I didn’t choose my outfit this morning. And I didn’t choose to just eat a Think protein bar, or to live in Tacoma, or be a salesperson, or become a marketer and then a strategist and eventually a fanatic about human behavior. I did not choose to become a small business owner who loves small business and insists on creating a 3-Things newsletter / blog every 3rd of the month. But all these decisions were made by me. I just didn’t choose them….not at least without a lot of antecedent inputs.
If you’re confused right now I don’t blame you. So I suggest you watch this clip from When The Devil Wears Prada…and then come back to this blog/email.
I’ve been fascinated lately with Dr. Robert Sapolsky and his books: Behave and Determined. They are dense but if you’re also fascinated with human behavior, they are worth it! I also got the word antecedent from his book (yes, I had to look it up first).
What’s the point Leah, you ask. The point is that we are constantly being influenced whether our conscious mind knows it or not. We are influenced by our biology and our environment and by a massive amount of inputs daily (11 million bits of info per second) and only a fraction reaches our conscious mind. The point is that as marketers and business owners we will never know exactly how any one of our customer’s circuitous path worked itself out to end up on our doorstep but we do know the path is often nonlinear. Many, many inputs went into their eventual decision to work with us and some of those inputs we had a say in (our website, signage, social media, salesperson, the feeling of our space, the feeling behind our messaging, the friendly voice who answered our phone, the experience of those who shared Google reviews, etc.). These inputs are important. They need to be meaningful, influential, and on brand, but most of all they need to be consistent and put out into circulation.
If you are inconsistent with your marketing you will get inconsistent results. Decide what you want from your marketing and then create the strategy to make it happen. And most important of all: execute!
People will say they willingly chose you, and you will smile and say you’re so glad they did!
