Ways You May Be Demotivating the Team and What Action to Take

Are you demotivating the team to do things in a way that makes them want to do it? A quality of a top-notch leader isn’t it? What about being aware of the many ways you may be demotivating the team? Well, remember this: good leaders are reliable and not predictable. And they should be consistent without being predictable. Not rocket science is it? But without these leadership traits, you will be losing the ability to motivate your team.

What skill matters most if you are a leader of a small business? Or perhaps for any business leader? We believe it is the ability to motivate. For a small business, developing the best motivational leadership qualities is more critical to daily operations than for larger businesses. Why? Because there is much less leadership to be involved. And fewer employees so you need everyone fully engaged and motivated.

Your personality and attitude make a world of impact on you and those around you don’t they? Making motivational improvements for you and your team should not be rocket science … it is usually the simple things that keep you from being most effective.

So … you need to pay attention to the development of your own motivational leadership abilities if you are a leader of a small business. Here are some things that may be demotivating your team, without your attention and what action you should be taking:

Not providing challenging work

Wondering what the most important part of being social is? It is listening, hands down in our opinion. And listening means hearing. So if you don’t start with great listening, you will immediately turn off a majority of consumers.

I learned this one quite early in my marketing and management career. Remember your first step in team motivation is making listening to the backbone of your conversation. And then give everyone meaningful work tasks and cross-train.

No open communications

Have you noticed how much team motivation has changed in the last decade? Most people have. So when you use just traditional communication techniques, employees imagine you are stuck in time. Not a good thing.

One communication action we think is most important is storytelling. Think about the stories that you were told as children. They are etched into our subconscious. Use pictures and videos to communicate your stories in creative new ways. Ways that will be remembered and talked about.

No consistency

Do you know your employees well and their likes and dislikes? If so, this is your guide to consistent personal conversational topics.

Always be consistent in the subjects you know your employees are interested in. Select the new variants but stick with their interests.

Little to no personality

Everyone has a personality or at least 98% of the populace. Your business reflects the personalities of its leaders either by choice or by accident. You know which is best, don’t you?

Every successful leader has a specific tone of voice. One that relates to the personality of the business. And yes, of course, a business and its leadership have a distinctive personality. Decide what personality you want and let your tone reflect in your leadership style … consistently.

Not Flexible

It is often difficult to be flexible with all the decisions required in the marketplace. So if you want to be more flexible and still be consistent, you must pay attention to even the small details in dealing with employee decisions.

Make your employee interaction stand out with simple messages.

Don’t listen

A Chinese proverb once said if you don’t like to smile don’t open a shop. The same goes for being a person who doesn’t like to deal with people. Nothing is more damaging to a business.

Listen, hear, and observe closely. Find the unspoken messages. Make listening and observing your core competencies. You don’t gain insights by talking. Ideas can come from anywhere, so it’s important to keep your ears open to new ideas and insight.

Leaders need to be good listeners for everyone, from customers to employees to business colleagues. They need to listen to what other people say and not just hear it. Listening also helps a leader get multiple perspectives. When making a decision, a good leader always listens to a number of different people. They know they own the final decision but always make sure they get input from multiple people.

Limited learning

Now more than ever, things are changing at blazing speed. Employees notice businesses that are stuck in time, refusing to learn.

There are only two ways to keep up. They are continually learning and applying what they learn. Spend time understanding changing trends and patterns. Apply them as often as you can. And most importantly, solicit the help of your team.

Unclear expectations

Don’t like networking either on or off-line? Not sure why you are in business, are you? This is true for employees and customers

Don’t be fooled by the deceptive simplicity of being social online. Building an effective network takes a lot of time, energy, and resources. Schedule time to make it happen and devote the energy required. Get your employees involved.

Don’t put people first

People should always come first, they are your business. No matter what the job is, leaders always want to look for the best people and then take care of them. They are the lifeblood of the business.

When you’re leading a business or an organization, you’re leading people. Many leaders work to have relationships with their employees. Taking them out for coffee and getting to know them better is common, and an important element of being a leader. Here are two additional perspectives from exceptional business leaders:

You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.

– Walt Disney

You have to treat your employees like customers.

– Herb Kelleher

Not sociable

Be social … walk around and connect on multiple levels. Connected leaders quickly become multiplier leaders. Multiplier leaders know that at the apex of intelligence, hierarchy is not the lone genius, but rather the leader who knows the importance of bringing out the smarts and capabilities in everyone around them.

Inspire and energize

Share your passion. Show compassion and share positive energy always.

A quality of great leaders is being able to clearly articulate ideas and get people excited and inspired about them. It’s not selling people on an idea, it’s inspiring them.

