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Posted on Wed, 12/28/2011 - 12:59 PM by
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What’s your legacy sentence?
Over the next few weeks, as we head towards 2012, I want to get you thinking about your business in a new/fresh way. I’m going to ask a single question in each post — but I’m warning you, these aren’t slam dunk questions. I’m hopeful that as you ponder my question — it will give you some ideas for making 2012 a break out year for your organization. If nothing else — this exercise should fine tune some of your marketing efforts. What’s your legacy sentence? If a customer/potential buyer was going to describe your business in a single statement, what would it be? Imagine yourself at a networking event and someone says…what do you do? You can either say, “I’m a financial planner” or you could say, “I help women in transition get on firm financial footing.” The first option tells me your profession. The second tells me 1) who you serve, 2) how you add value, 3) what to ask you next (as opposed to just saying, “oh, that’s nice.”) Which one would you want people to repeat as they introduce you to someone new? Whether you’re talking about your personal brand/reputation or your company’s reputation — the rule is the same. You need a single sentence. Mary Stier wrote a blog post about this and she quoted Dan Pink‘s book Drive, saying: “In 1962, Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy. ‘A great man,’ she told him, ‘is a sentence.’ Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was: “He preserved the union and freed slaves.” Franklin Roosevelt’s was ”He lifted us out of the Great Depression and helped us win a world war.” Luce was worried that Kennedy’s attention had been splintered and he wouldn’t be able to solidify the nation’s definition of his presidency. How about you? Are you marketing messages laser pointed to a single sentence or are they scattered all over your features, benefits and copy hyperbole? What single sentence can you use in person, on your marketing materials, in sales proposals, and in all of your sign offs and signatures?  Related posts: MORE NEWS FROM DREWS MARKETING MINUTEContent marketing is important but not free!One of the things that irks me is when I hear a marketing “expert” extoll the virtues of content (or social or digital) marketing and to close the sale — they remind their audience — “and best of all, it’s free.” Are you falling behind when it comes to mobile?I think it is fascinating in a “I don’t get it” sort of way. We all know that mobile is where digital is headed. We’ve all repeated the “by 2015, the #1 way we will access the internet is through our smart phones” and yet… it seems like most people are lollygagging along when it comes to getting onto the mobile train. Going viral = out of your controlIt seems like one of the goals I hear more and more is… “and we want it to go viral.” I translate that to mean — we want a lot of people to see it. 9 Keys to Wicked Awesome Landing PagesNote from Drew: Every once in awhile I like to open up the blog to a guest with a depth of expertise that I think you’ll benefit from. Here’s Jason Well’s take on landing pages. What can you learn from a small town?Turns out, quite a bit. The whole concept of having a marketplace is blurry today. It used to be — you sold stuff to your neighbors because they were the only ones close enough to buy from you. But today the world is one “global small town” where all your customers can talk directly to e... RELATED SMALL BUSINESS NEWSHow and Why I Use LinkedIn Groups to Build My BusinessAs I’ve written here in the past, I think there are solid business reasons for participating in most social networks these days, but if your business sells primarily to other businesses, you must get more active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is not the biggest or most talked about network these day, bu... Is Seek or Shout the Holy Grail for PR, Bloggers and the Disconnected Media?This is a guest post from Yvette Pistorio of Cision. Two shifts have dramatically changed the way media and public relations professionals interact over the past few years: the move away from email in favor of online social channels, and the emergence of versatile, freelance content creators who ar... A Very Short Message to the Shitdiots at @KloutA Very Short Message to the Shitdiots at @Klout originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license. State of IndependenceYears ago I worked in retail on both sides. I started out working for an electrical goods chain store, then moved onto a smaller local one. Why I’m Not Sure Google Will “Nail” the Places-Plus IntegrationDavid Mihm wrote an epic post earlier this week about the eventual merge/integration of Google Places and Google Plus. (It would help if you read that post before continuing on here.) |
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