One of the big challenges in business today is the over abundance of information.
(Yes, I understand the irony of writing more information right now.)
And personally, I like the information. It’s great for learning, mastery, and motivation.
Instead of complaining about “too much information,” I think a better idea is to consider how to make the information useful.
Some coaches and course creators are already adjusting their programs to be more execution-focused, for example. This is a trend in the right direction, since so many people are consuming but not doing.
I’d like to make a contribution of my own to solving this problem. I call it, thinking about things “in context.”
The concept isn’t hard to understand. The context of anything is simply the background information supplied to make it more understandable.
If I’m reading a Bible verse, for example, I can’t decide for myself what it means. I have to consider:
The verses before and after
The literary genre
The political climate
The historical setting
And way, way more
Similarly, content we consume today must be filtered through the context of the current business environment we’re in. Things like:
Your customers
The economy
Your financial situation
Market dynamics
How customers buy
Brand sentiment
And way, way more 🙂
So any piece of business advice and/or strategy you receive must be filtered though these areas of context.
Let’s make it practical.
One of the marketing strategies that has become ubiquitous over the last decade or so is running webinars. Influencers like Russell Brunson and Amy Porterfield popularized them and made a lot of money teaching people how to do them.
But would or could you follow their webinar advice today?
Russell’s “Perfect Webinar” is a timeless sales framework—it would work 100 years ago or 100 years into the future. That’s a plus.
However, his business model using webinars may not longer be a viable option for most businesses. Let’s run through just the few contexts above:
Your customers — Is your customer-base used to buying from webinars? Are they overused to buying from webinars? Webinar burnout is a real thing. And if they don’t usually buy from webinars, you may have a hard time getting them to understand what you’re doing. (For example, if webinars are always educational in your context.)
The economy — Will webinars work in today’s economy? It’s possible, but with registration and attendance Customer Acquisition Costs being higher than ever without a huge organic audience, it may be difficult.
Your financial situation — Of course, the above is perhaps not a problem if your personal financial situation is such that you can support the load of testing this sales process until it’s profitable. But can you pocketbook handle it?
Market dynamics — Turns out, it’s a really bad time to rely on Facebook ads. And Russell’s whole strategy before was running ads Monday-Thursday to fill up the webinar with new attendees.
How customers buy — I mentioned briefly above, but the reality is, many people are sick and tired of sales webinars. Are customers still buying that way in large enough quantities to make it worth it for your product/service? For that matter, is your product/service something that can be even be sold via webinar?!
Brand sentiment — Do you have brand equity build up that would make sense of you starting to offer sales-focused webinars? Could you use that strategy to actually build brand sentiment?
The point is not to tear down any marketing strategy you find. It’s simply to be realistic about the current state of things. The context of your business.
Marketing during a time of plenty is not the same as marketing during a time of recession. Investing strategies are not the same, either.
There are many determining factors. My recommendation?
Learn the basics. Master the things that will never chance. Become a disciplined executor of the fundamentals.
I’ll again point you to Lean Marketing. It’s one of the best marketing and business books I’ve ever read that doesn’t just tell you what to do, it helps you understand what you’re doing. And you need that kind of information to put it all in context.