There comes a moment in your life when you decide to upgrade your store's layout. You change the flooring, improve lighting, install a state-of-the-art 5.1 surround sound system, and choose the most modern color palette to compose the new look of the environment in relation to the products you offer. After more than 2 months of arranging everything, you finish and feel proud of all the hard (and expensive) work that resulted in the environment of your dreams.
Then you sit down and simply wait for people to visit you to see (and recognize) all that work and, of course, to buy your products. What happens? Nobody comes!
Then you realize that doing all this and not inviting anyone was money, time, and effort that did not bring the expected results. It's not yet lost money because the upgrade still has the potential to generate the results you want, but you need to think about the invitation.
Now, imagine the scene... You go to a quick print shop and make a small business card with a white background, simply written: "I have a new look, come visit me and buy my products." What happens? Very few people show up. First, you need to learn that "the medium is the message," as Marshall McLuhan said. Therefore, a message sent in the wrong medium will never be as successful as it could be. Second, you need to learn that wording is everything. And when not adequately crafted, it can reduce your sales success to nothing.
In another scenario, you print beautiful letters with golden and modern details, with the following message: "We are inaugurating the new look of our store, and you are part of a select group of customers to participate in our opening event. Confirm your presence on the QR Code below..." This makes it clear that your invitation has to be at the level that your store offers.
You need to know exactly who to send the invitation to, what they would like to read in an invitation, and what would motivate them to attend your event. Oh, don't forget to ask them what they thought at the end of the event... That's marketing.
On the other hand, it would be pointless to send the invitation to the right people, with the words they want to see, if your store is messy, dirty, and poorly lit, don't you agree? How you present yourself and appear is responsible for the first impact. And a person needs less than 3 seconds to judge your store based on appearance, organization, and experiences it provides. That's communication.
This is a metaphor that I always mention in my meetings with clients and prospects because it illustrates the dependence on a strategy that harmonizes communication and marketing. It may seem obvious, but notice that despite describing a physical store in my metaphor, it is exactly the same for the digital world. And this is where the obvious falls apart. In the digital realm, it seems that people forget about this.
The mess is information in the wrong places (poor user experience), the dirt is visual pollution caused by graphic elements in an unplanned manner, and finally, the lack of lighting could be seen as the difficulty of displaying your products/services in a way that truly clarifies, stands out, catches attention, and, above all, generates desire to purchase for the target audience.
I see much more often than I would like (and increasingly), entrepreneurs using "ready-made solutions," ready templates, thinking that anyone can do the writing, not paying attention to details that, for me, are obvious, but they tend to "go anyway." By saving on strategy and execution with qualified professionals and agencies, the company pays the most expensive price of all: time. And time is money, right?!
And here goes one of the biggest insights hidden from the inattentive... Beyond money, when you pay in time, something else is also affected... It is very likely that some competitor has taken advantage of the time you wasted trying to save. And there you lost as well: market share. Yes, my friends, we have to remember that the market size is always finite. And that changes everything!
Three valuable lessons should be absorbed in this text:
One depends on the other and are equally important. It's no use having a good strategy and poor execution (customer frustration), just as it's useless to have excellent execution, but no one knows it exists (entrepreneur frustration).
If you've read this far, it's because you certainly care about the subject and are studying to make better decisions. Congratulations! You're already doing something that most people don't do!
And if you're in the right moment, know that I help brilliant entrepreneurs with great ideas attract the attention and desire of the target audience to engage and buy their solutions, solving marketing and communication problems with intelligence and creativity. 😎
Images: Unsplash
