If you see someone pointing up at the sky and a crowd gathering, would you continue on your way without looking up? Not likely. It's human nature to look because everyone else is looking. It's human nature to buy what everyone else is buying. It's human nature to like what everyone else likes. New Marketing -- creating stories and spreading them -- accounts for human nature. New Marketing tactics allow people to do what comes naturally.
If yours is truly the Superman of its kind of offers, the best in the world, people will point and say in effect, Look...Up in the sky! It only takes one pointer to begin to attract a crowd, and attracting a crowd, even if it's a small one, is what you need these days to grow and prosper. New Marketing tactics can help you work the crowd, but you need pointers to attract one to begin with.
I've written and said it several different ways for the past couple of years: There are no companies offering supply chain products or services that have managed to attract a crowd. That would be for lack of pointers, because nothing amazing is happening. Nothing amazing is happening because across the board it's business as usual with marketing to match. Supply chain company executives are focused on creating and marketing things so that people would want them. But if instead they focused on creating and marketing things because people would want them, now that would be amazing. And more amazing still would be if they had marketing to match.
"First one in, doing it right, wins. C'mon in, the water's fine," invites Seth Godin in his latest bestseller Meatball Sundae. The end of the book seems to be directed right at supply chain company execs. "You can't imagine coming to work tomorrow trying to transform your [business] into an organization that makes stories. You can't imagine that your hard-nosed business-to-business customer, the guy in the short-sleeved shirt who does $3 million in billings with your distributorship, is going to fall for this nonsense.
"If that's you, I've failed. I'm hoping that just a few readers find themselves in your shoes, and I'm going to give it one last shot before I leave you alone.
"It's not nonsense.
"In 2006, Pfizer launched a prescription weight-loss drug. For dogs. [Fat dogs] are fat because the hard-nosed, short-sleeved business-to-business buyer you are so certain is hyper-rational is actually overfeeding his dog every single day and is now about to buy medicine so the dog will eat less.
"Human beings, left to their own devices, don't act like robots or rational computers. We don't all do the same things, and we don't do things for the same reasons. Given enough choices, we'll make choices. Not always the one the spreadsheet says -- just the one that feels right to us. Given an authentic story that matches our worldview, we'll believe it. And given the chance to speak up, we'll do that -- loudly and often."
You need to find a proverbial phone booth, cram all your executives into it, and change your organization into one that can give rise to the Superman of offers. Then it's up to pointers. The hard-nosed, short-sleeved business-to-business buyer has all the makings of one. He's a human being, after all. Human beings notice things that are amazing. Human beings notice other people noticing things that are amazing. Human beings crowd around when people are noticing amazing things. You, then, have the envious job of working that crowd.
Don't ask or pay pointers to point, or the crowd will surely turn on you and things will get ugly. Pointers are just doing what comes naturally. They don't necessarily care about you, and certainly they don't expect anything from you. The only thing you need to worry about is getting an amazing thing aloft and then working the crowd that gathers. The quickest way to disperse the crowd that pointers have attracted is to use Old Marketing tactics (annoying interruptions, hijacked conversations...). The best way to manage the crowd is to use New Marketing tactics (permission-based contact, enabled conversations...). But if you don't understand how important pointers are to your success, then for sure you won't be enjoying any.
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