Tag: book notes

Positioning

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What does a book from the 80s have to teach to marketers today?

Let’s see.

Advertising is, for the most part, unwanted and unliked. In some cases, advertising is thoroughly detested.

[…]

In general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience. Millions of dollars have been wasted trying to change minds with advertising. Once a mind is made up, it’s almost impossible to change it. Certainly not with a weak force like advertising.

[…]

as the effectiveness of advertising goes down, the use of it goes up. Not just in volume, but in the number of users.

These are some of the aspects Ries and Trout start from in their book, Positioning: how to be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace. And they bear quite incredible similarities to the environment marketers operate in nowadays. Almost 40 years after the book was written.

The solution to this mix of sensory overload and advertising inefficacy is positioning, the process that leads (better, should lead) companies to identify a space in the prospect’s mind and leverage it for growth and success. Contrary to common shared belief, indeed, growth and success are not in the product and its features, they are in how the audience and particularly your prospects remember and talk about you.

Not surprisingly, Ries and Trout share quite many examples of companies who did positioning right and companies who did it wrong (back in the Seventies and Eighties), and perhaps the more interesting examples are the ones the authors dedicate a full chapter each in the second half of the book. Some commonalities.

  • Find a space (“cherchez le creneau”, as they say in French) that is not taken, no matter if it is a small one, and be the first to move there.
  • To find that space, the company needs to know a whole lot of things that have very little to do with the product or service they offer: market, competitors, audience, prospects, and so on.
  • Be mindful of the importance of the name of your product or service, better if it is a name that reminds what the product or service stands for.
  • Avoid name extensions to the best of your abilities (“When a really new product comes along, it’s almost always a mistake to hang a well-known name on it“).
  • Be consistent with your positioning strategy in the long-term, particularly in times of change, when it is more beneficial to change tactics rather than strategy.

Positioning is one of those books that anybody who starts a career in marketing should read and keep close throughout their careers. It really is too easy to forget about the importance of everything that is not the product/service you are offering (competitors, environment, audience, etc.) and fall in love with words and messages that mean literally nothing to the people you seek to serve.

This is the classic mistake made by the leader. The illusion that the power of the product is derived from the power of the organization. It’s just the reverse. The power of the organization is derived from the power of the product, the position that the product owns in the prospect’s mind.

 

 

Peak performance

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The message of Peak Performance, by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, is as simple to understand as it is difficult to apply in practice.

Stress + rest = growth

That is to say, if you alternate periods of intense work, work that takes you a little beyond your limits, yet not too much, with periods of relax and rest, your potential will increase. And this is true both for athletes and knowledge workers.

The illusion of “always busy“, then, is not only bad for your narrative and your relationships, but also for your possibility to deliver your best work and to incrementally and progressively increase what “best” is to you.

If you think at all the times you came up with a solution to your problems, or a new idea, or a different approach to a tricky situation during moments of break (in the shower, during a walk outside, while playing with your kids), the message should easily resonate with you. On the other hand, think about how often you have managed to overcome a difficult situation by continuing to work relentlessly. Never, right?

And yet, we often fall in that trap. Sometimes because of peer pressure, sometimes because we feel guilty, more often simply because we are not sure what we are doing is good work, and we try to compensate by doing a lot. We end up being over-stressed, and this is never a very good idea.

Stress can be positive, triggering desirable adaptations in the body; or stress can be negative, causing grave damage and harm. The effects of stress depend almost entirely on the dose.

The book is full of examples of high performers, in different areas, and all seem to respect the growth equation that is the foundation of Peak Performance. And on top of that, they have pretty rigid and established routines.

Routines help keeping you focused on what you are doing in different moments of the day. They leave little space for excuses and resistance, they force you to show up and to be present with body and mind.

There’s a pretty good example on how to apply this principle for day-to-day work: the authors suggest to split your days in chunks of 50 to 90 minutes (depending on the type of work), followed by 7 to 20 minutes of rest.

In the words of the writer James Clear, “The single greatest skill in any endeavor is doing the work. Not doing the work that is easy for you. Not doing the work that makes you look good. Not doing the work when you feel inspired. Just doing the work.”

