A new client of ours, Closet Place in Wolfeboro, is winding down their brand strategy development, is hip-deep in web site design (new site to go live in a week or two) and has started some creative marketing pieces…. Their first piece is a coupon where they offer a free report - a Closet Planning Guide…. The recipient would be given a web page address where they can provide their name and email address to get the report for free.

During a phone consultation this morning, we were talking about other creative ideas on how to integrate traditional marketing strategies…. During the conversation, off the cuff, I outlined a series of steps that they could use in a marketing campaign…. Three goals in almost all of their marketing would be to;

• Connect with people directly … after they identify who they want to target
• DON’T sell! … Connect!
• Have the campaign be content oriented

After they stated they wanted to target new home buyers that have recently moved into a new, local housing development, here’s the quickie campaign I outlined :

1. Contact a local contractor who would also like to reach this same target market…. Offer to do the design, production and distribution of a marketing piece if they pay for the printing…. A local window installer would be a good choice here…. A good, low-cost piece would be a “door hanger”.
2. Hire a local teenager to distribute the door hangers on the door knobs of the entire housing development.
3. The copy on the piece will refer to a free offer of the Closet Planning Guide.
4. It will also provide a URL for a landing page that “squeezes” the visitors name and email address.
5. Set up an autoresponder that lets the visitor know right away how to download the Guide.
6. Set up another autoresponder that follows up in two weeks to find out if the person had any questions…. In this same email, give them another freebie report … maybe something like “top 10 closet organization mistakes.”… Tell them when your next tradeshow will be so they can meet you in person…. Maybe provide links to discount coupons.
7. Repeat these steps with similar campaigns but different high-value reports and information. In the next autoresponder, ask if they’d like to sign up for your free e-newsletter.

So, what have we done?… … We’ve created a campaign that is EXTREMELY low cost (less than $300-$400), is content oriented (not salesy), and establishes multiple direct contacts with people who are somewhat interested in what you have to sell…. More importantly, we’ve integrated seven different marketing strategies; door hangers, landing page, special report, auto-responder, tradeshow, coupons, and e-newsletter.

It’s this final step of marketing integration that allows the user to be enticed into a long term relationship where you provide a steady stream of high-value information…. Indeed, they will eventually buy from you OR will have you at the top of their mind when the topic of your services comes up in conversation.

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Morally, there’s no problem with that at all. I used to teach ethics …€” trust me.
…€“ William Bennett, U.S. drug czar (on beheading drug dealers)

Have you ever seen (or worse yet, created) a marketing piece touting how trustworthy the company is?… In this initial contact with the consumer, it’s the worst place to make this claim…. You’ll actually lose credibility!… Like with Mr. Bennett, just because you say it, doesn’t make it true or believable.

Better yet, connect on an emotional level, get the client, establish your trustworthiness and then let the referral and word of mouth marketing process spread this message.

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David Meerman Scott, author of my new favorite book on marketing, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, posts a story about Mark Batterson, a church leader in Washington D.C. If Mark can do these AMAZING marketing feats with his idea of what a church could/should be, then certainly every business owner can do the same with their own marketing.

A new client of ours, Mikaela Cade, is a pastor in Italy. She’s about ready to go live (tomorrow if all goes well) with her new v.1 web site. Most people who build their first web site will create a handful of static pages and quit developing for a year, or more, because of how work intensive it is to create something great. They settle for the online brochure site. Not Mikaela. Her vision was to build a web presence with: a blog, an electronic newsletter, a shopping cart for her books and special reports, an automated online calendar for her webinars and live events, major PR plans, and LOTS of information about her mission and services … really, the works! Without even reading David’s book, she is demonstrating - like Mark Batterson - that getting “the word” out has gone virtual and the new rules of online marketing warrant more than serious consideration. Bravo Mikaela!

FYI, David has extended his offer of a free CD - Online News Releases to Reach Your Buyers Directly - if you purchase his book on Amazon by Friday! That’s a $50 freebie. If you’re a client of mine, PLEEEEEASE buy this book. It’ll give us LOTS to talk about and will support everything Allen and I have been preaching.

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Lani Voivod, over at Epiphanies, Inc. writes about a visit from a group of Korean Micro Enterprises…. In addition to a Disney quote, Lani also warns us to NOT underestimate the “Might of the Micro.”… Good Advice.

Consider your marketing…. How serious are you about marketing B2B and (specifically) to Micro Enterprises? Those are the folks that are running super small businesses with less than $500K in annual gross revenues and less than 5 employees…. If not, consider how MANY of them are out there…. For example, here in the beautiful State of New Hampshire, a whopping 87% of all businesses in the state qualify as “Micro” Enterprises…. Yes, that was EIGHTY SEVEN percent!!… Yowza!

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Can you believe it? … it’s the middle of May! Soooo, how’s that marketing plan coming along? Hmmm?

If you need a business boost, here’s a tip; MicroCreditNH has opened up their big event …€” the “Entrepreneurial Exchange Day” …€” to the general business public! I know I’m going to be enjoying it … I’ll be one of the speakers!! My cohorts include; Judy Carlough, Sandler Sales Training; Steve Forkey (SEO guru), WebAction Group; Christine Halvorson, Halvorson New Media; Debby Hoffman, Positive Results Seminars; Susan O’Neil, @Web Site Publicity; Thom Pollard, Eyes Open Productions; and Lani Voivod (that A-Ha Gal), Epiphanies, Inc.

