 I moved from working in my business to working on my business!
Jim White, Founder Savor Dallas http://www.savordallas.com |
 I found a community of business leaders who make being in business a lot more fun and less lonely.
Jeannine Sandstrom, CEO CoachWorks International, Inc. http://www.coachworks.com |
 I now have a place to be open about my business success and future challenges.
Debbie Mrazek, CEO The Sales Company Author The Field Guide to Sales http://www.the-sales-company.com |
Archive for September, 2008
‘Touched for the very first time’
Call it what you want, but few pop stars and fewer businesses have understood the intricacies of Madonna’s genius of reinvention and the inevitable end of the business cycle. Learn from the branding expert.
While Madonna soars, everyone else seems to stumble, bumble and disappear down a deep, dark hole.
So, what is it about Madonna Incorporated that has allowed it to consistently reap profits for over 18 years on the trot? And is there something we in business can learn about branding from the chameleon of pop music?
What Madonna Learned from Houdini
Gasp! That’s what the audience would do, every time Harry Houdini cheated apparent death. Except that death was a deliberate stroke of genius to keep the name of Houdini alive forever.
Madonna seems to have used the same bag of tricks. Reinventing herself in almost clockwork fashion, she has transmogrified herself successfully into virgin, material girl, boy toy, dominatrix, media maven to working mom. And made big bucks all the way.
Out with the Cabbage, In with the Tomatoes!
Bring out the fertilizer, Madonna’s here!
With green-fingered precision and lots of tender loving care, she plays along with Mother Nature. In every phase, Madonna has realized that things change with the season and accordingly dug deep to replant new shoots.
Summer plants die. Shrivel, shrivel, it’s a fact of life. You can whine and whimper but if you understand the basis on which Mother Nature works, you can pretty much put it to work in your own business.
Most businesses experience growth both intellectually and physically, yet every business seems to run on summer growth. Never changing, never evolving, they hope Jack Frost will give them a wide berth when the cold days roll along. That doesn’t always happen and when the business peters down, it’s let’s blame the economy time, when all they’ve done is failed to plan for the end of a business cycle.
Take for instance a big law firm in Auckland, New Zealand. Lots had changed within the firm. It had grown considerably over the years and believed that its outdated logo was the hallmark of the firm.
Simple research showed otherwise. The clients hated it. Fuddy-duddy, they called it. Yet, it had nothing to do with the law firm. The partners and the lawyers were as competent as ever, if not more than before. A simple logo change, some internal and external fix-its and Voila, they could do little wrong!
It had nothing to do with the firm or the quality of its lawyers. They had simply failed to track public opinion that had gone against them. Once they realized it, they could mend it. Once they fixed the logo (among other things), they were reborn.
Replant the Garden, Don’t Chop the Trees!
Are we suggesting you reinvent the wheel? Madonna doesn’t think so. Like a hardcore brand specialist, Madonna has actually stuck to her brand like glue.
If you look carefully, she stands for RADICALISM. Everything she’s done has taken her one step higher on that scale. Every time someone screamed blue murder, Madonna was in the thick of it. She hacked the lawn, and replanted all the flowers choosing shocking pinks and bright orange, understanding all the time that it stayed in line with her true brand image.
Coke, too, tried to reinvent itself, but failed miserably. Why? Because Coke owns the word classic. People loved their Coke. It was owned by us sugar-water drinkers and no one, not even Coca Cola Inc., was going to change it. In short, that’s why they failed.
Yet Coke has reinvented itself in several other ways. Its packaging has gone from sexy bottle to cans and then to 2 liter PET bottles without much drama.
It has reinvented convenience, much like McDonalds reinvented their snack to combo lunch. Realizing that customers were after a better deal and their accountants were after better profits, the combo managed to put gigantic smiles on both faces simultaneously.
Let’s face it. It’s not just about reinvention. It’s about realizing WHICH PART of your business needs to be reinvented and then having the common sense to leave the rest alone.
Don’t Reinvent the Goodyear!
Chinese gooseberries were going nowhere till they were renamed Kiwi fruit. With this re-baptism of sorts, this humble, nondescript looking fruit somehow took on the flavor of an exotic, lush green country. The reinvention wasn’t earth-shaking; the results were.
Madonna does just that. While her radicalism has seen an outward change in every avatar, the core change isn’t overly dramatic or complex. Every reinvention has caused her to add bold yet simple color to her garden.
