Well, let’s put it this way: I was (and still am) an outstanding cartoonist. And marketing was nowhere close to being my forte. I’d write, but I’d agonise over it. The only thing that kept me going was the audience.
Audiences are needed…and not just for those who are struggling This is why writers, singers, speakers need an audience. It doesn’t reflect on their ability to speak, write or draw. But in their ability to be appreciated.
The greatest speaker in the world becomes a bit of a washout if there are three people in an auditorium that seats five hundred. It saps your energy.
However, if those three people happened to be the only ones the speaker was expecting, then he/she will turn out a world-class experience. Which is why if you’re starting up any venture, be it a blog or a website, or a newsletter or even a painting, I would get at least two-three people to visit (and bug you) so that you get and stay motivated.
The biggest issue is the appreciation, and not the ability to write, draw, speak. Being able to be very good at something, is a nice-to-have, but most writers, speakers, etc start out being very, very average. In some of my early speeches, I had to take a ten-minute break because I forgot what I was going to say. Early articles used to take me two days or more to write, and I’d struggle. But it was the audience (and believe me, back then they were tiny audiences) that kept me going.
Tiger Woods had an audience of two (his father and mother). It was not his so-called talent that mattered. He didn’t start out as the world’s best golfer. But without the audience, he probably would never have gotten there at all.
Get an audience, no matter how minuscule. Your so-called talent will come with practice. But if you don’t have an audience, you’ll probably never get off the ground.
Drinking Water for Weight Loss There are many different things that go into a well rounded diet and weight loss plan, one of which is to drink the right amount of water. Proper hydration is vitally important when it comes to dieting, exercising and losing weight in the process of it all. Consider this guide......
Journey from Reader to Erotica Author by Eliza Gayle, guest blogger and author of Lucas: A Black Cougar Novel To be honest it was a fast and furious trip. Despite my love for reading and my early adventures in fanfic, (although I had no idea the fact I was writing sequels to Star Wars movies......
When I got my start in the world of telecommunications more than 35 years ago, I started out as a customer service rep at what was then known as the New York Telephone Company in lower Manhattan. Oh, how well do I remember my trainer, Ann S also known as ‘Smoky’ who was of the best trainers in the Company. She taught us customer service from a to z. Let’s just keep it real here, Smoky drilled customer service into our little ‘fresh out of high school’ heads on everything from from how quickly to answer the phone when it rang, to what to say in any given customer service situation.
We learned about acknowledging the customer’s opening statement and assuring the customer they had reached the person who could help them. We explained why we were putting them (the customer) on hold and got their attention when we returned to the line before we began speaking. We thanked customers for their business and apologized when they were dissatisfied about anything whether it was caused by our department or not. We never usedthe word ‘they’ to blame another department in our company for something that was done incorrectly.
We took responsibility for everything. We followed up when we made a promise to a customer and made sure they understood what they were getting and asked them if there was anything else we could do. We avoided the word ‘policy’ when talking to an angry customer.
We practiced customer service, role-played it and listened to recordings of it. I was so inspired by Smoky who at the time seemed like a drill sergeant, I later became a corporate trainer myself teaching the art of customer service.
Because customer service was such an integral part of my job, as a consumer, I tend to watch for it in my daily business dealings. I make a mental note of good and bad customer service experiences everywhere I go just for fun whether it’s at the post office, a department store, fast-food restaurant, auto repair shop or even the library. I will take the time to fill out a comment card on exceptionally good or bad service.
With the economy in the predicament that it’s in, you would think that customer service would be at an all-time high, but I’m sad to say that it isn’t. What happened? Where did customer service go?
Should we expect customer service any more or is it yet another lost art?
Does Good Customer Service Still Exist? I believe in getting maximum value out of my time. Some months back, I realized I was spending roughly 1-2 hours a day driving in my car listening to music. I had heard about podcasts, but never really listened to one. Once I did, I was hooked. I spent......
Management - Customer Service Customer service is always a hot topic. How many times have you gone to a business where the employees waiting on you appear to not care if you were there or not? How many times have you gotten your clothes back from the laundry with buttons crushed or you......
Are you struggling to create a memorable positioning statement or USP (Unique Selling Proposition) for your marketing? Do you want to stand out from your competition, but the uniqueness of your business seems to elude you? Here’s a sneaky, vital secret that turns conventional marketing psychology on its head. By changing your positioning statement, find out how to transform your weakest link, into your strongest marketing strategy ever!
