Marketing
Inspiration for Better Marketing
In October 2007, I attended a two and a half day conference on marketing. This intensive course opened a whole new understanding for me of what marketing is all about. The hours flew by as my mind converted this business model to fit with the business of running and promoting a choir. The course may have ended but my journey down this path had just begun.
Here you will find articles that highlight my on going study of marketing.
added: 2010/10/30
16 questions to help you write a douche-free bio
Are you trying to write your own bio? Then you’ve probably discovered how hard it is to give your bio a personal touch—without sounding like a personals ad—while still making prospects feel like they’re in good, competent, professional hands.
Read highlights from the article
The following 16 questions are designed to help you produce the raw ingredients to write bios.
But before you dig in, please read these instructions:
1. Set a timer for 26 minutes. This is very important. Do not skip this step! If you’re a Level-9 Procrastinator like me, you’ll never start this exercise if you don’t give yourself permission to do it quickly. This doesn’t have to become a 3-hour, story-of-my-life writing intervention. (Unless you want it to.)
2. Answer the questions in a rambling, conversational style. You might even write them in the body of an email you pretend to send to a friend. Don’t worry about perfect sentences. This exercise is not designed to help you craft your bio. It’s simply to help you dig up all the good, fresh stuff buried in your brain, which you can then use to craft your bio. If you hate writing and are better at thinking on your feet, then speak your answers into a recorder or iPhone and transcribe them.
3. Let your answers sit for a while. Then bold the answers that seem interesting, unexpected, insightful, profound, or just plain feel like you.
Now you’re ready to go.
16 Questions to Help You Write Your Bio
- How did you arrive at running this business? What path brought you here?
- What are you known for professionally? What do you have a knack for?
- What’s the one problem you are best at solving for your clients? What do your ideal clients say about you?
- Who have you worked with in the past? And what have you done for them?
- What are you most passionate about professionally? What most excites you about your work & the contribution you can make?
- What are you passionate about personally? What do you really enjoy? What can’t you stop talking about?
- Where can we find you when you’re not working? What’s your favorite way to spend a weekend or a Sunday afternoon?
- How long have you been doing what you do?
- Where did you grow up and why aren’t you there now?
- Any volunteer activities you’re crazy about?
- Any nonprofits you love, & why?
- Any awards or medals, or even medallions? Personal okay, too.
- What would be impossible for you to give up?
- Why would someone not want to work with you?
- How do you want to be remembered?
- Anything else you’d like to tell people about yourself?
added: 2010/06/01
The Golden Circle, that codifies what makes the most inspiring people and organizations so successful and influential.
Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers -- and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling. Watch Simon speak at TED about How Great Leaders Inspire Action.
Why
Purpose, cause or belief The Why is your driving motivation for action.
How
Guiding principles The Hows are the specific actions that are taken to realize your Why.
What
Tangible proof, results The Whats are the tangible ways in which you bring your Why to life.
Watch Simon speak at TED.com
added: 2009/10/05
In Defense of
The Jack of All Trades
Excerpt from Webdesigner Depot
by Mindy Wagner
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, conn a ship, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an equation, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” Robert A. Heinlein
Website design is my "current" passion. However, you can see by the fact that this site has 4 very distinct areas of content, website design is not my only interest. I have truly fought with the stigma of "jack of all trades, master of none" for my entire life. Until now! Thanks Mindy for enlightening your readers and giving me a new sense of confidence.
-Vic
Here is part of what Mindy Wagner has to say about it (the jack of all trades)...
It Works For Some…
Being a generalist works for me, but it won’t work for everyone. There are a few reasons I think I’ve had success with it. They include:
Endless Curiosity Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about myself and have started to work with my nature instead of against it.
I’m a very curious person. I have trouble focusing on a single subject because everything seems so interesting to me. I have a broad arsenal of skills gathered over the years thanks to my curious nature. If I forced myself to pick a specialty and stick to it, I’d be incredibly bored and for me, boredom is misery.
A Love Of Learning I truly enjoy learning new things. I could hate a subject and still enjoy the process of learning about it. It’s fun for me to sit down and research a new technique or test out a style I haven’t mastered yet. If it wasn’t fun for me, I wouldn’t want to spend so much free time doing it.
Making It Work
To really be successful, I suggest you strike a balance between generalist and specialist.
Be really great at one thing, but decently good at several other things related to it. Be a great designer with a solid background in user experience and SEO, or a fantastic front end dev who can do light backend coding and pull together a decent layout.
Your primary work will improve because of the secondary knowledge you pick up. And whether you freelance or work for a company, you will be a more valuable resource.