Too many marketing people change twenty things all at once. Confused customers don’t care. Gradual progression they can handle and want. Dramatic change scares the heck out of them, often causing them to switch brands suddenly and permanently.
Even hardcore Madonna fans found the leap from music to movies too complex. She flipped and flopped her way through the popcorn aisles and came out triumphant on the Evita side. Yet, you’d prefer Julia Roberts to do the drama bit instead of doing a Grammy number, wouldn’t you?
Simple snip-snaps you and I understand. Which is why even Einstein kept it down to E=mc2 despite reinventing everything science stood for.
Can You Carry it Off?
Hey, Frank Sinatra was a great singer, but he just didn’t have Madonna’s figure and he’d look crappy as a blonde. Which is pretty much the crux of the issue. If you don’t have the ability to carry it off, you don’t. Not at least in the glare of the spotlight.
Madonna’s outward reinvention is her most dramatic feature, but at the same time she’s plugging away at her new spiritualism and lifestyle and hopefully it reflects in the lyrics as well.
Sting is a good example of a parallel Madonna run backwards.
Starting out like Billy Idol, he has wound his rock roots down dramatically and enriched his music to encompass several genres and languages. It’s a quiet manicured reinvention, that his fans lap up in eager anticipation
Sometimes the reinvention is loud and sometimes its soft but it’s never non-existent. Pop stars are good examples because it can often take one album to make or break them. You can serve twenty shoddy meals at your restaurant and still get away with it, but they can’t. Even the stars that appeared to exude stillness like Frank Sinatra, were actually living very close to their brand image and their noun and adjective.
Frank was a Coke– He stood for classic. Likewise, that’s what his music had to do. Elvis was a white singer singing black music and that’s radical. Which is why his gyrations on stage fit in perfectly with his uh-huh style. On the other hand, you could only take so much of Boy George. Know why?
At the end of the day, the calories are the proof of the pudding. If you don’t stand and deliver, you can reinvent to death without any change in your bottom line whatsoever.
How Does your Garden Grow?
For your business, there are several avenues that you need to magnify and reinvent. The main areas that you need to look at are:
1) Your Communication: Logos, Newsletters, Emails, etc. Do they really meet your clients’ needs? Have you got so busy doing things that you’ve forgotten to reflect your true worth to your clients?
2) Your Customer Loyalty: Are you stretching these parameters? Are they getting less or more loyal? If yes, why? If no, why not? What do you need to reinvent and re-analyse? And do you have a customer loyalty program at all?
3) Your Failure Analysis: This is a biggie. If you’re not analysing and welcoming failure, you’re going to be stuck on your island for so long, that you’ll sink once global warming gets worse. If you want to double yo
ur success rate, you’ve got to double your failure.
The Key to Reinvention is Simple
a)You’ve got to die a thousand deaths and come out on the other side. b)Simplicity is the key.
c)Your brand image is money in the bank. Don’t ever change it.
d)Wear the mini only if you can carry it off. Remember there’s a market for minis and gowns simultaneously.
While you’re reading, Madonna will be hard at work on the next step. Isn’t it time you got to work too?
©2001-2008 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas? Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.
Two might be company in life, but in communication you can go all the way to three and still have a rollicking party. If you step over to four however, it’s quite likely that you’ve stepped into the hara-kiri zone. Back up that truck a bit and learn how the power of ‘3′ has the ability to make your communication soar.
Let’s Start With a Little Test
Here’s a psychological test. Lay out 10 business cards in a row and choose three that catch your attention instantly. Now don’t cheat. Do this before you continue reading this article and you’ll be quite amazed at the results.
So What Did You Find?
Isn’t it strange that there seems to be no real reason why you chose what you did? There doesn’t even seem to be a very clear pattern emerging.
Some of the cards have lots of information, and some have very little. Some are colorful and others are not. Yet something has drawn you to play the devil’s advocate and reject some of them outright. Could that something be a deep-rooted psychological trigger embedded in your subconscious? And how can this trigger make such a dramatic difference to your communication and marketing?
Aha! You’ve just run into the magic of THREE.
Understanding and applying it will throw a light into the dark world of your presentations, brochures, web sites and yes, even email! Before you put this into the "This is for my graphic designer" basket, read further because it will help you recognize the psychological background of how the brain understands these things and reacts to them. It will also help you clean up your everyday communication that your designer might never get involved with.
