Tag: marketing

By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Just back from a few days in Istanbul, Turkey, where I spoke at a conference and then got to play for a few days.

As with all my trips, I keep my marketing eyes open. Here’s some of what I noticed:

  • Turks are  maniacs for food freshness (and the food is WONDERFUL!) to the point where packing dates as well as expiration dates are common on packages (which I have seen occasionally in the US) and the packing dates are extremely recent (not very common in my own country). I walked into a very small supermarket in kind of a backwater neighborhood on the Asian side and bought a bag of nuts that had been packed just one week earlier. And they tasted amazingly fresh. That tells me that supermarket turnover has to be very fast, and that the customers are looking at those packing dates and rejecting anything too old, if even this small and uncrowded market had food so fresh. If I were marketing any product in Turkey, food or otherwise, I’d think about how to include a freshness campaign.
  • Like many tourist destinations, Istanbul has an army of men (I didn’t see any women doing this) whose job it is to get the tourist into a particular shop (especially carpet shop) or restaurant. In Turkey, they were really personable, and often started by meeting tourists on their way into an attraction, giving some useful pointers, and then saying they’ll meet you at the end and escort you to the shop (and all of them kept those promises). At least the “like” part of the know-like-trust formula is very much a part of doing business. However, most of them lack any discernible USP (Unique Selling Proposition—a reason to do business there rather than with someone else). One that did told us that his partner would give us a discourse on the history of rug-making, which was accurate (I’ll be posting an article soon based on that fascinating conversation).
  • Most of the Turks I saw had dark hair and a medium skin tone, darker than Northern Europeans but lighter than Arabs or Greeks (kind of like my own skin tone, in fact). I did meet several fair-skinned blondes and redheads. Yet if you look at the ads, you’d think half of Turkey is blonde. I could interpret this as blondes having higher status (as they seem to do in the US as well—remember “Is it true Blonde’s have more fun?”), or as rejection of the principle that marketing should use images that resemble your market, or as something else I wasn’t there long enough to understand. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s coincidence.
  • For green marketers especially: if you want to move society to go green, make the green alternative much more attractive. Public transit in Istanbul is cheap, fast, easy to navigate—and extremely heavily used. Car ownership, by contrast, is expensive and full of hassles from icky traffic to high fuel prices to very limited parking in many areas. The result? Only 1 in 10 Istanbul residents have a car. I’m betting that once the rail connection between the Asia and Europe sides is complete (my understanding is that a tunnel is being constructed), public transit will become even more popular.
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , ,

Got a sales call this afternoon that was soooo pathetic, so 1980. The poor schlep wanted me to schedule an appointment with his field sales guy. Pretty much the first thing he said after telling me his name and his company (both unfamiliar to me) was that the rep would be in my area Thursday.

I politely replied that my time was very precious, and before I scheduled in in-person sales call, I wanted to find out “if it was a good fit for me.” And the first thing I wanted to know was what he was selling.

Turned out to be a credit card processing service. He offered me a free terminal if I would schedule the appointment to tell me about his “favorable” merchant processing rates, depending on the volume.

Well, first of all, I already own my own credit card processing terminal. Second, I’m a pretty low-volume shop, processing a few tickets a month for consulting and a few more for book orders that come to me directly (most are going through traditional book sales channels these days)—so I’m not likely to benefit much from his volume-based rates. And third, when he asked me yet again to set the appointment, I asked for information in writing so I could evaluate the rates. It would have been as simple as giving me a URL to type, but that thought did not occur to him, and probably not to his boss either. In fact, it didn’t even occur to this guy that he could mail or fax the information and then follow up later. (I actually switched to my current merchant processing company because that rep did exactly that, and his rates were in fact substantially better than what I’d been paying.)

Instead, he ended the call.

Well, I’ve got three pieces of advice for people using this selling model:

1. The customer or prospect is in charge these days. I don’t have to bow down to you and be sold to the way you happen to prefer to sell me. You have to offer me the chance to buy the way I want. If you want an in-person appointment and you haven’t shown me the value in it, I won’t meet you. If you want me to sign up over the phone and I want to see the terms in writing, you’ll provide the terms or go away empty.

2. We live in an empowered era. Your competitor is as close as a mouse click. If you won’t people research you, they’ll research, and do business with, somebody else.

3. It’s far more effective to build long-term customer relationships than to go for a quick one-time sale—and these tactics don’t build that relationship.

Of course, I could give them a lot more advice—in the pages of my award-winning books, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and Grassroots Marketing.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , , ,

Master marketer Seth Godin used his own ignorance of/lack of interest in Lady Gaga to make the very valid point that marketers should go after their unique audience and not worry about those who don’t choose to opt in.

But then he says,

I’m virtually certain that Lady (do her friends call her that?) doesn’t read my stuff, so we’re even.

Seth, Lady Gaga is a very savvy marketer. It would not shock me at all if she knows your stuff and dips in regularly for great ideas (as I do). 🙂

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Customer Service as Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , ,

Why have I been mostly absent from my own blog lately? Because I’ve been working long hours on behalf of a client who had some pressing and time-consuming needs—including hands-on media training, helping him hire a PR assistant, and getting out a rush press release with a very short window of opportunity.

How did I get that client? A referral from a client whose book I produced a couple of years ago. That original single project has now turned into work for four different clients, putting a significant amount of money into my bank account.

