At some point we all feel like we need to do more, reach more people, and be everything to every potential customer out there. But the reality is if we want success, we need to stop doing too much and trying to reach every person out there. You need to focus your communications efforts and make them count.
I work with a lot of clients that bring tons of opportunities forward, which is great!
And of course, we want to explore the validity of any new idea to see if it makes sense for the plan we’re working. And I’ll be the first to admit that I hate saying no to an opportunity. I mean, it’s an opportunity for business so why would we turn it down?
You wouldn’t turn down a $20 bill if you were walking down the road, right?
Now, I think we’ve all heard the sayings like:
“By being everything to everyone you’re nothing to everyone,” or “it’s not your job to be everything to everyone,” or “you can’t please everyone.” As cliché as those may be, these ideas are important, especially in the world of communications.
We need to be as targeted as possible with our communications efforts.
The reality is that if you go about trying to please everyone, you’re going to face endless struggles along the way. As communicators advising clients, or as business owners, we need to focus on what matters and what can drive the biggest results.
Unfortunately, with few exceptions, we don’t have unlimited resources to execute our campaigns.
Every opportunity we explore or new idea we consider takes time and resources away from the work we could be doing right now to drive results. We need to consider how we evaluate even exploring the exploring the idea and what that cost is before we actually dive into the idea or opportunity itself.
And this is where that $20 I mentioned earlier comes into play.
Sometimes there’s that low-hanging fruit that we want to capitalize on. Maybe it’s a canned influencer campaign, or bringing on a packaged service that can generate leads for you without too many resources being diverted. If it’s just the $20 and you can pick it up, then do it!
But oftentimes that’s not the case and it’ll cost you a lot more than $20 to get the $20.
Yes, every person out there could POSSIBLY be a customer, but we can’t go down that rabbit hole because, again, we don’t have unlimited resources, so we need to prioritize.
Whether you are part of an in-house team at an organization or servicing clients at an agency, you need to deliver value, which means you need to protect the hours you have to get the job done.
So, the strategic thought is this: we need to evaluate the opportunity before we look into it. Sometimes it’s as easy as a quick Google search and sometimes you need to dig a little deeper, but we have to become experts at evaluating opportunities without giving up our resources to deliver what we’ve promised to clients or the brands we represent.
I’ll leave you with a quote that I found while doing some research:
The is from famed editor and journalist Herbert Bayard Swope who said, “I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”
Translated for communicators, focus on the audiences that can drive results for your campaign, and then branch out from there once you’ve found success.
Here are some recent posts to help as you create your Strategic Communications campaigns, including the importance of having a strategic communications plan:
– Do I Really Need A Strategic Communications Plan?
– Tips For Managing Unethical Communications Requests
– A Meaningful Message, Or Pandering Without Purpose
– Pitching Media Like The Pros
– Don’t Let Perfect Be The Enemy Of Effective
– Wake Up. Kick Ass. Repeat.
– How to Create Content That Engages Audiences and Builds Brand Trust Quickly
I’ve also been discussing how you can find success following the Coronavirus crisis through the RADD approach, which is Recognize, Adapt, Develop, and Deploy. Check out our previous posts to see how you can succeed with the RADD process:
– Get RADD And Plan For Success Following Coronavirus Crisis
– Prepare for Success and Get RADD, Part 1: Recognize
– Finding Success By Getting RADD, Part 2: Adapt
– Get RADD, Part 3: Develop Plans For Success
– Deploying Your RADD Communications Plan
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