Kevin C. Whelan

Marketing Strategy Advisor and Mentor

How to get your marketing messages heard

The world is vying for your attention 24/7.

The same thing is happening to your customers.

Social media platforms, the news, marketing messages, colleagues, family and friends, and even people you’ve never heard of are trying to capture your attention this very moment.

And with so much upside to getting your attention, it’s no wonder you feel like there’s never enough time in the day. It’s no wonder you feel so distracted, overwhelmed, and anxious.

Time is your most valuable asset. You can’t buy more of it. Which means your attention is the most valuable gift you can give.

There are times when we want to go deep on a topic or idea. Times when we need to go long to convey a message or make a sale.

But if you want to get a point across, say it in fewer words, if you can. Get to the point quickly.

Otherwise, you risk losing your audience’s attention to one of the countless other people vying for it at the same time.

To get your point across, say less and get to the point quickly.

Why good design matters in marketing

You’ve heard this before: people make buying decisions emotionally and rationalize them with logic afterward. It’s true.

No matter what we buy, whether it is a lawnmower, a new car, or a pack of thumbtacks, there’s a distinct emotional connection that happens at the point of purchase.

If it “feels good”, people will buy. If it doesn’t, they almost never do.

As marketers, this is a key insight to take into your strategy and decision-making process. Your goal should be to optimize for that “good feeling” people have about your company, products, and services as early as possible.

While that’s intuitive, a lot of people fall into the trap of focusing on the logic behind their offer and completely ignore the emotional part.

The good news is, there are lots of ways to get to that emotional decision faster.

One of them is design.

Good design, whether it’s your website, visual identity, or any other touchpoint, can make a big difference in whether people buy or not.

The design of your brand is your prospects’ first direct impression of your company.

If you believe that first impressions are important to get right and hard to change, then you’ll know how worthwhile it is to use the best design possible for your marketing collateral.

It may cost more, which may hurt your pocket in the short-term, but it will allow you to charge more and close more sales because you’re starting from a place of positive emotional connection, not undoing a negative first impression caused by poor design.

Optimize for emotion, invest in good design, make a positive first impression, then let the other areas marketing add fuel to the fire.

Lessons from a sushi master on consistency

One of my favourite movies of all time is a documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. If you’re looking to infuse your business or career with some inspiration, watch this movie.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a story of a man, Jiro Ono, and his Michelin three-star restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro.

Sukiyabashi Jiro is a 10-seat restaurant located underground next to the entrance of a train station. And yet, this is one of the most prestigious restaurants in the world.

There is no menu so you get served what they have, reservations are made more than a month in advance, they only serve sushi (no appetizers), you must eat quickly and they tell you to leave when you’re done being served, and it’s considered one of the most expensive dining experiences in the world based on cost vs. how long you spend in the restaurant.

What makes this movie inspiring is Jiro’s relentless pursuit of perfection. The restaurant was founded in 1965, which is a long time for a 10-seat restaurant located next to a train station.

Every detail of the business is optimized to the highest standards, including where he sources his food, the dining experience, how dishes are prepared, and literally every other aspect of the business.

What I love most about this movie is it embodies an idealized version of a business: absolute mastery over every detail.

It also speaks to an internal desire we all feel to bring meaning to our work. His pursuit of mastery and the relentless focus on doing the same thing every single day is inspiring.

As W. H. Auden said, “Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.“

It reminds me of the book, Chop Wood, Carry Water. Excellence is often about doing the fundamentals with relentless consistency.

Below are a few driving points, quotes, and ideas that wrote down last time I watched the documentary.

Quotes and notes from the documentary

“We are not trying to be exclusive or elite. The techniques we use are no big secret. It really comes down to making an effort and repeating the same thing every day.”

“Once you decide in your occupation, you just immerse yourself in your work, you have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That’s the key to success and is the key to being regarded honorably.”

“We are not trying to be exclusive or elite. The techniques we use are no big secret. It really comes down to making an effort and repeating the same thing every day.”

“The only think about him that changed in 40 years is he stopped smoking.”

A good chef has five attributes:

  • They take their work seriously and consistently perform at the highest level.
  • They aspire to improve their skills.
  • Cleanliness.
  • Impatience. They are better leaders than collaborators. They insist on having things their way.
  • A great chef is passionate.

Michelin stars look for three things:

  1. Quality
  2. Originality
  3. Consistency

Additional quotes and ideas:

  • “I do the same thing over and over, always trying to improve it.”
  • “Every day better than the last time.”
  • “We don’t care about the money.”
  • “If it doesn’t taste good I don’t serve it.”
  • Their fish broker from the market: “If I don’t buy my first pick, I buy nothing.”
  • Jiro works every day (except national holidays and funerals).
  • “You must do the work.”

There are so many other great business and life lessons from the movie, and maybe I’ll share some soon.

