OPTIMIZING YOUR IMPACT: Information Overload Controversy and Antidote

Optimizing Your Impact with Jeff Schomay

A few months ago I posted an article about eliminating clutter in the presentation of your material. This article received many responses discussing the nature of what is too much, or if there are any exceptions.

On a similar vein, I recently saw a news segment about a new form of branding and advertising: companies turn your personal car into a driving advertisement. Those for the idea argue that this is an effective way to increase your brand awareness and inspire word of mouth advertising, especially since the driver of said car is matched to a company that they commend. On the other side of the argument, people claim that this type of advertising is too close to home, too intrusive, and being so, gives the brand a negative connotation.

So is branding every car on your block going to lead to too much clutter and be ineffective, or is it a great marketing and branding idea? Obviously, this kind of advertising can lead to an overload very quickly and backfire as some people point out. But this is not the core issue to consider.

Even on the roads today, as we are surrounded by too many advertisements, we ignore many of the ads, but we notice specific ones. What is it that makes us notice one over the other? If it is all just clutter, one would think we would filter it all out, but that is not the case. Something about an individual ad can make it jump out through the clutter. What is it?

I maintain that the necessary ingredient for being noticed is and has always been the design of the marketing material itself, with note of its intended format. As I’ve written about before, humans are hard-wired to resonate with certain principles of presentation, and capturing these will make the difference. Whether TV ads, print media, or cars on the freeway, getting your message in front of eyeballs is not enough. It’s the creative content that makes it through to your target audiences’ consciousness. It’s not the format that is the question here, it’s how the material is designed to match the format and human psychology, and a properly designed ad can always be effective, even in the middle of an advertising traffic jam.

For more information, please visit Jeff's TNNW Bio.





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OPTIMIZING YOUR IMPACT: Information Overload Controversy and Antidote

OPTIMIZING YOUR IMPACT: An Interactive Experiement

Optimizing Your Impact with Jeff Schomay

This month I'm trying something different. For almost a year I have been sharing insights on making an impact on your market and with the Holidays coming up I wanted to try an interactive experiment for some real results in the real world.

As I've said in the past, taking something neutral, mundane, or even boring, and finding a clever way to turn it into something fun, unique and interesting is at the core of making a strong impact. Some of the tips I've shared include: "Give 'em what they want, but not in the way they expect it," and "Facts tell, stories sell," and "Connect with something that resonates."

For this experiment we're going to combine two clichéd situations, but give it a twist to end up with something that makes a new kind of impact. Consider the following:

If you're a man, do you wear a tie often? Do you wear your tie when doing business? Has anyone ever said "Nice tie" to you? If you're like many businessmen you already see the cliché. If you are a woman who doesn't wear ties, have you even bought a tie as a gift for... your husband? Your son? Your dad? Your friend? Again, ties have become the biggest cliché gift out there. Guys have way to many ties and new ties don't bring any new reactions besides empty "Nice tie" comments.

Now it's time for the challenge: Can you take the boring old neck tie and change it into something that that is unique, fun, and interesting? Could you use this new tie to get different results and make a stronger impact? Could such a tie be an ice-breaker at a networking event that actually lead to a meaningful relationship? Could such a tie make you more memorable in the minds of people making a decision with who to go with? Could such a tie capture people to pay more attention to you? What do you think?

Here's the interactive part. Part one: I challenge you, the reader, to answer these questions in your mind. Predict the response you could get with such a tie. Part two: Imagine what would turn a tie into something that would turn heads and catch people's attention while still being tasteful. Part three (the most important part): Try it in real life and see what results you get! To help you out with this step, I have used the free online service called Zazzle to quickly upload unique designs for very unique neckties. Check them out at http://www.zazzle.com/jschomay to see theses examples, and note your own response to these designs. I'll bet you will respond stronger to these tie designs than you have to all the ones you have hanging in your closet. You can build from these examples and create your own personalized designs, or you can just order a design you like directly from the site and you'll get a good quality tie with the unique design sent to you in a week (for yourself or as a gift). Remember the challenge now - wear one of these ties to your normal interactions in life and business and see what reaction you get and if you do indeed make a stronger impact, and how that affects your goals. And the final part of the interactive experiment is to report your experience in the comments section below! I'll include a tally and analysis of the results in next month's column.

