Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have a Price

At the cookbook committee meeting today we settled on a price: $20/copy.

We're happy to say that we plan to design the book to fit in a small flat-rate mailer, so it'll cost $6 for postage and handling to ship anywhere in the United States.  We'd have been so irritated if we'd only thought of it after the books came back from the printer.

The funny thing is that even though we haven't announced the price, we have two advance orders.  This reminds us that if the book sells really well, it won't be entirely due to our editorial skills or our marketing acumen.  It's a fundraiser, and people do want to support the Women of Calvary.

Photo courtesy PSE&G

A little hint about designing your corporate logo

Blue ink dries the slowest.  That doesn't matter when your presence is all online.  One day, though, when your organization needs letterhead and business cards, you may learn to your dismay that you need to wait longer just to let the ink dry.

Maybe you're super-organized and never need a rush print job.  But if you're not, think twice about using a lot of blue in your collateral.

What if the media call and you’re not ready?

High-profile employees at large firms receive training in public speaking, including speaking on camera.  If they suddenly have to speak up on behalf of the company, they and their bosses are confident that they’ll come across well.  In the best cases they’ll express exactly what they’re supposed to.  They’ll be articulate and poised.

The rest of us may want to be that suave, but it’s not really that important, is it?

It is if you have a dream.  If you have a product or service you want to persuade others about, you need to speak compellingly.  And if you suddenly have a big breakthrough and the media want to talk to you, would you want to say, “No…thanks, really.  I’m just not a good public speaker.”?

They have other stories to cover.  While you’re gathering your wits, they’re turning to their next assignment.  Too bad, so sad.

That’s why, if you want to promote something, you need to be ready to speak.  That’s why I joined Toastmasters eight years ago. 

At Toastmasters you practice giving speeches in a friendly environment.  Fellow club members give you feedback about your speeches.  If you like speaking, you can also participate in contests.

Toastmasters needs you to fill in other roles, such as leading the meeting, being the “humorist” (telling one joke), and counting the number of times speakers say “ah” and “um.”

Toastmasters membership costs under $100 per year.  If you put in the time, you get something invaluable back—the ability to say the right thing at the right time.

Here’s the link to my club, the Murray Hill Speakers Club.

Here’s the link to Toastmasters International, where you can find a club near you.

If you’re serious about marketing, drop by a meeting for free and learn more about the program.

gurlz ONLY

Attention, gentlemen: this post is about menopause.  You might want to click away now.

LOL!  Can’t you hear those trackballs spinning frantically?

This really is about menopause.  It’s about how I can only think of one reason why the International Sleep Products Association (ISPA) hasn’t already implemented this marketing campaign:

“Congratulations!  You’ve reached menopause.  No more worry about staining your bedding, so buy the best.  Celebrate by treating yourself to a luxury mattress.  

As a special treat, if you tell us you’re over 50, we’ll include a set of 500-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets as our gift.”

(They’ll actually card everybody—nothing like the thrill of being told you don’t look your age.)

I see spots (hee hee) on the Lifetime Channel and OWN, The Oprah Winfrey Network.  I see ads in the women’s service magazines.  I see this as huge.

The only possible reason that they haven’t already initiated this campaign is that they haven’t thought of it.  Yet.

Gives me something to look forward to.

Off-the-wall idea for churches and houses of worship

 

Houses of worship of any religion should always be looking for ways to attract new members.  Here’s one you may want to try.

Distribute a letter to recent arrivals and neighbors.

• ·        For neighbors, use church volunteers and door hangers.  Target the houses and apartments nearby.  The more volunteers you have, the farther afield you can go.
• ·        For new arrivals, check municipal records for property transfers and mail out the letters.

The letter:

Welcome to (community name)!   (Or “Hello, neighbor.”)  If you’re interested in joining a house of worship, the congregation at (house of worship name) invites you to visit us at (address). 

(House of worship) is special because (unique selling proposition).

Our services are at (day and time).  If you have questions, please visit us on the internet at (URL) or call us at (telephone number).

Whether you decide to join our congregation or not, if you visit us we’d appreciate your honest and anonymous feedback about how you felt when you visited.  Here’s an anonymous survey.  If you care to fill it out, please send it to (PO Box number/city/state/ZIP)

We hope to see you soon.

Sincerely,

(Religious leader name)

(Religious leader title)

PS If you’d like more information, please do call us at (telephone number).  We promise no sales pitches!

The survey

Thank you for visiting us at (house of worship).  Your anonymous answers to this survey will help us understand how new visitors feel when they visit us.

Why did you visit (house of worship)?

