This morning we went on a school trip to a lovely place called Fort Langley. Apparently it is the birthplace, of British Columbia something about 160 years ago. It’s an old staging post for trading place and all that kind of stuff. It’s lovely.
The kids are 10 years old. They loved it. But, the reason I that I say “don’t tell but show them” is because of the way it was put across and most of us, in our marketing, in our discussions with customers, potential customers, etc., we explain things, we explain our features, our product, our services and we generally do it the wrong way around, me included.
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So this is how the guide got the kids interested in today’s school trip.
When the kids first arrived, they were kind of disinterested in the whole trip, wondering when their first snack break was going to be happening.
A part from the workers being dressed in Ody-Wildy clothes from Kebekwa type of clothes, beyond that, the kids couldn’t see what’s going on.
So he explained the game and explained how they get tokens and he explained what would happen. He said it in a good voice, he moved around, he pointed out things, they had visual aids and so on, and he then let them get on with it.
So off they went, they did their first, little test and they had to find little bits, take photos and get involved. And there was a lady, a first native lady who was very helpful to explain how things worked and explain some of the first native words for things.
Then they came back and to the center circle and the guy asked them questions and then they started to get tokens, and rewards for things.
As he asked them to visualize, they also gave them the gear to take Scottish selfies. There was a Scottish cap there, picture of a kilt and they wanted the kids to take photos and to put the hat on and to put the scarfs on and put the clothes on and take selfies and take photos and visualize, so it made it made it more eventful for them.
And all this got them excited. By the end of it, he’d worked the kids up into a frenzy. It was great and in the end there were winners and the winners got tokens and all that kind of stuff, and they had great fun. It was really good, but could have been very ordinary, could have been walking around just looking at stuff, looking, reading things and so on.
But once he made it where the kids have to be more involved, and made things more visual and made it more of a story, that got the kids going and so that’s was my take away of this trip.
The thing I got from the marketing perspective– and no the guy wasn’t marketing and no the kids didn’t even get to visit the gift shop. They obviously missed that one. But, I got the story telling and the showing, demonstrating, don’t just tell them about things, show them, make it visual, and bring it to life.
That’s what they did, they brought it to life. The kids could understand, they could touch stuff, they could put it on, they could take pictures, they can show their moms and their dads when they got back home. It’s much better.
Now you can do that in front of the customer or you can do it online. At my fire safety company, we make videos of the products. We have around 2,500 products.
It’s going to take a while. We make around 5 videos a week, so that is about 250 videos a year. We’ll get there in about 10 years time.
But by showing a video of the product along with the product in it’s box, what you get and then opening the box and putting it out, pulling the plastic… the plastic bag off, getting the thing out, throwing the card board out, getting the little bits tucked away in the bottom of the box, explaining what leaflets are in.
It actually visualizes to the customer because when you shop online, when you do the difference between that and going to a real life store, it’s a fact there’s no touching or feeling and when you go to a store, electrical store, no matter what it is, you can look at it, you can think “Well, looks nice.”,
“That one is more shiny than that one next to it.”, etc. When it’s online, you just looking at pictures and descriptions, so you have to make it more visual, you have to bring story into that, but this can be, when you’re sitting in front of the customer, when you’re on the phone, just think about it, it brings it to life.
Tuesday Toolbox Tip
It’s a Tuesday, now time for a Tuesday tool tip. Today I’m going to recommend one of my very favorites. Today, I want to tell you about Edgar.
We use it and love it.
Edgar does a job with our social media. I think you need an invite to get in, but don’t worry I’m sure you can get one of those. It is run by Laura Roeder of LKR Social Media.
She’s great, but she had a process for her social media that she use a very clunky using spreadsheets and she decided–she spoke to her husband who about this… about how annoying it was and he said “Why don’t you just code it?” and happened to be a software coder.
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So he came up with this, it’s brilliant. What it does, unlike Buffer that we also use, you can put post in and schedule them and you library them and these can repeated. So if you’ve got a killer post about something coming out, you can make it happen every month or if it’s over a launch every day.
If you’ve got people looking at your Twitter stream for instance, they see what you put up there for about 3 seconds. If they’re in bed, other parts of the world, other time zones, doing things, working, they’re going to miss it.
Lot of people think you can’t repeat a post. Hey, go look it Guy Kawasaki’s twitter feed and see how often he repeats stuff.
Yes you can, not one after another, but why not a few days apart? A month apart? Why not refresh a great article? If you’ve got an article, if it’s great, it will be great in a years time.
You don’t want to be doing things manually. Edgar does it for a year. Well worth a look,. Like I said we’re hooked, love it.
Now Edgar (find it at MeetEdgar.com) is not free. It is paid, but I think they have a free trial. But, once you’re on it, you’ll love it, you’ll be hooked for life. Well done Laura.
That’s it for today. Tomorrow we’ve got another school trip. We’re going to the zoo. I wonder what I’ll learn there.
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