Steven Johnson said: Being right keeps us in place. Being wrong forces us to explore. Do you sometimes wonder why there is less business innovation and design than you might have expected? We often hear from our clients that things are working; therefore they are reluctant to change. Innovative companies don’t follow this practice.
In any successful organization, many things are working, or it wouldn’t be a going concern. So it’s not surprising that people want to sustain that success. That pure impulse to keep what’s working can produce decisions that can slow or halt creativity and innovation.
A new idea that doesn’t quite fit with prior assumptions often is quickly set aside. Mistakes are seen as problems that must be fixed to restore the organization’s smooth functioning.
It’s all very logical and well-intended, but the effect is to resist any substantial change, gradually eroding the capacity for creative ideas and innovation and even actively opposing them.
Innovative companies
Innovative companies understand this and take action to overcome these tendencies. They continually track their customers and competitors to detect quickly signals that may point to needed changes.
Thoughtful experimentation is encouraged, not only as a way to test new ideas but to maintain the organization’s proficiency at implementing new ideas. There’s an awareness of the need to promote continual adaptation, rather than simply protect what’s working.
Most innovative companies Fast Company … interesting paradox
That is the interesting paradox here. The more strenuously we strive to preserve our success, the more we do what we already know will work. The more we look for confirmation and reinforcement of what we believe, the more momentum is created to avoid necessary change and adaptation.
It’s by letting go of that need to be right and have certainty, by being willing to reexamine our assumption and beliefs, which we build momentum for creativity and innovation. The more we’re willing to explore new possibilities, the more actively we look for exceptions that might expose flaws.
The more we consider a variety of interpretations, the more we seek to discover new insights. In the end, this is what builds the critical momentum in support of new ideas and adaptation necessary for creativity and innovation.
Remember, whoever tries the most stuff usually wins.
Need some help in improving the innovation process for you and your staff? Innovative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors? Or maybe ways to innovate new products and services?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options for innovation workshops to get noticeable results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on creativity and innovation from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Learn How to Think What No One Else Thinks
Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking
Amazon and Managing Innovation … the Jeff Bezos Vision
The Secrets to Building an Innovative Culture
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Seth Godin certainly gets it … probably had it down before anyone else. What may you be asking? My top SEO strategies are what creates content marketing success, of course. Secrets? Probably not. But certainly essential for success.
My top SEO strategies.
We don’t have an information shortage; we have an attention shortage.
Content marketingtactics such as; blog posts feature articles, optimized websitecopy, white papers, social media content and press releases. They are what move consumers along a specific path. Content marketing generates awareness of your brand, product or service. It inspires consumers to engage and consider you. It converts them into leads and sales and creates advocates. Lots to gain, yes?
More to learn: Press Coverage … 9 Actionable Ways to Get Good Coverage
Discover how content marketing exposes consumers to your brand, engages potential customers, and converts them into leads and sales. The following are our recommendations for ensuring the success of an online content marketing strategy. A strategy that even small businesses can successfully implement today.
My top SEO strategies … influence marketing
There is nothing more valuable than contact with people who already have popular websites. Do not try to ask them to promote you. The better option is to some ego-bait stuff (like interview) with them then ask them for a guest blog.
In-depth articles
Forget about writing average blog posts. Instead of this write some 10X stuff – 10X Content is the Future.
Generate quality backlinks.
Combine techniques
It is a mix of skills you already know but from your perspective. For example, I used to check the volume of keywords through Google PPC and Bing PPC program then make a new content map strategy.
Competitors
Tools designed for spying on your competitors cover just 50% of this job. Check every post, comment and article your competitors push. This way you can measure what strategy could be fruitful for your business.
Content
Not just SEO’d and unique but also useful. Your content should be shared and liked. Your goal here is to be noticed and mentioned. You need to receive as much attention as possible.
Promotion
No matter how good your content is, you won’t get any benefit from it unless you promote it. Hard. Remember: 99% of perspiration and 1% of inspiration.
Content comes first
A website with brilliant content can do great with or without SEO. A website with bad content will not survive with or without SEO. Note that a website with good content can become even better with SEO!
So, what is considered good content?
SEO strategies and techniques … original content
SEO strategy plan.
(articles, text, images, videos, presentations, infographics, comments, etc.) No copies or re-writes of existing articles.
Content published on your website first
Even if it’s your content, if you have already published it on another website then it’s not good for your site.
Content that includes text as well
Try to have text to accompany your non-text content. For example, if you post videos on your website, try to add a text description as well. If you add images, try to describe in words what the image is all about.
Content that is well researched
Users don’t want to read quickly prepared posts and neither do search engines. If you are writing about a certain topic or answering a question, make sure that what you write is justified and covers both sides of a story. Long articles are proven to rank better than short articles.
Posting frequency
Two things are important when it comes to posting frequency. First is to have fresh content on your website and second to establish a publishing strategy and stick to it.
Keyword research
Keyword research is the main driver of successful SEO. To improve your search engine ranking, you’ll need first to analyze keywords that are relevant to your industry.
Sound link building
It’s simple: high-quality link building produces greater results.
Creating quality content
Don’t let poor content affect your site’s search engine rank. It’s vital that you offer engaging and useful information to keep your visitors coming back.
When you go about implementing SEO strategies ( to guarantee a favorable search engine ranking), try following these methods to improve your ranking.
Content marketing strategy
Every website should have a content strategy focused around your top keywords. When you create content such as blog posts, videos, whitepapers, research reports and webinars, it gives people something to link to. Also, the content you create can rank by itself in the search engines.
For example, if you write a blog post on “How to Pick an SEO Company,” there is a possibility it will rank for some of the keywords you use in the title and the body post. This is especially true if the post gets linked to from other websites or shared a lot on social media. It also helps if your website, as a whole, already has significant high-quality links.
This results in high domain authority, which translates into better rankings for all of your content. Also, regular content creation shows Google that your website is alive and active. By sending this fresh content signal to Google on a continual basis, it will result in better rankings for your website as a whole.
Generate quality backlinks
Having an influencer and content marketing strategy will help you develop backlinks to your website. It is also important to actively seek ways to get people to link to you. Some of the best ways to do this are to write for a large publication, do industry interviews, and recommend your powerful content to people who matter.
Also, you can also use tools like Majestic SEO to see who is linking to your competitors. Once you identify the links to your competitor’s sites, you can analyze these links and learn how they got them. This will pave the way for the implementation of a similar strategy for your website. For example, did they donate to a charity causing the charity to link to their site? You can do the same thing.
Be mobile-friendly
In 2015, there was a major Google update known as Mobilegeddon. This meant that if you did not have a mobileversion of your website by April 21, 2015, you lost a significant amount of your rankings in the mobile version of the Google search listings.
Keep studying: 19 Top Marketing Initiatives We Should Be Discussing
So your website needs to be mobile-ready. There are three types of accepted options for a mobile site in Google’s eyes. The first is a responsive design. The second is being set up on a mobile subdomain or use dynamic serving. And finally, Google also now ranks websites higher that apply SEO for their apps. So if you have an app, make sure you are taking the time to implement application SEO.
