Archive of posts from May 2024

Is marketing getting easier or harder?

Most would say harder…

And they’re right. If by harder they mean “different and I hate change.”

But it’s actually simpler than ever.
Despite the competition. Despite the changes.

Here’s why:

Gatekeepers are gone.

Sure, there are algorithms…

But they’re only there to show people more of what they like. So if you’re not showing up, you didn’t show enough people that they like it yet. That’s all.

Gatekeepers used to unlock specific captive audiences. Now they’re gone, you need to define cohorts within your audience yourself. It’s different, but you’re in control.

Feedback is public.

How did people feel about your banner ads? You have no idea.

On social, you do. You’re connecting with individuals, seeing their words in response to yours. You can even see what they talk about on their own profiles.

We’ve never had more data available to us. Now we have it, we need to analyse it to improve our creative. It’s different, but you’re in control.

People are still starved for good stuff.

Of the >800 million videos on YouTube…

How many channels do you love and look forward to regularly? If you can think of more than 3, you’re doing very well.

People want to consume things they want to consume, in ways they love to consume it. And you only really have ~3 real competitors per cohort.

Sure, you need to produce fantastic stuff. It’s different. But you’re in control.

I explore this topic in more detail in this week’s issue of The Productoon newsletter. Check it out!

To increase referrals,

Just increase this one number:

‘R’ (used to track viruses, but also referrals)

- If every customer refers 1 more: R=1. - If 1/10 customers refer 1 more: R = 0.1. - If 1/100 customers refer 1 more: R = 0.01.

Lesson? The easiest way to grow is to increase ‘R’.

What makes ‘perfect’ product/service?

3 things:

- It’s WHAT we want. - It’s HOW we want it. - It’s unignorably good.

That’s it.

Whoever achieves those three things best, wins.

Focus on the fundamentals, champ.

EVERYONE knows what great marketing looks like.

…Except marketers (here’s why):

Before becoming a marketer:

• Likes thoughtful, personal emails
• Likes valuable newsletters
• Likes fun, useful webpages
• Likes discovering cool stuff

After becoming a marketer:

- Sends cold, templated, mass emails

• Spends minimal time on their newsletter
• Makes boring salesy landing pages
• Runs hypey salesy advertising

Start with the customer.

Build what they want, how they love to receive it.
Make it unignorably good.

There’s still practically no competition for that.

If I could sum up AI content in one sentence?

It would be this:

“AI is a good Robin, but a bad Batman.”

- Batman has the vision - Batman has the experience - Batman is who they call

- Robin helps investigate - Robin helps analyse evidence - Robin helps solve mysteries

But no Batman? No Dynamic Duo.

Lesson: Keep your suit on and get a sidekick.

’Cus sidekicks are awesome.

Developers that use JS for everything miss the benefits certain languages bring to different requirements (such as Go or Rust, for instance).
There doesn’t have to be a ‘winner’. You can use multiple programming languages.

Designers that use their favourite template for everything miss the benefits of thinking through challenges, and obscure decision-making with boilerplate.
There doesn’t have to be a ‘winner’. You can use multiple design languages.

Artists routinely debate which tool is best, be it Photoshop, Procreate, CSP, Krita… but being ‘all in’ on one denies you the benefits of the others.
There doesn’t have to be a ‘winner’. You can use multiple tools.

Animators agonise over whether they should learn Harmony, or TVPaint, or Dreams, or OpenToonz, or FlashAnimate… but why agnose?
There doesn’t have to be a ‘winner’. You can use multiple tools.

Writers think long and hard about which keyboard to use, be it low-profile or not, hot-swappable or soldered, mechanical or membrane… when all are good.
There doesn’t have to be a ‘winner’. You can use multiple keyboards.

Creators use tools to do great work. Focus on the great work, and use whatever tools you like to make it so.

There doesn’t have to be a winner. Thanks to all the differenet options, the only winner is you.

Business Gurus like flashing their big MRRs at you.

But you know what works better?

