Marketing Mistakes Even McDonalds Can Make : Be Visible

I was pleasantly suprised when I got off my bus and across the street (out of the corner of my eye) I saw a McDonald's roach coach. What made this roach coach even more fantastic is the word "FREE" on the side. I love free. So I saunter on over, grab my breakfast burrito and hang out for a moment. A few observations:

1. The direction people were walking was such as no one could even see them. All they needed was a way to direct people's attention...even a sandwhich board would have done quite nicely.
   
2. The majority of the traffic in the area was either getting on or coming off the ferry. Had they moved their operation to the entrance of the ferry terminal, their reach would have been much greater.
3. A lady yelling (in a seemingly angry manner) "free food!" out of the side of a truck is not the best attention getting device.
   

So, the moral of the story? Free food = a tasty treat for a lucky few. Free food + recipients of said food = effective marketing.

Try Not to Bug Your Customers when Marketing

I know, I know, this seems like a no-brainer, but it's so easy to get out of hand.

Once you have your business all set up, your mass email marketing templates crafted, your Facebook business account started and your focused Twitter accounts ready to go, it's hard not to want to jump all over the people you know like an enthusiastic puppy.

Some important things to remember:

• You don't have any customers. Unless you've purchased a working business, the people you're pinging, harassing, and advertising to are your friends and family. If you're careful they'll support you and pass along the word. If you're not, they might love you, but they will eventually tune you out. Just like when you were a whiny teenager.


• Start Slowly. Taking time to do test cases when you first start is a smart way to build your business. Share with your friends and family first (sparingly), then branch out slowly to other methods of marketing. This will allow you to deliver the level of service that you had intended.


• Let Your Customers Boss You Around. You have no idea which products will take off. What you might think is awesome might not resonate with your customer. Be flexible and let your customer tell you what they want. They'll make sure you're successful, if you let them.


• Spread the Love Around. Be sure to fill out your inventory. Whether that is blog postings, business listings, physical product, or virtual product, you'll want to have something to offer people coming to your site. You don't want your first customers to be disappointed customers.

Marketing: Finding YOUR Business Voice

Joe, this blog's for you.

Finding your business voice was such an incredible challenge for my business partner and I. Once we did find it, it was like a hand in a glove: just right. When I wrote Finding Our Business Voice I kind of copped out, saying that it just takes business experience to figure it out. It dawned on me (thanks to a little nudge from Joe) that everything takes a process. So, here are a few guidelines to find your voice:

• Meet your customer. Go out and meet several people you think you might be selling your product to. Asked them what sort of sites they go to. Ask them what magazines they read. Ask them what do they do for a living. Learn about the voices they gravitate to.
  
• Visualize your customer. Aw, hell, mock up a picture and tape it up to your desk along with a list of attributes that make them up. What kind of socks do they wear? Do they take public transportation? How old are they? Make it as detailed as possible, and prune it down later. This will help remind you every day who you're talking to.
  
• Know your product. One of the trickiest parts for us was understanding where our niche really laid. We learned that the more focused your product line is, the easier it is to market to your customer base. Even if you want to market to a wide customer base, make sections that appeal to specific interests. If you use this guideline to build your website as well as your marketing campaign, you'll win.
  
• Don't be afraid to be yourself. As most bloggers will tell you, their readers are drawn by their personality as well as the quality of their information. If your collateral is a personality as well as marketing material, people will feel more inclined to relate to your voice, and if they feel like they've gotten to know your company, they'll be more inclined to stick around. Look at Freshbooks, for example.
  

Marketing and Sales Before the Super Walmart

Isn't this desire for personalized, niche services just hearkening back to the times of yore (you remeber yore, dontcha?). Being impressed and mesmerized by the fact that companies are interested in engaging with you on a personal level through outlets like Twitter seems to smack of having salesperson in a store actually walk up and HELP YOU find what YOU'RE LOOKING FOR in a hardware store, doesn't it?