Move to HTTPS, a secure site
The “S” in HTTPS stands for security, and if your URL leads with HTTPS (Example Domain) instead of HTTP (Example Domain), then your website is secure. Google wants you to move your site to HTTPS so badly that they are now giving a ranking boost to websites that are secure. As we moved into 2016, we started seeing many new websites transferring to HTTPS.
Need some help in finding ways to grow your customers?
Such as creativeideas to help the differentiation with potential customers? Or perhaps finding ways to work with other businesses?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.
It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with innovation and creativity efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on social media marketing and advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
To answer that question, we have to go back to the very definition of digital marketing. It’s the concept of delivering advertising through digital channels.
It may be your website, online ads, social media, apps, or email. It’s a very broad term that grasps the essence of a modern marketing campaign: reaching the online audience.
Without a strong online presence, the marketing campaign for a business is not complete. It’s not good enough.
So it’s clear: every business needs a digital marketing campaign. Moreover, every business and marketer has to follow the trends in digital marketing. Let’s focus on the aspect of trends, shall we?
The Digital Marketing Trends of 2017
To understand where we’re going, we have to know where we’re coming from. In short – what notable digital marketing trends made 2017 special?
Big data – online marketing campaigns were based on predictive analytics, coming from market and customer insights.
Internet of things – it’s a trend that just started, but it’s changing the way small businesses approach to content
Influencer outreach – we’ve seen almost every social media influencer promoting something.
Mobile advertising – it’s going stronger by the day.
Live videos – people mostly use them to share moments of their days, but marketing experts are slowly finding their ways to benefit from this trend.
Marketing automation – since businesses have to be present on several online channels at a time, they are automating parts of the marketing campaign.
We’ll just stop there. Some of these trends will be growing in 2018. We explore and expand them to a whole other level.
Now, let’s look forward. What digital marketing megatrends will make the upcoming year different than 2017? What should business owners and marketing experts focus on?
Virtual Reality Is Getting Bigger
VR is better with friends. That’s the motto of a new Facebook project, which is still in its beta version. It’s called Spaces, and it brings virtual reality to social media. With this feature, people will get to be themselves in a different kind of reality. They will use their Facebook photos to build the VR character.
How will brands translate this trend into their digital marketing strategies? We’re sure of one thing: the opportunities are endless. They can create their own VR characters and stories, and use them to build relationships with the target audience.
Big data was one of the most notable marketing trends of 2017. It continues to grow bigger! We’re seeing more people getting connected with more objects, using more services, and sharing more of their preferences.
We’re constantly getting an increased volume of data to work with, and that helps us elevate the effectiveness of our marketing strategies.
The forecast leaves us in awe: the revenue from big data and business analytics on a global level are expected to reach $168.7 billion in 2018.
What customer is tracking data sets will we see in the upcoming year? Digitally-mature brands will rely on customer journey data and customer experience mapping. With these techniques, they can understand the experience of their users and deliver a personalized service. A business that doesn’t rely on this trend risks wasting time and developing ineffective marketing campaigns.
It’s not something new, but it’s a trend that will definitely grow.
Conversational Marketing
All businesses are aiming towards the very responsive to messages badge on Facebook. When people see that badge on your profile, they are encouraged to drop you a message with their questions or comments.
If they want to get in touch with the customer support to solve any issues or get answers before buying the product, they expect quick answers. With this badge, you prove that your support system is impeccable.
Facebook’s Messenger allows businesses to interact with the audience at a fairly face pace. That’s part of the marketing process, too. It’s the type of conversational marketing that’s going to be huge in 2018.
Let’s say you’re trying to buy snow tires for your car, and you found few local businesses on Facebook. They all sell different kinds of tires with different prices. You may write on their profiles, but maybe you don’t want all your Facebook friends to know what you’re looking for.
You’re just interested in the offer and the price, so you want to directly contact the support. If you do that via Facebook Messenger, you’ll most likely choose the business that does conversational marketing well.
Generation Z Is Now in the Focus
Move over Millennials; Gen Xers are about to take the spotlight. In 2018, the older representatives of the Generation Z (also known as Post-Millennials, Homeland Generation, or iGeneration) will be hitting the workforce.
They will have their own money to buy our products and services. Thus, marketing experts will have to include the needs of this generation in their promotional processes.
What makes this generation different than the Millennials? For starters, they prefer Instagram and Snapchat over Facebook. They are younger and more vibrant. They have more free time on their hands.
They use more devices in a day, and they are experimenting with every platform you throw at them. They would rather type a message than have an actual conversation.
Most of all, Gen Xers are Internet experts. Thus, your digital marketing campaign will have to live up to their standards.
Social Media for the Entire Organization
Digital marketing will no longer be limited to the marketing department of a company. We’ve seen this in action: employees promoting the company in its best light. MAC Cosmetics involved its employees in a social media campaign back in 2012. That gave a more “human” touch to the entire marketing process.
The online audience does not particularly trust corporate marketing. They want a subtler approach. When a company involves its employees in the process, they deliver what the audience expects: direct contact with the brand. Plus, they get to promote products and services along the way.
Chatbots are everywhere, yes?
Chatbots
What does a chatbot have to do with marketing? Isn’t it mostly for customer support? It is. However, the customer support process is part of a good digital marketing strategy.
If you have an impeccable customer service department, it will promote your business in a good way.
Chatbots saw a quick rise in 2017. We still haven’t seen the TacoBot, but we expect it to revolutionize the concept of the chatbot. We have to admit one thing: the marketing campaign developed around this tool is pretty great.
The chatbot itself is smart, effective, and it has a sense of humor. It gives us a hint into a very special trend: chatbots are the future of customer service!
Personalized Content Marketing
Internet users are demanding personalization. They want it in the customer support processes. They want it in the service delivery. However, they also demand personalization in your content marketing campaign.
According to Monetate, “94% of in-house marketers believe that a personalized website experience is “critical to current and future success.”
Personalized web experience – that’s where content marketing gets merged with the process of personalization. Most visitors share names and emails to get valuable content, such as eBook or long-form articles. We can use that basic data to provide a more personalized content marketing campaign via email, as well as on the site.
Video Marketing
According to Forrester research, a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words. Whoa, that’s a bold statement, isn’t it? But, it’s true. A video is much more effective than written content. Content is in the essence of video marketing, so we’ll still need writing services like Essay Geeks in 2018. However, chances are we’ll be needing more video scripts.
If you check your Facebook or Instagram feed, you’ll notice that videos are dominating the platforms. As you scroll down, a video will catch your attention, and you’ll stop for a moment thinking “let’s see what this is!” That’s exactly how most social media users react to videos, and it’s exactly why digital marketers will focus on this element of their campaigns.
Infusing Marketing into the Customer Journey Mapping Process
The customer’s lifecycle tells us a lot about the way the user approaches our products or services. The process of customer journey mapping is quite complex. It goes through three important stages:
Outlining the buyer persona
Defining all stages in a customer’s journey
Designing a customer journey map
Through this map, the business understands how their ideal customers behave. Why is this important for the marketing campaign? The data you get helps you design a truly effective marketing campaign. You understand how your target user considers, buys, uses and maintains your product or service.
In 2018, we expect to see an evolution in the way marketing strategies are designed around a customer’s journey. It’s easy for us to start thinking from a user’s point of view and trigger the action we want them to take.
