Author: animeshjmathur

Zeigarnik effect – Mystery books

Human Brain, Marketing, Worry

Are you enthralled with mystery books. I have been reading them ever since I can remember , initially it was Enid Blyton, then Hercule Point, then Allistar Macllean. Till now I if I get to read a mystery thriller – I just can’t keep the book down till I have finished it. Same is the case with movies or web series which are mystery oriented. If I identify a good series then I will finish all the episodes in one sitting.

I have written about the Zeigarnik effect earlier also. I will not go into the details about this here. However if you are interested, there are more than 500 articles that you can search giving details about this Lithuanian lady and her research. Like any scientific theory there are also people who don’t agree with this theory. I am however not interested in getting into that debate.

For me, whenever there’s an unfinished task, I have this nagging / worry feeling that I need to finish it and it keeps coming back into the foreground ever so often. For all these years I used to think its a personality trait with me alone, but then I happened to get hold of this theory and I realised I am not the only unique person who has this trait.

Today however I was reading the book Pre-Suasion, yes that’s not an error. That’s the exact name of the book by author Robert Cialdini. He had earlier written the blockbuster book Influence. If you are in marketing then you need to have this book in your easy to access reference guides.

Robert writes very exhaustively and his books are very dense with enough proof to back his theories.

While reading Pre-Suasion, Robert gives the reason why I have the tendency to read a mystery book in one go. Once again, this is not a trait unique to me, its because of the Zeigarnik effect. Our brain like to get closure on things. Till it gets closure, its in active mode to get the item closed. So until I understand how the mystery gets solved, I am not able to be at peace.

That’s the reason why the people who make multiple seasons of web series always put a hook right at the end, so that when they come out with the next season, there’s an audience waiting to watch it.

Imagine the usage of what I thought as a personality trait is also being used in the entertainment world.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Don’t blame the message…..check your market first

B2B, campaign, ideal customer, Marketing, messaging, single target market

I recently had two failures on a set of email campaigns that we ran for our B2B audience. As usual the first input I got from he sales team and their managers was “not a single response”. I was tied up in some other activities before I could analyse the issues. So last week I sat down with my team and asked them to come on Zoom so that I could see exactly what’s going on.

Whenever you talk about campaign failures – the first place that I like to check is the database (Also called the audience or in abrader term the market) in case of B2B prospects.

So if you try to sell carpet cleaning, you should be sure that the audience you are talking to has deployed carpets in their homes. Otherwise you can do the best advertising, messaging, offers but you won’t get an enquiry.

in my understanding when you have to do a post mortem of an advertising or email campaign failure, first start with the database because more than 50% of the times, that is the primary cause.

To come back to my story, I started going account by account for one campaign and realised that we were sending mails to the said designations of people, but the size of the companies was way higher than what I had mentioned in the Ideal Customer Profile. Somewhere there was a mis-communication between the manager and the database resource and we had this issue.

In the second case, the broad industry, revenue etc. were all matching. We didn’t have the break down of the sub industries. Before starting the campaigns, I had asked the research guy to give a sub-industry breakup also so that we are sure of the audience to whom we are sending. Since sales guys have their own time pressures, they decided to overrule me and the campaigns were sent out. Again “not a single response”. So during this session I decided to go to each company in the database and I asked the sales guy to show me the company details on Linkedin. Soon it was apparent that the sub-industries in which our service is not applicable were predominant in the database.

Whenever you want to analyse the failure of a campaign start with the Market/database first – you may not need to go any further after that.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Alerts….how I am trying to break free

Affirmative action, Distractions, Focus

On 7th Nov I had written a post on how alerts on various devices were disturbing me. I had not realized the amount of time they were taking away from me.

The alerts are short, but once you read the alerts and if there’s even something remotely interesting then my mind starts going in different direction….into the past…or into the future. The thoughts which your brain can generate are amazing. The worse thing is that because of the thoughts, feelings also change and I would sometimes also end up, feeling agitated. Once you you lose focus, getting it back takes an enormous amount of time.

So it was not the alert per se that was the issue, it were the actions afterwards which were problematic. Initially, after switching off the alerts , I actually had the feeling of a void and I was also anxious that I would miss out….the typical FOMO syndrome.

Soon however I got used to it. Now I just go and check my messages 3 times a day. If I need to get any update, I physically use the specific “app” to check, and then switch off the “app”.

By not letting the “apps” control my emotions, I am more alert to the things that I am working on.

Have I reached a stage of nirvana. No way. There are other distractions which keep occurring from time to time. Since I have such a strong tendency to get distracted I am always on the look out for ways to improve my concentration.

Let me know in the comments below if you have some ideas that you have used and got great results.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Return on Relationships

Business, Partners, relationships

Relationships are all about building bonds which are generally based on trust. Once people start trust you, they also open up and share things with you. As the trust grows, the bonds grow stronger and people start wanting you to also succeed.

Return on relationships is a concept I learned from Dean Jackson. He’s one of the most fundamentally sound people and can cut through the problems and reach the core reason extremely quickly. You can listen to his podcasts on Morecheeselesswhiskers.com or Cloudlandia or Ilovemarketing.com. He talks about return on relationships from the vantage point of how many customers come back to you for more and refer other customers to you.

My concept of partnerships or “riding the elephant” are all about relationships at the core. Nothing in business moves if you don’t build relationships. How good your relationships are is measured by the fact if you get a lot of your business with repeat customers or you get referred a lot to different people.

There used to be a saying – its not what you know but who you know that is important. There has to be an extension to that statement – its not what you know but who you know, who is willing to refer you, that is important.

So you may have a lot of connections on social media platforms like Linkedin, but if they are not willing to refer you, then they are unimportant. The onus of getting people to refer you is your responsibility so that you program them to think about you when they come across something in which you excel. Getting referrals on a consistent basis is the best way to get business, because you don’t have to invest your time in convincing people to look at you.

Have a look at how much of your revenues are happening because of business coming in from the cold versus repeat customers and customers that have been referred. The lower the first part the more profitable your business.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!