How the Brain Sees Things
The brain finds it relatively easy to grasp threes — elements, colors and fonts. Push that marginally up to four and the brain gets confused about where to look and what to do, and sends the eye scampering like a frisky puppy on a sunny day.
So why does this happen? For that we might have to go back a little to diaper country. As a child, everything you did and learned seemed to be centered around three — A,B,C; 1,2,3; Three blind mice, Three musketeers, Trinity, Three Stooges and Huey, Louie and Dewey. (Quack! Quack! Quack!)
Then again, maybe these writers, animators and wise men understood the ease with which we understand ‘threes’ and reconstructed their work to fit this paradigm.
The Building Blocks of Visual Communication: Elements, Fonts and Colors
Most visual communication can be reduced to these three features:elements, fonts and colors. Understand how they work and you’ve given yourself the added advantage of a mini design degree.
Just What are Elements?
I’m assuming you’ve gotten rid of those business cards in front of you. So I’ve made up some of my own to illustrate how elements work together. Elements are simply groups of objects that are grouped together to form a common definable form. For instance, your eyes, nose, mouth and ears are the main objects that form the element called the face. Let’s look at the cards below to understand this even better.
If You Look at Card# 1, You Will Spot 3 Elements:
1) The name and the title of the person.
2) The logo, the logo font and the service description.
3) The contact details form the third element.
If You Look at Card# 2, You Will Find Very Subtle Differences.
All I’ve done is moved the text and logo just a tad bit around. However, even that tiny displacement has ADDED a series of unwanted elements. Suddenly it appears there are 5 or even 6 elements.
1) The name.
2) The designation.
3) The logo design.
4) The logo font.
5) The service description.
6) The contact details.
Card# 3 Gets Even Harder to Focus On… Guess why?
Card#3 is all over the place, as it has not only violated the rule of elements, but also complicated the visual layout with additional fonts. It has 5 fonts. Learning how to manage fonts makes a big difference to your layout and the overall look of your project.
Here a Font, There a Font, Everywhere a Font, Font
There are zillions of fonts out there today, and it’s hard to restrain yourself when you’re putting together a document. Try to use not more than 3 fonts in any communication. The more fonts you have on a page, the harder it is to actually read what you’re saying. Be aware that a font that is in italics visually ends up looking like another font altogether. It adds to the elements and clutters it up considerably.
Also determine what the font is really doing for your document. You might want to create some drama and use contrasting fonts. For instance, fonts that are vertical used with fonts that are wide contrast well.
I’d also recommend that you read The Design book for Non-Designers, by Robin Williams. It’s an inexpensive, easy to read book that clearly explains the different facets of fonts and their usage, plus how to use fonts to set the mood.
Seven colors are for Rainbows
Whether it’s a tee-shirt, brochure, website or business card, it’s important to restrain yourself. Managing your color palette with just three colors can often provide the feeling of as many as five or six colors, when moved around a bit.
Count shades of colors as two colors. So, red and dark red are not just one color but two definite shades and hence, two definite colors. So, be clear about the colors you are choosing. Say you choose something like red, black and green. Move that round a bit and you can get brighter communication without the confusion.
Why This is Important in Marketing and Business Communication
Most of us are always presenting or selling to someone else. The proof of the pudding is always in the eating. But the taste buds start to salivate only when it looks really YUM! If you choose to ignore the psychology behind this, your ‘dish’ might taste wonderful, but you may never get someone to stay long enough to eat.
This also helps you keep a check on your designers. Good designers instinctively get this right, but sometimes they goof up big time. You can run this audit past your marketing material and check for elements, fonts and colors.
Having said that, a competent designer might have the innate ability to break rules. And if it works, that’s OK. Nothing is that sacred, but it helps to know the reasoning behind it. Besides, you now have the ability to make that designer sweat a bit.
Heeeeeeeeeere are some Examples!
McDonald’s: The McLogo consists of two elements-The name McDonald’s and the Big Golden Arches. They use just one font, and just two colors — yellow and white (or black)
Coke: The Coca-Cola button that you see in most advertising, consists of three elements: the button itself, the bottle on the button and the Coke Logo. Even though it is a full color image, the colors are minimal and there are just one or two fonts used.