• ·        I received a letter.
• ·        A friend or neighbor invited me.
• ·        Special occasion:
• ·        Holiday service
• ·        Special service such as a funeral
• ·        Other ___________________________________________________________________

• ·        When you visited us, did at least one person greet you with a friendly smile and an introduction?     Yes/No
• ·        Did anyone invite you to return?  Yes/No

•  ·        Was the building itself welcoming?  (Were there any physical barriers that made it difficult for you to participate in the service?) __________________________________________________________________

• ·        Have you visited a (denomination) church before? Yes/No
• ·        Was it difficult to follow the service? Yes/No
• ·        If it was difficult, why was it difficult to follow the service? ________________________________________________________________
•  
• ·        What did you think was the best thing about our service or our welcome?  ________________________________________________________________
• ·        What did you think was the least positive thing about our service or our welcome? _________________________________________________________________ 

Please answer the questions below on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “completely untrue,” 3 meaning “neutral,” and 5 meaning “completely true.”

                                                

                                                  Untrue           Neutral           True

                                                          

I felt welcome at the service        1         2        3          4          5

I might return to (house of

                                 Worship)         1         2        3          4          5

• ·        Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about your time with us?   __________________________________________________________________

                         

Thank you so much for filling out this survey!  We’re always trying to ensure that (house of worship) is as welcoming as possible.  Your opinions will help us.

Please mail this survey to PO Box number/city/state/ZIP

A special note from (religious leader): Thanks again for visiting us!  We hope we’ll see you again at (house of worship).

(Signature)

I can’t think of any congregation that wouldn’t benefit from feedback from visitors.  You’re welcome to use this idea, and if you do, I’d appreciate your opinions!

Happy new year.

My Cringeworthy Website

Please don’t visit KatharineHadow.com. 

Whenever I visit it I tell myself that it looks disorganized and unprofessional.  Then I do what anyone else would do.  I close the tab.

I started my site for two reasons:

1. as a portfolio for my print work, so I could send URLs instead of attachments
2. to show that I could produce and maintain a website

 It serves those purposes, but it’s unwieldy now.

It needs to portray a bold, confident marketer who can size up customers and bang out compelling copy on tight deadlines.  It, well, doesn’t.

But, ugh, the thought of rewriting all that copy from scratch, finding the perfect USP and call to action feels so overwhelming.

And yet, I do it daily in my pitch letters.  Pitch letters are easier, probably because I can tell myself that no one reads them anyway.

My project for today is to cull the best lines from my pitch letters and refashion them into exciting web copy for KatharineHadow.com.

About perfection—It’s actually good if the web copy isn’t perfect.  If the site were perfect, I’d never change it.  Then the search engines would assume that I’d abandoned the site, and eventually my rankings would slip.

So, in web copy, as in life, the goal is

Progress, not perfection.

LinkedIn Expertise

I’m now an “internet marketing expert” on LinkedIn. 

Here’s what happened:  I visited LinkedIn Answers. I answered another user’s question: how she could get her team to promote her email newsletter? That was easy; I rattled off a few ways that I would have promoted my own newsletter in a perfect world. 

The asker chose mine as “best answer.”   That means I now have an “expert” badge on my profile.

Annoyingly, some people who ask LinkedIn questions never close the loop by choosing the “best answer.”

One fellow asked where he could get print copies of Miss Clairol ads from the 1960s.  Several people sent him to URLs where he could have printed low-res copies.  I actually spent dozens of minutes on eBay tracking down actual ads and even packaging.  I enjoyed it, and I fully expected that he would acknowledge my work by awarding me the “best answer.”  Two months later, he still hasn’t chosen a best answer.

In fact, about 80% of the askers whose questions I’ve answered never select a “best answer.”  Some generous LinkedIn members answer questions because they want to share their knowledge.  Or because they want the links back to their own websites.  But many people like me answer questions because they want that “expert” badge and the ego gratification that goes with it.

So I emailed LinkedIn.  They don’t follow up with askers who don’t close their questions, and they don’t plan to.

If I really, really wanted the badge, and strangers really, really didn’t want to select best answers, there would be a dishonest solution: a “best answer exchange.” 

1. My friend Jimmy Doakes asks a question; I answer it.  Jimmy picks my answer as “best.” 
2.  I ask a question.  Jimmy’s friend Shruti answers it.  I pick Shruti’s answer.
3.  Shruti poses a question.  Jimmy answers.  Shruti picks Jimmy.

Note that I pose this scenario in the subjunctive.  I wouldn’t actually set up an exchange, of course.  It would degrade the value of my precious “best answer” badge.

