3 steps to take this week

Finish out the year: Create a marketing calendar for the remainder of the year. I like to use Word and create a table with four columns:

1. the month

2. product/service specifically to push then

3. what 2-3 marketing tactics I plan to use (pr, direct mail, etc.)

4. creative notes – brief timelines keys, maybe the headline has already come to me, etc.

Review your headlines: Take a look at upcoming marketing materials you have. Direct mail, website, ad, sales letter. What’s your opening line? 90% of the receiver’s decision is going to be made at the gut level by what that one line says. Make it compelling! Irresitible!

Ask for quotes: Contact 3 clients for testimonials this week. Two sentences will suffice. But get them! And then start using them on your site and in collateral.

3 marketing tips of the week

Got coupons? According to a recent analysis Scarborough Research, Internet coupons are of increasing interest to consumers, 11% of households currently obtain coupons via the Internet, and this has increased 83% since 2005. The Sunday newspaper remains the number one place for acquiring household coupons. Fifty-three percent of households get their coupons from the Sunday newspaper.  Cannot afford to be in the Sunday paper? You can afford to create a simple pdf of a coupon that tells customers to bring it in for a discount or free gift and post this to the home page of your web site.

LinkedIn: If you haven’t already, get your business on LinkedIn. It’s another easy way to get your business promoted and out there.

Human Resources Tip: Take time this week to examine your HR practices. What’s the process for posting a position? Is there some templated information to keep it consistent with what you say in your advertising? Do you respond to every employment inquiry? If you do not, you should. People remember what companies were gracious and what companies didn’t even have the time for them… they may not make the time in the future to buy form you when they’ve landed a new job. Make the effort! This is free word-of-mouth for you — and it’s up to you if it’s bad or good WOM.

Reminder to you: keep going

There seemed ot be so much negativity today. So I wanted to take a moment a remind all the small, medium and large businesses out there with passion… with a dream… that Coca-Cola was not built in day. Nor was Microsoft. Or Apple. Or Starbucks. Keep believing. Keep going.

And if you’ve just had an idea for something, pursue it a little. Breathe a little on that kindling and see if it doesn’t catch fire.

Some reminders of products and brands that might never had been…
Blue Jeans: Working as a canvas salesman during the California Gold rush, Levi Strauss noticed that the pants of prospectors had a whole lot of wear and tear. Strauss decided to stitch some canvas together and sell them as pants.

Feather Duster: In 1857, Susan Hibbard turned a notion about discarded turkey feathers into a duster that is still around today.

AVON: The first Avon Lady was actually a man, young door-to-door salesman David McConnell selling books. Turns out the ladies liked his free introductory gift of perfume much more than the books.

Band-Aid: Thanks to being accident prone, Josephine Dickson’s husband had an idea. He took some of the manufactured gauze and adhesive tape from the company he worked for, Johnson & Johnson, and put together some sticky bandages. Soon the company was making them to sell on a small scale. Four years later, in 1924, the company installed machines for mass producing the new product, and the trade name BAND-AID was adopted.

Christmas Lights: Thomas Edison might have been the great inventor, but it was his assistant Edward Johnson in 1882 who hand-wired 80 red, white and blue bulbs and wound them around a rotating evergreen tree.

Boardgame, Life: In 1860, Milton Bradley’s lithographer business was in jeopardy. His biggest seller — a clean-shaven portrait of Abraham Lincoln – wasn’t selling so well now that Lincoln had a beard. Out of desperation, he printed up several copies of a game he’d invented called, “The Checkered Game of Life.” It was hot. He sold 45,000 copies of the game by the end of the year and never looked back.

So whatever it is… you CAN do it. And if you need some help, call me.

My Tenets of Good Branding

1. BE CONSISTENT. You need to communicate key messages to audience segments on a regular basis in order to get their attention and create a lasting impression.

2. BE PATIENT. BE FLEXIBLE. Creating awareness takes time, so be patient.

3. BE CREATIVE. Create ads, brochures or other forms of communication for audiences that get the right messages heard — the benefits of who you are and what you do.