Doesn't the "new" and apparently noteworthy business model of specializing in niche products like bacon, candy, and toys especially for geeks just remind us of stories about bakeries that *gasp* just makes BAKED GOODS? Or butchers offering JUST MEAT? Or cobblers actually MAKING SHOES?

Maybe consumers are tired of generalization. Maybe we want people who do what they do best to DO WHAT THEY DO BEST. Maybe consumers just want help finding what they're looking for.

Maybe "yore" is pointing you in the right direction of your next marketing campaign. Or heck, maybe it's the answer to your whole marketing and sales strategy.

Finding Our Business Voice

So, I've had businesses before, but this new project I'm working on is different. Before I was a willy-nilly, seat-of-my-pants, ride the wave of excitement entrepreneur girl. I didn't set up processes that would make my life easier in the long run. I chose a partner with fewer resources than myself. I didn't understand what it meant to be a customer. I didn't even know what marketing is. Which promptly lead to increasing arguments with the spouse and overwhelming desire to take a month off of life.

This time, with no small contribution by my partners (hubby and official business partner), we've taken time to build out the systems and develop the plans to guarantee (as much as possible) our success. One of the most magical parts of this journey is the day we found our voice.

As you know, in this day and age, you can't just slap up a webpage, get a biz license and call it a success. The dot bomb days were aptly named. You have to create a lasting and genuine relationship with the people you intend to engage in business. Much like friendship, if you don't know what you stand for, it'll be difficult to find people who understand you. As a new business, we spent a lot of time feeling around for who and what we were so we could make a genuine connection with people. But when we settled into it, it was like coming home.

I would love to tell you there's a magic bullet for conquering this task. There isn't. For us, it just took time and business experience to settle into our skin and discover what we didn't want to be when we grew up.

Small Business & Family

I was commuting home (as I often do) on the boat the other day with a group and the topic of families, money and business came up. Because the Seattle area has lost of ton of large employers, many ex-employees are feeling out the idea of going it solo. If this isn't scary enough, many are unemployed. So, where does the new innovator procure some dough if they want to fund their marketing budget? If venture capital requires more than you see yourself doing and your credit is iffy, would you ask your friends and family?

The group I was sitting with were split. Half of them felt that asking their family would be the ultimate sacrifice. They would feel weak and vulnerable and as if their families would own a part of their soul. Others in this camp also lamented that they wouldn't want to put their families at risk that way. What if things went sour? What if you lost the business? Where would the money to pay them back come from?

The other half argued that they would want to give their family first crack at their success. They would get in at the ground level and therefore have a vested interest in seeing you succeed. They would also be far more forgiving (hypothetically) than a financial establishment.

To borrow, or not to borrow... What do you think?

Marketing your Business on the Cheap-Part 2: Social Networking

Welcome to my fast and dirty tutorial on ways to get your new business' name out and about like a east coast debutante.

Social Networking
If you read my last blog post, you'll have started a blog. Every time you write a blog post, pimp it out. Every time. That means you. Take five minutes to let everyone know that a) you've been writing and that b) you'd like them to give you feedback in the form of content.

Where?

1. Twitter. I'm sure you're sick of hearing about Twitter. I know I am. But God bless it, it works. I'm not sure why it's better or worse than Facebook, but by gum, there is a community out there waiting to hear what you have to say. Search for people saying your key terms by going to search.twitter.com and add them. They might just add you back.
   
2. Facebook. Who will sing your praises more than people who love you? Let people know that you're writing. Invite them to comment. You never know who they might turn on to the information you're providing. Plus, doesn't everyone like to brag/complain about a successful relative?
   
3. LinkedIn. Run, don't walk to create your business profile, personal profile and add people to your network. Add your URL to your status update. They are sent out to everyone in your network and can also provide an excellent way to get the word out. Not to mention it introduces you as a new business owner to the business community. Join an association! Answer Questions!
   

Anything else? Let me know if you have ideas.