One thing’s for sure: if I’ve thought of it, someone else is already doing it.  Just sayin’.

Comparison Shopping: Permission-Based Email

I've been thinking for a while about getting a Constant Contact account, especially now that I've taken on a big volunteer project (but that's a posting to itself.)

Constant Contact is a permission-based email service. You can use it to send emails to people who have agreed to received your emails (no spamming). You get good reports back as to how many people received and opened your emails. For small organizations that send out limited numbers of emails, the charge is $15 a month, which seems pretty reasonable.

But as I mentioned before, today is the last day to renew website domains before the price goes up. As long as I was at GoDaddy I thought I would update my profile. Under the "Support and Community" tab they had an Express Email forum for permission-based marketers.

I spent at least 10 minutes flipping around on the site trying to figure out if they charged for Express Email. Finally I had to resort to Google, whereupon I learned that Express Email offers all the features I wanted from Constant Contact for half the price or less. (One month is $7.99/mo; thirty six months is $6.39/mo.)

The main difference is that with Constant Contact I can send unlimited emails. GoDaddy would limit me to 500/mo. If you start receiving oodles of professionally-formatted emails from me, you'll know why.

Reminder: renew your domains today to avoid the 7% price increase.

Marketing Works

In 2010, four years after I gave up my residential real estate practice, people still ask me if I'm in real estate.

The message stuck. Something about my marketing worked--albeit a little slower than I hoped for.

Boomers, Brace Yourselves for the Brash

When I was interviewing at a law firm, I called an attorney friend of mine.

"How would you market a law firm?" I asked. I heard him stiffen over the phone.

"I wouldn't," he said through clenched teeth. He went on to tell me that when he worked at The Great White Shoe Law Firm, his business card didn't even include his telephone number.

Silent Generation, meet the Class of 2010. Maybe the law firm's understated campaign was a reaction to the breadlines of the Depression. It was probably a relief not to have to scrounge for the next client or customer, and a source of pride to stay aloof from sordid promotion.

Check out the picture of the woman with a sandwich board in Something's not working The Economist's story about the current US labor market. Her sign reads "Jennifernyc@earthlink.net/LAID-OFF/TODAY/9:45 A.M./HIRE ME."

Can "Will Work for Food" be far behind?

As The Economist points out, "about as many Americans are working as in the autumn of 1999-in a population that is larger by 28m." Competition is stiff, especially among those with no job experience. I predict that we will see self-promotion in this cohort that will horrify older generations.

500 LinkedIn contacts. Business cards at church. Realtor-style name badges. Email blasts. Skywriting, if they can afford it. Effrontery and chutzpah, because the ones who fail to market themselves will be left behind, even with their expensive college educations.

"How...tacky," I can already hear people sniff. "I didn't push myself on people like that. They look so desperate."

Actually, they are desperate. Wall Street Journal humorist Joe Queenan writes in A Lament for the Class of 2010, "Baby Boomers conveniently forget that it didn't set anyone back a year's salary to go to college in the 1960s and 1970s, and that college graduates back then were not entering a work force filled with other college grads."

These youngsters are competing for a limited number of jobs. They're competing against people with a lot more experience. Get ready now for a lot of young people who want your job, or any job. The smart ones are going to figure out how to promote themselves just the way Oscar-Mayer pushes processed meat.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go look for a name badge.

Edit: you may also be interested in this comment on job prospects in the UK.

Mystery Shopping

It's a mystery to me why, when I visit a local business, I find posters in the front window advertising the firefighter's barbecue that took place two months before. Why doesn't the proprietor simply hang out a poster instead that reads,

I don't care what my business looks like to my customers.
I never walk in the front door, anyway.
In fact, that's why I never flip over the "open" sign,
even when my business is clearly shut for the night.

Often what I don't find is some indication of when the business is open. I'm a real, live customer with money in her wallet, but I don't know if I have to wait 15 minutes or an hour and 15 minutes until I can get inside and buy something. Meh. I have other things to do than wait around.

I understand that freehand painting store hours on the window is expensive--and what if you decide to change your hours? But last time I checked, Staples sold lighted signs for $129.99, and if you really don't want to make a commitment, there's the flimsy plastic sign for $5.49.

While you're putting up signs, can you somehow mark your street number? I know it seems like no big deal to you, but if I'm walking down the block in high heels, I really do want to know if 350 Main Street is close at hand. This issue has been raised in New York City. Let's spread our concern all around the country, at least where I shop.

Finally, nothing says "the heck with my customers" like snow treatment. As a pedestrian, believe me, I remember which businesses barely clear one shovel width of snow, and which ones think that sprinkling a little salt suffices.

