Delivery

Downgrading What Is Free

Garth Beyer

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As unfortunate as it is, some businesses need to downgrade what they give for free.

Let’s stick with the same example from yesterday. Suppose that this bar and grill that gives large and cool designed mugs to those who go there on their birthday had to downgrade. Suppose they have to make cuts in their budget to stay open. They decide to give away the rest of the large and cool mug supply and replace them with small, round cheap mugs that just have their logo on it.

Unlike upgrading what is free, downgrading what is free hurts the customers you haven’t yet gotten.

On the positive side, it makes those who were there to get the free large, cool designed mugs feel even better. However, this has two repercussions.

1. Feeling better about something doesn’t mean they will want to come back again.

2. Giving something awesome for free is as much about optimizing word of mouth marketing as it is about making someone feel good for coming to your bar and grill, and not someone else’s.

The gamut here is that downgrading what is free risks negative word of mouth. Imagine someone who got the large, cool designed mug on their birthday then invites someone else to the same bar and grill in two weeks to celebrate their birthday, only, neither knows that the bar and grill downgraded their birthday mugs.

You can imagine where this leads.

This leaves us with the question of how we can make downgrading what is free, work. After all, while upgrading is always an option, sometimes downgrading is not.

The answer is, when you can’t change the product to make it better (or when you’re forced to downgrade), change the delivery.

People talk more about what they experienced than what they received anyway.

 

Stay Positive & Over, Over, Over Deliver

Garth E. Beyer

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What Makes A Successful Blog

Garth Beyer

Those who have said that content is everything, to focus on content first, that content matters most were partially wrong. Wrong, mainly because information is already infinite. Content is already there and all blogging is about is presenting information in an original way.*

What makes a successful blog is not so much the information you provide as how you provide it. Yes, of course it needs to be valuable information, but do you present it in a blunt, matter-of-fact way? Or, how about presenting it in a comedic, captain obvious way? Or, be extremely passionate. Or, express your message in 10 words or less.

Anyone can deliver, but how you deliver means everything.

*The restructuring of information is often misinterpreted as content creation. No. Content is already there. Restructuring is about show, not tell.

 

Stay Positive & Not What, But How

Garth E. Beyer

Making Art

Garth Beyer

Making art, as opposed to having made art, is what everyone wants. The making of art is what catches the eye, draws people in, and fascinates the audience you never knew you had until you made yourself vulnerable.

I just watched a Cadillac commercial. As opposed to only showing the car speeding on roads with a beautiful background of wheat fields, blue-grey skies, and a sunset; I saw the crew, the camera set-up on the vehicle, and the helicopter used to record scenes from above.

Does it make me want to buy a Cadillac? No. But it makes me appreciate them more, it made me write about them, it satisfied a curiosity that I never knew I had (to know how they record all of these slick car advertisements).

This isn’t new, but how you deliver is one of the largest aspects of this artistic revolution.

 

Stay Positive & You’re Not The Only One To Enjoy Making Your Art

Garth E. Beyer