ilovemarketing

Being Relentless – a Marketing discipline

Affirmative action, Marketing, persistence, Sales

Relentless is an adjective.

Synonyms – Persistent, Non-Stop, Continuous…

An adjective qualifies the noun – grade 5 English grammar course. In this case, the noun is going to be a person. A relentless person a persistent person is how this will be used.

So what is the significance of this English grammar lesson for today’s post.

The other day in one of the posts I mentioned about the I love marketing podcast episode with Chris Voss and I explained why I admired him because of his usage of of words.

With a background in hostage negotiation you have to be careful with your words and the words should have the the exact Nuance of what is being thought by the speaker. That is one of the reasons why his vocabulary is so good.

During the podcast, one of the questions asked to him was on the launch of his book, in 2017 I think, and how he went about promoting it.

One word that he mentioned which immediately stuck in my head was the fact that he was RELENTLESS in ensuring that he was on two interviews a week at the minimum, to promote his book which he is doing to this day.

While the book – Never Split the Difference – is very good, but if people don’t come to know about the book they will not go and buy it. It’s a terrific lesson in marketing from a hostage negotiator. If you keep yourself aware you can get marketing lessons even from the small kiosk on the kerb.

We may have a terrific product or a terrific service but if people do not come to know about it then people will not buy it.

In one word Chris had put out such a big strategy for marketing

Everyone knows about Coke. But they relentlessly advertise about their product so that when you visit the shop or restaurant and you are thirsty the first word which comes out of your mouth is a Coke.

Everyday in marketing and I include sales as part of marketing, if you are not somehow reaching more and more customers everyday , by some mechanism , you will not be able to build a sustainable pipeline and a predictable business.

You need not be brilliant, you need not be teriffic , but if you want to succeed you have to be relentless, persistent et al.

Till next time

Carpe Diem!!!

What is the JOB that you want your campaign to do – 2

campaign, lead generation, Marketing, media

This topic was not supposed to be split into 2 posts but it so happened that today morning I was watching a YouTube recording of the ILoveMarketing Meetup Group where Dean Jackson was interviewing Paul Colligan on the topic of podcasting. For those who have not read my post yesterday – I was referring to the Clayton Christensen experiment where he talks about the JOB of a McDonald milkshake. I had used that analogy to talk about why this question is important when you are choosing media instead of blindly following others.

He made a statement similar to what I had made when I was discussing with the media company regarding people blindly choosing Instagram because they get followers faster. Paul narrated a story where he asked a prospect about what was the objective of the podcast that he was trying to make and the prospect said “downloads”. So Paul asked him if downloads from China do or if they were to come from Fiverr – would they meet the objective? Clearly the prospect got the message.

Since there’s so much hype about followers / downloads most people think the objective is to create followers or to get downloads. You need to have clarity on what is the JOB you want your campaign to do. Not multiple jobs. Just one job.

If you are going on any platform – not only social media -for business purposes, there has to be a clearly defined JOB that you want the platform to achieve. Then understand if that platform will meet the objective in the most cost effective way. This is important because you don’t have unlimited supply of funds – even if you have, it would be stupid to get an email address at $10, if there was a way to get it at $1.50.

Don’t get muddled in your thinking based on the hype of the media companies. Its their JOB to sell you on the positives of their medium, but its your JOB to determine, what’s best for you.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Time is not money…relationships are money

collaboration, Habits, Karma, relationships, Uncategorized

Yesterday I  heard the  amazing statement above, that I could not stop myself from sharing it with you.

All my life I  have heard that time is money because it is one resource which cannot be replenished so you should use it very wisely.

I have worked on improving my ability to utilize my time and am continuously looking for ways to leverage my time. I stopped driving my car for health reasons, but now I feel that driving a car is not the best use of my time and I take a cab so that I can make better use of my time.

I delegate tasks to my team members so that I can work on higher value tasks.

Yesterday during the training from Ilovemarketing mastery program,  I heard the coach from Strategic Coach talk about this. She explained this concept so well.

All time is not equal.  The time spent in building relationships pays many times over compared to any other time spent.

As a matter of fact Richard Koch in his books also talks about this in the 80/20 rule.  While I have read his books but this time the way this coach explained was so awesome that it hit me.

Being in marketing I have always prided myself for the relationships I have cultivated but I realized after this training that I could have achieved an even higher level of success if I had built even better relationships.

Most of my success in my career has been because of the people who supported me and believed in me and therefore gave us business. My own capabilities maybe limited but these relationships multiplied those so many times over

See how you can spend more time on building relationships by first giving because as Joe Polish says Life Gives to the Giver.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Arrogance versus Self Confidence

arrogance, jealousy, mindset

I thought of taking a break from just talking about marketing.

Those of you who follow my blog know that I like to identify the differences between words in English and how they get used. An Oxford dictionary is still among the prized possessions in my library.

I was listening to a talk by Sean Stephenson on the Ilovemarketing mastery program by Joe Polish and Dean Jackson.

He brought out an important point on Arrogance versus Self Confidence.

Which led me to the dictionary again and this is what I got at the meriam-webster site and I have taken it from there and posted below

Definition of arrogance

: an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions

Definition of self-confidence

: confidence in oneself and in one’s powers and abilities

Sean’s take was that people with confidence have a tendency to always want to improve themselves and keep increasing their capabilities which increases confidence further.

On the other hand people who are arrogant are always trying to prove a point to others or to themselves.

What was more interesting was what he mentioned after this. Can people who are confident about themselves come out as arrogant to others.

As per him if someone thinks of your self confidence as arrogance, then it means they are jealous of you. Which is the price for being successful.

Bottom line is if people are jealous of you then you know you are being successful. And if people are not jealous of you then maybe you are not playing a big enough game.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!