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Craig Barnes on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 |
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I subscribe to blogs that offer practical insight and inspiration. As a rule I don’t re-blog about what I’ve read, but there’s exception to every rule. Right?
Today, Seth Godin’s blog about “Looking for Yes” was very insightful and inspirational.
Seth contrasts experiences at the post office and FedEx. It’s about the importance of looking for a “yes.” You know, those encounters where someone tells you “no”, what you want is not possible versus those where you hear, “yes”, we can get that done for you.
It made me think about the impact a “yes” can have to boost your marketing ROI. If the common denominator of a customer or prospect interaction is “yes”, it creates incredible leverage for establishing a lasting relationship.
What a mistake it is when employees think of a prospect or customer encounter as an interruption of their work. The customer is the reason for the work.
And as we persevere in this economy, I can’t think of a better way to improve business than finding a way to say, “yes.”
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Craig Barnes on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 |
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In my last post I talked about Seth Godin’s new book, Tribes. We Need You to Lead Us. Yesterday’s historic election of Barack Obama was the embodiment of Godin’s premise that, “The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.”
One needed only to look at the scene in Grant Park and from other locations around the country to see first-hand how people followed.
In today’s Ad Age, they summarized it this way: “Nov. 4, 2008, will go down in history as the biggest day ever in the history of marketing. Take a relatively unknown man. Younger than all of his opponents. Black. With a bad-sounding name. Consider his first opponent: the best-known woman in America, connected to one of the most successful politicians in history. Then consider his second opponent: a well-known war hero with a long, distinguished record as a U.S. senator. It didn’t matter. Barack Obama had a better marketing strategy than either of them. “Change.”
The lesson here for all marketers is that capturing the “leadership” position in a market when it is seemingly impossible is very much possible. It takes vision, a willingness to form and shape opinion, and to have a plan others follow willingly and enlist others to do the same.
All politics aside, it was the ultimate case study for achieving stratospheric marketing ROI, and an historic occasion that we can and should learn from.
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Craig Barnes on Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 |
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In his new book, Tribes. We Need You to Lead Us, Seth Godin makes the point that traditional barriers to leading a movement … a market … a “tribe” have been erased because of the Internet. Geography, cost, time are all non-factors because of the Internet’s capacity to connect us with a few or vast amount of people who have a similar passion, point of view or just something in common.
But, the Internet cannot provide leadership, that is still up to us as individuals. Read the rest of this entry »
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Craig Barnes on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 |
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Try this experiment. Count the number of messages you are exposed to from the time you get up in the morning until the time you arrive at work. I counted one morning last week and the number surprised me. Read the rest of this entry »
