Take advantage of others’ mistakes

And I’m all for that, except that we can end up arriving at the same idea at the same time, because ideas travel so quickly around the Internet. What we can miss is the opportunity that arises from the ashes of how our competitors often do things badly.

Their idea may be very creative but what often happens is that they communicate it once via email, PR and social media and then stop. They review the stats from all the activity, judge whether it worked or not, take the ‘leads’ and then move onto the next idea.

Our opportunity lies in their lack of persistence. They way I see it is, you may get bored quickly by your own idea, because you are looking at it many times and perhaps thinking that the audience will have the same reaction. They won’t. The truth is more complicated; what happens is that they miss one, two or all of your initial communications.

Or they see one but don’t read it.

Or they open but don’t read.

Or they read but then forget. And so on.

What can look like multiple interactions on your marketing automation tool may actually add up to nothing, other than a compelling reason to keep up the comms, but most companies give up at this point. Now, you can tell me you don’t want pester people, however no one has ever told me that I send them too many emails, so that can’t work as an excuse.

The simple truth is, your prospects are like you: busy, distracted, forgetful and inundated through every channels by a barrage of stuff.

Sure, you don’t want your elegant, perfectly crafted, compelling message to get dirty in amongst all the other stuff in people’s inboxes, but you have to play the game and fight for attention. The trick is do both; send out something that grabs their interest, but recognises that you need to keep getting in their faces. Converse with them in every channel and continuously respond to every piece of feedback, no matter how superficial.