Marketing your Business on the Cheap-Part 1: Blogs

After giving my ferry friend Joe a fast and dirty tutorial on ways to get the name out about his business it dawned on me that this would helpful information for anyone trying to start a business. So, here goes!

Blogs
Start a blog. It doesn't matter that you don't have product yet. It doesn't even matter that you don't have financing. Starting a blog is cheap and provides endless benefits. Figure out the main keyword topics for your website and start writing SHORT and TO THE POINT articles about your key topics.

Why?

1. It builds brand awareness. That means that people will start seeing the name of your business associated with good content. People will know your business before it starts to sell things.
2. People will start to trust you. Based on your excellent content, people will associate your name with reliable information. You will start to be known as an expert in your field. People will believe you understand their needs before you even sell things.
3. You'll have a built in audience. Providing you market yourself (see my upcoming articles), you'll have people who are already interested in your topics. They already want to hear what you have to say and because they trust you, they'll be willing to consider your product.
4. It raises your ranking on search engines for your target key terms. Because your key terms are already associated with your content, you, not only, get an opportunity to be ranked by Google and other various engines but if you're information is RELEVANT, you'll probably rewarded.

A Short Interview with Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media

Without belaboring the point, it's a tough economy to start a business in. Not to mention a marketing firm. Lisa Barone, Rae Hoffman and Rhea Drysdale of Outspoken Media have managed to leverage the crappy environment with their experience, talent, and vision. Lisa Barone offers you some delicious social networking tips to help your business thrive as well as an insight into their history and what makes Outspoken Media tick.

1. What compelled you to start a business in this crazy economy?
   
   I don’t know that “compelled” is the right word to describe what happened. Basically, life threw me a curveball and it was either dodge it or get smacked in the face. I dodged. ;) The true Outspoken story is that my (now) business partner Rhea Drysdale and I both moved cross country (her from Florida and me from California) to Upstate, NY to accept positions working together at another company.
   
   Those positions ended up not working out and we had to do something fast. We knew that we loved work together, so we called up our third lady of mayhem, Rae Hoffman, and decided it was time to do something together. There was no backup plan, no “what if this doesn’t work”, just a promise to each other that we’d make it happen and that together we could be successful.
   
   Obviously, we didn’t plan on starting a new company in an economic downturn, but we weren’t prepared to let it stop us either. We trust each other and ourselves to know we could make it work.
   
   
2. Do you feel like you have to work harder than a business starting up in a more receptive economy?
   
   Honestly, no. The fact that the economy is in the tanks hasn’t factored into our day-to-day operations that much. We have a new business, so it’s our baby and we’re working hard hours on it. But we’d be doing that anyway because that’s the attitude you need to take when you start a business. It becomes your life and you have to be obsessed with nurturing and growing it. It has nothing to do with the recession everyone keeps reminding us about.
   
   If anything, I think we’ve used it as an opportunity. We know that other companies are tightening their belts and looking at their budgets and taking more things in house. So we’ve focused a bit more on targeted some of our content towards that. We’re creating content to let them know all the little things they can do to help themselves with posts that offer advice for promoting a small business Web site or help with SEO for nonprofits. We’re trying to find ways to make the recession work for us instead of letting it scare us into submission. It’s worked out pretty well so far.
   
   
3. How do you define success?
   
   How do I define it personally? Wow, that’s a loaded question. ;)
   
   This will sound horribly cheesy, but I have a list of the things that I want to accomplish with Outspoken and for Outspoken. Any time something happens or I create an opportunity that gets me closer to scratching one of those goals off…then I view that as a success. A lot of my goals for Outspoken and for our clients have to do with strengthening their brands online.
   
   Internally, I want to be continually starting important conversations and to get people engaged and talking about certain areas of Internet marketing. And for our clients, success is showing them how to connect with their customers and how to start those conversations themselves.
   
   Rae and Rhea take care of the SEO and nitty gritty stuff. For me, success is found in the conversation.
   
