>Spot On! This Week’s Best Marketing Advice

Written on November 29, 2008 by Jay Ehret in branding, conversation, Customer Experience, headlines, promotion

Here are some of the week’s best small business marketing blog posts. They are categorized by the four spots of The Marketing Circle of Life. Enjoy and be educated.

Photo credit: nuno ferreira

Conversation: Fan Relationships (It’s Complicated) by Mike Arauz on his blog. Fans are people who on some level see their affection for something someone else has created as part of their own identity. If they love you, they will make you a hit. If they hate you, they will prevent you from ever having a chance. Honor the diverse ways that fans are willing and able to participate with the things they love.

Promotion: 4 Takeaways – Newsletter Subject-Line Analysis on Marketing Sherpa. How do you get better click-through and open ratios for your newsletter? How can you write more effective headlines? The goal is to identify which subject lines readers like. Here are the four biggest takeaways.

Branding: If They Find You, What Do They Find? at Advertising Fuelosophy 101. Your website must first be found, but once found the question becomes: ‘What do they find?’ What does a well-positioned, properly branded website look like? Many a company has failed to implement a website that supports and improves the brand experience.

Experience: Top 5 Ways to Annoy Happy customers this Time of Year by Casey Hibbard Wolfson on Stories That Sell. You can still pursue customer stories with happy customers right now, but it just requires more sensitivity and patience. Here are five ways you can annoy customers participating in success stories, and the antidotes. Respecting happy customers trumps your deadlines any time of year.

Now Build Your Own Marketing Plan
Our nine-part series, Build Your Marketing Plan is available for free on The Marketing Spot blog. Each installment includes a slidecast presentation and downloadable worksheets. Spend the weekend building your marketing plan.

The complete series can be found here: Build Your Marketing Plan

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>Spot On! This Week’s Best Marketing Advice

Written on November 22, 2008 by Jay Ehret in branding, conversation, Customer Experience, marketing, promotion, small business

Here are some of the week’s best small business marketing blog posts. They are categorized by the four spots of The Marketing Circle of Life. Enjoy and be educated.

Branding: Figuring Out What You Really Sell by Harrison McLeod at Men With Pens. What you’re selling isn’t about what you sell at all. It’s more than just the commodity, it’s the emotional association people have with your company. You need to give customers an experience, not just a product.

Experience: Extreme Makeover – Synagogue Edition by Dr. Ron Wolfson at Synablog. The Gap recently transformed their stores from “institutional” to “homey.” In an effort to woo back customers. The most important lesson is this: businesses rarely look at their customer spaces with fresh eyes. Familiarity breeds myopia. Look at your building as if you are a first-time visitor and make changes that can transform your business into something more homey.

Conversation: Napkin Folding – The Boot Fold by Scott Townsend on the United Linen Blog. Want to create some conversation about your business? Then create a WOW experience for your customers, something they’ll have to talk about. And it could be something as simple as folding a napkin.

Promotion: Vampire Colleagues Who Suck by Jonathan Kranz on YouTube (Kranz on Copy). Consensus is the enemy of progress. If you use consensus as your standard, you are doomed to reach for safety. Making something new: That’s marketing.

The complete series can be found here: Build Your Marketing Plan

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>Spot On! This Week’s Best Marketing Advice

Written on November 16, 2008 by Jay Ehret in branding, conversation, Customer Experience, local search, price, promotion, value, word of mouth

Here are some of the week’s best small business marketing blog posts. They are categorized by the four spots of The Marketing Circle of Life. Enjoy and be educated.

Conversation: What’s On Your WOM List? by David Armano at Logic + Emotion. In a simplistic kind of way, I like to think that word of mouth is simply something makes us want to tell others about it. Of course word of mouth can also be bad. Maybe it’s as simple as asking ourselves, would you recommend this to a friend?

Promotion: Dominating In Your Local Search by Soh Tanaka. Where does the traffic come from? The biggest contributor will be the obvious: Search Engines. Here is a general guideline to optimizing for search engines.