Go beyond “enough to be dangerous”. Know enough to talk fluently with someone who is a specialist in that area. This way you will be able to identify problems, taking care of minor ones and communicating bigger issues to the right specialists. You can be the person who sees the big picture and understands how all the parts interrelate.
In general, Jacks are best suited to small teams, management positions, or freelancing.
Small teams will appreciate your flexibility and are usually thrilled to see you tackle extra things that aren’t in your job description.
A bigger company means more toes to step on, so your eagerness might not be well received. And with larger teams you tend to see a high degree of specialization and less opportunity to try out different roles.
If you are already in a big company, a management or “big picture” position could keep you from feeling boxed in. People higher up the ladder need a broader range of skills to keep their teams interconnected.
Freelancing can be a great option if you’re business-oriented. You get to pick the projects that fit into your interests, so you will always have chances to stretch your skill set and learn new things.
Be Proud
If you do it right, being a jack of all trades should be considered a strength.
Your ability to adapt to a business’s needs will be highly sought after. There is no reason to feel that this is an inferior path.
Generalists bring much-needed balance to the workplace and make communication across disciplines a lot easier.
So go ahead…. ignore the over-specialized masses and keep learning!
Written exclusively for WDD by Mindy Wagner. She started her love affair with the web over a decade ago when a computer science major showed her how to View Source. Her goal is to design creative sites that strike a balance between usable and beautiful. Her website is MindyWagner.net and you can follow her on Twitter @graphicsgirl.
added: 2009/08/01
Marketing choirs
An introduction to the basics of developing a marketing strategy.
by Vic Hooper
The big picture
If your choir has the luxury of having a board member designated as "director of marketing" yea! Even if you do, it is important to realize that all board members, administration, and musical staff are "marketers" and have their place in developing and implementing your choir's marketing strategy. Marketing is more than a poster.
Buzz words
Whether you are studying music, sports, or chemistry, each discipline has its own language and is the first thing you have to get your head around in order to function and understand the subject. Marketing is no different. The common buzz words are: customers, competition, products, market share, profit and alliances. These are not terms that are frequently heard around the choir boardroom table.
In developing a plan to spread the marketing word to my friends in the choral world, I thought I would have to manipulate the language in order to make the message more easily understood. I soon realized the more beneficial approach would be to manipulate the choir into understanding the language of marketing. A spade is a spade; a rose by any other..., you get the picture.
Needs
Choirs, like any other "business" have three major needs: In choir terms they are:
- members to sing
- audiences to hear them
- money to pay the bills
Now lets think in marketing terms: All three of the above fit in the category of customers - people who buy what we have to sell:
- membership: human resources to participate in the manufacturing of our product(s)
- audience: patrons to buy our product(s)
- funders: foundations, government and private sector donors to support our research and development
Assets - Internal Audit
It is important to determine what it is you have.
- What service do you offer?
- What makes your choir unique?
- Why would potential patrons choose to pay for a ticket to your concert even if they have no relatives or friends singing in it?
Liabilities - External Audit
The big thing here, and something that is difficult for most of us in the choir world to comprehend, is that of recognizing competitors. How does your choir differ from all those other choirs out there? It is not just other choirs but anything that competes for the same dollar. This may include sports activities and clubs, other entertainment options, and on and on it goes. Are there ways that relationships can be made that will profit both competitors and our own choir. What other kinds of relationships can be gained? Word of advise here - when looking for alliances, first think of how your choir can benefit them and put your own needs second.
So what does this mean?
It means that, in order for choirs to meet their profit potential, attention has to be addressed to three types of customers: members, audience and funders and seeing that their needs are met.
Members
What kind of singer are you looking for? What are their needs? What do you have to offer? Who is your competition and what do you have that they don't?
Audience
What do you offer that your competitors don't?
Funders
What are your accomplishments? What projects do you want to develop? How is your choir a benefit to the community at large? If at all possible, hire an experienced grant writer.
Hopefully, this introduction has shed some light on the rather mysterious and often misunderstood subject of marketing. Areas that were not covered but equally important include: branding, advertising and publicity.
Good luck with your marketing plan. Please feel free to give me a call at (204) 775-9224 or send an email - I'd be happy to give you any advice I can. - Vic
added: 2009/08/01
Everything you need to know about creating killer content in 3 simple words
by Demian Farnworth
Everything You Need to Know About Creating Killer Content in 3 Simple Words
by Demian Farnworth
Creating great content is not hard. In fact, it’s quite easy. That is, if you understand three simple words.
If you summarized every single book and article written on writing for the web, you’d get these three words. Yet, no one–not even the experts, authors, or pundits–have ever consolidated all this knowledge into one simple, sticky formula.
Until now.
