THINKing

Forgotten Gems

Through no fault of their own, sometimes really good posts just get overlooked. Here are a few forgotten gems you may have missed.

Grandma Says -  Southern grandmothers have often said, “there are only three times a respectable person’s name should be in the paper: when you are born, when you are married, and when you die.” This is the one area in which I part company with my grandmothers.

Brand Euthanasia -  Some brands should be allowed to die, or if that fails, then we owe it to them to kill them.

New Business Tip: Do Great Work For Current Clients -My marketing mentor, Bill Loeffler, once said the the best new business program is doing great work for current clients. He was right.

The Value Of Connections – As we have discussed before, the value of connections in business cannot be underestimated. I’m talking primarily about tight connections that you use ruthlessly to help you achieve your personal and professional goals.

To Market, To Market… -  What does buying a fat pig have to do with your business? Stick with me and all will be revealed.

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Do These 10 Things Today

Are you looking for ways to build your business? Sometimes we become paralyzed because there seems to be so many things we could and should be doing to market our companies. Longtime readers know I’m typically a strategy first guy, but sometimes you just need to do something to get  things rolling. So, here are 10 easy marketing ideas you can start on today:

1. Plan a speech

2. Start a marketing calendar, listing all of your scheduled events in categories like advertising, direct mail, networking

3. Write five thank you notes and send them to your best customers. Repeat tomorrow.

4. Review your LinkedIn profile (you do have one, right?) to make sure it is complete.

5. Connect with me on LinkedIn

6.  Sponsor a charity event

7.  Write a press release. See my article: 33 Reasons To Do A News Release

8. Sign up for my enewsletter on marketing

9.  Line up a college intern to help you with your marketing this summer. As a UNC-Chapel Hill grad, I suggest UNC’s intern program

10. Read my series on New Business

Got any more ideas? Comment, please.

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The Rule Of Reciprocity

Are you using the rule of reciprocity?  I ran across this topic not too long ago, and it got me to thinking about how this rule applies to marketing and PR.

Much of what we PR people do is based upon this rule. Do something for someone else and they will turn around and do something of equal or greater value for you.

I’ve written about this before in a series of posts about networking and gaining new business.

Friend Brent Dees owns Focus Four, a three-year curriculum to teach business owners how to work on their business and not in their business. In the Focus Four class, Brent teaches you how to utilize this rule most effectively. Says Brent,

“You should identify the people who can do the most to assist you in reaching your personal and business goals and then find out what they are trying to achieve. Once you know this, your efforts should be directed toward helping them reach their goals. This is smart business and good public relations.”

Remember, you do it because you want to help them. Expect nothing in return from them. But guess what? They always return the favor a hundredfold. That’s how to put reciprocity on steroids.

How are you using this rule in your business or your life?

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Put Away The Diamond Ring

It seems to me that many marketers are like the guy overeager to get married. That guy walks up to the first pretty girl he sees and immediately whips out the diamond ring, asking for the order, so to speak.

Marketers who ask for too much information from prospects the first time they meet is guilty of this, too.

I am always cautioning my clients about asking for too much information too soon.

If someone wants to sign up for your enewsletter, it’s OK if you initially just get an email address and a first name. That’s what I recommend. You can give the prospect the option to provide more but I only require those two elements.

As the prospect gets to know you and appreciates the content you are providing, then you can ask for a little more information.Or, if you want to provide them with some increasingly valuable content, then its appropriate to require a little deeper contact information.

FutureNow addressed this topic recently and I loved this line for their post,

Remember, it’s not about you or your sales process. Your visitors are volunteers in the process and are coming to your site with motivations and intent.

That’s dead-on. Those visitors are volunteers, there of their own accord. If you don’t provide them the information they need without asking them to marry you right away, your competition will. So, let’s put away the diamond ring until we are really sure about this whole marriage thing, OK?

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Marketing’s Magic Bullet

Do you believe there is a marketing magic bullet? A lot of people do.

Hundreds of “consultants” make millions of dollars each year teaching seminars and boot camps, and selling newsletters about marketing’s magic bullet – that one simple thing you can do to fill up your register with virtually no effort on your part.

People buy this tripe because they want “simple” and “no effort” ways to move their business forward.

All those magic bullet consultants are wrong. I have the secret and I am going to share it, but you won’t be happy about it.

My marketing magic bullet: focus, discipline and consistency. Yes, my magic bullet involves some work on your part.

Focus requires you to define your audiences, learn about their behavior, and then provide relevant and believable information, communicated in an original, impactful fashion.

Discipline necessitates developing a marketing plan and implementing it aggressively. Your plan must also include a sales element. I know businesses that market and then just expect clients to flock to them with wallets in hand. Unfortunately for these businesses, it requires some effort on their part. Sorry, no passive income.

Finally, we come to consistency. This means implementing your program even after you are tired of it. And don’t change your message and marketing tactics on a whim. The race goes to the marathon man, not the sprinter.

Some other smart people agree with me. Business Coach Brent Dees says, “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. If you focus, you can accomplish your goals.” Friend Bill Loeffler used to tell clients, “We can’t do everything. Let’s pick three marketing tactics and do them right.”

Remember: focus, discipline and consistency. Unlike those other consultants, I won’t bill you for that magic bullet. Lock and load.

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Time To Plan

There’s usually some downtime at work around the holidays. What are you doing with your break? I’m using mine to meet with clients and prospects and to complete my planning for 2010. Do you have a marketing plan for the year? What new items are you incorporating into your plan?

Here are a few things I’m thinking about for 2010.

