The answer to just
about every question about work is really the question, "Who can you
help?"
Marketing is the act
of making change happen. Making is
insufficient. You haven't made an impact
until you've changed someone.
Better is what
happens when the culture absorbs our work and improves.
Marketing is the
generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem.
Persistent,
consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn
attention, trust, and action.
If you want to make
change, begin by making culture. Begin
by organizing a tightly knit group.
Begin by getting people in sync.
Committed, creative
people can change the world (in fact, they're the only ones who do).
Change is best made
with intent.
What you say isn't
nearly as important as what others say about you.
Each person has a
story in his or her head, a narrative used to navigate the world.
The way we make
things better is by caring enough about those we serve to imagine the story
that they need to hear.
People don’t want
what you make. They want what it will do
for them. They want the way it will make
them feel.
Start with empathy
to see a real need. Not an invented one, not "How can I start a
business?" but, "What would matter here?"
Early adopters are
not adapters: They crave the new.
You can't be perfect
in the eyes of an early adopter; the best you can do is be interesting.
I needed a team of
eight engineers and a budget of millions of dollars to send emails to a million
people in 1994. Today, anyone can do it
for nine dollars a month using Feedblitz.
Irresistible is
rarely easy or rational.
It's all built
around the simple question: "Do people like me do things like
this?" Normalization creates
culture, and culture drives our choices, which leads to more normalization.
Popular culture
isn't as popular as it used to be, Mad Men, which was hyped by the New York
Times in dozens of articles in just one season, was only regularly seen by 1
percent of the U.S. population.
Fear will paralyze
us if we haven't been taught that forward motion is possible.
We don’t want to
feel left out, left behind, uninformed, or impotent. We want to get ahead. We want to be in sync. We want to do what people like us are doing.
The status quo
doesn't shift because you're right. It
shifts because the culture changes. And
the engine of culture is status.
Shame is the status
killer. The reason that shame is used as a lever is simple: it works. If we accept the shame someone sends our way,
it undermines our entire narrative about relative status.
Instead of asking,
"How can I get more people to listen to me, how can I get the word out,
how can I find more followers, how can I convert more leads to sales, how can I
find more clients, how can I pay my staff…?" you can ask, "What change do I seek to
make?" Once you know what you stand for, the rest gets a lot easier.
A brand is a
shorthand for the customer's expectations.
What promise do they think you're making?
When you ask,
"Who's it for?" the answer needs to be, "The kind of customers
who are going to show up for us in a way that lets us keep going". You'll serve many people. You'll profit from a few. The whales pay for the minnows.
Tactics are easy to
understand because we can list them. You
use a tactic or you don't. Strategy is
more amorphous. It's the umbrella over
your tactics, the work the tactics seek to support. And your goal is the thing you'll be betting
will happen if your strategy works.
The best way to earn
trust is through action.
If you're having
trouble making your contribution, realize your challenge is a story you are
marketing to yourself.
