Three powerful words to use when marketing, getting someone's attention, and when hoping to make an impression.
"Did you know...?" Three simple words. You anticipate: "No! I did not know that! Thank you!"
If you hear the dreaded response: "Yes, I knew that," you may feel defeated but if you did your homework, you will have more to add.
If you are able to use these powerful "Did you know...?" words and they unveil a truth or fact that is both relevant and previously unknown; you educate, inspire and potentially make people's day.
From that moment on you become a resource. While you may not be an advisor yet, your unexpected and helpful information will have you appreciated in a new way.
Wasting your "Did you know....?" on common topics like Kool-Aid will backfire on you. Yawns, blank stares and sympathy for your little mind will result.
Acquiring new information may require you to read, study, investigate, dig and go places where few others go. In all cases, having unique information will require "work". Fortunately the topic is of interest and your vision is clear, thus it is no longer "work", it is positive action.
Here is the latest version with updated factoids of the "Did You Know?" video which has been watched millions of times:
Changes are invisible and new decisions must be made to create success. To start the fire for you, here are more bits of information which may be relevant to your business:
Did you know?
- 11% of people are left handed? Create something special for left handed people and they will be customers for life.
- August has the highest percentage of births. If your business is baby or birthday related, August may be your month! (I was born in August.)
- In 1999 Amazon acquired both Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and Alexa Internet.
- There are 28 million small businesses in the U.S. -- which outnumber corporations 1162 to 1.
- 70% of small businesses are owned and operated by a single person.
- Small businesses employ 57% of the country's private workforce.
- Small businesses pay 44% of U.S. payroll.
- It takes just 6 days to start a business in the US, compared to a whopping 38 days in China.
- It costs 6x as much to start a business in India than in the US.
- Reindeer like bananas. Christmas bananas can be added to milk and cookies as a treat.
- Cats spend 66% of their life asleep. The pet business can include blankets, baskets, pillows, cat pajamas and ....?
- Tennessee is bordered by 8 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia - more than any other in the US. If you live and do business in Tennessee, you are in a hub. Do you know how to maximize this?
- About 90% of the world's population kisses. This commonality is an entreprenurial dream, don't you think?
- A 'jiffy' is actually 1/100th of a second. Don't tell a customer you will have it done in a "jiffy".
- The most common mental illnesses are anxiety and depression. Which may be why your email inbox is bombarded with so many cures.
- Black on yellow are the 2 colors with the strongest impact. Want to send a message?
- Most people speak at a rate of 120 words per minute, or two words a second. Audiobooks are recommended to be 150–160 words per minute.
- The average adult reads prose text at 250 to 300 words per minute. While proofreading materials, people are able to read at 200 wpm on paper, and 180 wpm on a monitor. If you are hiring an editor and thinking about whether to pay by the word or by the hour... consider this.
- Google originally started as "Backrub". Can you imagine the conversation? "I am going to Backrub that".
It may be hard for some to think of a search engine other than Google, but the search behemoth did not begin with that name. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both with computer science degrees from Stanford, started their search engine, it was called BackRub. This search engine was operated from the servers of Stanford only, but soon took up more bandwidth than anticipated.
How to get ahead:
Subscribe to news feeds from universities, governments and companies which focus on doing studies. Do the work to read the information early and become a source for others.
