Conversation Agent: How to Defy Newton's Laws of Motion in Marketing

Is your marketing not gaining momentum and the right kind of velocity?

It could be because of the unbalanced relationship between force, mass, and acceleration.

Interpreting from Newton's laws of motion, your marketing may suffer from inertia (which, was discovered by Galileo and René Descartes), changing only when pushed by an external force; constant mass and movement, with no growth acceleration; and getting an opposite reaction equal in force to your action or push.

In physics, the force necessary to accelerate and object by a given amount depends on the object's mass or amount of matter. The greater the mass, the bigger the force you need.

Who will be harder to move in the photo? Many organizations are finding it hard to gain momentum and velocity without the fear of falling flat, because of their mass.

Emerging media allows you to develop laser focus in your marketing, act small while you take advantage of the following forces to scale as necessary, and thus gain momentum.

How do you defy Newton's laws of motion in your marketing?

(1.) integrate people, processes, and technology -- this is why you need to start going beyond the fascination with using social media in a state of inertia, as channels to stream your messaging, to a state of planned motion. Don't let external factors decide how you change, initiate it internally.

It's not just slapping them together, it's thinking about marketing as a system.

For example, you can see how many of the efforts put forth by Ford in social media are integrated with the car company's story, its people, employees and customers, and you can bet there is a process behind the company's success, which extends beyond the marketing group into the business.

(2.) humanize business -- this will help you energize your motion so that you're not alone pushing through the dip when things get hard, and at the same time you have an engaged and engaging team of self motivated individuals who can work in autonomy at the service of customers. Growth acceleration happens with the help of the minds and hearts at work in your business.

It's not just meaningful marketing, it's about meaningful business. Emphasis on meaningful.

For example, take a look at Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the brainchild of Chip Conley, whose heart is focused on employee and guest satisfaction. This is and independent hotel company in California that has rewards its guests as part of its karmic capitalism philosophy. Many will probably put Zappos.com in this category as well.

(3.) gain permission -- start pulling instead of pushing and watch that negative force dissolve. Be magnetic, be interesting with great and useful content. Stop subscribing people to email newsletters, for example, and start making it very easy and compelling to want to receive information from you.

It's not just about asking, it's about making something worth receiving.

For example, think about the super useful SmartBrief newsletters, packed with well researched and curated content and so easy to share with your network [disclosure: I'm both a customer for a custom newsletter, and a member of the Advisory Board of SmartBrief on Social Media]

Movement and velocity give you a competitive advantage only when you think connections, act human, make something worth having.

What are your examples of businesses that defy Newton's laws of motion?

Comments

Great post!

Humanizing business and gaining permission are two of the most undervalued assets in the business world today.

I don't know if it has to do with mass per say. It seems as though its just the big corporate culture that says that you have to de-humanize business by sending customers through huge voice mail phone trees and ignore permission based marketing by creating everything brochure style without lead generation in mind.

These are two of the things that I preach about on my blog. A little human humanizing goes such a long way in an interaction with a client.

And when you combine permission based marketing with the human element it is a VERY effective combination.

Posted by: Sean Gallagher | April 17, 2010 at 08:23 PM