I got to thinking, what has been the most valuable thing I got from my internships and first few jobs?
For me, it wasn’t the experience, a line on my résumé, or even the list of contacts I met.
The most important thing I learned from my first couple jobs is:
The best way to work.
It took me four years of college to figure out the most efficient way for me to write a paper (write for an hour, do something else, write for another hour). It’s taken me nearly as long to recognize my best working environment. It’s different for everyone:
- Are you happiest alone at your desk, plugging away at a task unbothered by others?
- Or maybe you like sitting calmly in a meeting, bouncing ideas off of your teammates?
- Maybe the highlight of your week being cooped up with 4 or 5 coworkers, in a room, with a deadline, pressed for time to come up with a complicated strategy for a picky client.
Whatever it is, figure it out and stick with it.
For me it comes as a mixture of a couple things. My best thinking comes in the planning stage with a deadline and a team around me. When it comes to actually sitting down and doing the work, as long as I have my headphones on and Pandora blasting I can work just about anywhere.
What’s the best way you work?
My friend Chris plays football for Monmouth University in New Jersey. I planned to attend his last game and went to the Monmouth Hawks Football website to find the schedule. The left-hand side menu bar has links like:
- Roster
- Hall of Fame
- Marketing
Under the marketing tab there’s information about “Promotional Events,” “Hawks in the Community,” and the student-generated “Shadow Nation” fan club.
Now I know most organizations (including VQC) do promotional events, most of which are geared to help the community in some way. But should they be marketed as marketing?
Granted,
- Their purpose IS marketing
- The funding comes from the marketing budget
- Marketing professionals probably oversee them.
But actually referring to the programs as marketing to the public?
It seems insincere. Marketing isn’t supposed to look like marketing. When it is, it comes across as disingenuous.
Marketing works best when called something else. Every action a business takes has the accepted benefit plus an ulterior motive, like
- Sales calls
- Motive: add an account
- Marketing: “Match your needs to our expertise”
- Charity work
- Motive: get press
- Marketing: “Improve society”
- Infomercial ads:
- Motive: get you to buy cheap trinkets
- Marketing: “SOLVE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS BY CALLING NOW!“
These exercises usually work because they massage people’s sensibilities. People like being catered to, appreciate when a business helps to improve society and want to do basic tasks more easily.
But when the groups offering these services come out and say “we’re doing this to market to you,” it breaks the illusion.
Imagine if a sales rep called and said, “Your name is on my list and I’d like to make some money off of you.” Or a company at a benefit had a sign saying “LOCAL NEWS! Interview us.” Or an infomercial: “We’ll tell you every possible way this thing can help you, but it’ll break in three months.”
Is any of your customer communication breaking the illusion?
If you’ve ever watched COPS, you’ve seen it first hand.
If you’ve ever witnessed a crime, you’ve probably done it.
If you’ve ever been stopped randomly on the streets of New York, you’ve experienced it.
The weird way people act when they can help someone out.
People change when they have information for the cops. They act, for lack of a better word, weird. Not the criminals or the victims, but the witnesses. The bystanders. The onlookers. The people Dane Cook talks about in his classic bit about a car crash:
Officer, I’m sorry, yeah I just want you to know, if it helps in your investigation, I was in my kitchen, and I heard it, so I came out. I will testify in court I was cleaning a dish, I will bring the dish as exhibit A.
Fact is, regular people LOVE talking to the police when they’re witnesses. So much so that they’ll drop whatever they’re doing (washing a dish, perhaps) to talk to the cops. They stand around talking amongst themselves, acting concerned, often until the police actually leave. They want the chance to speak their piece, to feel important.
And it’s not just talking to the cops. On the whole, people LOVE helping out. There’s no better example than Cash Cab. It’s a TV game show in a taxi cab, and one of the “lifelines” the contestants can use is the “Street Shoutout.”
They pull the cab over and literally ask the first person they see if they know the answer to the difficult trivia question. In New York City no less! The people on the street eat it up; they love helping out the complete stranger. Even if they have no idea about the answer, they’re still extremely eager to help.
Businesspeople aren’t any different. We love helping out others too. You meet someone new at a mixer, swap business cards, and get to talking. Pretty soon you mention that you’re having trouble with your widget production, and your new friend says
“O Wow! We had that same problem last year! Let me get the number for the widget consultant we used, she’s awesome!”
The added credibility that your new friend brings to the transaction will help you immensely with your problem. And she feels happy for setting up a deal between the two of you.
My point is that given the opportunity to help out someone else or give information, most people jump at the chance. It makes them feel good.
The trick?
