Category: Marketing

I’ve read on different blog posts
that the business card is dead,
that email signatures are the new method
of recording contact information. 

I disagree. 

A few weeks ago, I won a contest. 
The holder of the contest, an author,
included her business cards as part of the prize mailing. 
She gave me a dozen and
by the end of a week 1,
I had given them all out. 

Why? 

It was the quickest way to
convey her information during
a face-to-face conversation. 
The business card had
a picture of her new book and her website.

In today’s information culture,
it is pretty much impossible to hide your past. 

There are two basic ways to approach the “bad” bits. 
You can try to keep them a secret and
hope they never surface
(impossible to do if you are ever in the media spotlight)
or you can be open about them. 

Jay Leno? 
He puts a star on them.  
The placement of his Walk Of Fame star is
on the site where he got arrested for vagrancy. 

Say you’re new to the world of writing copy. 
You don’t want to spend a lot of money.  
You need to test, to practice. 

So what do you do? 

You submit articles to Digg with different titles
and watch the results. 
And if you’re a savvy blogger like Mohammad Saleem,
you not only track the results but
you post on it also,
ending up with a killer article on writing headlines. 

The mega long titled movie 
“The Assassination of Jesse James
by the Coward Robert Ford”
is being pumped as one of the year’s
“top secret” movies. 

Forget for a minute that
this Brad Pitt movie was filmed years ago. 

If something is called “top secret”,
it is often not good. 
Good is difficult to keep quiet. 
Good creates buzz. 
Good goes viral.   

Much has been written about David Beckham,
his salary and whether he is “worth it.” 

In that evaluation, all factors,
not simply his playing
needs to be considered. 

What many people following the industry,
including Robert Boland at New York University,
are pointing out is
the increase in franchise purchase prices
since Beckham joined the league. 

As Boland states, Beckham is
“a world champion marketer,
not a world champion player.”

Google has launched a new Book Search.  
The feature has some implementation issues
(as we have become used to seeing with new software)
but I am already excited about the marketing possibilities. 

Soon customers won’t have to search for romance
and then wade through 1,000’s of novels,
often getting discouraged
and ending up with nothing. 

They will (at least eventually) be able to look for
romances set in India during 1832. 

Less choice means more likely to buy. 

John Jantsch advises to
send a monthly press release. 
“Get in the habit of creating a press release every month
with some newsy item or announcement and
send it to a highly targeted list of journalists
as well as your best clients and prospects.
Do this for a while you will find some interesting PR avenues
may start opening up.” 

What I like about this strategy is that
it drives you to action,
forcing you to complete at least one
news worthy promotional event a month.

If you have a great product,
don’t be afraid of sampling. 

The movie Stardust has hosted
the most free sneak previews
of any movie this summer. 
Having multiple opportunities to attend,
I finally agreed to one screening. 
And found out why they can confidently
give away free seats. 

The movie is that good
(for those loving fairy tales). 
I have personally recommended it
to over 1,000 women.

About once a month,
I submit a post to Romancing The Blog. 
In these posts,
I always, always mention
two or three authors and books. 

Why? 
Because readers respond to specific examples. 
It better serves my customer. 

And by doing so, I help someone else. 
I may never see a benefit
but as it didn’t cost… 

When you can, help someone else.

Recently I overheard an argument
between a publisher and an author
(online of all places). 

The author was upset about his book sales. 
The publisher suggested
he market the books more. 
The author felt that was the publisher’s responsibility. 

That’s fine if he didn’t care about results
but he did. 

My general rule is…
if I care, I take responsibility. 
Not doing so causes stress.
Not doing so and whining,
makes one look like a putz.