   
4. What are the benefits of being a business owner over being a regular worker bee?
   
   You can work whatever hours you want, flexibility, being your own boss, freedom in voice and what you’re doing, etc. It’s a trade-off, though, because there are definite drawbacks as well – time investment, long hours, only eating what you catch, insurance issues, losing all social interaction when you suddenly spend 14 hours a day working out of your apartment. ;)
   
   For me the biggest benefit of being a business owner has been being able to use my real voice. I’ve gotten a lot of comments from people suggesting that the type of content on the Outspoken Media blog is “different” than the blogging I’ve done for previous employers. And what they meant was that it’s more engaging, it’s more authentic, it’s more passionate, and essentially, it’s more me. And it’s that way because I’m writing under my own rules. I don’t have other people’s corporate policies to deal with or have to be concerned with censoring myself. For me that’s been really important. I feel like I’m finally at a place where the blog and company I work for really represents who I am and what I believe. And getting to come to that every day feels incredible.
   
   It’s amazing to create something that you love so much.
   
   
5. What are the three most important social networking tips you can offer new business owners?
   
   • Get on Twitter: I can’t stress how valuable Twitter has been to the new branding of Outspoken Media. We’ve connected with current clients, brought in new ones, and attracted media attention and other big name SEO folks. It’s really leveled the playing field for small businesses to get in there and connect with the people who matter most and to make that process very scalable.
   • Network outside your little bubble: Find people who run parallel to you and get on their radar. Stop playing in your incestuous little circles and go make friends with the folks who sit just outside your bubble and run with different crowds. Talk to them. Help them promote their stuff. Lift them up. It will come back to you in spades. The people just outside your niche can do more for you than the folks running in the same circles.
   • Always give more than you take: You want to be someone that people want to associate with and you do that by being the type of person who supports others. I wrote a post a few years ago called Don’t Be Famous, Be Useful and it’s something I still keep in the back of my head today.
   • Don’t focus on making yourself a star, focus on making your customers and everyone else around you a star. That’s how you make friends and connections. It’s how you get people’s attention and show them you’re the kind of person (or company) that they should be interested in.
     

Blog Call: Combining Real Life and Online Marketing

Today's number is 464. That's how many articles I have in my Google Reader and how many articles I will shuffle through to make sure you get some interesting articles on stuff that might appeal to you. The theme: combining marketing strategies of online and real life. This will come in especially handy for you folks working in less technology savvy industries:

1. How to Make Your Offline Presence Work for You Online - Some great tips on what to do to integrate your online and offline campaigns. Any size business can take advantage of SEOmoz's wisdom here.
2. 4 Real Offline Uses for Twitter - A great way to look at Twitter from a real-life perspective. These are easy and implementable strategies that will encourage people who are interested in your brand to want to know more about you.
3. The Conversion Attribution Problem - There's always a gap between tracking your online and offline conversions. This esteemed firm has an interesting discussion that deals with ways to attribute credit where credit was due. Complete with lined-paper pencil drawings.
   

Tracking Offline Campaigns in the Google Analytics section of Google Support also provides a helpful reference to take time to see how effective your campaigns are.

How do you track your online and offline campaigns?

3 Ways to Maximize the Journey AND the Destination

I'd say that my biggest weakness is my drive to get to the finish line. I can't imagine that I'm alone here.

It's often said, "it's the journey, not the destination". Despite the cliche nature of this statement, when you stop to really look at it, it's got a pretty darn good point. In the web project management adventures I've taken on, it's the knowledge I've accumulated over time that has increased my value as human capital.

So, today I'm playing the role of the hand-holding, gypsy skirt wearing, uber-positive therapist who likes to speak in proverbs. Here are three things that will help all of us get the most out of every part of every project we tackle:

1. Be in the now. It's easy to get lost in the military march towards the end product, but your most effective learning will come from the process. In most cases, the knowledge gathered from the actual DOING of the project will far outweigh the end result.
   