As highlighted in Econsultancy’s Content Strategy Best Practice Guide from July 2017, “solid understanding of the customer journey through customer journey mapping can establish a firm foundation for success.” In 2018, digital marketing strategies will be moving in that direction.
More Influencer Marketing
When you think of influencer marketing, you think of Instagram. It’s the center of this trend. We’re seeing people with millions of followers promoting all kinds of brands, products, and services through the platform.
But that’s not where it stops. Influencer marketing is present on all other social media channels, too. It involves bloggers, who influence to convince people to try anything they recommend.
This is a prominent current trend. With the rise of Instagram stories, it’s taking a different dimension. We expect influencer marketing to grow in that direction throughout 2018.
Through their stories, our favorite Instagrammers are not only sharing moments of their days. They also make recommendations that we trust, and they don’t seem intrusive by doing that.
Since the platform doesn’t serve this content in your feed, you see only the stories you want to see. That’s why you trust them more. That’s why brands can benefit from this marketing method.
Digital Marketing Growth Is on Its Way
With the ten upcoming trends we described above, we tried to predict how businesses will approach digital marketing in 2018. That brings us to the final and most important trend: digital marketing growth. It’s a never-ending process that doesn’t allow us to remain in any comfort zone.
Many of the old trends are still persistent, but we keep adding new ones in our practices. Digital marketing transforms the way businesses operate. In a good way. Does your business have a specific digital marketing growth program in place? It should have. Consider the above-listed trends and make sure to include them in your strategy.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Chris Richardson is a journalist, editor, and a blogger. He loves to write, learn new things, and meet new outgoing people. Chris is also fond of traveling, sports, and playing the guitar. Follow him on Facebook and Google+.
Becoming obsolete is a reality in today’s fast-moving environment. Yes, today’s business needs require us to leave our comfort zone and venture into an environment that can achieve marketing innovation.
The customer never buys what you think you sell.
Peter Drucker
Luckily, it doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning the principles we’ve learned along the way. It just means evolving our thinking and applying these same principles to the new mediums.
Related: Secrets to Share on Lego’s Marketing Campaigns
Looking for more marketing innovation? Check out the work of Jay Baer.
Here are ten areas of business change. They will get the organization paying attention on where to find breakthrough innovation ideas for marketing needs:
The arrival of channel convergence
All mediums are converging. The customer dictates the content they want to consume, across multiple mediums, the times they want it.
On-demand mediums will challenge the marketer as consumers move swiftly between tablets to a smartphone to television.
The new ways of targeting customers across multiple platforms now allow the marketer more long-tail opportunities. These will augment and support traditional targeting.
Data is the new norm
The promise of big data brings with it enormous benefits. They include ones that can now inform customer preferences. Ones that identify relevant prospects in real-time. And ones that distil meaning from reams of information where it impacts competitive or brand reputation.
The opportunities to target more granularly beyond just “company”collected transactions provides profound examples. Examples to find the right customer, at the right time, in the right channels, with the right message.
The need for strong data analysts to compile this information across multiple platforms and mediums will be an essential component. A component to target effectively for acquisition. And a component to improve retention rates and optimize for real-time performance.
Change is imperative
Gone are the days of relying on historical data. These days, any data point longer than 30 days is too old and therefore, of limited value.
No longer are we required (or should we be required) to sit and wait for results.
With data becoming more embedded in our daily work, marketers must work towards a more agile, near real-time environment:
This also means becoming more data responsive to an increasingly splintered market. It means having the structures and processes to change tactics on the fly.
It is the context
Google has gone beyond just keyword and now tries to extract real meaning from what people search or speak about.
Semantic algorithms go this one step further and now give marketers the tools to improve the understanding of what people need and want.
It’s here that will help predict and define areas the brand can connect and provide value to customers.
A more informed customer expects an optimal experience. Such an experience “allows them to shop and receive their purchases where they want when they want and how they want.”
This means providing the ‘continuous experience’ across brands, devices, and format.
Today’s marketer is channel-agnostic and is aware of sites, platforms and channels.
Note that the customer is researching, eliciting recommendations, price-comparing and ultimately, buying.
Marketing innovation examples … value is the new currency
One of the hardest lessons for marketers to have learned is to refrain from leading with overt company or product messages.
“Leading with value” has become a difficult principle to adopt, after years of “me-me-me” communications.
Declining performance of digital ad units means marketers must rethink content. Rethink content from the position of the customer.
The rise of editorial as an essential function within marketing will be necessary to install this new discipline.
Marketing innovation ideas … building sustainable relationships
The value of social media as open two-way conversations now provides brands with the ability to build relationships. It provides brands the effort and commitment to nurturing customer relationships through these channels.
Word of mouth and advocacy are strong indicators of brands doing it right.
The value of organic traffic that results from content value, social consistency, and customer commitment, will become more critical. More critical than the more costly campaign-driven ad-buys and promotions.
Agencies will never be able to be truly able to build effective community management services. This function needs to live within the heart of the organization.
Customer relationships with brands cannot be fostered via surrogate means, and then adopted by the organization.
Only employees within the organization, with the proper knowledge and solutions, can effectively troubleshoot customer complaints. They need to provide the right responses in the expected timeframe.
An emerging discipline in community /customer relationship management will be critical. It will permit the community to gauge the pulse of the audience It will also bridge the gap with the organization.
Team organizational focus
The result of these changes will inevitably move away from marketing and become embedded in all parts of the organization.
A responsive, dynamic organization means that PR, HR, Product development, Inventory Management, Operations will need seamless communication channels.
Channels must receive properly and disseminate information into and outside the company to stakeholders as well as external customers.
The future marketers will become more operations-minded but will rely on the collective organization to function effectively.
Customer-centric is all there is
As digital media matures, the areas mentioned above will move companies to start to shift. Shift in ways that puts the needs of the customers at the center of the organization.
One-to-one marketing will become a reality as data allows us to personalize experiences truly for each customer.
Retention will get increasingly harder as mediums and platforms rise and fall with the nomadic consumer.
Where critics have prophesied the death of marketing, a more responsive, dynamic and collaborative organization will take its place.
Takeaways
Marketing is no longer a discipline with best practices and tried and true techniques.
As long as the technology exists, and media evolves, consumers will continue to find new ways to connect and consume information.
What’s clear is that these days our traditional definition of longevity is short-lived. Not only does the marketer need to morph with the times, but the organization also does as well.
Marketing needs demand breakthrough innovation.
Do you have an Integrated Marketing Strategy?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improve your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Are you a baby-boomer? Have you decided what to do with yourself after your retirement? Are you rethinking boomers?
Rethinking boomers.
Before you answer those questions, I’d like to refer you to a fascinating article by Marc Freemen: The Dangerous Myth of Reinvention.
A man is never too old … until his regrets take the place of his dreams.
John Barrymore
Marc Freedman is founder and CEO of Encore.org, which annually gives out The Purpose Prize for social innovators in the second half of life. He is the author of The Big Shift: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life.
Like many of us, you may not have heard of this organization. And that’s not because it has not been very successful.
For those not familiar with Encore, here’s how they describe themselves:
Encore.org is building a movement to make it easier for millions of people to pursue second acts for the greater good.
We call them “encore careers”. These are jobs that combine personal meaning, continued income, and social impact in the second half of life. An excellent idea, isn’t it?
