Tag: communication

Illuminating

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Often we keep things for ourselves because we believe they are trivial, unimportant, shallow, taken for granted. And so, we only speak when we believe we have the big insight, the great idea, the breakthrough.

This makes our working places fairly quiet.

Of course, we talk a lot with our colleagues, during coffee breaks and in open spaces, waiting for a meeting to start or as we queue at the canteen. But when the spotlight is lit on an issue, a project, a plan we refrain from speaking our mind unless we feel completely comfortable what we are going to say is flawless and smart (spoiler alert: it very rarely is!).

When the chance arises, be brave and voice your concerns. Tell about that thing they have probably thought about already, that check they have certainly done already, that scenario they most likely have considered already.

What’s trivial for yourself can be illuminating for others. That’s the nature of humans and their minds.

Safe in the drawer

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It is terrifying to show the work you’ve done.

They might not like it. It might be they think I am a fraud. What if there’s a typo I have missed? I have absolutely no authority to do that. Probably better if I give it another review. I can always publish it tomorrow. Everyone is so busy. Nobody is probably going to read it. After all, who cares? Is it really something important that I have to say? I might get fired for that. I look dumb in the video, I need another take. It’s not my best job. The concept I am trying to express is too weak. I am not a graphic designer, and the presentation looks dull. I’m not a native speaker, they’ll find out right away. They are crazy if they think I am going to do that.

And the most horrible of them all.

What if somebody likes it, and I have to continue …

On the other hand though, what good is it to keep that manuscript, that video, that drawing, that blog post, that article, that idea, that question safe in the drawer?

If it’s numbers you want …

Fabrizio1 Comment

When marketing is in total and complete service of sales, it is very easy to fall into traps.

You get what you reward, after all. And if it is numbers you are after, you will find somebody who can sell them to you, or somebody who can induce you to believe in a new made up trend, or again somebody going rogue who will ask you for a ransom to get back what is yours in the first place.

I have written about this before, but the intensity of this collective allucination is baffling. Marketing is about experience and relationships, and the only way you can build a great relationship is by continuosly looking at quantitative and qualitative data combined.

When is the last time you have talked to one of your customers?
When did you spend half a day skimming through reviews?
When have you done something that does not scale, just to impress one single member of your audience?
When did you use Voice of Customer to make an important decision about your next campaign?

We all get to measure [success] differently. You know how many people in here are all about math, conversion, and quantity? You know what that’s called? That’s called salespeople. Marketing and branding doesn’t get measured by the hour. For me, how I measure it is “how do I feel about where I am positioned?”, “how well is my company doing?”, “how well is my speaking requests coming in?”, “how many people are watching my stuff?”. But I don’t measure it on a tactical day-to-day, it’s an overall feeling of a vibe, intuition, and some baseline metrics. Many people are into landing page optimisation, and by the way that shit works, but that’s sales. People did not come here to see me speak because I cookie them, and target them with my message. It’s because I give them value, and they hope to get even more value from seeing me speaking live. This is branding.

Gary Vaynerchuk, see also this article

Here is what we do

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When you go on a first date, you are not expected to discuss the most intimate recesses of your mind, nor your most embarassing habits. At the same time, if after being married to a person for few years you would find it difficult to open up and you would refuse to discuss yours and your partner’s feelings, that would sound strange.

Yet, more often than not, when a company approaches its customers, there’s one level to the conversation: here is what we do.

For awareness: (since you don’t know) here is what we do.
For acquisition: here is what we do (we know you are interested).
For activation: here is (a taste of) what we do.
For retention: here is (more of) what we do.
For revenue: here is (how much) what we do (costs).
For referral: here is what we do (tell others, pretty please!).

This is a strategy that would not work in any kind of relationships under the sun. And we expect it to work in a business setting, because for some reasons people are extremely more rational when they wear a suit than when they are in their pijamas. If we only get the chance to tell them once more about what we do, they’ll certainly be convinced!

How broken is this?


Will you waste it?

FabrizioLeave a comment

It is fairly easy to step out of anonimity for a moment, particularly in this world in which everybody has unlimited access to tools and channels to reach a wide variety of people.

Of course, sustaining it for longer is as intense as a job. It’s not by chance that nowadays bloggers, youtubers, influencers that have spent time and effort building a dedicated audience get paid to produce more content.

But if you break through even just once, even with no intention to continue on the same track, there’s an important decision you have to take: what will you do with the attention you have gathered? Will you just waste it and move on to trying the next thing, or will you follow up to signal and build something, even small, that can make an impact?

Careful, though, as while you think about it, the needle moves faster and faster towards the former. At some point, it will just be to late to choose otherwise.