2. Read the directions. In most cases, what you're doing has been done before. If you read the directions, you can bypass the most common and time consuming mistakes and start making new and exciting mistakes (!) that will shorten your learning curve. I like skipping to advanced mistakes, myself.
   
3. Treasure the learning stage. I know it's tempting to want to rush through this time to get to the "good stuff". But this is your opportunity to study your project in a more academic way. Take this time to understand your project's history, present and future. This is a sure-fire way to reduce errors in the long term.
   

Why Stripmine Your Web Address? Isn't the Earth Enough?

I think TinyURL undermines your marketing efforts.

I'm not really talking about sharing an eBay treasure with a buddy across the country. I'm really talking about the removal of all keywords and brand names from the link you're trying to promote.

Brand names promote trust in many cases, right? So why, for all that is holy, would you strip it out of URL? I know that when I scan web addresses the first thing I look for is if the carpet matches the curtains. Get your mind out of the gutter. I mean if the title of the articles/page/etc matches the web address. For me, when I see a title like "Bacon Flavored Chocolate Bunnies" and the link is http://www.candystore.com/bacon_flavored_choclate_bunnies.html it establishes a distinct connection I find is critical for me to click on your link. Candy store. Chocolate. I will not, however, think twice about passing you by when I see a sterile URL like http://tinyurl.com/chlqw9, do you?

I realize that the brevity demanded by Twitter and status updates that character real estate is critical. But, and this is the old fuddy duddy in me, maybe being quick and to the point isn't always the right thing. Maybe there's value to being able to tell the whole story. Maybe allowing people to connect our brand name with our product needs more than 140 characters.

The Simpsons, Moms, Quilts, and Lemons

Warning: This post may read like an episode of the Simpsons.

This weekend we celebrated a milestone birthday for my mother. I made her a king size quilt called "tides" and although she loved it and I was proud to give it to her, I vowed never to make another king size quilt again. But as I came to think about the time I got to spend with my mother-in-law, father-in-law and husband to finish this herculean project it dawned on me that I wouldn't have been able to even attempt this had I been working full-time. In fact, I wouldn't be able to do a lot of things that I've been able to do since I've been unemployed.

Hubby and I have been attentive to our finances and we've come up with various solutions that will allow us to live the life we've become accustomed to. Which then lead me to start thinking about my long-term goals and our long term goals as a couple. I've started considering that I can make a living, and pursue my dreams, I just need to switch it up a bit. I need to rearrange my expectations. It started to dawn on me that maybe I could make lemonade out of this great big pile of lemons I feel like I've been handed.

Maybe this is the right path for me and maybe it isn't, maybe I'll get a phone call tomorrow offering me my dream position. If that happens great, if not, that's okay too. All I really know is that I was trying to see through the lemons life has handed to me. I learned that lemons aren't translucent. Maybe I'll start making lemonade, pour a big glass and see if I can see the world that way.

Can't Get Evangelism Outta Mah Head

The idea of finding ten people to evangelize your idea (as I referenced in Friday's post regarding First, Ten) has been haunting me.

It's so attainable, tangible even. Such a viral (yet decidedly benign) way to share ideas has to be a winner. I am so compelled.

Companies that have impressed me in regards to evangelism are Google, Apple, Fluevog Shoes and Ben & Jerry's (I'm a bit of a loudmouth about companies I love).

Google offers fantastic value-add tools for people like me: portable documents, shareable web-based calendars, simple, uncluttered, and effective search. I've easily turned ten people on to these products.

Apple, although I'm not a huge fan, is a marketing genius. People who are fans are die-hard. They try to convert everyone they know. They brag about the shininess of their white computers and they have even cultivated somewhat of an superiority complex based on the machine they use. Now THAT'S evangelism.

Fluevog Shoes is another favorite of mine. I don't know if it's hip to tell the world about a brand of shoes I love, but I do. I get stopped on the street constantly about my crazy shoes and I get to tell them all about my favorite hand-made shoes. They're not cheap and the service isn't always the best, but O THE SHOES.

