Marketing Joint

How Not to Behave

Behaviors are powerful in business. Nothing is easier to notice than behavior. Here are some common mistakes we all make from time to time. I've made all of these mistakes at some point in my own career. Maybe even a couple times!

Keeping our mouth shut.

I've always regretted it when I said something - anything - when upset. It's a never-win situation when you talk while upset or angry. Whether it's an in-person conversation or e-mail, sit on it and do not react when you're upset. If you're truly upset or angry, there is no chance that you'll say anything that'll improve the situation unless, of course, you act like a phony or mislead people. It's never good to be a phony and always bad to mislead. Tomorrow comes soon enough. Just sleep on it.

Cool Sites

These are just cool sites.

Newsmap gives you a visual, constantly changing representation of Google News. You can select and deselect news categories and countries. I use it every day.

Pew Internet & American Life has a lot of demographics and usage data. If you have time to read, go here for data.

Overcoming Limitations

Let me ask you a question. Your son or daughter is a basketball player. There's only one problem - he or she is short. Being a short basketball player is a big limitation. Speed, coordination, stamina, and the rest are surely other potential limitations. But, if you're short, basketball is not a smart sport to pursue. What's the best way to overcome this limitation?

Let's just say that you can only do one of three things:

Buying vs. Selling

Selling anything is hard. Forget the one liners about great salespeople selling ice to eskimos. I hate that line. Eskimos need ice to make igloos. Right?

Making buying easier is even harder. Why? Because we often spend all of our time trying to make selling easier. Raj talked about it before in his Paradox of Choice posting. Things will be harder to sell if and when buying is hard. Take a look at what Goodyear does to make tire buying easier. This is Goodyear folks. One more time ... Goodyear.

Startup Lessons From Albert Einstein (Sort Of, But Not Really)

Here, I thought it’d be interesting to view some startup and marketing concepts within the context of basic qualities discussed in physics. Believe it or not, there are lots of similarities about physics, startups, and marketing.

Revisiting NEWS WAR on PBS Frontline

This week, PBS re-aired its popular FRONTLINE (investigative) documentary on the future of news. PR pros, newspaper journalists, and bloggers will find Part Three particularly interesting. But, I think all Americans will find the entire series pretty engaging.

Here's a link to the four part series entitled News War.

- John

B2B Marketing Out Of Touch?

Not really. Well, maybe a tiny bit. Every single individual in B2B or enterprise marketing should check out THIS Forrester study on the opinions of B2B decision makers. The full report is available on American Business Media's site. You have to register to download the entire report but it only take 15 seconds to register and well worth it. It's pretty new (Fall 2007) as far as such reports are concerned.

The report defines a "business decision maker" as the folks I categorized as "buyer influencers" within the sales cycle and with direct stake in my previous posting on Influencer Marketing: Basic Model. I wish that they had broken it down or focused just on the buyer with purchasing authority. Without the breakdown or focus on just the ultimate buyer, it's probably exaggerating the industry media numbers a little bit.

- John

If Confidence Rules, Winning Follows

It’s no secret that I love startups. There are general qualities about a startup that make it distinct from any other organization. It’s important to understand these qualities in order to survive – much less thrive at – a startup. Take a look at what follows and see if you have the personal and professional traits that can withstand the startup environment. If you have it, ask yourself “how.” If you don’t have it, ask yourself “why.”

The Million Dollar Idea

Infrastructure startups are difficult to fund. Most infrastrucuture startups require a significant amount of upfront VC investment. Web 2.0 startups are much easier to fund although it's becoming clear that as most of these sites head into the end of year two (i.e., running out of money), finding Series B investors is getting pretty tough. So, I have a bright idea. And, my idea is worth a million dollars ... minus $999,999.99. Just promise me that you won't share it with others because this is my one and only plan to become the next Mark Cuban. Why shouldn't I be the one who Carl Icahn pushes down Yahoo's throat? Mark's busy micromanaging his new Dallas Mavericks head coach anyway.

Top 5 Reasons Why Lead Generation Fails

Regardless of the mechanism through which you attempt to generate sales leads, there are some across-the-board mistakes that end up undermining the effort. Here are the Top 5 Reasons Why Lead Gen Fails:

Meet The Press: How To Interview

How many times have you had “media training” to help you interview with the press? How many times were you disappointed with the training? If you’re like most people, you were probably ok with the training but felt a tiny bit let down. Part of the problem is that most media trainers focus on how not to have a bad interview and/or drag on with the “no duh” tips like stay on message, have something to say, make it interesting and relevant, and so on. In other words, don’t talk about a million irrelevant things, ramble on about uninteresting stuff, and jump all over the place.

Which Brand Will Be Our Next President?

Like many others, I often spend my Sunday mornings watching the parade of discussions (more like sparring) on politics on the major television networks. Lately, both the Republican and Democratic Parties have been talking about themselves as brands. One pollster said this morning, "... because the Republican brand is damaged right now." Oh boy ...

Republican brand. Democratic brand. Nope, I still don't like it. Sounds silly.

It could be fun to compare the parties to actual brands though. Republicans are like Wal-Mart. Democrats are like Target. Obama is like Google. McCain is like Microsoft. I shop at Target and buy Microsoft. You can see why this year's election has me all confused.