(And by ‘better’ I mean ‘actually works’)

- Solve, don’t sell. - Present, don’t flash. - Edutain, don’t teach. - Illuminate, don’t dazzle. - Delight, don’t complete. - Overdeliver, don’t overbook. — Zip up your pants, don’t guru.

Which do you think is most lacking out there?

Who’s the best marketer in your business?

Even in a company of one, it should not be you.

But wait… If no one loves your business more than you do… How could it possibly be anyone else?

Because the best marketers are always:

Your customers.

But there’s a problem: Most businesses have no clue how to ‘recruit’ their customers as effective marketers.

There are a few ways… today we’re going to cover the best way. Integrating edutainment into your attraction, activation, and advocacy stages.

Attraction: They want to come to you

Produce marketing materials that people love and look forward to.

Letting people discover your business through video content that resembles what they already love watching (so they can enjoy watching you too, instead of just skipping you).

Letting people play with a product mock with a fun guide and contextualised seed data (so they’ve already tasted wins before signing up).

Letting people play with an interactive quiz that starts solving their problems right away (so they’re already associating you with easy, fun progress).

Letting people play with a game-style walkthrough to explore your physical location (and find secret goodies, so they already know your place before visiting).

People look forward to seeing you. Stage one of recruitment complete.

Activation: They want to use your product/service

Make getting setup with you so delightful they’ll work you into their life.

Make onboarding fun so they can’t not complete it. Incentivise onboarding completion so there are bonuses for doing it now. Give more bonuses for trying out new features. Be creative about what the rewards are.

Give your product/service a personality so people feel like they’re building a relationship, not just using a tool. Let it talk to them, let it be a ‘person’, let loyalty develop within that relationship. Let it remember their birthday. Let it have a birthday.

People look forward to using you. Stage two of recruitment complete.

I explore this topic in more detail in this week’s issue of The Productoon newsletter. Check it out!

What’s a ‘brand melody’?

(And no, it’s nothing to do with audio!)

But it has everything to do with how a brand ‘sounds’.

Y’see. we remember melodies.
We hear the first few notes = we recognise the tune.

When you ‘hear’ a brand, you know:

- what you’re about to learn - how you’re about to feel - how good it’s going to be

But it’s NOT always a good thing.

It could mean:

- you’ll learn basically nothing - you’re about to feel uncomfortable - it’s not going to be that great

Or it could mean:

- you’ll learn something useful and applicable - you’ll feel great while learning it - it’s going to be top quality stuff

So when you create content, videos, pages, products, anything…

Remember it’s all part of your brand melody.
Just one bad note makes it all sound ‘off’.

What do you want your brand to ‘sound like’?

The only thing worse than getting your niche wrong…

Know what it is?

Having ‘everyone’ as your niche!

When you choose wrong, you:

• Discover how much must change
• Profoundly modify your work for them
• Profoundly modify your marketing for them

Those are all transferrable skills.

But when you choose ‘everyone’, you:

• Build what you think ‘everyone’ wants
• Offer ‘vanilla’ work that nobody wants
• Produce marketing nobody will listen to

When faced between ‘none’ or ‘wrong’

Choose wrong.

In my experience, it’s the path to ‘right’.

My first passive income in 2007,

Was 65,536² of something really weird:

A ‘virtual underwater shopping adventure’:

• Virtual clothes for 20¢/each
• In a 3D underwater playground
• That paid our bills each month

Weird huh? (Cool though imo 😂)

But it taught us big lessons:

• If you learn what people want,
• And also learn what people enjoy,
• Then combine the two: they tell others

This unlocks blue oceans.

Even in saturated markets.

Even when you think there’s no market.
(Like virtual clothes for 20¢/each)

So I don’t think of them as ‘blue ocean strategies’.

I think of them as ‘underwater shopping adventures’.

If it could sell tons of virtual clothes per month…
What can it do for your (more sensible) business!

Y’know your customers can be your salesforce?