Ben & Jerry's makes "remarkable" products as well. Their crazily named ice creams, as well as their reputation for standing up for the environment, and their animals (no matter how greenwashed that statement is) make them a company you want to tell people about.

What companies do you tell the world about? Whose product excites you enough to share it with friends?

Godin, Evangelizing, and Spiritual Business Acumen

A Seth Godin entry popped into my reader yesterday that struck me. He basically says find ten people who love you, your product, your idea and you're bound to have gradually built success. He says this is preferable to the big rush upon launch and then a petering out over time.

Unbeknowst to us, this has been the approach that a friend of mine and I have with a new project we're working on. But I had never had it put into words before.

So, thinking about your business strategy, what ten people love you, your product, your idea and are willing to evangelize for you? Do you have a collection of dedicated followers that will spread your your word to the masses?

And why is this starting to sound like a religious mission? Are we taking business acumen from the days of Yore (Yore, a lovely time for bronze). They had a shareable, spreadable idea that could be considered the most successful idea yet. AND they started small and let the idea grow at a slow steady rate (with the exception of a few crusades).

3 Questions for Fast Food Companies

There are a few commercials airing recently from fast food companies who are lowering their prices to "help customers". I find them interesting and they get my brain gears going while I'm crocheting and drinking my chamomile tea.

The first to do it was Subway, some official looking dude comes on our TV set touting the credo of a fictitious sandwich cabinet. Insult added to injury when we get that "Five Dollar Footlong" song stuck in our heads. McDonald's offers a reduced cost menu now that you can get an entire meal for $3.00 or less. Most recently, Domino's is offering a $5 pizza and the commercial shows the CEO shedding his suit and hopping in a delivery car.

It's brilliant marketing, no doubt. But I have a few questions for these "pro-customer" companies.

1. With the connection of bad food being cheap, how much are you really helping anyone? Diabetes and obesity on the rise and they're making it even easier for people to get their junk food. You could argue that Subway has "fresh vegetables" but let's be honest, anyone who's ever eaten there knows that those tomatoes have as much flavor as a carboard box.
   
   
2. Are you just attempting to divert attention from your overpaid CEOs? In an attempt to jump on the socialist-esque bandwagon brought on by this intensely popular presidential administration as well as their crackdown on the rich, do feel like if you drop a buck off of your product's price, they're turn a blind eye to your swollen salaries (Domino's CEO made 2.6 mil, Mickey D's made 12.7 mil-Source)?
   
   
3. If you really wanted to help your customers wouldn't you just find a way to give back to the communities you service? I'm sure families would like to stay in their homes, have the opportunity to support their families, or enjoy a full pantry. Maybe you can help them. Maybe our private corporations can work to being better citizens for their communities, as Obama has suggested.
   

Job Hunting: It's a FIRE SALE!

I'm giving away the farm! I'm looking for people I can do things for. Need a job? A website? A recommendation? A babysitter. I'm your gal!

This sounds crazy. I know. When I first became unemployed, I was wearing a scarlet letter of desperation. I knew that no one wanted to help someone so insecure. I needed to find a mental Judo tactic that would help turn my attitude around. So I starting using the Fire Sale tactic.

Got a co-worker you need to get more from? Take them out to lunch! Need to get your aunt to stop sending you chain letter emails? Offer to help set up her Facebook account! Need a recruiter to call you back with potential job offers? See if they have other positions you can match to your friends!

It took an adjustment being that I come from a generation of "me" types. But at the end of the day I feel pretty great and I know I've helped someone and it shows. And even crazier is that it's really working. I've had more potential opportunities from this approach than any Craigslist cruising I've been doing. Give it a shot!

An Ode to Seth

As Seth Godin says in Sliced Bread and other Marketing Delights, Be remarkable.

Take time out of your day to ask yourself what will excite your customers about your product.

Those that do will have a product worth sharing. Bonus points if you're doing something nice for someone else in the mix.

An entrepreneur on their way out probably won't be saying "I wish I was more dogmatic in my marketing approach."