Gathering enough information, talking to enough people, and connecting enough dots to figure out what everyone around you needs. If you make enough people feel good (through good business or referrals), they’ll feel good about mentioning your widget when they meet new contacts.
The Creative Meeting
All too often the people sitting around the table come up with awful solutions because they can’t separate themselves from their own perspective.
Say a friend has asked you to be a sponsor at his chicken barbecue. You say yes because you’re friends with him. You then call a meeting with your creative team to see how to get the most out of the event, nevermind that you’re a B2B business and most of the attendees at the barbecue will be consumers (and retired).
At the meeting you brainstorm ways to make the event a success: handing out cute pens, tote bags, T-shirts. Having a raffle for free USB drives, $25 gift certificates, free massages, etc. When each idea comes up, your people look on the bright side (”People would love_____!” “That’s perfect!”)
When they say “people” they really mean “I.” I like that, so other people will too. Because it appeals to me and I make the decisions, by default it’ll be a huge hit.
The Creative Fallacy
Here’s why this approach never works: everyone loves their own ideas. And they love the ideas of people they respect even more. Is Grandpa really going to use a USB drive? Or a furry pen? More than that, why is a B2B operation sponsoring a chicken barbecue anyway?
Instead of making decisions then finding ways to make them succeed, decide on the right channels up front so even if you have a subpar follow-through it won’t be a disaster.
Effective and Ineffective Creative Marketing
The best way to do avoid event catastrophe is to have an out-of-body experience. You and your team need to
- Remove yourselves mentally from the planning process
- Divorce yourselves from your ideas
- Think like the person you’re trying to reach.
Remember a time when you were marketed to inefficiently. It happens to me nearly everyday: I’ll be watching TV with my friends and after a particularly awful commercial that doesn’t relate to me I can’t help but say, “That was terrible.”
Now think of a time when exactly the right thing came along at exactly the right time. For me, that’s usually late-night fast-food commercials. It’s 11pm, I ate dinner an eternity ago, and that Crunchwrap Supreme just looks soooo cheesy and tempting. So I drive to Taco Bell and pick one up.
Succeeding Creatively
You have to recognize your audience and what they respond to. Once you understand that, you can pick and choose where you want your marketing to be. Don’t decide on the channel then try and make it work (like the chicken barbecue). Put being where your customers are the first priority.
Because if you do it right, they’ll appreciate hearing from you.
Photo thanks to Solo, with others.
1. You’re establishing yourself as an expert
I blogged about this earlier, but it’s worth repeating. The more you ooze expertise in your field, the more people will be willing to trust you. The more people trust you, the better your reputation will be and the more willing potential customers will be to do business with you.
2. People don’t have the drive to effectively steal your knowledge
Unless you provide a service that can be copied efficiently by anyone (in which case you’re in trouble), the majority of people who come in contact with your knowledge will not “steal” your ideas. And imparting elementary knowledge about your industry doesn’t help your competitors: they already know it.
You obviously understand the way your industry works, you’ve built a business inside it. But communicating that to outsiders is difficult, if not impossible. Just like doctorese.
Think of how much work, dedication, and sweat you put in to building your business. Not many people can be successful at what you do. Your actual service was your foundation, to be sure, but now it’s just one small part of your company. Now your business is the sum of the relationships, client base, and brand identity you’ve established over the years.
Just because someone can do what you do, doesn’t mean they can do it well. And just because they can do it well, doesn’t mean they can do it well right now, where you are.
So don’t be afraid to give away a little knowledge, it’s a good investment.
It’s called the theory of the “one percenters.” Basically, 1% of any given group or community cares enough, is interested enough, and is motivated enough to “contribute content within the democratized community.”
Statistically, only 1 out of every 100 blog subscribers, customers, or group members will be “into” your culture enough to become an übermember.
The real-world example Ben and Jackie cite is Wikipedia. 72% of the articles written on Wikipedia are written by 1.8% of contributing users.
The same is true for individuals, I suspect. Out of every hundred or so interests you have, you really care about just one.
- You’ll spend nights up till 2 or 3 in the morning for no reason reading about it.
- You’ll blow hundreds of dollars to go to a convention on it.
- Whenever it comes up in a conversation, you can’t shut up.
I know for me, that thing is linguistics. I could talk your ear off about where different words come from. I break down the difference between Germanic and Latin loan words in normal conversation. I’ll tell you within 5 minutes of meeting you that most of the big words in English are basically the same in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. And why.
I don’t want to be snobbish, it’s just that I find that stuff fascinating. I get personal satisfaction from talking about it; it excites the hell out of me. I want to evangelize.