It’s hard to beat a direct referral from a delighted client, unless perhaps with a direct referral from a well-respected industry guru (and I get plenty of those, too, including one earlier this week). In both cases, they come to you pre-sold, and if you don’t mess things up, they want to work with you.

Plus, since they came through referral, they often are happy to refer others. Your marketing cost: zero.

Of my seven most recent major clients, three were referrals, one I met at a networking event, one found one of my websites, and one remembered me because I wrote an article about her years ago. I’m not sure how the sixth found me, will have to check.

To get referrals: do the best job you can, and encourage your thrilled clients to tell others about you. If you’re in an Internet social media community together, and the client expresses delight privately, ask that client to share this feeling with the community (that’s when you start getting referrals from industry leaders).

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Advertising Tagged with , , , , ,

One of the things I enjoy about travel is the chance to dip into the world of big-company messaging and watch for trends. At home, I tend not to buy a lot of the mainstream brands so I don’t know what they’re up to.

My breakfast this morning included items from General Mills (Cheerios) and Lipton, both of which left me scratching my head in wonder that in this day and age, and with all the resources at their disposal, so many big companies still don’t have a clue.

General Mills greets me with a big banner on the front of the box telling me that I can win a free box of Cheerios if I turn over the box.

On the back, it directs me to go register on a website, and hints that there’s some connection to heart health (which Cheerios has used as a marketing point for many years).

I give General Mills points for figuring out how to reach the target audience. Presumably, pretty much everyone reading the back of a Cheerios box is a consumer and/or purchaser of the product. Also, General Mills scores points for attempting at least some weak level of consumer involvement.

But the offer is too weak. Let me get this straight: you want me to take time out of my day, type in a 21-character domain name, and then register on your site…for the possibility (not certainty) that I might be lucky enough to win a $3 box of cereal? For that, I’m going to take time away from productive work and expose myself to marketing messages from now until Doomsday?

The offer is not compelling enough for me, at least. The benefits are theoretical but the cost to me is real. You want my registration for a giveaway? Make it worth my while. A chance to win an iPad might coax my name and e-mail out of me. A sweepstakes for a box of cereal, not so much.

Oddly enough, the site itself makes a better offer: $4 in coupons for everyone registering, AND the chance to win a cereal box.

Part 2 of my breakfast: a cup of Lipton peppermint tea. On the teabag tag: this trademarked phrase: “Lipton tea can do that.”

Huh?? Now I’m the one who has no clue. What can it do? For whom? Who cares? This one was not even compelling enough to get me to click over to lipton.com in the interest of research (to write about what I found there in this blog). It is so lame I’m not even going to bother.

Adding to my resistance: on the tea bag envelope, it says “Feel everything becoming alright.”

First of all, proper English is important to me. “Alright” is not proper. When discussing making things better, it should be “all right.” But again, there’s nothing here to convince me to click. Where’s the call to action? Where’s anything that relates to me as a peppermint tea drinker, an herbal tea drinker, or even a tea drinker? Where’s the differentiation?

Not to pick on these two companies–I could name hundreds of examples of companies whose marketing departments utterly squander their chance to move the discourse forward. But to have two in the same breakfast struck me as worth writing about.

(Cheerios and the Lipton slogan are trademarks of their respective owners.)

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , ,

This is an approximate verbatim transcript of the phone call I just ended.

Me: “Hello, this is Shel, how may I make your day special?”
Her: “I’m from and I wanted to let you know that our sales manager will be in your area on Thursday and would like to make an appointment.”
Me: What does your company do?”
Her: “We have a free credit card terminal for you.”
Me: “I’m happy with my current merchant account provider and I already own my own terminal.”
Her: “Our system includes a digital receipt system where you don’t need paper receipts. What would be a good time on Thursday to meet with her?”
Me: “I need to see information before I set up any appointments. Can you send me something and I’ll call you back if I’m interested?”
Her: “Well, it’s on a laptop, you have to see it.”
Me: “Can’t you e-mail it?”
Her: “You can go on our website–”
Me (interrupting): Wait a minute. You call me up out of the blue and try to sell me something. You want to waste my time with an appointment. And you’re going to make ME do the work to research you, you won’t even send me information?”
Her: (no response)

At that point I hung up. I wonder who would actually buy from this idiotic process.

Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. These people think they are marketing, but this is not marketing. Marketing is about building relationships, providing or adding value, solving problems. This boiler room telepressurer (I will not dignify her by calling her a telemarketer because she’s not marketing; she’s confronting people who don’t want her message) is doing one of that.

I’ve written six books and hundreds of articles about how to market effectively. People like this give the whole industry a bad name, and then we have to work that much harder to overcome prejudice against us.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, People Helping People Tagged with , , , ,

Proving yet again that you can network pretty much anywhere…I was listening to a teleclass and 37 minutes into the call, the presenter fell off. He didn’t come back on, but someone else asked if anyone was there, and I responded.

Fifteen minutes later, I had been booked as a guest on his radio show, he asked me if I would collaborate on a joint venture involving a pitch to National Public Radio, and another person who’d been quietly listening joined the call to invite me to consider a project he’s involved with.

All because I took 30 seconds to explain what had happened and introduce myself.

What networking opportunity can you seize? (Need idea starters? I suggest my award-wining sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail