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Tag: marketing
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Promotion is King
“Without promotion, something terrible happens…
…nothing.”
That’s a quote from P.T. Barnum, one of the greatest marketers and promoters ever. If you’ve seen the Movie, “The Greatest Showman” you’ll know his story.
One of the ‘rest of the story’ stories that is not fully portrayed in the movie is that when P.T. Barnum finally convinced Jenny Lind, a European opera singer, to come to the U.S, he realized that even though she was very famous in Europe, no one new who she was in the United States.
So, he went to work promoting her heavily in many newspapers before she even arrived in the United States, while she was on the boat on her way over. So when she arrived, she had 30,000 people gathered to meet her at the dock.
He then continued to promote her and she sold out every show. After a while, she thought she was so good that she didn’t need P.T. Barnum anymore, so she cut off her partnership with him.
After that, she couldn’t fill up any shows. And finally left the country without fame.
She thought it was because of her incredible talent that people flocked to see her, but in reality, it was the promotion of her by Mr. Barnum that produced her fame.
Nothing happens without promotion.
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Just keep going
I don’t know why I do this.
Oh, now I remember… because I can.
There’s just something very intriguing about publishing your own words in a public space. (I guess that’s why so many people do it.) But the space has been ruined by marketers. Not the good kind, the bad kind of marketers.
Everywhere you go, there are too many advertisements. “Buy this, get that! Like this, subscribe here.”
I guess that’s what you get when you have an open space where anyone can say anything.
That’s what allows me to write this.
So I have to be okay with it.
When anyone can say anything, you’re probably not going to like some of it.
Like this. Why are you even reading it?
Well, thank you. It helps me write better.
That was fun.
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Communicators
I don’t remember what I signed up for, but I’ve been receiving a daily email called Ragan’s Daily Headlines that contains main headlines from Ragan.com which is a site for internal business communicators. Even though I’m not an official ‘communicator,’ I do similar work as I communicate with people inside the Boeing company.
And this Ragan site has some great info. Relevant stories, videos, and discussions from people trying to make things happen within big corporations. Again, I found a place with more stuff to learn.
Will it ever end?
Of course their business model is to hook you with good stuff, then make you subscribe if you want more of their good stuff. Some articles require you to be a member of ‘Ragan Select’. But there’s plenty of free stuff for me.
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Citizen Marketers
A while ago I posted about a group I joined where we were getting our Personal MBA. It amounts to reading a bunch of the latest business books and having discussions about them, even sometimes having the authors speak to us in an online forum.
Well, we’ve actually called our version the Alt-MBA (for Alternative) and have been going gangbusters. We’ve picked our own list of 25 books that we’re reading in 25 weeks, and our only graduation requirement is that we have to teach someone else something we learned.
Now, I’ll admit, I haven’t been keeping up with reading every book (actually the first few were ones I’ve already read) but I’ve still learned a lot from the summary presentations and the discussions, and will be catching up by purchasing a few tomorrow.
So what I really wanted to share today is this latest book presentation on Citizen Marketers by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. The presentation is by Cassie Pruett and is best viewed in full screen mode. (She does an awesome job.) Check it out, it’s only 22 slides and will take you 2 minutes.
By the way, all our presentations are located on SlideShare and all of our podcasts are on iTunes. A good idea would have been for me to share these presentations once a week when they come out, but since I just thought of it, I’ll try and catch up (we’re only on week 7.)
Anyway, Citizen Marketers is a good one about the new influencers and how it’s all about the online community and (digital) word of mouth these days.
Now go tell someone about it.
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Lessons on Marketing from Twitter
I really don’t like referring to one blogger all the time, and I don’t even read his blog every day, but somehow I stumbled on this post and thought it was relevant to my post yesterday. (And as I write this, I’m watching a Nightline story on Twitter, so I feel like I’m right on the cutting edge of relevance.)
There are two concepts that Chris demonstrates in his post:
- The new marketing is about personal, human contact that is easy now because of web tools, not the spam messages that are also easy with the new tools. Spam is the lazy way, and the old school business model, which actually damages your reputation and is more detrimental to your business than the few sales or traffic you may get from it.
- The new web tools (and influence built with them) also allow changes to be made quickly, which makes your business nimble and responsive, able to address your customer’s concerns instantly. And that is invaluable to your customer, in fact, so amazing that they might tell all their friends about how you treated them so well. And that’s really good for you.
I guess the overall message is that we should be careful about every interaction we have with anyone, because that is who we are to that person, especially if they have no other information on which to base their impressions.
So this post actually ends up being about the new marketing and not so much about Twitter. Because you can do good and bad marketing with other tools also.
Here’s a link that a friend of mine sent to me today.
It talks about the art of generating buzz, or word of mouth marketing which is so powerful.
Do you know how to do it?
I really liked what Seth said in his blog here.
Many business and marketers think the effeciency of communication through the web allows them exploit it by capitalizing on the quantity of messages they produce. It is so prevelant that we have a word for it – spamming – and it is not a nice word. Everyone hates spam, so why does it still exist? Because the old marketing paradigm still exists, and when this (not so) new tool is applied to the old paradigm, it appears as something that can produce results for free.
But we know that the old paradigm is fading, not really working anymore, and being replaced by a new paradigm, which is actually a reprise of a really old paradigm – actual personal human connection.
What people are finding out is that the web communication efficiency is allowing them to have personal human interaction and connection with a lot more people than they could in person (which was the really old paradigm of small town personal service, where everybody knows everybody.) This is actually way more effective for spreading ideas, getting things done, starting a movement, accumulating customers, or anything you want to do, than impersonal, cookie cutter broadcast messages to the world. Those kind of messages don’t talk to directly to me, so I don’t really want to respond. But if a real person who I have a relationship with is talking to me, I listen, I respond.
So how this relates to Seth’s post is that you can be you, and nice, and personal on the web, which helps you to have positive relationships with a lot more people.
And if you have that, well, you can do anything.
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