3 Lessons of marketing deployment

  • Written by Josh
  • Posted September 5, 2008 at 12:04 pm

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I put together a short list of things I need to remind myself from time to time. These are just a couple of examples that make business, marketing and products all the more better when done right.

1. Marketing is made much easier with a product.

So many times people jump the gun on marketing and forget to develop a good product in an attempt to cash in on those marketing dollars. Marketing and products go hand-in-hand. To have a successful campaign in affiliate marketing, the local mom and pop store, selling shoes or whatever the case might be requires a balance between product and placement.

I know this seems very logical, but I know from my own experience that I can get very excited about things and tend to overlook some of the small details. This is when having a plan of attack and sticking to it helps. If you develop a worth-while product that people truly can use, the marketing can be much easier provided there is synergy. Develop a plan and think things through before acting them out. In the end you will save a lot of time and energy.

2. Not all products have to be useful, but the marketing has to be truthful.

People sell things all the time that no one has a use for, but they are fun, quirky, silly, bizarre, colorful, you name it. As long as the marketing that surrounds that product is telling the truth, then there is no issue with how or what is being sold. On the flip side of the coin, you can’t make people believe your product does something it doesn’t (not ethically at least).

It goes without saying that people will buy anything they latch onto at any given time. I have a friend who still buys Hot Wheels at a drop of a hat. He likes to collect Hot Wheels and views them as a neat way to splurge. But if a product is misrepresenting itself or claims to do things that it can’t, word will get around eventually that either the product or the creator cannot be trusted.

3. Market to the talkers

People in general love to talk, especially about things that have captivated their attention, are unique, highly useful and so on. People will also talk about things they didn’t like or find useful. How many times have you been in the store contemplating which item you are going to buy when a stranger out of nowhere appears and recommends one product over the other? I am sure this happens to me or someone next to me at least once a month. You want to get your product in the hands of the people like that who are doing the talking.

If your product / service is good, they will be sure to let you know also the reverse is true as well. Then it is a matter of you enabling them to talk and share with others about your product or finding a way to channel that input into bettering the product. Yes, that is correct, even bad comments and remarks are a good thing. This probably explains why software always has a never version or release. Could you imagine if we were all still running Windows 98?

I recently saw an ad on TV about some Microsoft experiment that was letting people try Microsoft’s newest operating system Vista under a different name. Then after all of the good comments and ooohs and awwws they told the participants it was Vista all along. I have to admit I was one of the ones who refused to switch to Vista until hell froze over. After being forced to use it I don’t have any notable complaints other than being on a learning curve. I am sure in the end I will adapt to the software and the software will adapt to me.

Anyways the list can go on and on forever, but ultimately it is up to you as a marketer and producer to establish what your baseline for service and quality will be.

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Filed under: Business, Effective Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Ideas, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Suggestions, Product, Services, Uncategorized, Unconventional Marketing

Remote Blogging and 2 tools every blogger needs

  • Written by Josh
  • Posted September 1, 2008 at 7:51 pm

For the last two weeks I have been looking for a program that could run multiple Wordpress accounts. I just wanted a place to manage all of my sites without having to log in and out of a bunch of Admin Panels. I ran across about 20 different software programs or web based programs that wanted to charge up to $2,000 (can you believe that). Nothing was really what I was looking for, and the last thing I wanted to do was waste money on something that wasn’t quite what I was looking for. This brings us to Zoundry Raven.

Zoundry RavenZoundry Raven is a Windows based program that allows you to add in all of you blog account Wordpress, and the best part is that it’s free. I quickly added in all of my accounts and configured them to be able to remote post with the help of the xmlrpc.php function of Wordpress. If you are running Wordpress 2.5 or newer, you need to enable this function manually in the settings tab of your Admin Panel. When you write your post or edit an existing post, it looks and feels just like Microsoft Outlook.

