Using The News To Get More Customers

We had a flurry of inbound leads at our startup Tacit, following an article I published on LinkedIn.

The article was about how we built an AI model that outperformed ChatGPT + Claude by 300% on OpenAI’s Healthbench.

The article was written to show our technical prowess, but I wrote the headline as “Sovereign AI can be built right here in NZ”.

The reason? It’s because that’s what our target customers care about in the current news cycle.

Here is how to insert your company into the current news cycle.

Step 1:

1. Go to Google Trends & enter the topic you care about - e.g. Sovereign AI

   

   A graph that shows up and to the right

   
   

2. Confirm your suspicion by going to Google, selecting the news tab and typing in the same search term - you’ll see a list of all of the news articles being written about the topic
   

   

   2 weeks ago, Fortune wrote about Sovereign AI

3. Then go to X or Reddit and type in the term and see what's doing the rounds by looking at the latest news

   

   Screenshot from a tweet 10 minutes ago, before I wrote this article

4. Then simply figure out where your company fits into the news cycle by using this prompt:
   
   “Determine how (our company insert url) can strategically position itself within the growing (keyword) hype cycle and identify high-leverage opportunities to newsjack emerging stories, generate thought leadership, and earn media coverage that increases awareness, credibility, and inbound demand”

Step 2:

1. Write the article or story based on the response

2. Share it on socials

If you’re struggling with GTM or want a hand, have a look at what we can do for you at K&J or just reply to this email.

If you’ve got a better way to do this - please also reply to this email we’re always wanting to learn here.

Tailor-Made Suits

Something your customers will ask for is personalisation.

They’ll tell you they want things custom made or custom served. But it’s a lie. What they’re actually saying is they want to be made to feel special.

The thing is, most of the time, whatever you’re selling just isn’t that important to people. Even at our gym for example, where people spend up to 10 hours a week, most people could not care less about what changes we’ve made, or the drinks we’re hosting soon etc... When they show up at our gym, they don’t want to think about what exercises they should do, or how to use that new machine.

They don’t want to think about the 23rd priority in their life. They just want to be told what to do and do it.

You want to know the secret to how every awesome burger chain starts? 1 burger, fries and a drink. You want to know how every awesome burger chain ends? 27 burgers, and pages of extra’s and drinks.

Personalisation sounds awesome, until you ask questions (to personalise that thing for them) and you very visibly watch their energy drain from their bodies.

What colour would you like? Should that move left or right? Salt, Pepper, Paprika?

Personalisation’s is almost never your next move. Try making people feel special first. There’s a ton of ways you can do that, at a fraction of the cost of going custom.

There is a market for custom. But its small. And way smaller than you think.

I know heaps of people who’ve been to Thailand, I only know two who’ve left with tailor-made suits.