David Young | Branding Blog - Marketing Advice and Advertising Strategy for Local Business Owners

Will you be in the room when the good stuff happens?

There are loads of new things going on at my favorite non-traditional business school. In fact, it looks to me as if this would be a good time to just rent a place in Austin and establish some kind of semi-permanent residency.

Chris Maddock is teaching a series of writing classes under the title, Workin' It. What a great title for a series. Chris is the best non-trad teacher you'll ever get. Have I ever told you that Chris calls me several times a week, yet we rarely talk. Yes, that's the nature of our relationship.

Marketing Beyond Advertising is a revamped version of Tom Wanek and Mike Dandridge's course. Crafting policies and plans for delivering kick-ass customer experience is what you'll get out of the class.

Selling Customers Their Way is the new title for a sales course taught by Ken Brand and Dennis Collins. They've both proven their sales expertise through careers in training and coaching their own staffs.

My favorite Naked Accountant, Jean Backus is teaching Money and Cool Chicks in June.

Marketing on a Shoestring Budget is a FREE class from Mike Dandridge and Clay Campbell.

Escape The Box is downright scary. Dr. Richard Grant will spend 3 days helping you train the dragon in the other side of your head.

And, that's not all. Why don't you go check it out.

PS...For graduates, Sean Taylor has resurrected the Beagle Bugle. Keep an eye on this!

Playing Good Defense: Taking Advantage of Turnovers

BEWARE: Sports Metaphor usage by a non-sports guy follows...

It's that time of year when even the non-sports people are following tournament brackets just to fit in around the office. Not me. Nobody here gives a rip. Really. HOWEVER, I thought it would be a good opportunity to make a point, and include a pointer. (let the sports talk begin)

Let me spell it out. It's basketball. Your business is one team. You're playing against your cross-town rival. The customer is the ball. The net is a sale. Don't make me draw a diagram.

What if nobody scrambled for a loose ball? What if your competitor drops the ball and you just stand there slack-jawed and let it roll through your legs while another member of your competitor's team picks it up and scores? What if the rules allowed a third competitor to run onto the court and grab the loose ball with his own portable net?

Reminder: You're in business, not watching basketball on TV. If you see a loose ball, pick it up. If your opponent dropped it, grab tightly and don't give it back. In basketball, the ball goes to the team who DIDN'T score (I guess to give them a chance). In business, after you score, the ball stays with you. Don't drop it. Pick it back up and guard it. Protect it. 

Business isn't basketball. You have permission to run onto the court with your own net and grab a loose ball.

Do I need to draw a diagram?

photo credit: stuseeger

Seminar Heckler

It was the same guy, over and over.

We should have expected it when he announced during introductions that he didn’t want to be at the seminar but was attending as a favor to his radio rep. He all but told us that he fully intended to make someone pay for his inconvenience. As the 2 days unfolded, he showed us his cards.

His preference is to be a heavy-handed marketer...one of those in-your-face type of advertisers. As I encouraged people to put their web visitors in control of playing video and audio, he argued with me that he believes it’s more “engaging” to have audio and video set to auto-play when a visitor arrives.

As Tom Wanek illustrated one of his Currencies that Buy Credibility with a case study on Yvon Chouinard and Patagonia, Mr. Heckler argued that only someone who is “already rich” could possibly have the guts to draw a line in the sand and stand up for a principle.

A good debate can be stimulating. I’m all for arguing the fine points, or even the not-so-fine points over a glass of red or a couple of beers.

Why am I even bringing this up?

Because it illustrates the point of being clear on the defining characteristics of your business. This guy was clearly at the wrong type of seminar for his tastes. In fact, his tastes are about 15 years out of date for the times.

Today, it is more important to say something powerful in your ads instead of saying something powerfully. You do see the difference don’t you? A powerful message reflects key benefits of your product or service, your policies and philosophies. Delivering a message powerfully, just means using some annoying, intrusive means of delivering it in the hope that people will notice.

Have you seen a dog-eared Yellow Pages book lately?

Me neither.

My Facebook friend, Ruth, was asking for help researching a presentation she's giving to a bunch of Yellow Page advertisers and it got me thinking about this topic.

It used to be that your Yellow Pages book would get all dog-eared and doodled on in the course of the year. Every single Yellow Page book I've seen in the past couple of years has looked pristine. Shockingly pristine.

What a waste of money...good money by good people that are afraid NOT to advertise in this dead-tree environmental disaster. Millions of books printed, at a huge profit, just to spend a year on your desk in a drawer before heading to a landfill. Of course, that's just my opinion.

