Instead of outthinking the competition…
it's worth trying to outlove them.
Everyone is working hard on the thinking part, but few of your competitors worry about the art and generosity and caring part.
The wishing/doing gap
It would be great to be picked, to win the random lottery, to have a dream come true.
But when we rely on a wish to get where we want to go, we often sacrifice the effort that might make it more likely that we get what we actually need. Waiting for the prince to show up is a waste of valuable time, and the waiting distracts us from and devalues the hard work we might be doing instead.
If you can influence the outcome, do the work.
If you can't influence the outcome, ignore the possibility. It's merely a distraction.
How to downgrade
Sometimes, your organization will be tempted (or forced) to offer some of your customers less than they’ve received in the past. Perhaps you need to close a local store so you can afford to open a better one a few miles away. Or reroute a bus line to serve more customers, while inconveniencing a few. Or maybe you want to replace a perfectly good free mapping application with a new, defective one so you can score points against your hometown rival in your bid for mobile domination.
A few things to keep in mind:
1. When possible, don’t downgrade. People are way more focused on what you take away than what you give them. Many times, particularly with software, it’s pretty easy to support old (apparently useless) features that a few rabid (equals profitable, loyal and loud) customers really depend on.
2. When it’s not possible to avoid a downgrade, provide a bridge or alternatives, and mark them clearly and discount them heavily. In the case of Apple maps on the new iphone, it would have been really easy to include links or even pre-installed apps for other mapping software. It’s sort of silly to make the Lightning adapter a profit center. When you cancel the all you can eat buffet, be generous with the gift cards given to your best customers.
3. If you can’t build a bridge, own up. Make it clear, and apologize. Not after an outcry, but before it even happens. The genius Francois at the Grand Central Apple store insisted that my hassles with the Music Match feature in iTunes were merely my "opinion," and all the steps I had to go through to move the audio books I’m reviewing from one device to another were in fact good things. It's silly to expect your customers to care about your corporate priorities or to enjoy your corporate-speak. If you've taken something away from them, point it out, admit it and try to earn a chance to delight them again tomorrow.
Apologizing to your best users is significantly more productive than blaming them for liking what you used to do.
Coming from a loud place
Despite your instincts, almost all big change, almost all important organizations, almost all the stuff that matters doesn't get launched big, from the loud place, on the front page of the paper or on the Super Bowl or on a popular blog.
No, the stuff that changes everything starts on the fringe, captures the imagination of a dozen, who bring along colleagues or friends, and then it's a hundred and then…
Make whatever list you want: Twitter, Kiva, 500px, Pure Food and Wine, Jiro… They all became hits without being anointed by the loud folks first.
Instead of cajoling your way into the spotlight, consider investing in the experience first.
Overstimulated
Time to pay attention to the Weber-Fechner Law.
It's easier to tell the difference between two bags of flour that are three ounces apart in weight when one weighs a pound, than it is to tell the difference between two bags that are three ounces apart when one weighs twenty pounds.
It's easier to tell the difference between two flashlights that are 6 lumens apart when one is just 2 lumens bright than it is to tell them apart when one is 200 lumens.
The more stimulus you're getting (light, sound, pressure, delight, sadness) the less easily you can notice a small change. That seems obvious, but it's worth saying.
If you're entering a market filled with loudness, it's harder to be noticed, even if the incremental benefit you offer seems large to you. If you're trying to delight existing customers, the more delighted they already are, the more new delight you need to offer to turn heads.
One more reason to seek out those that are both interested and underserved.
Stepwise progress
Yesterday, Squidoo reached one of its goals: We're now ranked #50 among all US sites in traffic. Ahead of the New York Times and Apple.
There are more than four million pages on Squidoo, from a recipe for candied chickpeas to an entire magazine about Halloween. All built by our talented members.
The thing is, our tiny team grew this way with intent. Stepwise progress is a choice, and it means you invest, measure and focus your energy differently. It can be frustrating, because shortcuts get ever more tempting along the way.
With 50,000,000 unique visitors a month, our platform seems to be hitting its stride. A typical overnight success that took seven years to build. Thanks to the squids and to everyone who helped us get this far.
PS check out my friend Bernadette's new book… another example of generous, stepwise audience building
The simplest customer service frustration question of all
"Why isn't this as important to you as it is to me?"
“If you knew what I know…”
"you'd see it was obvious."
This is the foundation of the rational pitch, of the fact-based marketing campaign.
Two challenges:
1. Can you teach us what you know?
and
2. Once we know what you know, will we actually think it's obvious, or is this also a matter of belief or worldview?
It's a very different thing to say, "If you believe what I believe, then this path would be obvious…" because getting someone to share your beliefs is far more difficult than getting them to know what you know.
Obvious is a good place to be if you can get there.
From general to specific (or vice versa)
There's no doubt that it's easier to start an organization (or a project) around specific.
The more specific the better. When you have a handful of ideal potential clients and a solution that is customized and perfect for them, it's far easier to get started than when you offer everything to everyone.
Not only that, but the specific makes it easier to be remarkable, to overdeliver and to create conversations, because you know precisely what will delight the user.
Once you master your specific, you can do the work to become general, because you have cash flow and reputation and experience.
The flipside of this is interesting: if you have somehow, against all odds, managed to succeed in the general, the move to specific is almost effortless. If you can change your reflex action that consistently pushes you to mass, the market you've chosen will embrace the fact that you, the general one, are now truly focused on them, the specifics.
Truth and consequences
There's a huge chasm in most markets: People who want to be isolated from the consequences of their actions, and those that are focused (sometimes too much) on those consequences.
For years, Paula Dean sold cooking shows to an audience that refused to care about what would happen if they regularly ate what she cooked.
Rep. Anthony Weiner wasn't open to buying warnings about what would happen to his photos and tweets.
At the same time, there's the audience of new moms that are overeager to baby-proof their home (just in case), the conscientious recycler who doesn't want to know about the actual costs of picking up that bin out front, and the passionate teacher who sacrifices every day so his students can thrive a decade from now.
If you are selling tomorrow, be very careful not to pitch people who are only interested in buying things that are about today. It's virtually impossible to sell financial planning or safety or the long-term impacts of the environment to a consumer or a voter who is relentlessly focused on what might be fun right now.
Before a marketer or organization can sell something that works in the future, she must sell the market on the very notion that the future matters. The cultural schism is deep, and it's not clear that simple marketing techniques are going to do much to change it.