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What Makes Marketers Tick?
Apr 2nd
Most of us are fascinated by what makes others tick. Why else do so many of us love to see and read interviews?
Pamela Lockard, author of Profiles in Marketing Excellence, is no different. In fact, it was her inquisitiveness about marketers that led to writing her book. She says:
“First, I just have this tremendous curiosity about people… and I really wanted to know more about what makes marketers tick. So I started looking… and I found nothing, not one single source where I could go and find a lot of information about marketers. So I decided to create it.”
For Profiles Lockard interviewed 25 marketers, noting, “We began our search looking for marketing pros that had at least one of the following criteria”:
- Top level marketing experience within a large corporation
- National recognition for their work
- Published
- Marketing educator
While the author has been in marketing for 30 years herself, she says she realized she knew little about what makes top-notch marketers tick. “Those at the top of the field often stay in the background, doing their best work behind the scenes.”
A good interview will give you a snapshot of who the person is (if they are open). The best interviews come from an interviewer who knows how to ask questions that tease out revealing answers.
Profiles gives you a chance to peak under the hood, inside the minds of 25 marketers. The marketers reveal in a conversational style how they made it to the top of their game. To some degree the book pulls out and distills lessons about marketing techniques. But you also get inspiration from reading about others. You learn from their experiences — when they got it right and also when they got it wrong.
Some of the marketers interviewed are:
John Jantsch, President, Duct Tape Marketing
Small effective and affordable small business marketing
Chris Martin, Regional Director, Radio Disney
Radio home of the hottest kids’ music and videos
Ruth Moss, Executive VP, Added Value
Marketing inspiration that works
She also included me as one of the profiles. Now, I don’t necessarily think of myself as a marketer — certainly not a remarkable marketer. But I suppose I’m not that different from many of you who have started your own businesses. Faced with bills to pay and people depending on us, it’s trial by fire. We learn how to market and sell if we don’t want to starve.
What Makes The Author Tick
Lockard (pictured in the image above) is not only an author, but is the CEO of marketing agency DMN3. She’s one of the few Certified Professional Direct Marketers in the United States.
Giving back to the community seems to be the order of business at DMN3, the company that she runs with her husband and a team of 30 marketers. In fact, a business that cares about and supports the community has become a trend in business and marketing in recent years. In her case, it’s more than a recent trend — giving back is part of who she is:
“I’m most proud that I have achieved a point in my life, where I can work to give back. I continue this business because it allows me to help a homeless shelter that is very dependent on my husband and myself to stay open. 70 women and children have a place to sleep because of our business.”
Who Should Read This Book
This is a perfect book for marketers, of course. If you’re committed to the field, you will want to know more about how others made their marks in the world.
But I think it’s also inspiring for entrepreneurs and small business leaders. We may have the best products or services in the world. But if we don’t know how to market and sell, we have a tough road ahead.
Thumb through the book, and find a profile for someone in a business similar to yours or in a similar industry. Dive in and start reading. This is a good book to pick up and read for 30 minutes here and there, and thumb around in. It’s not one of those books where you have to start at the beginning.
According to Julie Pitts, Development Director of DMN3 Institute, “Profiles is meant not as a sit-down read but for motivation and insight and new ways of thinking.”
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Google Makes Hotpot Reviewing Easier, More Social
Mar 8th
How do you train mainstream Internet users to not only leave reviews, but also to use your platform when they do it? You make it as simple as you can. And that’s just what Google has done.
The Google Mobile Blog announced last week that users can now update their Twitter status when they review a location on Google Hotpot or Google Latitude via their Android device.
From Google:
“When you rate and review places like restaurants or cafes from Google Places, you can share valuable recommendations with your Hotpot friends and across Google’s products – in search results, on google.com/hotpot, and on Place pages. But we wanted you to be able to share your recommendations even more broadly. So today, you can start sharing your ratings and reviews with your followers on Twitter directly from your Android-powered device.”
Reviewers can use the Google Maps rating widget to share their reviews and ratings with their friends. Nothing particularly new or revolutionary, but at least we get a really clean interface.
