Dave

Apr 12 2010

18 Rules For Everything

There are no real rules to life, right? For instance, in this day and age, any schmo can launch anything and call it a business. Whether it gets on your nerves or not — well, it’s the new rule. Or non-rule.

So, to celebrate our new freedom as a society, here are 18 rules for everything. Courtesy of your friends at Area 224. You’re welcome.

Co-opetition. If you enter the world of business without this attitude, you miss out on ways to make some real noise. Witness RealSMM.
Failure is okay. Admit it and move on. I failed with my first startup, a business called U Sphere. I learned a ton.
Belt matches shoes. Fail this test, gents, and you look like a goober.
Be nice. You can be direct and still be nice.
There is immeasurable value in looking someone in the eye. (I thank Jim Alexander for teaching this to me again this past weekend.)
The world is not out to get you.
Being genuine is a lost art.
Pedestrians: obey walk lights.
Drivers: watch out for pedestrians.
As we’ve said before — Ninjas do not introduce themselves.
There is a bell curve of knowledge. Any subject, there’s a small subset of people who know too much, and a subset of people who know nothing. Everyone else is in the middle.
Pocket squares are always a nice touch.
Assume nothing.
The seat in the middle of the table at a meeting holds the most power.
Life’s too short not to use chopsticks.
Use your phone. Email is great for explaining things. But you can often cut through the clutter with the phone.
Passion cannot be faked.
Bottled water is way too expensive.

So, any rules YOU live by???

Mar 28 2010

How to be Memorable with Your Marketing

Isn’t it interesting how some things stick out in your mind – and others, well, you either can’t (or don’t) remember?

This can be true with marketing. I’m talking all kinds of marketing: ad campaigns, direct mail pieces, social media marketing, outreach, events…gosh, the list goes on.

So…

How do you make your marketing “memorable?”

Here are five tips:

1. Have a point. This may seem trite, but so many people forget it with their marketing. For example, I was just on the website of a company that a friend of a friend suggested I check out. The most annoying thing about this site could have been its flash graphics (always a bad idea, IMHO). Or maybe the crappy color scheme. (They did that.) Bad design. (An overall valueless website.)

These were not the biggest failings — the biggest failing was the lack of a point. I read and re-read what it was they do and it had the feel of a website that was built by committee. With no point.

2. Distill your messages down to the WIIFM. To that end, every piece of marketing MUST be written as if you’re the target audience asking “What’s in it for me?” This gets back to benefit vs. feature. Feature: what the executives decide management should care about when launching the product.

Benefit: what the buyer will want to get FROM BUYING THE PRODUCT. How will I benefit? What’s in it for me?

3. Ask “why should I care?” Search has a mastermind person named Avinash Kaushik –Â @avinashkaushik — and he talks about the “3 layers of So What?” I love this because it takes the above “Benefit vs. Feature” question, the WIIFM concept, and ratchets it up big time.

To paraphrase Avinas: keep asking “so what?”

For example…”I’m launching a new service that delivers cufflinks to your door within 24 hours?” So What? “The cufflinks are handmade in Africa?” So What? “Every time you buy a pair for $35 we buy a cow for the villagers who made the cufflinks and they get 25% of every sale in cash.”

Editor’s note — this service, as far as I know, doesn’t exist yet.

4. Look for the niche within the niche. Fellow savvy marketer Jim Alexander and I have been working on a book whose code name is “Nichification.” This is a lot of work — interviews with people who have launched products and services and successfully sold and marketed them in various niche businesses.

One emerging theme in this book is the niche within the niche.

Put simply, take a subset of the population that would buy your niche product (if you use the above, try “cufflinks enthusiasts”). Then, take a subset of THAT population and cater your marketing to them. 75% of those who wear cufflinks are rich guys. The other 25% might be those who want to know that every cufflinks purchase helps support the global economy.

Write for those people.

5. Cut out unnecessary words and puffery. I find myself increasingly annoyed with marketing that is memorably BAD for its over-blown, long-winded, crap-o-rama.

We’ve all seen the web pages that go on and on and on, where you have to keep scrolling down to find out what they’re selling and how much it sells for.

I love Mark Twain’s line: “I am sorry I am writing a long letter, I didn’t have the time to write a short one.”

Get to the point with your words, marketers. We’ll thank you…

So, now that you’re ready to be memorable with your marketing…what tips do YOU have to share?

Mar 13 2010

WWSMMD – What Would Social Media Marketing Do?

Background: I’m at the bank, and watched a situation unfold. I tweeted about it.

Here’s a blow-by-blow of what I witnessed:

Customer comes in, under control but clearly upset, as he had used an ATM to withdraw $400 — but the machine did not dispense his cash, just a receipt.
The person at the Information Desk tells him that, since he was not using a card from Chase, he needed to get his own bank to handle the situation.
They got his bank on the phone, and he was told he needed to file an online complaint.
He was even madder now; since Chase was not offering to rectify the situation.
He mentioned that someone behind the counter said “that machine is always broken.”
The Chase rep said they couldn’t put an “Out of Order” sign on the ATM.
The customer again asked for Chase to give him his $400.
The person behind the counter said “No” because it’s not their policy.
He asked to speak to the manager.
The person behind the counter, the same one who was helping all along, said “I am the manager.”
The customer left.

This is what I witnessed; I tweeted about this situation in the hopes that someone would weigh in.

