When making any marketing purchase, you want to know what it will bring you. Too many business owners forget that step, and buy blindly, wasting a ton of money.
This morning, I got a call from a promotional products salesman that illustrates this all-too-well. This a real conversation, as best as I can transcribe it from memory:
Me: I don’t do advertising specialties, because I don’t even meet most of my clients. I get them from my books, from online networking, from my speeches…
Salesman: Would you like more traffic to your website? We do these beautiful laser-engraved pens with your website URL.
Me: I already get about 50,000 visits a month to my site.
Salesman: Well, imagine hundreds of thousands more visitors.
Would you type in a URL from these pens?
Me: You think I’m going to get hundreds of thousands of visitors by giving out pens? Let me ask you—when was the last time you visited a website because someone gave you a pen with the URL?
Salesman: Most of the pens I’ve seen don’t have URLs.
Me: Well, I’ve seen plenty that do. I read every printed pen I get. And I can’t think of a single one that got me to type in the URL.
First of all, the guy is out of touch. URLs have been appearing on pens for years. I did a quick survey of ten random custom pens in my stash; half had a URL, and some of the others, like a pen from Hyatt hotels, didn’t really need one because the URL is obvious. If you’re going to do any kind of promotional product, you want your URL nice and prominent on it. And second, he was so completely clueless about the ROI for me. The ROI for him is obvious: a commission. But what’s the benefit to me? Zero.
Mind you, I’m not dissing the category of promotional items. I’ve seen examples that work well: an auto sunshade with huge block letters on both sides, promoting a mayoral candidate (she won)…a mug that stays on your desk as a reminder, month after month, a solar calculator promoting a solar energy consultant…lawn signs with the silhouette of the mountain a local environmental group was trying to save, along with both phone and URL (they won).
In fact, I’m actually planning to experiment with a small run of imprinted seed packages; I believe they will harmonize with my message of business growth through green principles. I’ll hand these out when I speak at green business conferences, and maybe throw a few out to the audience for answering questions correctly in general business conferences.
Promotional products make sense when there’s not only a good fit between the marketing vehicle and the brand, but also a good fit between the utility of the product and the visibility of the marketing message. On that last, it’s the difference between items like pens or worse, sunglasses, where the marketing message is hard to read and too small to do much branding anyway—and something that actually might be useful for marketing, say, a t-shirt or tote bag, where the message can easily attract attention.
What are some of the best and worst marketing purchases you’ve made (or seen), from an ROI perspective? Comment below.
Nina Amir and I have known each other online for a few years now; we finally got to meet at the BEA Bloggers conference last week in New York. But I had the post scheduled long before then, as part of Nina’s blog tour. It’s alo an example of the kind of great material you’ll find in the upcoming series of e-books I intend to pubish as part of a series called Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers.
Yes, I already have a single-volume book by that name. But as I’ve been updating and revising for the new edition, I decided it was a bit overwhelming to be just one book; there’s so much good new cool stuff on book marketing nowadays.
Nina’s expertise is blog-to-book—and interestingly both keynote talks at the BEA Bloggers day were from bloggers who had published books. And with that, I give her the floor.
—Shel
How to Write and Promote Your Book One Post at a Time By Nina Amir
If you want to create an author’s platform, a fan base, a tribe, a community, even a movement around your book, or around the idea upon which your book is based, the most effective or inexpensive tool you can use to achieve this goal is a blog. And if you want promote that book or idea from the moment you write the first word of your manuscript, you can do this quickly and efficiently by blogging your book. Simply write, publish and promote your book one post at a time on the Internet.
With a blogged book you write your book from scratch in post-sized bits and publish them in cyberspace. In the process, you promote your work and develop a fan base for your book (and for yourself).
To blog a book and create both a successful book, one that sells later to readers and to publishers (if you desire), and successful blog, one with a large or growing blog readership, follow these eight steps.
Choose your book topic carefully. Make sure the topic you plan to write interests you and interests a lot of other people but also is one about which you feel passionate.
Evaluate your book’s success potential. See your book through the eyes of an acquisitions editor. To do this, go through each section of a book proposal and accumulate the necessary information as an evaluation process.
Angle your topic: Consider if you need to angle your book differently to make it unique in both the book store and the blogosphere.
Create a content plan. A table of contents works for nonfiction. For fiction or memoir, map out your story arc or create a timeline. Include material that will not appear on your blog.
Write your book in post-sized bits. Blog posts are short–250-500. Break your nonfiction chapters into many subheadings or sections. For fiction or memoir, divide your story arc and time line into vignettes or scenes.
Blog 2-7 times per week. Write a short bit of your book (a post) in a word processing program to create a manuscript. Then copy and paste this into your blogging program, and publish it.