Getting a person to work with a leader when they’re not obligated is more than just inspiring them. It’s about ensuring people have fun and are energized with passion. Many charities get people to volunteer for them by inspiring and energizing a noble cause. They say that if you donate, you’ll be spending your time working toward something greater than yourself. This inspires people to take a few hours to work for a charity promoting a cause they believe in.

No mentoring

Mentor and develop self-esteem and a positive attitude. We have written about employees’ positive attitude on several occasions. Employee attitude is so critical that it can’t be overemphasized. It often trickles down from leaders, but it needs to happen more by design. Your business can never be what it can be if you don’t focus on employee happiness.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ll have dozens of people criticize you. Customers, current and former employees (whether you know it or not), and family and friends may give you constructive criticism. It can be stressful to hear or read, and it can be easy to pass on criticism to employees. But it doesn’t help that much. As a leader, you should ensure employees have high self-esteem in their job.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your enablers for success for yourself and your team?

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 continuous learning. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, 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.

Losing Brand Attention: Simple Action You Can Take To Prevent It

Losing brand attention.

Do you express feelings and emotion often with your customers? Are you aware of the ways you are losing brand attention? Well, remember this: the more feelings and emotion you express, the more attention to your brand. And the more influence it can create. Not rocket science is it? But without it, you will be losing brand attention.

Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced.

David Freemantle

As long as it’s positive, there is no such thing as too much brand attention. If you play your cards right, you can roll all of that great attention into growth for your company. Here are some of the mistakes businesses make with their branding and the best and most creative steps to get people to notice you and your brand.

The other day one of my readers commented I was the oldest person she knew social media content all the time.

Then she said it was a compliment.

We both laughed.

Then there was an awkward pause.

While her statement clearly wasn’t true, being relatively seasoned in business means I had learned many valuable brand lessons that would have been great to know when my business career started.

That’s how it has always been.

So, in keeping, here are 12 ways for losing attention to your brand and, most importantly, what you should be doing to prevent them:

Losing brand attention … not listening

Wondering what the most important part of being social is? It is listening, hands down in our opinion. And listening means hearing. So if you don’t start with great listening, you will immediately turn off a majority of consumers.

I learned this one quite early in my marketing and management career. Remember your first step in online marketing is not broadcasting messages. To establish great attention to your brand, build engagement with consumers by making listening to the backbone of your conversation.

Only focus on traditional branding messages

Have you noticed how much marketing has changed in the last decade? Most people have. So when you use just traditional marketing techniques, customers imagine you are stuck in time. Not a good thing.

One tip we think is most important is storytelling. Think about the stories that you were told as children. They are etched into our subconscious. Use pictures and videos to tell your stories in creative new ways. Ways that will be remembered and talked about.

The rising cost of consumer attention … no consistency

Do you know your target customers and their likes and dislikes? If so, this in your guide to consistent topics.

Always be consistent in the subjects you know your customers are interested in. Select the new variants but stick with the subject categories.

What is consumer attention?

Lack any brand personality

Everyone has a personality or at least 98% of the populace. Your business reflects the personalities of its leaders either by choice or by accident. You know which is best, don’t you?

Every successful brand has a specific tone of voice. One that relates to the brand’s personality. And yes, of course, a brand has a distinctive personality. Decide what personality you want for your brand and let your tone reflect it. Take the initiative.

Complex messages.

Complex messages

It is difficult to be heard above all the noise in the marketplace. So if you want to grab attention and hold it, you must avoid complex messages.

Make your marketing stand out with simple messages. The best technique is with great visuals that convey your messages.

Not a people person

A Chinese proverb once said if you don’t like to smile, don’t open a shop. The same goes for being a person who doesn’t like to deal with people. Nothing is more damaging to business.

Being social is all about making friends as well as building and exploring customer relationships. Continually look for new ways to engage customers and remember engagement is a two-way street starting with listening.

Limited learning

Now more than ever, things are changing at blazing speed. Consumers notice businesses that are stuck in time, refusing to learn.

There are only two ways to keep up. They are continuous learning and applying what you learn. Spend time understanding changing trends and patterns. Apply them as often as you can.

No networking effort

Don’t like networking either on or off-line? Not sure why you are in business, are you?

Don’t be fooled by the deceptive simplicity of being social on-line. Building an effective network takes a lot of time, energy, and resources. Schedule time to make it happen and devote the energy required.

Frequently falling behind

Yes, all the changes in the business world are adding to your workload. No doubt about it. You can’t stay the way you are without falling further behind.

Familiarize yourself with new tools and applications, and select the ones that help to reduce your workload and that can help you and your customers in other ways. Consider carefully what platforms are best for your customers. You can’t do them all.

No message relevancy

You are always adding new customers, aren’t you? And current customers are trying new things and ways. Ignore these at the peril of your marketing message relevancies.

Derive timely and valuable insights to customer wants and needs. Talk about useful, helpful topics on these insights. Give your customers good reasons to return.

