Monthly Archives: August 2009

A Tagline For An Interior Designer?

Names + Taglines

I currently work in commercial interior design, branching out to residential design on my own, home staging and seasonal decor for homes…looking for a great tagline. I’ve seen enchanted homes, every house has a story to tell. I’ve come up with nothing creative.

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Jay’s Answer: Taglines should focus on a clear benefit you offer your clients. You’re right – “enchanted homes” and “every house has a story to tell” says nothing about your service.

To find a tagline, you need to identify something special about your service. Something that others can’t do (or as well) as you, and that matters deeply to your prospective clients.

Here are some ideas to play with:

  • Make Your Home A Pleasure To Live In
  • Fall In Love With Your Home Again
  • Love To Live In Your Home?
  • Does Your Home Feel Like Home?

How To Get Started With Social Media

eMarketing

My company sells packaging (gift bags, boxes, ribbon, tissue, etc.) to small retailers, home businesses and consumers via an ecommerce store (retailpackaging.com), paper catalog and call center. We’d like to get involved with social media. This is what we’d like to achieve through our social media efforts:

– More internal links (both to content we create, and deep links to products).
– Increase the perception among potential retail/home businesses that we’re a company that cares about them.
– Build loyalty with existing small retail customers. Getting them to return to our website for the content and potentially make repeat purchases.

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Jay’s Answer: Right now your website is all about selling your products. So if someone comes to your website looking for supplies, you have a “match”. However, if someone is looking for packaging ideas or how to improve the presentation of their products, you have a “mismatch”. Perhaps that’s what your blog can be about: tips for presenting products (case studies, photos, etc.) in attractive ways that boost the sales (and potentially increases margins) of products. In other words, help your customers make more money and they’ll be coming back to you.

How Can We Boost Internal Business Communication?

Publicity

I work in the global marketing and communications team of a leading IT services company. The company has many fully/partially owned subsidiaries and also joint ventures. The senior leaders have realized that these subsidiaries and joint ventures are often kept aloof from whatever is happening in the parent organization and thus the employees of these organizations tend to have a lot of apprehensions about the parent organization. To overcome this gap I have been entrusted with the task to find of ways and means of effective communication with the subsidiaries and joint ventures. Please suggest how can the objective of effective two way communication be achieved. The motive is not just to keep them updated but also to encourage them to share their apprehensions, achievements etc.

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Jay’s Answer: Consider creating a wiki on a company intranet (using wikispaces for example). Anyone can post. Anyone can respond. RSS feed allows people to be notified on changes. Your IT department can quickly set up a wiki (for free) and boost your communication effectiveness.

Business With Passion: Jimmy Dillon

Videos

Trailer:

Jimmy Dillon is a San Francisco-based guitarist, singer/songwriter, teacher, and playwright. Growing up listening to everything from early Beatles and Stones to Howlin’ Wolf, he has since toured and recorded extensively, backing up great artists (John Lee Hooker, Clarence Clemons, and Bruce Springsteen) as well as forming his own bands (The Edge and The Jimmy Dillon Band). In 1999 he wrote Ascension of the Blues, a musical history of the Blues (from Blues to Bop, Ragtime to Rap, and a whole lotta’ Rock n’ Roll) and has been performing/producing since then. He is most proud of creating Blue Star Music Camps where he and other touring musicians pass on their years of performing experience by teaching kids Rock & Roll.

Email: jimmydillon@comcast.net
Website: www.JimmyDillon.com

CDs include:

  • The Best of Jimmy Dillon
  • Ascension of the Blues
  • Bad and Blue
  • Rituals
  • Everything

Business With Passion TV Show Logo

A Welcome Package That’s Not a Bribe?

Products

I have been asked by the owner of our company to create a welcome package for our new clients, and the employees in their shipping depart. We build all custom new wood pallets and shipping crates. Our initial marketing has had an awesome response. He would like once they are on board to receive a “thank you” just as memorable, that “I can’t believe they did this for us “and that they feel they made the right choice about choosing our company for the shipping needs. Most shipping departments are happy with the traditional pizza and pop. The problem I’m running into is some of our much larger new clients company’s do not allow this kind of gratuities. I am looking for some creative ways around this so as not to break any of their company policies and still let them know how much we appreciate their business, and something more creative for our new contact person within their company, different than the traditional gift basket.

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Jay’s Answer: Why not send a thank you note, with an signed image of everyone in your company? That lets the other company know there are people crafting the pallets and not machines.

Taglines For A Small Business?

Names + Taglines

I’m starting a small business -the products are jeweled/beaded bookmarks, fabric purse organizers and little girl hair bows. They will be sold in hair salons, book stores, antique shops and boutiques. We need a name for the business and any other marketing ideas.

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Jay’s Answer: Here are some names to play with:

  • A Little Bit Of Beauty
  • Small Indulgences
  • Feel The Love
  • SpiritJewels (rhyming with: spirituals)
  • Womanize
  • Beauty Flash

How Can I Promote Our Web Conferencing Services?

eMarketing, Publicity

We have the best solution for web conferencing: robust, simple and economic. What is the best way to promote it to non-using clients? We already have 30 days free trial for the full version and free trial for 3 person web conferences.

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Jay’s Answer: You have two potential groups: people that use a competitor’s product (but are unsatisfied) or people that haven’t used a web conferencing product (because of techno-fears).