Experience: Why Slashing Prices is Just Wrong by Lewis Green on Biz Solutions Plus. When the economy turns down the natural reaction is to cut costs and to slash your prices–DON’T! Now is not the time to reduce your revenues; it is the time to stand up and stand out. Enhancing customers’ experiences by offering great value, quality services and products constitutes a smarter and more prosperous approach.

Branding: People Want to Connect with People… Not Companies by Mack Collier at MarketingProfs Daily Fix. The reason why people go back to a brand has nothing to do with the product, and everything to do with the people that stand behind it. Many times you have you heard that “people want to have relationships with companies/brands.” I say that’s complete BS.

The complete series can be found here: Build Your Marketing Plan

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>Spot On! This Week’s Best Marketing Advice

Written on November 8, 2008 by Jay Ehret in Advertising, blogging, branding, conversation, Customer Experience, marketing plan

Here are some of the week’s best small business marketing blog posts. They are categorized by the four spots of The Marketing Circle of Life. Enjoy and be educated.

Silly-Rabbit-Flickr-photo-by-Mykl-Roventine

Photo Credit: Mykl Roventine

Branding: Silly Wabbit, Brands Aren’t Just for Customers by Amber Naslund on Altitude Branding. Cutting prices is not a good way to attract more customers. Price is the bugaboo of any brand communication, and usually the tool of last resort. Maybe your strategy shouldn’t be lower prices whatsoever.

Promotion: The Power of Emotion by Richard Huntington on adliterate. Emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions. Emotional involvement beats rational persuasion in getting result delivered. Here are five commercials each representing one of the five fundamental emotions.

Conversation: Why Start a Blog and 25 tips to Make it Work by Valeria Maltoni the Conversation Agent. For businesses especially, people have come to expect that you have a Web presence. But, when they research you or your type of business, they prefer to read what others are saying about you, or they want to see you in action. So why use a blog, and how do you make it work?

Experience: Tip of the Week: Deliver the Essential *Boom* by Kelly Erickson at Maximum Customer Experience. Why are Walmart’s sales up in a sea of down? They’re selling the essentials. Change your focus to deliver the essentials rather than the discretionary.

This Week: I’m heading to the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas. WOMMA, is the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and the most recognized organization in the “industry.” I’ll be looking for practical small business advice and will file a report Friday.

The complete series can be found here: Build Your Marketing Plan

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>Spot On! This Week’s Best Marketing Advice

Written on November 1, 2008 by Jay Ehret in blogging, branding, conversation, Customer Experience, website, word of mouth

Here are some of the week’s best small business marketing blog posts. They are categorized by the four spots of The Marketing Circle of Life. Enjoy and be educated.

Promotion: Blogs versus Websites: What’s the Difference? by James Chartrand at Men With Pens. There’s a misconception surrounding blogs and websites. Many people still believe these two types of Internet presence are different. Well, they are different, but only in how you use them and not how you build them.

Branding: Tell Me Why It’s Better by Jonathan Salem Baskin at Dim Bulb. Cutting prices is not a good way to attract more customers. Price is the bugaboo of any brand communication, and usually the tool of last resort. Maybe your strategy shouldn’t be lower prices whatsoever.

Conversation: Customers Are Your Most Effective Sales Force by John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing. Happy, educated, results oriented customers are the greatest sales force you can employ. Here are four primary steps involved to raise the level of customer participation. What are you doing to involve your customers.

Experience: Proof of Micro-Interactions by Davide Armano on Logic + Emotion. How a $4 cinnamon roll turned a Disney World customer into a customer evangelist. One magic spot added to one customer interaction can go a long way. Do the little things really matter?

Now Build Your Own Marketing Plan
Our nine-part series Build Your Marketing Plan is available for free on The Marketing Spot blog. Each installment includes a slidecast presentation and downloadable worksheets. Spend the weekend building your marketing plan.

The complete series can be found here: Build Your Marketing Plan

Let future articles from The Marketing Spot come to you: Receive by Email or

Get The Marketing Spot in a blog reader

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