Avis Is Only Number 2. So Why Go With Them?
Years ago, in the rental car market, Hertz was chugging along merrily, with Avis a distant second. With one Problem-Based USP, Avis closed the gap. Their catch phrase, We’re No.2, We Try Harder, ignited the minds of the target audience like a rampaging bush fire. They turned a liability into an asset.
Southwest Airlines took to the skies with a similar message. We’re Smaller Than Everyone Else, they told us, while gently explaining why their service was dramatically better, as a direct consequence of their size. They also turned a liability into an asset.
In 2001, Harley Davidson proudly boasted how their CEO was 38th on the waiting list for the company’s then, new V-Rod motorcycle. And they took pains to describe how each Harley was lovingly rolled off the plant. The waiting period, which normally would be perceived to be a negative, was turned into a publicity coup that burned a stamp of quality and a uniqueness into the brains of every prospective Harley owner.
All of these companies took a cold, hard-nosed look at reality. The superlatives in their business had been taken. Instead they unearthed their USP, in what most people would consider a disadvantage of sorts.
Are You Doing What Sally Did?
Sally is one heck of a real estate agent. Barely six months into real estate, and she’s already forging a red-hot path into the top ten salespeople in the country. While her talents and persuasive powers are formidable, there’s a little something that puts her head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. That Little Something Is A USP On Steroids!
If she chose to be unimaginative, Sally’s USP or tagline could have ended up as pretty run-of-the-mill. It could have ranged from a tacky, Residential Properties for every budget, to utterly boring, Getting Top Prices for Your Home. All of which would see her struggling to stand out, in a dog-eat-dog me-too marketplace.
A goody-gum-drop USP would get her nowhere in a hurry. She needed a USP with rocket fuel in its tanks. Something that would reach out and demand your attention without hesitation. If You Sold Your Home In A Week or less, You Probably Got Too Little
That’s the USP that Sally created. Can you see what I mean? Doesn’t that USP go for your jugular? Sally’s target audience is sellers, not buyers. If you just sold a house, wouldn’t you feel a twinge of regret? What if you were about to sell a house?
Wouldn’t you be curious to find out just a little bit about what Sally does to lasso in a higher return? And wouldn’t you be just a little bit wary if the next real estate agent you met told you that she could sell your house in next to no time?
You’ve just witnessed the psychological power of the Problem-Based USP.
How To Create A Knockout USP For Your Business
Let’s assume you’re in the wine selling business. To own real estate in a customer’s brain, you’d have to do battle with about a zillion other wines. Yet decades ago, Paul Masson cut through the clutter with a simple statement. We sell no wines before their time. With charming simplicity, they turned a negative waiting period into an exploitable advantage.
You too can turn your liabilities into assets. Stop screaming about how magnificent you are, and look for the apparent glitches in your business. Let’s just consider a few scenarios. Are You Perceived To Be Too Expensive, Slow, Or Maybe Just Too Busy?
When we started our website at PsychoTactics.com, we were faced with a similar dilemma. As human beings, we often disdain simplicity and common sense. The distillation process needed to simplify a concept into easy-to-munch bites is often just seen as common sense, and of no huge intrinsic value.
Taking that liability into consideration, PsychoTactics.com created a USP concept, that stressed the fact that everything was not just old, but at least 5000 years old. In fact, everything has already been tried and tested. That put us in a mould that is totally different from all the new-fangled marketing angles you hear about every day. The liability of common sense was turned into the asset of experience.
Best of all, it turned a problem into a winning USP concept. The Biggest Reason Why You Should Search For The Hiccup In Your Business Strategy
Finding what makes you beneficially different is a notoriously difficult task. However, just about any client or potential buyer will very quickly identify your weaknesses and liabilities. If it’s a technical problem, you can fix it. If it’s a conceptual problem such as speed or price, it is much harder to fix.
This, however, is the key to your success. The more you try to keep your weaknesses and liabilities under wraps, the more customers will uncover them. On the other hand, take a liability and turn it into an asset. Expose a problem to the harsh glare of the spotlight and transform your frog into a prince.
This brave act will gain the instant admiration and support of your clients, while giving you a USP that others simply won’t have the guts to match.
Can You Make The Leap?