A lot of this article revolves around two keyword definitions. Here are the words and relevant definitions from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Reinvention – A complete remake or redo to bring into use again.
Reintegration- a restoration to a unified state.
We will come back to these definitions in a moment.
We will leave it to you to read Marc’s article in its entirety. In this blog, I will capture components to give my views on the author’s opinions.
Myth of reinvention.
Point one
Gary Maxworthy spent three decades in business until a personal tragedy prompted him to reexamine his priorities.
He left the corporate world behind and set off to find his true calling. In the process discovered both a new identity and the path to accomplishing his most important work fighting hunger.
In this telling, Maxworthy is an archetypal example of the reinvention mythology that seems omnipresent today.
This is especially so when it comes to those in the second half of life. Self-help columns are packed with reinvention tips.
For all its can-do spirit, I’ve come to believe the reinvention fantasy. The whole romance with radical transformation unmoored from the past, is both unrealistic and misleading.
I’ll even go further. I think it is pernicious, the enemy of actual midlife renewal.
For the vast majority of us, reinvention is not practical, or even desirable. On a very basic level, it’s too daunting.
How many people have escaped the past, started from scratch, and forged a whole new identity and life?
Sure, it happens. But not often, at least outside of Hollywood.
My view:
Let’s start with the meaning of reinvention, so we are all on the same page.
Reinvention is a remake or redo. But in this context, I believe the remake or redo has to do with the end state of what you want to do.
For example, people have executed reinventions within their careers on many occasions.
I started as an engineer, then went into marketing, and ended up as a business unit executive. The end state in each instance was different. However, many of the skills required for success were the same.
One could refer to these changes as a reintegration or a reinvention.
Not very different indeed? More like splitting hairs?
My conclusion then is that people in retirement have several choices. They can be totally retired and do hobbies, or pick a different end state of activity.
This could be much different than the one that represented their last job. To achieve this new end state, they could reinvent or reintegrate.
In case, many (or perhaps most) skills to be successful would already be there. It is not like they are starting over, in my opinion.
So I believe Marc is splitting hairs here. His conclusion is far overstated.
Point two
More troublesome is the underlying assumption that the past. In other words, our accumulated life experience is baggage to be disregarded and discarded.
Isn’t there something to be said for racking up decades of know-how and lessons?
Considering failures as well as triumphs? Shouldn’t we aspire to build on that wisdom and understanding?
My view:
Don’t understand how he got to this conclusion at all. Whose underlying assumption is this? Not a good one in my opinion.
Everything new we decide to do whether a reinvention or reintegration is built on the old. It is often just ‘reconnecting the dots’ of experience in a different way.
Rethinking boomers … point three
Studying social innovators in the second half of life with a focus on individuals who have done their greatest work after 50. I’m convinced the most powerful pattern that emerges from their stories can be described as reintegration, not reinvention.
These successful late-blooming entrepreneurs weave together accumulated knowledge with creativity. They continually are balancing continuity with change.
They are continually crafting a new idea that’s almost always deeply rooted in earlier chapters and activities.
My view:
Certainly, agree with these points mostly in entirety. However, they do seem in conflict with the previous points, don’t they?
Again I believe that much too much is being made of the differences in the meanings between reinvention and reintegration.
Baby boomer.
Point four
To me, that’s the most damaging part of the reinvention mythology. It is the preoccupation not only with rebirth, but with youth itself, even as it is slipping away.
Today 70 is upheld as the new 50, 60 the new 40 or even 30, and 50 practically adolescence.
My view:
My opinion is that there are varied reasons why people want to continue to have meaning in their lives and try new things.
It is about the age of continual learning, and you could (and perhaps should) consider this to be age-insensitive.
While I certainly have no real data to back it up, I believe new things and continuous learning has little to do with age in most instances. Notice I did not use either of the terms reinvention or reintegration.
In fact, I would conclude most baby boomers would like to ignore age entirely. They would prefer to make it irrelevant.
My takeaways
I don’t buy into the myth of reinvention. I believe all people, regardless of age, should consider new things. They are just building new skills on top of the old.
Probably none of the new skills will be far afield from the older ones. And for certain, everyone should be as active as possible. This includes continuous learning and engagement in activities with new end states. This is particularly true of ones that ‘give back.’
I certainly believe in ‘encore careers”. That is jobs that combine personal meaning, continued income, and social impact in the second half of life.
Encore.org is a great organization with an impressive mission.
What do you think? Do you have comments or opinions to add to this discussion?
Need some help in building better customer insights from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer base?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job of growing customer insights and pay for results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new insights that you have learned.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
Check out these additional articles on customer service insights from our library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
I have been in management and leadership positions in the military and business world for forty years, and I often get asked about my corporate culture experience and my best business lessons. Surprisingly (or not) my list of business culture lessons probably have varied to a degree, depending on when in my career it was constructed.
The list of lessons is based on real world experiences as well as managers and leaders I studied (including many bosses). For example, Dwight Eisenhower was only one of many I studied over those many years.
Being such a business manager is a lifelong learning process. You are never done learning and renewing lessons you have learned. Every great manager always looks for ways to improve their ability to improve their leadership qualities and attributes.
If you read ten books on business management, you could easily build a checklist of 50 or more management lessons for future business managers. But more is not necessarily better for the best lessons to study and apply.
The following lessons represent my favorite lessons on business management I have learned over my 40 years. They are the ones that have made the biggest impact on my success:
Corporate culture … people first
No matter what the job is, leaders always want to look for the best people and then take care of them. A business is just a group of people working on various creations and inventions. People are your business. It is as simple as that. It’s all about the people. They are the lifeblood of the business.
When you’re leading a business or an organization, you’re leading people. It makes sense that leaders need to take care of their people. Many leaders work to have relationships with their employees. Taking them out for coffee and getting to know them better is common among leaders. Putting people first is an important element in being a leader.
Competency
Whatever you do, be competent in your current job. It’s the only true currency you have. That being said, no amount of competence will protect you when the next re-organization comes.
Corporate culture examples … relationships
Never forget that relationships in business should be business relationships. You may have a friend or lover at work, but the relationship will end the moment the opportunity to advance in the business is placed between you and your friend or lover. By the way, I strongly recommend keeping romance outside of the workplace.
Always be a multiplier.
Be a multiplier
Multiplier business managers know that at the apex of the intelligence hierarchy is NOT the lone genius. Rather, it is the genius who knows the importance of bringing out the smarts and capabilities in everyone in the team.
Corporate politics
Understand that politics is a fact of corporate life, and learn to deal with it. That means you take time to understand the views of the people involved in corporate conflicts, as well as the conflicts themselves. There will be times when you have to choose between being in the right or being employed. It’s your choice.
Establish clear direction
Getting people on board, aligned and pointed in the right direction is vital for an organization. If each person is going in a different direction, it can be chaos in an organization.
Keeping people coordinated and aimed is a continual process. You’re the luckiest leader in the world if this happens by default. Two ways to ensure people are coordinated and aimed is setting milestones and having multiple coaches and promoters for your employees.
Do what you can to make sure people enjoy what they’re doing. If people aren’t passionate about the business and love what they’re doing, they are more likely to be going in a different direction and susceptible to becoming disengaged. Certainly not a good thing.