And that’s not all.
Google also updated Google Latitude to give users the option to “ping” friends they see are nearby but who they don’t really want to call or text. Once you ping the friends you couldn’t be bothered to call, they’ll receive an Android notification asking them to check in wherever they are.
Once they do, you’ll receive a notification back letting you know where they’ve checked in so that you can see where they are and potentially meet up with them. (I’m not so sure about this one. Hopefully there’s also an option to “hide” your location so people can’t see you popping up all over the place.)
Personally, I think it’s really interesting to watch the moves that Google is making in local and social. By adding Twitter functionality to Google Hotpot reviews, they’re building more awareness and making it easier for users to share their recommendations (the service) with others. And they’re doing essentially the same thing by peer-pressuring users into checking in via Google Latitude–two services that, I imagine, haven’t been getting too much play compared to Yelp, FourSquare and even Facebook. With the new additions, Google adds some incentive for users to get involved and increases product awareness at the same time.
A smart play. But is it enough?
What do you think? Have you used Google Hotpot or Google Latitude, either for your business or personally? Have you seen many reviews being left for your business via Google Hotpot?
Google Makes Hotpot Reviewing Easier, More Social
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
The thing that makes it popular…
Mar 3rd
might be precisely the thing that keeps it from working.
Chatroulette was popular because you might randomly see some horrible naked guy. It was like a train wreck attracting rubberneckers. But the very attraction that drew a crowd also ensured it would never be seen as a serious tool.
That kid in school that everyone cheers on as he works to become a class clown might appear popular, but it’s certainly getting in the way of his being taken seriously enough to get into college.
I’d argue that the same thinking applies to the way you first encounter someone. You can certainly be over the top enough to get a handshake or even a meeting, but the thing that got you that meeting might be exactly what costs you the deal.
There are a hundred ways you and your organization can become more popular, earn more clicks, generate more comments… but is popular what you’re after?
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Posterous Group Tool Makes Small Business Sense
Dec 16th
Posterous Group Tool Makes Small Business Sense
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Posterous, the email based blogging tool, has quietly (or not so) built a very large user base. The tool’s popularity I believe is in large part due to how simple it makes it to engage in the act of blogging. Users post content by sending an email .
While it is indeed a simple tool some very well known bloggers such as Mashable editor Jennfier Van Grove and Edelman Digital’s Steve Rubel have moved to it as one of their primary sources for information streaming.
Actually, while many people swear by Posterous as an information posting platform I haven’t really seen it as particularly powerful tool for small business over any other platform such as WordPress.
This week, however, Posterous added a feature that I think may have some real utility for small businesses.
Posterous users can now create their own public or private groups and add users that can share, post, and submit various form of content. Again, using email only, group members don’t even need to have a Posterous account to add content. The two panel interface presents the information in a very accessible way.
Groups have been around for a long time from Yahoo and Google, but I think this platform is a much better tool for multi-party sharing around specific topics of content much like a forum with better structure, more types of content and let’s face it a higher coolness factor.
I can see:
- Business units in organizations using the tool to archive content
- Loosely formed networks sharing information as a group
- Small business teams creating and sharing information
- Customer groups creating what amounts to user generated sharing
- Organizations building community around shared ideas
- Non-profits building groups sharing around an event
- This might also be one of the best family sharing tools out there too
To create a group all you need to do is send an email to new group@posterous.com and tell them the name of the group. You can then add a list of group member. Posterous will send your member an invite and create the URL for the group blog.
All groups are private by default, but I could certainly see public uses for the tool. Group owners have the ability to see permissions for members.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
What Makes a Happy Business Anyway?
Nov 11th
What Constitutes Happiness?
Happiness is a state of being, and it varies from situation to situation. Just like in life, a happy person is productive, energetic and creative. They’re happy because their needs are met and they are motivated to give anything a try that will improve the quality of their lives.
When a business is happy, it is productive and seeks challenges as it sizes up its competition. It also has the confidence to go out and secure more, bigger and better business as it builds a solid track record.
So what makes a business this happy?
