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Adam Fairhead
Is your business growing properly?
Clients regularly ask this about their own businesses.
Here’s how to calculate the answer:
1) Define ‘right-size’
‘Bigger’ is not a size.
Choose an actual size.
2) Define the optimal experience
What do customers want to hear?
What do customers want to receive?
How would customers love to receive it?
3) Is #2 moving you toward #1?
If Yes: stop stressing 😎
If No: change #2
Produce an amazing experience.
Supplies last until you right-size.
Adam Fairhead
What makes a perfect website offer?
Is it to take a 30 day free trial?
Nope. Most people don’t trust you enough to enter CC information.
Marketers have messed it up with their silly games.
Is to register for plans & pricing?
Nope. Gatekeeping information essential to the buying decision is just silly.
In no known universe is “make it harder for them to want your thing” a good idea.
Is it to book a discovery call?
Nope. Enough businesses have conflated ‘discovery call’ with ‘sales call’ to have ruined this.
People want a sales call like they want a hole in the head.
Here’s what makes a great website offer:
It’s what they ALREADY want, but given to them how they’d love to receive it.
I explore this topic in more detail in this week’s issue of The Productoon newsletter. Check it out!
Adam Fairhead
It’s OK to stink at finishing projects.
Why?
Because it’s a skill.
Starting, creating, and finishing projects is a skill.
Don’t practice it, and you won’t get better at it. Worse, you’ll lose your edge, and find them more difficult the longer you squander your streak.
Practice it, and you’ll get a little better at it, each and every time.
Starting (but stinking) at finishing projects is the first step to shipping great work.
Stink away, champ.
Adam Fairhead
The problem with:
…is that they’re normally optimising the wrong thing.
You don’t need to:
You simply need to:
Optimise for that.
Adam Fairhead
“Thanks for asking, that’s not what we do.”
This sentence (or a derivative of it) needs to exist in every business.
Even if you’re short on work right now.
Even if you’re scared to turn down accounts.
Even if you’re not sure what happens next.
Do what you do. Master what you do. Create an experience that is intentional, thoughtful, and exquisite. Learn how to make it better and better for those who need a master at what you do.
And don’t dilute your craft by trying to serve everyone.
Saying No to the wrong folks is as important as saying Yes to the right ones.
Adam Fairhead
Avoid marketing automation, unless it achieves these things.
Users should feel it results in:
And never feel:
Automation should be “you, but better”.
Adam Fairhead
In business, we’re told to
“Work on the business, not in the business.”
True for entrepreneurs, less so for artists and indies.
And even less so when appropriating lessons to productivity.
“Work on your productivity system, not in your productivity system” would be terrible advice, when in fact the opposite is true.
Advice is not universally ‘true’.
Advice is simply a reflection of what has worked before in some circumstances some of the time.
Take it with a pinch of salt.
And be OK with doing the opposite.
Adam Fairhead
We think we want to make things easier.
But do we, really?
When a writer gives their writing to AI to do, it becomes easier.
Except a good writer looks upon the result and sighs.
Perhaps they could doctor the resulting prose into something acceptable. But the heart of the piece never really starts beating. They long for the discomfort of a blank page, where they can go to war with words and write something full of life.
Perhaps they could avoid writing with it and just use it for research. But the clinical, sanitised output lacks so much context. They long for the memories of toiling for the information they need, the kindling from which sparks fly when it’s time to write.
Maybe we didn’t want to make things easier after all.
Maybe it sounded better in our heads, but reality lacked humanity.
Maybe it being hard is what distinguishes coal from diamonds.
Maybe we should be glad hard things are hard.
Adam Fairhead
Potential customers have a problem.
And they want to get to a solution.
So what do marketers do?
They say, “Forget about all, that look at my cool product!”
And that is why marketing is hard for them.
They try to close sales by doing things such as:
❌ “Make a super-irresistible offer so scrumptiously delicious they couldn’t even entertain the very possibility of doing anything other than exactly what you tell them.”
The problem is, that’s not how people work. How often do you click on a page, then feel a magical marketing force rip your credit card out of your pocket against your will? Causing you to feverishly spend thousands of dollars on a service without any of the senses nor faculties you’ve used both your entire life prior to now? Exactly.
Here’s another:
❌ “Meticulously A/B test every aspect of the page to make the leap happen, like a hunter carefully aiming his weapon at unsuspecting wildlife, to make sure he paints the meadow with the maximum amount of brains.”
The problem with this one is two-fold. First, it’s a little bit gross. Second, it puts a lot of pressure on your materials to compress what could have been a really enjoyable user experience into a desperate pitch-fest graded by analytics rather than whether or not your target market actually likes it.
That is making marketing hard.
I explore this topic in more detail in this week’s issue of The Productoon newsletter. Check it out!
Adam Fairhead
Although marketing keeps evolving,
Don’t forget what matters most:
The rest is just cherries on top. 🍒
I create a weekly newsletter for creators who want to improve their product marketing and their mindset. Check it out: