Too many of us marketers are complacent to simply consume what is produced for us. We look at industry trends, and follow the ones that are successful. However, very few marketers actually create. In a creative field like marketing, I’m surprised at this “follow the leader” mentality that has emerged lately.

I don’t mean to insult the accountants and financial wizards of the world (they do a great job of maximizing profit, and organizing finances), but what in the world are they doing making marketing decisions. Marketers of the world need to step up and do what they do. Stop letting non-marketers make decisions for you.

The best way to break away is to create something. Anything. Either a process, a tactic, or simply new content. Sure, it’s important to look at successful industry trends, but why settle for that? Instead of looking at the leaders, become that leader, and have your competition look at you for ideas. Blaze that trail. Be creative. Be a marketer.

Here is a very nice post from the folks at CrowdTilt discussing some advice on promotional campaigns. This is good stuff, well worth the read…

crowdtilt:

Here are a few quick tips on how to get your Crowdtilt campaign started off on the right foot.

1. Never stop promoting the campaign. 

Send e-mail, facebook updates, or tweets to your friends and family. One of the single most important tips for an online campaign is to be persistent. While some people will contribute the first time you ask them, the reality is that it will take at least 2-3 friendly reminders before the majority of your friends and family open up their wallets for you. Campaign pages who keep their donor base engaged with frequent updates tend to be the most successful.

Keep in mind this doesn’t mean peppering people with links. (They will ignore it after a while)  A well-timed and placed tweet, facebook post, or e-mail will go a long way.  Here is a great guide to limit how to limit your outreach without becoming overbearing on your friend’s social feeds.

Tweets: 4-5 times a week.

Facebook posts: 1-3 times a week.

E-mails: 3-4 per duration of campaign

 

Some tips on generating traffic on social networks:

• The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET.
• The biggest spike occurs at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays.
• Weekday usage is pretty steady, however Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET is consistently the busiest period. 
• Although most posts and comments appear around 3:00 p.m. ET, posts published in the morning tend to perform better than those published in the afternoon.
• Fans are less active on Sunday compared to all other days of the week.

 

Remember: The campaign’s chance of success is directly related to the amount of work and promotion the campaign administrator is willing to put forth.

 

 2. Promote Tactically.

While we recommend telling everyone you know about your campaign page, before you send out mass e-mails to everyone in the contact book, first send out e-mails to your closest family and friends. This is one of the most important tips for success. The reason you want to do this is because your inner circle of friends and family will be the most generous and easiest to recruit to help spread the momentum for your campaign by setting the tone for subsequent contributors. For instance, if your first four contributors each give you $75, future contributors will view this as the appropriate contribution size and will be more likely to give this or a similar amount as well.  You can also manually set the donation amount in the campaign creation settings. 

 

3. Start with a modest goal.

 One of the keys to a successful Crowdtilt campaign is building momentum. Your friends and family will be more inclined to give if they think their contribution will help you reach your goal. By setting a modest tilt goal for the campaign and quickly reaching fundraising milestones like 10% and 25% of your goal you can build a lot of momentum and get your donors excited about the campaign. On the other hand, if you set your goal too high, some people will be discouraged from contribution because they’ll view your goal as unattainable and will feel like their $25 or $50 bucks won’t really make a difference.

 

4. Offer your contributors a chance to get something in return.

 A great way to get people to contribute is by offering them a raffle prize.  Example:  When you e-mail your contacts you might include that you will be raffling off a $50 gift card to Home Depot [or whatever prize you choose] to the first 20 people to donate. This creates extra motivation for those people who are on the fence about donating.  A well-run raffle with the right grand prize can raise incredible amounts of money for campaign. Most groups underestimate how much money a raffle can raise. Your choice of prize or prizes should vary depending on your financial goal, the size of your potential market, and how many volunteers you have to sell tickets.

 Remember, bigger prizes mean more tickets must be sold to turn a profit, but they also mean substantially higher profits. Design your raffle prize offerings to match your community’s tastes.

