Will Anyone Give A $%*@ About It

Garth Beyer

That’s the first question Dave Florin, president of Hiebing, a PR agency in Madison, asks when it’s time to evaluate an ad campaign or PR strategy.

Here’s a few more bits of wisdom shared:

  • Most marketing philosophies speak over the heads of people. Every strategy needs to pass the “So what” test. If it passes the “So what” test, then it’s much more likely to be paid attention to.
  • Sensitive + awesome = sweet spot
  • Relevant + differentiated = sweet spot
  • Know who the product does not appeal to
  • “Compelling stories are engaging, simple, portable. . . at the end of the day, there is a person there.”

Businesses try to appeal to everyone and waste money on it. The way to good writing is to write to a single person that fits your target. The same goes for creating ads. Create an ad with one person in mind. Every newsroom and broadcast station that I have visited, I can always find a poster of a person that is meant to remind everyone of who they are supposed to be writing to.

Who do you write to? And do they give a $%*@?

Good Enough Or Perfection Fallout

Garth Beyer

If you haven’t heard of the term “satisficing,” then it’s time to listen closely. It’s much like “good enough” if you define that as “Good. Now, enough.”

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There are two sides to satisficing.The first is on you, the content creator. Perfection with your product or service might be able to be accomplished from time-to-time, but not consistently and it’s not what your clients or customers want. Understanding your audience is the second side of satisficing.

Herbert Simon who coined the term “satisficing” maintained that “individuals do not seek to maximise their benefit from a particular course of action (since they cannot assimilate and digest all the information that would be needed to do such a thing). Not only can they not get access to all the information required, but even if they could, their minds would be unable to process it properly.”

In laymen’s terms, even if people notice perfection, they have difficulty interacting with it. Most of the time though, they don’t notice perfection. This leads to a series of questions you need to ask yourself.

  • Why spend time on creating perfection?
  • What does my audience expect?
  • What is the most my audience can or is willing to process?
  • Can I create more by satisficing than I can creating perfection? (obv.)

Two extra bits about this:

1. Having an idea (not a goal!) of what perfection is at the beginning of a project puts you in a great position to start working. Beware, you will end up hairless trying to follow all the way through with that idea. (Either it will take so long to reach that you bald or you pull all of your hair out trying to make it perfect.)

2. Acknowledge the Juggler’s Perfection. The businesses and freelancers who make the most are those who create something that’s imperfect, perfectly.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Fall Out Of The Running By Trying For Perfection

Garth E. Beyer

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Your Audience Is More Open Than You Think

Garth Beyer

When you create more connections, you’re bound to be more open. That’s something I love about the current state of society and the people in it.

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Part of me feels that I have Facebook and Twitter to thank for making people more open. Another part realizes that it is just a beneficial byproduct of the connection economy.

Yet, I see businesses and freelancers running with their arms held close to their chest so they don’t hit anyone, so they don’t make themselves open, so they don’t seem vulnerable. This is trite and counterintuitive.

I can barely begin to tell you how many people have told me things about themselves and their lives that they would never have mentioned eight years ago. Respectively, I owe it to them to be just as open (which is in our advantage).

It’s not a matter of mutual generosity, it’s more a risk at creating a symbol of trust.

This calls for you to reciprocate that risk. When you see that others are doing or acting as you do, you feel comfortable, you feel in place, you feel more willing to trust and invest in what that person is offering.

Just the same. If you want the business of those who are very open about themselves and their lives, you need to be open too.

This is why storytelling has become the largest importance of businesses, why brand matters, why sales are made on trust, not shininess.

 

Stay Positive & Open Sesame

Garth E. Beyer

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Habit Is A Daily Thing

Garth Beyer

Habit is what you do today, not what you did yesterday or what you will do tomorrow. If you disagree, let me ask you this:

The first day that you begin something that you want to consistently do each day, is that not considered a habit?

If not, then when is what you do finally a habit? I love habits because you can only measure them by the day. I love habits because you can only break them by the day. I say this, not to persuade you to agree, but to encourage to keep at your goals each day.

It’s much like the idea of being one bite away from getting back on your diet. Don’t let the lack of doing something yesterday stop you from doing it today. Just the same, don’t let the inability to do something over the weekend stop you from doing it today.

When it comes to habit, numbers mean nothing. All that matters is today and if you do what you set out to do.

 

Stay Positive & Deal With Tomorrow,  Tomorrow

Garth E. Beyer

Here’s The Thing About Menus

Garth Beyer

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I love going out to lunch for the sake of staring at the restaurant’s menu. Why?

Because I can read how they describe the meals, what they are trying to sell and how they are trying to sell it. People take lunch to get away from work, I take it to get more into it simply because every product can be written like a meal on a menu. With all the restaurants and menus available to us, there’s a lot to learn.

Seth Godin wrote today about Salmagundi: “Salmagundi is a salad dish, originating in the early 17th century in England, comprising cooked meats, seafood, vegetables, fruit, leaves, nuts and flowers and dressed with oil, vinegar and spices.”

What if we tweaked the description to this: “Salmagundi is a diverse salad dish that will get you to experience variety, the spice of 17th century England.”

By tweaking it in such a way, you’ve done two things.

1. You’ve told the customer how they will feel eating Salmagundi.

2. They’re going to want to know the ingredients and they will ask the server. An advantage because menus don’t sell to people, people sell to people.

Think this through when you’re writing the description to your product. Don’t tell them what it is. Tell them how it will make them feel.

That’s why we buy food, or anything, really.

 

Stay Positive & More Please

Garth E. Beyer

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A New Edge To The Publishing Industry

Garth Beyer

What I’m about to tell you is a fallout for publishing companies, sure. But the change occurring results in the thriving  publishing industry.

Brands are now publishers.

And for the sake of those who don’t consider themselves a brand: businesses, services, inventors, creators are now publishers too.

A product won’t sell well unless you provide a copy of the story of it.

A business won’t gather as many clients unless they first share their story with them.

A freelancer won’t get as many bids unless they pitch their story, not their service.

Stories are driving the economy, and the only way to get your story out there is to publish it*

 

Stay Positive & If You Don’t Know Your Story, You’re Behind (here)

Garth E. Beyer

*word of mouth storytelling, I’ve always considered a form of publishing too.

Those Who Lack Great Ideas

Garth Beyer

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As much as I believe that everyone can come up with great ideas, I do come across those that will tell me that they can’t. Instead of fighting with them and trying to convince them of what they already believe to be false, I side with them.

That doesn’t give them an excuse not to do anything.

If anything, it encourages even more action on their part.

My simple retort then is to find a business that you value, a model that you can see yourself implementing and then build that business in an area it has yet been built in. In essence, you’re taking a great idea and using it geographically elsewhere.

Sometimes I fall into the trap of believing that a restaurant in town that centers on entertaining the customers by allowing them to watch the chefs cooking and turning that into a show is the only restaurant that does that; that there are no other restaurants like that anywhere else.

This comes to the restaurant’s advantage – the belief of “the only one”.

However, after a moments thought, you and I both know there are more restaurants that carry this model of turning a dining experience into an entertaining experience, but that doesn’t make them less valuable.

This process works with any great idea, not just restaurant based ideas. Think of some product or service you love. Guaranteed you can find almost the save product or service elsewhere – not everywhere, but elsewhere.

Don’t wait to come up with a great idea. Others have already done that for you.

 

Stay Positive & Take A Great Idea And Bring It Back Home With You

Garth E. Beyer

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