The final part of the book is dedicated to a very important part of performance: purpose. There’s quite a lot of evidence that having a purpose that “transcends ourselves”, that goes beyond the immediate, short-term gains, makes us bring out the best work we could possibly do. And more than that, it increases our capability to accept stress, widening the growth leaps in the equation.

In situations that feel scary or overwhelming, our brain—our central governor, our ego, our “self”—automatically tries to protect us from failure. It shuts us down and tells us to turn in the other direction. Even if failure doesn’t mean physical injury, our ego doesn’t like emotional injury, either—it doesn’t want to risk getting embarrassed, so it ushers us down the safe route. It’s only when we transcend our “self” that we can break through our self-imposed limits.

 

This is Marketing

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What I wrote yesterday about the commoditization of marketing is deeply inspired by the work of Seth Godin.

This year, I have read his most recent book, This is Marketing, and despite having followed his blog for years now, and being familiar with most of his ideas, I felt it was the missing piece in my approach to marketing. A way to translate things that are already profoundly rooted in my practice into easy and plain words that everybody can understand.

You can’t be seen until you learn to see is the subtitle of the book, and that is a common thread througout the pages. The focus on empathy and on the necessity to deeply understand who you are serving is one of Seth’s mantras. There’s a metaphor he uses this time around, that is not only great at describing this approach, but also in differentiating it from the other side of marketing, the commoditized side.

It doesn’t make any sense to make a key and then run around looking for a lock to open. The only productive solution is to find a lock and then fashion a key.

Seth Godin

Marketing is about building a relationship, this should be nothing new to anyone who has read Kotler and his principles. And despite this being one of the oldest precepts of the field, we keep forgetting it, because other ways are more alluring and promise shorcuts to achieve results.

For Seth, it all starts by understanding what is the change you seek to make. Because every marketer is in the business of “making change happen” (and everyone who wants to make a change is a marketer). Then, understanding that changing everyone, seeking the mass, is not only unrealistic, it also sets us for mediocrity and disappointment. The only real possibility is identifying our “smallest viable audience“, the smallest market we (or our company) can survive on. And do our best work and responsibly bringing it to them.

This is Marketing is about a way to do marketing that considers affiliation more important than dominion.

Modern society, urban society, the society of the internet, the arts, and innovation are all built primarily on affiliation, not dominion. This type of status is not “I’m better.” It’s “I’m connected. I’m family.” And in an economy based on connection, not manufacturing, being a trusted member of the family is priceless.

Seth Godin

Affiliation, though, does not happen when you talk about how perfect your features are, or when you bombard people with flashy and catchy ads. It is a slow and long process, one that requires patience and consistency, and one that cannot be measured. And that’s where most marketers fail nowadays: they use the prime tool for affiliation (content marketing) and pretend to dress it for dominion (us, us, US!).

Eventually, if the marketer is successful, they will have served people that will spread the word (“the best reason someone talks about you is because they’re actually talking about themselves”, about their taste, about what is important to them) and that will speak up if they are missing (permission marketing).

This is Marketing is a beautiful read about mindset and change, one that is not for marketers only. Actually, it is for marketers only, but we all are marketers nowadays.

For a long time, during the days when marketing and advertising were the same thing, marketing was reserved for vice presidents with a budget. And now it’s for you.

Seth Godin

 

Permission marketing

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Permission Marketing is a book (and an idea) by Seth Godin that is 20 years old this year. And yet, its message is still so powerful and actual.

Permission is the opposite of interruption.

With traditional media, people’s attention is constantly interrupted with an advertisement, that basically asks them to focus on something they did not want to focus on in the first place. It is an invasive form of doing marketing, and the customer is powerless as the choice is little: whether you are watching television, listening to the radio, driving home after work, your entertainment and train of thoughts is subjected to messages that are short, catchy and completely not requested.

With the Internet and the multiplication of information (and of promotional messages), Godin argues that there is a new possible way to do marketing. A way that aims at establishing a long term relationship with your target audience. A way that is respectful of and empowering for the customer. A way that is possible because, after all, the Internet is not a mass media, but a niche media, “the biggest direct marketing platform that ever exhisted”.

