Happy Holidays

From all of us at The Write Effect to all of you...happy holidays and may we all experience an abundant, prosperous new year!!


Photo credit: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/download_file_captcha.php?pid=24555&sid=3

Get found!! Key words to help you entice your audience!

A few years ago, a friend and I took a jaunt to downtown Minneapolis to attend a rally where someone we greatly admired was scheduled to speak. In search of refreshments, we separated, agreeing to meet up in ten minutes at a designated spot.

This would have been fine, except that when I arrived at the spot, he wasn’t there. What followed was 90 minutes of me frantically searching for him in a crowd of 92,000. (This was pre-cellphone days, so apart from sending up a flare, I had no way to contact him.) After the event ended we did meet up again at our car, but I had missed the entire rally.

If you’re not applying proven marketing principles—whether online or in direct marketing—you may find that you’re business is going to get lost among the thousands and thousands of others out there. And what a waste of time.

That's why you need to commit these vocab words to memory this week. They are critical to getting you found and arriving at your marketing success:

Keyword marketing—This entails utilizing keywords and key phrases relevant to your business, products, services and customer’s searches in your online marketing. You can research keywords yourself by using free keyword tools online, such as those at webconfs.com or google adwords, but if you have the budget, consider hiring a professional to do it for you. Keyword marketing is a complex, yet critical process and the search engines’ ever-changing rules make it one that requires you stay continuously up-to-date. (Sort of like your accountant and the tax laws.)

Link text—Link text are words contained in a hyperlink upon which your site visitor clicks in order to take them to another web page. Preferably on your own website. Preferably to your order page.

Marketing plan—Your marketing plan outlines your strategy for all the great marketing you’re going to do to sell your product or service to millions of people. It’s one of the most important elements in your business plan and should contain a workable budget as well as realistic action items. Getting asked to appear on Oprah to become a gazillionairre does not qualify as realistic.



Photo Credit: Simon Howden http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=404

Work Gets in the Way of Life

Sometimes work gets in the way of…well…everything...especially at this time of year. I've got more than enough to do shopping, baking, wrapping and pretending I'm enjoying all this, thank you. I don't need something like WORK to get in my way.

Wait. Yes, I do. I mean...if I want to eat and pay bills and stuff, I do.

Juggling is one of the hardest parts about being a solopreneur or small business owner. It’s easy to get sidetracked and lose your focus, which is what’s happened to me these past few days. BUT, a few extra minutes after hours, when the phone has stopped ringing and clients have stopped making perfectly reasonable, albeit time-consuming requests, and I’m back on schedule. So, away we go…

Guerilla Marketing—No, this has nothing to do with Dian Fossey. The term Guerilla Marketing was coined by legendary ad man, Jay Conrad Levinson, to describe a form of marketing and advertising that is inventive, original and aggressive on a small or even non-existent budget. Think unconventional, unusual and inexpensive—exactly what you’re looking for.

Help—While there are a multitude of “H” words we could explore (HTML, Hits, Hypertext, et al) for our purposes, HELP is the best “H” word you can focus on at this point. In other words, ask for it when you need it. Don’t try to go it alone, even if most people spend more at Starbucks on a daily basis than you have in your monthly ad budget. Find online forums, free web sites, info articles, blogs (like this one) and ask for HELP!

Inbound Marketing—The opposite of Outbound Marketing. These days, there are a million ways for your audience to BLOCK your outbound message. Think no call list, spam blockers, TIVO (to fast forward through those annoying commercials), satellite radio, etc., etc. Inbound marketing works on the premise that tools such as Facebook, Twitter, web sites, blogs, free downloadable white papers and e-newsletters bring warm, qualified leads to YOU! More about Inbound Marketing in the weeks ahead.

That’s it for today kids. Keep studying and whatever you do, DON’T GET BEHIND. (In other words, do what I say, not what I do.)

Back to School--Back to Work

This is my attempt at recycling and making sure my blog is "green." In other words, I've been busy traveling for business and so am "repurposing" a post from September.

When one is traveling for business, it's as if the Blue Fairy has come along, swept you out of your life and into some alternate reality where there is nothing but overcrowded airports, bad coffee, flight attendants who snap at you like you're five, and hotel rooms with broken thermostats. In the meantime, life...your life, the life that you left behind...goes on without you. And when the traveling is done, and the Blue Fairy drops you on your ass back into your actual reality, you feel a bit disoriented.

Thus is my rationale for recycling this post. It's time to get back to work children. See you next time with something new!

Lately, I’ve found myself lingering in the Back to School department at Target, longing for the days of new lunch boxes and a 64-pack of Crayola crayons, remembering what it was like to get new clothes and shoes and have my mom take my picture clutching my new Big Chief Tablet right before I stepped onto the bus. Just because that was a million years ago (sometime during the Johnson administration as a matter of fact--yes, I am THAT old) doesn’t mean we can’t still focus on learning.

Here’s your next batch of DIY marketing vocab. Take notes. There just might be a pop quiz later:

Direct Marketing—Seems pretty self-explanatory, but can encompass many things, including Direct Mail. In a nutshell, Direct Marketing targets a very specific audience. Instead of taking a shotgun approach and mailing out your brochure to everyone in the United States, you build a profile of your target market (determined by demographics and psychographics) and tailor your message or offer directly to them.

For example, you want to make sure that if you’re selling genuine fur-lined computer monitors, you’re only marketing to those folks who would have a use for that sort of thing. My guess is no one from PETA should be on your list.

