Marketing

Who I Am Not

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“I am what I am and that’s all that I am.” ~ Popyeye the Sailorman

Knowing and embracing your identity is a major aspect of achieving real success. As a matter of fact, understanding who you are, as a human being or as a business, may be the most important step you can take to make sure that you experience success on your own terms. (If being a millionaire is not one of your goals, people may look at you as successful, but that’s someone else’s definition).

If knowing who you are is essential to getting what you want in life, the other side of the coin is acknowledging and accepting who you aren’t. You may not think about it very frequently, but it is something you need to consider. With that in mind, let’s consider this idea from three angles: recognizing 1) who you are not, 2) what your business is not, and 3) who your customers are not. Then acting accordingly.

Who I’m Not

“It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. The great man or woman is the one who never steps outside his or her specialty or foolishly dissipates his or her individuality.” – Og Mandino

You’ve probably heard one piece advice more than any other over the course of your life. “Be yourself.” Your parents, teachers and good friends have probably said it on numerous occasions to keep you on the right track. It never gets less true or becomes less valuable.

In the context of this discussion, we can rephrase the statement. Don’t be anyone other than yourself.

Know your goals and aspirations. Don’t be afraid to chase after them or pay high prices to attain them. I’ve said it before, and I think it’s apropos: dreams are never too expensive.

Know your values and morals. Adhere to them no matter what, and be bold in standing up for what you believe. Yes, it will cost you, but integrity is worth it every time. Don’t bow down to pressure to conform to anything that violates your conscience.

Remember that being a copycat is usually a bad idea. Modeling exemplary people is fine, but never surrender your individuality. You are one of a kind.

What My Business Is Not

“When a man’s undivided attention is centered on one object, his mind will constantly be suggesting improvements of value, which would escape him if his brain was occupied by a dozen different subjects at once.

“Many a fortune has slipped through a man’s fingers because he was engaged in too many occupations at a time.”

These are the words of legendary showman P.T. Barnum (from his booklet The Art of Money-Getting). Smart guy.

Think about this: Ferrari doesn’t make family cars. They’re not trying to either. They just make the world’s most iconic sports cars.

Apple is not Microsoft. Neither is Google. Each company likes it that way.

Whether it is explicit (like Whole Foods– no un-wholesome food) or implied, what your business is not matters. What you don’t do makes a difference. This is true for a few reasons.

1) Taking a strong stand for something you’re against will put you on the same “team” as others people with the same opinion. They will more readily relate with you, like you and buy from you.

2) Deciding what you don’t or won’t do will make you a specialist. Being great at one thing or in one area is almost always better (and more profitable) than being decent at several things. Like the brain surgeon. General practitioners are well-paid and highly skilled, but the neurosurgeon can become world-renowned, in-demand and can earn far more than his less specializing peers. Specialists are in a class of their own.

All because they don’t do everything. The key word here is focus.

3) Choosing what you don’t do protects you from wasting time. There are things that you don’t want to do, or don’t do well. Why waste time talking about them with prospective clients? Do you really want to spend your time and energy working something where your results will be less than your best work?

This is very true for me. I am not an artist, graphic designer or HTML expert. It’s good that I know that. I have the can either learn these skills, or avoid situations where they are part of the deal.

It’s also good for potential clients to know, so they don’t have the wrong impression. They can save time knowing that I am not the best choice for every job. I know where I’m gifted, and I’m aware of my limitations.

Your business will see amazing benefits by knowing and making known what you are not and what you abstain from doing.

Who My Customers Are Not

Knowing who you customers are not is huge when it comes to providing them with products and services that they want and need. It will help keep you from creating products that flop. You hear that the foundation of marketing is knowing your customers. Understanding who they are not has great advantages.

Lifetime is “Television for Women.” They know the majority viewers are not men. They don’t try to speak to men. The shows, movies and whatever the heck else they provide is designed for adult women. Similarly, the commercials that run on that channel are designed for female buyers. The people who make the commercials and buy the advertising time slots know who’s watching, too.

When your business is what it is, and isn’t what it isn’t, that fact alone will go along way in determining who your customers are not. You’ll still have to look deeper to find out more. The better you understand your market, the better you’ll be able to serve them. The better you serve them, the greater success you’ll have.

You can think about your target customer in terms of gender (like Lifetime), age (do they still sell Sixteen magazine?), economic status (Rolex and Walmart), and a great number of other distinctives.

Getting to know what your customers are not is part of getting to know them. How well do you know the people you want to sell to?

Succeeding in business is difficult when you’re shooting in the dark. Flip on the light switch by getting in touch with your prospects and customers.
 

Another Judo Move

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There has been some great feedback on my post “5 Judo Moves Every Copywriter Should Know.” If you haven’t read it, please do so. I’m more than 99% sure you’ll be able to get at least one benefit from it.