As far as I know, there are very few limitations to the software other than if you are running some extra plugins that require your input. Otherwise you are about to quickly and efficiently edit and post to multiple blog accounts in a matter of minutes, or as long as it takes you to bang out some posts. You are still able to insert all of the pictures, html, links and peview before publishing. If you are running more than one blog, it is definately worth checking out.

Seagate FreeAgent GoNext on the tools every blogger must have is the Seagate FreeAgent Go. The FreeAgent Go is a portable hard drive that does more than just store your files. It allows you to run and sync all your home computer files so that while traveling you have all the software and features you are used to having at home. For example, I run my Zoundry, Skype, FireFox, Word, Excel and just about any other program you can imagine. The version I got holds 160 GB and they make 250 GB version as well. (Link to Seagate FreeAgent Go on Amazon non-affiliate).

The main advantage is the ability to have all the comforts of your home computer at your disposal while only having to carry something the size of a deck of UNO cards. The second you unplug the devise from your computer or a remote computer, all of the cache is erased and everything is cleared as if you weren’t there at all. One of the biggest advantages I could see would be the ability to use your own version of FireFox. If you allow some of your passwords to be stored in FireFox when you visit those sites, you don’t have to manually type them, thus preventing any keyboard takers from recording your passwords in any public places. I always make sure to use the encryption mode so that I am the only one able to use the device. If you travel at all and hate lugging around your laptop and cables for just a night or two you can simply bring your Seagate and have everything you would normally have, anywhere.

(P.S. this post was written with the help of Zoundry and Seagate while traveling.)

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Filed under: Blog, Blogging, Business, Seagate, Travel, Traveling, Work, Zoundry Raven

Make Money With Bananas

  • Written by Josh
  • Posted August 30, 2008 at 10:51 am

This is a guest post brought to you by Shaun Connell, webmaster of Make Money, a free resource for those who want to make money online and think outside the “money box.” Find out what the money box is by visiting the site. If you would like to be a featured guest poster go to the guest poster page to learn more.

Every once in a while I stumble onto an analogy that just sticks in my mind. The analogy illustrates a concept or technique so well I can’t help but constantly refer back to the analogy.

For a perfect example, Seth Godin’s analogy in The Big Red Fez did the trick. I can’t think about internet marketing without instantly thinking of his illustration that demonstrated how you can get your visitors to do exactly what you want them to do.

So what was this amazing analogy? Before we discuss it, let’s do some internet marketing 101 for a refresher.

Back to the Basics

We’ve heard the basics a billion times and there’s a reason: mastering internet marketing is found in mastering the basics. Internet marketing tricks and “secret strategies” can be helpful, but they must never be seen as anything but compliments to the two “make money online” basics: writing great content and building links. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

Building the links is for generating traffic. Writing great content is for getting your traffic to take the actions you want them to take. Traffic without content that convinces your visitors to take action is simply a waste. Unless your visitors click ads, sign up for newsletters or check out your sales page, you might as well have never had the traffic. Unless your traffic takes action, you can’t make money.

Keep it Simple, Stupid!

So, what’s the easiest method of getting your traffic to do something? By making it hard to not do it. Your website/blog design should be showcased around the fundamentals of what your visitors should instantly do.

Remember, this is a business. Any page that doesn’t directly make money through readership is nothing more than a “squeeze page,” with its entire purpose to:

1. Build Trust
2. Funnel Traffic

This brings us back to the analogy by marketing genius Seth Godin. How should you organize your design and content? Simple:

Think of your visitors as a bunch of monkeys. These monkeys are at your website for a reason: they want a banana. If you want them to find the banana, just give it to them. On every page it should be obvious what the banana is.

So What Do You Do?

The Internet provides marketers with the greatest opportunity ever known to marketers: the ability to literally hand an eager audience information that they can monetize. They’re coming to you, so feel free to offer them relevant information that you can monetize.

