Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
Write letters to 10 influential followers, past client or old friends you know are working on something new.
The $10 it will cost in stamps and envelopes will certainly be better than the $10 you could spend on Facebook advertising.
“Hey, I know your wildly busy and striving for success. Is there anyway I can pitch in? Let me know. *phone* *email*”
You’ll either come out remarkable or memorable to the recipient, and even to those that don’t respond.
Stay Positive & Let Me Know How It Goes
Uber found SWSX and gave free rides to all attendees instead of spending the money on advertising in all the hometowns of everyone at the conference. They chose to reach a bounty of their target market instead of using a huge chunk of budget to advertise heavily in each city.
When everyone is under one roof, that’s your opportunity to make an impact.
When and where does your target audience get together?
Stay Positive & Why Aren’t You There?
The uninformed consumer is passé.
It’s ever more important to put a story out that matters (if not because you actually have one that matters, but because it is becoming the only way to survive in business).
The days of advertising and appealing to the mass are over. Now people are steadily searching out brands, reading about stories, seeing reviews from people who worked at the company of the product they want to buy. They actively ask what their friends think of a particular product before making a purchase. They read the “about us” page before they continue looking at what to buy.
Very soon Unilever will lose customers to their brands because people will see that they run provocative ads for their Axe brand that directly counters the messages they are trying to get across with their Dove brand.
These conglomerates that are trying to reach the mass by switching what brand they slap on a product won’t benefit them in the long run, simply because people are now realizing how one company is running the majority, and they’re not happy about that.
Take the beer industry for instance. The rise in craft brewery sales can be pinned (among other things) to consumer’s realization that Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors are the parent companies to some of their previously favorite beer brands.
Now people are starting to go to the restaurant that has a family story over the chain restaurant where computers rule.
In the past, having 20 brands owned owned by a parent brand worked. Now people want one brand (the parent) with one product. And that’s good for you and me because it offers us the chance to tell a story that truly matters, resonates with humans (not robotic consumerists), and allows us to pour our hearts into one bucket.
Stay Positive & Being Passionately Forward Leads To Consumer Attachment
Photo credit
I once had a professor who assigned groups of his students to write an elaborate creative and advertising brief. The document was to include everything from a SWOT analysis to target demographics to a media buying plan. When it was time to turn in parts of the overall plan, each part was 20+ pages when it should have been 2-5.
It was 20+ pages because the students wanted to use big words, repeat themselves in different ways with hopes it would convey their point better, and generally they thought it made them look better and, thus, get a better grade.
Oddly enough (sarcasm), 60+ page documents don’t move people.
Often times it’s one sentence, one page summary, one short video that makes someone move to buy, to research, to book, to subscribe, to hit “like.”
While I agree there are benefits to getting students to have a 60+ page mindset, I’m not so sure it accomplished the goal of what the class was for.
Sometimes limits, ceilings, maximums can work in your favor: they force you to write concise, they encourage big thinking of small ideas, they push you to work in ways that resonate with the target audience you want to impact. No one wants to spent three hours of their day looking over your brief, no matter how good you say it is.
And if you can’t communicate your message in just a few lines, is it really worth communicating, really worth investing in?
The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?
Ecclesiastes 6:11
Stay Positive & Can You Guess Where Those Long Docs End Up? (see pic above)
Photo credit
I’m surprised I’ve got to write about Yellow Pages. I’m surprised they still exist.
The issue isn’t so much how yellow pages promotes itself, reaches out to businesses, and pays people minimum wage to ship the pages to people and businesses that don’t want them. No. What amazes me is that businesses still use them to advertise. Perhaps they think they might as well since so many other businesses have pulled back. That thinking begs to be written about.
When starting a business or working on growing it, you’re presented plenty of options that are small investments with small returns. You may shrug them off or you may run with them. After all, there’s little to lose. Right?
Wrong. This “Yellow Pages Method” leads you to spread yourself thin. It gives you a false sense of successful marketing. It distracts you from the people you’re meant to focus on, the people who care, the people who seek you out on purpose rather than come by you on accident.
Having a business name that starts with A doesn’t get you extra business anymore.
The other issue with choosing to advertise in Yellow Pages is many do it simply because it’s what they recognize. Again, this action defers the question: is the Yellow Pages what your target market recognizes. Not you. Your target.
It pays to remember businesses don’t survive because of Yellow Pages, Yellow Pages exists because of businesses inability to devise a marketing plan that matters.
One last statement about Yellow Pages, the print version: it’s not a product anymore, it’s an advertisement. The tangible product keeps Yellow Pages on your mind for when people (like me) write about them or mention them, you still recognize it. Perhaps you may come across their online version. Then the question turns away from business owners to the marketing successes and failures of Yellow Pages.
Stay Positive & Would You Say Shipping The Hardcopies Is Good Marketing?
Photo credit
Some of the best writing comes from challenging a cliché, turning it on its head, and getting original with something overused. Weird is original and original is often uncomfortable.
Think of this concept in terms of advertising, not just writing.
Epic ads are often about challenging stereotypes. Pantene for example. Or the famous Cherios ad, aired during the Superbowl.
If you want meaningful buzz, go creatively challenge status-quos, clichés, and stereotypes.
Spare some time this weekend to incorporate this tactic into your PR, your brand, your writing. See what happens.
Stay Positive & Don’t Take The Flack Personally
Marketers used to rent eye-balls, they used to take out a loan for a potential audience, they would buy media space to shotgun market. That was marketing at its most traditional. That was marketing when the masses mattered, when there were only 3 television networks, when developers hadn’t come up with a way to block pop-up ads yet.
When I write you’re a marketer now, I’m not knighting you a marketer, I’m reminding you that you’re a marketer now, as in, you’re a marketer in the 21st century, as in the post-renting, post-loaning, post-shotgun marketing world of it.
Now as a marketer you own eye-balls, you own an audience and you own media space in a niche location. The success of your marketing is dependent in how you find those looking for you, treat those who already find you, and provide for those who frequently visit your home; be it your blog, your catalogue, your YouTube account or some other space your tribe gathers.
Marketing involves ownership, and ownership is scary. The stakes are much higher for marketers than they were 10 years ago. You can’t blame the mass for not clicking your ads, you can’t blame the lack of newspaper circulation for the decreasing sales numbers, you can’t blame Facebook for preventing your video from going viral. If some effort of yours is unsuccessful, it’s your fault. More ad space, bigger banners, extra magazine inserts won’t help.
Getting marketing right involves taking care of what you own.
For many that starts with understanding that you have ownership of an audience and a space.
Stay Positive & Remember My Favorite Aspect Of Marketing: You Get To Choose What You Own
And here is some bill the cat for you.
Photo credit