That’s suppose to be a good thing, unless…

…you totally misunderstand the assignment like Sedgwick 😏

But seriously:

• Make what customers want
• Make it fun for them to receive
• Make it ‘un-ignorably good’

If there’s ever a recipe for share-ability, it’s that.

Ignoring ad targeting features?
= “Let’s speak to everybody, thus nobody”

Using overly broad ad copy?
“Let’s speak to everybody, thus nobody”

Underestimating ad visuals
= “Let’s just do what others do, thus not stand out”

Not A/B testing ad elements
= “It’s fine to not explore what our people truly want”

Skipping analytics review?
= “It’s fine to not explore what our people truly want”

Ads should be expressions of care and fiduciary responsibility.
Not daddy’s billboards.

Marketing = what you say while in the room.

Branding = what they say when you’re not.

These words often get mixed up in a lot of other things. But that’s really all they boil down to.

Now. Doing the exact same thing as everyone else can mean you’re marketing.

But it definitely means you’re not branding.

Here’s why:

If you say the same thing as everyone else, they won’t say anything about it when you’re gone.

Ergo, there is no branding.

Want to build a brand?

Remember to be different. Your special kind of different.

Because you’re so unique already.

Harness it, apply it to what you say, and let it be remembered.

Congratulations! You’re branding.

Is there a ‘secret’ to irresistible marketing?

Nah. No secret. But there are patterns. 3 of them, in fact.

Since the market’s inundated with content, why not follow them?

After all, you don’t just want to be seen. You want to be unforgettable. So this week, we’re diving into the three key elements that make that happen. They’re not new-fangled things. They’re timeless. Just like you’re about to be:

Learn WHAT they want

Talk to them. Learn their inner-narrative. Decide where in that inner-narrative your work should fit. Then tell their narrative back to them with you included. By giving people what they truly want, you lay the groundwork for engagement and loyalty.

Deliver it HOW they love to receive it

Explore the various channels and formats your audience prefers, whether it’s social media, email newsletters, podcasts, or interactive experiences. Explore what it is they love about the specific content they consume on those channels, so you can show up as one of the ones they love, not one of the ones they skip.

Build quality at that intersection

That intersection of WHAT and HOW is your sub-niche. The amount of high-quality material at that specific intersection is likely very small. So over-cook your response: create materials so remarkable in that intersection that it simple cannot be ignored. Great storytelling. Amazing visuals. Immersive experiences. Think big and own that intersection.

I explore this topic in more detail in this week’s issue of The Productoon newsletter. Check it out!

Sometimes time doesn’t feel real.

If I multitask, time goes fast. Not much gets done.

If I go deep with uninterrupted singletasking, time goes slowly, and lots gets done.

A fast day with little to show for it.

Or a slow day with lots of progress and time left to spare.

We may not literally be bending time.

But it’s the next best thing if you’re creating work that matters.

“Are my competitors better than me?”
“Are they delivering way better product/service than me?”
“Are they smarter marketers or salespeople than me?”
“Or just way smarter in general than me?”

Unlikely.

More likely they’re one of the following…

• Better at bluffing online than you,
• More consistent than you,
• Both.

Listen…

• You’re smart enough. Your competitors srsly aren’t smarter.
• You have the skills. If you don’t, upskill & you’re good.
• Your marketing may not be edutaining enough.
• You may not know your market well enough.
• You may not be consistent enough.

Otherwise, you’re absolutely set.

All problems ahead are solvable.

Don’t want to be a replaceable hype-man?

You need Evergreen Ubiquity.

Being your company’s ‘hype-man’ means…

• Waste time on checklist productivity,
• Go to market on the back-foot,
• Chase people around,
• Discount your stuff,
• Hamster wheel. Yeurgh.

But ‘Evergreen Ubiquity’ draws folks in…

• Very educational, and very entertaining.
• You’re drawn to it for its contribution in your life.
• You’re drawn to it for the personalities you bonded with.
• You’re drawn to it because it’s a small part of your identity.
• You go to it, it doesn’t chase after you.

