Category: Marketing

Thursday 10:05pm

Sheffield, U.K

Are we in a brave new world where technology is all that matters and classic human skills are not going to be needed any more?

Or is human nature going to prevail – as we obstinately cling to our biological ways of doing things?

Take the success of Amazon, for example. What makes it special? Why has Ebay become so popular?

The most obvious answer is that they timed it well – they had the technology and created the systems and processes – the infrastructure – needed to do business in the world of the Internet.

You could buy books on Amazon and sell your old stuff on Ebay.

But – just because you can do something doesn’t mean you will.

The two internet giants (and others) created new markets that were transparent and that you could trust.

Reviews, Ebay seller ratings, guarantees, escalation processes – all these helped reassure people that their money was safe if they used the platform to make a purchase.

Many of us can still remember a period when we didn’t fully trust things online. We might look it up online, but then go into a store to buy it.

Then we went into stores and checked online to see if we were getting a good price.

Now, we use stores like display cabinets – a place to look at things before we place an order from the cheapest place online.

The thing that Amazon and Ebay got right, eventually, was removing all risks for us as buyers of products.

And this is something Facebook is learning, perhaps painfully.

Facebook enables us to be producers and consumers of information – of stories and pictures and memories.

The problem is that they have also allowed their platform to be a seething quagmire of misinformation, propaganda and sleaze.

We don’t trust them or their platform, or feel it’s a safe place for us and our kids – and now they are having to do something about it.

They’re learning something that great marketers have always known – if you want someone to make a decision, take away every barrier, every risk that they could possibly face.

Let them try it out, pay later, offer a guarantee, let them have their money back at any time if they’re not happy.

Bend over backwards to make sure that they can make a decision and be confident that they can back out if they have even an iota of regret.

Some people are scared of doing this – what if they get taken advantage of?

But – back to human nature – more people will do the right thing. There will be some people who take advantage of you, but that will be a small number that is more than offset by people who decide to take a chance on you because of what you say you’ll do to remove any risk for them.

And, if you have a good product or service, you know they’ll be happy.

If we’re not confident that we have something good – then we need to fix that first.

But after that… you know that it will help the customer.

So… wipe out every last little bit of risk and then let them make the choice that is best for them.

Monday, 9.33pm

Sheffield, U.K.

What is the single biggest problem with looking at what your competitors are doing and trying to emulate them?

For example – if they have a flashy website and spend loads on pay-per-click advertising – do you have to do that as well to compete?

If they attend particular trade shows or go to awards, do you need to have a presence there as well.

Does a me-too strategy work?

The problem is that if you do what everyone else is doing, then what is it that sets you apart? Why should someone choose you over someone else?

This is something that many organisations struggle to get right. The boss looks over at the competition – perhaps she gets an email newsletter – and wants to know why her company isn’t sending out stuff like that.

It’s much easier to mock up a newsletter and start sending it out instead of questioning whether the newsletter adds value and if clients would actually read it.

Competing on such a basis is effectively an arms race, with everyone spending money to keep up with everyone else.

And, because the Internet effectively makes it free to send out stuff, ridiculous amounts of crap floods into our inboxes every day.

There’s a simple principle that we should keep in mind when advertising what we do.

If you are holding a red flag in a sea of blue flags, you’ll stand out from everyone around you.

That doesn’t happen if you’re holding a red flag and are surrounded by others also holding red flags.

If your business is doing what everyone else is doing then you have to come up with something new, something unique – that makes you look different from everyone else.

Many businesses are too scared to appear anything but corporate. They think that by projecting an image of themselves that is all polished wood and starched shirts they will come across as professional and competent.

Fear rules how they make decisions. They don’t want to send out controversial messages that polarise their audience. The words they use are dull and insipid.

It’s not about shocking an audience. Instead it’s about attracting their attention and then getting a message through to them.

And that’s very hard to do with everyone else shouting at the same time – especially on the internet.

Imagine how you would act if it cost you $10 to send each message. You’d be much more careful about who you sent it to, what you said and how you created a deal for them.