Types of corporate culture … build connections
Both managers and leaders know their job with their teams is about building lots of connections. They make people feel they have a stake in common problems.
Pay attention to culture
Understand the culture of the organization, especially their expectations of what makes a good employee. They all say they believe in teamwork, dedication, hard work, etc. But look at the employees who are successful, who get the recognition, who rise quickly – they represent what the company is looking for. What do they do that you can do?
Build and maintain trust
Trust is a key element we all need to set aside vulnerability, but it is hard to build, and easy to lose. It is not built on words, but through actions and evidence. Only when it works can a team address the necessary issues to win.
Corporate experience meaning … conflict and consensus
Conflicts and fights are not the same thing. Conflicts are normal and required factual push backs in business, whereas fights are emotional, often personal, disagreements which do not lead forward to consensus.
Corporate environment.
Embrace change
Change is the only constant in business, so make it your competitive advantage. Initiate change rather than react to it, and give clear instructions to help the team understand why the change is necessary, and how it will make the situation better.
Establish a level of structure and control
The challenge of structure and control is to strike the right balance. With none, things fall into chaos, but too much can have the effect of stifling innovation and creativity.
Make decisions
In general, any decision is better than no decision. Usually, a blended approach is the best, between independent decisions, and collaborative decisions factoring in the best team input. Picking the best team members is a right starting decision.
Foster continuous communication
Communication is the glue that forms the bond between leaders and teams and holds great teams together. Credibility is a required base.
Corporate experience … provide recognition
Recognition drives motivation and human behavior, and human behavior drive results. Recognition validates people and their purpose. Intangible rewards can have an even greater impact than tangible ones, but they must be relevant.
Create learning experiences
We all have a desire to learn and grow. The best learning opportunities are experience and sharing.
Make your boss look good
Understand what your boss regards as a priority, and help him or she accomplishes it. Make sure that you document what you’ve done. Your boss needs the accomplishment, but shouldn’t get the credit for the work you’ve done.
Train your replacement. You won’t be able to get a promotion if there’s no one else to take your job.
Corporate environment … foster teamwork
Peter Drucker is a silent mentor for our small agency. We are big fans. He once made an interesting point when he said that leaders don’t train themselves not to say ‘I’ He’s implying that leaders innately work with others and let the team get the credit. They don’t force themselves to say ‘we.’ ‘We’ is natural for them, and it’s the way they’ve always thought.
You work as a team when you don’t care who gets the credit.
So the next time you interview someone with a resume that states, ‘I accomplished x’ or ‘I did x’, it should send up a few warning signals.
Staff development
Many companies follow the motto: “Hire for the character, train for skill.” You hire people that are eager to learn. They don’t have a ton of skills; but as a leader, you teach them, and they become better. They grow with your company and contribute to its success.
You see this with football coaches. In football coaching, it’s almost unheard of for someone with no experience to be hired as the head coach of a team. Most people start in a low-level position and gradually move up.
The same occurs in business. George Bodenheimer is the former president of ESPN. He started out working in the mailroom of ESPN. It would have been very difficult for him to rise to the presidency if he hadn’t had a boss who wanted to help him grow and succeed in the company.
Everything communicates
How you dress, how you stand, how you speak, etc. If you want to succeed in a corporate environment, you have to communicate that you are the kind of employee that represents the corporate success story.
Do not rest on past successes
There is nothing more dangerous to life’s success than a last great result, is there? We are ‘only as good as our next result’. Stay paranoid.
Make yourself a project
Hairdressing icon Vidal Sassoon was famous for having said: “The only place you’ll find success coming before work is in a dictionary.” We have to work on ourselves. Put pressure on ourselves. Critique our days. Give back to society. Be our very best coaches and cheering squads. All of this applies as much to our personal lives as for our business lives.
Continue to add to your connections and be a continuous learner
Woody Allen said: “85% of the secret of success is just turning up.” Turn up to events. Make that phone call. Read that book. Do that training? Have the courage to ask that question. Make the effort. Stay connected to what’s happening around you.
Be a priority ‘ninja.’
Getting more of the important things done every day. Be obsessed with getting priorities rights, on what’s really important, every day, and make sure you spend the majority of your day on these priorities.
Embrace change
Darwin said it was not the strongest of the species that survived, but the ablest to adapt to change. There will be more change in the next five years than we’ve seen in the past 50. Get excited by change. Be part of the most movements that you can. Help shake things up.
Be decisive
One of the key jobs of a manager is to be an effective decision maker. Employees are never comfortable with managers who make slow decisions and the frequently change their minds. Quality managers make decisions quickly and stick with them.
Provide sound guidance
Be available for your staff members and show interest in their career development within the business. Don’t hesitate to offer guidance along the way.
Building and maintaining trust
Always do what you say and set good examples. Demand from yourself the same level of professionalism and dedication that you expect from others. Trust, once broken, is seldom restored to its original state. It is the most fragile yet essential attribute of leadership and management.
Present the big picture
Consistently show the team how their projects fit into the larger goals and objectives of the business. You can never be too detailed on communicating the big picture.
Be patient but persistent
Delivering strong managerial skills takes time and practice. Seek guidance from mentors, colleagues, your boss, and your network.
Deliver confidence
Having and being able to deliver confidence counts. Most managers are self-confident. The real skill and ability are to extend faith to others. You must be good at recognizing and believing in the talents of others.
Accept learning is never done
You have worked hard to get to this point. Rely on your experience but accept there is still much to learn. Learn from everywhere you can, including your team.
What a business represents
For all of the reputation that corporations are soul-sucking, back stabbing, political jungles where you can only rise by stepping on the heads of others, they also provide employment, benefits and a bit of security that support millions of people and their families worldwide.
Related post: Competitive Growth Strategy … the Story of In-N-Out Burger
They are not democracies, not charities, and not therapy centers. They exist to make money, and they hired you to help them make money. That’s the deal.
Keep that in mind every day, keep your emotions in check, do your job, and if you find you don’t like working there anymore, don’t complain – just keep it professional, and move on.
The bottom line
The moral of this story is that the best leadership lessons should have a great influence on team development and teamwork. If these different thoughts are possessed by your current management or leadership team, or your emerging leaders, you will be in a good position for the road ahead.
Which of these management lessons stand out to you like the most critical? Do you have any other thoughts of effective managers worthy of mention? Leave a comment and share your insights with other readers and us. We would be most interested in your thoughts.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.
It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with innovation and creativity efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
Check out these additional articles on business lessons from our library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Mistakes are a part of life. But you don’t want them to be even a small part of your best search marketing design experience. We know that providing valuable information via our blog, emails, and social media is the best way to attract customers and clients.
And by figuring out exactly what their pain points, needs, and desires are, we can create content that best meets their expectations.
People’s time is priceless. Don’t waste it with irrelevant messages. Engage them with messages that they are interested in.
Content marketing is the process of delivering brand value to an audience by publishing branded content designed to help or entertain to earn attention rather than pay for it.
Related: 12 Lessons from Ben and Jerry’s Marketing Strategies
Have you ever wondered if the content you are writing is run of the mill or just plain boring? If no one likes your content, you won’t get any social shares, linkbacks, or traffic.
Whether you write content for B2B or B2C sites, there is an art to content creation.