Things you need for that:

• To know your customers way better than you do now
• To know how they love to consume content/products
• To know what they consider ‘completely un-ignorable’
• To build at the intersection of those things
• To ‘pay the price’ of it taking time to build

Which would you rather be?

Here’s 3 truths across ALL marketing.
Don’t be guilty of missing any of them:

1. People like things that give more, not ask more.
2. People like enjoyable things, not boring things.
3. People like well-made things, not regurgitated trash.

Example: Free samples of tasty, healthy chocolate that makes you lose lbs.

We’re not here to make boring templated asks.
We’re here to make lives empirically better,
safely, and give them a blast doing it.

(P.S. sign me up for that chocolate 🙃)

What is creative success?
Or success as a creative?

Most define it all wrong:

You’ll encounter people online who will make you feel like you should be ‘achieving’ more. ‘Doing’ more. ‘Turning over’ more. Being ‘featured’ more.

More more more.

And they all miss the point entirely.
The point? That which you set out to achieve in the first place.

Some set out to create for fun after the day’s responsibilities are complete.
Some set out to create as a side-income.
Some set out to create full-time.
None are right or wrong.
Only decisions, based on what you want to achieve.

Some want to work on a few projects they feel passionately about.
Some want to work on as many projects as possible, touching them only briefly.
Some want to work only on their own projects.
Some want to work only with clients.
None are right or wrong.
Only decisions, based on what you want to achieve.

Maybe you want to make lots of money from your work.
Maybe enjoying your day has monetary worth of its own.
Maybe you don’t care about how much you make.
None are right or wrong.
Only decisions, based on what you want to achieve.

What is creative success?

Not listening to others, if their noise isn’t serving you.

You succeed when you set a goal for yourself — your goal - and give it your best shot.

We’ll be very proud of you for doing that.

And you should be proud of you too.

I enjoy gardening on the weekends.
It makes focus so much easier during the week.

If you think your time is worth $30/hour, or $50/hour, or $100/hour, or $200/hour…
…Make sure you keep doing things you could pay someone $10–20/hour to do.

Gardening is a great example.

Feel how much effort goes into an hour.
Feel how much your back aches after an hour.
Notice how much sweat is on your brow after an hour.

So when you go and sit at a desk,
Ready to do your creative work,
You’ll appreciate just how much you need to bring to each hour someone paid you.

Is it 2X the sweat? 4X the sweat?

Your focus will never be the same.

Is there anything worse than a relationship ending?

You can probably think of a time that happens. Ughh. Yowch.
Exhausting to think about.

If your product had feelings, it’d probably feel the same way about customers who leave.

And we can’t have that.

There are 3 ways you can use edutainment principles to increase customer retention for your product or service. Your product’s feelings are at stake:

1) Your brand becomes a friend, not just a service provider

When a service provider comes to your house, you offer them a drink then keep out of their way. You want them there only for as long as they’re doing precisely what they need to, then you want them gone.

When a friend comes to your house, you offer them your whole fridge, a place to stay if they need it. You want them there for as long as they want to be there.The difference is profound. We need to give the brand a voice and personality (in both product UX and content) to ‘befriend’ rather than merely ‘transact’. Make signing up easy, valuable, and enjoyable. Make getting started easy, valuable, and enjoyable. Don’t behave like a service provider. Behave like a friend.

2) Edutaining content: another reason to stay engaged

Knowledgebase. FAQs. Documentation. Guides. These all sound boring, don’t they? That impression didn’t come from nowhere. We learned this the hard way over many years: going deeper with a product is kinda boring.

But we want users to go deeper. So use better paradigms. If your people enjoy the comic in their newspaper, use that paradigm. If your people enjoy watching fun videos on YouTube or Netflix in their own time, use that paradigm. If your people like playing games, use that paradigm. Give them WHAT they want to know, HOW they love to consume.

I explore this topic in more detail in this week’s issue of The Productoon newsletter. Check it out!

I was asked this question recently.