The most successful raffles generally have between one and four prizes. When you decide on the selling price of your raffle tickets, keep in mind the market value of the raffle prizes. For high-end prizes ($800+) it is not uncommon to see prices on the raffle tickets of $6 or more.

Selling raffle tickets is really easy on Crowdtilt.  Set up a campaign that has predetermined amount equal to the price of a raffle ticket.  Contributors will also be able to purchase multiple tickets at once.  The campaign administrator will be able to track who bought tickets and how many were purchased for the drawing. It brings a level of excitement and anticipation to the deadline from the contributors.

 

5. Get your story in the media.

 The local paper will usually be more than happy to write about your campaign if it benefits the community in some fashion. The more exposure you get, the better your campaign will do especially if it’s a local campaign on the local news. It’s no secret that people like to be apart of something that is high profile within the community.

 

 6. Make your campaign go viral.

The most successful fundraising campaigns are the ones that go “viral” on the Internet. The results can be astonishing with hundreds of people making contributions across the country and raising thousands of dollars for a cause. Although not every campaign will go viral, here are some tips to help get you there:

• Ask friends and family to spread the world. When you send out your e-mail make sure to ask your contacts to share your campaign with their friend’s co-workers.
• Create a 24-hour Facebook “Wallflower” Campaign where everyone donates their status message for one day to direct the participant’s networks to contribute to the cause.
• Make sure to get off to a good start with a big donation off the bat (close friends and family can help). This will give you some quick momentum to get people excited about your campaign.

 

7. Thank your contributors.

When you create your campaign page, you can draft a thank you message that automatically goes out whenever someone makes a contribution. You can also send personalized thank you e-mails to your donors from their profile pages. Thanking each contributor individually is essential if you plan to fundraise again in the future and hope to ask the same people.

 

8. Create a blog about the campaign. 

 This will give the campaign a human face and a voice (yours) as well as providing an outlet to publish updates, stories, and highlight the people behind the campaign.  It’s a great resource that builds credibility and enthusiasm about your campaign.   Once the information gets rolling it will get picked up and re-blogged by other sources.  We recommend tumblr.com for functionality and sharing capabilities.

Tumblr tip:  Run a search for like-minded blogs to start following. If you follow a blog they will most likely start following you back. If you have good content then you are more likely to get your posts re-blogged.

 

9. Create an attractive campaign page

Personalize your fundraising page as much as possible with a heartfelt description and a striking photo.

The campaigns that do the best are the ones who really make an effort to tell their stories or are super descriptive about what the funds will be used for. Explain to your contributors what you are raising money for and why it is so important to you. If your friends and family see that you are passionate about the campaign, they are more likely to give and give generously.

 Campaign photo:

Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words so make it count.  Also remember you must choose a picture that will also be attractive and striking in thumbnail size from the search page. 

 A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself whether you would click on a link if you were scanning the page.  Get advice from others as well.  The larger a focus group you have the better shot you have at nailing down a picture that will get noticed.

 

 10. Have Fun!

It’s always important to remember to have fun. Getting a campaign tilted can be hard work but it can also be very fun and if you’re not enthusiast about it will tough to fake.  It should be a fun activity and if you’re having fun with it, the positive emotions become contagious and will make people want to contribute.

 

Posted by: G.Case

(Source: crowdtilt)

First of all, you may be asking “what is a swipe file”? Basically a swipe file is a journal of ideas, keywords, concepts, etc that you’ve taken from other sources which you may or may not use in your own business.

You might be thinking to yourself ”that sounds kind of…. evil”. Well, what can I say, it kind of is. But that’s not to say that you shouldn’t have one. I think every marketer out there should have a swipe file, and I’ll tell you why.

Good ideas are good ideas. It doesn’t matter who or where they come from. Just stealing an idea outright is probably not the best way to go, but if you think about it, you may have ways to improve on that concept. Then it really isn’t stealing is it? You may have a different way to implement that idea or concept, or maybe just thinking about the idea brings you another different idea that you otherwise wouldn’t have thought of.