1. When it’s fulfilling its mission. Many businesses start off doing one thing and often get distracted by following what they’re competition is doing or trying to be the “be all, end all” for their customers. This is the best way to be miserable, especially if fulfilling those roles distracts the business from its goals. The business’ workers become unhappy and production declines. (How to Dev a Mission Statement)
2. Being profitable at what it does. Yes, making money is an important component of a for-profit business. They know they’re on the right track when the budget line is black and there are lots of trailing zeros! While this is probably the most common way to gauge success, profitability doesn’t always have to be in the numbers to make a difference. Profitable also means a loyal customer following who is consistent and likes what the business is doing, and shows their appreciation
3. Doing their one business thing well. It’s true that most businesses promote the idea of multi-offerings for products or printing services to keep things diverse, and it is really a good idea. But sometimes, it’s not such a good idea for those businesses who try to do too many things and are driven by the wrong motivators. Businesses love it when their names become a household name and synonymous with a product or service that they are exceptional in.
4. Watching expenses. Cutting back and making financial sacrifices makes the business happy over time. There may be a bit of financial sacrificing early on, but the end result will make the business happy that it went through any brief periods of financial strain to operate better.
People use various things to gauge the happiness of a business, however. Their profit level, the number of employees, the number of years in business and even its role in the business community. But businesses who are viable and have longevity don’t just use these factors as gauges. The same types of human components that it take to make happiness must apply to businesses as well.
Through trial and error, the business must find what works, change things when necessary and constantly work to improve the quality of their business. They need to also implement systems that work and are a great personality fit, as well as eliminate those things that cause stagnation. With business experimenting and good customer skills, businesses will find that they’re not only happy, but their efforts are working to create an image branding for themselves (or via personal branding). This is completed with satisfied customers and a business full of happy employees.
View full post on Business Pundit
Disney Makes Wholesome Foray Into Social Networking
Sep 25th
| However, underneath the saccharine tenderness of its goals, this family centric approach to social media has an ulterior… |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
myBrainshark Makes Your PowerPoint a Big Star on YouTube
Sep 9th
Brainshark Inc. has just opened up an ocean of access to its on-demand multimedia customers by introducing a new feature that enables businesses and entrepreneurs to share their PowerPoint presentations on YouTube–at no cost to the participating company.
Started 10 years ago, Brainshark provides a web-based Software as a Service platform that allows your business to create and share on-demand, multimedia content, and access deep metrics associated with it. The Massachusetts-based company has built a polished online platform that walks you though converting PowerPoint slides–as well as other materials such as PDF files–into powerful voice-enriched Flash presentations that are suitable for YouTube, your own website or company blog, and even e-mail marketing campaigns. A year ago this month, Brainshark launched myBrainshark–a free version of its software well-suited to entrepreneurs and small business users.
Brainshark has long lurked in the waters of multimedia communication for savvy businesses that appreciate the benefits of publishing their PowerPoint presentations on their own website or blog, accompanied by audio and voice narration, and viewed through an easy-to-use player.
But the real beauty of Brainshark and myBrainshark may just be in your
ability to tap into deep reporting metrics after you distribute your
content. The toothy platform lets you see who and how many people are
watching your presentation, how long each viewer stays with the show,
where they’re watching (by country as well as by state in the U.S.) and
much more. This is valuable information for your sales and marketing
departments, which will get an accurate notion as to how buyers and
others are receiving the content and how it is influencing buying
cycles.
And now Brainshark for YouTube–introduced to the public just yesterday
afternoon–is a free service for Brainshark’s enterprise customers as
well as those who take advantage of the myBrainshark.com site. Using
only a PowerPoint deck and a phone (or a computer microphone), you can
immediately create high-impact business content that’s ready to post on
YouTube. No muss, no fuss.
This new service makes it possible for anyone who possesses the basic
skill set to create a PowerPoint presentation to successfully tap into
the power of high-impact online video marketing by publishing and
distributing it as a YouTube file. In short, myBrainshark makes it
possible for your company to engage in a feeding frenzy of online video
marketing, greatly expanding the reach of your message and how people
consume it. Think of it as the democratization of multimedia
presentations.
