Newsletters

In marketing, as with many things in life, it can be very easy to get into a routine that can become a rut. You develop some content, maybe schedule some ads, do a few other things, and repeat.

The problem is, to keep marketing effective, you need to change now and then. That’s especially true in the digital age, when the platforms you use, and the search engine your customers use, can change their rules at any moment.

This makes it all the more important to keep an eye on what’s going on and to try some new strategies. If you’re not sure how to get started, here are five options to consider.

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Creating content for your product or service is a non-stop process. Once you start creating blog posts, newsletters, videos, podcasts, etc., you need to keep going because people begin to expect it. And when folks search online for things, Google likes to show the most current results first.

Keeping up with content can feel daunting, which is why it’s important to remember one very important thing.

Repetition is your friend.

I don’t mean putting out the exact same material all the time – that would get old very fast. But you can repeat the same general ideas and themes, which makes it a little easier to keep up. You can also repurpose the same message for different types of content. For example, you could use the same theme for a blog post, social media post, podcast, and video.

Using repetition might still seem counterintuitive, so here are five reasons why it works in marketing.

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I recently started the book The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer, which looks at how and why we believe things. He points out that while we may like to think that we believe things because we’ve carefully considered the evidence and that our decisions about what to believe are based on logic, that’s not what we do.

“What happens is that the facts of the world are filtered by our brains through the colored lenses of worldviews, paradigms, theories, hypotheses, conjectures, hunches, biases,  and prejudices we have accumulated through living. We then sort through the facts and select those that confirm what we already believe and ignore or rationalize away those that contradict our beliefs.” (p. 36)

He makes some excellent points. It’s fascinating to read about how our brains evolved for pattern recognition, and how that in turn has led to the way we form beliefs.

Reading it also got me thinking about beliefs that people have about marketing that aren’t true. Here are 7 common marketing beliefs that you should reconsider (if you haven’t already).

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It’s no secret that the pandemic has changed many things in our lives, including how we buy and sell and raise awareness of our products.

But now, with some degree of normalcy returning, it’s time to take another look at your business and see if you need to change again.

Relating to your customers

You may have lost some customers this past year or struggled to gain new ones, and if so, you’re not alone. This has been a challenge for many businesses, and even though things are changing a bit now, it doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get an influx of new customers.

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This past weekend I spent some time spring cleaning in my house, and it occurred to me that it’s also a good time to do some business clean-up.

You don’t have to spend a long time on it, but getting more organized and refocused will help you move forward to the rest of the year. Here are three tips to get you started.

Weed out your client email list

A good starting point is reviewing your client email list. You may have been collecting names to add to that list over several years, and while it feels good to have lots of people on it, your business isn’t helped by keeping people on the list who aren’t engaging with you.

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Have you seen the “Easy” buttons that Staples sells? These are meant to be a bit of a joke, but they also make a good point.

People like to take the easy route.

And this makes perfect sense. Most of your clients and prospects have a lot going on in their lives, and they don’t want to spend more time or effort on something than they have to.

So if they have a choice between your product and service or another similar one that’s easier to understand or purchase, odds are they’ll go with the other option.

This is why it’s important to make things as simple and straightforward as possible for your clients. Here are a few ways you can do that.

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I recently started a fascinating book called The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention by Simon Baron-Cohen. It talks about how humans have evolved to look for if-and-then patterns, a process that leads to both discoveries and inventions. For example, someone long ago followed this pattern to create the first flute.

If I drill holes in this bone and I blow through a hole then I hear a musical note.

The book also discusses how some people have brains that are more inclined to look for patterns and follow what Baron-Cohen describes as the Systemizing Mechanism. But all people have some systemizing traits, just in greater or lesser degrees.

And I realized that looking for patterns in this way can be helpful for your content. Here’s how.

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For the past several months, people have been making a lot of jokes about how every day of the pandemic feels like Groundhog Day, with everything blending together and feeling like it’s always the same day.

These jokes increased a couple of weeks ago on the actual Groundhog Day, and it got me thinking about how that feeling of sameness also applies to writing content.

After all, when you’ve been writing about the same field for long enough, it can get harder to find new things to write about. You can always revisit something you covered before, this time from a new angle, but it can be hard to make it feel fresh, or for you to get interested in writing about it again.

When that happens, here are three tips that can help.

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Since folks seemed to enjoy last year’s January newsletter with positive environmental stories, I thought I’d make it a tradition. And after 2020, I think we could all use positive news. I’ve put them in three categories – legislation, wildlife and plants, and technology.

Legislation

1. NJ set to implement strongest U.S. ban on single-use plastics

Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey signed a law that will implement the most comprehensive ban on single-use plastics in the country. The law doesn’t go into effect until early 2022, but at that time, it will: ban single-use polystyrene and plastic bags; phase out paper bags at larger grocery stores; and make straws available only by request.

2. Denver approved increased sales tax to address climate change

Denver voters approved Ballot Measure 2A with 64% percent of the vote. The measure increases the sales tax by 25%, with the goal of generating $40 million annually to fund climate-related programs and reduce the city’s emissions.

3. Arizona plans for 100% renewable energy by 2050

State regulators in Arizona approved a plan for the state to move towards renewable energy. The plan calls for 50% of electricity from renewable resources by 2035, and 100% from renewable resources by 2050.

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Of the many, many movie versions of “A Christmas Carol,” my favorite is “The Muppet Christmas Carol,” for two reasons. One is that I’ve been a fan of the Muppets for as long as I can remember. The other is that this is the only version that inspired me to read the book, which is now one of my favorites.

The movie has many wonderful scenes, but one, in particular, stands out when I think about generosity. It’s after Scrooge is transformed, and he runs into two men (in this version, Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew) who had been rebuffed when asking Scrooge for a charitable donation the day before.

Now, though, Scrooge offers a donation, one so large he has to whisper it.

That’s not the generous part, though. The generosity comes when Beaker is inspired to give his own scarf to Scrooge.

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