Follow the tips below, and you’ll increase the likelihood of your content being shared, which will help you generate traffic.
Content marketing is all the rage. It seems marketers are falling all over themselves to increase budgets, increase volume, and in many cases, decrease the value.
Like any other business initiative, content marketing is a STRATEGY, not a tactic. And as such, it should be planned and executed with well thought out processes and procedures.
While there are articles, books and a plethora of data on what content marketing IS, I’ve decided to discuss the mistakes to avoid in delivering content readers are clamoring for:
Search marketing … focus on the best content marketing strategy
Content marketing needs to put attention on the consumer, not on your business.
Content marketing strategy is not about you or the public relations of your business.
Make it difficult to share
It seems like common sense to have sharing widgets on your content so users can easily make a couple of clicks of the mouse and share your words with the masses, but so many people miss this all-important step.
And if you’re creating something like a brochure? Include the URL, so you can easily be found.
Expensive
Or at least it doesn’t have to be. Remember that your content marketing strategy sources can (and should) include: your brand, your staff, your customers and EVERYTHING else that surrounds your company.
With all of those sources, it shouldn’t take moving mountains to create something creatively good.
Too promotional
Examples of content marketing.
Successful marketers know good content aims to help, not sell. Be a help and avoid selling at all costs.
Remember selling is a component of marketing, but marketing is not selling.
Best content marketing design … a “Project”
Try an on-going process. It takes gobs of time to do it right, and if done correctly it’s never over.
Tackle it in an iterative manner and use reviewers to critique the work.
A Blog
While your blog is one way to create content marketing, it shouldn’t be the only way your company distributes content for your would-be clients to consume.
There’s also: social media, eBooks, case studies, informational packets and brochures, presentations, videos, podcasts, and workshops.
Everything to everybody all the time
Good content marketing efforts nurture prospects and lead through the entire lifecycle. It should continually aid current customers.
One piece of content won’t be helpful to everyone at every stage.
Boring content
The only way your content has a chance of going viral is if it’s perceived as EXTREMELY valuable. As in, you’re sharing jaw-dropping tips and tricks for your industry.
Otherwise, your story about the amazing service you received at the pancake house is just serving your need to see your name in the byline.
One-way communication
It’s not enough to push your content out.
To execute a content marketing strategy that is helpful, you’ll need to respond, comment, ask questions, and interact with the people who are consuming your work.
Solely from marketing
Not only should you consider having several departments help create content, you can’t rule out having your customers help you create great content, also.
Or at least ask good questions for you to respond to.
Remember this simple fact
Stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in. Let your content marketing success be your difference maker.
From maximizing quality to increasing your online entry points, eliminating these content marketing mistake will help build a foundation that will serve your customers, your brand and — perhaps most importantly — your bottom line.
What would you add? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below!
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improve your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete. Excellent point from Jack Welsh. Does your business have a winning value proposition? We have found many clients that cannot articulate their unique value proposition. In fact, building value propositions creates more mistakes than any marketing subject we know. In our opinion, trying to win against your competition with value proposition mistakes is like trying to sail with no wind. Such mistakes will certainly lose many valuable customers.
Nothing is more important for your business than competitive advantages … the more you have, the stronger your business. So pay close attention as we describe many mistakes when building and implementing winning value propositions.
Before we continue, let me ask you a question.
What works best for value propositions in your business? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? Be the one who starts a conversation.
Related: Grow Your Business with 10 Secrets of Value Propositions
So how do you derive good differentiation? For starters, make sure you understand the concept of a value proposition:
Start by understanding there are two ways to win in a competitive market:
Achieve sustainable lower cost (and therefore price) than your competition for the same products and services (very difficult to sustain)
Deliver more value, despite equal or higher price
A business is a value delivery system. The heart of a winning value proposition is the end-result experiences of value a business intends to deliver to its target customer segments. It needs to be articulated for the customer value end state … not for your product, service, or business process.
To understand your potential value to customers:
Be your customers … study and creatively infer value by observing/learning from what they do.
Do your claims surpass the value alternatives in the marketplace? Do your customers believe your claims?
So where should you look for mistakes in your business’s value propositions? The top areas include:
Value proposition mistakes … limited real value
The most useful definition of unique selling propositions (USP) is a believable collection of the most persuasive reasons people should notice you and take the action you’re seeking.
This way, it guides your decisions much more clearly and can be used as the basis for marketing messages.
If you don’t have strong selling propositions, people don’t have good reasons to do either of those.
For example, if your online bookstore has an average selection, decent prices, delivery, a guarantee, good customer service, and a website, why would anyone buy from you? There’s surely a competitor who beats you in at least some of those aspects.
You don’t have to be the best in every way. Sure, it’s great if you are. But realistically, it’s difficult enough to be the best couple of ways.
However, if you’re the best in at least several ways, you’re the best option for the people who value those propositions.
Starbuck’s doesn’t have the lowest prices. Amazon isn’t the most prestigious bookseller. Zappos’ isn’t the easiest way to shop. People buy from them for other reasons.
So, if your bookstore has the largest selection, for example, but the other things are just average, the people who value a large selection have a reason to buy from you.
You must have some product or service elements that are unique. Something has to make you the best option for your target customers.
Otherwise, they have no good reason to buy from you.
The heart of a winning unique selling propositionis the end result experiences of value a business intends to deliver to its target customers. The end result experiences. For example, a customer shopping for an electric drill is looking for one that can deliver holes as easily and conveniently as possible. Also, one that can deliver the most multiple functions.
Not articulated for customers
Unique selling propositions need to be articulated for customers… not for your products, services or business processes. Products, services, processes are the vehicles for the proposition delivery.
Value proposition model … limited specifics
Customers perceive relative value in any proposition, even implicit ones … so every business delivers a unique selling proposition (explicit or implicit). You need to design it explicitly. Don’t let it happen by chance.
Limited knowledge of target customers
“Become” your customers instead of just asking them what they want from your business. Listen, observe and study to creatively infer from what customers DO.
Not having multiple unique selling propositions
When your customers have customers, different USPs are required for different players in the value delivery chain.
Doesn’t grab customer attention
People won’t ever buy from you if they don’t even understand why they should pay attention to you. And they notice you only if you have strong and unique selling propositions.
The usual definition of a unique selling proposition is incomplete. It is a promise of something the competition cannot or does not offer. It must be strong enough to move the masses, i.e., attract new customers.
Unique selling propositions, as defined it like that, is a decent, but incomplete, internal tool that can guide your decisions to the right general direction. But nothing more.
Value proposition example … no proof of claims
If you say, my pizza is the best in the world; will people flood your restaurant? No. They won’t believe you.
Without proof, you can’t say much before it starts to sound like marketing talk. No one pays attention. Or remembers. They just don’t believe. No believing, no trust. It is all downhill after that.
For example, I recently saw a digital marketing competitor site where they claimed to be the secret weapon of digital marketing for the most successful companies in the world. Needless to say, we doubt anyone can take that seriously when nothing supports the claim.
As long as you don’t prove your claims, people are unlikely to really believe them. And your unique selling proposition becomes of no use.
Use studies, testimonials, and common sense, among other methods, to prove your claims.
Impressive numbers can be the right choice, but they don’t always work.
Instead, a few expert testimonials make the idea credible. They can even take away the need for you to make any claims’ the testimonials can make the claims for you.
