This actually is a marketing article but you need to stick with me for a minute until I get done painting a word picture before getting to the salient points that need to be made. The idea for this article came to me as I was working on my wife Tammy’s bird feeder. Until recently, I never really paid a lot of attention to Ornithology and not being formally educated in that science, you could call my observations those of a layman. Yet, after you start caring for a community of birds and small animals that you grow, you can’t help but make some observations and draw some parallels between nature and human behavior.
Our bird feeder is a simple but well-thought-out contraption. It has one tube you fill with little seeds that the sparrows and smaller birds are most attracted to, a larger one for sunflower seeds the finches and cardinals love, and a cage that opens in which you place what’s called a “mineral block” (or you can use a piece of bread like I do) that some of the larger birds (some of them the uglier ones) prefer. Some birds feed on all three options but most have preferences and only move to the next choice if their favorite one has been spent. Then there are the scavengers that feed on the shells and drippings that fall to the ground below. Sounds somewhat like people in a way, right?
Nature is like consumerism. There are some opportunistic tendencies with certain types in the community. The Bluejays will actually fly off with some of the peanuts we put out on the fence for the squirrels. That behavior surprised me, but when you think about it, those birds are large and strong enough to grab a peanut and fly off with it, no problem. The squirrels still get their fair share. They, the squirrels and Bluejays, are some of the larger consumers… not unlike the business world. Warning: when you put out a birdfeeder, you also can get some skunks, woodchucks and possums, so be careful letting them out. The larger birds in the community take the larger food choices more often. The smaller ones have to stick to what they can handle. Another good analogy to consider
Putting peanuts out for the squirrels creates an interesting dynamic because then you have to grease the pole that holds up the feeding tubes, or they will get acrobatic and climb the feeder to steal the bird feed. Like some consumers who will do anything to own something, if you don’t grease the bird feeder pole, the little varmints will climb up to an outreaching arm that holds up a feeder tube and hang upside down to get to the seeds. It’s actually quite a sight. It ticked my wife off the first time she saw it but before long (we Googled it) we figured out how to keep them on the ground where they now reside picking through the sunflower seeds that fall as the birds feed. This is, after they have polished off the nuts that the Bluejays didn’t pilfer.
They all come to be fed. Different content speaks to different species and there is a direct marketing analogy… there are different types of buyers but they all come to be fed. In the world of marketing, a current favorite saying is that “content is king” and content is food to the consumer in the discovery mode. Being the most friendly and dependable place to get information is much like the community of birds that we have built. They come with an expectation and a trust that we will feed them well and we do. I submit that this is what your marketing should do. Feed the consumers with information that will enable them to make the best possible decision for themselves whether they are buying goods or a service.
I was duly surprised the first time I threw a piece of bread out into the yard and it wasn’t on the ground even an entire second before a sparrow swooped down and flew off with its prize before any other could claim it. I guess what surprised me was the realization that it was waiting on me. By now you have probably figured out that I didn’t grow up around bird feeders and that these were new observations by an older gentleman. They are. I grew up more the Ducks Unlimited type with a father who taught me how to pick out and nail three or four quail after the bird dogs scared up a covey. Had my wife never wanted to see the wildlife in our suburban backyard, I would never have had these revelations. I thank her.
After I finished with my bird and squirrel feeding and went inside the house I looked out the kitchen window at the bird feeder from a distance. I was looking at a community that we had built. A community that had come to count on us to be fed. As time went on I came to recognize the sounds of the many birds in the trees in our backyard and became aware that they were waiting their turn too and that hundreds of birds and tens of squirrels had become accustomed to our morning trips with the bread and the seeds and the peanuts (unsalted) and that they looked forward to it as I did as well.
Building a community is so critically important in today’s marketing landscape. Becoming known as a place to be fed things of decent substance in lockstep with the whole “content is king” quote is a profitable strategy. Being a provider of dependable information is much like feeding the birds. Using social media platforms and gathering emails in order to deploy articles that position you as a “thought leader” and “product specialist” in your arena is what current marketing should accomplish. The larger the social media community and email marketing deployment catalog you build, the greater your reach. The greater your reach the greater your audience and therefore the more potential for sales and service.
Allow me to add a qualifier: it's NOT about likes and views alone. As my colleague Clyde has proven, it's about evidence. It's about being able to “show”, not simply “tell”, a new prospect that you have served someone just like them in the past. Showing happy customers is a mental security blanket as you earn their trust and as we all know, we must sell trust before we sell anything.
There are different types of birds coming to your feeder too. They all need to be fed. Give the consumers you want to impress knowledge about their needs, give the little birds things they can digest, give the medium sized ones intermediate priced goods and services appropriate to their appetite, and the big ones… those great big fun ones… give them all the exciting information about the luxury items they desire.
There is grave danger in the marketing world in not putting out the right amount of seeds as well. If you are a “mom and pop” category business then you can't afford to
encourage “opt outs” by mailing your email audience too many times. The big box stores like Best Buy come to mind. Their marketing department depends on volume and they don’t manage their level of annoyment as well as a local business needs to. They use analytics that assume a larger than normal amount of opt outs as collateral damage. Those of us smaller businesses who make up 85% of the economy can’t afford that behavior. Overfeeding can be a bad thing. I’ve noticed that some businesses don’t bother with creating compelling, substantive content; they just run another sale, month after month… burning up their reputation like a junkie who just can’t get enough. I wonder if it's ever occurred to them that if they are always running a sale, if everything is always on sale, that that IS their regular price. Just an internal query I’ve had about those who don’t believe in a more pragmatic strategy of branding themselves properly. Oh, don’t get me wrong, if you have the vision and resources to be the Walmart of your industry, by all means - help yourself! But if you are a garden variety, everyday ole American independent business person, you have to understand niche marketing and that is not necessarily a high volume, low margin
The takeaways in a nutshell (sorry I couldn’t resist the pun)? Whether you sell goods, services, or lessons, the size of your reach inside the segment of the population who care about what you have to offer is your path to dominance. Your marketplace will gravitate toward the reputation that makes them feel confident in what a company has to offer. You must sell confidence before you sell anything of real value. If you sell value and not price, the birds will be more attracted to what you have to offer. A lot of something that no one cares about at a low price is a fool’s offering to the consumer population. Even though it would be free, if I put dog food in the bird feeder there would be no takers. My point? Know who you are and who should care about you based upon what you do. Then build a community that makes sense according to your mission and what you have to give.
Our partner Joey, the CTO (Chief Technical Officer), excels in finding what he calls “like minded individuals” to learn about the companies we work for. That's how you build a community by convincing people with an interest in what you do to engage with you.
Businesses grow by making the right kind of friends. They, these consumer friends, may be of different social and economic levels but they care about what you do so they join your community. The more you have, the more referrals and word of mouth you have, so it follows, the more buzz there is about you. Good social media-documented service also serves as what our newest team member, “Clyde the Guy” calls “evidence. All the birds coming to your feeder won’t be exactly the same in their specific needs and their buying abilities but they, because they care about what you do, will be “birds of a feather.” Welcome them. Young before they grow older and more capable. Welcome them. Educate them. Care for them. Feed them and they will feed you.
“Gathering around an interest is a primal and instinctive need of all living things. Finding groups of people whose lives you can enrich is a good salesman’s dream.” - Jack Klinefelter
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