So, how ’bout a sixth move to add to your judo repertoire?

Ancient Roman poet Ovid said that “Nothing is stronger than habit.” George Santayana is quoted as saying “Habit is stronger than reason.”

So, if you can attach your product or service to a habit that exists in your marketing, you have a tremendous advantage: there’s a force of nature working on your behalf!

For example, you don’t see most cigarette lighter manufacturers do much advertising. They don’t really need to. They’ve attached their product to a habit/addiction. Smokers are going to smoke, and they need matches or lighter to make that happen. All a company has to do is put lighters where smokers can see them, and they’ll sell.

On the other hand, there are companies that create habits around their products or services. What percentage of people buy the same toothpaste every time, without even thinking about it? I bet it’s a pretty high number.

A researcher at Duke University published a paper in 2006 which found that over 40% of the activities we perform every day are habits, not conscious decisions. We’re not nearly as analytical and rational as we like to think we are!

Can you think of any ways you can use the force of habit as one of your best salesmen?

  • Become associated with something your target market already uses habitually.
  • Help your market engage in those habitual behaviors instead of trying to get them to change those habits (which is what a lot of marketing attempts to do)
  • Make it easy to form a habit buying from you.

The Ophiuchus Effect

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Facebook and Twitter were abuzz this week with rumors that a mysterious 13th sign called Ophiuchus has been added to the zodiac. As the “news” went viral, emotions ran high. You’d have thought that World War III had been declared by the way some people reacted.

Now, I’m not into astrology, but all the commotion surrounding this ordeal can give us some valuable business insight.

Peter Drucker said that “The purpose of business is to create a customer.” No matter what industry you’re in, your product or service is all about people. The dynamic that generated such a strong emotional reaction with so many people can also have a profound impact on your customers and prospects.

What’s Your Sign?

The primary reason for the stir surrounding this topic is that it strikes directly at the way in which many people identify themselves.

The mind automatically moves into self-defense mode when confronted with any perceived threat to one’s view of the world and his place in it. If you’ve ever had a disagreement with someone about religion, politics, or even sports teams, you know this is true.

Many people take their zodiac signs seriously.  Their identification comprises a major part of how they think about themselves and the world around them.

Millions check their horoscopes as part of their daily ritual. Important decisions are often made based on what they read. Every newspaper has an astrology section. And there are countless places to check horoscopes online and even on cell phones.

The idea of changing this way of thinking has proven to be earth-shaking.

Every interested individual is forced to ask the question, “Am I what I have always considered myself to be?”

It’s the same reaction that people have when they find out that they were adopted. Everything they think they know about themselves is challenged.

Putting the ‘Ophiuchus Effect’ to Work

What are the key lessons you can take away from this phenomenon and apply immediately to your business?

1. One’s perception of who he is forms the very foundation of every choice he makes, including purchasing decisions. No one buys from you because of who you are. They buy what they buy because of who they are.

2. The main reason people form connections to certain products, services and brands is because they tie into how they think of themselves.

Apple shines in this area. Their products and services appeal strongly to those who consider themselves to be creative, intelligent, free-spirited and cutting-edge. Apple has created a cult-like following by participating in customers’ self expression.

How do your customers think about themselves? How can you fit your business into these parts of their lives?

3. People are firmly attached to their own personal categories. You need to know how your customers and potential customers categorize themselves. If you don’t know, find out immediately. Think about the way Democrats and Republicans “brand” themselves. The concepts of “liberalism” and “conservatism” carry powerful emotional ties and fierce (often blind) loyalty. You can use the same strategy to build bonds with your audience.

4. It may be possible to create a category for your business, but it is much easier to become associated with what your customers and prospects already love. Tommy Bahama is a good example. The lifestyle of perpetual tropical vacation is one that certain individuals aspire to. Those people will naturally relate to products like the ones that Tommy Bahama offers.

Make a bold statement of who you are as a company. You will attract the kind of customers you want to do business with. Lukewarm relationships will decrease proportionally to the strength and specificity of the stand you take. Instead, you’ll form passionate, long-term relationships.

5.  Affirming the worldview of your customers and connecting with their categories they identify with will help build instant rapport and trust. You are “one of them!” As such, they will feel that they can trust you and relate with you. They believe that you understand them and their needs.

Take time to get to know how your customers view the world. Find ways to affirm their way of thinking. You’ll discover your interactions with them will be more beneficial both for your business and them.

The addition of Ophiuchus to the zodiac may be the latest tall tale, but the emotional reactions are no myth. The psychology is real and powerful. Apply the lessons this event has taught you; your business may never be the same.

Fair Warning

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I’m working on the December edition of my newsletter.

I feel the need to warn you. If you aren’t subscribed to the newsletter, you’re really going to miss out on a powerful lesson this month.