If you have a doodled-up, dog-eared Yellow Pages book, please snap a pic and send it my way...just for nostalgia's sake. My kids don't believe that people used to use them for any worthwhile purpose.

Image credit

Let's meet in Barrie, Ontario next week!

The next version of our Wizards On The Road event is next week in Barrie, Ontario, just a short hour's drive from the Toronto Airport.

Steve Rae is organizing the event and we've got 2 full days of Wizard of Ads teaching for you at the insanely low price of $145.

If you read Roy William's Monday Morning Memo this week, he mentions the Pendulum of Society. I'll be delivering the original presentation that we've been showing around the world for almost 7 years. If you haven't seen this unique view of society's generations, it's worth the trip. If you're scratching your head wondering about all the changes going on around you, this will make things clearer.

Check out all the details at www.WizardsonTheRoad.com or just go over to our signup page and we'll see you in Barrie!

Be a "Word of Mouth" Enabler

Sometimes delivering a great customer experience through amazing products, architecture or movement just isn't quite enough to trigger the chain reaction of effective Word of Mouth.

Think about the reasons that people might be hesitant to recommend. Perhaps I consider my experience too "private" to talk about...or don't want to share the "secret" of my success. Unless you ask someone for specific advice, you'll seldom hear them bragging about their top-notch dentist, plastic surgeon or medical specialist.

Loss of proximity is another reason Word of Mouth loses it's oomph. If I have an amazing experience on vacation, but don't have an opportunity to share it until I get home weeks later, the magic of the moment has already begun to fade.

If you are truly delivering the goods to your customers, you should work on techniques to help them share their experience in the moment or very soon after.

Even in the late 1800s, the big cruise lines knew how to enable Word of Mouth among the millions of immigrants tucked away in 3rd class. On White Star liners, where even the 3rd class guests were served food by waiters on tables set with linen, the menu cards doubled as postcards that could be sent home to friends and relatives.

I think back on some pretty amazing experiences I've had and not been able to share until well after the moment. A great example is the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. The system in place is a well-oiled machine for getting people rigged up, trained up and moved out into the superstructure to begin the ascent. Before you are back down, the digital photographs of your group have been loaded on monitors in the gift shop waiting for you to purchase them...which we did. On a CD, which sat in our bags until we returned home. Then, it sat on our coffee table for weeks.

Since you are not allowed to bring your own camera, these are the only pictures you can get of your experience and I'm sure that loads of people purchase them. How could they be turned into an instant Word of Mouth marketing tool?

What if the operators made the photos available on a kiosk, where you could just email a lower resolution picture to anyone you wanted, BEFORE you left the building. Yes, they might lose a few CD sales, but they would be enabling their customers to tell others in the excitement of the moment.

In this day of social media, they could take it a few steps further. Since most of their tickets are sold online, they could ask for some sharing details BEFORE people arrive and be ready to post photos and video directly to their Facebook, Myspace or Twitter streams DURING the experience.

What about your business? How could you enable people to tell others while the experience is still fresh?

Congratulations to the Bootstrappers!

Congratulations to my friends Rich Christiansen and Ron Porter, who have sold their SEO firm, Castlewave and will now proceed to take life easy until the next business-building bug starts to itch.

You may remember me writing about their book and their courses. They started Castlewave as a living case study for their book. Here's an excerpt from their blog:

As all of you know, this business was created with $5,000 to prove the principles in the book. CastleWave indeed was profitable from day one, generated over $1MM the first year at 50% margin and this past year did apx $1.4 MM. We have offices in both NYC and Utah and presently have 23 employees and apx 30 active clients ranging from smaller companies like Bank On Youself to large customers such as OpenTable and IMax.

It's been a lot of fun and quite educational enjoying their friendship and working with a few mutual clients. I can't wait to see the next chapter in their lives unfold!

Another Benefit to the Radio + Web Marketing Strategy

I've talked a fair bit about the strength of using radio (or any other off-line medium) to drive search for your business's name, or your "brand."

The primary benefit is that prospective customers will not find your competitors when they're searching for you.

There's another very strong benefit that I haven't mentioned. It's a bit more complex because there's not much you can do about it. It all takes place in Google's mighty brain, and on your own browser...as explained by SEOmoz.

Personalized search is now on by default. This means that every click, branded search, and expression of a "brand preference" or "brand affinity" in Google's results is likely to result in preferential biasing towards that domain in future searches. A "Google" Pontiac message during this Superbowl wouldn't just send users to their site, it would also mean that tens of millions of searchers would now be "personalized" towards that domain.

