Advertising

IN THE BOX PODCAST

Episode 48: WOM Advertising, Asking For Funding, Writing Things Down And More (Podcast)

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast we talked about how businesses success without advertising, if money really does talk to everyone, whether or not you should write things down, how to ask for funding and controlling the rumors about you.

Episode 48: WOM Advertising, Asking For Funding, Writing Things Down And More

Word Of Mouth Advertising – How do businesses still succeed without advertising? Is it a smart move to be purely run on word of mouth?

Sellouts – Does everybody truly have a price?

The Ask – One top on how to make the “Ask” while fundraising?

Write Down – How do you personally handle the question “Should I write this down?”

Bonus – How important is it to control the narrative around your life?

 

Stay Positive & Subscribe Here If You Haven’t Yet

“I Think It Would Work”

Garth Beyer

Other variations you might here during a strategy planning meeting: “I like the idea.” “I’m convinced.” “You’ve got me hooked on the idea.”

While certainly positive and supportive statements, normally you’re not your target market.

It’s fantastic the idea appeals to you, but what about the tribe it’s truly meant to appeal to? If you don’t plan on investing in the product or service your marketing (if you’re not part of the tribe), then how you react to the marketing strategy doesn’t matter much.

Rather, when you use language like “I think that would really resonate with who we’re trying to target” or asking your colleagues if they feel Kasey (your target) would share a piece of content instead of asking if they (your colleagues) would share it, you begin to drive marketing that matters.

 

Stay Positive & Put Yourself In Their Shoes (Then You Can Use First-Person Pronouns)

Giving Is The New Advertising

Garth Beyer

Here’s advertising I think we can all get behind: advertising that gives viewers what they want.

PostIt follows you around so banner ads become a list of things you want to remember.

Businesses like McDonalds are now buying the ad space of Pandora to give you 30 minutes of no-ad listening.

Even podcast advertising is seeing the benefit of giving. It’s a podcast norm that hosts advertise products and services they use and care about – no pre-recorded voiceover here.

I did lead you astray with the title. Giving isn’t necessarily new advertising as it has always been the best kind of advertising, we’re just slowly catching on.

 

Stay Positive & No One Cares About Being Interrupted If They Get A Gift For It

Wassupp And How Do You Happy?

Garth Beyer

The Heinz ketchup bottle I used over the weekend has a “How Do You Happy?” label on it. Heinz wants you to interact, to share what makes you happy or so I think that’s what it wants you to do, it wasn’t very clear.

Heinz, rather, whatever agency behind the not-so-creative idea is appealing to the mass that uses ketchup, but it doesn’t transfer over well. Not every ketchup user is happy, wants to be happy or cares to share what makes them happy – they just want some ketchup with their fries.

Budweiser has made some wacky commercials. The ones that stand out to me are the Wassup commercials. At the time of the commercials, the phrase “Wasssuppp” was the most popular term Budweiser drinkers used, not all, but enough to make a commercial about it. “Wasssupp” became a trigger for drinking Bud.

Heinz is attempting to turn what makes you happy into a trigger for wanting to use Heinz ketchup. While you can’t argue happiness isn’t universal, trying to get millions of people to associate a bottle of ketchup with their own happiness isn’t logical because everyone’s answer to what their happy is is different.

What’s the difference between “Wasssupp” and “How Do you Happy?” – a shared experience. Budweiser took a common phrase said by Budweiser drinkers (and beer drinkers in general) and turned it into a trigger. When someone says “Wassupp,” you think of Budweiser. When I say what’s your happy? Ketchup isn’t up there.

The guideline: treat different customers differently. Understand what they value, not in terms of personal happiness, but in terms of their desired experience. Bud is better to drink with your buddies. Ketchup isn’t better to eat when you’re doing what makes you happy, unless of course, eating fries is your life’s purpose.

 

Stay Positive & Shared Experiences Was Everything (And Still Is)

Who Matters

Who Matters

Garth Beyer

Failure doesn’t always mean your product, service, work or art sucks. In fact, most of the time failure means you’re trying to make it appeal to the wrong tribe, you’re trying to get it approved by the wrong people, you’re trying to please the wrong market.

It’s why you hear “that’s really poor marketing/advertising” more often than you hear “that’s a really sucky product/blog post/service.”

Who matters matters greatly.

Don’t scrap what you’ve worked hard to build, scrap who you’ve worked hard to build it for and seek someone new, maybe someone less famous. You’ll be surprised how far re-targeting gets you.

 

Stay Positive & Try Someone New Before You Try Something New

Problem With Many Marketers’ Mindsets

Garth Beyer

Marketers Mindset

As marketers, we often have a big ego when it comes to our industry. We see things. We notice trends. We can (or at lest we often always try to) answer why? Why X appeals to target Y. Why a restaurant would have revolving doors. Why a business is using a particular hashtag.

It should go without saying that we often know what’s best. After all, we’ve studied the industry for years, read thousands of articles, talked to hundreds of people to know why things are they way they are. Yet, this mindset gets marketers in trouble over and over again.

We think if a particular ad appeals to us, it will also appeal to our target audience. (We have high standards, you know? So if it works on us, won’t it work on anyone? Heh.) Our mindset can be simplified to we know what’s best for others based on our own reactions of an ad or PR strategy. All the while, we forget that we are not the target market.

The best way to break the mold is to see every opportunity as an opportunity to learn, not to prove or show we’re right. Michael E. Gerber wrote it perfectly,

“Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.”

As long as we retain the mindset of wanting to know more, needing to know, being humble enough to know that we don’t know it all, we can evade the mental trap so many marketers are caught by.

 

Stay Positive & Now You Know

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They Will Be Pleased, Regardless

Garth Beyer

Don't Appeal To The Mass

When you make an effort to reach the masses, to please the majority, to advertise to all, you are inevitably creating a bitter experience for some.

You see this with retail stores quite often. Owners spend their time outside of the store trying to reach the masses, and in doing so, they neglect and devalue those already in it. It’s better of them to treat and please the customers already in their store if they wish for more newcomers.

We need to recognize people will want us to build an experience for the mass. The thought process of most is that one event that calls out to a majority is better than five events that call out to smaller groups.

Writing a book that is safe, that anyone walking around the bookstore will want to pick up, seems to be the most logical thing to do, but it’s not. It’s better to write five shorter books that target a specific tribe.

You may win the lottery, you may have a successful large event, but all who attended, all who bought your book will revert back to their search for the one that makes them feel most valued, most part of a tribe.

They will eventually be pleased, regardless of the decision you make because it’s our natural inclination to find a place where we have a consistent pleasurable experience, one that connects us with like-minded people, one that all who attend or purchase can give the same answer to “People like us ______.”

We can’t please everyone at once, so why bother?

But we can please everyone over a period of time/a series of events/a number of books by recognizing the tribes people are part of and creating a remarkable experience for each of them.

Thing is, you may find out that pleasing one tribe is all you need to do. Stephen King doesn’t need to write a book specific to a bunch of tribes. All he needs is one group to please.

Anyway, if one were to measure effort, I’d say it takes about the same to appeal to the mass as it does to appeal to smaller tribes. The results, however, are different… very different.

 

Stay Positive & Different Is What You Want

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