Now that you can see the forest for the threes…:)
Go out and look at advertising. Revisit your brochure. Audit your presentation. Streamline that website. You will be appalled at how much clutter you had to start with, and how easy it is to smarten it up quickly and efficiently.
Your marketing message will be much tighter and more professional. But best of all, you’ll know you’re doing something that’s deeply embedded in the psychological psyche of humans.
May the ‘fours’ be with the reckless Luke Skywalkers of the
universe (That’s a joke, ok?)
You’ll find it pays to stick to the threes!
©2001-2008 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas? Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.
Use these steps to get a top search engine ranking for your website.
You may have heard that search engine rankings are crucial – and this is the truth. If your website ranks well in Google, MSN and Yahoo then you are exposed to the greatest pool of Internet traffic available. These search engines together drive over 90% of search market share.
But how to get this rank ? Let me show you very clearly , "How to rank 1 in search engines in 12 proven steps!"
First , create a text file on your computer and name it analysis.
Step 1: Go to the search engine on which you want high ranks.
Step 2: Search the term you are targeting. Example if you want to rank high for "SEO", then search for it.
Step 3: Look at the number one sites title that the search engine is showing you . Count the number of times your search words appear in it. Add this number to your "Analysis" file.
Step 4: Count the number in the description provided by the search engine. Add this number also to your "Analysis" file.
Step 5: Visit the site and count the number of times the term appears there and Add this number to your "Analysis" file. Don’t forget to count the number in the META DESCRIPTION tag also!
Step 6: Type the URL of that site in the search with link attribute. Example if www.mydomain.com is number one , then search for "link:http://www.mydomain.com". The search engine will show you the number of other websites that are linking to that site. Add this number to your "Analysis" file.
Step 7: You can also add the same data for the second and third results in search.
Step 8: Open your page which you want to get ranks for in your favorite html editor. Most of the html commands are inbuilt and I don’t have to bang my head with HTML codes when I am trying to concentrate on page optimization.
Step 9: Modify your title tags , meta tags so the number of times keywords appear is just one higher than the number in the analysis file . Do the same for the BODY of your page. Enclose the keywords in BOLD tags and sometimes in both BOLD and ITALIC tags .
Step 10: If you have lot of text on the page, then divide it into paragraphs . Before every 2 or 4 paragraphs add a HEADING tag. Don’t forget to squeeze in your keywords in this tag! You can use style sheet to make the heading look better on your page. Example <H1 style="font-size: 20px"> will reduce the size of the text in heading to 20 px instead of displaying the ugly large heading . Replace < with < Replace > with > in the code above .
Save and upload this page to your website .
Step 11: Get your site indexed by search engines . You can submit a sitemap to google directly at http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login. Google wants a XML map which is also indexed by other search engines. Generate this map for your site and submit to google. For other search engines link this map from your website’s pages. But the XML version is not for human visitors who will be visiting your site. So create a HTML version for them and link this from all your pages. It will use your XML map and create a HTML map from it , count the number of pages on your site, link to all, divide them in categories and also links to your XML map for search engines. Best part it also allows you to add your own website templet so your visitors know that this is the same site. Providing a sitemap will help you get your site indexed faster. Google says that you can have 50,000 pages listed in one single sitemap of yours.
Step 12: Start building links for your site. You can do this by submitting your site to web directories. The more sites link to you, the better it is. Remember you have to cross the LINK number in your analysis file. Most directory owners will cancel all your links if you submit twice to their directory.
Now keep checking your back links frequently in the search engines . You can use MSN to get the best idea. Search at http://search.msn.com
Some would suggest that you need to submit your site to search engines but that is totally unnecessary because the back links will keep bringing search engines to your site again and again. With each visit , they will index more pages of your site .
You must also link to quality sites as this tells the search engines that you are providing your visitors a useful resource and your site must be important enough to refer a quality site .
Best of luck for your site . Always remember , "Write for human visitors and not for search engines."
Written by Michelle Hayes
Many people in business always try to sell you the dream. It all sounds so good when it is being told to you. The fact is that dream will not be a reality until you set a goal. Goal setting may not be as far fetched as you think. Within this article you will learn how to set an obtainable goal and live your dreams!
