
Q7. Why should the consumers care about Le Croy?
Releavnt styles, quality and great value.
Q8. What is the purpose of Le Croy’s PR Twitter account?
Le Croy has two Twitter account, one is the PR handle. The PR handle is to share news about Le Croy and events that Le Croy is participating in.
Q9. Lastly, we would like to know how each pair of insert company’s jeans is constructed. If you can tell us what materials you use? How the materials are acquired? Where the jeans are sewn together? As well as the creative process in designing the jeans?
I do not have this answer at this time
*To give the benefit of the doubt here. Perhaps this business is transitioning into a new economy layout and doesn’t have answers to the new untraditional marketing strategy basics. Regardless, telling us so would make it much easier to help them than acting like their brand is concrete and perfect.
**What do you think Le Croy could have done better to give us what we need to develop the best marketing strategy for them? What critiques do you have for my group and I? Share your input in the comments section below.
