Remember, when you’re selling your offerings, you’re asking people to part not only with their money. You are also selling confidence in what you have to offer.
Archive for April, 2008
Please don’t turn Earth Day into another holiday like Christmas, where marketers pollute it’s real meaning. If you’re going to market your greenness, do it consistently and authentically. This means that your organization needs to embrace and involve green practices. Don’t be cheesy, but be real.
Today I met with the most influential brand on today’s young trendsetters (I can’t say names, but their name rhymes with Lice). One takeaway is more of a reminder of something I’ve known forever. Start at the top of the pyramid, and let the gravity of culture and marketing take care of the rest. In order to create the maximum impact for your brand, you need to influence the influencers.
Today I came across an article that discusses how biofuel, once considered a key weapon in the fight against climate change, is now causing havoc with the world’s food prices. What shocks me is that the economics of crop supply and demand wasn’t more adequately and openly addressed. Now, people are starving and food riots are spreading around the world…welcome to the 21st century.
How does this apply to small business marketing? Like I say in the title, this is a tangent, but a small one. In marketing you need to understand the consquences of your actions before you act. Will the customer buy, and why? What’s my expected ROI? You need to set expectations and measure against them. Otherwise, you’ll waste valuable money and time on a poorly thought-out endeavor. And while potential marketing disaster isn’t going to cause a food crisis, the outcome can still be severe for your small business.
There are more ideas than ever in the world. This means there is more opportunity than ever to combine and permute ideas into new ideas. You have more ideas than ever to connect in interesting and creative ways. Just open your eyes and look. Whenever you think you’ve hit a wall and can’t be creative, always remember this.
Last week, I had my grandma send me her iMac in exchange for a Dell (she didn’t like the Mac). She sent the iMac through UPS, with instructions for the package to be held at the UPS facility. Note the TO BE HELD part, which you have to pay extra for, btw. The package requires a signature, and since I’m not home during the day, I want to pick it up myself before work. So you’d expect UPS to be reliable…not even close.
For two days, I visited the UPS facility to pick up my package, only to discover that it’s on a truck for delivery each time. Despite promises from facility staff, phone reps, and customer care, they dropped the ball several times – for something they were PAID extra for! How hard is it to KEEP a package at a facility?! Forget about the adage “you get what you pay for”. I had to resort to stalking the UPS driver in order to claim my package, which should never have happened!
Does your business claim superior service? How do you know? Can you back it up? You need to be absolutely sure that your marketing claims are present at every step of your operation. It only takes one mess up to torpedo your image. In this case, I lost all trust with UPS’s claims of reliable delivery. Don’t let this be your company.
If you’ve ever wondered why I only blog a few times a week, here’s why. The New York Times recently did an article about full-time bloggers who are literally working themselves to death. Small Ninja is a blog that I hope communicates useful information. I’m not interested in minute-by-minute content, but would rather keep the content relevant and interesting.
Ever wanted to test your marketing message on the cheap? Google Adwords (or similar platforms such as Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN) offers a great way to see if your message will create attention and conversions for your offerings. Here’s how to do this, using Google Adwords as an example:
- Setup your Google Adwords account. This is super simple, and takes only a few minutes.- Create text ads with one or more messages. I suggest at least two variations on the same message so you can run an A/B test.
- Choose the keywords and other placements for your ads.
- Your ad is up and running.
Use Google Analytics and the Adwords reports to determine which ad is doing the best.Once you have this insight from Google, you can take your winning ad message and create print, TV, radio, or other ads. This is a super cheap way to test your message for only a few hundred bucks or less – much less expensive than running thousands of dollars in print or TV.
After using Typepad, I’ve concluded that I like WordPress better. It’s free and easy to use. I guess I got tired of paying Typepad for exactly the same thing I get with WordPress. Anyway, if you lost my blog for a bit, I’m sorry. Feel free to re-subscribe via the Feedburner link on the right side of the page, and you’ll be sorted out.