It’s easy to find the first group: they’re already searching for web conferencing products online. The second group is harder: they may be using teleconferencing products (for simplicity’s sake) or only face-to-face meetings.

The problem is that you want results fast. Neither of these groups is likely to come in droves quickly for your product, because few clients need to regularly web conference. The “regulars” have found a solution that is acceptable (if yours is much better than the competition, and you can prove it, then that’s your USP). The “occasionals” may need education to teach them WHY online meetings are much better than face-to-face, and how to make money doing online meetings. This takes time, though.

Your best bet is to start networking with businesses in your community to find those that do frequent meetings, and build testimonials. Alternatively, create an affiliate program to encourage others to help you sell the services.

Is Your Advertising Amoral?

Creative Business Ideas, Publicity

The moral is...
Photo by Hamed Saber

You already know that a strong headline gets people to start reading your (advertising or marketing) copy. You also know that the purpose of every paragraph is to get people to continue to read the rest of the copy. But what happens when people get to the end of your copy?

Each of Aesop’s Fables end with a brief moral (“One bad turn deserves another” or “Appearances are deceptive”) that summarizes the point of the story. Does your copy end with a moral-like statement? I think of this phrase as a “toeline” (the opposite of a headline). While a headline focuses on the benefit to the reader, the toeline focuses on your offering with a reminder about the benefit.

For example, if you’re selling raw, organic cat food (called Purely Cat Food), your headline might read: “Keep Your Cat Healthier Naturally“. Your copy would describe why most commercially available cat food is bad for cats, and by feeding your cats this food they’ll live longer and be sick less. Most people end the copy with “Now available at your local store”.

Instead, create a toeline that echoes the headline. For example, “Purely Cat Food Ensures Your Pet’s Health”. Notice it starts with the offering, then mentions the benefit.

Hyperconnectivity Stress

Creative Business Ideas

Phone stress

Are you on Twitter? Facebook? MySpace? LinkedIn? Other social networks? Posting regularly? Checking your email every 15 minutes (and immediately responding)? Check your RSS reader daily? Is it helping your business? Cellphone on all the time? Is it helping your quality of life?

We get caught up trying to keep up with the latest ways to boost our business. In some cases, a small effort has a major benefit (for example, a website allows people to find your online 24/7). But when we spend too much time focusing on trying to keep up with “the world”, we lose sight of our intimate network (people who truly know and care about us). Hyperconnectivity is giving us the feeling of doing something (having thousands of Twitter followers) but at the expense of meaningful relationships (both in our personal and business life). It’s also decreasing the amount of creative “unstructured” time that we need to think deeply about issues. If we’re always reacting to a stimulus, we have no opportunity to actually do something novel.

Before you jump into the latest business “fad”, find out the true cost (time/money) and the real world results (profit, goodwill). You’ll always hear stories about the person who made $100,000 overnight from a Twitter feed, but remember that these stories are passed around because they’re not typical. Focus on what works for you, experiment on new things, but balance your return on investment (ROI) of your time/energy.

The Anatomy of Buzz (Revisited)

Book Reviews, Publicity

Buy Anatomy Of Buzz Revisited

Everyone is looking for buzz – people talking about their offering. We all know that word of mouth marketing is the strongest form of marketing: it’s free, it spreads, and it’s personal. But how can you get your message to be spread virally?

Emanuel Rosen has been studying buzz for over 10 years (the accidental, the intentional, and the incorrect) and has amassed a lot of rules/tips to help you increase your “buzz factor”.

Today, the common advice you’re given is: go on a social media site (such as Facebook or Twitter), befriend a lot of people, join their conversation, and tell your story. The hope is that by sheer numbers, your story/message will go viral. The problem is, that advice only works if: your message is viral-friendly and if you have the right audience.

Is your message viral-friendly? People tend to talk about exciting products, innovations, personal experiences/interactions, complex products (that take an expert to understand), expensive products (to validate the price/value ratio), and visible products (things that they see in their environment). We are programmed to talk with each other, and we’re always looking to connect our lives with others’. A viral-friendly message is something that would naturally occur in our day-to-day interactions and whose purpose is to establish a positive social connection.

Do you have the right audience? The right audience may not be who you think they are. The the essence of any marketing strategy: identifying your target market to ensure you solve the problem they’re facing. Most people, after identifying their target market, try to target it with buzz directly. The problem is, not everyone that’s reachable is listening to you (an unknown or someone with a vested interest in the message). Instead of trying to try to target everyone – target the influencers. In the past, the influencers were editors/writers of newspapers and magazines. While these people are still influencers, there are now a large number of other people (“network hubs”) that are listening for something new/interesting to share with “their people”. It may be their Twitter followers, their blog readers, the eNewsletter subscribers, or their social group.

All network hubs share the following qualities: Ahead in adoption, Connected, Travelers, Information-hungry, Vocal, and Exposed to the media more than others (ACTIVE is the acronym). The book focuses on how to find such hubs:

  1. Letting network hubs identify themselves
  2. Identifying categories of network hubs
  3. Spotting network hubs in the field
  4. Identifying network hubs through surveys

Once you’ve identified the hubs, you need to give them something worth talking about and encouragement to share the message with others. And by all means, make sure that what they’re talking about is something of true value (otherwise, your buzz will turn negative on you).

If you’re interested in more information about buzz, you may also want to check out WOMMA.