How To Cut Through The Noise And Be Heard
The world is noisy. We are all busy and distracted. We can't hear your message above the chaos. Even if we could, we probably wouldn't notice.
You're competing with texts, photos, email, likes and shares from our friends and family. You are competing with the noise of our lives.
You can yell to get our attention, but we won't hear you because everyone is yelling.
You can make outrageous claims, but we'll catch on and tell everyone we know you're lying.
You can be quiet and we'll never know you exist.
Like it or not, this is the world we live in. And the noise is only getting louder.
You could give up. That's always easy.
But we need your ideas. In fact, we crave them.
We want you to make things better and less expensive and make us feel good and help us understand. Often several of these things at the same time.
So.
How can you rise above the noise and get our attention and give us what we want?
One way is to be helpful.
Here are some ideas.
Save Us Time
Time is the is the currency of life. It's one thing we all want more of. Eliminate time-sucking tasks. We will pay you well for it.
Save Us Money
Save us money and we'll give you our money. (How's that for ironic?) Do more than give us something for less, shock us with incredible value. Make it so good and so affordable that we have no choice but to buy.
Make Us Feel Good
Help us feel good about ourselves. Make it easy for us to help others. Show us that we can change the world.
Help Us Understand
Cut through the complication and teach us to do that thing we've always wanted to do. Show us the connections we might not see.
Usefulness Gets Us Talking
These are the things that cut through the noise and grab our attention. These are the things we talk about and share.
Think of the last time you raved about a product or service. Why? What did it do so well that you had to tell someone? I'll bet it was one of the above.
An Exercise
Look at the products in your life, the things that you love to tell people about. What do they have in common? That is your definition of useful. Focus on people who feel the same. That's your target market.
Here are some things that I find useful and like to tell people about.
Dollar Shave Club saves me time and money by delivering razor blades, something I hate shopping for.
The Aeropress makes ridiculously good coffee without much fuss or cost. It saves time, money and is uniquely useful.
The Wirecutter makes me feel smart and saves me money and time with their in-depth reviews and price watch.
The book Rework helped me understand how to build a business in which people thrive and reinforced my existing beliefs. That feels good and helps me understand.
ThreadLab sends clothes I could never pick out myself. I feel good about how I look and save money and time.
You get the idea.
Now, go. Make your idea so helpful that we can't help but talk about it. We'll cut through the noise for you and tell everyone how great you are.
Hi, I’m Keith Monaghan.
I’ve created and managed e-mail marketing campaigns to millions of subscribers for companies like NBC Television and Lucasfilm (yep, the Star Wars people).
My work as a Market Researcher has helped creative teams with projects for Nike, The CW Network, Upworthy, THX, Specialized Bicycles, Umpqua Bank, and other companies you may have heard of (and many you probably haven’t.) You can learn more abut me and my work here.