How much should I budget – both in terms of my time and money – toward marketing and PR? Does it make sense to spend it in traditional marketing, in PR, in direct marketing, in social media or in some combination?

Have the media habits of my clients and prospects – marketers and HR executives in Fortune 1000 companies – changed? With which media are they spending more time and which ones have they abandoned? Where is their pain in 2010? Are they still short-staffed and looking for outside resources to round out their teams?

Based on some of the research I’m seeing, it looks like marketing budgets will be up a bit this year.  According to eMarketer,

Next year, while broadcast television, radio, newspaper and magazine spending continue to downsize, though more slowly than in 2009, online ad spending will enjoy a nice bump-up: eMarketer currently forecasts 5.5% growth. And the increase won’t all come from search—banner ads will grow 3.3%, and online video will jump by 40%.

This is shaping up perfectly for My Creative Team, since we have a great deal of expertise in the online environment and in developing flash animation and corporate video for online use.

LinkedIn now connects me to 52 million professionals. Is there a better way to utilize my nearly 600 connections on this social platform? How can I use LinkedIn’s advertising capabilities to reach my target audience, specifically the HR audience? We develop a great deal of employee communication and training materials for Nucor, and would like to expand into HR with other Fortune 1000 firms.

Does a My Creative Team presence on Facebook still make sense since we are focused on Fortune 1000 contacts?

Tell us what you are thinking about. We’d love to hear your thoughts on how you plan to market in 2010.

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A Fresh Wind Is Blowing

The business winds are changing direction, but there are some organizations that don’t get it and never will. The news media and big ad agencies are two industries doomed to be swept overboard if they don’t keep a weather eye out. Today, it’s about transparency and a new focus on customer service, doing what’s right for the customer. I’ve found if you do what’s right for the customer, you, too, will ride under full sail.

Let’s review a recent example of what I’m talking about in the marketing arena.  We have a client leaving another agency to come to us for a number of services, including SEO, email marketing and Google Adwords.

Old school companies try to lock clients down by tying them to agency accounts for Google Analytics, Adwords, or email marketing, or  by hooking them into proprietary content management systems and the like.  An agency which manages all of its Adwords or Analytics in a master account is not going to want to give another agency administrative access. Guess what? You can’t transfer Google Analytics accounts and you lose all the historical data. Adwords account can be transferred, but it takes an act of Congress.

When we set up client accounts – although it is less convenient for us – we set them up in the client’s name. That way, if the client ever decides to move on, we can hand over the accounts and wish them well. That’s the new, transparent, customer-oriented way to do business.

Are you old school, or are you harnessing the fresh wind?

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Dusty Archives – February 2009 Edition

From time to time we sort through the archives of THINKing to resurrect gems that you may have missed. Here are a few that we recommend.

It’s The Relationship, Stupid – I don’t care how you slice it, when it comes down to fundamentals, business is all about relationships. Ignore this truth at your own peril.

What Customers Want – Here’s the truth: Your customers don’t know what they want. And to assume otherwise is folly. When you begin relying totally on customers to be your product development department, you are asking for serious trouble.

Patience? No, Let’s Kill Something – There’s the old joke about the two buzzards sitting in a tree overlooking a highway. One responds to the other, “Be patient? I’m hungry. Let’s kill something.” Just like that buzzard, it is not in the nature of most marketers to be patient for business to grow.

Great Employees = Happy Customers – Companies spend millions of dollars each year identifying their brand, and then communicating their brand promise through various media. Employees are the primary “media” in the majority of brand contacts. Raise your hand if you think a majority of your employees understand your brand promise well enough to live it and articulate it clearly.

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New Business 2009

Are you out looking for new business? Who isn’t? I wrote a series on the topic some time back. You may want to check it out if you missed it the first time around.

New Business Primer – Part 1 – Introduction to the new business primer.

New Business Primer – Part 2 – An organization’s brand identity must be a reflection of three things: market perceptions, the organization’s acumen, as well as its aspirations. Positioning is where these three elements overlap.

New Business Primer – Part 3 – My marketing mentor, Bill Loeffler, once said the the best new business program is doing great work for current clients. He was right.

New Business Primer – Part 4 – Let’s get past this strategic stuff and to the tactics that got you in front of prospects. First on my list of ways to get in front of prospects was referrals.

New Business Primer – Part 5 – Here is the best piece of advice I’ll ever give you, although at first blush it may not seem that astounding: focus. Did Harry say “focus”? Yes, he did. Wow, that’s deep!

New Business Primer – Part 6 – Let’s talk about social networks. In order to be most effective, you must select three to four networks and focus your efforts there.

New Business Primer – Part 7 – Cold calling is a waste of time and there are better ways to spend your time.

New Business Primer – Part 8 – Network It. Now that you have your client defined and you have looked at your list to identify those folks who can help you, you need to contact them.

New Business Primer – Part 9 – PR professionals know about reputation. But so often they don’t spend any time building their own reputation and brand. Step back and take a look at yourself as if you were a client.

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Top 10 Posts of 2008

THINKing’s top stories of the past year are listed below. Our blog tends to be an eclectic mix of advertising, PR and social media stories, and our top 10 posts reflect that. We might be on to something.

#10 – Know Your Media – Newspapers

#9 – A Bigger Logo Necessitates A Smaller Idea

#8 – Great Employees = Happy Customers

#7 – Patience? No, Let’s Kill Something!

#6 – When Billboards Go Bad

#5 – What Customers Want

#4 – It’s The Relationship, Stupid

#3 – Twittering Journalists

#2 – Top 10 Story Starters For Blocked Bloggers

#1 – Newspapers: Dig The Grave

What were your top 10 of 2008?

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