But the main takeaway of this article is one thing: radical consistency can be a path to making your work more meaningful and (to me) is one of the main drivers of success in business and in life.

What things could you do so consistently that, if you did it, your work would have greater meaning and your business would thrive?

Leave a comment below.

You just proved these signs work

Do you want to get people’s attention? Start by talking about them.

There’s a series of park benches and garbage receptacles around where I live that says, “You just proved these signs work”.

The goal of these signs is to try to sell ad space on public benches, garbage receptacles, and wherever else these kinds of billboards are sold.

And for whatever reason, they’re impossible to ignore when you walk or drive by. They make you think, ‘wow, these ads much actually do a great job if I seem to read them everywhere I go.‘

But the odd thing is, when there are actual ads on them, I almost never notice them. It’s like they become invisible.

Billboard advertising can be a tough place to get results. And I’m not going to go into detail—nor am I an expert—on all the factors that might make them successful.

But there is one element of this specific ad example that makes it work in some cases and invincible in others: the use of you-centric language.

When you use the word “you” in your headlines and ad copy, you naturally perk people’s ears up.

Subconsciously, we read the word “you” and think, “this is about me, I better listen up”.

There are all kinds of reasons for this. But I think it stems from our biological need to look after our own best interests, either by avoiding threats or capitalizing on opportunities.

If you want to get people to read your marketing copy, talk about them and use the word “you” as early and often as you can.

Yours,

—k

The genius behind Wendy’s charity campaign

The other day, my wife and I stopped at Wendy’s on our way home. We couldn’t resist.

After we ordered, they asked if we would like to donate a dollar to a charity for kids. Of course, we said yes. Who doesn’t want to contribute to kids’ charities?

Then, as they were giving me the food, they also gave me a $1 coupon for my next order as a “thanks” for my donation.

Brilliant.

Not only do they demonstrate socially responsible values, which reflects well on their brand and makes me feel good at the same time as a donor, but they also gave me an incentive to come back.

I had the double satisfaction of knowing I contributed to a good cause AND it theoretically “cost” me nothing— assuming I apply the coupon to my next order—since the $1 I gave is offset in savings on my next order.

I realize this second part about “costing” me nothing is crazy. It would end up costing me more to go back and redeem it because I don’t regularly eat fast food. But as a marketer, I pay close attention to my thoughts and feelings when I buy, especially the subtle and subconscious ones.

After all, we all buy emotionally, so it’s worth studying these things.

What a brilliant three-sided initiative they’re running. It helps their brand equity, it feels good to me on multiple levels, and it brings me back to buy more (when I probably wouldn’t even go again for a long time).

Can you do something good that might also increase your brand equity while also increasing your sales?

Can you do it with three layers like Wendy’s did?

280 words daily for a month

There is a slow (but growing) trend of people who write and publish a blog post every day. Truthfully, I wish I was one of them.

No, let me clarify: I will be one of them.

It takes a lot of discipline to show up publish every day. It’s not that writing is hard, it’s the resistance, a term coined by Steven Pressfield, that makes it hard.

Fear, uncertainty, imposter syndrome, writer’s block, and the feeling that you should be doing something more important are all forms of the resistance.

Deep inside my bones, I believe writing and publishing ideas is the best way a person can grow professionally and serve others.

And I’m not saying just write and publish ideas anywhere. I specifically mean publishing content on a platform you own (i.e. your website, not just LinkedIn or Twitter).

In my heart, my mind, and my guts, I know writing every will bring out a person’s best ideas and create the most opportunities overall.

So, I’m going to do that. I’m going to write every day. For at least a month. But, I’m going to do it with constraints.

I’m arbitrarily picking a 280-word limit for each blog post. Just like Twitter has a 280-character limit, I’m picking 280 words for each post.

This sets the bar low enough that I can’t not do it. It also forces me to be concise while giving room to explore a topic.

That’s my task. I challenge you to do the same.

Are you in for the #280words challenge? Let me know on Twitter.

Yours,

—K

P.S. This post has exactly 280 words. H/T to Seth Godin for inspiring the daily bloggers out there.

Why you should work on your marketing daily

It’s easier to do things daily than it is to do them weekly or monthly. It’s counter-intuitive but it’s true.

When I exercise daily, it isn’t even a thought. It’s a habit. I make time for it and it gets done. No excuses.

And it’s the same with your marketing.

If every day you publish your thoughts on social media, write that blog post, refine that ad creative, or generally check in on things, it’s a lot easier than trying to do it once a week or whenever you have time.

And here’s the thing: your results are a lot better, too.

We all get busy. And when you’re not planning to work on your marketing every day, it becomes an afterthought. Things get missed. Days go by.

And then what happens? The pipeline slowly dries up until one day you are wondering what happened to your leads.