As a copywriter, I think it’s okay to take certain keywords or phrases and use them yourself. We do this anyway whether we think about it or not. Every word in our vocabulary has come from someone that has come before. We don’t invent new words when we talk to each other. Therefore I don’t really think it’s wrong. It’s not the same as stealing someones essay or blog post.

Anyways, you get the idea. If you don’t already have one, go out and buy a composition book, a spiral, whatever, and start jotting down ideas from different sources. You may be surprised when those ideas may come in handy. 

Here is an interesting graphic that I’ve taken from the MindJumpers blog.

I was doing my rounds, checking out the usual marketing blogs the other day, and found an interesting article on Robert Middleton’s site Action Plan Marketing about what he called intellectual firepower. Basically he talks about how in order to be successful you have to put in the work. This is all really easy to agree with; I’ve always been a fan of hard work. The truth of the matter is that lately I feel that many marketers out there are just plain lazy. What can be done about this? Read on…

It really starts with motivation. Before even trying to develop intellectual firepower, you have to genuinely want to improve yourself. If you’re just trying to motivate yourself, then you should already know which buttons need to be pushed. However, if you’re a manager, tyring to motivate a team or specific members of a team, you’ll need to really understand what motivates them both professionally and personally. Once you and/or your team is at the point of genuine motivation, then you can begin to arm yourself with intellectual firepower. How do you do this…

Back in school, you’re given homework. Why should it be any different at work. Give your employees reading assignments, and spend some time addressing new marketing ideas and emerging concepts. I think that most businesses merely exist with no real emphasis on growth, development, or innovation. Of course, the CEO’s of the world are looking for growth, but what about the average employee? Find some way to arm your employees with knowledge, and show them that their development is important to the future of your business. Then maybe you’ll see some real effort. Motivate and then educate.

Of course, developing intellectual firepower is about more than just reading. You have to put in the work. This means that management has to be approachable, and flexible. Listen to what your employees tell you and take it into consideration. Reward good ideas, and encourage everyone to bring their A game to work. I could go on and on, but you get what I’m saying.

What do you do to develop intellectual firepower? Let me know in the comments below or email me privately at edwardviator@evil-marketer.com.

Anyone that knows me, knows that I’m a gamer. You can read all about it on my other blog. Sometimes I spend some time looking through videos on YouTube of games that I’m interested in buying so that I can see if they’re worth the purchase or not. Why then are video game companies forcing YouTubers to take down videos of playthroughs and such? Don’t they understand that this is how gamers find their products? I just saw a video by a well known YouTube commentator that pretty much sums up my feelings as well. He uses some vulgar language so it may not be safe for work, but here’s a link to the video anyway.

This is what happens when you let accountants and financial folks take control of your business. They do a great job of organizing, and re-investing your money. But why are marketers letting them do their job for them? As a marketer, it’s your decision as to how your products and / or services get promoted. I’m of the philosophy that you should use any and all tools in the box to get your message across.

In this day in age where consumers (especially gamers) are spending less time watching / listening / paying attention to commercials, why would you want to take your products out of a media that they are paying attention to? It makes no sense to me. I was just talking to a friend yesterday about how video game marketers usually do a horrible job (someone please hire me, I won’t let you down), and today I see yet another example of that.

If you are a decision maker at your company, please do not limit your marketing opportunities, or alienate your customers by trying to stop them from using current technology to promote your products or services. Use these guys to your benefit, and profit by them. 

What do you guys think? Agree, disagree? Are there any other examples out there that you can think of where companies have done this? Let me know in the comments below. 

You may be thinking, sponsorship isn’t really that big of a weapon. Yeah, tell that to Subway who for years has been beating us over the head with the story of Jared. Jared is a guy that reportedly lost a ton of weight by walking to a local subway and eating one of their sandwiches every day. Now he’s basically the face of Subway. Sponsorship can help you communicate to your intended audience in ways that other marketing tools can’t. It’s a great way to clearly tell everyone what your brand stands for.

