Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Saturday, November 17, 2012
What, Why,Who!
I want marketing and messaging to answer four simple questions. If you want to get someone to do something - donate money, buy your product, start exercising - you need to have a good feedback to four questions. People want to know:
1. Why me?
Prove your personal revelance. Why should people care about your message? They need to connect to you on an emotional level. If your writing tends to be more like an academic argument than a true-life story aimed at touching the heart, it’s time to break out of your old habits and put the heart and soul of your work back into every word you write.
2. What For?
If people take the action you request, what will happen? If you're a nonprofit, where exactly is a donor's money going? What will they get in return for their donation - personally and in terms of your programs? If you're a company, what benefit will people get from your product? How will it make a life better? The more specific and tangible, the better.
There is plenty of research on why this approach is important; people want to understand your Cause.
Why Now?
Urgency and immediacy in your message, is the glue hod success. Why should someone act now as opposed to tomorrow? What is at stake right now?
Who says?
The messenger is often as important as the message. People tend to do what other people are doing. Tap into that by using trustworthy messengers. People say friends and family are the most influential, so also think about how you can get your supporters to speak for you among their own circles of influence.
Before you give that next presentation, send that new appeal or make that sales pitch, make sure it contains the answers to these four questions. You'll have much more success - which is the entire point of the message.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
What Makes The Difference !
1. The Road Not Taken. Frost, Robert. 1920. Mountain Interval:
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
Sunday, May 20, 2012
4M Baby Boomers Can't Retire
4 million Baby Boomers a year are turning 50
and they will not be able to afford to
retire.
That’s a pretty scary statistic, isn’t it?
One can easily see a “boom” in 1946, when births
went from 2.8 to 3.4 million. The end of the
boom is not as clear, however. Perhaps that
delineation was marked when annual births
dropped below 4 million (1964).
“Every 7 Seconds” another Baby Boomer turns
50 – every 7 seconds.
Whew! Is that possible? Well, you don’t have to
be a math major to check it out.
Let’s look at 50 years ago – 1959 – when
4,097,000 Boomers were born. Now, I suppose that
some of them have not made it this far, so let’s
round it down to 4,000,000. (That’s just my
estimate, but it is close enough for my
purposes here.)
So, a bit more than 4,000,000 will turn 50 in
2012 with over 20 million turning 50 over
the last five years alone.
Let’s see how that breaks down:
per year: 4,000,000
per day (4.0 mil / 365): 10,958
per hour (10.6 k / 24): 456
per minute (456 / 60): 7.1
And 7.1 per minute amounts to one every 8.5
seconds.
If you use 1957 as your base number, when
4,300,000 million boomers were born, that’s
a heck of a number!
During the Baby Boomer years, 1946-1964 (inclusive),
75.8 million Americans were born. The ratio of
males to females has stayed relatively constant.
There were approximately 1.05 male births for
every one female birth.
The middle class and baby boomers are beginning
to realize that corporations and governments
will not be here to save them in the end.
If you are like most people, you are likely
already affected by one, two, or even three
of these massive converging trends. At a
minimum, you likely know someone who is
affected.
People cannot afford to retire. In March 2012
Canada increased the age of retirement
to 67.
Now… The good news.
These 4 trends are actually working toward a
5th, ‘Perfect Storm’ kind of trend.
and they will not be able to afford to
retire.
That’s a pretty scary statistic, isn’t it?
One can easily see a “boom” in 1946, when births
went from 2.8 to 3.4 million. The end of the
boom is not as clear, however. Perhaps that
delineation was marked when annual births
dropped below 4 million (1964).
“Every 7 Seconds” another Baby Boomer turns
50 – every 7 seconds.
Whew! Is that possible? Well, you don’t have to
be a math major to check it out.
Let’s look at 50 years ago – 1959 – when
4,097,000 Boomers were born. Now, I suppose that
some of them have not made it this far, so let’s
round it down to 4,000,000. (That’s just my
estimate, but it is close enough for my
purposes here.)
So, a bit more than 4,000,000 will turn 50 in
2012 with over 20 million turning 50 over
the last five years alone.
Let’s see how that breaks down:
per year: 4,000,000
per day (4.0 mil / 365): 10,958
per hour (10.6 k / 24): 456
per minute (456 / 60): 7.1
And 7.1 per minute amounts to one every 8.5
seconds.
If you use 1957 as your base number, when
4,300,000 million boomers were born, that’s
a heck of a number!
During the Baby Boomer years, 1946-1964 (inclusive),
75.8 million Americans were born. The ratio of
males to females has stayed relatively constant.
There were approximately 1.05 male births for
every one female birth.
The middle class and baby boomers are beginning
to realize that corporations and governments
will not be here to save them in the end.
If you are like most people, you are likely
already affected by one, two, or even three
of these massive converging trends. At a
minimum, you likely know someone who is
affected.
People cannot afford to retire. In March 2012
Canada increased the age of retirement
to 67.
Now… The good news.
These 4 trends are actually working toward a
5th, ‘Perfect Storm’ kind of trend.
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