Seth's blog on adversity and the route to success came just at the right time today. Starting your own business isn't easy, especially when you have such specific ideals of what it will and won't be and when. Ideas that lead to genuine success are bound to be tricky to execute (this is also true of great marketing or great product).
The temptation would be to give in and start making compromises, as Seth says "Why bother? The thinking is that we can just pump some more oil or smile and gladhand our way to an acceptably happy outcome."
That was the phrase that did it for me though, "acceptably happy outcome"; nowhere in any of my planning and rationale did that phrase occur. Genius was conceived to reflect its name, to be outstanding, incredible, remarkable, original.
The same has to be true of all marketing and product development. People don't want to buy stuff they see as just "ok" or "acceptable", they want terrific value, great quality, unique features...
So next time you're tempted just to "make do", ask yourself what you set out to do in the first place and why. I'll bet it wasn't to produce something average.
Monday, 14 November 2011
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Who's your imaginary friend?
I just read this great post on Copyblogger on why having an imaginary friend (or at least a picture of someone who would be typical of your audience) in mind when you write makes your content better.
Buyer personas aren't new but the act of visualising a specific individual is helpful and a step not everyone takes. I think the concept goes further than just copywriting; we ought to take our imaginary friend everywhere with us.
Your ideal customer should be there when you shape new products, make changes to your payment or service policies, choose your new locations or any other decision that could impact them and their loyalty to your brand.
Buyer personas aren't new but the act of visualising a specific individual is helpful and a step not everyone takes. I think the concept goes further than just copywriting; we ought to take our imaginary friend everywhere with us.
Your ideal customer should be there when you shape new products, make changes to your payment or service policies, choose your new locations or any other decision that could impact them and their loyalty to your brand.
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
3 Ways To Justify an Investment
The 3 Ways
1) Use evidence - it sounds simple but too often we assume the reasons for our decisions are obvious to others (so they raise objections and obstacles we could have avoided) or forget to question ourselves deeply enough on the evidence behind our decisions which can lead to poor decision making.
We should always explicitly ask ourselves, what facts can I gather than inform me that my investment would be a sound one? Is there anything that would point against the spend acheiving what I suspect it will? Is there anything I can do to counter this?
2) Set clear objectives and measurable goals - that age old question, how will I know if it worked? Firstly you need to know specifically what you are trying to acheive through your investment and the scale by which you are going to measure your success, not just the metric but the target too.
3) Follow up to demonstrate the value - it doesn't matter whether this is to yourself or your boss, documenting the successes that resulted from your investment will enable better decision making in future. You can revisit both triumphs and failures and refresh your learning before making other similar decisions.
1) Use evidence - it sounds simple but too often we assume the reasons for our decisions are obvious to others (so they raise objections and obstacles we could have avoided) or forget to question ourselves deeply enough on the evidence behind our decisions which can lead to poor decision making.
We should always explicitly ask ourselves, what facts can I gather than inform me that my investment would be a sound one? Is there anything that would point against the spend acheiving what I suspect it will? Is there anything I can do to counter this?
2) Set clear objectives and measurable goals - that age old question, how will I know if it worked? Firstly you need to know specifically what you are trying to acheive through your investment and the scale by which you are going to measure your success, not just the metric but the target too.
3) Follow up to demonstrate the value - it doesn't matter whether this is to yourself or your boss, documenting the successes that resulted from your investment will enable better decision making in future. You can revisit both triumphs and failures and refresh your learning before making other similar decisions.
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
Missing out on misspellings
Just a really short one - just been doing some keyword research for my parents' company site and I am staggered by the number of searches some either misspelt or differently spelt words run every month (permutations of jewellery for instance). Now to discover how to capitalise on it without looking like we all left school 10 years too early...
Friday, 15 April 2011
The Monkey and The Marketer
This post is dedicated to my dear colleague Abi Stern, with thanks for the discussion that inspired it...
One of the major battles for many marketers is finding enough time for high value activities amongst the sea of humdrum day to day duties, often in support of other business functions and away from their core focus.
We affectionately term this "monkey work"; its not difficult, just time consuming. This is also an affectionate nod to Ken Blanchard's book The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey, which is ace if you haven't read it. So how do we ensure our monkey time is managed and we have enough hours left to be marketers?
1) Make sure you know who else could perform the task - sure, as a marketer you're a master at your CRM system but does that mean you're the only one with access? Your automatic adoption of tasks without asking who should really do them and whether the responsibility could be shared will lead to too much monkey business and not enough marketing.
2) Make a habit of saying no or not now occasionally - if you allocate certain blocks of time in which you can complete these tasks and stick to them, you'll naturally push back on people's so called "urgent" requests and you'll be amazed how many turn out not to be urgent or how easily the person finds another way to do whatever it is they wanted you to do.
3) Be sure to understand the purpose of the activity - I've been asked to analyse different things in our business more times than I care to count and often when I ask what the information will be used for I get a pretty lame "oh, I just thought it'd be interesting to know". So ask the question, because prioritising other people's idle curiosity is unlikely to be your smartest move.
Anyone got any other tips they'd like to share?
One of the major battles for many marketers is finding enough time for high value activities amongst the sea of humdrum day to day duties, often in support of other business functions and away from their core focus.
We affectionately term this "monkey work"; its not difficult, just time consuming. This is also an affectionate nod to Ken Blanchard's book The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey, which is ace if you haven't read it. So how do we ensure our monkey time is managed and we have enough hours left to be marketers?
1) Make sure you know who else could perform the task - sure, as a marketer you're a master at your CRM system but does that mean you're the only one with access? Your automatic adoption of tasks without asking who should really do them and whether the responsibility could be shared will lead to too much monkey business and not enough marketing.
2) Make a habit of saying no or not now occasionally - if you allocate certain blocks of time in which you can complete these tasks and stick to them, you'll naturally push back on people's so called "urgent" requests and you'll be amazed how many turn out not to be urgent or how easily the person finds another way to do whatever it is they wanted you to do.
3) Be sure to understand the purpose of the activity - I've been asked to analyse different things in our business more times than I care to count and often when I ask what the information will be used for I get a pretty lame "oh, I just thought it'd be interesting to know". So ask the question, because prioritising other people's idle curiosity is unlikely to be your smartest move.
Anyone got any other tips they'd like to share?
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