You have sidewalks. They're good for walk-in traffic. You have snow. Sorry, but them's the breaks.

Oh, Right, a BRANDING Ad

I have blogged before about how I feel when ad salespeople ask me if I want my ads for "branding" or if I want the person seeing it to take a specific action.

I have felt irritated. Of course I want the "ad spend" to pay off in real benefits.

Those of you with professional advertising experience chuckled, I'm sure. After all, most of my experience with advertising has been for non-profits. The nice thing about doing marketing and PR for non-profits is that publishers understand that there is little or no budget for advertising. A non-profit is not going to buy a random "branding" ad, and a publisher will still grant the non-profit coverage space. Thank you, publishers.

But publishers are like any other businesses. They have expenses, which they can meet either through ad revenue or subscription revenue. Both are in free-fall now thanks to the Internet.

Although publishers would like to maintain that wall between advertising and editorial departments, they have to keep the lights on, too. I'm sure readers would like to believe that coverage springs purely from a disinterested editor pointing out what's new and noteworthy in the market. But if it were your publication, wouldn't you want to devote space and attention to an organization that proved that it had your publication's interests at heart?

Maybe once or twice, you might allocate a little space to a new product or contact, and hope that the contact would turn into an advertiser. But over and over? Not likely.

An editor made that clear to me in an email:

TO GET COVERAGE -- PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING

We get literally hundreds of incoming e-mails DAILY from people and organizations seeking coverage.

The sad fact is, most of these submissions, no matter how good, important or legitimate, won't make it into our magazines or onto our website.

Space and time and staff are limited and we simply can't do all these submissions proper justice.

If you want to GUARANTEE coverage of your event/story, please read on.

LET'S ALL TRY A NEW, "WIN-WIN" APPROACH

If you or your clients are willing to buy ads in our magazines, we are willing to work with you to get your story properly covered. You scratch our backs, we scratch yours. The more you are willing to advertise, the more we're willing to do for you.

It's not what we want to think happens in the media, but of course it makes sense. He has bills to pay, and his readers are not paying them. Someone has to. (This particular publication was rather small and specialized, but if he came right out and said it, don't you think other publishers are thinking it?)

So I have redefined branding ads for my own purposes. A branding ad is an ad that I have no hope will ever pay off in measurable results. I take out the ad to support the publication, hoping that one day, down the line, the editor will return the favor. And because I like the fact that there are still real publications written by real journalists.

Branding ads, by the way, are more fun. I can be fanciful, without having to hammer home those pesky calls to action.

We're All Journalists Now, Aren't We?

I'm getting ready for The Big and Influential Trade Show.

As an exhibitor, my company received a list of the registered media planning to attend. Last year I just sent everybody some press releases. This year I'm being more selective, so I looked up each company. And, you know, some of them may have blogs, but I wouldn't call them "media," any more than I would call myself a medium. In fact, a couple of them were PR firms, maybe looking for free admission to the show.

If there were an emoticon for an eye roll, I would use it here.

Semantic Stretch II: Low Redefinition

Julian Baggini has another name for semantic stretch: low redefinition. In The Duck that Won the Lottery: 100 New Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher, Baggini writes.

The advertising industry often uses low redefinition to make the ordinary sound extraordinary. My personal favorite is the wide use of "passionate."....This devalues the truly passionate, whose ardor is now put on a par with a corporate desire to make good curtain fittings.

You could say that semantic stretch or low redefinition is the act of appropriating a word or symbol that people have learned to respect (such as "passionate") for one's own personal gain.

This just in-- Tiffany Sharples tells us in the August 10 Time Magazine that words really do have power. Using profanity allowed study participants to withstand greater discomfort, and it decreased their perception of the intensity of pain. "(P)eople should not overuse profanity," Time quotes Richard Stephens, lead author of the study in question. "...it blunts [swearwords] of their power when you do need them."

So, you semantic stretchers and low redefiners, stop sapping words of their power. Appropriating words to promote your product is just as dishonest as counterfeiting LiveStrong bracelets or concrete certification tests or antivirus software.

Ps. No one is more surprised than me that this is my 100th blog posting. Thank you very much for continuing to read and post comments. kh

Clever Swag

If as a marketer I am going to hand out a promotional item, I want it to have three attributes,

1. I want the item not to cost too much, because I want to hand out a lot of them
2. I'm willing to pay more for an item that is so clever that I believe people will hang on to it, or even show it to their friends and family
3. Most importantly, I want the recipient I give it to to pause for at least a microsecond and think about the organization I am promoting.