Share your posts on social networks. Include a link to your most recent blog post in your status updates on your social networks.
Edit your manuscript. Take the time to revise the first draft you created, and hire a professional editor to give it a final polish.
If your blog and book stem from your sense of passion and purpose, you have the opportunity to build something larger than a blog community. You can create a movement—inspire people not only to gather around your blog and buy your book but to go out into the world and take action. In this way, your fans promote for you by sharing your blog posts and by taking on your cause.
About the Author
Nina Amir, Inspiration-to-Creation Coach, inspires people to combine their purpose and passion so they Achieve More Inspired Results. She motivates both writers and non-writers to create publishable and published products, careers as authors and to achieve their goals and fulfill their purpose. She blogged her book, How to Blog a Book, Write, Publish and Promote Your Work One Post at a Time (Writer’s Digest Books), in five months. Find out more about her at www.ninaamir.com or www.copywrightcommunications.com.
I’ve said for years that industrial designers should have to live and work with their products for six to twelve months before they’re released to the market. It’s much easier to fix the bugs pre-release, but the designers don’t actually use the product, so they don’t see the bugs.
“I’m not a fish” is the one that too-often rules the design world. He shows slides of a culvert designed to transport fish—but designed so fish can’t use it. The industrial designer is unable to think like his or her “customer,” and the project fails.
Some of the others, among them “not my job” and “the world changed” lead to other types of stupidity. Most of them are actual real-life examples—but I’m hoping the photo of a sign that says “Caution: This sign has sharp edges. Do not touch the edges of this sign” in large, dramatic letters, and then in tiny letters, “also, the bridge is out ahead” is a joke.
The seventh item, “broken on purpose,” is about thinking differently—about making your project not only attractive to the right people, but unattractive to the wrong people. If you want to stimulate your brain toward genius, pay careful attention to that segment.
Tomorrow through Thursday, for the 16th time, I’ll be attending (and for the 15th time, writing about) Book Expo America, the largest book-industry trade show in the US. This year might be the first time I’m not attending a pre-event publishing conference (I’m attending a blogging conference instead)—in part because Independent Book Publishers Association, for the first time since I started attending, is not doing their University (they did it in the winter, in San Francisco). They are still doing the Ben Franklin Awards, at least—so I’ll get to see a lot of my friends.
I’ve found this event tremendously useful over the years, even got a book contract in negotiations that started on the show floor. It’s the best way I know to take the pulse of the book world, and a terrific place to network.
If you’d like to read my coverage of other BEAs since 1997, please visit https://frugalmarketing.com/dtb/dtb-publishing.shtml (Note: the safety alert you may see from Google or Norton is because of a link to one of my other sites, where we believe we’ve tracked down the offender but Google hasn’t updated itself yet—go ahead and click).
Two astounding pieces of news related to the nuclear industry crossed my desk this week.
First, a rundown by Harvey Wasserman, who’s been fighting nukes all the way back to the 1970s (at least two of his many books are on energy issues), on the current very sorry state of the nuclear power industry, worldwide. And only China and Russia have an aggressive construction program at the moment.
Wasserman notes that this is an industry on its knees.
France just elected President Francois Hollande, who campaigned as a pro-safe-energy, anti-nuclear candidate
In the US, the few nukes currently under construction are saddled with costs that make them completely uncompetitive, even without all the other negative factors, and with a loan guarantee program (a/k/a “bailout”) that looks increasingly tenuous—and meanwhile, the safe energy/no nukes movement, largely quiet since our victories 30+ years ago, is waking up (I even went to a safe energy demonstration recently whose speakers included Vermont’s governor, one of its senators, and its attorney general)
Even China, a country not known to pay much attention to the safety and well-being of its citizens—and one that has been expanding its energy capacity through every technology it can harness—is reevaluating its nuclear program, and may halt construction or shut down some or all of its reactors
And Wasserman didn’t even discuss the several countries (among them Germany and Italy) that have pledged to phase out or shut down their nukes.
The second story is a reminder of one more reason why we should never have harnessed this technology: it’s a genie that won’t stay in the bottle. Every nuclear power generation or fuel processing plant increases the chances of global terrorism, and of rogue governments getting their hands on nuclear weapons.
As the reporter, Matt Pearce, wryly noted, “Good thing Kodak isn’t in Iran; that’s the kind of thing Israel’s been threatening to go to war over.”
But rest assured that we are out of danger from Kodak’s uranium, he notes:
Lest this story conjure up memories of the anxiety over “loose nukes” after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kodak ditched the uranium in 2007 with the coordination of the U.S. government, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
You might want to send a link to this post to your elected representatives, with a letter about why you favor clean-energy alternatives to nukes and fossil fuels.