Its 9: a.m. and you have errands to run, dinner to prepare for friends (they are coming to taste your specialty) and a few household chores. You need to have this all done before 6:p.m. Most would start out making a "things to do list" the night before to prepare the day. You do your chores and run errands and prepare dinner all in time for your dinner with friends. All goes well, Goal Achieved!
In business, you must set the same standards. You are the only person who can decide where you want your career to go and how to get there. You must decide what matters the most to you. Devise a plan to achieve your goals.
Distractions are common when working at home. No matter how organized you are and how your date book may look. Life is full of unexpected surprises. All the organization in the world cannot keep you on track without having specific goals and a plan in place.
The Making of Your List
Making your list of what is most important is the start of goal setting. Set aside some time to write down your goals. Make sure you prioritize them. Now you need to find your motivation for these goals. (Here is an example: Goal- Increase your business party sales. Reason – To have the life you have always wanted)
Visualize images as they come into your mind without monitoring them. Write down the first things that come to your mind. Visualize yourself in a shiny new car, taking a family vacation, having more time for romance, wearing a fabulous wardrobe, getting a massage or all of the above! These are the things that are most important to you. It is your life, these are your dreams and you can make them come true!
Concentrate on where your goal is taking you and navigate your plan to get there.
Now decide how much time you will need to devote to your business. Consider time constraints and obligations so you have nothing to distract you. Write down what you would like your income to be. Writing it down is the first step in getting to your goal.
Create Your Plan
You have made your list and know what you want. How do you get there? Your goals are your destinations and your plan is how you get there. Turn that list into a neatly written, more specific list of your goals. Prioritize them by what is most important to you. Make your goals achievable as well as short term and long term. Set goals to achieve for daily, weekly and monthly. I personally like 30-60-90 day goals. If you’re shooting for an annual goal list that too!
Now create a plan to achieve your goals.
- Daily: Structure each day with the necessary time you will need to devote to your business.
- Weekly: How many contacts do you need to make each week to add bookings to your schedule?
- Monthly: How many parties will you need to earn the salary you desire?
- Annually: What do I need to achieve highest in sales, top recruiter or even the trip promotion?
If your goal is recruiting, consider how many new recruits you may need to Climb the management ladder and to achieve your status goal. Achieve the Top Recruiter Award.
Set Your Plan in Motion
Post your goals and plan in your work area as a constant reminder. Keeping them easily accessible will keep you on track. You could post pictures of the trips or prizes you wish to earn. Revise your goals when necessary. You may find that you may have underestimated yourself and need to raise the bar a bit. Or you may have set some unrealistic goals that place impractical demands on your time. Changing your goals or reprioritizing them to better adapt to your personal life or obligations is fine.
A wonderful time management method is to set clear goals and a plan by which you can achieve them. You can avoid some of the most common time stealers such as procrastination, indecision, interruptions from the telephone and visitors. Two things to keep you stress and fatigue free are organized workspace and set hours (to concentrate on your goals). Let family and friends know this is work time. A clearly defined path to your success along with prioritized goals will help you visualize your dreams into a reality!
Key Qualities of a Useful Goal
- Specific – Describes what you want to accomplish with as much detail as possible.
- Measurable – Describes your goal in terms that can be clearly evaluated.
Challenging – Takes energy and discipline to accomplish. - Realistic – Capable of obtaining it.
- Deadline Date – Specify completion dates for each goal. Break down long term goals into smaller goals with targeted dates.
- Ask yourself what your business can do for you AND what can you do for your business!
By Ray Blunt
There is a game being played somewhere right now within almost every government organization. The game is called ‘In Search of Best Practices’ and it is played something like this: “We’re about to launch a major change (like putting in a leadership development program). Before we do, let’s benchmark the best organizations around to find out what they do, and especially, let’s see what other government organizations are doing. After all, we don’t want to reinvent the wheel now, do we?”
So the change team dutifully goes out, does their research, makes some site visits, documents their findings, and then prepares a menu of best practices from which a program is built. The game proceeds by briefings up the line which are bolstered by citations from the Who’s Who of Best Practices—prominent companies in the news, selections from the 100 Best Companies to Work For, other Federal agencies, etc. The game is won when the program, designed around the Best Practices, is given the go ahead. So what’s the problem? It may possibly be declaring a premature end to the game by failing to realize that ‘best’ is simply a local term, not a universal one, and that there may be better and prior wisdom that is being ignored in the bargain. It’s something worth discussing.
