3 Productivity Lessons from the Movement Marketing Summit (So Far)

As I write this post, this is day 8 of the Movement Marketing Summit (4/14/2015 – but the lessons will be evergreen).

The Summit is a two week online conference put on by Aj Amyx and Andy Zitzmann.

I’ve been power listening to the videos during my morning and afternoon commutes (I wish online video players would make it possible to listen at 1.5X or 2.0X speed) and have noticed a few lessons popping up again and again.

These productivity lessons will transform your marketing efforts if you consistently implement them.

1. The 15 Minute Rule

Nearly every single presenter (from Aaron Walker to Sue B. Zimmerman) referenced spending around 15 minutes a day on something. From time spent meditating, to writing in a journal for a morning routine, to time spent engaging on social media or creating an image to post on Instagram.

The 15 Minute Rule kept surfacing. The rule is significant for two reasons:

1. The 15 Minute Rule Overwhelms Overwhelm: One of our biggest struggles in implementing new strategies or personal or sales disciplines is that we get overwhelmed by all the time we’ll have to spend. Just take 15 minutes. Pick one thing. Do it. Then start doing something else (and if you happen to get traction, then keep on going).
2. The 15 Minute Rule Leverages the Compound Effect: 15 minutes a day, everyday, will turn the titanic and start sending you in the right direction. 15 minutes of strength exercise. 15 minutes of sending value out via Twitter. 15 minutes of focused time with your children or your spouse. That 15 minutes will transform your life.

2. The 80/20 Rule

While I do not believe that the 80/20 rule is a universal law like gravity or the fact that there’s one tabletop or countertop that is required to be cluttered with junk mail, I do believe that it is a good starter guideline. (Check Web.Search.Social’s Carol Lynn and Ralph Rivera’s writing and podcasting on the 80/20 rule for there passionate, yet well thought-out, rebuttals to our lemming-like belief in the 80/20 principle).

If you are starting out in sales and marketing, the temptation is to try to get people to buy your stuff. Consequently, we spend 80% of the time asking everybody to buy, click, or signup and only 20% of the time adding value.

The 80/20 Rule in marketing is that you share and give value 80% of the time while spending only 20% of the time trying to capture value.

By keeping the 80/20 Rule in mind, you can shift your mindset toward bringing massive value 80% of the time, so that during the 20% of time that you do make offers, you’ll have more leverage with your audience.

You can apply this rule any way you want, but the long and short is that you need to go heavy on value. 20% is NOT a small percentage, so this still gives plenty of permission to serve people by showing them how to buy your stuff.  More importantly, this 20% time you spent pitching or selling? That’s not slimy, smarmy, gross, or dumb. It’s giving people an opportunity to buy a solution to their problems.

Therefore, it’s 100% value, just broken down a bit to help keep you from machine-gun pitching.

3. The Checklist Rule

One key discipline that most presenters seemed to have but didn’t make too much fanfare about is the use of a checklist or process.

The power of checklists is in three key areas:

1. Your Self-Discipline: Self-discipline is a muscle. The more you have to use it during the day, the weaker it gets as the day goes on. When we have to use our short-term memories and that annoying nudge in the back of our minds to remember to keep disciplines around marketing, sales, or other processes, we use up that self-discipline unnecessarily. Using a checklist removes the need to access that limited resource.
2. Your Trustworthiness: People do business with those they know, like, and trust. Trust isn’t only about trusting your character. It’s trusting that you’ll deliver content and value in a consistent way. Checklists helps keep your product (you, your content, your marketing) delivered in an expected, consistent format. That will build trust.
3. Your Stress-Level: Checklists give your brain permission to relax. If you had to remember every process, every time, your stress level would go up. And that’s miserable. Another piece of awesome is that if you have checklists, you can further decrease your stress by outsourcing processes to virtual assistants (and those real-life assistants that work in your office).

A Bonus Observation

True confession: I’d never heard of Aj Amyx or Andy Zitzmann until I got an email from Jeff Goins about this Summit.

Apparently, these guys have quite the following. I thought I’d heard of all online marketers and coaches. I was wrong. By the way, Amyz and Zitzmann have put on a stellar online Summit.  They ask insightful questions and offer up some golden nuggets of knowledge, themselves.

The Lessons Here

1. Learn from New People: Don’t limit yourself to the people you’ve heard of. Every once in a while, take in a new webinar or follow a new rabbit trail. Not only had I not heard of Amyx and Zitzmann (I fear that sounds bad, but it’s not. I’m an insurance agent. I can’t know it all), I hadn’t heard of the lion’s share of their guests.  Through these fresh voices, I found some new perspectives.
2. Your Market Has Room for You: I don’t suspect that most of you will want to become online marketers or coaches. The space seems filled to the rim with talent. But the fact that I just now discovered about 30 new voices who are making online hay tells me that even this glutted market has space. Therefore, your market – whatever it is – has plenty of room for you, as long as you bring grit, determination, and your authentic self to the table.

To Wrap It Up…

Pick a discipline, create a process for it, and do it daily – for 15 minutes a day. Make sure that, even if you’re not specifically putting out 80% ‘generous value’ vs. 20% selling and pitching, that you tint everything you do with the generosity that the 80/20 rule represents.