Got Clients? Advertising Is for Boring Businesses

Filed Under Successful Blog | 15 Comments

Think About It . . .

“GET” STICKY!

I’ve been hearing myself repeat the same thought lately. It’s something that Andy Sernovitz said when he spoke last May at SOBCon07. Andy knows a few things about what people talk about. He wrote the book, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. What he said was . . .

Advertising is for boring businesses.

Andy was making the point that if our product or service was compelling, interesting, people would already be telling each other to check it out.

In his book, Word of Mouth Marketing, Andy explains that to people talking about us and our stuff, we need to know what people talk about. We talk about three kinds of things.

    We talk about other people and their stuff.

    We talk because it makes us feel smart, important, and helpful.

    We want to feel part of a bigger group.

Talking to each other is what we do . . . on a regular basis.

Interesting, exciting, satisfying, compelling products that do what they promise are sticky. They get us talking. We share experiences that we find remarkable and defining.

Obviously Andy’s talk was anything but boring. Here I am telling you about it 5 months later. He doesn’t need advertising. His message stuck with me.

What was the last product or service you talked about? What about it made you want to tell the story?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

High Times Shopping In The Sky Mall

Filed Under One Way to CC It, Successful Blog | 12 Comments

Sometimes I Don’t Get Marketing

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there are some things I just don’t get.

One Way to CC It logo

For example I don’t get most things that have to do with home decorating. When Christmas rolls around my wife will take some classy looking ornaments and, say, arrange them on a side table over a snazzy table cloth with some glass bead strings snaked around the table.

It looks great! But I never would have thought to do that on my own. To my way of thinking ornaments belonged on a tree. Arranging them festively on a table would never have occurred to me.

This sort of thing has become a running joke in our marriage. We’ll see something along those lines and she will turn to me. Do you get that? You don’t get that do you?

Nope.

It looks great and all. But that someone would have taken the time and effort? Don’t get it.

I’m really OK with not getting some things.

I get most things about business. But there are some things about the whole marketing thing that I just make me shake my head. Nope. Don’t get that either. Read more

How to Undo Reverse-Wrong Zig-Zag Marketing in 5 Easy Steps

Filed Under Branding, Business Life, Marketing, Successful Blog, Trends | 8 Comments

I’ve Been Thinking about . . .

Personal Branding logo

. . . about a conversation in college.

“Susie B., ” I said. “I envy you.”

“Oh, really? Why?”

“You’re the kind of person who knows exactly where you’re going. You move through the alphabet from A to B to C and so on. Me? I have to go from A all the way to Z and then I land on B just like you. Then I’m off again to Z before I can find my way back to C again.”

. . . about the interview question.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

The right answer is NOT “It depends.”

. . . about a recent comment from a friend.

“I’ve never seen you do anything in a straight line. You’ll always be such fun to watch.”

On good days, I think of it as creative, flexible, and original. On not so good ones, I think of it as chaotic, undisciplined, and unrefined. I’ve learned you go with what you got — manage to your strengths and shore up your weaknesses.

For me that means, stopping often to figure out what I’m doing wrong.

This time it’s serious. I’ve been doing Reverse-Wrong Zig-Zag Marketing.

No wonder folks don’t understand.

If you’re having a problem defining your brand, turn the page and read on.
Read more

Great Find: Motion Mall

Filed Under Branding, Marketing, Successful Blog, Tools | 5 Comments

An Interactive Option to Amazon Advertising

I found this alternative advertising option reading OMMA, the Online Marketing Media & Advertising Magazine. If you’re willing to share a little ad benefit for a little interactivity and pulling power, you should take a look at this one.

Great Find: Motion Mall

Permalink: http://www.motionmall.com/

Audience/Topic: Any blogger who would like an Amazon program with some extra oomph and interactivity.

Content: Motion Mall is a Boston-based company that offers one-stop advertising that any blogger can setup and have running in four simple steps. All you have to do is

    1. Design your ad.
    2. Join the Amazon Associates program.
    3. Provide your contact information.
    4. Copy and Paste the HTML.

The benefits of Motion Mall are

    You get to choose the product focus.
    The interface is interactive and refreshes throughout the day.
    You’re paid directly from Amazon’s Associates program.

What’s the catch? There is a reasonable service fee to cover the costs of the interactive interface and you might find that some readers spend more time interacting with the ads than reading your blog posts.

To check out Motion Mall, click the logo.

Motion Mall

This is the most interesting new ad model I’ve seen in the longest while.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Getting Customers to Stop by to See You

Filed Under Content, Customer Think, Design, Successful Blog | 1 Comment

Walking the Trade Show Floor

Customer Think Logo

Yesterday walking the trade show floor, I felt I was in a 3-D blog world. Aisles and aisle of blogs sitting side by side with real people in and around them. They were all in the same market, different niches. Some were not easy to tell apart. I was scanning the signage to get a clue. Oh my! 60% were woefully inadequate. Here’s what I saw.

  • Company names with not a hint of what they do.
  • A list of what the company does, but no name to pull it together.
  • Taglines that said abolutely nothing, i.e. making things happen — good things? bad things? It didn’t say.
  • Taglines that said the same five buzz words that I found at most every other booth.

It seemed clear to me that the folks who designed these books — 3-D blogs — were thinking of what they thought the customer should know rather than thinking of what the customer might have come to find out. Standing outside each booth that I’m talking about I only had one question. Read more

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