How Thought Leaders Stay Relevant

Have I ever told you about the time I almost decked a guy in Paris?

In 2014, my wife and I achieved one of our top bucket list dreams when we moved into an apartment at the base of the hill below the Sacré-Cœur Basilica. My daughter CeCe and I would often play on the hill and climb the stone steps that led to the basilica at the top. The hill attracted throngs of tourists in the summer eager to enjoy the panoramic view at the top.

And where there were tourists, there were street vendors. You couldn’t walk two steps up the hill without an aggressive vendor stepping in your path. One after the other, dozens accosted tourists all of them selling the same worthless stuff. Because there was no differentiation between them and little value to their tchotchkes, they had to resort to obnoxious, manipulative tactics to get attention and make the sale.

One day one of these fine gentleman thought he would continue blocking my way until I bought something. Meanwhile, my three-year old daughter was quickly getting farther away from me putting crowds of tourists between us. Some sort of parental instinct kicked in I had a sudden desire to deck the guy. Thankfully I found enough sense to settle for a gentle-ish push on his shoulder so I could step around him. Eventually, I learned how to dodge and tune out the vendors.

A similar scene plays out every day on the Internet.

Hundreds of thousands of marketers accost web surfers trying to sell stuff that all looks the same and has little value to back it up.

This noise online is at an all-time high and growing daily.

This is making it exponentially harder to stand out and get attention…yet attention is vital to the growth and survival of your business. If you can’t get the attention of your ideal customer, you can say au revoir to any chance of generating income or impact. But there is hope for you to stand out and get attention.

A great example of this was a vendor that caught my attention one day as CeCe and I walked home from the basilica. He was selling handmade wooden toys. Rather than stepping in front of people or yelling at the top of his lungs to be heard, he sat at a table creating one of his toys and explaining the process to passers by. This novel approach was working. He’d gathered a small crowd. The “social proof” led others to stop and pay attention as well. This guy was different. Everything from his marketing to his sales pitch to his product stood in sharp contrast to the rest of the vendors on the hill.

Here’s the takeaway.

You don’t need obnoxious marketing or a manipulative sales message to get and keep attention. People will stop and give their time and attention to things that matter most to them.

The key is to know how to position your business and brand to be so relevant, resonant, and remarkable that your ideal customer is genuinely interested in engaging with you.

Now you know the meaning of the RRR in the each subject line of this email workshop: relevant, resonant, and remarkable. Let’s take fast action to get results…

Commit today to elevate above the noise and rely on relevance, resonance, and remarkability to grow your business.

And let me know in the comments:

Have you been to Paris? What was your favorite thing? Have you ever punched someone or been punched?