Similarly, you can use testimonials to build your products’ overall perceived value and take away the last doubt people might feel about your promises.
Many businesses don’t help people see what sets the company apart from its competitors. This always amazes us.
They are better than others, and they could prove it. They just don’t do it.
Instead, they try to persuade people with general promises, corporate babble, and feature lists. If your website doesn’t clearly tell visitors what makes you worth their attention, they won’t spend the time to figure it out on their own.
Weak claim communications
It’s your job to hit people in the head with what makes you different and worth attention. Clever ways to communicate your claims. In believable ways.
When people understand why they should buy your product instead of any other, they’ll do it.
Poor customer experience/service
Great service creates a great experience and becomes something worth your customer talking to his friends about. It is the most important element of your word of mouth marketing campaign.
Trust is the most often named reason customers say they select businesses to do business with. Good warranties are great places to start building trust.
The bottom line
So, if you were wondering where to put your marketing time and energy to optimize how to win customers from your competitors, focus on avoiding these mistakes in building and delivering winning unique selling propositions.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential clients?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And this struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improve your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on value propositions from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Unique Value Proposition … Does It Covert Leads Well?
11 Creative Tips to Build Small Business Differentiation Strategies
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Stop interrupting what people are interested in, and be what people are interested in. Have you tried employing viral inbound marketing campaigns? In today’s socially engaged and networked marketplace, viral word of mouth marketing has moved to the top of marketing campaign elements at your disposal.
In this blog, we will discuss viral content marketing examples and lessons we can derive from them.
Viral content marketing campaigns are one of the best ways to get potential customers talking about you.
Viral content takes consumers by surprise, makes an indelible impression, and pops up where and when people least expect it. It often has a large targeted audience and often can be accomplished at reduced cost. While there are definite actions to take, it is very difficult to achieve the optimum results.
Related: Guinness Marketing Campaign Shows Their Creativity
By being a little more clever and unpredictable, you challenge consumers who appreciate a little fun in their products.
The techniques require creativity, flexibility and a willingness to take a little risk. Creating viral content that taps into the human psyche is the Holy Grail for many marketers.
Going viral is quite possibly the fastest, most cost-effective method to publicize your business on a grand scale. The beauty of a viral YouTube video that when combined with a tweet and mass media, is that your brand will make a memorable impression on a huge audience within a short time.
So a viral video is a publicist’s dream and a marketer’s hope for fame but there’s just one question:
How do you do it?
What makes something go viral in the first place? We examine this question through some of my favorite examples of viral content campaigns:
Inbound marketing … WePay
One of my favorite examples of a company going viral and creating a story worth talking about is WePay and their stunt of leaving a 600-pound block of ice in front of a PayPal conference.
WePay’s execution here was brilliant: for years, people had been complaining about how PayPal would “freeze” their accounts, locking them out from withdrawing the money they earned. If you sell goods online, your PayPal account could be a big part of your livelihood, so to be locked out and ignored was obviously enraging for many people.
No surprise, then, that WePay’s jab at PayPal’s willingness to freeze your money was so well received! Press around the story was whirling, starting with coverage on TechCrunch:
Since some of the biggest points of difference that WePay offered were dependability, security, and customer service that PayPal has often been accused of lacking. Taking a jab at their competitor with this stunt wasn’t just for random, pointless press; it got people talking about a problem WePay truly hoped to address.
Related post: Jaw-Dropping Guerrilla Marketing Lessons and Examples
Will it blend?
Blendtec will it blend?
How the heck do you promote a line of blenders? That’s the question Blendtec found itself asking when it wanted to promote its new line of blenders. It’s tough for a blender to have “social currency,” so what could they do?
Funny. Memorable. Manly. The keys to success from the ‘Will It Blend’ marketing campaign. Any certainly something you’ll want to do for a networked market. Like Blendtec did very successfully.
‘Will It Blend’ is a marketing campaign consisting of a series of infomercials demonstrating the Blendtec line of blenders. In the show, Tom Dickson, the Blendtec founder, attempts to blend various unusual items in order to show off the toughness and power of his blender.
This brilliant viral campaign was found in the series called Will It Blend?, a video collection of Blendtec blenders destroying (or not destroying) popular items that definitely should not be in a blender.
The genius of this series was not only in how it made blenders a discussion topic (seriously, kudos) but in how the videos showcased just how rugged Blendtec blenders really were.
The showmanship may have been great, but these videos were also moving products. If a blender can spit up and chew out an airsoft pistol, it can most certainly handle any fruits and vegetables that you’ll throw at it.
Inbound marketing examples … Dove
The Dove Evolution viral ad is effective because it sends a positive message about the true definition of beauty. And this video really did spread like a virus. Not only did it get nearly 2 million hits within a month’s time, but it also received attention from top TV shows.
Inbound marketing strategy … Kmart
With revenue continuing its long, steady decline, Kmart teamed with ad agency FCB to reenergize its much-maligned brand, promoting its product-delivery program by appealing to the fun personality in all of us.
The “Ship My Pants” online video embraces sophomoric wordplay to inform customers that items that are out of stock in Kmart stores may now be shipped directly to their homes for free.
Key elements of viral content
Viral content requires the aligning of the stars, but there are some key elements to look for as part of your campaign:
Play on emotion
Find content that will touch your audience’s hearts, souls or nerve endings. In a world that tends to be all business, make folks laugh out loud, cry or blink in surprise (preferably all three) and you will make them remember you.
If your industry is serious, don’t be afraid to make a joke (as long as it’s in good taste). Find ways to make people laugh.
Use simple concepts
Your message should be simple but compelling and without an ounce of excess flab. Just get your brand out there… in a good way.
High-quality content is key. Most people can tell the difference between meat and fluff, and that makes the crucial difference in what they will take the time to read or view and pass on to others.
Just be real.
Be real
There’s no need to pretty up your product or fake your viewers out. Ikea’s Herding Cats was real, wasn’t it? Relevant also helps. If you can pull it together to relate to a current event, an issue in your industry or a popular trend that will help but you’ve still got to ensure it’s relevant to your audience.
Offer help or be entertaining
Offer something in return for your viewers’ or readers’ time and attention. ‘How to (insert topic)’ tips and instructions, discounts or freebies and solid news updates are all ways to provide perceived value, which can then be tied in with your particular business.
An off-kilter, daring, funny example is the Dollar Shave Club, a parody on the fad of clubs out there, hilarious and at the same time chock full of marketing. You’ll need to watch it at least twice to catch it all.
Reach out
Your goal is not just to manufacture widgets but to make those widgets meaningful and relevant. To do this, you need to tailor your message to your audience. Use language, images and, of course, a medium that your intended customers will relate to.
The launch video for Apple’s iOS5, for instance, showed casually dressed Apple executives demonstrating the device’s new features with catchy, flashy shots of the product. Although at almost 6 minutes, this video is on the long side, it has still been viewed by more than 3 million potential customers.
Use the caring card
A project that you share the same view of the world as your audience. Connect to common concerns. For example, the International Social Survey Program found, in surveying 33 countries, that the state of the economy tops the list of issues considered most pressing.
So the themes of saving money or creating jobs are likely to resonate with your public. Keep the mood positive, even inspirational, and the chances of being liked or forwarded increase.
