Category: marketing

The first reader

FabrizioLeave a comment

Three things to keep in mind when you are writing a marketing message.

The other person does not know. Even when they share your same background, even when they face similar challenges, even when they have already tried similar products, even when your name is known and celebrated. Who reads does not know what you mean, what you care about, why you are good for them, why you are interrupting their day, and a whole lot more. And if they are left doing the effort to figure that out, they are gone.

The other person does not care. You might have the most brilliant invention of the past two decades, a flawless and unmatched technology, a fantastic company culture, and the most talented people working in each of your teams. Who reads cares literally zero about all of this, they have their own inventions, technology, culture, people and agenda. And if they are left building the bridge on their own, they won’t even start.

The other person is a human being. When you enter a room full of people, you most likely will not talk about “future-proofing”, “streamlining”, “best-of-breed”, “capabilities”, “artificial intelligence”, and so on. The mind of who reads gets fuzzy when they are faced with inflated jargon, they stop focusing on the message and they start thinking about what they should do instead. And if those are the words you are building your message around, they will find someone who treats them as a person.

Of course, the most important thing to remember is the fact that you are the first reader of your marketing messages. If something does not sound right, if something is unclear, if what you are producing is not what you would read in your own time, reasearching a product, seeking a solution to a problem. Then others will probably not find it more compelling.

Find and nurture

FabrizioLeave a comment

Communities are built because of the active commitment of a small number of people.

Starting something, anything, with the masses in mind is nonsensical and counterproductive. Only a small fraction of the full potential audience is going to pick up your message, use it as trait to signal their identity, and spread it.

Your job is to find them and nurture them.

The most important moment

FabrizioLeave a comment

There is a time, in every marketing story, when the things you are working on do not deliver the expected results. Perhaps you have overpromised, perhaps the campaign is not effective as you imagined, perhaps a pandemic unexpectedly changed the rules of the game, perhaps your team is not as good as it should be, perhaps your leadership is not as good as it should be. One way or the other, pressure mounts, your job is on the line, your team is on the line, and people around you start to question everything you say.

I believe this is the single most important moment.

Because what is easy to do in such cases is to start blurring the boundaries between urgent and important, following shiny objects that can deliver short term results, draining your team to exhaustion and demotivation, putting more weight on opinions and less on facts, limit communication to a restricted circle of trusted people.

And the difficult thing to do is stay the course, spread your message wide, understand what is happening and involving people in finding solutions, expand beyond your team to tap into new knowledge, measure, defuse the situation, learn from the whole process and repeat.

Nobody forces you one way or the other. It is a choice.

Seeking attention

FabrizioLeave a comment

Pure advertising is still something many companies invest heavily into, often along with the complementary public relations. I am sure they are important and they matter to some brands, but before putting resources behind it, particularly startups and small business should consider one simple fact.

People hate advertising so much that when given the choice many prefer to pay to skip it.

Netflix (vs cable TV), Spotify, YouTube are the most popular examples. And if that’s the case, what kind of attention will your ads get the next time they air?

Candidate position

FabrizioLeave a comment

What is currently happening in American politics is a matter of positioning.

Trump (the incumbent) is going after Obama in an attempt to reposition the previous administration as corrupt and indecent, in order to extend such a label to the democratic candidate that is going to challenge him in November. Biden (the challenger) is indeed approaching the election with two main topics: “I am not Trump” (not a great idea, by the way, positioning-wise) and “I was part of one of the most successful and popular administrations in the US history” (that in terms of positioning could be seen as a sort of “line-extension”, again not a great idea). And so, Trump is going after Obama to go after Biden, attempting to undermine the image of integrity and likeability the two (but mainly Obama, to be fair) have established.

Now, what Trump is doing is a legitimate strategy. Will it be effective, though? The fragility of the story Trump is building is probably not on his side. You can tell another product is inferior, or has flaws, or is not up to the task, yet that’s not something you can base on hearsay and speculation. Most of all, though, I believe what Trump is doing is not a winning strategy because he has decided to play in the challenger’s field. Instead of leveraging topics that are common to his admistration and to his past success, he is going after something new, a domain (integrity and likeability) that is not really his own.

Curious to see how this will develop in the coming months.