The ONE Terrible, Awful Thing That's RUINING Your Marketing.

Hey You There.

I don't actually want to talk to YOU.

I want to talk to your BRAIN.

The specific areas of your brain I'd like to speak to are:

A) Broca's Area (which deals with language)

and also I'd like to talk to

B) your substantia nigra, ventral tegmental area, caudate region and your hippocampus - which according to "researchers" are the brain areas that get lit up by curiosity.

Can you run go get them - those parts of your brain - for me real quick?

See, when it comes to our digital marketing and content plans for 2023, we're going to want to want to evoke surprise, curiosity, a sense of something "new."

We're going to want to share something our audience hasn't heard about 8 million times already.

The one awful, terrible thing we can do is just keep producing content that "sounds like" something our audience has already heard.

Put it this way - to everyone who reads, watches, or listens to our content, we are EITHER

A) a "Trusted Resource" OR

B) a "Tape Recorder of Stuff I've Already Heard."

Our content is either fresh and surprising, or it's something that makes those parts of the brain go, "I Already Know All About That."

I'm being facetious when I say "awful and terrible." Ain't nothing wrong with "tape recorder" content. I do plenty of it. We all do. We all say stuff that other people have already said.

We all build on stuff that has already been said. Such is humanity.

We all have audience members who choose to follow us, and choose not to follow another person who said something similar - or was even the original source of "our" idea.

Or as Howard Allen said, "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats anyway."

Sometimes, our audience just needs easy answers to simple questions.

Sometimes they JUST NEED TO KNOW WHAT THE G-DAMN LINKEDIN ALGORITHM is doing today! Okay? And if we're lucky, they want to hear it from us.

So. Not all content has to be original. Or surprising. Or curiosity-evoking.

Nonetheless. There is a very, very sneaky technique oft used (yes, I did say "oft) by marketers who know there are only a few real choices when it comes to messaging that means anything.

As my buddy Henry Devries (Forbes columnist, marketing expert, and"The Agency Owner Book Guy") likes to explain it, there's 4 basic ways to sell your service.

Your service can be "New!"

It can be "Better!"

It can be "More!"

But my favorite marketing- sales position - the one we love to aim for, is "DIFFERENT."

Sometimes called "The Contrarian Position" (Thank you Marketing God Henry DeVries) or 'The Mythbuster."

I like to think of it as "The Challenge Narrative."

It's not hard to find your own "Challenge Narrative."

You can do it in 5 minutes, right now.

1. Go look up 3-5 of your competitors
2. Or Google a phrase from your industry ("top LinkedIn strategies for 2023")
3. Find out what a lot of experts in your wold are talking about right now.
4. Choose an example of "Dominant Narrative" that's current and popular.
5. Challenge that narrative in your content and create a curiosity gap with your headlines/titles/opening lines

For example, let's say a lot of people in your industry are talking about "The Great Resignation." Or about "Quiet Quitting."

You could start with The Top 3 Reasons "Quiet Quitting'"Isn't a Real Thing.

Challenge that Popular Narrative. Or as they used to say in my day, "Subvert the Dominant Paradigm." (This was itself a relatively popular bumper sticker in Chicago in the late 90s)

Let's Practice!

What is a popular narrative in your industry that you could challenge?

What popular idea do your peers get "wrong"? What do they teach that in your opinion, is old news, no longer true, or just could be framed in a more powerful way?