Here’s the skinny:

Concord, NH, May 1, 2007 - Are you self-employed and seeking fresh marketing, business development and technology strategies to further develop your business? MicroCredit-NH has organized a statewide event dedicated to business development and networking for New Hampshire’s small business owners. “Entrepreneurial Exchange 2007: Reach the Peak” will be held in Concord on Saturday, May 12th from 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM. The event will take place at the Grappone Conference Center at the Courtyard Marriott on 70 Constitution Avenue. Entrepreneurial Exchange 2007 is sponsored by PSNH, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Laconia Savings Bank and First Colebrook Bank.

The Entrepreneurial Exchange will offer participants a choice of four morning workshops to attend. These include: Effective Sales Techniques, covering sales and listening strategies to build rapport with prospects and clients to increase business; Business Development, which will provide participants tools for brainstorming including 50 ways to boost business productivity, visibility and profits; Technology Panel, with three speakers discussing the latest opportunities technology provides to small business owners, including search engine optimization, blogging, and search engine marketing; and Marketing, which will focus on the power and significance of a strong branding strategy.

In addition to the morning workshop tracks, the event will include two hours of facilitated and open networking time and afternoon roundtable discussions facilitated by the workshop presenters. These discussions will cover a variety of business issues and challenges facing the small business owner.

“The Entrepreneurial Exchange is MicroCredit-NH’s premier event of 2007,” explained Rob Riley, Director of MicroCredit-NH. “Our mission is to increase the income and economic stability of New Hampshire’s small businesses, and this event will offer strategies for participants to achieve increased profits through business skill development and networking opportunities. We encourage the self-employed from all corners of the state to join us for this unique day of training and celebration of entrepreneurship.”

Pre-registration is required, as space is limited. The registration fee is $40, which includes lunch. To register and for more information, visit www.microcreditnh.org for a live online registration link, or call MicroCredit-NH at 1-800-769-3482.

Hope to see you there!!!

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What do these things have in common?:

• Your web activity logs
• Your last direct mail postcard
• Your last advertisement
• Google analytics
• A landing page on your web site

Give up? Answer: They’re all small pieces of your marketing mix but you’ve probably not integrated any two of them together!

Hugh Bishop (Chairman of British Direct Mail powerhouse agency Meteorite) commented in a Marketing Week article that the amount of data that is available, or can be collected (willingly) from the consumer, dramatically changes how marketing can be performed. He says:

With this knowledge comes the power, not only to find potential new customers but also to take them on a personal journey delivering the right messages at the right time, via the most appropriate media. And thanks to the new digital channel, all of this can be delivered in more cost-effective ways than ever before.

Unlike “pure” digital, the [Direct Marketing] industry can fuse who brands want to talk to, what they want to say and where and when it is best to communicate with consumers. This in turn enables the [Direct Marketing] agency to deliver individual and effective customer journeys.

So, it’s NOT about creating single point campaigns designed to sell or “pull.” It’s more about discovering who your audience is …€“ using objective data …€“ and then offering up an experience. Build a relationship with your audience members and you’ll be able to create evangelists, not just one-time buyers.

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Two years after the movie St. Elmo’s Fire came out (holy cow, that was 1987), I was visiting a friend of mine at Pepperdine University. We were walking from the dorms across campus and something was happening. You could feel the buzz in the air. People were walking faster. People were whispering to each other. Complete strangers were talking to each other in an odd way. Then, we became part of the wave…. some girl, all a titter, told us that Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez were on the campus, but she didn’t know where they were. Just the idea that they were on campus was worthy of buzz. A few minutes later, as we were walking by the track and field area, GUESS who we ran into?! We introduced ourselves, they introduced themselves (as if we didn’t know), we chatted a bit and we went along our merry way.

OK, I told you that story so I could tell you this one…

In Seth’s recent post he share’s his view about “worldviews” and how they impact our internal filtering mechanisms and daily actions. He’s referencing a Washington Post article about a test. One where world class violinist Josh Bell - and his priceless musical instrument - played outside of a D.C. subway station to see if anyone would take notice. Would thousands of people pass up the opportunity of experiencing genius simply because they didn’t recognize what was in front of them? You should read the story yourself. It’s a fascinating social experiment.

Here’s a snippet from Seth’s post:

If your worldview is that music in the subway isn’t worth your time, you’re not going to notice when the music is better than usual (or when a famous violinist is playing). It doesn’t match the story you tell yourself, so you ignore it. Without permission to get through to you, the marketer/violinist is invisible.

HEAR, HEAR! So, what’s the difference between the two stories? Both involve something out of the ordinary suddenly appearing out of normal context, in public. The first story involved SOMEbody recognizing the situation and starting some buzz. The second story didn’t.

Lesson for business owners; When it comes to marketing your product or service, the presentation, the context, the quality, the features, the benefits … they ALL matter very little UNLESS you can connect with people. Like with Josh Bell, although he was “giving away a free world-class performance, it didn’t matter to people because they had put up their blinders. Their anti-spam filters were so heavily set on “high”, there wasn’t a way for them to recognize what was happening right in front of them.

So let’s try to predict what would happen if we combine these two stories. If, in front of the subway station, as part of the social experiment, we planted a couple of evangelists … people who would go around to just a couple of other people around them and whisper to them “Hey, that’s Josh Bell playing on a priceless Stradivarius”. How quickly would that next person’s paradigm shift? How quickly would the filters be turned off? Bottom line; How quickly would they then stop to make note of what was in front of them? Possibly more important is the question, how quickly would the buzz spread through the crowd??

Business marketing is NOT about showing people your features or quality. It’s about connecting with them first … THEN you can talk about your features and benefits. Show your features before you connect and you won’t be able to penetrate the filters, just like Josh Bell … except he owns a Stradivarius and you don’t.

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