If you want your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, consider putting the opt-in at the bottom of every post. (Better yet: think about having your website store special cookies so that only those visitors who haven’t already signed up for it will see the opt-in field.)

If your main monetization strategy is AdSense, put it up under the left-hand side of the title, with the text wrapping around the ad.

If your main monetization strategy is an affiliate program, wrap up every post and article with a relevant affiliate link.

In the end, just think about what you want your visitors to do in an ideal visit. Now make sure they can do what you want them to do. Give the monkey a banana, and make money while you’re at it.

This is a guest post written by Shaun Connell, the webmaster behind the free internet marketing resource “Make Money“. That link is the banana. Click it. You know you want to.

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Filed under: Adsense, Blog, Blogging, Business, Effective Marketing, Guest Post, Marketing, Marketing Ideas, Marketing Strategy, Unconventional Marketing

An ounce of energy equals a pound of return

  • Written by Josh
  • Posted August 28, 2008 at 7:16 am

So many times people and businesses say, “Why don’t you give me money something, and in return I will give you something.” Sometimes it works much better to give first. People don’t always want public recognition or awards in order to get motivated, but what they do want is to know that someone cares.

I used to work at a call center before starting out on my own online. When you take calls day after day helping people to solve their problems, you experience a wide variety of emotions even from one call to the next. One person you might talk to is completely ecstatic you fixed the problem and will always try to call just you back. Other callers are pissed and frustrated at their situation and let that come out on the phone (as if I caused the problem directly). They could care less about anybody, only the problem. It is very easy for me, and I am sure others, to respond in kind to flared up tempers, sometimes it’s required. What the customers on the phone are really saying is that they have a problem and want to know you will do everything possible to help them. That isn’t always easy to convey.

In order to drive the best customer experience possible, we have to ensure our customers that they do in fact matter and we will do all we can to take care of them. This is also the case when seeking out potential customers or managing your brand.

People love working for someone they can connect with and relate to. This is why it is important to meet with and connect to everyone in your organization regardless of their position. Studies have shown that having that connection reduces turnover rates, leads to higher productivity and overall good will throughout the office.

When looking for customers, leads, employees or promoting a brand, people want to feel important, included and irreplaceable. In order to make that happen, it is important to find ways to connect to people on a level that meets one if not more of those needs. Opening the door to subscribe to others’ blogs in my Google Reader was a way for me to follow the same people that follow me. Reciprocity, in essence. I like having readers and visitors frequent my blog, and I would like to do the same, but the truth is, there are only so many hours in the day. So in order to stay in touch, I offered to subscribe to anyone’s blog who posted a link. So easy, it’s not too late.

In the end, I am sure I gained even more subscribers of my own in a give and take respect and it also allowed me to subscribe and follow the people who frequent my blog. The key is to convert that same give and take into building your brand or gaining customers. This is why offering an hour of free consulting, troubleshooting or promoting is such a value tool. You are giving a little of what you have, the customer knows that you care and ultimately that ounce of energy multiplies into a pound return. The key is to use what you have and to find the balance that best fits.

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Filed under: Business, Effective Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Ideas, Marketing Strategy, Unconventional Marketing

Leave me your RSS link

  • Written by Josh
  • Posted August 26, 2008 at 1:12 pm

RSS IconI am going to subscribe to everyone’s blog who leaves a link to his or her RSS in my comments (more than one RSS link is OK). So, if you would like to have an additional subscriber, leave your link below. I am finding that with work I am having less time to surf the blogs I typically do, so instead, I will subscribe. I usually breeze through my RSS reader once or twice a day and try to comment on all of the posts that intrigue me.

I know that posts have been a little less frequent lately. That is do to my business growing new heights in such a short time. I am letting the dust settle a bit and should be resuming a more normal posting schedule after Labor Day.

If you are new here and would like to subscribe to this blog Click Here.

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Filed under: Effective Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Idea, Marketing Strategy, RSS, Unconventional Marketing
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