How Interesting Are You?

The humming toadfish shouts loud. Really loud.

It’s their method, tested, refined and evolved over billions of years to be seen and found by a mate.

Marketing 101, if you like.

And where the humming toadfish sings, the peacock dresses up.

All marketing starts with being interesting. If you’re not interesting, you’re not seen. And interesting must infuse what you do, how you do it, how you talk about it, and for who. All aspects must align.

Interesting need not be shouting loud either. You’re not a toadfish. We live in a noisy world. And in a noisy world more noise isn’t interesting.

Try different instead. And different as understood by the people you hope to use your product or service. They will judge your message, your interestingness.

You must see what you do via their lens. Your positioning is something which happens in their mind, not yours.

Seth Godin has a good way of thinking about this (and lots of other things too).

If what we do starts with what our customers want and need and expect and hope and believe, this is where your positioning should start.

If you sell ‘business services’, are you selling to the people who are mainly price conscious or interested in speed, or people interested in outlier thinking? People are motivated by myriad different things; know these motivations and talk to them. When you start via the lens of what your customers want and hope and believe, you can find a space relatively unique to you; unique because you’re focused on a set of attributes, a set out client outcomes, which everyone else is less concerned with.

This is where positioning starts. This is where sales and marketing starts.

• Don’t sell to all people; sell to a few.

• And know them intimately.

• Polarising is your friend.