HWW #25 – “Navy Wants to Use Dolphins, Sea Lions to Defend Our Shores”

Hi Folks,

Welcome back to the Hardworking Words newsletter.

In this month’s issue, you’ll learn
* Why Dolphins and Sea Lions are real Americans.
*A head-bobbing truth about marketing your business.
*Why it’s your right, your privilege and your responsibility to
market your quality goods and services as aggressively and
effectively as you can.

I was out this morning stretching my legs when I saw this headline
on the front of the Seattle Times:

“Navy Wants to Use Dolphins, Sea Lions to Defend Our Shores”

Which, of course, made me stop in my tracks, do a little twist and hunker down on my haunches to read more.

Because that’s one heck of a headline. That’s a headline that grabs you by the frontal lobe and makes you go “Whuzzuwah?” just itching to know more.

That’s a headline that would fit just fine right there on the front of the National Enquirer (except for the fact that it’s, you know, true, and that the smiling picture of a dolphin with a camera attached to its fin doesn’t look doctored one bit at all.)

That’s a headline that’s going to have papers ripped out of those
big metal boxes all day long and make the poor paper guy burst a
disk when he empties out the quarter bins in the morning.

And you can just bet the editor of the paper did a full-on dance of
joy when this story came crawling across her desk and she saw that
she was going to get to *be bold* in her headline copy.

Now, a lot of the marketing you see out there suffers from mediocrititis: an unfortunately common disease where lawyers, hack-job ad-folk and ‘fraidy-cat CEOs strive to make their messages as utterly mediocre, uninspiring and un-intriguing as possible.

They cut all the life out of their words. They go at every brochure, press release, web page and ad with a fine-grain belt sander until they’re left with headlines like “Go Further” and warmed over slogans like “The Smarter Choice in Real Estate”–bloodless marketing pap that says little and means less; buzz words and BS phrases that are meant to be clever and cute and to hypnotize consumers with their supposed
profundity.

*But you know what really gets in my craw about all the awful and meaningless marketing out there?*

It’s that there are a lot of good, solid companies doing it. Companies with good products, awesome services and approaches to customer service that are just about godly, but who are absolutely petrified of saying anything compelling or interesting at all.

And that skeezy, snake-oil peddling slimeballs who are hip to salesmanship are eating their lunch.

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Quality is Job Two or Three
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Every once in a while my buddy Dominic Canterbury and I teach a
Biznik (http://www.Biznik.com) class called “The Top Ten Marketing
Mistakes Made by Small Businesses and How to Avoid Them.”

And about halfway through the class I give this little speech. I say:

“OK. I’m about to say something that’s going to make every one of
you in this room bob your heads up and down like you’re at a Black
Sabbath concert.”

They all laugh and smile a little.

“There are people out there who are *worse* than you are at what you do who are *more successful* doing it.”

And then that whole room of massage therapists and real estate agents and Web wizards and sharp-eyed entrepreneurs stop laughing, stop smiling and start banging their heads slowly as the thumping beat of “Iron Man” plays back behind their eyes.

Because quality is great. Quality is necessary. If you want to stay in business for the long run, keep your customers coming back again and again and earn mountains of referrals, you’ve absolutely got to offer a quality product or service.

But if you’ve got quality and don’t do everything possible and necessary to let people know about it *in a compelling, interesting and selling way*? Well, then you’re going to get beaten and bloodied by the not-as-talented, not-as-ethical folk down the street who are willing to stand up, shout to the heavens and BE BOLD.

Which is really the whole message of today’s newsletter. If you’ve got a quality product or service, you owe it to yourself–and to the folks you want to be your customers–to get out there and use potent and effective marketing. To use the stuff that works, not
that stuff that you *want* to work. To make big promises and do everything humanly possible to keep them. To craft strong offers your prospects just can’t resist. And to kick the plague of mediocrititis for good.

Because I don’t care how many times you’ve curled up with a big bucket of popcorn and “Field of Dreams,” just because you built it, doesn’t mean they’ll come.

Comments? Questions? Harsh invectives? Hit me up at chris (at) haddadink (dot) com.

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