Good luck, happy holidays, and have fun with this experiment!

For more information, please visit Jeff's TNNW Bio.

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OPTIMIZING YOUR IMPACT: An Interactive Experiement

OPTIMIZING YOUR IMPACT: Newton’s Third Law of Motion Applied to Marketing

Optimizing Your Impact with Jeff Schomay

“Interaction makes all the ____________.”

Did you fill in the blank? Did you say difference? If so, we’ve created an action/ reaction event, the theory being you now have a “vested interest” to read more to see what you got yourself into, right? Or does it really make any difference?

Action <-> Reaction. You can’t argue with Newton’s third law. Anything you do (including doing nothing) is an action. Anyone who comes in contact with that action (or lack thereof) will have a reaction (again, possible to do nothing). It’s just physics, and it happens constantly. The key is to use this universal law to achieve the reactions you desire. And the only way to do that is to create the proper initiating actions. But how?

As with everything in the “Consumer Persuasion Industry,” it all comes down human psychology. In the example above, we almost can’t help completing the sentence. The human mind craves completion, balance, and closure, and is wired to attempt to provide those qualities anywhere they are missing. While a simple fill-in-the-blank trick may not seem to have much sway over your potential customers, consider the same principle with a most sophisticated approach. I’ll explain with an example:

A friend of mine recently fell victim to a well-planned burglary. The robbers had observed his daily schedule, picked a time when he was out, cracked the code to the front security doors of the apartment complex, broken into the control room and stolen the security tapes and turned off the power to his unit, and then entered his apartment. He returned to find his door splintered and kicked in, and his belongings fully trashed.

Ok, I’ll stop there. The point is, due to our natural sense of empathy and our desire for closure, you may be asking “What happened next?” which is exactly the reaction I was hoping to achieve. Imagine creating a similar story all about the troubles your product or service solves that your potential customers could empathize with. You don’t have to get them to buy from you right away, you just need to get them to ask “What happens next?” That’s when you know they’ve got a “vested interest,” aka they are a qualified lead. Action reaction.

Another instance of getting the most out of Newton’s law is our human sense of burning curiosity. If there’s something I can push, pull, slide, etc, I’ll probably do it. That’s why museums need to put up so many “Please Do Not Touch” signs. That’s why people “kick the tires” of a new car they are considering buying – seriously, how much useful information does kicking the tires give you? It’s just an expression of our need to interact with something as a part of our decision making process.

So, now that you know that, create the opportunities for your potential customers to react to, and you’ll pull them closer to your intended results by using the laws of nature to your benefit. You don’t even have to try to convince anyone anything, they’ll complete the reaction side of the equation all on their ____.


Good luck and Good Marketing.

Jeff Schomay

--------------------------------------------------------
Written by Jeff Schomay
Inspire Your Buyer - Branding and Marketing
Maximize Your Impact. Get Better Results.
www.Inspire-Your-Buyer.com
jeff@inspire-your-buyer.com
(c) 2009
Jeff Schomay is an expert brander/ marketer, and a professional film writer/ director.

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OPTIMIZING YOUR IMPACT: Newton’s Third Law of Motion Applied to Marketing

OPTIMIZING YOUR IMPACT: Is Marketing Obsolete?

Optimizing Your Impact with Jeff Schomay

“Marketing.”

How do you define that word? Obviously everyone knows what it means, but it seems marketing ain’t what it used to be. In the good old days you go out, buy your advertising, and wait to see who comes. Now that we have an internet full of eager consumers, a company can send out millions of directly targeted interactive advertisements with an auto-generated response system and an automated purchasing and cross-selling system with a built-in remunerative affiliate sales program for less cost than what it takes to send out 100 postcards in the mail.

But that’s not all, the things that worked just a year ago – affiliate programs, “squeeze pages”, fancy websites with e-commerce technology – are being largely ignored today, thanks to the proliferation of online social networking platforms. I’ve heard that YouTube broadcasts more user-generated content in one year than all of the TV and radio stations have sent out combined since they day they were invented. People are literally canceling the newspaper and turning off the TV and firing up their web-browsers and aggregate news readers (RSS). And the advertisers who used to use radio, TV, magazines, and newspapers are noticing and hurting.