And you have that interest that annoys all your friends. Maybe you’re into remote control airplanes. My dad’s obsessed with ubuntu and Ron Paul right now. Maybe you LOVE heart-shaped Valentine’s day pillows. Whatever it is, you love talking about it.
From a marketing perspective, think about how extremely valuable the people who can’t shut up about your industry are. I’ve bought books, subscribed to blogs, and even funded an education to soak in everything I can about language. And I still want to know more.
In this light, cold-calling a middle-manager to tell him about your great new X345R copier seems ridiculous. What does he care about your specs? He’s got his own interests. Like peacock bass fishing.
How about seeking out the forums online built around “image reproduction” and connecting with the people who freaking love copiers already?
You could do this by sending the copier fanatics the specs for your new product and invite reviews. Or bring them into your regional office for a demonstration. Or make and mail copier T-shirts to anyone who wants them (with your logo prominently displayed, of course :-).
Even “spam” marketing transforms when you’re preaching to the choir. If you love coffee mugs, you’ll look at an email selling limited edition teddy bear mugs much differently than one hawking a product you don’t care about.
Seth calls this permission marketing. If you haven’t started looking for your 1 percenters, start now. The internet makes it really easy. Here are some places to get started:
- MySpace Forums: Take advantage of common interests on the largest social networking site.
- Facebook Groups: The fastest growing social networking site.
- Yahoo! Groups: Probably your best bet.
What are you a one percenter about?
Here’s your chance to talk our ears off about your big interest.
Ben and Jackie are two of my favorite marketers. They’ve built a business around advocating referrals to generate new business by pleasing your customers to a point where they become “evangelists.” People who will shout your company’s name from the rooftops and do your most important marketing for you.
Today, Seth posted about “Faith, hope and love: the three marketing levers.” Here’s what he says about love:
And love? Love gets you to support a candidate even when he screws up or changes his mind on a position or disagrees with you on another one. Love incites you to protest when they change the formula for Coke, or to cry out in delight when you see someone at the market wearing a Google t-shirt.
The customer evangelists and the “lovers” are on fire with passion for your brand! In the spirit of the Giants winning the Super Bowl, here’s another analogy I’ve been thinking about lately that defines your ideal customer: the sports fan.
Die-hard fans…
- Berate their competition.
- Buy and proudly wear their team’s logo.
- Forgive their team’s flaws.
- Look ahead (or behind) to a better day.
Their burning loyalty often comes from pretty personal experiences. To give you an example, these are my teams and why I’m a fan:
- College Football: Penn State (PA raised baby!)
- Pro Football: Baltimore Ravens (Born in Baltimore)
- Major League Baseball: Baltimore Orioles (Ditto)
- Pro Basketball: Philadelphia 76ers (Closest NBA team to home)
- College Basketball: UCLA (Mom was born in LA)
- European Soccer: Real Madrid (I lived in Spain for a year)
If you’ll notice, I’m not a fan of the team with the prettiest logo or the best record. God forbid I be called a bandwagoner!
I am a fan of the hometown teams, the ones whose baseball cards I had when I was nine, whose games I listened to laying in bed during the summertime. The bond I have with my teams is more than just a passing fancy, it’s really an emotional connection.
And my non-hometown teams are personal too: trusted and knowledgeable family members have “recommended” them to me, because they have had a personal connection with that team. I become a fan because I trust my family members’ judgment.
That personal, emotional connection can turn into something greater though. Fan comes from fanatic, and fanatics are extremely loyal. They personally feel their teams defeats and successes: they’re crushed when their team fails and overjoyed when they succeed.
What more could you ask for in a customer?
I just finished the copy for a new client. He’s a chiropractor. During our initial interview, in typical doctor fashion, he used a hundred big long words that I didn’t understand.
Doctors are notorious for speaking like this. Just look at the first couple sentences from this Wikipedia article (the first one I found in a search for “most obscure condition”):
Hyperprolactinaemia (BrE) or hyperprolactinemia (AmE) is the presence of abnormally-high levels of prolactin in the blood. Normal levels are less than 580 mIU/L for women, and less than 450 mIU/L for men.The hormone prolactin is downregulated by dopamine and is upregulated by estrogen. A falsely-high measurement may occur due to the presence of the biologically-inactive macroprolactin in the serum. This can show up as high prolactin in some types of tests, but is asymptomatic.
Um. Huh? What does that mean? Do I have that? Am I dying?
Doctor-talk can be indecipherable and mean nothing to the patient, but it actually accomplishes two very important things.
