I want to share with you the shortcut to creating your next marketing plan. And it is a secret I feel most in the profession of communications and marketing don’t have the guts to reveal.
Go to that file folder on your machine that has your 2016 Marketing Plan. Replace the 6 with a 7. Call it good. (This is assuming you had a marketing plan, which would be a miracle for most of us, agencies included.)
The reason you could read those last few sentences and feel any form of recognition is because this is the way we live now. And leaders are constantly placed in the position of matching every challenge with a degree of emotional intelligence that drains us by the end of the day. A colleague lost a loved one to cancer. You have a big presentation in a few days. You and your spouse had an argument about the election.
While we do our best to compartmentalize, we are humans. And these forces, a daily fire, fatigue our faculties in various and sundry ways. This can look like stagnating sales, listlessness, strained relationships and marketing that is just plain unoriginal and boring.
I realize this is a marketing column. But it is my observation that the confidence with which you can communicate ideas persuasively (marketing) is directly related to your mental health. I am not a coach or a therapist. But there are a few simple ways to attenuate your mind to dealing with the future and strategy of your organization.
Check out the full article in the July issue of Small Business Monthly for simple steps to becoming mentally uncluttered.
Few moments are more fragile for professional humans than the ones spent staring at a blank Word doc. The cursor blinks. You check Facebook and like some posts. You buy something on Amazon. You return to the blank page. It is a special kind of hell.
You can empathize with this situation because you have been this person — on deadline for that proposal or presentation, and you’re stuck. And the fact that you can empathize with this situation should help you in your endeavor to entreat others to express their ideas. Namely when they are asked to express them in the form of 26 characters, 10 numbers and a handful of symbols on a regular basis.
If you have not yet had the pleasure of proposing your company’s content development (your company’s strategy surrounding blogs and social media), then know that you can be prepared for any number of excuses.
Here is what you will hear:
But I am not in communications/sales/marketing/tech-stuff. I’m not a creative person. I do not have anything to write about. I am not a good writer that is why I have this job. Can’t someone else just write my stuff? (The list goes on ad infinitum.)
The trouble with this, of course, is that you know none of these are really reasons. They are, however, revealing of some latent insecurity. And now the task of undoing potentially years of delusion is yours — the inspirational leader.
This is no small undertaking, and you can take the short route of just hiring a talented writer or agency to build out the content for you. However, if that is not in the cards for you, fear not, there are a few tactics I have seen that work to unlock the hidden knowledge and creative spirit of an organization.
Check out the full article in the June issue of Small Business Monthly for five steps to becoming a better listener.
Years ago, I was covering a St. Louis-based CEO. My assignment was to write a short profile and get his keys to success. After an interview, we stopped at an employee’s desk.
“Hey, do you have the proposal ready for this afternoon?” the CEO asks.
“I was scheduling a lunch with the Kansas City guys tomorrow, but they may have a conflict,” says the employee.
“It’s important that the proposal gets out by the end of the day,” says the CEO, nodding.
“Barbecue is probably a good option, but I think that the whole Kansas City versus St. Louis thing might be a thing, you know?” says the employee.
If you turned the sound off, the interaction resembled a conversation. But a better description would be parallel monologues. Neither of these men listened to the other. They just said what was in their heads in concert.
It is easy to paint these two as communicatively inept but, each day, we have conversations like this with employees, customers, vendors and even dear friends. We fail to really listen to each other.
According to the University of Missouri, of our communication hours, we spend nine percent writing, 30 percent speaking and 45 percent listening. Well, supposedly listening. Most people retain 25 percent of the words we hear. If you are anything like most humans that means that you are spending 75 percent of that time (when another person is talking) thinking of what you are going to say, weighing whether or not you enjoyed the latest Tarantino film or ruminating on that latest political Twitter post that has you all riled up.
Listening skillfully can help your company retain your most talented people, calm upset customers, avoid lawsuits and give you piece of mind. And learning to listen costs you nothing but time.
I am not an expert listener. However, from my years in journalism and from yet more years of helping executives to effectively communicate, I have observed a couple of simple tools that can set you on the path.
Check out the full article in the May issue of Small Business Monthly for five steps to becoming a better listener.
If you venture into the woods this time of year, do not be surprised to find people far from the beaten path tromping through brush. With their eyes wide and baskets in hand, they scan the ground. They are hunters, and their prey is not a beast, but, rather, a fungus — the illusive morel.
Morels only emerge when exact conditions in soil temperature, sunlight and moisture are met. And the mushroom’s market value reflects this — a restaurant will pay a premium for them. Their high value is based both on what it takes to find them and their unique flavor profile.
However, the mushroom is only a small part of the fungus. Most of the organism is a giant, underground mycelium. This underground network can be vast (acres in size), and it can live and breathe in the earth for thousands of years.
Most of the fungus is not visible above ground, and it’s not reliant upon soil temperature or even the presence of ideal circumstances. It is ruddy, ugly, earthly mycelium.
I use this metaphor not to inspire mycological pursuit. Rather, I implore you to see your communications efforts much like organic fungus in the natural world. Sincerely.
Business owners spend a great deal of time trying to find the next marketing thing that will solve their communication ills. However, most of the real work of marketing is done beneath the surface. Focusing on this aspect of your communications is a better use of your energy than tromping through the weeds looking for an illusive solution.
Check out the full article (or the layout version) in the April issue of Small Business Monthly for four marketing activities that will help your marketing stand the test of time.
A friend of mine makes (almost) his entire living from making people laugh. He’s a standup comedian and comedy writer. But when asked by strangers what he does for a living, he often says, “I’m a tax attorney. And, you know, this time of year is just…wow. I don’t even want to talk about work.”
My friend is not, at heart, a dishonest person. He does this because of the uncomfortable follow up questions he gets when he says he’s a comedian. Essentially, it goes something like this: “Hey man. Can you tell me some jokes I can use?” Or, worse, they try to tell him jokes.
While I am not an advocate for lying, I think I may need to start using the same technique. Not because people mistakenly think I’m funny or because I am nearly as interesting. When people find out I work in marketing, they immediately start asking those questions: What’s the best time of day to post to Facebook? Should I get a Pinterest account? How much does a website cost?
The most disheartening aspect of these questions is they are coming from business leaders — people who I know have a vision and passion. They have something inside of them that encouraged them to make the irrational decision to start a company. And they have high aspirations.
But, for some reason, when it comes to marketing, we throw out strategy in favor of knee-jerk scrambling for attention. I think I know why we do this. We fear we are missing out. We fear we are not doing what we think our competitors are doing. They are posting clever stuff on Facebook, creating a presence on Pinterest or getting speaking gigs at industry trade shows. Jealousy is in high gear.
However, I entreat you to look at this circumstance differently. Do not be wooed by new tools. You can, however, take that energy and devote it to something fruitful: Discovering and articulating purpose. The heavy lifting of successful marketing is not in the techniques. It is in the leadership’s ability to clearly articulate vision. And, once you have that in place, the tactics will become clear — almost instantly.
You can start with a simple exercise…found in the links below.