This doesn’t mean we should ignore the competition.

You should study them, read every message they put out and learn exactly how they advertise themselves.

Then – figure out what you can say and show that is different.

Saturday 10:31pm

Sheffield

There is a problem – definitely in the UK and more widely in Europe and small businesses in the developed world – and it has to do with how much work we’re doing.

Many businesses are not productive enough – the amount of work done by each person in the business is flatlining.

And this is a problem for one very simple reason.

As more people look for work, including from the vast labour markets in India and China, the supply of qualified, skilled people increases.

Existing businesses will face more competition from more places – and if they’re not getting better at what they do all the time, then someone else will take them out.

So why do small businesses, in particular, struggle to keep up?

To start with, there are three things they can do to improve their businesses – they can invest in better systems, create better processes and hire better people. And this creates three problems.

1. They’re Too Busy Paying Rent To Worry About New Technology

Most businesses owners are neck deep in work.

There are customers to deal with, suppliers to shout at, employees to manage, rent and wage bills to pay and tax to collect and give the government.

Almost every small business owner is spending too much time working in the business to step back and make the time to work on the business.

So – wanting money out of them for something they don’t understand is not going to go down well.

However good a new technology – most business owners just haven’t got the time to get their heads around it and work out if they will benefit from it.

2. They’re Entrepreneurs – Not MBAs Or Accountants Or Lawyers

May people who start businesses have a passion for what they do, or they’ve taken over the family business, or they spotted a gap in the market for a product or service.

They’re creative opportunity spotters, risk takers and problem solvers.

That’s great when you need sheer force of will to convince suppliers to give you credit, customers to give you business and people to work for you in exchange for promises.

It’s not so good when you need to pass a security audit or comply with GDPR or file an environmental compliance application.

Often businesses don’t have the skills in-house or the contacts outside to get qualified advice on what they should do and how they can do things better – whether it has to do with improving sales and operations, cutting costs or having better contracts in place.

3. They Don’t See The Point Of Investing In Training

This is the hardest one for many business owners to get – and it’s the equivalent of shooting themselves in the foot.

You only have two options – you can hire someone with the skills you need, or you can train them to the level you need.

Many business owners don’t want to pay for training. They see that as an immediate cost and, once the person has been trained, what happens if they simply leave?

All that investment disappears. Instead, why not just hire someone that another company has spent a lot of money to train?

That’s Why They Die A Slow, Lingering Death

People don’t want to mess up their business – they just do because sorting things out for the long term is just so much harder than dealing with things right now.

But we should… think about these three sayings:

• If you don’t make time to exercise, you will have to make time for illness.
• Forewarned is forearmed
• If you train people, they may leave. But, what if you don’t train them and they stay?

If you’re too busy to fix your business now – then it will be a lot harder when the competition has moved in and taken most of your customers.

Understand the value of good advice.

And – train your people. Having a good training system in place that takes inexperienced people and turns them into superstars is the best insurance against having to hire superstars that will leave you the first chance they get for a better offer.

It takes one set of skills to create a business. It takes another set of skills to keep it alive.

Life is just too busy.

There’s always too much going on.

If you’re young, there are parties to go to, friends to meet, movies to watch and places to visit.

If you have a family, the kids take up all your time, and what is left is spent tidying up and trying to get some sleep.

If you’re older, perhaps the grandkids keep you busy. Or there’s holidays with the friends, cruises and charity work.

Is this a good thing?

Possibly. Many people have worse lives and struggle with daily living.

But the fact that others have it worse doesn’t change the reality of the life we live.

So, what can you do about it?

There’s a great ad that Saatchi and Saatchi did for The Health Education Council.

It just says No. And below, it says still the most effective form of birth control.

And this is good advice with almost everything we do.

The point is that we spend a lot of our time doings things others want us to do.

At home, we need to deal with asks from family.

We exchange our time at work for money, and get told what to do as a result.

And, if we want to be nice and useful and not get fired, we do the things we are asked to do.