- John

Perform And Behave Well

Here’s an advice for all the young people starting their first jobs. You need both stellar performance and behavior to excel in your job. It’s a simple equation.

Great Performance + Great Behavior = admiration

Great Performance + Poor Behavior = envy

Poor Performance + Great Behavior = suspicion

Poor Performance + Poor Behavior  = resentment

Influencer Marketing: Basic Model

What exactly is Influencer Marketing? And, why is Influencer Marketing so important? In this post, I’m going to lay out some viewpoints and “answers” using a couple charts I slapped together to illustrate a few key concepts. You’ll notice that I do not use three dimensional magic slides or Venn diagrams. This is not because interrelationships or multitudes of external factors and internal dependencies are non-existent. This is just one way you can view the world. I tend to create and use simple diagrams quite frequently and typically don’t waste a lot of time on bells and whistles.

Blogs Are The New Media Establishment; Bloggers Are The New Influencers (Huh?)

Not so fast! What happened to the previous crop of influencers? Did they all just vanish? There isn't a day that goes by without someone ranting about how blogs (and bloggers) will change the world. Blogs will change how we generate and consume media. Blogs will change PR. Blogs will change how corporations (and startups) communicate and converse. I'm very surprised that very little is being written about the history of mass media and how media in general has evolved over time.

The Burden of Managing People at Startups

Executives at startups tend to be average at best in managing people. At worst, startup executives are very, very bad. Personally, I’ve learned through trial and error that managing people effectively is one of the most important responsibilities of a startup executive. It is not a burden. It is an opportunity.

Intuit Gets New Stickmen Logo

I was pretty surprised to see Intuit change its corporate logo. In the past, I've used both Intuit's TurboTax and H&R Block's TaxCut. For my own reasons, I like TurboTax better. Recently, I went to their site and almost thought I misclicked on my bookmark. The Intuit logo is never really prominent on its boxes. Whether for Turbo Tax or Quicken, the packaging always blaringly screamed out the product name(and still does). Also, the company's TurboTax headquarters building in Southern California doesn't even sport the corporate logo (Turbo Tax signage sits in its place).

So, I really wonder why they changed their well recognized logo. Unlike companies that are currently undergoing a logo change (such as Ford or Xerox) as part of on overall image makeover to actually distance themselves from their recent stumbles and fumbles, Intuit is a very solid company with a pretty loyal customer base.

Gotcha, Made You Laugh! Using Visuals To Make A Point

Let me show you how powerful words can be when coupled with some good pictures or images. I'll illustrate how visuals can enhance crisp ideas or thoughts. Below is a "TOP 10" list containing some cardinal rules of startup growth and marketing. We're going very "high level" here folks so put on your oxygen masks. (Click on each photo to enlarge it.)

Rule #1 -- Hire smart people. When assessing intelligence, do not overthink. Given enough opportunities, dumb people usually reveal themselves to you. Just be attentive.

Rule #2 -- Always be very CLEAR in your messaging. It's not that hard. Bad messaging usually is a result of making too many compromises to please too many people. It's usually not stupidity although ...

Mother's Day and Hallmark

Tomorrow is Mother's Day! I've been thinking a lot about my mother lately. Every day of the year is really Mother's Day, isn't it? But, we still go to stores and take our our wallets to buy a card. Most of the time, we pay Hallmark, the card company.

I had no clue that Mother's Day actually got it's start around the time of our (U.S.) Civil War. Before President Woodrow Wilson made it a holiday, a mother who wanted to speak out against wars tried to unite mothers against sending their sons off to war. I always thought Hallmark was somehow behind Mother's Day. Tells you how clueless I can be ...

Marketing According to Seth

This week, Seth Godin suggests that great marketing can be defined by four words. "Make big promises; overdeliver." It reminded me of the blog I wrote a couple months ago on branding being defined by repeatedly kept promises (You Promise? Absolut-ly!).

Seth uses the definition in context of word of mouth. I used it in context of brand building in general. But, I think both are striking at the same concept overall ...

- John

Press Releases Are Calling Out For Help

Everybody knows what a press release IS but I’m not entirely convinced that everybody knows WHY it’s called a press release and what PURPOSE it serves. I’m almost tempted to use the past tense here because the press release we all came to know has really changed or evolved rapidly over the last half a dozen years. PR teams must adapt and adjust to this reality. Here’s a before and after look at our beloved press release.

What Startups (and George Bush) Can Learn From Poker

What do poker, business, and war all have in common? Escalation of commitments. There’s a lot of academic research in the fields of game theory and decision sciences that cover the concept of escalation of commitments in exhausting detail. Most of these studies pertain to decision making relative to resource allocation. So, I’d like to take a real-world approach to sharing some thoughts around this fascinating topic. First, let’s talk about no limit poker. Then, we’ll specifically hone in on business decisions. And, finally, say a couple things about war. After all, we’re in election year.

Big 6 Reasons Why Meetings Suck

All of us have read those typical articles about meetings and how they stink. Most of these articles suggest all kinds of ways we can make meetings better. What bothers me about these articles is that they play it way too “safe.” Come prepared. Keep the agenda succinct, clear, and manageable. Invite the right people. Stay focused. Be on time. So, let’s get a bit “risky” here and lay it all out there …