Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

I got a phone call a few days ago from my friend Steve who is a fellow independent professional. He said to me at the beginning of the call, "David, I'm calling you as a reference."

So I'm thinking, "OK, he wants to hire someone I've worked with or someone I know - perhaps even a client of mine whose testimonial he saw on my website."

I say, "Steve, what can I do for you?"

And then he mentions someone's name. Let's call this person Larry. Now I like Larry and he's a good guy - perhaps a little confused about his marketing and messaging... and frankly that's OK because Larry is NOT a client of mine (although I've given him plenty of chances!)

Steve stops me and says, "No, no... I don't want to hire Larry. Larry wants to hire me. I'm calling you to ask you what kind of client do you think he would be?"

Wow. It's not a consultant reference, speaker reference, or service provider reference - Steve was asking me (essentially) "Would this guy be a good client?" FYI Steve saw me connected to Larry through LinkedIn and some other social media sites.

Lessons for YOU:

• We live in a hyper-connected world
• People DO read your social media profiles
• People DO judge you on the "company you keep" both online and off
• If you're a pain in the ass - as a consultant, speaker, vendor, partner, OR client... word will spread faster than you can imagine
• The top people in their field (ahem, YOU) do not have the bandwidth nor the interest to work with folks who are a pain in the butt
• YOU can't afford to be a pain in the butt on EITHER side of the professional services buying equation

Comments? What do you think? Have you had some experiences to share along these lines? Would love to hear from you in the Comments section below...

Recently, two additional Do It! Marketing team members earned their Inbound Marketing Certified Professional designation - Catherine Bernard and Dusty Meehan.

In order to receive the Inbound Marketing Certification, the recipient must attend a variety of courses and pass a comprehensive certification exam, demonstrating subject matter expertise in the following areas:

• Advanced Search Engine Optimization and Ranking Improvement Strategies
• How to Blog Effectively for Businesses
• Social Media and Building Community
• Business Applications for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other Social Networks
• Viral Marketing and World-Wide Raves
• Creating Strong Calls to Action and Effective Landing Pages
• Inbound Lead Nurturing (Turning Leads into Sales)
• Successful Email Marketing
• Analyzing Results and Demonstrating ROI

This certification demonstrates our expanding commitment to serving our community of professional speakers, consultants, coaches, trainers, experts, authors, and thought-leading service business owners as their "instant infrastructure" team combining:

• Inbound marketing services to make the phone ring and fill your calendar in the best possible way (when you get THEM to call YOU!)
• Offline thought-leadership marketing through article placement in leading trade, professional, and industry publications of your target market, webinars, teleseminars, guest interviews, and other hand-selected opportunities
• Admin/backoffice service and support for upselling, cross-selling, and stimulating repeat and referral business from buyers, audiences, and past clients

If you'd like to learn more about how we can help YOU generate more leads, better prospects, and bigger sales - visit Done-for-You Marketing for Speakers, Consultants, and Experts.

p.s. It's also a great way to fill your calendar with LESS time, effort, energy, and drudgery.

A few years back, J.M. Smucker topped the list of the "100 Best Companies to Work For" compiled by the Great Place to Work Institute and published annually in Fortune magazine.

Their extremely simple code of conduct (and the foundation of their strong corporate culture) is as follows:

• Listen with your full attention
• Look for the good in others
• Have a sense of humor
• Say thank you for a job well done

See, it's simple! No big words.

No "mission/vision/gobbledygook."

And what is most interesting to me is that the "corporate code" above is not corporate at all -- it's PERSONAL. It addresses the way each individual person is expected to BEHAVE (not think - but ACT).

What's the corporate code where you work?
Is there a difference between the written code (on the wall in the lobby, perhaps?) and the way people really treat each other? Click in the COMMENTS section below and let's discuss...

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David Newman is a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professionals who want to do a better job of marketing so they get more leads, better prospects, and bigger sales.

• Leadership Skills
• Teambuilding
• Motivation
• Supervisory Skills
• Customer Service
• Meeting Facilitation
• Process Improvement

• Healthcare
• Corporate
• Financial Services
• Small Business Owners
• Entrepreneurs
• Non-Profit
• Faith-Based Organizations
• Anyone who wants to maximize potential, overcome obstacles & achieve goals

• Architectural drawings
• Building plans
• Hammering
• Screwdriving
• Framing
• Drywalling
• Plumbing/HVAC
• Roofing

• Tall people
• Short people
• Families
• People who want a new house
• People who'd like to move
• Caucasians
• African Americans
• Asian Americans
• Latinos
• Anyone who wants a house they can call a home, a roof over their heads, and to obtain housing

MARKETING TIP: Nobody CARES about YOU and what YOU do! They want to hear about the outcomes. Outcomes go way beyond features, benefits, processes, and methodologies.

Sell me on the HOUSE and what my life will be like when I've moved in, or have guests over, or have a picnic, or retire.

