In a temporary lapse of judgment or perhaps a moment of genius I decided to take two week away from my marketing company that is barely 4 months old. Not surprisingly I spent the first week and five days freaking out about work and wondering if the modest amount of relaxation was worth the costly exclusion.
While the answer to that question is yet to be told – I came to some important conclusions in the 11th hour of vacay about my company and work to date. I need to more than change lanes – I need to entirely change my direction.
The reason why is put simply so far everything I have done has been from a place of desperation rather than inspiration. I have been so scared of not producing results that I have played entirely inside the expected lines.
The problem?
If you want to beat the house you can’t play by the rules!
Otherwise put – the only way to ensure that you produce mediocre results for yourself and clients is by serving up the same spread as everyone else. No one pays attentions to the predicable. No one cares if you can make them “more efficient” or “save them time and money”. Life is far to short to spend it counting pennies and maximizing ROI. No one wants to spend the night chatting to the guy who has nothing more interesting to talk about that their investment portfolio or predictions for the upcoming presidential race.
The irony of course is that if you know me this isn’t the bullshit that I would normally parrot over beers. I am, simply put, a lot on the weird and wild side outside of work but put me in a meeting or on the meter and the most boring version of myself emerges.
The problem?
Doing the expected is predictably uninspiring. Thinking “what should I do” rather than “what do I want to do” or “what would be exciting” is an absolutely surefire way to shut off my brain and all of my creative juices. This is not only bad for me (I end up hating my work) but is bad for my clients who gets “good value for their money” rather than “great results and an awesome experience”.
My saving grace to date is that to date when offering boring solutions – like creating more keyword targeted landing pages to increase traffic – I have delivered the offer with the same degree of enthusiasm that I deliver description of irresponsible adventures and near death experiences!
To be fair the results of diligently executing on best industry practices have been predictably good. The problem is that if you want to beat the house you need more than predictably good odds – you need to get noticed which requires tons of personality and be willing to ruffle more than a few feathers.
So the question stands how does a company obsessed with measuring and maximizing ROI through content marketing talk about and approach the topic without coming across as incredibly boring?
The answer – as it seems is always the case in life – lies in talking points I have found myself endlessly sharing with others about but failing to live by myself – namely people don’t buy “technical advantage” they buy into the result they feel both practically and emotionally.
Put simply people don’t practically and emotionally connect with the feeling of “spending less money”. While great talking about “saving money” requires people already know and feel attached to what they are saving that money for. Likewise no-one is emotionally connected to maximizing return on investment they get excited about the practical day-to-day effects of having more money to spend!
All that to say I am going to stop offering the following boring advice:
“Interrupting buyers patterns requires connecting with a consumer’s perspective.”
And instead start telling clients:
“If you want people to pay attention you have to give them something to laugh, scream or cry about.”
