A few of things to take away from Brandon Sanderson (popular writer of fantasy and science-fiction) breaking Kickstarter in the past week or so.
A few years back, I got a cold connection request on LinkedIn that was different from the others one usually gets.
The person sending it – a rep for product A – had done some proper research about me. They even got to this blog (I have a link in my profile, so all legit). They read a few posts and in their request they actually commented on one of them.
I accepted their request and I did not purchase product A.
In fact, I did not even book a meeting, since it was just something out of the scope of my work.
About a year later, a colleague of mine reached out asking for a recommendation. They were unsure which one of two tools they should pick for their own work. One of the options was product A. I listened to the colleague introducing the two options, and ended up saying that I did not have a clear opinion on which one they should choose. I mentioned, though, that I had a very good experience with the sales process of product A. That resonated with my colleague, since they were having a similar experience themselves.
For many different reasons, my colleague decided to pick product A.
The morale of this story is in three parts.
First, to cut through the noise, you have to do some extra effort. Perhaps quality of outreach is more important than quantity of outreach these days.
Second, brand and reputation is about taking that extra effort and making it consistent over a period of time. It’s easy to do the hard work when it works, but it’s when you do it despite the poor results, or despite the ups-and-downs, that the hard work becomes a part of your identity that others appreciate.
And third, well. Try to attribute that sale.
Keep in mind that some tools that we use daily in marketing (and not only) are just ideas that stuck.
As such, it is good to periodically review them to make sure that they are still useful and that people using them agree on what they are for.
The funnel is such an idea.
Everybody uses it and talks about it all the time. Yet even within the same organisation, it is usual to have different people look at it from different angles, defining different stages in different ways, and generally using the levers for somewhat contrasting purposes.
So, asking what a visitor is, what a lead is, what qualification means, and agreeing on the process that moves traffic back and forth is a great place for teams to start. And to go back to whenever it makes sense.
Without this conversation, chances are that you are all focusing on separate parts. And that’s not how the funnel gets going.
In whatever you do, keep things simple.
One button is better than two.
One paragraph is better than two.
One message is better than two.
One minute is better than two.
One goal is better than two.
It takes time and effort to bring things to their most simple form. And it pays off a million times.
Numbers come after stories, and stories others can relate to come after stories we can relate to.
We like to think of the world as a rational place, where people make decisions based on a set of available information. Of course, that is far from what we experience every day.
If you want to inspire action you need to remind this.
You've got this 