What Cute Pets 😺 and Marketing Have in Common
I used to have some very usual pet many years ago - fire-bellied newts! I grew up loving amphibians as a kid but they aren’t always the easiest pets to take care of. I had a tadpole when I was in 4th grade and I think it lived a month. Guess how long my fire-bellied newts lived? Not 1 month, but one lived 7 years and the other 8 years.
They are very quiet animals except when they fight. I would be sitting in the same room with them, reading the paper and I would hear a big splash and the sound of the pebbles moving around. I always guessed they were two males since they liked to fight with each other. One of them did enough damage to the other (permanently altering the shape of his tale) I added a plastic barrier between them so they couldn’t harm each other.
One of the secrets I learned when taking care of my newts is not to change all of the water and keep the tank a little dirty. I was reminded of this the other day when my daughter needed to clean her fish tank and was worried about killing her fish. I walked her through the steps of how much dirty water I reserved when I cleaned my newts tank. It’s all about keeping the integrity of the habitat of the animal when you clean it. Oh the secrets of wet pets!
After I helped my daughter that Sunday, I had an idea of how this relates to marketing. It’s important to keep some foundations as you go about your marketing but you don’t want to alter or change your messaging so dramatically that people don’t understand you. Leave a little of the old water aka the same messaging when you do your marketing activities. Be ok repeating yourself over and over so that your community and audience understand your message.
It’s not easy. (Think of how many time Coke tried to introduce a new product and yep, wasn’t successful!) You get excited about sharing something that’s pretty left-field from what you’ve been sharing on your platforms etc. You want to do a 360 and say something totally different. That’s ok, as long as you ease into it and leave some of the old messaging with it as well. It takes time for folks to accept change. Take it from me, who owned newts as pets for many years and closed down my web design firm and went full time to marketing strategy and coaching, I couldn’t do it overnight and it’s taken many months to help folks realize my new focus.
Did you relate with this article? Ever owned newts or frogs? Drop me a line, I’d love to hear from you!