It’s not good enough to be right. You must also be effective.
We love that saying, because it’s pretty sobering.
How many times have you seen people make the mistake of thinking being right is enough? I’m sure you can probably think of a number of times you yourself have been right, but ineffective…
And what’s the result? Well, you have zero impact.
We see this mistake in business owners all the time – they suffer from the curse of knowledge. They’re too close to their business and the subject.
The problem is, they think everyone knows why they should buy. Well, newsflash sis – they really don’t!
So what is effective communication?
Well, in this context, we think it helps to focus on just a few key elements:
Firstly, you’ve got to be bold. If you do what’s expected of you, you will lose the attention of your audience. At a dinner party, or a Zoom meeting, people are polite enough to pretend that they care about what you’re saying. We all have a set of heuristics, which determine what we think we should all be talking about. But that language is so predictable. It’s forgettable and boring. It’s trance language.
On social media, people will simply pretend not to see it. You do that. You do that right now! You keep scrolling when you see something that’s boring. 95% of LinkedIn is boring. I bet if you spent 15 minutes on LinkedIn and 10 minutes later I asked you what you saw, you would not be able to recall more than 5% of what you actually saw. So break the mould, do something new, do something unexpected.
If you don’t, it doesn’t matter what you say. No one will be listening anyway!
Secondly, simplicity is your friend. Complexity is a turnoff; you need to be able to distil your message into its absolute components. We find the best way to do this is to actually start with the end in mind. Think about the result you’re trying to achieve first, and then build backwards.
Also think about a one word pitch, or maybe even a one sentence pitch. When you do that, you’re forcing yourself to just lose all of the fluff and unnecessary language. We all have way too much going on. We’re all way too busy. And the last thing we need is to watch your video, read your website, listen to you speak and try and work out what on earth you’re talking about. So say what you mean! Get to the point, add in the detail later.
And finally, be authentic. It’s kind of cliche, we know, but seriously, be yourself. Lose the phone voice, lose the act. Drop the mask. You’re going to look way more comfortable, you’re going to sound way more trustworthy and you’re going to have much greater impact when you’re sticking to who you truly are.
Most people are afraid to do this because they feel it could make them look vulnerable. Well, vulnerability attracts attention, and in a good way – it makes people listen, and most of the time the audience will appreciate it and respond positively. Obviously, don’t overshare. Look at what the opposite of authenticity really is in terms of marketing – it’s usually cringiness. It always comes across as untrustworthy, and usually it looks insincere. And if your target audience is British, we Brits hate insincerity!
If you don’t believe me, go to America, and spend seven days being served by the most incredibly wonderful, yet highly irritating, waiters and waitresses. They’re really trying to help you, but they’re so overzealous that it ends up grating on us! So be authentic and be yourself.
There you have it – it’s not enough to be right, you must also be effective.
If you want some inspiration on video marketing ideas that will effectively communicate your message, check out our e-book. We detailed 14 video strategies proven to generate new business!