Creating a negative USP is a tricky, dangerous tactic, and one not to be taken lightly. “We’re slow and proud of it!” is hardly a selling point, yet fulfills the requirements laid out in the article. However, if you’ve been struggling with your USP, as many companies do, this is a tactic that may work well for you—as it has with some of the companies above.
It’s time you tickled your customer’s brain with some sharply focused psychological marketing jujitsu. Find the weaknesses and liabilities in your business, carve them into a dynamic USP, and the attention your business has been craving for, will be yours forever more!
June 2008 update June was the best month ever as far as meeting my goals goes. I finally, FINALLY achieved my goal of spending $2000 or less in a month. My total expenses for the month were $1,861.97, and that includes $350 in medical-related expenses, plus clothes, a haircut, and eating out. Now......
Selling Your Home In Wounded Real Estate Market Selling your home in the current housing market is risky business. Throughout the last five years, the housing market has taken a deep U-turn and clearly turned in the favor of buyers. Before you get into the real estate game, you must be prepared to price your home to sell,......
On my way to work this morning I was reading a preview of a book I just have to check out called “How Not To Act Old.” Just read a couple pages of it, but it looks really good if you have a good sense of humor. My husband and I love to joke about this subject because he actually does some of the things that this book pokes fun at.
As a baby boomer who just recently turned 58 and is still actively a part of corporate America, I am kinda sensitive to the fact that a lot of ‘younger’ folks seem to think that all of us are ready to be put out to pasture.
“When are you going to retire?” “Don’t you have enough years in?”
First of all, many boomers are having to work longer or in some cases, return to work because of devaluated 401k plans and changes in our economy. While there are a lot of people that I know of that are showing up at work each day and doing next to nothing and expecting a paycheck, there are many of us that are valuable contributors to the workforce. As for me personally, I read, listen to and watch all that I can to stay on top of nuances in the telecom industry (where I’ve been employed going on 35 years) and there’s a lot to keep up with.
Since I have been with my company, I have gone from an environment where everything was on paper, then we went to microfiche (rememember those little tv-looking microfiche viewers?) and now… computers.
Yeah, it was scary at first, I admit that, but I applied myself and did what it took to learn the next new thing and that’s how I survive.
Ok, enough of my soapbox tirade.
Sorry about that.
As I said time and time again, I am a coach and a student meaning that I readily admit that I don’t know it all. Not even close. As a member of Blog Success I am learning a ton of stuff to help me get more love to my blog. Watch this video to learn how to use trackbacks to your blog to get more link love…
Blog Commenting and Link Building Free Cheat Sheet Blog commenting and link building are major parts of my search engine marketing plans for my clients. So I've had to create a standard practice for it to make it efficient. I also wrote an article on Google's Knol called Linking Strategies for Small Business Marketing. Most of my clients want......
linklings, too old for the factory edition Another week goes by and another spate of bad job news. I'm beginning to suspect that I may be in the "old enough to be difficult to hire" category - many of the manager positions I've looked at quickly turn me down. I doubt it can be my qualifications......
I wanted to share 1 of 10 videos created by Gideon Shalwick at Become A Blogger.com that shows you how to use Feedburner for a variety of things like setting up subscriptions to your blog via rss feeds, subscription by email, monetizing your feeds with Adsense and more. You’ll want to watch all 10 videos that will give you step by step instructions in setting up your blog.
Learn How to Get Traffic to Blog When it comes to writing in a blog, simply writing and assuming that traffic will come is not exactly the right way to go about things. If you want to learn how to get traffic to blog, then you need to be willing to take some extra steps to make......
Corporate Blogging Made Easy One of the best ways for a company to reach out to their customers and build a strong brand is corporate blogging. However, there are a lot of misconceptions out there and a lot of room for error. Let’s take a look at some techniques that you can use to......
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Drinking Water for Weight Loss There are many different things that go into a well rounded diet and weight loss plan, one of which is to drink the right amount of water. Proper hydration is vitally important when it comes to dieting, exercising and losing weight in the process of it all. Consider this guide......
Journey from Reader to Erotica Author by Eliza Gayle, guest blogger and author of Lucas: A Black Cougar Novel To be honest it was a fast and furious trip. Despite my love for reading and my early adventures in fanfic, (although I had no idea the fact I was writing sequels to Star Wars movies......
they were getting and asked them if there was anything else we could do. We avoided the word ‘policy’ when talking to an angry customer.