Too much, too fast

Never bite off more than you can handle. If you do, you will become frustrated and, most often, give up.

Employing social media takes a lot of time and energy. And there are no shortcuts. So start small and grow a little at a time. Be patient, it takes time for good results.

Put emphasis on content quantity

It’s not about the quantity of your marketing content. Put your energy in quality content rich with information that is interesting and helpful. It is not the number of fans you have. Nor is it about the numbers of people you follow. Fans count very, very little … make no mistake.

Forget about the fan numbers and concentrate on the engagement of customers and making friends. Relationships build trust and customer advocacy.

The bottom line

To be effective in this new era, we as marketers need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views or social media shares. We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire brand experiences that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.

We can do better at grabbing and holding attention. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences.

Does your business have a winning value proposition?

Need some help in capturing more customers from your branding design strategies? Such as creative branding 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 improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Do you have a lesson about making your brand marketing 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.

New York Yankees … 11 Awesome Lessons From Yankees Brand

The CVS Rebranding Strategy: a Case Study

Building a Brand … A How-to Guide for Small Business

6 Favorite Brands and Why I Like Them So Much

Brand Management … 12 Ways to Humanize the Brand to Build Trust

Walmart E-commerce Strategy … 6 Reasons Why It Won’t Beat Amazon

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.

10 Deadly Sins of Graphic Design Advertising

We found advertising works the way the grass grows. You can never see it, but every week you have to mow the lawn. Good thought from the Nielsen Company. Do you occasionally read or watch ads? We would say people don’t read ads. However, they do read or watch what interests them. So if you are going to create compelling and persuasive advertising, you are going to have to create something interesting that will help consumers want to read. And you absolutely must avoid the ten deadly sins of graphic design advertising.

Check out our thoughts on creative marketing.

And, oh by the way, what you write must be more interesting and entertaining than the millions of other advertisements out there. Now that is a daunting task, isn’t it?

Daunting is not a strong enough description, is it? According to Nielsen, there are 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day. And Statistic Brain says that our average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds – one second less than a goldfish!

Related: Some Great Story and Storytelling Examples to Study

We check our phones 150 times per day. We check our email up to 30 times an hour. And the amount of information in the world continues to double every 18 months.

All this available information and data is creating a battle for customer attention between brands, publishers, and every one of us who creates content. But more importantly, it’s forcing businesses to think and act like publishers and creative designers. What about you?

Do your ad designs have the power to encourage the right sort of conversations? We’ll discuss this point in a bit.

It has been said that advertising is the price to be paid for being unremarkable. That may be true, but I have noticed, despite the growth in online marketing, that even remarkable businesses also advertise the old fashion way. It is an essential component of your marketing campaign, for awareness or consumer education of your value.

If you are going to be successful in advertising, you absolutely must avoid these ten deadly sins of advertising design:

Graphic design advertising … too many choices

Ever heard of Hick’s law? This law states that the time required for a customer to make a decision is a direct function of the number of available choices.

Too many choices are not a good design as they make decisions more difficult. And that is not a good idea, is it?

Not keeping promises

This sin is closely related to the one on lack of trust. When you make a commitment to a potential customer in an ad, and then don’t deliver, you most often lose the client for good. Not a desirable outcome is it?

Visual distractions

Abstract or conceptual visuals tend to distract viewers. People prefer symbolic language and images that relate to the senses. People are far less receptive and responsive to language and images that relate to concepts.

Life is experienced through the senses and using symbolic language and images that express what people feel, see, hear, smell or taste are easier for people to understand

Sins of advertising design … too much design

Don’t use every inch of white space because you can. Leave some “breathing room” so people can digest your message. We believe the more, the better.

Remember people will take away only one or two things from what they see. The clutter of a design keeps them from spotting the takeaways you desire.

Lack of trust

Customers more easily remember companies that they know and trust. Focus your ads on either getting known to start the trust building or conveying memorable messages. Doing both at once is not a good practice.

No call to action

The whole point of the story in advertising is to deliver the desired call to action efficiently. If the audience does not clearly understand the call you want to action after seeing the ad, then you are missing the real opportunity.

Graphic design advertising … often too ambiguous

Marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting and worth talking about and remembering. If the information is obscure it certainly won’t be remembered.

Showing no originality

Don’t present material that overwhelms people with sameness. Unique messaging grabs attention much more readily. You only have a few moments to communicate, so use powerful, focused and straightforward words – such as ‘free,’ ‘unbelievable,’ etc.

No consistency

Being inconsistent means your information is not prioritized. You should choose information that’s most important and make it your primary element of the ad. Every piece of information in your ad should be weighted according to its importance.

Also, the idea is to make things more user-friendly by an aesthetic consistency of style and appearance.