I took this quote from Seth Godins latest micro book Tribes:
“Do you beleive in what you do? Every day? It turns out that belief happens to be a brilliant strategy”
This resonates with me because it will motivate us to find solutions that ‘non believers’ will be too inept, apathetic or bored to uncover.
Entrepreneurs ought launch something they beleive in conceptually, not just financially.
In order to be in love we need to feel loved. Often we mistake love for other intense emotions such as lust, obsession and even fear.
So if we were to translate this to business parlance it might read like this:
If we want people to love our brand or company, we simply have to make our audience ‘feel loved’.
So then the next questions we should be asking are:
– Will they love this product?
– Will they love our value equation?
– Will they love our guarantee?
– Will they love our designs?
– Will love our ‘contact us’ policy or phone staff?
In fact, let’s just start every audience related question with the words ‘Will they love….”
If we do this and focus on being more than good, more than liked and only accept moving towards stuff people will love. Then one day, they may just love our brand.
In advertising parlance we talk about depth and frequency. Depth being how many people we reach on each occasion. Frequency being how often we reach them.
It’s great to let zillions of people know about our start up as quickly as we can. We may even be lucky enough to get some kind of viral campaign working for our startup, we may be featured in the newspaper, on techcrunch or we might even be lucky enough get a TV spot.
After the event here’s what happens: People cook dinner, pick up the kids from school, pay the bills, kick the dog and get on with life. They have a life to live and they get on with it. Our start up doesn’t really matter to them… straight away.
Consumer awareness goes something like this:
Exposure 1: “That’s a cool idea / product / concept”
Exposure 2: “Oh, yeh, I must remember to check that out”
Exposure 3: “There it is again, might be worth having a look”
Exposure 4: “hmm, Ok – I’ll look when I’m shopping next / on line next”
Exposure 5: ….They finally act, and go look at, investigate, touch, feel, try….”
After many exposures we have “a chance’ of selling to them.
Sure some people check it out first time, some buy straight away, but the large majority need reminded, over and over again. It doesn’t mean – go out and spam them or do terrible interruption marketing. It means this; “have frequent and relevant marketing communications to the people who might care”.
It’s a lot like never noticing a car advertisement until we are in the market to buy one. They’re always there, we just have selective perception.
This is why Advertising frequency is king. No point having a big launch campaign if our prospective new customers aren’t looking on that occasion. For entrepreneurs, the big launch concept is a hoax – It’s unsustainable. Like an exercise regime- it’s far better to do an hour workout everyday, than to do a 5 hour gym session on a Saturday.
The good news is we don’t need the superbowl budget of a large conglomerate to have the frequency we need. We just need to start a conversation which continues indefinitely.
“It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?”
Brands are the personification of things and services. In fact they are the amalgamation of a group of people, which creates an organizational culture and eventually, a set of brand values. Values which in real terms are like those of a person.
In the spirit of the reasoning above here’s an interesting question:
Does your brand have good manners?
That’s actually what we’ve been getting at during this Business 2.0 Post Industrial Complex Devolution. We’ve been getting back to basics. The basics of acceptable behaviour. Moving away from the school yard bully – (read here – large inconsiderate conglomerate) – to something which deserves our attention.
In case we happened to forget – here’s a ready reckoner of ‘Good Manners’
– Listen to others
– Have patience
– Wait your turn to talk
– Never interrupt
– Ask for permission
– Always say ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’
– Be honest, truthful and pure
– Be punctual
– Be tidy
– Never be rude to anyone – older, younger, richer, poorer
– Keep out of bad company
– Be kind to those around you
– Don’t be selfish, but share your good things
– Don’t cheat
– Be polite at all times
Here’s the ironic thing…. some of these sentiments and ideals came directly from the Children’s National Guild of Courtesy – a Good Manners chart which was distributed to elementary / primary schools in UK and Australia from 1898 until approx 1950.
You can download the PDF here: goodmanners
And yet it’s akin to the language we are now hearing from business re-inventionists. In real terms, we’ve just realized that often with success comes bad manners and attitude. Then after the bad manners and attitude comes the inevitable decline. This is why the new world brands are winning – they simply have good manners.
Startups – if we personify our brands, then let’s ensure they have ‘Brand Manners’.
Check out the following chart:
We can either,
1. do the easy stuff now.
or
2. do the hard stuff now.
Either choice ultimately leads to the opposite end of the spectrum over time. It’s the same for sport, business, scholarly pursuits, wealth creattion and entrepreneurs. Sure it’s easy to know, but ‘it’s equally easy to forget. When things aren’t going so well, or we are not getting the wins we want – maybe we should consider the chart above, and decide what we were doing a little while ago, and more importantly which tangent we want to be on in the future.
It’s our choice.
Entrepreneurship and startups are a lot like starting out in your career. People want you to have experience before they will hire you. It’s that ironic circular reference in which it is impossible to get the job, to get the experience required until we’ve got the experience – right? hmmm.
Often startup businesses need a lot of people before the idea, concept or thing simply works. Kind of like email or fax machines. They only become useful when everyone has one…. or at least some form of critical mass in which we can exchange things of value. Aside from the fact this proves that the most powerful element in any business mix is distribution, it also indicates we all have a chasm to cross before success can become a reality.
So how do we cross the chasm? How do we make success a reality?
We must preempt it.
We must preempt our future reality. As though it already exists. We must talk and act as if it has already happened. Not just internally, not just convincing ourselves, but to all of those whose paths we cross day to day in startup land. We have to sell the future, before it arrives, as if it’s already happened.
Sometimes we might have to use ‘creative language’ which somewhat stretches the truth (our current reality). We ought not feel bad – every successful entrepreneur in history has done this. Every successful entrepreneur in the future will do this. It’s just a necessary element in creating the future. It’s not lying, it’s part of the creation process. Screw it – sell the sizzle and make it real. By the time the people catch up to the today’s reality – you’ve already created the future version.
Bill Gates sold MS DOS before he even built it. He said to IBM – “we have what you need.” Despite the fact it was metaphysical at that stage.
Generating media and interest in your start up is one of the areas where this must happen. Whether it’s in traditional media, the blogosphere, or other means, people don’t want to cover us until we’ve had success. What they fail to realise is that their coverage is the thing which often starts the success. Then people who read about our brand, website or widget say, “Wow, I better check that out”. They believe in ‘the people’. If other people are embracing it, it justifies them checking it out. it’s the wisdom of crowds, as far as people are concerned, we only count when other people care.
When people ask about your startup and want the obligitory progress report – paint the most positive picture possible. Use creative language that makes it sound bigger, better and closer. No – use language that says it has already arrived. Make the future your present reality.