Write with these three words in mind, and anything you publish on the web will rivet attention, stoke desire, and get action.
Don’t believe me? Well, after you’ve read the rest of this article, give it a shot. And let me know what you think.
1. Clear
In less than four seconds visitors need to be able to comprehend what you wrote on your web page. I didn’t say “read.” I said “comprehend.”
Even before Steve Krug wrote it, the unbreakable law of the web has always been this: don’t make me think.
Your headlines, sub-headlines, links, labels and navigation should all communicate clearly what lies in, under or behind them.
This is part of giving readers control. No tricks. Nothing clever or cute. Never lie. Just straight, uncensored, easy-to-digest truth.
Do it any other way and you’ll repel people. Bore readers. Lose money.
2. Concise
Writing for the web is a minimalist affair. Your words, sentences and paragraphs are short. Precise. Lean. Tight. Web writing trades in sheering off useless words. Cutting flabby paragraphs…
Even shedding entire pages.
Think that’s harsh? Jakob Nielson recommends you cut up to half of the words for every print page you plan to put on the web.
There’s a great benefit for you behind all this editing: You’ll become a ruthlessly good writer. You’ll get much better, in fact.
Best of all, writing clear and concise won’t make you boring or dull. Far from it.
3. Compelling
The Rich Jerk is irritating, annoying and loathsome. But he’s compelling. Interesting. Persuasive. That’s why he won’t go away.
Why? Because he’s tapped into human emotions—greed and pride—that pull people into his copy… whether they like it or loathe it.
You have to do the same. You have to uncover what makes your reader tick. What strokes his ego. What plucks his gut strings. What keeps him up at night. And when you uncover that hot spot, punch it.
If he’s a political junkie, wave breaking news in front of him. An Apple addict? Share the latest hacks and apps for the iPhone. A wine lover? Hustle the best bottles his way.
Whatever it is, give your reader what he wants. Or he’ll go away. It’s the law.
What About SEO Copywriting?
Forget about it. Seriously.
If you focus on writing clear, concise and compelling copy, you will naturally write keyword-dense copy. You’ll naturally write for the search engines.
In fact, that’s why I think the label SEO copywriter is redundant. Every web writer worth his salt is a SEO writer. At least they are if they write clear, concise and compelling copy.
The question is, content creator, are you?
What Do You Think?
Did I miss it? Are there more than three words that describe successful online content creation? Let me know and we’ll debate it.
About the Author: Demian Farnworth is Senior Web Writer for an international humanitarian aid organization and blogger for Fallen and Flawed. Follow him on Twitter.
The five golden rules of online branding
Michael Carlon, Dynamic Logic
Marc Ryan, AdRelevance
Risa Weledniger, 24/7 Media
Branding
Summary of hypotheses:
- Frequency is positively related to a banner’s ability to brand
- Banners with less animation score better on branding metrics than very animated banners
- The longer the key message or logo takes to appear, the less branding impact it has
- The amount of time a logo is present is positively related to branding impact
- Banners with larger logos perform better than banners with smaller logos
- Cluttered banners perform worse on branding impact measures than less cluttered banners (clutter measured by number of graphical and textual elements in the banner).
added: 2009/10/05
Embracing lifetime value
From Seth Godin's Blog
by Seth Godin
If you walk into a company-owned cell phone store to sign up for a contract, what are you worth?
If you walk into a company-owned cell phone store to sign up for a contract, what are you worth?
Given the huge gross margins at AT&T and Verizon and the standard two-year contract, I think it's easy to figure on more than $2000 in lifetime value.
If you ran a business where a customer represented an additional $2,000 in profit, how would you staff? How long would you make someone wait? If staff costs $25 an hour, how long would that extra person take to pay off?
Few businesses understand (really understand) just how much a customer is worth. Add to this the additional profit you get from a delighted customer spreading the word--it can easily double or triple the lifetime value.
So, a chiropractor might see a new patient being worth $2,500, easily. And yet... how much is she spending on courting, catering to and seducing that new customer? My guess is that $50 feels like a lot to the doc. Instead of comparing what you invest to the benefit you receive from the first bill, the first visit, the first transaction, it's important to not only recognize but embrace the true lifetime value of one more customer.
Write it down. Post it on the wall. What would happen if you spent 100% of that amount on each of your next ten new customers? That's more money than you have to spend right now, I know that, but what would happen? Imagine how fast you would grow, how quickly the word would spread.
Here's how you'll know when you've really embraced this--a good customer at your podiatry practice (or supermarket or tax firm) walks out the door in a huff and you turn to your partner and say, "There goes $74,000."
Seth Godin has written 12 bestsellers that have been translated into 33 languages
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