Brainshark and myBrainshark presentations can be viewed online at any
time and from anywhere in the world by your customers, your sales staff,
HR professionals for training purposes, or anyone else who can benefit
from self-guided presentations. Better yet, the multimedia presentations
can also be viewed on mobile devices including smartphones and iPads,
and combine PowerPoint slides, documents, photos, background music and
voice narration that can be added–via phone or computer
microphone–from a continent away.
With yesterday’s announcement, myBrainshark users who have a YouTube
account can upload PowerPoint decks to myBrainshark and add their voice,
and then seamlessly upload the resulting presentations as video files
to YouTube–with titles, descriptions and tags intact. Then it’s just a
matter of publishing a link to the audience you have
targeted–employees, sales prospects, customers, partners and all those
who influence your business–enabling them to experience your content at
their convenience, whenever and wherever they want. In addition to
viewing the YouTube video, your audience can still watch the multimedia
presentation on myBrainshark too.
Like everything else, there are several downsides, but they are minor.
For one thing, you must abide by YouTube’s 15-minute rule, which means
your file can run no longer than 15 minutes if you’re posting it on
YouTube. But that problem is solved by the fact that, when uploaded on
Brainshark.com, the ocean’s the limit on the length of your
presentation.
The only other annoyance–and again, it’s slight–is the fact that
because of YouTube’s aspect ratio, your Brainshark presentation won’t
fill the entire screen, leaving gutters on either side.
To get started on myBrainshark–taking advantage of the site and ability
to publish presentations to YouTube–follow these simple steps:
1. Upload your PowerPoint presentation:
2. Add voice to the presentation using the provided telephone number or your computer microphone:
3. Edit your presentation’s properties, including title, description,
categories and tags, and choose the option to publish to your YouTube
channel or account:
That’s it–your voice-enriched presentation is ready for viewing on
myBrainshark and (if you’ve opted for this) as a video on YouTube.
myBrainshark is available in three flavors:
Free, Pro, and Pro Trainer. Advanced features related to privacy and
enhanced reporting are available in the Pro edition, while the Pro
Trainer edition includes eLearning features such as the ability to
insert test questions and applying scoring, issue certificates of
completion upon your viewers meeting your predefined requirements, the
ability to integrate courses with your learning management system, and
more.
For more information, visit http://my.brainshark.com.
View full post on Entrepreneur.com – Daily Dose
Government Makes Germans Productive? Hogwash.
Aug 31st
How are Americans so overworked, yet get so little done? That’s a question Chicago labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan tackles in his book, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?, which, according to the Salon interview I read, explores “America’s misguided culture of overwork.”
“Germany’s workers have higher productivity, shorter hours and greater quality of life,” according to Salon. As a first-generation German-American, this made me curious.
But after reading the interview, I was disappointed. Geoghegan basically seems to be extolling the merits of social democracy without considering core cultural influences. It sounds like all we need to do is implement a system of social democracy, with free universities, more efficient health care, and more vacation, and we’ll end up a having a much more productive workforce.
I’d hardly draw the conclusion that social democracy, the system of governance itself, is responsible for German productivity. First of all, many Germans I’ve met aren’t exactly impressed with their government, which adds special taxes to everything from church participation to tea. In exchange for that nice vacation, maternity leave, and free education, you get limited opportunities for personal wealth or property ownership. You are, to coin a US business phrase, satisficed. If you want to hit it big, with a mansion and a pool and solid investments, you’d best move to the States.
Secondly, I don’t think any governmental system will somehow compel people to become more productive. The real influences are between people themselves, based on the behaviors they’ve formed and integrated throughout their territory’s history.
Here are my reasons that the causes for German productivity are more ingrained in culture than government:
1) German virtues include industriousness, stoicism, obedience, and self-denial. Doing your duty has implicit social value, more so than looking busy. This mindset is ideal for getting things done. If you behave differently, you may activate an inner shame mechanism that draws you back in line.