Interesting Practices
The victory lap cannot realistically be taken until the program design actually produces the results that people intended because somewhere in people’s minds is the sneaking suspicion that if we do it like the big boys and girls we will be like the big boys and girls. But that syllogism can turn out to be false, and some have fallen into that trap—including me.
Dave Ulrich, perhaps the wisest human resources expert around, uses the term “interesting practices” to describe such approaches to a range of human resources initiatives. They may work in the long run–or they may not. The key is to understand the culture of the organization, the capabilities the organization possesses, and the needs it is trying to address. Keeping up with the GEs or the Microsofts of the world or even the IRSs does not mean your approach to leadership development will mirror the outcomes of theirs.
Five Best Principles
It may make more sense to start with a solid understanding of what can be called ‘best principles’ in succession and leader development and then see which practices will work for your organization’s culture and its specific needs for future leadership. If you begin with the best principles, you can then safely test out your proposed practices to see which ones best fit your situation. Here are five principles that have bred success, specifically in excellent Federal Government organizations:
1. They base their practices on the four proven principles of how leaders learn to lead—challenging and varied work experiences; significant relationships with senior leaders; self awareness based upon feedback, reflection and lessons from the hardship crucibles of life; and self development and selected training.
2. They make a business case for developing future leaders with decision makers that helps drive the mission and avoids the trap of simply being something ‘good’ to do.
3. They recognize that initiating leadership development, at least in the Federal Government, is most often a cultural change as well where leaders shape the culture and it is not simply a case of human resources development (HRD) standing up another new training program.
4. They understand that the key cultural change is this: it takes leaders to grow leaders—not trainers, not HRD experts, not consultants: leaders grow leaders—and that it will take a serious time commitment on their part.
5. Senior leaders hold themselves and their human resources development and training partners accountable for results—those results are that a next generation of good, solid leaders emerge (who, in turn, grow those behind them).
Getting It Right
In my opinion these are tantamount to being non-negotiable principles of developing future leaders, forged from experience. These must be the framework around which any leadership development program is designed before anyone starts thinking about best practices. And if you look carefully, four of these five principles are based on an assumption that it takes leaders to grow leaders. These principles are not a menu; each one is critical to success. Successfully applying these principles requires hard work and persistence over a long period of time—make no mistake about that.
So, what do you see in your own leader development efforts in your organization? If you are a leader, are you actively engaged in developing the next generation in your own organization at whatever level (and devoting the time it takes)? What barriers do you face in doing so? If you are an aspiring leader, what can you do to help imbed these principles if they are not yet implemented? Do you think you can make such an impact on those above you? Finally, is it a realistic expectation that the public service leaders of today have the time and the capability to help grow the next generation or the awareness that their contribution is sorely needed?
Ray Blunt is currently the Associate Director and Fellow at the Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation and Culture. For the past 12 years he has served as a leadership consultant and teacher for the Council for Excellence in Government and the Federal Executive Institute as well as for several government and non-profit organizations. He spent 35 years in public service in the US Air Force and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
Written by Jim Estill
Return on investment in marketing cannot be measured accurately.
Do you buy a Coke because it is on the billboard; because you saw the ad on television; because you saw the Coke truck; or because the Coke machine is convenient? Was it the ad this month or last? Or was it the ad you saw when you were 10? Or is it the fond memories you have of drinking Coke? Or the nice logo?
The answer is – you probably don’t know exactly why you buy the Coke at the particular time that you do. It is a combination of all these factors that make up marketing that cause the consumer to take action.
Marketing is the battle for perception. Good marketing can create the perception needed to cause purchasers to buy.
The only type of product that can have an instant return on investment in marketing is something that is truly commoditized. If you are selling water and there is no perception that your water is any different than anyone else’s water, then if you do a marketing campaign or a promotion or a price reduction, you can shift share from a competitor. Most manufacturers should actually be spending their marketing dollars differentiating their product. It is much easier to sell “Clean Glacier” water over “bottled city” water if Clean Glacier can sell the refreshment and health benefits of their brand.
The only companies that should want to commoditize their markets are ones that are truly the lowest cost to produce (not to be confused with lowest price). To sell at the lowest price without the lowest cost is a recipe for failure.
