With a down economy
comes downsizing.
Downsizing means more work for remaining employees.
How to ensure some of their precious time
is spent on your projects?

Send thank you’s.

I’m working on an implementation right now.
After each milestone is reached,
I send out thank you emails.
I make them personal.
I place them in an isolated email
(nothing other than the thank you).
I cc the person’s boss.

Thank you’s in this company are rare.
The receipients appreciate them
(especially with lay offs looming).
Their bosses appreciate them
(everyone wants to manage superstars).
My project has suddenly become a priority.

Send a thank you today
(they are even better sent on a Sunday).

Love her or hate her,
Sarah Palin is in touch with her own style,
her own brand, and her own target market.

It irked me when,
upon her nomination,
she was set up to take the Hillary Clinton vote.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Yes, both are women
but they are completely different women and
they appeal to completely different voters.

Like Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Both are colas
but they have very different brands.
Coke is traditional while Pepsi is edgy.
When Coke tries to be edgy,
they fail.
When Pepsi tries to be traditional,
they fail.

Is your product trying to be something it isn’t?

Peter Drucker said
“What gets measured gets managed.”

True
But the important decision is
what to measure.

An author buddy told me
her contest promotion didn’t work.
Why?
Because she didn’t get a single entry.

When we dug into her site stats,
there was a clear spike in traffic
during the contest.
As increasing traffic,
not receiving contest entries,
was her goal,
she clearly met it.
The promotion was a success.

Look at what you’re measuring.
Are they tied to your goals?

The media is focusing on
the gloom and doom.
They may be right.
There may be a legit reason to be worried.

But when the big guns are promoting one emotion
(fear),
there is always a marketing opportunity
for small business
to promote the opposite
(hope).

Now, I’m not saying
stand up and say the economy is going to be fine
when no one thinks it will be.
That’ll make you look like an ignorant jack a$$

What I’m suggesting is
focusing on the positives
in
other areas.

For example:

On reader loops,
a lot of people are talking about the economy.
Heavy, depressing, tiring stuff.

I, instead, talk about the great books
I’ve read recently.

This positive promotion makes me stand out.

Seth Godin has a great post
reminding us
that when we stand for something,
we have to say no.

This is more challenging to do
when sales are not-so-hot.
It is, however, still necessary.

On my romance blog,
I have one regular reader
who is very much against eBooks
(yet she reads blogs, go figure).
Every month,
I give away an eBook
and receive an unhappy email
from this reader.

As a flag waving member
of the eBook community,
I continue to give away eBooks.

Sales for Breach Of Trust
are not great.
I could be walking away from a sale
by irritating this reader
but I can’t say eBook is the future
and then give away print.

No one would trust me
and we only buy from those we trust.

There was a huge bookfair in my city last week.
I didn’t have a booth but
I wanted a presence.

What did I do?

I walked up and asked a smaller booth
if they would like some free pens to distribute.
These pens had my logo and website on them.
After a couple tries,
a booth said yes.

Win-Win

The distributor had freebies
to lure participants in with.
I had click thrus to my site
for the next couple days,
all for the cost of some pens.

Cash and time strapped entrepreneurs
CAN have a tradeshow presence.
All you have to do is partner.

According To titanium ebay,
the average best time to end
an auction
is 11pm EST on Sunday.

But Skip McGrath cautions
this is not a hard and fast rule.
It depends on holidays, football games,
and most importantly, the target market.
School kids would be in bed by then
and
Seniors are also more likely to surf earlier.

“You need to make sure
you end your auction during a time
when your target market is online.”

This hold true for marketing also.
No sense marketing if no one is watching.

I have a buddy whose idea
of enthusiasm in web copy
is using BOLD and multiple exclamation marks.

I suggested she read
Stop, Ask, and Listen
by Kelley Robertson.

Instead of offering a dismissive
“Oh, we’re out of stock,”
say
“We’re completely sold out!”

“We can’t get any until next month”
becomes
“They’re selling so fast
we can’t keep them in stock!”

“You can try getting it at
one of our other stores”
morphs into the stronger
“Let me contact one of our other stores
and see if they can help.”

Are you using enthusiasm in your copy?

David Wolfe and Robert Snyder
in Ageless Marketing
advise companies to
“Market to values, not to age.”

The top 3 values held
by Americans 62 and older are
self-respect, family ties, and faith and religion.
The top 3 values held
by Americans 45 to 61 are
altruism, family ties, and intellectual curiosity.

Yes, feature older actors and actresses
in marketing
but actually mentioning age is not needed.
Focus on values.

When I worked for a certain beverage company
and Pepsi, the competition,
tested a new product,
we would buy pallets full of
product
before it even hit the store floor.

We’d then tear the product
apart in labs
and ship it
to co-workers across the world.

Pepsi’s sales would spike
in these locations
but they weren’t real sales.
They were,
as Robert McMath calls them in
What Were They Thinking?
(a must read for any product developer)
Falsies.

The more shelf stable a product is,
the bigger the magnitude of the falsies.

If you’re using test markets
to judge sales potential,
make sure they are real sales.