Month: December 2007

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Web 2.0/Social Media

Whether we use Facebook and other Web 2.0 sites, email discussion groups, blogs, or even Usenet newsgroups, one of the key advantages for solopreneurs/very small companies is our ability to use social networking much more effectively than big corporations. This has been true all the way back to BBS systems in the 1980s.

We can be nimble, we don’t need committees to approve our posts, and we can be authentic. And this is one medium where dollars don’t mean as much as quality.

As someone who provides marketing consulting and copywriting to microbusinesses (many of them home-based businesses), I have been urging my clients (and the readers of my books) to pick a social medium that works for them, and work the niche since at least 1993.

E-mail discussion lists in particular have been very powerful in growing my own business from a local to an international clientele. They have allowed me to brand myself very powerfully in front of a carefully target group of prospects, and I get many clients as a result of a consistently helpful and well-informed posture.

What’s your experience?

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News, media-general

Talk about a clueless company! First its PR department issues wrong information. Then when journalists pick up the story and cast the company in a negative light, they demand retractions saying the story was based on erroneous information–but not bothering to mention that the wrong stuff was supplied by them in the first place.Read more »

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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Publishing

Novels have been used to persuade since at least the days of Gulliver’s Travels. Books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Huckleberry Finn had a major influence on 19th century social policy; in more modern times, authors from Ayn Rand to Joseph Heller to Phillip Campbell have used novels as a platform for their agenda.

Now comes a novel that teaches the very skills of persuasion–something I’m not sure has been done before (though the late Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus trilogy skirts the edges).

Advertising maven Ben Mack’s Poker Without Cards goes deeper into the human psyche than even the very provocative Daniel Quinn, and with the same kind of unexpected mind twists. Set up as a dialogue over several months between Mack’s alter ego Howard W. Campbell and a hospital psychiatrist who believes Campbell holds the key to understanding a particularly difficult case, the book is a page-turner even without trying to have any kind of real plot. The places the two men go in their discussions may change your mind to the whole idea of what’s possible and how the brain actually works–while providing a gripping, if not particularly easy, read.

And speaking of persuasion, he’s managed to persuade people who seldom write blurbs to endorse his book, including not only Wilson himself but also Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brodie (author of Virus of the Mind as well as the original MS Word) and Internet marketer supreme Mark Joyner, among others.

As a marketer, I recommend this book without hesitation to marketers who want to understand persuasion on a deeper, more personal level than you can get from nonfiction. And as a planetary citizen, I recommend it to consumers who want to understand what’s being done to them by forces they may want to understand.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, Politics

While others are shocked, investigate reporter Greg Palast is not surprised that Jon Mendelsohn, chief fundraiser for Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, is involved with a big scandal.

Nine years ago, Palast secretly recorded Mendelsohn–thinking he was taling to a lobbyist from Enron–bragging that he could get to anyone in British government is the price was right, even Gordon Brown (at that time in charge of the British treasury).

His question is not how a supposedly ethical party man was able to channel “£630,000 ($1.2 million) in dodgy, possibly illegal, campaign contributions to Labour”–but why Brown, who couldn’t have been uninformed about Mendelsohn’s shady history, brought him on board in the first place.

An interesting question, indeed!

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By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News

On one of the many Internet marketing newsletters I read, I got this link, and this teaser:

Over 82% of the people who have viewed this
video have opted in for more information.

Must be pretty powerful, eh? So I went to check it out.

What I found was a short and extremely well-produced video from one of the masters of Internet marketing, someone who has been behind the launches of a dozen or so successful “continuity” programs–where you pay a fee each month until you tell the company you want out. Most of the continuity programs out there sell membership programs; this guy sells software tools, as well as a very popular seminar series.

And he’s someone who very much understands the power of focusing on benefits, and of delivering value–and has parlayed that understanding into many millions of dollars.

So it was a shock to watch this video. It’s an exercise in non-benefit-oriented brand-building, and the call to action at the end is extremely week in my opinion–what I call “empty calories marketing.” In other words, the sort of thing you’d expect from a large ad agency that wants to make its client feel good but doesn’t care about actually generating results, and not one of the most sophisticated direct marketers on the planet.

Well, maybe he knows something I don’t. I wasn’t moved to leave my name of the squeeze page at the end, but if that copy in the e-mail blast is to believed, better than 4 out of 5 visitors do leave their names.

I’ll be curious to learn what kind of results he gets from this. And also whether other marketers disagree with me and feel the ad is effective.

Note: the link above is the affiliate link for the people who sent me the e-mail. I am not an affiliate of this program.

