Strategy

“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)

A Different Kind Of Plan B

Garth Beyer

Off The Path Plan B

Working on every project like you would a jigsaw puzzle is essential if you want it to be a success. Lean the box against the wall and start putting all the pieces together, regularly looking at what the final product is supposed to be. But work projects (and life!) aren’t that simple.

You can plan everything out. You can have the perfect strategy. You can create a system that will get you from start to finish. But – and this is a big but because it’s always existent – things won’t go as planned, as strategized, as systemized.

Tactics will change. People will let you down. You will take an unexpected and uncontrolled turn toward the unknown.

Knowing your plan and visualizing the final puzzle, final product, final campaign has it’s value, but knowing what you will do when the plan doesn’t go as planned – that’s what proves a person is in it for the long run versus only if things go the way they planned.

 

Stay Positive & Yes, You Can Plan For Your Plan Not To Work

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Effective Strategy Questions

Effective Strategy Questions

Garth Beyer

Communication Strategy

1) What’s the ultimate objective? Can you cut it down to 3-5 words?

2) Who is it you want to communicate with?

3) What do you want them to do? What action should they take after hearing from you?

4) What’s in it for them? Is there a reward to taking that action?

5) This will help you decide the best time to send an email. When is the best time to send your message? And where? Perhaps it’s not email.

6) What is the best tone for this message? Does it align with your voice on other platforms?

7) What’s the central idea? What’s your one word? What’s the point?

 

Stay Positive & Is This Strategy The Best Strategy?

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Getting Your Client To Take A New Angle

Garth Beyer
Maps: Making Exploration Even More Interesting

Maps exert a powerful pull on the public psyche. That same pull can be – and at times, must be – made with your client.

Just because you’re the professional does not mean that you don’t have to convince your client to follow through with your plan. Especially when your plan entails risk, trying something new, and exploring different angles.

The most effective way to persuade is to create a map, a picture journal, a story of exploration.

What we have seen since the original mapmakers is that maps create a sensation, a desire to explore. Maps lead to explorations which are then turned into stories. When you combine maps and stories you receive an overwhelming amount of support and investment to draw more maps and make more stories.

Maps are defined as a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes. Can you see the simplicity of its connection to Public Relations?

You may think your client will go with your plan simply because it shows that treasure will be found if it is followed. In reality, they may already be finding treasure and with most clients you will discover that it isn’t so much about finding more treasure that is the problem.

The wonderful aspect of creating a map for your client is about making the map interesting. Anyone can find treasure, but it takes an expert Public Relations Specialist to design a map that is more invigorating than the profits to be made.

Turns out it’s a win-win situation.

The more enthusiasm a map creates, the greater the reward.

Overcoming Communication Palisades: Part One

Garth Beyer

Yesterday I posted a laundry list of various Communication Palisades.

Obviously there are hundreds of ways you can go and tweak each individual one. For the sake of this post, I will share with you the four step process to overcoming any and all of the communication palisades.

Step one: Whether it is before the communication takes place or after, to overcome the obstacles of communication, you must begin (or re-start) by focusing on preparedness and design. This involves returning to the source and encoding steps of the Shannon-Weaver Model. Is your message as specific as possible? Have you chosen the medium of encoding and the channel with the least amount of noise?

Step two: This step is about running ladders in conversation. At every distance, implement a reminder of the source of where the communication originated as well as the reason for communication. This frequent return not only strengthens the connection of communication, but it allows you to maintain the focus as much as it communicates it to the receiver.

Step three: Communication has to have a certain vivacity to it. Communication isn’t effective if it does not get others enthused, excited, interested, and maybe even a little bit turned on… at your ideas. This third step is vital for those who are communicating something bland, something generic that it’s even hard for you to be interested in. As a PR Specialist, there will be times that you have to swing something, but in a positive sense. What makes the swing negative is when you fake your enthusiasm, when you channel deceitful excitement. A true PR professional will work on convincing themselves of the subjects animation before expressing it to another.

Once you convince yourself, it’s much easier to convince others.

Step four: Flirt with benefits. Communication is a transaction and as you can imagine, the only transactions that seem to “work themselves out” are the ones where the other person feels they are getting a huge benefit out of it. Ask yourself, how can you benefit them? But don’t just answer it yourself, tell them!

Whether you are analyzing your communication strategy before it takes place or revisiting ways to strengthen a communication attempt you have already made, following these four steps will get you past almost every barrier.

The most important variable to consider while taking these steps is to be human. Be real. Be honest. Be caring. But above all, just be human.

The Business Sport Of Soreness

Garth Beyer

Business is a lot like sports.

When you play a sport for the first time, you get sore, but through the soreness your muscles and body improve and grow in order for you to play the sport better. After a good few months of playing and practicing, your body no longer gets sore. Then what? The average activist would go on playing the sport only to find that they are making little improvement in their physique and skills. The intelligent activist would switch up the training routine whether it is by doing a different kind of sport (preferred) or merely working directly on separate strengths necessary for the sport. If you are not feeling the soreness, something is wrong. That means you are in your comfort zone, that you have plateaued and will develop very small improvements, if any.

In businesses, the soreness is called failure, often created from mistakes which were made because you are training and practicing. If you are not feeling any businesses soreness, then you are either not training hard enough or you need to change your routine to succeed any further. Don’t let your body or your business plateau, avoid habitual “sport” strategies.

In the Business Sport of Soreness competitors die standing still.

Stay Positive & Be The Winner, Not competitor

Garth E. Beyer