It must be the competition, you think.

I get it. Marketing is time-consuming. It can be difficult. There are so many details, tasks, revisions, coordination, and headaches that come with it.

But it’s also the highest point of leverage in your business.

After all, would you expect a fruit stand to be successful if it did not take its fruits to the marketplace?

Yes, you have operational responsibilities. Yes, they’re very important.

But if you’re not working on your marketing initiatives daily, moving projects along, and publishing content to the world, then your business will suffer.

Maybe you won’t see the effects today. But every day you’re not investing your time in marketing, you’re losing opportunities. I guarantee it.

If you own the business, ask yourself how many days each week you work on your marketing—even if it’s just for a few minutes.

If the answer is less than five, you’ll have a problem soon (if you don’t already).

Work on your marketing daily. It’s easier and it gets better results.

Yours,

Kevin C. Whelan

Two specializations, two brands, one door

I recently walked into a fast-food restaurant in Toronto that specializes in roti and dosa dishes.

But they aren’t a “roti and dosas” restaurant. They operate under two distinct brands, My Dosa Place and My Roti Place, even though they serve food from the same retail space.

The ingredients in dosas and roti are very similar. They both have lots of curry flavours and originate in India.

At the location I visited, there is one door but inside there are two separate cashiers, two separate food stations where they prepare your food, two separate menus, and two separate eating areas in the same retail space.

It makes you wonder why they didn’t just open a “roti and dosas” restaurant if that’s what they end up serving anyway. Why go through all the trouble of setting up two separate food stations and hiring more people if you own both businesses and operate them from the same place?

There’s a lesson about marketing here: when it comes to marketing, specialization is power.

People like knowing that the thing they are buying is high quality. In this case, customers are not buying from a generalist fast food place that makes everything. They’re buying from either a roti or dosa restaurant. They’re buying from specialists at each.

It’s not hard to imagine a fast food restaurant being able to make two good dishes under one brand. But there’s nothing remarkable about a company that sells roti and dosas.

It’s more remarkable to be a roti OR a dosa restaurant.

One is specialized, and therefore probably good at that specific category, and the other is generalist, and probably mediocre at both. Even though we know they’re the same company, the trouble they went through to create two brands and distinct experiences makes sense to me.

So my final takeaway is this: it’s okay to sell multiple things or to serve multiple markets, but it can be smart to do that under different brands if you can manage it.

Brand consolidation and diversification may seem more efficient, but to the customer, it can make you seem unremarkable at any one thing.

Yours,

—K

P.S. I discovered later that they also have My Meatball Place and operate it alongside My Roti Place at a different location.

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Nobody wants to read your sh*t

 Author, Steven Pressfield, has a great book called, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t.

The core premise of the book is—wait for it—nobody wants to read your writing. People are too busy. It’s just true.

It’s been a while since I read the book, but the idea has stuck with me ever since. Here’s my interpretation of the concept and what you can do about it.

How to write stuff people want to read

If you want people to consistently read your writing, whether it be a blog post, social media post, website copy, or any other form of writing, then every piece of content should answer two questions:

  1. “So what?”
  2. “What’s in it for me?”

If someone doesn’t have a clear understanding of the point you’re making and how it benefits them, then you’ve missed an opportunity.

But it’s deeper than that. You don’t just miss one opportunity. You also put at risk all future opportunities to get your messages read.

Why? Because you’re teaching people that your words aren’t worth reading.

You teach them to tune you out.

And that’s the death knell of marketing. You need your words to get read or you aren’t actually doing marketing.

Like all things, it comes down to trust. People will click and read your words as long as you deliver an ROI on their time.

Every time you focus on yourself instead of the reader, that trust gets diminished. Drip by drip, it teaches people not to read your words.

And that’s why it’s so important that every word you write is in service to the reader and has a clear point.

It’s about them, not you. Always.

 

This article originally appeared on Everspaces.com. 

Should You Buy Social Media Followers?

It’s long been known that you can easily buy followers on social media from various places. Most often, you’re buying bots and fake accounts, so for most of this article that’s the kind of “buying” I’m referring to.

This is a controversial topic for some, so I want to look at both the pros and cons of buying social media followers for your business.

Towards the end of this article, I’ll also talk about some ethical ways to buy followers if you are interested in doing so.

Pros

1. Social Proof

As far as I can tell, there’s really only one business benefit to buying followers, and that is social proof (i.e. you look more credible with more followers).

Having tens of thousands of subscribers could make you look like a well-established and beloved company. People might consciously or unconsciously think you’re more credible, making them more likely to follow you and/or buy from you.

On the surface, that seems like a fairly good reason to buy followers. You get new customers trusting you more quickly and you could even build your real following faster.