My dad, who is a 3 year prostate cancer survivor, decided to stay in shape so that he could limit his chances of a recurrence, and began running in 5K races. Every race, he wears a sign on his shirt that displays the logos of all the businesses and non-profits that have helped him in his fight against cancer. One of those businesses, USMD Prostate Cancer Center, thought that it was such a good idea that they started sponsoring his runs. By sponsoring my dad, he is able to run in more races, and thus promote these organizations more effectively. He’s become a vocal spokesperson for USMD’s services (which did indeed save his life), and gets the message out in a very low cost way. By the way, you can check out my dad’s latest racing exploits on his blog here.

You don’t necessarily have to sponsor a person to get your point across. Sponsoring an event, or a cause of some kind also has the same effect. It gets your brand name out to people that are interested in what you do, and goes a long way in describing the intangibles of your company. What do you stand for (besides making money), and why should your target audience care? Speaking of targets, like all good and effective marketing, sponsorships should be targeted. You want to make sure that whoever, or whatever you are sponsoring has some interest to your target audience. Otherwise, what’s the point.

Anyone else have anything to add?

Check out any marketing blog today and you’ll see pages of posts about social media and relationship marketing. While social media is a very important and effective tactic, I think we all need to step back and realize that it will take more than one tactic to win in this game called marketing. While you may say that traditional marketing is not as effective as it has been in the past, I would argue that these tactics are the foundation of a solid marketing plan. Perhaps they need to be applied in a different way to be effective in this new era of marketing, but whatever. Anyway, I’m beginning a new series: Traditional Weapons of Marketing, starting with my favorite subject marketing research.

Marketing research is my favorite of the traditional tactics, but that’s not the only reason why I’m discussing it first. Your marketing plan begins with solid research. Let me be very clear, all of your marketing decisions should be based on facts (I didn’t understand this when I first started my career, but it is in fact true). Research is where you get those facts. You can either collect and analyze the data yourself, or you can take it from a 3rd party’s already established results. This breakdown looks like this:

- Primary Research: If you need to know something specific, sometimes the best way to find out is to conduct your own research. There are alot of elements to gathering quality data, such as your collection methodology, survey design, incentives, analysis methods, and so on, but I’ll leave that for the research pros to discuss… or maybe for a future discussion.

- Secondary Research: Why go through the expense and effort of conducting your own research when the hard work may have already been done by someone else. There are tons of research findings, reports, and statistics out there for you to find. Sometimes it seems like these findings have nothing to do with you or your business, but you still may be able to apply them somewhere. The new US Census data for example is invaluable to marketers in that it describes what the standard US household looks like in each geographic region. Pretty handy if you’re looking to open a new market, or simply gain a better understanding of your current market.

All research is either quantitative or qualitative. Meaning that it can either be expressed in numbers or in a more abstract way. I’ve seen many companies only focus on quantitative research, or statistics. This is a mistake and is the reason why focus groups exist. Talk to your prospects and customers and try and understand their mindset. You may have a great product, but it may not be practical for the common user. Your inexpensive food may taste excellent, but perhaps your customers want a healthier choice. You need to know the right questions to ask so that you can get the information you need to make a good decision.  

Just one type of research isn’t going to cut it. So you put together an excellent survey, and collected data from a very good sample. You’re still only looking at the results of one study. You should also look for existing data (like the census), conduct focus groups (have a discussion with your prospects and customers), and in general find ways to conduct research in your everyday business (go to a fast food restaurant and look at your receipt… you see that phone number to take a survey?). Research is not something that you do and then forget about, it should be conducted year round so that you can be sure that you are making sound business decisions.

So how can I use social media to conduct research? In this era, people are more connected than ever before, not just to each other, but to your business as well. Use this connection to open discussions with your customers. Ask some questions, and you may find some eye opening points that you never realized before. There are more obvious ways to use social media to your benefit (emailing surveys to people and so on), but you should look at the non-obvious and most importantly the non-intrusive ways to getting your information.

