Mind Readings: Dedication and Consistency

In today's mind readings, a bit of a scolding almost of uh about dedication and consistency. I got an email newsletter today from uh a company I'd done business with in the past. And I hadn't gotten an email newsletter from them in a while. It'd been uh at least a couple of months, if not more. And you could tell that they just you know tossed it out there.

And there was a couple of uh news articles, you know, summarized and uh uh an opening greeting from some salesperson, and then of course a big old sales pitch in the middle of it. And it bugged me. It bugged me because when you are inconsistent in your marketing, and when you are undisciplined in your marketing, you're saying you're implying a whole bunch of things that you probably don't want to be implying in your marketing. Number one, your lack of consistency shows a lack of dedication, right? That shows a lack of discipline internally in your marketing team.

And as with all indicators, it's one of those things that makes you question well if the company can't even send out its newsletter on time on a regular basis, uh, if it's just sort of an afterthought, why would I want to do business with them? Because maybe that maybe all their stuff is like that. Maybe they're they're just uh a crap show everywhere within their companies, right? So that's one thing that that lack of consistency and that lack of discipline in their marketing may be indicative of bigger problems, right? It's like uh going out on a on a first date with somebody and they just start stealing all the food off your plate.

Like, is this going to be a thing? Is this an indicator of a lack of boundaries that that could be concerning? But the bigger thing that bugs me is that this email, both the lack of consistency and the content in it, shows a lack of respect to the audience. Shows a lack of uh giving value to the audience. The intent of this company and the intent of the marketing team of this company is very, very clear.

They are like that one friend who only reaches out to you when they need something, right? Otherwise, you never hear from that friend. Uh and you're like, them again. When you're not consistent when you're marketing and when you're not delivering value with your marketing, you're implicitly saying that your audience only matters to you when you need something from them, right? We all we gotta hit our sales numbers for the quarter, send out some emails, right?

Or our our our numbers are down this month, send out some emails. Instead of saying we need to provide value to the people who have consented, who have who have volunteered to get stuff from us, we need to keep providing them value and a lot of it over time, consistently in a dedicated way, so that they understand we value them, so that they understand we think highly of them, that we respect them. And when you do that, and when you show that respect to your audience and give them value and don't ask for as much back as uh in terms of value as you give, then asking is easier, right? It's much easier to ask for something when not to say that your relationship with the audience should be transactional, but if you've been giving value for 52 weeks and you have a big ask every 13th week, it's still kind of a 12 to 1 ratio, right? Of you're you're giving, you're giving, you're giving, you're giving.

Can we ask for something? You're giving, you're giving, you're giving, you're giving, can we ask for something? Um that's the best way to make sure that your audience feels respected, feels valued, understands the value you provide, wants you in their inbox, or in their social media channel or the YouTube channel, or wherever. It doesn't matter, it's all it's all agnostic. But when you give way more than you take, and when you give consistently, you are saying to the audience, this is a mutually beneficial relationship.

This is this helps us both. If they don't, um, you may need to check the value proposition of what you're asking for because if you're asking for a whole bunch of money and you haven't given equivalent value, there may be a disparity in the exchange of value there. But especially when it comes to email marketing, create that discipline internally. Email marketing, if you're if you're doing it well, email marketing should not be an afterthought. It should not be just something to check off on the weekly checklist of things to do.

It should be something that you're giving to somebody. My friend Ann Hanley says email newsletters are distorted by marketers, right? Marketers focus so much on the news part and not enough on the letter part. And I don't know about you, but most of the time when I do get letters from people, they're written to me, right? Whether it's in an email or a paper or what have you.

And when you approach your email marketing with that same lens, that same perspective, and you're writing a letter to your friends, essentially, every week, every month, whatever, give value in the same way that you would give value to in a letter you would actually write to your friends. And yes, you can have some news in there too. Hey, we've got this new thing on sale. That's fine as long as it's not the majority of the content, right? The content puts the audience member first and gives them the value that they expect and earns you a place in their brain so that when they have a need, they know who to call.

Don't be like this other company that is the desperate friend. Desperate acquaintance, really, because at that point that person's not a friend. Don't be the desperate acquaintance. Don't be the stalkery acquaintance. It's like just only shows up when they need something.

It's not a good look for a person, and it's definitely not a good look for your brand. Thanks for watching.