Direct Response is much the same as Direct Marketing/Direct Mail, except that your marketing piece includes a means for the potential customer to respond to you, either via coupon, mail back request for additional information, or order form.

Eighty-Twenty Rule—Also known as Pareto’s Principle, the 80/20 rule states that 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of your revenue. As such, it’s important to identify that 20% and make sure you’re managing those accounts closely. Now that doesn’t mean that it’s okay to treat that other 80% like redheaded stepchildren. On the contrary, all your prospective and existing customers should get as much “love” as you can give them. It’s just that that 20% is likely your bread and butter—treat them well and they’ll continue to keep you in business.

Full Position—This is really a newspaper term, (“What? What’s a newspaper?”) but can still be applicable if you’re utilizing ad space online or even in your local shopper, small town news or a newsletter in which you’ve purchased ad space. Essentially, it’s the most effective placement for your ad because your ad is completely surrounded by an actual news article, making it highly likely that the reader will peruse your message while they’re busily reading the surrounding article.

That’s all for today kids, this being the first day of school and all. Be prepared for more info to come! Class dismissed.

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

Julie Andrew’s singing “Doe a Deer” in The Sound of Music keeps echoing in my head. I wish it would stop. But, I think there’s a good reason for it. When you’re starting your own venture into DIY marketing, you need the primer, the Dick and Jane early reader, the ABC’s, if you will.

So let’s begin:

Advertising—Both verb and noun...it’s the act of promoting your business and the final result of your marketing campaign. It’s what you’re going to do for now until you’re so incredibly successful that you can afford to hire a big Madison Ave Agency to do it for you. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Brand—Who are you? Or rather, who is your business? If you’re a consumer (and who isn’t) you know more about brand than you realize. Once you establish your brand identity (which we’ll do in the weeks ahead) you’ll know exactly what your brand stands for--your brand message and what it promises. Then all your advertising will grow organically from there. (Ooooh, that sounds so Oprah, doesn’t it?)

Competition—Who are you up against? Huge multinational corporations or the mom and pop shop on the corner? This is an important factor in your marketing, so don’t think it doesn’t matter. Start looking at your competitors ads and websites. What are they promising? How is your business different, and most importantly, better?

This is just the start of course, and it’s enough to keep you busy for now. (C’mon now—just be patient. You didn’t start reading Tolstoy the minute you learned the alphabet did you?)

Photo Credit: jscreationzs:
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1152

I Don't Feel Like It.

I admit it…I’m lazy.

If I can find an easier, faster, cheaper way to do something (preferably where I don’t have move away from the couch) then I’m all over it.

Unfortunately, that’s not a formula for success. It’s a recipe for muscle atrophy.

And since I don’t really aspire to be an undifferentiated blob, lounging around all day is pretty much not an option. However, I’m not naturally like the Martha Stewarts and Rachel Rays of the world…I don’t get up at dawn and fashion tea cozies out old underwear or have a burning desire to create homemade sachets and potpourri from rotted oak leaves, grass clippings and dog hair clumps I’ve pulled out of the vacuum cleaner.

So somehow, I must find the motivation to “go to work” every day. And whether it’s because I fear that if I don’t, I’ll have to call a Lady Kenmore Washing Machine box “home,” or just the fact that I’m virtually unemployable since besides writing, the only other skill I possess is with Nunchucks, and they don’t transfer well to other professions.

How about you? What drives you to drive your business forward?

Funny Business Friday--You Stink!

Though my work from home attire will probably someday land me on TLC's “What Not to Wear,” I’ve always made a point of dressing and presenting myself in a professional manner for client meetings. It communicates that I take the client, their business and my job seriously.

So it was with this commitment to professionalism that I approached one such meeting with a particularly “earthy” client a few years ago, even though I knew their apparel might be something less than Armani business casual. They were literally ditch diggers, hauling in heavy equipment to bore trenches for underground cable, lines, pipes and more. Not folks that one would assume would be particularly delicate in their sensibilities.

I joined the agency team (with whom I was working at the time) for the meeting in the expansive, airy conference room. Upon their arrival, the clients shuffled in, two men and a woman who, with all due respect, looked well-suited for their professions. The woman took five steps into the room, stopped dead in her tracks and announced in a snarky, holding-my-nose-I-smell-horse-turds-voice, “I CANNOT stay in here. I’ll DIE!”

She then promptly turned on her heel and stormed out. The agency director hurriedly followed her.

Her co-workers shifted uncomfortably.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

They cleared their throats, “Sure,” one of them said. “She’s just…sensitive.”

Several moments of awkward silence passed until the agency director returned. He dialed a number on the conference phone at the center of the table, switched on the speaker and the woman’s voice answered. The meeting commenced with her disembodied voice contributing from somewhere in the bowels of the agency.

When the meeting ended, I literally ran into her in the hallway.

“Are you okay?” I asked, genuinely concerned.

“Sure,” she responded. “As long as I steer clear of you.” Then she stormed off.

The agency director phoned me later that afternoon, explaining that the client had “an extreme sensitivity to certain aromas, perfumes and the like.”

Now I’ve never been one to marinate in flowery scents, and I DO bathe on a regular basis, so I couldn’t fathom how this woman could have been so violently affected by my “aroma.” The only thing I’d done that morning before arriving at the agency was to use a small amount of lightly scented hand lotion. And while I don’t discount some folk’s sensitivity, her rude behavior made me wish wholeheartedly that I’d indulged in a garlic/onion pizza and Cuban cigar right before attending our meeting.

Have you ever encountered a rude client or business associate? If so, how did you respond?