I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but let me say this: the information I’ll be expounding on would not usually be free. In fact, I’ve never shared these insights before at all. Nor have I heard them expressed anywhere else.

Frankly, I’m glad that my subscriber list is fairly small. Can’t have too many people walking around with this kind of info.

Nevertheless (always-the-more), if you really want to cram some dynamite into your salesmanship skills, you won’t want to miss this.

This will impact your ability to persuade, influence and sell

  • face-to-face
  • online
  • in print
  • over the airwaves
  • even from the stage.

See the subscription box on the right side of this page. Scroll down just a little bit. There you go. Just be aware that if you enter your email address, I fully intend to rock your world.

Arthur’s Advertising Wars, or Why You Don’t Want to Compete on Price

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You can learn a lot from cartoons. I have 4 kids in the house, so I know.

Marc Brown’s classic cartoon Arthur teaches us a business lesson we should all heed. Competing on price is a losing proposition.

The entire episode is enjoyable, but the business fun starts about 5 minutes in.

So, do you still want to be the low price leader in your field?

The 7th Grade Science Lesson Business Schools Should Teach

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Do you remember learning Sir Isaac Newton’s “laws of motion” in school? I wonder, were you like most of your classmates, questioning whether knowing this stuff would do you any good in the real world?

Today I want to apply Newton’s thinking to something other than physical science. You know me: I always have to look at things differently.

Newton’s 1st Law of… Business?

Newton’s first law of motion states that objects tend to remain in the state of motion that they’re in. We use the term inertia to describe this phenomenon. Moving objects want to keep moving. Stationary objects like to stay still,

You can probably already see where I’m going with this.

If you’ve ever been in business, or seriously considered launching a one, you have almost certainly experienced what I’m talking about. Getting started is hard, isn’t it?

Changing your state of motion from stationary to forward motion takes a lot of energy. Not to mention if you have to get others to move with you! No part of the process requires more hard work than the initial phases. Think of the space shuttle. It takes two rocket boosters and a fuel tank bigger than the shuttle itself just for lift off. The rockets and fuel tank are unnecessary after the astronauts are several miles from the ground. I’m only guessing here, but I imagine that 95% of the fuel burned during the entire voyage is consumed in the first few minutes. Defeating inertia is not easy.

Once you’ve got things started and moving along…Continue Reading on Fishing for Customers blog.

Money-Getting Is An Art

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I just added another of my favorite classic works to the website, The Art of Money Getting (alternately known as Golden Rules for Making Money) by the one and only P.T. Barnum.

I won’t babble for too long about how much I love this little booklet. I’d prefer if you read it for yourself. But let me make a few comments.

1) It contains very good, practical advice on being “economical.” You hear complaints about the bad economy. Well, the national and global economy is made up of billions of micro (personal) economies. Do you part!

2) Barnum presents a driving emphasis on focus, perseverance and hard work. “Hard work” is a dirty phrase these days. We’ve evolved, apparently. Work smarter, not harder. Even Scrooge McDuck taught us that lesson.

Tell that to Usain Bolt. If you think hard work and determination are not key elements in his success, you’re lying to yourself.

3) He keeps earning money in its proper perspective.

I’ll be the first person to tell you that money isn’t everything. Barnum puts it more eloquently than I could.

Getting rich is not always equivalent to being successful. “There are many rich poor men, while there are many others, honest and devout men and women, who have never possessed so much money as some rich persons squander in a week, but who are nevertheless really richer and happier than any man can ever be while he is a transgressor of the higher laws of his being.”

4) This stuff is just plain old good fashioned advice from a master businessman. Simple and straightforward, but rarely implemented tactics and strategies to success in life and in money-getting endeavors.

Check it out here. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed, and I guarantee you’ll benefit from reading it. It’s a 25-page PDF. You can read it in one sitting, if you like.

WIGs and WAGs

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The other day I listened to an interview with Stephen Covey, author of “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and “The Eighth Habit.” Lots of profound material was covered, but I want to share one comment that stuck out for me.

This is another acronym, like WAGs (Wild “A” Guesses) from the previous post. In fact, we’ll tie the two concepts together in a minute.

Covey spoke about setting and orienting yourself toward accomplishing WIGs, that is Wildly Important Goals. These are the most important objectives that you want to achieve in the various areas of your life. He teaches that if you don’t set WIGs, you will spend most of your time focusing time and energy doing less important things.

Having clearly defined goals helps direct action. You only have 24 hours in a day; why waste even one minute doing something that may be urgent, but not important. Leave “firefighting” in the past.

Here’s the connection, along with an application.

You will not be successful in reaching your WIGs if you settle for making WAGs.

You need to be knowledgeable (as well as constantly learning). You need to be specific. You need to be discriminating in what you choose to do along the path to the finish line. WAGs will not do the job.