Pondered it… and I figure it this way:

Marketing is the voice you share while in the room.

Brand is the voice residue you leave behind in their minds.

Which of these 4 choices is best?

• what does it say about you:

1. Valuable + boring
2. Useless + enjoyable
3. Useless + boring
4. Valuable + enjoyable

Most ads/content are 3.
Most good content is 1.
Most things we look forward to are 2.

The opportunity is clear, isn’t it?

See if you can spot the pattern here:

• Burnout = Focusing on the wrong things
• Imposter syndrome = Focusing on the wrong things
• Money worries at the start = Focusing on the wrong things
• Struggling to sell = Focusing on the wrong things or the wrong people
• Not standing out = Focusing on the wrong things

Protect your focus as though it’s a newborn lamb, friends.

Which is more fickle in your business:

Your target market, or algorithms?

Optimise for those who’ll stick by you.

Different types of leverage:

Solo operator wants to stay solo, so uses as many time-saving tools as possible to maximise leverage while staying solo.

Solo operator wants a small team, so delegates as many SOP-based tasks to others as possible to buy back time.

Solo operator doesn’t want to be solo, so shares the load with others who help figure out the problems together.

None of these are right or wrong.

But if you don’t know your own goals, you can’t mobilise toward them. You’ll risk choosing the wrong forms of leverage just because someone with different goals told you to.

Do you, champ.

How is creating less… actually creating more?

Creating ‘less’ means you create ‘better’.

And ‘better’ is more highly valued by the market.

If you want your work to be more highly valued…

If you want more from your creativity…

Create less.

We’re told we should be making great offers…

But look at your own behaviour. Is this true?

Here’s what you may notice:

OK offers: no claims, average terms, no bonuses.

Good offers: big claims, great terms and great bonuses.

Great offers: no claims, average terms, no bonuses.

Wait… how can OK and Great be the same?

Let’s find the answer in some examples:

Let’s take a designer toy collector.

If their favourite artist launches a new drop, and they like how it looks, they just need to know the time and place. They don’t need extras or refund policies to convince them. They already set aside the funds.

Or when a new iPhone comes out.

Apple fans know that Samsung will give you a powerful phone with a great screen, 7 years of support, a charger, a free tablet, the list goes on. But they’re already set on buying the next iPhone and it hasn’t even been announced yet.

Why didn’t the designer need a ‘killer offer’?

Because the artist took them on a journey they see their role in (purveyor of fine designer goods, first to back a winning horse, the identity of having a keen eye)
Because the artist gave more than they asked for (showing up regularly at micro-events around the world, limited run drops and gifts for many years)
Because the artist made it enjoyable (collecting scarce goods is naturally addictive and enjoyable for many people)

Why didn’t Jobs need a ‘killer offer’?

Because Jobs took them on a journey they see their role in (1984 dystopian future, which he associated with Microsoft)
Because Jobs gave more than he asked for (fought for tech that cared about design, fought labels for uniform 99¢ tracks, fought for tablet segment to not be geeks-only, etc)
Because Jobs made it enjoyable (the marketing, the unboxing, the setup, the UI, the identity)

And that’s just for designer toys and gadgets.

Nobody ‘needs’ these things.

Meanwhile, my social inboxes are exploding with strangers offering to ‘grow my business’ with huge claims, seemingly-great terms and seemingly-great bonuses.

And yet I just delete them.

It’s not the offer that needs to be irresistible.

It’s the brand.

I explore this topic in more detail in this week’s issue of The Productoon newsletter. Check it out!

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.

Nobody wants to sign up for your product.

Nor refer others to sign up too. How do we fix this?

One way is to gamify your onboarding:

Reward behaviour you want repeated
If you want them to do it and leave, optimise for that.
If you want them to enjoy it and share, optimise for that.

Make them look good in front of peers
If you want them to tell nobody, try bribing them.
If you want them to tell everybody, increase their status.

Make it exciting for them to do
If you want them to become churn, optimise based on logic.
If you want them to become fans, optimise for emotion.