Compare that to individualistic, materialist, risk-taking America. Everyone wants to make it, to hit it big. There’s cultural weight on freedom–of speech, of religion, of expression. It’s not about behaving and being orderly, it’s about having the liberty to be yourself. That mindset doesn’t naturally extend into a tight, organized, efficient organization, the way the German one does. Instead, we’re all trying to outperform one another to hit said jackpot.
2) Germans tend to be more objective than Americans about their own life conditions. Because of this lack of emotion about one’s own life, there’s less drive to pursue personal gratification at every turn to ease suffering, find something better. Life is less “about me” than it is here in the States. The cultural value of loyalty outweighs that of personal gratification.
Americans, meanwhile, generally feel optimistic and entitled. As an American, you assume: I should be rich, I should have a nice car, I deserve nice things. When life doesn’t match those assumptions, you turn to: Who can I blame? What can I do better? How do I get to my goal?
Some product or service will invariable pop up on your radar to help you out. You’re optimistic, you’re gratified, until something triggers the process of finding solutions again. So, hopeful, you seek and buy another temporary solution.
From a labor point of view, more emphasis on self-gratification does not an efficient workforce make. Meanwhile, a stoic, loyal, “work through it” emphasis does keep people productive, especially with guaranteed vacations to look forward to.
Even if Americans had guaranteed vacations, they’d still be trying to “hit it big,” fulfill their sense that they deserve the good life. Someone would invariably skip vacations in order to work harder than everyone else to pursue that goal, which would make other people do it, too, and…there you have our current condition.
3) Perhaps because of that competition, American merit is based on perceived commitment to work. Americans take work home all the time. Between laptops and mobile devices, they practically have a drip feed of work-related communication. Instead of concentrating hard during work hours, then unwinding, Americans are halfway online all the time in order to augment that perceived commitment. I doubt this is more productive. Instead, it burns employees out, leading to limited brain function, increased distraction, and–you got it–less productivity.
I’ll concede that a social democracy like Germany’s helps mitigate burnout by mandating vacations, stress by offering maternity leave, and debt by offering free university. But it’s not sufficient to conclude that social democracy alone makes Germans more productive.
View full post on Business Pundit
Google’s Priority Inbox Makes Email Smarter
Aug 31st
Google, which has most recently been trying to divert users away from Skype by integrating Google Voice with Gmail, just added another innovation to its stable: Priority Inbox. TechCrunch has more:
Google has built a system that figures out which of your messages are important, and presents them at the top of the screen so you don’t miss them. The rest of your messages are still there, but you don’t have to dig through dozens of newsletters and confirmations to find the diamonds in rough.
The beauty of the system lies in its simplicity — it’s nearly as easy as Gmail’s one click spam filter. There’s almost no setup: once it’s activated on your account, you’ll see a prompt asking you if you want to enable Priority Inbox. You can choose from a few options (the order of your various inboxes and if there are any contacts you’d like to always mark ‘Important’) but don’t have to setup any rules or ‘teach’ Gmail what you want it to mark important. It just works, at least most of the time.
The system uses a plethora of criteria to decide which messages are most important: things like how frequently you open and/or respond to messages from a given sender, how often you read messages that contain a certain keyword, and whether or not the message is addressed solely to you or looks like it was sent to a mailing list. If you come across a message that’s been marked important when it shouldn’t have been, you can hit an arrow to tell Gmail it’s messed up. Likewise, if a message that should have been flagged gets sent to the ‘everything else’ area, you can promote it. Through these actions Gmail gets progressively smarter, so the system should work better over time.
TechCrunch writer Jason Kincaid also says that now that a computer is prioritizing your email, intros will becoming even more important. Perhaps someone will develop a kind of SEO strategy for getting a prospect’s attention via email, based on the kinds of keywords Gmail tends to prioritize. That said, not doing annoying things in an email, like starting it with “Dear Sean” (not my name) or “Hey there,” both intros that I discovered in my inbox this morning, will always help your case.
View full post on Business Pundit
SEO Marketing Services Makes Life Easier For The Internet Marketer
Aug 16th
| We all know that organic traffic is the best traffic… the ultimate path to the internet autopilot lifestyle that we get pitched day in and day o… |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