This means the more I search for your brand, the stronger your brand will show up in my own searches, on my own computer. This doesn't apply to search results across the web because it is a part of "personalized search" which is an individualized component of Google's system. It's the kind of thing that used to feel kind of creepy to us, but now that we're desensitized, and now that they aren't so blatant about it, feels ok.

Humorous sidenote...if you spend a lot of time Googling your competitors by name, you'll likely see their results go up, and your brand decline on your own computer. Frustrating? Yes. Worrisome? No.

SUGGESTION: If you dominate search results for your name, instead of telling people to "click over to acme-heating.com" start telling them to "Google Acme Heating!"

If you have a generic name like "Denver Heating and Air," this isn't likely to work for you because a search for your name will also show all of your competitors as well.

The truth is, most folks will search for your name anyway because it's easier than remembering your exact domain. Even if they do remember your domain, they're just as likely to type it into Google as they are to type it into the address bar. That's why "google" is one of the most searched phrases on Yahoo and vice-versa. Given the choice (or not knowing the alternatives) people will do the easiest thing.

So, tell them in your ads to do the easiest thing!

Here's the old Pontiac commercial they mentioned in the SEOmoz article:

Prosound: On-Hold Messaging for Smart Business Owners

We launched a new client web site last week for ProsoundUSA.com, a company that specializes in improving the phone experience of your customers. Instead of just providing "on-hold messages" and those automated attendant systems that we've all come to hate, ProsoundUSA owner Chester Hull makes it his business to learn about yours BEFORE attempting to tell you what your message should be.

In fact, he takes it one step further and will evaluate how your living, breathing, real-life staff is doing on the phones. His phone evaluation service costs just $149 and if it saves just one sale, would be worth it to most businesses. Followups include not only his message writing and production, but customized phone etiquette training for your staff.

I don't normally gush like this about clients, but Chester is a kindred soul to those of us who believe that building a brand is more than just a cool logo and a funny ad. Chester knows that a brand is built only at that place where the customer's world intersects with the business's world. The phones are often the very first point of contact.

If delivering an outstanding experience to your callers is important to your business, Prosound is your first stop. Take a listen to his on-hold message samples and you'll understand how he's different. And, be sure to subscribe to Chester's on-hold marketing blog, he's got a lot to say about your phones.

About the web site...

Chester hired Wizard of Ads Partner Paul Boomer and I to re-design his old site from the ground up using our Persona-based approach. As Chester will tell you, the effort of putting up a site using this methodology is about 80% under water.

That is, we spent a great deal of time getting to understand Prosound's customers and their motivations...what points of information are important to them and in what order. Only after we understood his business, could we begin to map out pages, sketch out designs and get to the point where most web developers begin their process.

Kinda sounds like the same approach Chester takes, huh?

Here's the "after" shot of Chester's site:

 

And...here's what it looked like before:

Ok...let's roll the credits:

• Persona based web architecture...Dave Young
• Graphic design...Paul Boomer
• Copywriting...Dave Young, Paul Boomer and Chester Hull
• CMS platform...Wordpress MU installation by OM4

Car & Driver on the Toyota Recall

There's a great editorial in Car & Driver on the Toyota Recall. I love the headline:

Scandal, Media Circus, and Stupid Drivers

Mike Dushane takes on the screaming media, including a jab at 60 Minutes for their coverage of a similar situation with Audi in 1986.

He also opens with a great piece of advice on personally dealing with the situation if it arises:

First, What to Do if Your Car (Not Just a Toyota) Starts to Accelerate Uncontrollably

If your car starts accelerating unexpectedly, hit the brake (it's the one to the left of the gas) and shift into neutral. After you do this, the engine may race loudly but the car won't accelerate. Pull off the road, brake to a stop, shift to park, and shut off the car. This is a simple solution we guarantee will save your life in any car that suffers from unintended acceleration. For more, read our story “How To Deal With Unintended Acceleration,” which is based on our own instrumented testing.

While he offers a more rational look at the numbers and the likelihood of this happening to you, he gives a scathing look at the Toyota's product line over the years and the motivation of the majority of purchasers.

Toyota has earned a reputation in this country over the past 30 years as a maker of utterly dull and utterly reliable transportation appliances. Readers of Consumer Reports and their friends buy them by the millions. But with the notable exception of the Prius (which now is facing its own recall fiasco), Toyota hasn't produced many interesting or exciting products.

It's worth your time to read the entire piece.