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By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Web 2.0/Social Media

Mark Joyner has deservedly enjoyed a reputation as one of the online world’s most creative and successful marketers, going back many years.

He and I have become Internet friends after he bought a copy of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First over my website and I responded with a personal note.

Now Mark is trying another viral experiment with his new blogging course: giving it to anyone who posts the following text on his or her blog.

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

  • The best blogging techniques.
  • How to get traffic to your blog.
  • How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

That’s Mark’s language. i don’t write like that. I’d just say that anything Mark is giving away is certainly worth exploring. I own three of his books (one of them, The Great Formula, even has half a chapter by me. I’m going to get my copy.

But anything Mark does is also worth studying. As a marketer, this is what I see:

  • A clear attempt to go viral with the power of free
  • Canned text that will show up on hundreds or thousands of websites, and in most cases without any added commentary
  • My own need to add commentary, in part because I don’t like to pass off other people’s words as my own, and in part because I want to differentiate this page for the gazillion identical pages this will generate

    • If I were Mark, I’d have actually encouraged people to do their own text, and use his link. But that wasn’t my call to make.

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

    Ken MacArthur reports that he was offered a Congressional Medal of Honor in a robot-telemarketing call by the office of Congressman Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma.

    He was quite rightly sickened by the for-a-fee pitch, as the Congressional Medal of Honor is supposed to be “the highest award for valor in action against an enemy force which can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Armed Services of the United States. Generally presented to its recipient by the President of the United States of America in the name of Congress.”

    Hmmm–didn’t Jesus himself throw the moneychangers out of the temple? Wasn’t the Protestant Reformation launched by people who were sick and tired of the Vatican selling indulgences that hadn’t been earned? And didn’t a certain President Clinton get in trouble for selling access to the White House and the Lincoln Bedroom? Have we learned nothing? Are we so wwilling to cheapen the name of the veterans who earned this powerful accolade?

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, General Commentary

    Chris MacDonald’s Business Ethics Blog has a very amusing article on the Mafia’s Code of Ethics, in which he extracts business success principles from the until-recently-secretMafia’s 10 Commandments.

    As one example:

    #3. Never be seen with cops.” (i.e., avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest)

    Chris doesn’t do permalinks on his blog, so to find this post, dated 11/11/07, use the search bar to hunt for ” Business Ethics, Mafia Style”.

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    By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News

    Watch the stunning commercial Sony made showing fireworks made of paint instead of the usual substances.

    Then watch the behind-the-scenes story of the making of this commercial.

    As a marketer, what conclusions can you draw? Here are a few of mine:

  • It is still possible to make commercials that are also art–even make them absolutely riveting
    The logistics involved in this 60-second spot are as complex as a general’s decisions on the battlefield
    f you don’t have several million dollars to play with, making TV commercials may not be the best use of your marketing resources, because you cannot compete with this level of craftsmanship
    If the purpose of the ad is to get me to buy this particular TV, the ad is an utter failure; at no time does it show me any benefit to this set over any other
    However, if the purpose is to draw a positive association with the theater, the excitement the art of it, and the viral thrill of sharing it with your friends, then the ad is a rip-roaring success–but whether that will translate to enough additional sales to justify the costs of producing and airing the ad, I don’t know
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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    Who will the Democrats nominate? Let’s hope it’s not Hillary. There are thousands and thousands of people in the “democratic wing of the Democratic Party” working to nominate somebody who more closely represents the progressive viewpoint.

    Hillary has made it abundantly clear that neither peace or personal liberty is particularly important to her. She has an abysmal record. She voted for the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, has been quick to embrace the Bush Administration’s warmongering rhetoric on Iran, has as far as I can tell has shown no real leadership during her years in the Senate.

    She has a double-whammy disadvantage. the Right, for reasons I don’t understand, demonizes and vilifies her to the point where they would come out in droves to vote against her, even if her opponent is someone they also despise–while the Left is completely uninspired by her, recognizes the betrayal of their constituency, and wouldn’t turn out to support her bid. The Dems are crazy if they nominate her.

    She may get some votes from muddy thinkers who think that voting for a woman is always the progressive choice (ignoring examples throughout recent decades from Margaret Thatcher on down). She won’t get votes from true progressives.

    While I might have to grit my teeth to do it, I think I could vote for any of the other Dems in the running. If it’s Hillary, I’ll bloody well vote Green. And in the primary at least, I’ll have the fun of voting for a candidate whose views are quite close to my own: Dennis Kucinich.

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