So I ask you, fair readers, “What Would Social Media Marketing Do?”

It’s probably better to ask “What COULD SMM Do?”

(I’m obviously biased in my opinion, but not for a reason you’d think. I was at the bank waiting to get a Notary. I ended up sitting down with a Notary who then introduced a sales guy who wanted to go over my account information. He offered to help me with business stuff; he seemed flummoxed that I was actually working with a very helpful Chase rep in Phoenix, Arizona, on my business account.)

So, Chase (and any other company looking to dip their toes into a pool filled with their own customers, the happy ones and the rabid ones), here are some thoughts:

Monitor this stuff. Take one of these sales dudes and make it his job to see what is being said about the company, in real time, online. I’m not just saying Twitter (though that’s a start), but Facebook and YouTube and other places.
Get your booty on Foursquare. I don’t use Foursquare but that is beside the point. Location-based marketing is here, and if someone is audacious enough to announce to the world that they are AT YOUR BANK RIGHT NOW…well, saying hello would be a good thing.
Want to be my local bank? BE MY LOCAL BANK ON (INSERT SITE HERE). Tweeting from the Evanston, Illinois Chase Branch? Why not. In fact, I’d feel a heck of a lot more comfortable if someone from the bank branch got on and said “Hi from the bank branch, stop by and say hello.” YouTube is great for this stuff. I don’t care if 5 people view the video.

These are just a few ideas — I’d love to hear yours. Banks have a ways to go in this social media stuff, but I’d love to see baby steps.

What do you think?

Mar 04 2010

Fan Pro Quo – A Social Experiment Aimed at Small Business Referrals

Insomnia gave us this nifty little idea…

It’s actually not our idea, but that of a really clever guy named Larry Brauner, whose Online Social Networking site did something similar earlier this year.

Here’s how it works:

You visit the Area 224Â Page on Facebook.
If you aren’t already a fan of Area 224, consider becoming one. No purchase necessary, valid in all 50 states and throughout the world.
Then, once you’re a fan, you can post to the Area 224 Wall. SO, while you’re posting to our wall, why not post about YOUR BUSINESS? Yes, type in the name of your business or organization’s fan page, and other fans will see it.
Also, while you’re there — consider checking out other companies and organizations. Maybe even become a fan.

Fan Pro Quo!

Other companies we like — like Arment Dietrich, for instance — have done some clever things (like “fan of the week”), too. So, feel free to share other fun Facebook Business Strategies while you’re on the Area 224 Page.

Cheers!

Mar 03 2010

Brand vs. Model, Benefits vs. Features – How to Learn from Ford

What’s it like to build a brand in this modern age?

Ford Logos

I often hearken back to days of old — when I was in an operating company of a large financial services conglomerate*. Often, we’d hear something from the field: “hey, we’ve created this product, we need to sell it” or “this is a service that we need to roll out.” All of this needed to happen within the confines of a large, prescribed, and sometimes unwieldy brand architecture.

But it became a lot simpler when we’d ask the following two questions for context:

Are talking about BRAND or MODEL?

Are we discussing BENEFITS or FEATURES?

Let’s start with Brand vs. Model. “Ford” is the brand. (One that happens to be kicking some major bottom these days — probably for going against the grain.) You can see from the above photo that brand, obviously, is more than just a logo. The cars and their features change over time, sometimes mistakes are made along the way, sometimes there are breakthrough successes.

But each MODEL must support the overall Ford BRAND. Ford might mean “All-American” to some, could be “economical” or “reliable” to others, or “supercharged sports car” to others.

Gonna launch the Ford Edge? Or the Fiesta? Those are MODELS — the guess here is that the team behind the Edge said “what could we build that says ‘crossover’ but still embodies the Ford BRAND?” (Can you tell that, with each passing day, I want a Ford Edge more and more?)

So, if you’re building a BRAND, are your MODELS supporting the overall BRAND? Is each one of your PRODUCTS or SERVICES a MODEL, underneath an overall BRAND ARCHITECTURE?

Note: these questions work well, VERY WELL, for on- and off-line brands. Trust me.

What about the “Benefits vs. Features” question? Thanks, again, to Ford for hitting us upside the head with the BENEFITS vs. FEATURES on the Ford Edge Official Site. Screenshot, please…

Thanks, Ford

Did you notice something? While Ford could have hit you over the head with MPGs, with government ratings on fuel efficiency, scores on 0-to-60, etc., they didn’t. They put themselves in your shoes (as a driver, consumer, future buyer) and said, simply “Drive Past Gas Stations Faster.”

That’s putting BENEFITS before FEATURES. That’s asking the question “How will the reader/prospect/future buyer BENEFIT from buying our product/reading our copy/visiting our site?”

People of Earth, I’ve been guilty of not asking these questions, too. Feature: my site can do x, y and z. Benefit: visit my site and you’ll end up happier, more refreshed. Whatever.

There’s a little bit of empathy marketing here. There’s a little bit of agile marketing here.

But there’s a ton to learn from Ford here, too.

And from the Financial Services concern I worked for, where we actually would get pushback on BRAND vs. MODEL. And on BENEFITS vs. FEATURES.

It was great pushback, made us all stronger.

Try pushing back yourselves.

[*That large financial services conglomerate should be pretty obvious if you’ve Googled me.]