I once directly stole an idea from a church in Colorado, figuring that no one could accuse me of poaching in their intended market. At a street fair on a hot a dry day, the church set up a booth and handed out cups of cold water. My church did the same thing. We still don't know if we had extra Sunday visitors because of the booth, but it was so inexpensive that it really didn't matter. The fairgoers appreciated it, especially the bagpipers, who guzzled the stuff.

On Saturday I saw two more clever ideas for swag. I attended the Self Magazine Workout in the Park in Central Park in New York. I intended to arrive early because I recalled that the lines for the free give-aways were very long when I attended two years ago. Getting in line for promotional items would have kept me away from the exercise classes. I preferred to take the classes, but I didn't want to miss any good promotions, either.

Actually, I did not get their early, but it didn't matter. The lines for promotional items were much shorter. Marketing departments are cutting back on spending. Last time a plastic surgeon gave away handbags. This time my most expensive gift was probably the Asics backpack. Last time Physicians Formula gave away compacts. This time they gave away lip gloss.

I am looking forward to using both of these gifts. But the gifts that made me say, "Wow!" as a marketer were the ones that the users really appreciated and that cost next to nothing.

The Jell-O people had a challenge. The Workout in the Park took place on a warm day at 105% humidity (according to my personal barometer). They could have arranged for refrigeration and handed out thousands of 2-ounce cups of Jell-o with teeny spoons, but that would have been a lot of work.

I'm not even sure I took one of their give-aways; it was a coupon for your next purchase of Jell-O. Yawn. And yet their booth was one of the most popular at the event. Why? Because they invested $50 in Hula Hoops. Women flocked to the booth to twirl their hips and recall their baby boom childhoods, days of Wham-O and Jell-O.

"Where did you get that?" I importuned a fellow attendee. I had just finished an exercise class. As I said, it was 105% humidity. Instead of perspiration cooling me down, the moisture in the air was condensing back on my brow. This young woman had a bandanna. It clashed with my shirt but I didn't care. I wanted that bandanna, to stop the sweat from dripping into my eyes. She pointed me to the Ford booth. Way to go, Ford! Other than the fact that it was a special Ford calico print, this was a very ordinary inexpensive bandanna, but that does not stop me from being grateful for it.

I'll have to try hard to think of give-aways that inexpensive and memorable.

Clash!

What's a marketer to think when the Economist is saying

The downturn will also accelerate the use of social media, such as blogs and social-networking sites, by consumers looking for intelligence on firms and their products
(From Buy, Buy to Bye-Bye)

.at the same time that the AP is saying

Call it online sociability fatigue.....As social networking grows, from stream-of-consciousness Twitter to buttoned-up LinkedIn, even some of the very young people who've helped drive these sites could use a break.
(Are You a Twit If You Don't Want to Twitter?)

?

Marketing Communications Metrics

At two round table discussions today "Computing the PR-Sales Link: How Leading Brands Organize the Integration of Communications with Sales" and "Linking Your Communications Efforts to the Bottoms Line--Measuring How You're Being Perceived by Different Audiences and Where to Adjust Your Messaging to Make the Greatest Impact" I learned that other marketing communications professionals are as stymied as I am about how to prove the value of our work.

Every other PR professional I spoke to, including people who worked for agencies, international airlines and Ivy League universities, all felt frustrated by the lack of convincing benchmarks. And all this time I thought that it was just me. I thought that if I read the right book, took the right class, diligently studied the metrics in VOCUS, I could figure out how to demonstrate how my pickups resulted in sales.

Thanks to the Business Development Institute for the Communications, Reputation and Sales Driving the Top Line Conference today, for letting me know that I am not alone.

Just Say No to Flash

I remember when CPU time was so precious that researchers at Stanford and Berkeley had to eke it out on shared servers. Now I marvel that I can carry a gig around in my pocket. A terabyte if I wear cargo pants.

Still I’m shocked when a site tells me that it has to install Flash or ActiveX. Usually I navigate away. I have a modest computer. I try not to store much on it. If I allow you to install QuickTime or Flash or ActiveX, I might have to give something up, either speed or memory.

I don’t want to sacrifice space on my computer so that some kid fresh out of college can show off what she learned in programming class. Don’t ask me to slow down my computer so that your site performs better.

But, hey, I’m the woman who refuses to carry a drugstore discount card. I refuse to make my wallet fatter so the store can track my purchases. (Sometimes I give them my ex-husband’s phone number if I’m buying lipstick and hygiene products, just to confuse Big Brother.)

If you’re marketing to me, don’t ask me to inconvenience myself on your behalf.