Talk about ME, MY life, and what MY experience of your product/service will be. That's all I really care about!

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David Newman is a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professionals who want to do a better job of marketing so they get more leads, better prospects, and bigger sales.

"Nearly all rich and powerful people are not notably talented, educated, charming, or good-looking. They become rich and powerful by wanting to be rich and powerful."
-- Paul Arden

How’s that for a goal? Imagine this:

“Billy, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Billy: “Rich and powerful!”

Isn’t that great? What is wrong with that answer?

Nothing, NOTHING, NOTHING! Or as my mother says, “There’s nothing wrong with making a lot of money, you know.” (Thanks, Mom.)

Paul Arden gets it. On the cover of his book It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be, he has the subtitle “The world’s best-selling book by Paul Arden.”

That’s what we’re talking about!

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David Newman is a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professionals who want to do a better job of marketing so they get more leads, better prospects, and bigger sales.

'Ideas are flowing much faster now than they ever used to.'
-- Pradeep Sindhu, Founder, Juniper Networks

This snippet from a FAST COMPANY interview got me thinking that one good metric for corporate innovation is fairly simple to measure: I call it IDEA FLOW.

Here's how to measure it - right now!

Answer these 8 questions:

1. How many ideas have come across your desk in the last 30 days from anywhere in your organization?

2. How quickly did you respond to them with either:
   a. feedback
   b. discussion
   c. implementation

3. How many ideas did you personally contribute anywhere else in the organization?

4. How many got one of the three responses in question 2 above?

5. Where do most of the ideas that are ACTED UPON come from in your organization?

6. What formal or informal structures are in place to harvest, encourage, and reward business ideas - even crazy or offbeat ones?

7. Are managers rewarded for not only the ideas they come up with, but others' ideas that they credit, promote and implement?

8. What is the path of the typical IDEA FLOW in your organization? Are there many stops along the way or is there a streamlined process?

Do you remember the public TV cartoon on "How a Bill Becomes a Law?" - connect that to "How Do Ideas Become Profit?"

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David Newman is a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professionals who want to do a better job of marketing so they get more leads, better prospects, and bigger sales.

Almost 10 years ago, I wrote an article for the Philadelphia Business
Journal (and an abbreviated version for WallStreetJournal.com) entitled "Marketing is Everyone's Business."

Upon re-reading it recently, I came to the sad conclusion that the article wasn't that strong although the concept behind it was HUGE then - and it is still HUGE today...

It was inspired by my 10-minute conversation with Susan Bach
of Adolor Corporation in Exton, PA. Susan gave me more
information about her company and their positioning,
products, and future plans for new drugs than most brand
managers at competing companies could have done. The catch?
She's the HR Director.

The bottom line: You gotta KNOW the business and MARKET the
products, services, and value prop no matter what the title on your business card. Great companies KNOW this and TRAIN for it. Does yours?

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David Newman is a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professionals who want to do a better job of marketing so they get more leads, better prospects, and bigger sales.

Guest column by Nick Usborne

The Rule of One falls into two areas...what you write about, and who you write to.

Here’s the first part of the rule...

Confine each communication to a single topic

This is a battle that has been raging between copywriters and their clients for a very long time.

Twenty years ago I remember trying to discourage clients from wanting to say too much in a single ad or direct mail letter.

I think they felt that if they were going to pay the media costs, they would get “more for their money” if they used every opportunity to say as much as possible about their products, services and company.

My counter-argument was that they would communicate much more clearly, and with better results, if they stuck to a single topic and a single message. The same problem persists today on the web.

Too many web pages try to cover too much ground.

Think of it this way. Very few people arrive at your site wanting to hear about all of your different products or services. Most will have used a search engine to find information on a single, clearly defined topic.

Whether you bring them to a specific landing page or some other interior page, build your pages so that they focus on just one topic at a time.

Do that and you will stay focused and please your visitors.

As a side benefit, you will also please the major search engines, which consistently reward pages that are confined to a single topic. The more clearly defined the page topic, the higher the listing.

And now for the second part of the Rule of One.

Write to one person at a time

You have probably heard this advice before. But as I read web pages across a variety of industries, I see little evidence of writers following this simple rule.

Basically, you will write more clearly, more personally and with better results if you picture an individual prospect or reader as you write.

Don’t write to some amorphous demographic group. Write to one person within that group.

Don’t create a mental picture of “that kind of person”. Picture a real person with a real life. Think about that person’s life. Think about what they want out of life.

Now think about how your product or service fits that person.

If you do this well, if you can truly see an individual prospect in your mind, it will have a profound impact on what and how you write.

Your text will read and feel as if it is being written to a real person. The corporate-speak jargon and biz-speak nonsense will disappear, and you will suddenly begin writing more clearly, with a true empathy for the person who will be reading your text.