It is less than six months until the US elections for President, House of Representatives,and one-third of the Senate.
A year ago, seeing the level of hate and vitriol against Obama from the ultra-right, and the paralysis of government, I was pretty convinced that the Republicans would win easily. Now, however, I think Obama will prevail, at least if the votes are counted accurately and the voters are allowed to vote (both of them BIG ifs, in the wake of anti-vote legislation and the near-unanimous adoption of vote-counting techniques that are entirely too easy to rig, as we saw in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004).
What’s changed?
The other candidates have been making very cogent arguments against Romney; the Republicans have given Obama plenty of ammunition.
Romney himself is the most clueless major-party US presidential candidate I can remember, constantly putting his foot in his mouth, constantly shifting positions, and failing to convince pretty much anybody of his sincerity, his integrity, his ability to relate to common people, or even his basic competence. It’s almost as if he were coached by Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin.
The Occupy (a/k/a 99%) movement has focused long-overdue attention on class issues, while Romney has cheerfully embraced his fellow one-percenters.
The Republican Party as a whole, with Romney’s open support, has made it clear that their tent is not big enough to hold unemployed people, Latinos, women’s reproductive rights supporters, gays and lesbians, or students—or even moderate Republicans (just ask Senator Richard Lugar). Obama has opened his arms to these constituencies. If the Democrats can get all those folks to show up and vote, they win.
It is painfully obvious that Washington’s political gridlock is the Republican Party’s doing. They’ve been dubbed “the party of no” for good reason. People are sick and tired of the constant obstructionism and of the specifically stated goal of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “Our top political priority is to deny President Obama a second term.” Not exactly an appropriate priority for a country still struggling with a deep recession, two major and several minor wars, crises in healthcare and education, and all the rest.
Nobody likes a bunch of name-calling whining bullies. Instead of proposing actual solutions to our country’s problems, the Republicans have race-baited, religion-baited, called him a socialist (for goodness sake—Richard Nixon has a more progressive record!) and a Muslim, and all the rest of the ridiculous Big Lie nonsense.
While Obama’s accomplishments are smaller in number and far more centrist than they need to be, he can point to some real strides: The economy is better, Osama Bin Laden is neutralized, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell s justifiably buried, two terrific Supreme Court Justices have been appointed (we need one more to replace one of the four on the extreme right), and something vaguely resembling healthcare reform actually got passed, where every other president since FDR failed.
The right cannot attack Obama on the places he’s most vulnerable: personal liberty, an absurd faith in nuclear power, failure to keep his promises on renewable energy, and an inability to get us out of all these wars—because Obama’s positions on all these issues pretty much are the Republican positions.
And finally, even if they totally forgot to do the necessary organizing to pass his agenda, Obama’s campaign knows a whole lot about social media and community organizing. This provided the edge in 2008, and could do so again if the Dems can convince young voters especially that they haven’t sold them out, and that the kind of change they voted for in ’08 may be difficult to achieve, but it would be impossible under Romney.
Still, the Democrats cannot and should not take victory for granted, and they have to make sure to pick up seats in Congress as well.
I’d be cautious on composting dryer lint, however. It’s little bits of clothing, and unless you wash nothing but organic cotton, you probably don’t want a mix of heavily pesticided and/or synthetic chemical crap in your compost.
After more than a week of traveling in Ireland and Northern Ireland, here’s some of what I notice:
Fairly high public awareness in general terms, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to behavior.
Wind power plays a significant role. It’s common to see large wind turbines (as in much of the rest of Europe), thouh for the most part in small clusters of one to five, rather than in the vast wind farms of say, Spain—and also to see older, smaller private installations on individual farms, of the sort that were common on US farms in the late 1970s.
Solar’s role is minimal. I have seen exactly one rooftop solar hot water installation, and the only places I’ve seen photovoltaic have been on self-powered electronic highway signs. Of course, it’s not the sunniest place in the world; an Italian immigrant told us, “in Ireland, they call this a beautiful day. In Italy, we would call it a disaster.” But there must be more than is obvious, because we passed quite a number of solar businesses, even in some pretty rural areas.
Fair trade has a lot of currency here, and you can find a fair number of fair trade items not only in specialty stores and supermarkets, but even at gas station convenience stores.
Big cities have some limited public recycling in the major commercial and tourist areas. I imagine there are recycling programs for households, too.
On the campus of the technical college we visited, environmental awareness was quite high. This school is also about to launch a degree program in sustainability and one in agriculture, yet they haven’t explored the obvious linkages between those two program offerings—in part because they’re slotted for different campus, 50 miles apart.
To my shock, the small conference center we stayed at in rural Donegal was still using energy-hogging incandescent light bulbs.
