I received a really nice looking mailer from Judo Marketing. I really liked the fact that they lay out their entire product portfolio in one small brochure, with specific pricing information – don’t you hate people who are coy about pricing? Anyhow, I expect great things from these folks. If you’re a small business looking for promotional items, corporate ID or just branded swag, check them out.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Marketing to the Metrosexual
Entrepreneur Magazine writes, “Men need products too.” I guess noone ever went broke overestimating the vanity of men! 
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Blogwatch: MarketingPilgrim.com
The guys over at MarketingPilgrim ran an interesting article called “Ten Tips to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment” that I thought I’d share. You can see my comments at the bottom of the article.
They also have a very interesting promotion to encourage people to blog about them. I don’t recall having seen this promotional method before. They’d like people to discuss why they read Marketing Pilgrim. So here goes:
Your humble servant reads dozens of blogs – in addition to websites, magazines, newspapers and other media sources – in order to bring you the most interesting cart and e-commerce news. Marketing Pilgrim is one of the sources I read. What’s special about Marketing Pilgrim is that it has achieved a mighty Google PageRank™ of 7, which is just slightly shy of awesome. The reason this has happened, of course, is that they have a tremendous amount of original content, and great industry credibility, so lots of people read them and link to them.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
The Free Model
Last week, I blogged about Radiohead’s pay what you want release.
I’d like to explore this idea a little more deeply. After one more reference to the idea of free music, I’d like to talk about free writing.
Now it’s not surprising that Scott Ginsberg (Nametag Guy) is enthusiastic about this:
After all, positioning isn’t about MARKET share; it’s about MIND share.
Become the person people think to call before they take another step.
And it certainly isn’t surprising that Seth Godin is a huge fan of doing it this way:
A Google search finds more than 200,000 matches for the word ‘ideavirus’, which I made up. Some will ask, “how much money did you make?” And I think a better question is, “how much did it cost you?” How much did it cost you to write the most popular ebook ever and to reach those millions of people and to do a promotion that drove an expensive hardcover to #5 on Amazon and #4 in Japan and led to translation deals in dozens of countries and plenty of speaking gigs?
It cost nothing.
A different take is provided by author Jonathan Lethem, who discusses “second sourcing,” a term he has coined to denote the appropriation and reuse of intellectual property.
The dream of a perfect systematic remuneration is nonsense. I pay rent with the price my words bring when published in glossy magazines and at the same moment offer them for almost nothing to impoverished literary quarterlies, or speak them for free into the air in a radio interview. So what are they worth? What would they be worth if some future Dylan worked them into a song? Should I care to make such a thing impossible?
And then there’s another kind of writing: writing software. Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress goes even further,
“For me, open source is a moral thing. Software should be free; it’s our philosophy as a company.”
<rant>
I hate it when people conflate free and open. Open source may or may not be free. Free software may or may not be open. Furthermore, although I think Matt Mullenweg is an incredible genius, but this kind of Richard Stallman-esque thinking just seems frivolous to me. Sure, it’s nice if it’s free. It’s even better if it’s open so that I can change it. But the ultimate acid test of utility is fitness for use. Does it do what I want?? If it doesn’t, who cares if it’s free! And if it does exactly what I want, why should I begrudge having to pay for it?
</rant>
I mean, what’s the difference between saying, “software should be free,” and saying “massages should be free?” They both strike me as absurd.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Where would Jesus BOGOF?
In an appeal to the better angels of our nature, Tom’s Shoes offers a BOGOF with a twist: you buy a pair for yourself, and a poor child in a developing nation gets a pair free. I think this is a brilliant approach, and so does Seth Godin.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Keys to selling to tightwads
Just because they’re cheap doesn’t mean they won’t buy. Neuromarketing has some good tips:
- Create packages or bundles
- Express prices using small units of measurement (per day instead of per year; per half pound instead of per pound, etc.)
- Describe extra charges in terms that make them seem picayune (“only five dollars” instead of “five dollars”).
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Ads in small spaces
Last weekend I was on a US Airways plane, and was surprised to see that they covered even the tray tables with advertisements. I did a bit of searching and found the product placement spaces offered by airlines doesn’t end there – would you believe sponsored air sickness bags?
Now arguably this is getting a bit carried away – but what about the small spaces in your world? Is your store advertised in your email signature? Does everyone who knows you know about your store? Do you have a blog or a newsletter for the store? Are you giving business cards to people that you meet who might be interested in your goods or services?
Nielsen: Word of Mouth is tops
Ratings king Nielsen just released a new survey showing that consumers placed their highest levels of trust in other consumers. If you’re not savvy about word of mouth marketing, the guys over at WOMMA give an excellent introduction to the topic.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
A stodgy old consumer products company … not!
MediaPost is liveblogging OMMA NY, and one of the posts this morning was about UniLever’s new social media strategy. Why are some consumer products companies so edgy when others seem to be wasting time on dorky initiatives that have nothing to do with brand-building? Given the low-margin nature of the trade, shouldn’t they all be, in the words of David Lee Roth, running with the devil?