But, at some point, we could lose track of why we are doing anything in the first place.

What drives you, what do you really want?

And is what you are doing every day getting you closer to or further away from what you want.

Perhaps we can’t remember – all the years have buried our real wants under layers of reality, demands and expectations.

A good tactic to peel back the layers is the perfect day exercise.

Imagine your perfect day. The one that would make you totally happy. What does it look like?

Where do you wake up. What is the room like, the bed, the view?

Maybe it’s not a room, but a hammock on your beach hut in the Caribbean.

What’s the first thing you do? Who is there with you? What is breakfast like?

How do you spend your morning? Do you jet off to a high powered meeting in NYC or LA or are you having brunch with friends in Paris? Or walking the dog in the highlands of Scotland?

Describe your day in detail, from start to finish. Write it down quickly, without censoring yourself. No one is going to see this, so be completely honest with yourself.

Then, look back at what you have written and compare it with what your life looks like now.

If you’re dreaming of being a documentary film-maker but spend your days doing forensic accounting for waste management companies, then something has happened along the way to nudge you off course.

It’s not a problem.

You have the rest of your life to get back on track – starting right now.

And the way to get started is by saying No to the things that take you further away from your perfect day.

Not to all of them, not all at once – that will just get you fired and ruin all your relationships.

But, perhaps – that’s what’s actually needed in some cases.

For most of us, we need to correct course, not sink our boat and swim, spluttering and flailing, towards a new one.

Try saying No to more things from now on.

Thursday 8:27pm Sheffield

Did you do what you were supposed to do today? Go to work? Follow the rules? Keep your head below the parapet?

That sounds like a good day’s work. Let’s say it was better than that – let’s say it was a great day’s work.

You finished your todo list, helped a co-worker complete a few more jobs and got a large contract signed. Everything is fabulous.

You go to your manager, bursting with excitement – you’ve got all this stuff done, it’s time to pick up some praise and a well-deserved reward.

So… what do you think you’ll get?

1. A huge cash bonus.
2. An all-expenses paid trip to Bali with your family, with everyone flying first class?
3. More work.

Most of us spend our lives working on other people’s priorities

We live in a world where the education system teaches us to fit in – to be good workers. And that’s great for lots of people.

But not for everyone. And the system doesn’t know how to cope with those people in any way other than putting them in straitjackets.

So we get contracts and rules and policies and training – all things designed to squish us into a role where we do what we are told to do and nothing else.

In other words, we act like pragmatic, reasonable people – agreeing what we should do and doing what we agree, most of the time.

What would a Samurai do?

Hagakure is The Book of the Samurai, a collection of conversations with Yanamoto Tsunetomo, an 18th Century Samurai who became a Buddhist priest.

The Samurai point of view that comes out of these writings is not pragmatic, not reasonable – and it’s not a philosophy. It’s a state of mind, and not one that is easy to understand.

In one of the stories, a warlord attacks and kills another one. When this happens, the soldiers of the dead warlord are ronin, masterless Samurai. What should they do?

The answer is clear. They must take revenge. The way of revenge is simply to force your way into the other warlord’s house and be cut down.

Don’t stop and think. Don’t consider details – like how many soldiers guard the place or what you need to attack. When you do this, the time goes by, your start to think, and then you give up.

It doesn’t matter if the enemy has a thousand soldiers waiting to fight you. You go in with the mindset that you will start with the first one and cut them down, one by one.

Even if it looks like you will lose, take action – recklessly, irrationally. Go in, cut them all down, or be cut down.

Don’t wait and think. Act. With no regard to reason or outcomes.

Would you attack a warlord guarded by such people?

Sometimes life needs that kind of attitude. Was Steve Jobs reasonable about removing all the buttons from the iPhone? Was Elon Musk reasonable about going to Mars?

George Bernard Shaw wrote “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

To win, you need to be the kind of person that will fight, even when it is absolutely certain that you must lose.

When the time comes, you do not reason – you must only act.