This month for our business book I read Hook Point by Brendan Kane. You may recognize his name because of some of the impressive results he's gotten with social media (he's known for generating 1milllion followers in less than 30 days), and over the years he's worked on many marketing strategies that have been successfully used by celebrities, well known businesses and even movies. The whole premise of the book is found in the subtitle of it: how to stand out in a 3-second world. I know, 3 seconds isn't long enough to really tell people what you're all about. The good news for us businesses is that Brendan makes it clear that you don't have to communicate your whole message in 3 seconds, but that first 3 seconds is the time you have to convince people either on or offline they want to read/learn more or stick around to hear the rest of your story. Let's take a look at some other insights in the book.
One of the points in the book that stood out is the focus on the purpose of content. He emphasizes that it's better to create quality content over quantity content. He also suggested that content creators focus on the goal of being able to satisfy the viewer as a way to understand if their content will resonate with their audience. What is satisfying content? It's content that means the viewer will feel the time spent with it was worth the investment, the content was well paced and didn't rush the point or take too long to get to the point, and finally the content was logically presented in an organized fashion that didn't make the viewer have to figure out what was being said.
Second, successful businesses (and marketing campaigns) are built on relationships. What does this mean? It means that first and foremost you recognize that every person who sees your campaign or becomes a client is unique, which is why marketing campaigns have to change over time and no one campaign will resonate with everyone. One way of understanding this is to remember the concept that was shared in the early 1990's and still resonates true today about the 5 love languages (Brendan's book shared about a comparable communication personality types concept): what your love languages is isn't necessarily the love language of your partner. And the same is true in marketing, which is why we've seen a huge focus (s0metimes with laughable results) on customized or personalized marketing. There are two important things to remember from this: first that what clicks with you won't necessarily click with your audience, and second that the better you get to know your client or customer, the more successful you will be at convincing them what you're selling is something that will benefit them or someone they know.
Finally, the reason that "hook points" work is because they focus on leveraging value instead of strictly selling a product or service. This ties in with the previous point because I think it's hard to establish value for something if you don't care about anything but the sale. And if you're not establishing value, your potential customers will go to a company that is willing to communicate value. If you don't care about the uniqueness, values, needs, life and concerns of your potential customer, you won't make the effort to go over and above on understanding why they're looking at your product/service in the first place and then being able to communicate back to them why your product/service is a good fit. And what we've seen over not just the past 3 years but the past decade is that the investment is almost the only way to really stand out in the market.
Do you have a hook point or other quick method of catching the attention of and communicating to people that you're worth 3 seconds and more of their time? Because without having a quality presentation that's engaging, well put together and invites them in immediately, you are likely to miss out on an opportunity to work with a client/customer that might be a good match.
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