While I’m on the subject of “Rubicon” (can you tell that I’m excited?), let me paraphrase a couple of the powerful one-liners that really made powerful statements during Episode 4 from this Sunday:

“I’d rather face the consequences of my action than my inaction.”

Quite a powerful statement. Are you action oriented, or passive? Are you a cause, or are you subordinate to the effects others produce?

“There’s no special sauce. Only data and decisions”

Reminds me of something I heard Jay Abraham say (again, paraphrased): “I don’t have thoughts. I have tests and results.”

Get out there and work! Analyze your results and adapt accordingly.

By all means, learn from others, model success whenever you can. But realize that there is no “special sauce.” Just don’t tell the gurus you heard that from me.

How about one from Episode 1:

“There’s always a why. You just don’t understand it.”

As marketers, as business people, it is important to figure out the “why” behind transactions and interactions. Why do people buy from you? Why don’t they? Don’t settle for a WAG, either!

Spy Games

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Have any of you seen the new AMC series “Rubicon?”

Four episodes have aired so far. I’m loving every second.

(I’ve always been into conspiracy theories, espionage and stuff like that. If you have a similar interest, you really need to take a look at this show. You almost never hear me recommend that you sit in front of the television, so you know this is serious.)

There was an acronym that one of the characters used in this Sunday’s episode that I wanted to share. There is, naturally, a practical application to go along.

Forgive me: like the obsessed fan that I am, there is a bit of an introductory synopsis coming up. If you want to get to the point of this post, skip down to where you see THE POINT in red letters.

We follow a team of intelligence analysts working at the American Policy Institute, aka API. They basically tell various government and military agencies what the data they collect from wire taps, satellite images, etc., really means.

In this episode, the team is assigned to make the analyze info and advise the military’s decision on whether or not to drop a bomb on a potential target. Innocent lives are at stake.

Trying to determine the risks involved in the mission, the 3-person team guesses the number of civilians that could be in harm’s way. One of them exclaims that the estimate quoted is a “total WAG.” This is defined as a Wild “A” Guess. Feel free to guess what the “A” stands for.

So here’s THE POINT:

In direct response marketing, you cannot afford to make WAGs. You don’t have the luxury of fooling around with the money you spend to roll out your campaign. Every dollar has to be accounted for. This is especially true if you’re working on a project for a client. You can’t play around with their investment.

The good news is that you don’t have to settle for making guesses in your marketing.

Too many business and ad agencies develop concepts without ever doing research to find out exactly what motivates their target audience. Even more proceed with their ideas without ever testing to see if what they’re doing is producing results.

This is wasteful at best, and potentially suicidal for your business.

Lesson for today: don’t make WAGs when it comes to your business decisions. Strike that: never guess at any of the important decisions in your life, business or personal.

Do the necessary research so that you can move forward prepared for what’s out there. What is your hottest prospect really scared of? What is your wife’s favorite flower?

Then test everything. I’ll go out on a limb and say that everything in life is quantifiable to some degree. Find out what kind of results you’re getting, and work on improving them constantly.

Improve Your Marketing by Playing Board Games

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Maybe I’m crazy, but it seems like you can find marketing lessons everywhere. I’m not talking about learning from the hundreds of sales messages that harass our eyes and ears daily.

You can gain marketing insight in what seems like most unlikely places…

Last night, my lovely wife and I had a great time playing Scrabble. After having the crap beaten out of me for most of the game, I had an epiphany.  Scrabble can help you be a better marketer!

I won’t take up all your time going trough all the details, but observe some of the benefits that you get from playing this classic game:

  • You’re constantly being exposed to new words. And advanced vocabulary (one that you actually put to use) is a key to the game. It will also help you with writing copy and content for your sales letters, website, articles, etc.
  • Scrabble is all about finding connections. Your brain can do a lot of exercise during competitive matches. Marketing is all about connections, too. Gotta find a way to bring your customers and your product or service together.
  • You’ll improve your ability to analyze details. A critical eye can do wonders for your advertising efforts.

The key lesson that I took away from my epiphany is that what’s on the board is more important than the letters on your rack. If you spend all your time looking at your own letters, you’ll get trounced (a word I am now quite familiar with). No matter what you have in your possession, if you can’t get it on the board, it’s worthless. Contrariwise, even if your assortment of letters is really sorry, you might still be able to create a huge word based on what’s already been played.

This is crucial with marketing as well. It is essential to understand your market. Understanding your audience is the most important part of marketing. Probably the most important aspect of running a successful business.

Short version: don’t spend all your time and effort looking at you. Look at your target, find out what they want, and figure out how to use that intimate knowledge to elevate your marketing to a higher plane.

Oh, and I’m selling my Scrabble Marketing Training Manual for $49. Give me a ring if you’re interested.

(Yes, that’s a joke!)