We have been given a gift.
We have been given the ability to now, more than ever, make a difference.
The effectiveness with which a person can make a change has indeed been magnified due to the internet and social media and the word of mouth age in which we live.
An ability to make an impact with less time and less money than ever before.
This capability to amplify the story in which we choose to tell with such ease, comes with huge responsibility.
Over the last few years as the internet has started to grow, there has been a slow transition in the world of marketing. A transition that started with the internet and has been accelerated by the introduction of mobile and smartphones. This is the transition from push to pull marketing.
It is no longer about shoving a mass message down the throats of consumers in an attempt to persuade them to buy.
The large scale factory business model of mass production and a large marketing budget is dwindling.
Consumers will only listen to what they want to hear, and they will search far and wide for the information they want.
But now, since people have whatever information they want at their fingertips, you have to be more relevant than ever.
It’s about making it as easy as possible for your customers to find you when they want you and where they want you.
If you are going to hire a creative (marketer, writer, designer, etc.),
Let them be creative or don’t hire them at all.
Many organizations proclaim their innovative culture, yet few fail in doing what is required to keep their creative people happy, and productive.
*If you are going to hire a web designer, don’t force them to build you a website that looks like it was built 10 years ago.
As a new father, I have been thinking lots about what I will teach my son and how I will raise him and the best way to educate him. Do we home school? Do I send him to an expensive private school? The answers to these questions are yet undecided. However, I do know one thing.
I will do everything in my power to ignite the creativity inside of him.
To protect that delicate little flame that our modern education systems and culture are striving to diminish.
Why are we so creative as children?
We try to stuff the square peg into the circle hole. One second a stick is a sword, the next it’s a baseball bat.
There are no limitations.
Yet somewhere along the path to adulthood, we loose this… freedom?
Our culture breeds conformity and standardization.
When did we become convinced that only those who color inside the lines are doing it right? Who are we to tell a child that they must color inside the lines? Why crush their creativity? Why not let them throw on that page whatever it is that is in their imagination, in as many colors as they wish?
“Every Child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”
-Picasso
Is it really that people’s attentions spans are getting shorter due to technology? Or is it that technology allows people to spread that attention across a great span of content?
It’s not that I don’t have a long attention span, it’s that your content is no good. So i’m moving on to something better. Because I can.
I for one, will sit down and read a good book cover to cover, or watch a 30 minute you tube video. If it’s good. If I am engaged. If I am entertained.
People are very capable of giving attention for longer periods of time. However, are you able to engage them and entertain them for an extended period of time?
It’s not that they have a shorter attention span, it’s that they have the ability to skip and sort through the junk.
They will see what they want to see. And nothing more. No ads. No fluff. No poor content. No junk.
Some people have more influence than others.
Some people are more easily influenced than others.
Some people with lots of influence can be paid to influence others, some cannot.
Everyone has a sphere of influence, some are larger than others.
The influence that others have on us, the emails and texts they send us, the conversations we have, most definitely impact what we do, read, say and buy.
We can see a commercial about Volvo’s high safety ratings. Or we can hear our friend boasting about how incredible their Kia is. We tend to believe that our friends tell it to us straight. Yet we are skeptical of what ads tell us as they proclaim that 11 out of 10 professionals recommend Tide.
In Jonah Berger’s book Contagious, he shares that “A word-of-mouth conversation by a new customer leads to an almost $200 increase in restaurant sales. A five-star review on Amazon.com leads to approximately twenty more books sold than a one-star review.”
Don’t waste your time trying to influence the wrong people. It is important to know who you are trying to influence, the spheres that they have influence over, and what they are going to tell that sphere once they interact with you.
Those that are listening are naturally an interested audience. After all, most people listen to their friends when they talk.
This word of mouth is now easier and faster than ever thanks to technology.
P.S. It also helps if you can make it easy and enjoyable for those influencers to spread your message.
They feel interrupted.
They are annoyed.
Interrupted? Annoyed?
Yes.
Lets think for a minute.
You are watching your favorite tv show, something HUGE is about to happen, and than it cuts to a commercial break.
Interrupted. Annoyed.
On your way to work, your favorite radio station plays 1 song and 6 ads.
Interrupted. Annoyed.
It’s not as complicated as we think it is. People wanted to be entertained, not interrupted from their entertainment. Yet companies spend billions of dollars every year interrupting and annoying in an attempt to tell consumers what they want them to hear.
Some companies have capitalized on this annoyance and have customers that PAY just to avoid it.
-I pay for Netflix so I don’t have to be interrupted watching my show, WHEN I WANT TO.
-I pay for Spotify so I can listen to my music ad free, WHEN I WANT TO.
Spotify just like many other companies has found a way to still charge advertisers to pay for ads, and yet charge their customers to not listen to these ads. Imagine that.
Facebook has done a great job of limiting junk content on their site. Knowing that if the junk and spam gets too much, people will be annoyed and leave. They know that their entire existence depends on NOT annoying people. For this reason, Facebook will make you PAY to share junk. If your content is good enough, people like it and share it. It will spread to more people… Free… If it’s annoying and terrible content. You sir, shall pay for it.
Last I heard, if you have a page on Facebook, when you post something, it only reaches 3-5% of those who have liked your page. Facebook makes you pay if you want more people to see it. This is not just to make Facebook money. They are protecting the very platform’s existence. If what you post is good, people like it and share it and talk about it. The Facebook algorithm will allow more people to see it, organically. However, if everything you ever post, gets scrolled right past by all of your fans and followers. Good luck to you.
Sure, if we pay enough money and shout enough, people will hear us.
But will they like it?
It is far more cost effective and polite to be the entertainment not the one interrupting it.
Jeff Bezos makes senior executives read 6 page narrative memos prior to in-person meetings.
Bezos said in an interview that this is because “when you have to write your ideas out in complete sentences and complete paragraphs, it forces a deeper clarity of thinking.”
I write to grow. Not only my writing abilities, but also a deeper understanding about the topics in which I choose write about.
In the process of putting my own words to thoughts, something happens. I begin to logically develop my own theories and ideas about the topic.
While writing about why I like to write about things, I am developing a passion and building reasons for why I am even writing in the first place. By simply dwelling on it for a while, I am motivating myself with logical reasons for doing this.
Interesting.
There is always two ends of the market.
On one end of the spectrum are the items that we WANT. The items that we will pay anything for.
You can buy the same jewelry at a wholesaler or it can come in a Tiffany blue box. Yet we perceive that one has more Value. More importantly, that special little blue box has more value to the person receiving it. A brand, a tribe, something with meaning and unexplainable value.
Meanwhile the other side is racing to the bottom, with a goal of efficiency, cutting costs. Screaming to whoever will listen that they are the cheapest option.
“Those guys do also sell chairs, but our chairs are cheaper.”
There are two problems with this race.
First, to win this race, you need economies of scale which you are granted as your organization grows. The bigger you get, the cheaper you can do things. This takes time. It is important to remember that in basically every industry, this race has been won before. Wal-mart, Amazon, Dollarama, they won. Good luck competing.
Second, under some bizarre circumstances, if you can manage to compete, the problem is that you might actually win.
My coffee is always hot at that Starbucks!
This gas station never runs out of gas!
Said no one running to tell their friends.
People expect quality, which in itself is not momentous or exceptional. It’s not enough to make a customer run and tell the world.
Find a way to be surprising, to be exceptional. To blow people away. Do something they could have never even imagined. In that you will find your customers to be your greatest ambassadors.