This is permission marketing. Instead of running ads to the mass, you seek to craft a message that resonates with some people (your audience), so that they consent to hear from you again. Permission marketing has three key characteristics.

  • It is anticipated, as people long for it, they want more. They ask “what happened?” if you stop sending them messages.
  • It is personal, or at least it reflects a need for self-identification, and as such it resonates deeply with the wanted identity of the receiver.
  • It is relevant, as it is supposed to be just what the receiver was looking for.

The message is still relevant, as the way we use the Internet today as marketers is much more similar to the way you would use a mass media.

Our inherent laziness makes us believe that by running ads, everywhere, to everyone, and by scaling them when our budget increases, we can actually be successful. And sometimes, that is the case. Yet more often than not, we end up being ignored.

The ironic thing is that marketers have responded to this problem with the single worst cure possible. To deal with the clutter and the diminished effectiveness of Interruption Marketing, they’re interrupting us even more!

Seth Godin

Permission marketing is a long-term effort (Godin compares it to dating to find a life-time partner, while interruption marketing would be more like clubbing) and it consumes one of the scarcest resources in a world that lives at the speed of life: patience. The final result, though, is the creation of a tribe, a passionate relationship with our people that can last forever. Or at least, until we end up betraying the trust we have been given.

 

 

How to win friends and influence people

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The very same title kept me from reading How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnagie for a long time. The idea that friends can be won and people influenced was something I just could not digest. People (and friends alike) would love me not because of some weird subterfuge, but certainly because of who I was and how I behaved.

The fact is, this book is a must read for everybody who wants to know how to make a relationship work. Any type of relationship, though Carnagie focuses mainly on business relationships.

The message is as simple and commonsensical as it is difficult to put into practice: if you want to have meaningful and satisfying relationships in your life, just forget about yourself.

This does not mean you have to obliterate yourself in the presence of others, or that others can do anything to you and you should just accept it and be greatful for their consideration.

It means that the next time you are talking to somebody, you should stop thinking about what’s the next smart thing you are going to say as soon as they make a pause; you should stop wondering about the fallacies of their argument to counter them with your infallible logic; you should stop telling about how wonderful you are and how they should change to match your worldview.

Instead, you could open to the other person in the conversation, do that genuinely and from the heart, focus on what they are telling you and make sure they walk out of the dialogue with a higher self-esteem they had before joining it.

Few points from the book that really resonated with me. And to some extent changed my approach to relationships.

People are not “creatures of logic”, they are “creatures of emotions”. If we really think that by proving the validity of our argument we will win their hearts, their minds and their actions, we are delusional. In this sense, Carnagie says, “any fool can criticize, condemn and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving”. That’s where true power lies.

Avoid interrupting others, even if it is to share an incredible idea you just had while they were talking. Leave them space to talk about themselves, and be sure you are interested and listening. At some point in my career, I realised how I had stopped asking people how they were when meeting them, probably because at some unconscious level I was not interested in knowing that. I have changed course, also thanks to this recommendation. Now, when I get asked “how are you?”, I try to keep my answer as short and to the point as possible, and then ask back “and what about you instead?”. And I listen to the answer, carefully.

I have mentioned this next point already once in my blog, and I consider it my personal key take away from reading How to win friends and influence people.

You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.

Have you ever been so passionately and unconditionally convinced by somebody else who just proved you wrong, to go as far as changing your mind, and actually liking the person? Of course not, and others as well do not appreciate being told they are wrong. Again, this does not mean you should abandon all your opinions and ideas. It just means that it’s not by arguing that you will have other people’s goodwill. Finding common ground and moving forward together is a much better and more sensitive approach.

And finally, give praise to others. Not generic “good job”. Tell them that for sure, and also why they did a good job, what you were impressed with, why, why it is important and what would that mean to you if they would do it again. We love to be praised, and yet we find it so difficult to praise others. Make it a daily habit, if needed, and get used to it so much so that it becomes natural and genuine.