The celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo has a motto: “minimum effort, maximum satisfaction.”
It sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? The world loves a hack – a strategy or technique adopted in order to manage one’s time in an efficient way.
Now, I’m all for efficiency, and in some situations a hack can be a good thing – e.g., vinegar and newspaper to give you smear-free windows. You get a good result without chemicals, and you use things you already have around the home. It sounds like a win-win…
…but you wouldn’t set up a window cleaning company that relies on vinegar and old newspaper. A quick fix isn’t the same as setting up a sensible, long-term strategy for life…or business.
As I sit here typing, the Lionesses have just achieved something the Lions have singularly failed to do for decades – win the Euros. Did any of these Lionesses get where they are with hacks? I doubt it.
Of course, what starts as a hack can become a technique. To stick with the sporting motif – Dick Fosbury and his ‘Flop’. You could say that when he was working on it, he was looking for a hack. Previously, all jumpers had used the straddle method but, once he had introduced the Fosbury Flop, no one continued with the old standard methodology. This wasn’t a quick fix, a hack, it was an innovation.
Quick fixes very rarely lead to permanent solutions.
I notice when I’m on social media that, in among the adverts for bed linen and recipe ideas, I get a lot of paid for adverts for diets and exercise regimes. They all seem to use a version of the same formula:
You need to do A to improve your life
But A is hard
You don’t need to do all the hard work that A involves, instead take this short cut and do B
Everyone else has been telling you something that is wrong
Follow me, and you’ll get better results
It sounds tempting – minimum effort, maximum satisfaction.
I don’t have a lot of good things to say about my old economics’ teacher, but one thing has stuck in my mind for the last 30 years – “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
If you put in minimum effort over a prolonged period, you will ultimately achieve minimum results. You have to pay with effort to get good, long-term results. If you follow the latest, faddish diet, you may get a quick result, but I guarantee you won’t still be doing it in a year’s time. Therefore, a quick hack might be good for losing a dress size before a wedding, but it won’t turn you into Kate Moss. The fact is, you’ve relied on a hack that makes life easy, but you haven’t altered your mindset.
I promised this will be the last sporting analogy. There are no quick hacks to help you achieve and maintain real gains in the gym. Instead, you have to repeat lifts again and again. This means overcoming the boredom and getting into ‘reps’ – repetitions. Reps help you build muscle, but it’s time-consuming and is nowhere near as sexy as a quick hack. The difference is you get long-term results.
It’s the same in marketing. If you think a quick hack will get you the results you are looking for, you have to ask yourself what are your goals?
Do you want a quick hit that gets people through your door on a single day – the equivalent of dropping a dress size through drastic dieting before a wedding – or do you want a strategy that consistently delivers the right kind of customer to your door? The former might feel good for a day or so, but you won’t be able to build your business off the back of it.
If you want the latter, you need reps. In marketing terms, repetition is reinforcement. If you’ve got a product or service that you are proud of, then your best policy is to repeat it in an effective way over and over again until it becomes an accepted truth:
KFC – Finger Lickin’ Good!
Gillette – The Best A Man Can Get
Heinz – Beanz Meanz Heinz
McDonald’s – I’m Lovin’ It
Carlsberg – Probably the Best Beer in the World
Undoubtedly these are clever slogans but what really makes them work – and the reason they stick in our minds – is that they have been repeated over and over again until they are permanently lodged in our brains.
The same technique of repetition can be seen everywhere – from politicians seeking election to the adverts for diets and weight training regimes on social media.
Reinforcing a message will get you results. Social media has the advantage that it is relatively cheap to employ but you can repeatedly reach a targeted demographic of potential customers. Eventually, even I clicked on one of the exercise adverts because repetition had made me curious - so it does work.
Repetition isn’t a short-term hack; it is a long-term technique for success.
If you want to know more about developing your strategy for success, contact Suzi on 07590 591140 or e-mail: suzi@blueberry-pr.co.uk
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay