Marketing Rant

I just launched a new blog about network marketing. Here’s the link:
http://www.NetworkMarketingHeroes.com.

I have become quite fascinated with the topic. Being a curious guy, my plan is simple yet rather grandiose: I am going to interview 52 successful network marketers in 2007, pick their brains and share this knowledge with my readers.

It’s not 2007 yet… and one interview is already there. It is with Robin J. Elliott, a worldwide Joint Venture expert.

Hop over to http://www.NetworkMarketingHeroes.com.
and take a listen.

Consider this my little Christmas gift.

Merry Christmas!

Whenever I turn on my TV or read the paper (happens very infrequently these days), it seems as if we (the collective “we”) are obsessed with our dietary choices. We count the calories, watch the trans fats, and load up on the proteins. And lest we forget the Omega 3, which is very good for us although nobody knows what exactly it is.

So what do our “purveyors of food” do? Let’s see:

- Farmers are pulling their hair out trying to make their produce more organic;

- Food manufacturers keep coming up with increasingly healthier additives;

- And the restaurateurs are tripping over themselves adding “healthy choice” items to their menus.

Heck, even the ever-so-ubiquitous Golden Arches, the traditional stronghold of His Majesty The Burger, are now becoming more known for their salads!

Question: If you are a restaurant, should you follow?

If you do, you will be just a number in a huge crowd of others competing for the same piece of the pie. Remember that in business you don’t get a reward for doing it the hard way (I’m paraphrasing the great Dan Kennedy here).

And if you go in the opposite direction, you may just corner the market.

The way Jon Basso of Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, AZ did.

At Heart Attack, you don’t get just a burger. You get a Double Bypass Burger. There is also a Triple Bypass, as well as the most monstrous of them all, Quadruple Bypass. It is brought to you by a “nurse”. Your vital signs are being monitored by a “doctor”. And when you’re done (done eating, that is) a “nurse” takes you to your car in a…wheelchair!

Heart Attack has been around for less than a year but has already deserved prominence on numerous news sites worldwide.

Jon claims to provide the “taste worth dying for”, but his and the Heart Attack’s fame has nothing to do with the quality of the burgers (I haven’t had one, but now I’m so sold I can’t even imagine them being not fantastic).

It’s all about the decision to not only do something different, but do the exact opposite of what everybody else is doing:

- If they switch to salads, Jon gives you a burger;

- If they serve smaller plates, Jon builds the biggest burger you’ve ever seen;

- If they promote healthy eating, Jon offers the “taste worth dying for”;

- If they are being serious, Jon turns it into a farce, compelte with “nurses”, “doctors”, wheelchairs, theme songs, and downloadable ringtones.

Once you get a business like this going, marketing is effortless. It just happens. Like a letter from the Office of the Attorney General of Arizona complaining Jon’s… ahem, “nurses” are not real nurses!

http://www.heartattackgrill.com/not_real_nurses.htm

Two things are for certain:

a) Whichever way this controvercy gets resolved, Heart Attack stands to benefit from it.

b) Next time I am in Tempe, I’m having a Double Bypass.

Scott Tucker, a debt management wizard from Chicago and a brilliant marketer, has a new title:

A GUY WHO’S GIRLFRIEND DUMPED HIM!

How many people would go public about that? Hardly any. But Scott is no regular guy. In every problem therein lies an opportunity.

Scott is stuck with 2 first-class round-trip tickets to Barcelona for HER birthday, with HER name on it. He decides to turn all this into a publicity stunt. Up goes a website to do a search for another girl with the same legal first and last names.

The result?

Scott Tucker is interviewed by and featured on:
- WQAD
- FOX 5
- Dallas News
- Forbes
- Quote.com
- US 99.5
- Market Watch
- The Seattle Times
- WGN9 Chicago
- WLS 890 AM
- KWQC TV
- WIBC 1070
- NBC5

and list goes on… and on… and on.

As the old adage goes, you need to make news, not the news releases.

Find out more about Scott’s campaign at http://www.FreeTripToBarcelona.com

Do you live in Canada? If so please help my friend Leesa Barnes.

No I am not asking for a pledge or donation (hm, is it not the same thing?). All I ask of you is 30 seconds of your time to answer a few questions in Leesa’s survey about podcasting. Don’t worry if you don’t know what podcasting is and have never even heard the word. Just go to this link and cast your vote: Canadian Podcast Listeners Survey.

Marketing is part art and part science. You can argue which part is bigger or more important. Most people would agree though that marketing is very practical — it’s all about investing some dollars and cents so as you’d get back a larger quantity of dollars and cents later on. Right?

Well, yes, sort of. See, there is also a metaphysical side of marketing, which I’d like to touch on today.

I’ve seen it time and again, how some people follow every single rule in the book and create what would seem to be a killer copy, then send it out and get only mediocre results. And then someone else would whip out a totally amateurish piece and bring in a ton of new business.

How is that possible?

There is an explanation.

Everything is energy. Your sales copy is just a medium to transmit your energy to other people.

So when you are trying to figure out why a particular piece did not perform as expected, try to remember how you felt while writing it. Also, try to remember what your gut was telling you when you were about to hit the Send button. Were you excited? Were you confident? Or were you feeling that uncomfortable “suction” in you gut?

Also, were you sending it out to “give” or were you sending it out to “get”? If you send it out to “give” and in your heart of hearts believe that this stuff is going to help someone, this energy will be in your letter. If you are sending it out to “get”, you are coming from a “need” or “scarcity” mentality and that bad energy is going to be there too.

Good energy — good results.

Bad energy — bad results.

Honestly, I don’t know how it works but it does work. And it works in all areas of our lives, not just in marketing.

I am hardly a master of that force and still learning. Yet, speak with any successful marketer and you’ll find that not only they are very aware of this force but also know how to direct their own energy, and that’s what makes them successful.

They also listen to their tummy a lot. Because it’s your tummy and not your head that knows what’s right for you and what isn’t.

“Whatever we send out, we get back 10 fold”
- Kody Bateman, CEO and Founder of SendOutCards

“The key to success is to raise your own energy; when you do, people will naturally be attracted to you. And when they show up, bill ‘em!”
- Stuart Wilde (as quoted in Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker.)

No I am not mistaken: Taylor Hicks is only number #2. Not on the American Idol, of course. I’m talking about Google’s Zeigeist, a service that shows you the most popular (searched-for) phrases over the last week.

Here’re the 15 most popular phrases:

1. clay aiken
2. taylor hicks
3. danica patrick
4. famke janssen
5. indy 500
6. rebecca romijn
7. memorial day
8. juggernaut
9. ghost rider
10. dixie chicks
11. ellen page
12. kimberly dozier
13. hugh jackman
14. coco
15. katharine mcphee

While this is an interesting service that tell you what many people “out there” are instested in, I’m in for a surprise: I can only identify 8 out of the 15 most popular phrases and why they are in that list (and 3 have to do with Americal Idol). For the rest of them, I am clueless.

Hmm… Maybe I need to bone up a bit or what’s going on in the world.

Or maybe not. Because “the world” is not my target. And not yours either. Figuring out what’s “hot” in your niche a lot more important.

Yet, if you can hook people with something that appeals to a very large audience this can help you attract more prospect.

I, for instance, is interested to see how the traffic to this blog will increase because of this little article.

Ever since I read about James Sterling Moran, a publicity icon and a master of outrageous stunt, I wanted to know HOW he managed to sell a refrigerator to an Alaska Eskimo.

Last week, I found an answer. Turns out, none other than Toronto’s own Mel Lastman pulled out a similar stunt and sold a fridge to an Inuit.

First, a few words about Mel. He is our former mayor and the holder of the world record of mayoral longevity (38 years in a row!). In 1955, he founded a chain of furniture and electronics stores called Bad Boy.

Bad Boy had to compete with the “big boys”, large retailers with deep pockets and a lot of dollars in their advertising budgets. Our hero managed to survive and prosper — and become a celebrity — by using a series of publicity stunts designed to seize the attention of the buying public.

So, how did our Bad Boy Mel manage to sell a fridge to an Inuit?

He LISTENED to his customer’s needs.

Inuit don’t need a fridge to keep the food cold. There is no lack of permafrost to ensure their food doesn’t go bad prematurely .

Where the fridge comes in handy is when they need to protect the food from the animals never ceasing to try to dig it out and steal it.

Last week, ex-mayor Mel returned to Bad Boy. One can only guess what other publicity stunts Mr. Lastman has up his sleeve. One thing’s for sure: The Brick, Leon’s and their likes are about to lose some customers.

I’m spending as much time working from my home office as working from my “office” office, or my clients’ offices. Yes, I do have a PDA (it’s a grown up Palm Pilot called AlphaSmart, a laptop alternative). But I’m not too diligent when it comes to synchronizing it with my Outlook.

Now, the new Google Calendar comes to my rescue. The Quick Add feature is the best. It’s almost like having a human personal assistant. “Susan, I am having lunch with John Q. The Client at 12:30 PM tomorrow”.

And what if I’m not online? Well, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem because I have my daily to do list with me.

Alright. I’m giving it a try.

Today, I did a 1 hour talk to a class of 12-graders. It was the son of one of the guys in my business networking group who invited me (Thank you Michael. It was great to meet you.)

They had “leaders” of various caliber speak to them about “business”.

I wish they did this to me when I was in Grade 12! (I actually never was in Grade 12, but that’s another story.)

Based on my experience of working with these kids’ dads and moms, I didn’t expect them to know much, if anything, about marketing.

Not them. Not these kids.

Well, I was in for a nice surprise. The AIDA formula (stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action, in case you have not been around Planet Earth for the last 120 years) was old hat to them.

I kid thee not: They can teach their own parents some marketing! And if they did, maybe those parents wouldn’t be struggling as much in their little businesses. And who knows, maybe those businesses wouldn’t be so little anymore.

Among all the spam I shovel out of my Inbox every day, I get some interesting pieces. The one I got today was particularly hilarious.

Dear alex@bizLeverage.com:

Our company offer Target marketing services:

1. Supply target emaiI-list (Just for your order).

2. Custom-built your email-list and send out your email
message for you.

Right… I guess it doesn’t get any more “targeted” than this, does it?