There is a great book called Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, that talks about mavens (product experts) and connectors (natural networkers who spread the word). The thesis in the book is that getting products known by enough mavens and connectors can cause a product to “tip” and become pervasive and successful.
I sit on the board of Research in Motion (RIM). When RIM was first introducing their products, they spent most of their marketing budget on giving samples of their product to people they identified as mavens or connectors. Most stockbrokers qualified. Because the product worked well, they evangelized it and eventually that lead to more adoption and ultimate success.
A single influencer can persuade hundreds of customers to buy over a long period of time.
The purpose of marketing, then, can be to influence the influencers. Design any program with that in mind.
Marketing is also best done with multiple media. It is best to not only send a flyer but to telemarket, email, fax, press release, demonstrate products in trade show, advertise etc. The different messages reinforce each other and different people get different things from different media.
All marketing tends to be more effective if it is repeated often. It has been said that the first time a person sees something about the company, they don’t see it; the second time, they are vaguely aware of it; the third time they look at it; the fourth time, they read it; the fifth time, they absorb; and the sixth time, they buy it. All marketing effects occur over time.
Because of the difficulty in measuring ROI, some companies will just stop marketing. This is great news for those that keep marketing. In time share will shift to those that continue to invest.
I am a time management person. I pride myself in using my time well. I even authored an eBook and audio CD on the topic. People ask me why I Blog and do I get a return on the time I spend blogging. I do know it has given me a higher profile. It has added to the traditional press I get (I have been written about in the Globe and Mail, Forbes Magazine and many computer trade journals like CRN). Can I measure the ROI? No – but no long term company can measure ROI accurately.
Follow these steps for making your company a heavily quoted source.
Ever wonder why your competitors keep cropping up in coverage – whether it be national dailies, on big-time TV broadcasts or even in local business magazines – while your company’s relegated to the back of the trades?
The fact is, a lot of media pickup isn’t always driven by stellar press releases, according to Dan Forbush, president and founder of ProfNet, a PR Newswire service that puts journalists in touch with experts and sources for breaking stories. "There are two essential approaches to media placement. One is to persuade reporters that your organization has news worth reporting – this approach is deliberate and release driven. The other is to persuade reporters that there are individuals within your organization who – because of their industry perspective or some form of expertise – are worth interviewing. This approach is opportunistic and pitch driven."
His tips for effectively playing the expert game:
- Play reporter. "Forget for a moment your own organization’s objectives, and read the world as a reporter would," Forbush advises. "Given your beat and the readers you must satisfy, what topics are of interest? What angles do you find fresh and provocative? With which sources – with what expertise – do you want to be in touch with?"
- Become a matchmaker. "Having performed that analysis, you can now lay the role of matchmaker," he continues. "Ask yourself, ‘Which individuals within my organization or my clientele can satisfy these reporter needs? And what presentations will be most persuasive?’"
- Identify ideas for the masses vs. tailored pitches. "When you write a news release, you’re packaging ideas for reporters in masses," Forbush says, "but when you write a pitch, you’re tailoring an idea for a single reporter. You’re saying ‘I think you’ll be interested in this person because’ – and you have a good reason for thinking so because you’ve done your homework. You’ve read the publication, or you’ve watched the show, and you know what works and what doesn’t. Via Lexis-Nexis or Google, you’ve researched the reporter’s work, and you’re familiar with his or her recent reporting."
- Adopt a long-term perspective. "In all of your relationships with reporters, adopt a long-term perspective," he cautions. "You should craft your pitch carefully in such a way that – even if the reporter doesn’t take you up on your offer this time – you can be confident your next pitch will be read. This helps cultivate your standing as a reliable source."
- Perform an Expert Audit. "You can be a reliable source only if you have a thorough knowledge of your organization and have identified everyone who can be helpful to reporters and how," Forbush says. "For this reason, when you join a new organization or take on a new client, you should always perform an ‘expert audit.’ Sit down with colleagues or clients and identify who can talk effectively about what."
- Develop platforms for spokespeople. "By profiling your spokesperson(s) on your websites and expert resources for reporters, you provide easy accessibility to these experts," Forbush says. "If you have an expert who can speak on a ‘hot topic’ that is currently in the news, consider sending out a media advisory alerting reporters to the availability of your spokesperson, and his or her position on the topic," he suggests.
Follow these simple steps and soon you will find reporters seeking you – or one of your experts – out for a quote again and again.