Ira’s third video on storytelling is by far the most popular. He's describing the positive side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I think this video speaks to: Linear, no-threshold thinking, Minimum Effective Dose, and Cumulative Effect.
The reality is that most of us fear that we aren’t turning our marketing dollars into profit. Not consistently. Not directly. Which is why we have advertising budgets. To limit risk.
I remember a Marshall McLuhan quote of “The Media is the Message.” So I asked Roy, what about McLuhan? The skies darkened, the floors parted, and a fiery hell appeared as Roy screamed.
“The amount of time finding the decent story is more than the amount of time it takes to produce the story… I think that, like, not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.”
A dozen years from now 50% to 60% of transactions will be occurring online. And a surprising advantage will go to stores who sell online but advertise locally.
Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger made money by using a strategy that passed the test of time. At 97 years old, Munger attributes two things to his success: patience and inversion.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Confucius told us that. Or did he? Actually, Fred Barnard made up the saying to promote the use of images and called it “a Chinese proverb so that people would take it seriously.”
When you advertise, you typically make bullet points of what you “want customers to know.” Giving a customer an education so he’ll have no choice but to pick you is as fanciful as it is arrogant.
For every IBM, there are 100 Blockbusters. For every General Motors, there are 100 Polaroids. You can bet the leaders in your category will one day be in trouble. You can catch and pass them.
The chase for instant gratification in marketing often looks like “sales events.” Knowing when to use a sale and when to use other methods to get customers in the door makes all the difference.
The first video covers Ira’s two basic building blocks of storytelling: the Anecdote and the Moment of Reflection. And in advertising terms, these are roughly analogous to Relevance and Credibility.
Business is like writing. You have to find your own style and stick to it. Stop worrying about what the competition is doing. They're all bastards. Get inspired by things they don't understand.
I hate funnels. The thing we call a Marketing Funnel is really just a shorthand to remind us that no customer goes from “I don’t know who you are” to “here, take my money!”
You’re thinking about buying something and an acquaintance says, “Don’t do it; I bought that / hired them and it was a total waste of money. I got screwed.” Generally speaking, we believe them.
I spent a day with two HVAC company owners. Harry the Anxious Hare is closing barely 10% of his online leads. Ted the Radio Tortoise’s telephone team is closing more than 60%.