4. DIVERSIFY EFFORTS. Not all the eggs in one basket. I would rather plan for smaller ads consistently placed over the course of the year than blowing an entire marketing budget on one insert. I like using free publicity to stretch a marketing budget.

5. MEASURE RESULTS.

Information Architecture: Why You Need It

Information architecture determines the overall structure of a web site – the flow from home page to sub-level pages to thank you pages. Usability is a large part of information architecture. Does the visitor feel oriented? Do visitors know where to go for the information or functionality they want? Is the navigation intuitive? Is the user interface empowering and informative? The nomenclature and organization of that information, the ability to sort through and customize it, will determine the success of the visitor’s experience. Like any good sales pitch, it’s anticipating the question before it is asked and presenting a thoughtful answer.

The major content categories should be easy to grasp and they should align with specific target audiences. It is also important to surround any individual document or issue with related materials. This approach helps pull users into the material and establishes broader relationship to your brand, even if they originally pursue very specific information.

The information architecture will also form the basis of the guidelines for content length and layering. Information should be presented in a layered manner, allowing users to get a solid overview and then choose to drill down to more detail if they are interested. Supporting information to the primary text on any page should be presented as second reads on the page, drawing users to pertinent facts and recognizing the propensity of Web users to skim as they read.

Information architecture for the web is much like the design of a library or supermarket. The idea is to provide paths to information by showing relationships. Of course, web sites do not consist solely of linear relationships. Pathways through sites can be varied and few users will take the exact same path. Navigating is subjective, based on someone’s own preferences, interests and experience. Sites must be designed with a full understanding of the medium. Vertical pathways through the information must be straightforward and reliable, while lateral pathways should surface related information elsewhere on the site. Finding a balance between the way information “wants” to be organized and how the users want to find it is the key to successful information architecture. Once the relationship between the major content groups, the target audiences and the audiences’ expectations are established, the site mapping can begin.

3 marketing ideas to complete in 15 minutes

Sometimes the day-to-day sucks us into some dry, boring muck, doesn’t it? You head to the office every day but it seems like you ar enot getting anything crossed off YOUR to-do list. Marketing typically falls to the bottom of priorities when in fact, doing a little every day, can keep momentum going for your business. Here are three easy steps you can take today in this realm.

1. Write five of your best customers and thank them for their business. Hand write. Strengthens loyalty.

2. Review two of your competitors’ sites. Be sure you see what they are doing and NOT doing. Find an opportunity. Get a new idea.

3. Send a quick email blast to your database of customers. Send them a small, limited time offer… free shipping or 2 for price of 1. At bottom, state you appreciate their business.

3 bits worth knowing

So besides my book writing, I’m also looking to write some articles.

I have also cleaned out my in-boxes and been diligently reading the many enewsletters I subscribe to. Here are three interesting nuggets:

Laura Ries analyzes the branding of iPhone. Good read.

A recent benchmark study of more than 6,000 women by BlogHer, in conjunction with Compass Partners, shows that 36.2 million women actively participate in the blogsophere every week, with 15.1 million publishing and 21.1 million reading and commenting. 68% of this BlogHer community is concentrated in the 25 to 41 age group (the GenXr’s), compared to 42% for the general blogging population. Two thirds have completed college, and 46% earn over $75,000 compared to only 25% of the general community.

Pew has now broken down our twiddling middle class into four pieces. Great stats and pretty interesting from a mindset perspective

hot right now

employee branding
Getting HR and Marketing on the same page is key when it comes to current employees (how are they explaining their company to friends?) and potential ones (do you answer every resume?).

brand auditing
Have you been paying close attention to your customers? What do they drive? What do they wear? The more you see the similarities in your customers, the easier it is to figure out how to attract potential customers of the same vein.

getting serious
Small business knows that marketing is important yet they tend to leave the creating of their messages to people with little experience in this realm. Would you leave your bookkeeping to just someone that is good at math? Why leave your out-of-pocket marketing investments to someone who is “creative?”