In the July 2006 issue of deliver magazine,
Seth Godin is quoted as saying
“You’re spammers
if you’re sending me
unanticipated, impersonal, irrelevant junk
in a format I don’t want to get
about a product I’m not interested in
and won’t have time to look at.”
The easiest way to prevent this
is to always think about adding value.
To your prospect.
Not just to your bottom line.
Many people view the 44+ crowd
as being set in their ways,
unwilling to try new things.
Not true.
According to a 2005 Yankelovich MONITOR survey,
28% of Boomers purchased products
from a catalog over the previous 2 months.
7% of Boomers made a purchase
after receiving mail from a company
with which they had not previously done business.
Don’t rule Boomers out as a source of new business.
A local actor was talking about
the lack of local media coverage and
how that is translating into less star power
and lower earnings.
Having never heard of the guy,
I Google’d him,
looking for a photo.
Was there one on IMDB?
No.
Was there one on Wikipedia?
No.
Did he have a website?
No.
A blog?
No.
You know why there is a lack of media coverage?
Because he makes it damn difficult.
Are you making it easy?
Do you have your logos online?
Your product offerings?
Photos of your top execs?
A young entrepreneur I know
is planning to spend thousands of dollars
for a professional to design a logo.
And she is spending this
before she even has a product.
Yes, a logo is important,
it is a visual representation of your brand,
but the cost does not have to break the budget.
The Nike swoosh
was created for $35
($184 in today’s dollars)
by a student designer.
Put the money in the product first.
With the advertising for my upcoming book launch,
I’ve collected a folder full of cover art images.
Why?
Because that folder is needed.
Every advertising venue has a different size requirement
and these sizes have to be exact
or the advertiser will be charged a penalty or worse, rejected entirely.
There is also an image quality requirement.
90 DPI (dots per inch) is the standard
for web/e-publishing
as the average screen can’t resolve higher.
Print, though, print requires a higher quality.
300 DPI is the minimum and usually standard
but the requirement can reach over 1200 DPI.
So when designing images or artwork or logos,
start at a high DPI.
An executive
on a past product launch
asked for a response rate on a magazine ad
the week after it launched.
He came from the direct mailing world.
With a direct mailer,
you can expect 80-90% of responses
between one to two weeks of mailing.
Calculating a response to an ad
in a magazine
might take the month or more.
If we had given him the extremely low numbers
we had after that first week,
he would have declared the marketing compaign a failure.
Marketing plans are important.
They lay out not only the marketing techniques and budget
but the response timelines.
Darren at Problogger in his post about advertising
reminds us that when we promote online
to link to a landing page,
not necessarily a front page.
So say I was advertising my writing site
in the Romantic Times eNewsletter.
I wouldn’t send them to
http://businessromance.com/,
I’d send them to a page specifically set up
for Romantic Times readers.
This page would introduce visitors to the site,
talk about my latest novel, and
suggest some starting posts to read.
This automated response
is easy to do
and
makes the reader feel special.
For some unknown reason,
client k got on a ranking of top Health blogs
(must be all that talk about selling more M&M’s
and how sleep is overrated).
I promptly contacted the listmakers and
got it taken off.
Why?
Because not all prospects are good prospects.
Calming down readers
who are never going to return
is a waste of energy.
As is trying to sell a beef burger
to a vegetarian.
Or marketing a romance novel
in a car magazine.
Concentrate on talking to the prospects
interested in the product first.
I got an email from a start up company
looking for press.
They did everything right.
They used my name,
they mentioned a recent blog post,
and they offered up
either a guest post or an interview.
Impressed,
I emailed my 3 quickie questions.
Then they blew it.
First, the reply back was
a cut and paste of their FAQ page
(insulting).
Then scrolling down,
I see that my email was flipped to someone
with a “this came from our blast email.”
So I feel like a fool for responding to spam.
The lesson?
Don’t talk to the press
unless you want a conversation.
One of my buddies tells everyone
that he is an alpha male.
He isn’t.
And that is easy to determine.
Why?
Because if he was an alpha male,
he wouldn’t need to tell people he was one,
they’d simply know.
That is the same with marketing.
If the only way your consumer “knows” something
is because you tell them over and over,
the minute you stop telling them,
they will “forget.”
The message won’t ever go viral.
It won’t ever last beyond the last marketing spend.
There has to be some truth in advertising for it to truly work.