So again the question – is marketing as we know it obsolete?

To answer, we need to step back and look at what marketing really is. My simple definition: Letting people know you have something to sell. That’s all marketing is; radio, TV, print, direct mail, internet, social networks, sky-writing, etc. are all just tools used for letting people know you have something to sell. And that means the principles are the same for each tool, and it means you better have a strong grasp on the principles if you want to use the tools effectively and make an impact.



Let’s step through the principles quickly.

First off, you can’t market anything if you don’t have anything to sell. What are you selling? Careful, that’s a trick question. A chiropractor doesn’t sell spinal adjustments, he sells comfort. Coke doesn’t sell a flavored, carbonated beverage, they sell refreshment. And the ipod isn’t a fancy portable music player, it’s a machine that provides a soundtrack to your life.

The lesson: don’t ask what you are selling, ask what your market is buying and why they would buy it from you. Come from their perspective and you’ll know what to sell them.



Now that you know what you are selling, how will you market it? I think there are only two things you need to accomplish in marketing:

• Get your message in front of as many eyes as possible, and
• Get those eyes to pay attention to your message

If you have the best message in the world, but no one sees it, is it marketing?

Where should you start? There are tons of places to market:

· Face to face (direct presentation, networking, word of mouth, etc.)

· Advertising through media (TV, radio, magazine, newspaper, etc.)

· Online advertising (web presence, social networking, “ezines’, pay-per-click, etc.)

· Direct mail (both physical and e-mail)

· Outdoor (billboards, signs, transportation, venue, sky-writing, etc.)

· Awareness and information (business cards, flyers, brochures, etc)

· Sponsorship, endorsement, associate and affiliate

· More? (Hire bald people to let you write your message on the back of their head and tell them to ride the bus all over town?)

Ultimately, the areas you use will depend on who you want to reach and what is most fitting, and also fits into an overall cohesive strategy of hitting your target audience from multiple arenas with the same message (they say you have to hear something up to 7 times before you take action, not to mention different people learn in different ways).



If your message reaches a million people, but no one listens, is it really marketing?

Now for the part most people forget to do – make a message that sings! Make it snap, make is sizzle. Make an impact. Figure out how to best present what you are really selling (remember?) so that it:

· Gets noticed

· Gets people’s interest/draws them in

· Gets the results/resonse you want

This is easier said than done and a professional can really shine here, but the basic idea is to approach everything from the buyer’s point of view and what’s in it for them, catch them with something that snaps and back it up with value, and always ask “how can I say this better?” Using visuals, making it fun, making it interactive, making it clear, concise, and interesting will always help “inspire your buyer.” It’s an art and a craft, and it’s too important to skimp on, because marketing that people don’t listen to is marketing that didn’t work.



So… what does all of this mean?

No, marketing is not obsolete. Some of the tools work better than others, but no matter what approach you have, analyze which tools will work best for what you want to achieve, use them to get in front of eyeballs, and most importantly (ever increasingly more so with the human-driven nature of web 2.0) present your message in the most interesting, valuable, and intriguing way to make an impact!



Good luck and good marketing,



Jeff Schomay



--------------------------------------------------------

Written by Jeff Schomay

Inspire Your Buyer - Branding and Marketing

Optimize Your Impact. Get Better Results.

www.Inspire-Your-Buyer.com

jeff@inspire-your-buyer.com

(c) 2009

Jeff Schomay is an expert brander and marketer and a professional film writer and director.

___________________________________________________________

Posted to THE NATIONAL NETWORKER. To subscribe for your free newsletter, go to www.TheNationalNetworker.com. For the complete National Networker Relationship Capital Toolkit and a free, continuous RSS feed (available either by traditional RSS or by direct email), go to: http://thenationalnetworkerweblog.blogspot.com. You are also invited to click our buttons:


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OPTIMIZING YOUR IMPACT: Is Marketing Obsolete?