Addressing Holiday Cards

One of my best buds
has received a holiday card
addressed to her cats…
yes… to her cats.

The veterinarian realized
that people who loved their pets
would find this enchanting
and tell others about it.
There was no marketing attached,
only a simple holiday card.

Another one of my buddies
has a child in karate classes.
She pays the bills
but her son received the holiday card
from the instructor.

Her son,
who is eagerly awaiting his letter from Santa,
was over the moon, excited.
He showed that card
to every one of his classmates.
Again, there was no overt marketing attached.

Am I advising to send cards to kids?
Nope.
That can be tricky.

What I am suggesting
is to think seriously about
whom you’re addressing your holiday cards to.
Yes, the card may be going to the same location
but the impact will be quite different.

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Categorized as Marketing

Getting Paid To Learn

I wanted to learn to write steamier fiction.
I could have taken courses.
I could have asked an author buddy
to mentor me.

Instead, I subbed stories
to erotic romance publishers.
The steam wasn’t there
but the plot was.
A publisher contracted one of my stories
and my editor helped me up the heat level.
I got paid to learn.

Years ago,
I wanted to learn about franchising.
I had no franchise experience
but I had killer new business development skills.
One of the top quick service restaurant franchises
hired me to help them develop new products,
and they taught me about franchising.

Going back to school is great.
Taking night courses is great.

Getting PAID to learn is even better.
Odds are…
you can parlay the skills you have
into getting a job
to teach you the new skills you need.

BTW… one awesome benefit
to getting paid to learn
is that you are learning
from people who are also doing.
No airy fairy theory nonsense.

Tracking Marketing Effectiveness

Every time
a charity I support
sends out marketing material,
they use a different extension number.
The ‘operator’ who answers
always asks for that extension
before she patches the donor through.

One of my publishers
uses different discount codes
for different promotions.

I will use different promotions
on different yet very similar books
in the same series.

Why is this done?

To track how effective our marketing is.
If we can’t track results,
we can’t determine how successful
our different techniques are.

3R has a post
suggesting a few other techniques
to track marketing effectiveness.

Track, fine-tune,
increase your chances at success.

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Branding And Marketing

I have a new release every month
under one of my pen names.

I don’t advertise every month
because…
well…
I have yet to see
a direct correlation between
online advertising and sales.

However,
what I DO is advertise
every three months
in a big way.
I don’t do this for sales.
I do this to build brand recognition.
It helps when I contact publishers
to sell my next book.
It helps when I’m chatting with readers.
It helps when I’m negotiating online bookseller
assistance with sales.

I don’t advertise
every second of every day
to build brand recognition.
I advertise in a BIG way
every so often.

For branding,
all you need is to be seen
and be remembered.
Experiment
and find the most cost effective way
to accomplish this.

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Categorized as Marketing

Looking For Problems

Did you just wince?

Most people do
because most people don’t need any more problems.

…unless you’re an entrepreneur
looking for an idea
and then
you’re looking for a problem to solve.
The bigger the problem,
the more lucrative the opportunity.

As Rajesh Setty says
“General tendency is to stay away
from problems
and stay far away from bigger problems.
However, if you are not solving a big enough problem,
chances are that you may not
be doing anything important.”

Problems are opportunities.
If you have a problem
or an irritation
or frustration,
ask yourself
if enough other people feel the same
to warrant you designing a solution.

Employment Gaps

Once upon a time,
if you took a year
or six months
or less/more
off work,
you were unemployable.

Those days are now happily gone.

I have huge gaps in my resume.
I get asked about them
but I don’t get punished for them.

Why?

Because I’ve done stuff,
I’ve achieved things,
during that time.
I’ve written novels
(non-work related).
Friends have traveled
or done volunteer work
or tried and failed at business start ups.

I have yet to hear of anyone
getting punished
job search-wise
because they took time off
the corporate fast track
to do something different.

I HAVE heard of people
getting punished
because they took time off
to do absolutely nothing.
That shows lack of ambition
and it makes employers suspect
it wasn’t a conscious choice.

Employment gaps aren’t bad
but do have a good story
to explain them.
You WILL get asked.

Idea Generation

One of my author buddies
shared that she was in a dry spell.
She couldn’t think of any plot ideas.

Well… dang… that’s an easy fix.

We rounded up four other writers
and we spat out ideas.
She ended up
with a list two pages long.

Any writer
or inventor
or entrepreneur
has so many ideas,
she can’t possibly bring them to life.

So if you need ideas,
ask.
You may not use hers
but they may prod
an idea of your own to life.

Be generous with your extra ideas.
Ask for ideas if you need them.
Help others help you
to change the world.

The First Month On The Job

When I start a new contract,
for the first month,
I work like hell
and keep my big mouth shut.
I watch the office dynamics.
I figure out who the players are,
and who I can trust.

THEN I ease into conversations
and decision making.

Gil Schwartz in
September’s Men’s Health
advises a similar strategy.
“Sometimes anxiety in the workplace
leads to blabitis.
Nobody ever landed in trouble
for being too thoughtful and reserved
at an open meeting.
For the most part,
everyone respects a man
who projects a willingness
to learn the ropes in attentive silence.
You need to speak
when it’s appropriate to do so,
of course.
But stifle your tendency
to blather intelligently,
even if you think it makes you sound good.
That’s dangerous.”

When in doubt,
keep the mouth shut.

Naming The Individual

According to Laura Wattenberg,
author of the popular book,
“The Baby Name Wizard”,
how we name children
has fundamentally changed,
reflecting more individualism.

In the 1950s,
the top 25 most common boy’s names
and the top 50 girl’s names
accounted for half of babies born.

Today, it takes the top 134 boy’s names
and 320 girl’s names
to cover half of babies born.

There is a balance
between having a unique name
for a child
and fitting into society.

“We all want to be different
from each other,
but our tastes are still
as much alike as they ever were.
So the result is
we have a thousand tiny variations on a theme.
You get Kayden, Brayden, Hayden, Jayden.”

We see this same phenomenon
in brand names.
Different yet the same.

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Painting A Word Picture

Common sense would say
that the more general
the description you give,
the more people
that description will appeal to.

Common sense is wrong.

One of the first things
novel writers learn
is that the more specific a description,
the more engaged a reader will be.

The pint-sized wiener dog snapped his razor sharp teeth.
will grab more readers than
The dog snapped his teeth.

What does that mean for writing copy?

If you erase colorful descriptions,
thinking you’re rushing prospects
to your snazzy offer,
they won’t care enough
when they get there.

Be specific with your descriptions.

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