There are no guarantees
Now, all that being said, you can select all of the above and put them together into an “epic” vlog and then what? You post it and wait for the earth to move, yet somehow… it doesn’t. There is no way of predicting with any certainty what will go viral and what will merely make your mother happy.
As well as content, timing and sheer luck play a role in going viral. But that’s the beauty of viral; some of the best come from a crazy list of ideas, quickly thought up. They are fast projects so even if they don’t get the response you hoped for, you have not invested a major portion of your budget.
If virality can be understood through the emotional state of the sharer, and how aroused they are, the video content (and written content) can be prepared by marketers to evoke the right emotions.
In simple terms: you should not be playing it too safe. In order to evoke high levels of arousal such as awe, surprise, amusement, anger or anxiety, you are going to need to be pushing the boundaries and giving something highly original.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing created by remarkable customer service. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing strategies. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Zen teaches that the potential to achieve enlightenment is inherent in everyone but lies dormant because of ignorance. It is best awakened not by the study of scripture or the practice of good deeds, but by breaking through the boundaries of mundane logical thought. Lincolns leadership abilities certainly break through these boundaries. This blog will explain why this is true.
Who is the leader you admire most? There would be many we like and studied. But our favorite would be Abraham Lincoln. He worked to achieve mastery in law and politics. He gave his toughest rivals power and autonomy. In fact, he surrounded himself with rivals who excelled in areas where he was not strong. And despite his many failures, his life was an immense success.
His motivational leadership style was rooted in two higher goals: freeing the slaves and keeping the nation intact. These were big motivators for most of Americans, yes?
In a scene from the Steven Spielberg movie Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln tells her husband: “No one is loved as much as you by the people. Don’t waste that power.” The movie is based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s popular book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, a masterful telling of Lincoln’s story that follows the lives of each of his cabinet members.
T. Duryea of the U.S. Christian Commission, which met frequently with President Abraham Lincoln writes:
In temper he was earnest, yet controlled, frank, yet sufficiently guarded, patient, yet energetic, forgiving, yet just to himself; generous yet firm. His conscience was the strongest element of his nature. His affections were tender & warm. His whole nature was simple and sincere – he was pure, and then was himself.
Both the movie and the book give great insight to Lincoln’s strong leadership skills — those things that have made him so admired. While you may not be leading revolutionary change in the country, here are ten leadership lessons from our 16th president on how to lead change in both your personal and professional lives.
Related: 10 Leadership Competencies You Should Not Live Without
Leadership abilities … lead by example and a positive attitude
Work to be, the way you want to be perceived. Don’t try to look good, be good. A good name is more valuable than fine diamonds.
If you look for something to complain about, you can certainly find it. There’s ‘always’ an opportunity to be offended. Don’t take these opportunities; they don’t lead to anything positive. Learn to see the roses in life; life is filled with roses, if you’ll take the time to see them.
Show your spirit
The spirit that guided him was clearly that described in his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds…. ” He always demonstrated his strong spirit.
Leadership abilities … pick a strong team
At a time in history when the United States was at war with itself, Lincoln surprisingly chose to fill his cabinet with a team of his rivals. He surrounded himself with his rivals who excelled in areas where he was not strong. He gave credit where it was due and wasn’t afraid to accept the blame. He genuinely sought out and listened to other people’s point of view.
These were men he considered to be the best and brightest minds in the country, and they were unafraid to challenge Lincoln and assert their opposition. A self-confident man, Lincoln welcomed strong opinions as it provoked thoughtful debate as well as inner reflection. It proved to be an important tactic during his presidency.
You have to have others on your team who are not afraid to challenge you or at least feel at ease enough to express their opinions. Learn how to learn from your strongest rivals.
While it’s helpful to get more than one opinion, strong leaders know when and how to make decisions. Cabinet members could have argued forever, but Lincoln had the ability to know when he had all of the information he needed. Walking away to seek solitude, he was able to determine the best solution and make a decision without wavering.
Good leaders clarify their decision criteria, identifying musts and wants, and using that as a guide to compare options. Assess the risk of each option as well as the benefits, to help in making smart tradeoffs between alternatives.
Lincoln knew when to speak and when to remain silent. He knew when to act and when to wait. At the same time, Lincoln wasn’t afraid to lead. When he knew his actions would likely sway more people to his point of view, he got out in front of them and acted. But he only did so when he was sure he wouldn’t lose the people lagging behind.
Preparation
Before you can succeed, you must prepare. When Lincoln was an unknown attorney in the backwoods of Illinois he was preparing for success, when Lincoln became an Illinois State Senator, he was preparing for success, and even when he lost the election for the U.S. senate twice, he was preparing for success. What are you doing in preparation for success?
Connect on a personal level
We know Lincoln was fair, but he was also known for his jokes and storytelling. It’s how he broke the ice and blazed a trail to common ground. Lincoln also made himself accessible. As president of the United States, he kept regular office hours and citizens were allowed to see him.
It’s not how smart you are — strong personal relationships and high levels of trust are the foundation of effective leadership. Good leaders demonstrate empathy, take an interest in others and work to build solid relationships.
Lincoln might best be known for his integrity and willingness to do the right thing even if it was difficult or unpopular.
Good leadership quotes.
Live fearlessly
Directly after the Union had taken the Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia at the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln marched with a handful of men into the capital city, the heart of the enemy’s territory. The night of his assassination at Ford’s Theatre, Lincoln denied the services of a large security detail to accompany him to play. Even though he knew he would probably be assassinated at some point, he wasn’t about to live his life in fear because of it.
Fear is a crippling thing, especially to the leader. There are always a billion things that could go wrong. You just might fail. But you’ll never know until you try.
Don’t avoid adversity
Lincoln never shied away from controversy. He was once quoted as saying:
No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
And he was correct. You’ll never please everyone. There will always be critics to what you do. Sticking to your guns and following your heart is what defines who you are and will shape your success in the future.
At the same time, we have to be open to constructive criticism. These criticisms will help us shape and fine-tune our ideas into something better.
Lincoln might best be known for his integrity and willingness to do the right thing even if it was difficult or unpopular. He was willing to accept the fallout of his decisions and being accountable. He took responsibility for his administration’s mistakes even when his subordinates were at fault.
At personal cost to himself, Lincoln chose the high road, sometimes paying for it in initial political strategy, only to find respect from his countrymen increasing over time. A good model for any leader, yes?
Don’t fear failure
Lincoln did fail quite a bit. He was quoted as saying:
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
Failure is essential to any leader. It builds character and allows you to see what won’t work and certainly to reflect and learn. It’s not until you fail that you show your true colors.
Simplicity of communication
Lincoln’s oratorical skills are legendary, and he was the very best at getting across excellent, long remembered messages in as few of words as possible.
He was very good at storytelling and painting a picture. He knew the power and magic of a story. That’s why his speeches are full of analogies, pictures, and anecdotes. Being a ‘commoner’ was a badge of honor that helped him communicate to the men who gave their lives on the battlefield, the families who buried their young, and the slaves who desired their freedom.
In conclusion, remember this: Lincoln was a great president because he was a great man.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your ability to lead. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, history may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
It’s up to you to keep improving your leadership learning and experience from all around in your environment.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