One, it establishes the doctor as an expert. You’re in over your head: that’s why your at the doctor’s office in the first place. The doctor uses a few words you’ve never heard before to reassure you that he knows his stuff and that he’s capable of taking care of you.
Doctorese is also comforting, in an odd way. Doctors are supposed to talk like that. Even though it’s horribly ineffective at getting meaning across, if you can’t understand the doctor, he must be pretty good.
Imagine going to a doctor who, instead of saying “you have a benign growth on your uvula,” said, “you’ve got something growing on that little thing that hangs down in the back of your throat.“ You know exactly what he means, but is that the way you’d want your doctor to talk?
The same can be said for your industry. Your clients are not experts in the your field (if they were, why would they need you? :-). Establishing yourself as an expert builds trust. You don’t need to use huge words that your customers don’t understand, but you should find a way to communicate to them that you’re an expert at what you do.
Take a look at Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, or Aaron Wall. They are experts in their field because they’ve shared their knowledge in a meaningful way with the rest of us. And if I had a writing, blogging, or SEO problem that was completely out of my league, their services would automatically be at the top of my list.
Would your clients say the same about you?
Q asked me the other day to get the information for a lawyer specializing in intellectual property. To give you an insight into how a 22-year-old finds a business, I wrote down the steps I took to research and call my new business.
(Here’s a hint: I did everything online!)
1. I went to findlaw.com
They’re our biggest competition with lawyers, so I’ve heard their name a lot. They build websites exclusively for attorneys and then list them in a massive directory, organized by location, specialty, size, etc.
2. Searched “intellectual property”
I was leaning toward someone who specializes in IP, not necessarily a full-service firm with only an IP department.
3. Found a couple matches in Harrisburg
One practices IP law exclusively and is relatively small. The other is a huge, well-known firm based out of Philly with offices in
4. Looked into each firm
I had to make sure the lesser-known company was reputable. Even though the specialized in IP, the brand recognition I had with the larger firm made it necessary to investigate the smaller guy a little more. Sure enough, the little guys have 40+ years of experience. With the large firm, their entire IP team is located in Philly.
5. And the winner is…
The specialists! The larger firm only had a satellite office in
What this means for you:
1. The younger a customer is, the more inclined she is to look online to research a business.
At my age, no one would even dream of picking up the yellow pages to find a pizza place or plumber. We go to Google to find what we’re looking for, be it song lyrics, new business, or a job. One great way to get new internet customers to your business with Google is sign up for their local search (FREE for a limited time!). It’s a much better idea than spending a ton on a half-page yellow pages ad.
2. These young customers are growing up, and will be your core demographic one day.
The entire world is steadily moving online. This has many implications for the future, one of which is that if you have no web presence, you’ll lose a HUGE opportunity for new business. Online it’s really easy to get third-party reviews of a business, so instead of talking to friends, you can see what other people are saying about the company. One bad example is here.
3. The web is making businesses more transparent than ever.
Without the internet, I would have had no idea that the small IP firm even existed. I would have looked up “attorneys” in the yellow pages and called the one with the most engaging ad. But would I have gotten what I was looking for? Probably not. You don’t need to spend a ton of money to get noticed anymore.
Paul Giamatti is a funny guy. If you haven’t seen Sideways, don’t worry, I won’t ruin it for you (I can’t stand when people do that to me :-).
Here’s a bare bones summary: two men go on a wine tour through
Giamatti’s character is a neurotic writer anxiously awaiting news from a publisher. He’s so preoccupied that he flips out when asked to drink Merlot. He gives a pretty memorable rant as to why.
At any rate, Sideways exposed the fineries of
And guess what.
They didn’t drink Merlot.
According to one wine shop owner, sales of Merlot fell as much as twenty percent after the movie got popular. Seasoned oenophiles turned up their proverbial noses at this previously popular wine. It became the “faux pas” of the wine world.
On the one hand, people fresh out of the theaters were afraid to make a mistake. And the “experts” insisted that they had given up Merlot months ago. But the end was the same: a drastic drop in sales.
I’ve got two observations about this situation. Often, first-time customers new to a particular industry (especially one as stuffy and proper as wine) try hard not to make beginner mistakes.
To hear an expert say that he’s leaving the table if anyone orders Merlot is very influential. For the new customers, it’s better to err on the safe side and order a glass of chardonnay.
On the other hand, at any time your product can, for reasons impossible to predict, become extremely “uncool.” Some wineries had made killings for years selling Merlot, only to have their business snatched out from under them by a couple words from a fussy fictional writer.
If your business is overly dependent on one product, you’d better get a backup plan.
I’ve never tried merlot, and I’m not about to start now. 
How about you?