Jeff Cornwall writes
“A local entrepreneur, Charles Hagood,
co-founder of The Access Group and
Healthcare Performance Partners,
always tells my students that
if he had just one dollar left
to spend in his company
he would spend it on marketing.”
If I had one dollar left to spend,
I’d spend it on an immediate sales driving activity
which marketing often is not.
Sales and cash flow today
keeps companies alive for tomorrow.
A hotel I recently stayed in
was upgrading their rooms.
The rooms hosted expensive furniture,
curtains, bathroom fixtures and
had the hottest decor colors.
The problem?
The hotel used bargain workers
to install everything.
The paint had been dripped on the carpet
and touched the ceiling.
The light fixture in the bathroom was
too close to the shower curtain.
The grout covered the tiles.
It was a mess.
A company is only as premium
as their weakest link.
I’ve seen this happen again and again.
A company hangs its hopes and dreams on an ad.
This ad when launched has poor results.
So what does the company do?
They run it more often
or at different times or…
And what happens?
It still doesn’t work with repetition.
In times of cheap production costs
and more expensive airtime,
this doesn’t make sense.
Test and tweak
You’re considering sending a sales email.
Which should you send… html or plain text?
According to Michel Fortin,
html emails always outperform plain text.
The problem?
Getting past the gatekeepers
(email delivery companies like AOL and Yahoo).
One solution is to build permission
before sending
(an example is a newsletter sign up).
I’ve been reading some posts
on the 7%-38%-55% communications rule
(55% of communication is body language and facial expressions,
38% is voice,
7% is actual words used)
and the web.
Basically promoting the idea of video
on sites to communicate more effectively,
to “capture” the 93%.
This reasoning is ridiculous.
It would mean that newspaper, magazines,
radio are completely ineffective
which we know is not true.
This rule is meant to apply to face-to-face communications only.
I don’t talk about traditional advertising
(tv, radio, print)
very often on this blog.
Why?
Because for most smaller businesses,
it is not necessary.
As Michael Philip and Salli Rasberry state in
Marketing Without Advertising,
“More than two-thirds in the U.S., certainly
– of profitable small businesses operate
successfully without advertising.”
There are other more effective
and more efficient means of marketing.
A study by Harris Interactive
found that 70% of all mobile ads were deleted.
10% were acted upon.
That would sound terrible on its own.
However, when compared to
a direct mail campaign where a
success is 2-3%,
it is terrific.
How to improve that rate?
Same as with direct mail,
a more targeted list with permission to sell.
Lois Kelly, on Guy Kawasaki’s blog,
talks about the types of stories
with word of mouth power.
One of them, event or seasonal related,
I use frequently,
not by covering the obvious story
but by offering a complementary piece.
A star wedding in Paris would prompt
an article on Parisian restaurants.
A fresh angle on the story.
Less closely tied but
less competition also.
While music sales may have suffered
from the sharing culture,
the bank accounts of music stars haven’t.
I can’t watch a music video lately
without seeing some sort of product placement
and these deals are lucrative.
Jessica Simpson for her video A Public Affair
was paid $200,000 by HP
for showing their products.
Smart, innovative business people
can make money in any environment.
Recently there was a discussion
on Ken Silver’s eBook forum about
promoting eBooks on exercise.
The reco?
Narrow the niche
from the general population
to stay-at-home Mom’s
or seniors
or those with chronic fatigue syndrome.
With a few simple tweaks,
the author has gone from
one general, untargeted product
to a product line-up
for each easily marketed niche.