Dear Leaders, Entrepreneurs, Dreamers, and Creators of Great Things: I write these Love Letters each month with the hope of bringing you a little encouragement, some marketing help, and a few minutes of joy. Whether we are already friends or have yet to meet, I hope you’ll enjoy my stories from the road and some awesomely random takeaways, tools, tips, and updates.
Spooky
There is a reason great brands have a clear enemy. They don’t have to talk about themselves. And they don’t have to talk about their competitors. They can spend all their time and energy talking about how they slay the one big, scary monster.
Here’s the thing. A whole lot of you haven’t gotten clear on your monster. You are spending your marketing energy talking about yourself or about how you are better than your competitors. But your audience doesn’t care. They are far more worried about the monster.
Snickers doesn’t talk about other candy bar options or even about how they are generally considered the number one candy bar in the US. They talk about how their customer feels. Hunger. The emotion is the monster.
Right now, for much of our audience, the monster is uncertainty. It’s permeating every single conversation and decision. It’s present in every single market I visit. It’s what is keeping people up at night… the overwhelming feeling of “I am not sure what to do or when to do it.”
What if you put all your energy into one, single monster? What if you named it and then presented the people, possibilities, and processes you have that help slay that monster? What if, instead of talking about yourself or about your competitors, you only talked about the one clear enemy?
The market, interest rates, the election, the seasons… none of those are the monster. The monster is how your customer feels about them.
Sell clarity, not confidence. “You don’t have to know what happens next. You just need to know what your next step could be.”
Strategy
I sat in a marketing session this past week, wrote down 5 words, circled them about a dozen times, and put a star next to them. Because I needed the reminder.
Strategy.
Then planning.
Then tactics.
Many of us are going into business planning season. We’ll review our goals, look at our numbers, and make plans for the coming year. But most of us are missing the most important part. Strategy.
Strategy is your how and your why. It’s your guiding direction. It’s the big-picture direction of where you are going, why you are going there, and what happens to you, your team, and your customer along the way. It’s a set of choices: this is what I/we do, and this is what I/we do not do.
Planning comes after. Planning is where we break it down into quarters and apply time and resources to the strategy.
And tactics are the smallest pieces. What we will do today. The specific daily habits and actions we will take.
It’s so easy to skip the first part. Or even skip the second and just load up our calendar with tasks and tactics.
This year, instead of “business planning season” – I am going to do strategy season.
Join me.
The good stuff
The latest websites, books, & tools that are inspiring me, the people who are making me smile, and the stuff I have been writing on sticky notes.
I added a couple of books to my TBR pile this month. I highly recommend them both:
Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers by Steve Pratt
Bragging Rights: How to Talk About Your Work Using Purposeful Self-Promotion by Lisa Bragg
Some iPhone features I didn’t even know existed!
I learned a new term this month, and I am obsessed. Narrowcasting. Coined in 1967 by J.C.R. Licklider, it is the practice of delivering content, media, or advertising to a specific, well-defined audience instead of the general public. While broadcasting aims for maximum mass appeal, narrowcasting prioritizes relevance and context. I love this because so often we think we need to reach everyone… when the actual power is in reaching a specific one with a specific message.
The future of marketing belongs to… (loved this perspective!)
A great example of someone who has gone all in on marketing their location and is killing it lately.
And lastly, a little reminder we all need.
Thanks for reading, friends! If you want to get these in your inbox every month, be sure to get on the mailing list. And if you are looking for a speaker who will motivate your organization to get up, get moving, and face change head-on, I would love to chat.