2. Ego Boost

The main non-business benefit I can see in buying followers is the ego-stoking it provides. We feel good when we are perceived as authorities in our industry. We feel successful, we look successful, and that feels good all around.

Cons

Since we are comparing both pros and cons to buying social media followers, what possible downsides could there be?

1. Trust Factors

Buying followers is a shortcut to perceived popularity. It’s what happens when you have not been doing the necessary work required to build a brand organically.

If people find out you have been buying followers, they would naturally wonder where else you’re cutting corners and whether you can be trusted.

Even if they suspect you bought followers, their trust in your has been diminished.

Identifying whether someone has purchased followers is fairly easy. You can look who follows any account (on Instagram and Twitter, at least) and after some time you’ll see a trend as to whether they are real or obviously fake. You may need to do some scrolling, as often followers are bought early in the account’s history and are buried deeper in the list of followers. There are other ways to do this for different platforms as well.

2. Deception

Buying followers is a form of deception. Good marketing is never deceptive. Good marketing requires having a quality product or service to begin with. When your product or service is great to begin with, marketing becomes about transferring enthusiasm about your offer to your potential customers. No hype or sales-y-ness required.

If people think you’re being deceptive, are they more or less likely to buy from you?

3. Low Engagement

When you buy followers, you also get low engagement. If you have a million followers but only 1,000 likes on your post, the platform will naturally skew towards not showing content as frequently to your true followers.

Platforms are algorithmically built to show good content as the priority to keep people engaged. They determine what is good content by the amount engagement (clicks, likes, shares etc.) relative to your followers and number of times your posts are viewed.

For example, posts that get a lot of likes quickly after publishing will continue showing up at a higher rate for a longer period of time. Posts that get ignored by most followers are less likely to be displayed in general.

4. No Direct Business Benefit

Fake followers are not customers. They’re usually not even real people. Therefore, don’t expect them to buy anything!

Ethically Buying Social Media Followers

In this article, I’ve been focused on whether you should buy fake followers on social media. I’ve been focused on the kind that produces the most number of followers fastest, which is to buy bots and fake accounts.

There are at least three other ways to “buy” real followers more ethically (directly or indirectly).

1. Advertising

You can advertise on most social media platforms with a message that compels people to follow you. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc. all have ad platforms that enable you to either promote a link or promote your own profile to increase followers.

If your core message is good, this is a sound and ethical way to grow your following. You’re essentially exposing people to your value proposition in the hopes it catches some attention and captures new followers.

I actually followed someone this way on Twitter the other day. They were advertising a link to some resource to help consultants. I clicked his profile instead, saw a relevant value proposition (he helps consultants with their business) and his latest posts were interesting to me. So I followed him, which is an indirect benefit to his ad spend.

Advertising to relevant audiences with a relevant message is an ethical way to build your following.

2. Follow/Unfollow

This area ventures a bit more into the grey but I don’t see it as an unethical way to grow your following.

There are tools out there that allow you to follow people based on who they follow (i.e. follow all followers of x influencer), hashtags they use, and other factors.  These same tools often unfollow them if you don’t get a follow-back, just so you don’t accrue a big disparity between the number of people you follow vs. the number who follow you.

The idea is that the tool follows real people, they see a notification, read your profile, and follow back if your content and profile description is relevant.

You can also do this manually if you have the time. It’s got a low success rate but it works when you target people correctly.

There is potential that if you follow/unfollow too many people too quickly, you can get banned from posting or following people for a period of time. There are settings you can use to slow this down.

Do this too many times and your account could get blocked, so be careful.

3. Strategic Interactions

Much like the idea above, you can use paid tools that engage with people based on who they follow, words in their posts, or hashtags they use. Engagement means liking, sharing, commenting, etc. The goal is to get people to notice you, read your profile, and then follow you.

This too will have a low success rate if you’re using a tool. It’s the shotgun approach. It works better when you do it manually to highly specific people and add value to them over time.

This method is also most often perceived as spam, so be careful not to overdo it if you decide on this methodology. Spam is not marketing, so I don’t support this method for companies looking to do things right.

 

Conclusion

In business, there’s one essential asset that must be developed, fostered, and protected at all times, and that is trust.

When you buy social media followers, your primary risk is people either knowing or guessing that your followers are fake.

If they find out your followers were purchased, their trust in your will be reduced to whatever degree they expect you to be honest. Even if they suspect you have bought your followers, the trust has been affected

I’m not saying you should or should not buy followers. If you’re going to do it, I recommend advertising since it’s the above-board way to do things and is the least resemblance to spam.

However, if your sole goal is immediate financial growth and you think you can get a greater return on your marketing efforts by buying followers, than by all means do it. But know the risks.

Good marketing aims to be ethical and truthful at all times, so for me, I’d rather not blur the lines into the grey area if I can avoid it, either for myself or my clients.

Tell me your thoughts in the comments!