Keep one thing in mind. This is not a “copywriting trick”. This is writing pages in a way that corresponds to how they will be read. It may sound obvious, but so many people lose touch with the fact that every page you write WILL be read by individuals with unique lives and needs.

No “group” will ever read your page. No “industry” will ever read your page.

The web pages you write will always be read by individuals, one at a time.

Concluding thoughts

Stick to one topic and write to one person.

It sounds easy, but very few people do it. Sometimes copywriters fail to write in this way because they haven’t thought about it. Sometimes it happens due to unrelenting pressure from above.

Either way, sticking to the Rule of One will always help you. Discipline yourself and fight your clients and managers if you need to.

In the end, the results will speak for themselves.

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Note: Nick Usborne is the leading advocate of good writing on the Web. He is an 
author, copywriter, consultant, speaker, and the publisher of the Excess Voice 
newsletter for online writers. Read his articles at http://www.excessvoice.com  

I was browsing through my ebook edition of Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich and this particular passage jumped out at me.

Thought you should see it. YOUR comments welcome below in the COMMENTS section... just scroll down and let me know what you think.

9 Reasons People Fail

1. Lack of well‐defined purpose in life. There is no hope of success for the  person who does not have a central purpose, or definite goal at which to aim.   Ninety‐eight out of every hundred of those whom I have analyzed had no such  aim.  Perhaps this was the major cause of their failure. 

2. Lack of ambition to aim above mediocrity.  We offer no hope for the person  who is so indifferent as not to want to get ahead in life, and who is not willing to  pay the price. 

3. Lack of self‐discipline.  Discipline comes through self‐control.  This means  that one must control all negative qualities.  Before you can control conditions,  you must first control yourself.  Self‐mastery is the hardest job you will ever  tackle.  If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.  You may see at one and the same time both your best friend and your greatest enemy, by  stepping in front of a mirror. 

4. Procrastination.  This is one of the most common causes of failure.  “Old  Man Procrastination” stands within the shadow of every human being, waiting  his opportunity to spoil one’s chances of success.  Most of us go through life as  failures, because we are waiting for the “time to be right” to start doing  something worthwhile.  Do not wait.  The time will never be “just right.”  Start  where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your  command, and better tools will be found as you go along. 

5. Lack of persistence.  Most of us are good “starters” but poor “finishers” of  everything we begin, moreover, people are prone to give up at the first signs of  defeat.  There is no substitute of persistence.  The person, who makes persistence  his watchword, discovers that “Old Man Failure” finally becomes tired, and  makes his departure.  Failure cannot cope with persistence. 

6. Negative personality.  There is no hope of success for the person who repels  people through a negative personality.  Success comes through the application of  power, and power is attained through the cooperative efforts of other people.  A  negative personality will not induce cooperation. 

7. Lack of a well‐defined power of decision.  Men who succeed reach decision  promptly, and change them, if at all, very slowly.  Men who fail reach decisions,  if at all, very slowly, and change them frequently, and quickly.  Indecision and  procrastination are twin brothers.  Where one is found, the other may usually be  found also.  Kill off this pair before they completely “hog‐tie” you to the  treadmill of failure. 

8. Over‐caution. The person who takes no chances generally has to take  whatever is left when others are through choosing.  Over‐caution is as bad as  under‐caution.  Both are extremes to be guarded against.  Life itself is filled with  the element of chance.

9. Wrong selection of associates in business.  This is one of the most common  causes of failure in business.  In marketing personal services, one should use  great care to select an employer who will be an inspiration, and who is, himself,  intelligent and successful.  We emulate those with whom we associate most  closely.  Pick an employer who is worth emulating. 

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Need a great marketing speaker for your next association conference, company meeting, or franchisee/dealer event? Marketing speaker David Newman delivers the goods - over 600 presentations since 1992.
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And then leave a comment below with your questions, thoughts, and advice on the ideas above.

Are you a DO IT freak? Welcome to the club!! Please use the social media buttons at the top of this post to share it with your network. YOU are a rock star!

Just came across this terrific item from my fellow marketing speaker and marketing coach, Jose Palomino of Value Prop Interactive - take a look. (Jose's ideas are ALWAYS worthwhile so you may want to subscribe too!)

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Just when we thought we had exhausted our creativity with YouTube, up comes this small brand with a truly and literally “out of the box” idea. Bringing to mind those old “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” books that became a fad among young readers in the 90’s, this recent promotional spot from Tipp-Ex (BIC’s European brand of correctional fluids and tapes) lets viewers interact with the video to change its outcome.

At first, viewers might not realize that the advertisement is interactive, or even that the video they’re watching is an advertisement at all. It starts off as an apparent home video of a two-man camping trip, but their adventure (and unfortunately, their language as well) turns sour when a bear wanders into the campsite. Much to the viewers’ surprise, they are asked to choose what happens next...

Read the rest on Jose's blog, Strategic Propositions

What do you think? Crazy? Innovative? Effective? Share your thoughts in the COMMENTS section below.