Anyways, enough of that. You get the idea. To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from The Godfather, a marketing plan that doesn’t include research is not really a marketing plan. (the original line is “A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.” and is my favorite line of that great film).

A while back, some information came to my attention that just made me smile my evil marketer smile. It was something I had never really thought of before, but is a real no-brainer common sense move. I’m not going to name any names, because that’s not the point. Apparently this company has learned a way to make some bucks off of its competition. Let me explain how…

Company A owns a facility that receives goods from wholesalers and distributes to retail locations all around the US. This type of set up is pretty routine, as most retailers do this type of thing. However, instead of branding the facility with company A’s name, they use a generic company name for the facility… and then they run it like it’s own separate company. This means that the facility is free to accept orders from other locations that aren’t owned by company A, and may even be competing against their corporate masters. What? You may be thinking that it doesn’t sound very smart, but indeed it is.

If you’re doing business in a free economy then you will have competition. This comes in the form of direct competitors and indirect competitors. For example, if you make soda then you are competing against other soda companies, as well as the guys that produce juice, sports drinks, lemonade, tea, and other beverages. They all serve a similar purpose, and they are all competing for a similar market. Like my man Luke Skywalker says “you can profit by this or be destroyed.”

By providing the same service to your competition that you provide to your own company, you can capitalize on this competition and make some money off of them. If they don’t come to you, they will get it from somewhere so it’s not like you’re going to put them out of business by denying service. On top of all that, if the competition begins to rely heavily on your services, you can always pick a strategic time to cease services and kick them while they are down. Hahaha, there’s nothing like pulling the rug from under your competition just when they need you the most. Suckers!

I read an article in the Dallas Morning News today about retailers using Facebook as a platform for building online stores. You can read the article online here. People have been attempting to monetize social media since the phenomenon began, but this is the most direct effort I’ve seen. With over 50 million people active on Facebook, there’s plenty of incentive for retailers to get in on the action. However, I think that it would be a mistake to only focus on sales, and therefore overlook the social aspects of Facebook.

Why are retailers doing this? According to the article which quoted Henry Wong (CEO of Adgregate Markets) “Because this is where the customer is hanging out. They’re not hanging out on websites.” Hmmm, why could it be that customers aren’t hanging out on websites? Could it be that mindset which refers to visitors as customers? I think that has alot to do with it. It’s been a while since I’ve visited a website with no advertising; one that isn’t just trying to sell me something. Facebook is a place where people go to goof off and check in on friends that they may not see on a daily basis. No one goes to Facebook thinking, wow, I hope I can find something to buy. Retailers need to be aware of this and remember not to press the sale too hard. Otherwise, they could force visitors to move on to other time wasting websites.

The big boys are doing it, but what about small business? I think that Facebook and social media in general could be a fantastic avenue for small businesses to create awareness and even sell their products (or services). Why? Back in the old days, if you wanted to sale something, you advertised. If your advertising budget was substantially larger than your competitor (and you weren’t a total buffoon) then you would take home more profits. Today though, when a youtube video of some kid playing a video game can go viral and generate hundreds of thousands of views, it seems like there’s a more level playing field. There’s nothing to stop small businesses from taking advantage of social media to generate sales, and if they are creative about it, they could even outsell some of their bigger and badder competitors.

So, is “social retailing” the obvious next step in monetizing your social media success? Actually, I think it is. It’s a fact in business that if business can make money doing something that isn’t against the law (even that doesn’t stop some) then they will do it. Retailers can and will sell on Facebook, and they will generate some income. The bottom line though is that people only have a finite amount of disposable income, and I don’t think setting up another sales channel (which incidentally will compete with your own storefront / website) is going to have a dramatic effect on sales unless retailers start getting creative in leveraging the social aspects of social media.

Think I’m full of it? You know what to do.