Marketing Muse from Silver Square

Five ways to show your thanks and share your abundance

This year, I started a grateful journal. I thought journaling was a bit too out there for me until I started doing it. I write down what I'm grateful for (usually listing three) and what lesson I learned for the day. It's a great way for me to end my day and helps me stay on track for life and business.

In the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, I want to share my gratefulness to you, my reader, and share a gift from the book Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. Enjoy the holiday and eat lots of dessert.

1. Feed people: There's no better way to be generous than by hosting a dinner party - and what do we have coming up but the ultimate dinner party? For many Thanksgiving is a family event, but inviting a friend or colleague who may be alone on the holiday is a wonderful way to be generous and strengthen a relationship.
 
2. Make introductions: I'm constantly introducing people from different parts of my life who might benefit from knowing each other. It's a sort of ongoing puzzle, matching up the right people and the right opportunities. Never hoard your relationship equity.
 
3. Become a knowledge broker: Share information, by blog, by email, by Twitter, over lunch or however else. But in particular, focus on sharing information that helps people solve problems, however broadly defined. Suppress the urge to tell all the world about your favorite chicken salad sandwich (unless maybe you have a cooking blog) just because you can. With all the noise out there, occasionally silence is the truly generous choice.
 
4. Tell a story: Sharing your history is always a generous way to give something of yourself to a friend or colleague. Telling a real story about your past - with a beginning, middle, end, and maybe even a Kleenex moment - is even better. They'll be happy for the glimpse of what makes you tick (and hey, it saves them a price of a movie ticket).
 
5. Mentor and get mentored: Perhaps the only thing you can do that's more generous than serving as a caring, consistent mentor to someone is asking someone else to mentor you - and then working your hardest to make them proud.

The branded pen that beats them all

Imagine you're at an upcoming tradeshow and you have a guy in your booth asking about your product or service. He asks more specifically "how does your product work?" and you couldn't be happier to demonstrate. You grab one of your pens - yes, a pen - and you pull out a mini banner that has each step of your product's process. Sweet! What is even better, the pens are not all that crazy expensive, so you can gobble them up just like you would a traditionally branded pen, but this time, it comes with a display screen. This really is the branded pen that beats them all (disclaimer - I have no idea how it actually writes, which would be a deal breaker for me, but it if fits your needs and budget, give it a try).

 

Here is one place you can find the pen.

I wish I may, I wish I might, but check out the marketing

I am typically a slow adapter when it comes to gadgets. I get them fairly quickly, but, I'm never one to obsess about having it on the first day, the first week, or even the first month. I cannot really say that's so with the Kindle.

 

This little baby has been on my wish list for awhile now. I heard about it and then checked it out for myself - it's a beautiful little thing! I enjoy reading immensely so this little guy would be my new BFF. What I couldn't help but notice, too, was Amazon's really sharp marketing elements like the list of all the reasons why you would like the Kindle, kind of a something for everyone list. They didn't just list a few things - they hit them all. Do it because you want to be green. Get it because you'll enjoy best sellers for 10 dollars. Do it because you travel frequently and you want to lighten your load.

Check out their site and take some inspiration for your next product launch.

Do you need to get a little satisfaction?

I love it when things begin from a mistake. The founders of Get Satisfaction started the company all from watching online users post and answer their own questions from a software release that was launched with a bug. Bingo - a new company was born.

Get Satisfaction helps companies collect, monitor and respond to audience feedback. As I have discussed before, consumer-driven content is where things are going. You should really take the time now to position your company to create means to not only directly interact with your audience but allow them the platform to speak and share collaboratively as well. I almost always take advice from a forum or a blog vs what the company is saying - it's more relative and definitely easier to find and use.

Check out the tool and see if it's right for you. If it's not, continue exploring how you can interact with your audience and use their feedback to help drive your site's content. Get on board and get a little satisfaction started now.

The 12 free days of Indy Christmas

 

This very fun marketing campaign is coming your way for its third year. I like the campaign for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it's simple and gets people out and about Indianapolis. Through PR, the ICVA reaches the masses and promotes parnters such as the Indy Wine Trail, the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum to name a few.

How can you use the buzz of a holiday (any holiday) to promote your business? It may be a tad too late to find any brilliance for this year, but it's just the right time to get your marketing act together for 2009.

The really good marketing job description

From time to time I spend an hour focusing on a topic or blogs or whatever and this is how I "make" the time to get something in that typically wouldn't fit in to my busy day. Last night I spent time reading various marketing blogs and Seth Godin's was one of them. I have read most of his books and have highlighted him before, so I'm going to do it yet again today. He wrote a brilliant marketing job description. Next time you're in the market for a new hire, consider some of his points.... no matter what the job you're looking to fill.

The marketer's attitude

Traditional job requirements: show up, sober. Listen to the boss, lift heavy objects.

Here's what I'd want if I were hiring a marketer:

You're relentlessly positive. You can visualize complex projects and imagine alternative possible outcomes. It's one thing to talk about thinking outside the box, it's quite another to have a long history of doing it successfully. You can ride a unicycle, or can read ancient Greek.

Show me that you've taken on and completed audacious projects, and run them as the lead, not as a hanger on. I'm interested in whether you've become the best in the world at something, and completely unimpressed that you are good at following instructions (playing Little League baseball is worth far less than organizing a non-profit organization).

You have charisma in that you easily engage with strangers and actually enjoy selling ideas to others. You are comfortable with ambiguity, and rarely ask for detail or permission. Test, measure, repeat and go work just fine for you.

You like to tell stories and you're good at it. You're good at listening to stories, and using them to change your mind.

I'd prefer to hire someone who is largely self-motivated, who finds satisfaction in reaching self-imposed goals, and is willing to regularly raise the bar on those goals.

You're intellectually restless. You care enough about new ideas to read plenty of blogs and books, and you're curious enough about your own ideas that you blog or publish your thoughts for others to react to. You're an engaging writer and speaker and you can demonstrate how the right visuals can change your story.

And you understand that the system is intertwined, that your actions have side effects and you not only care about them but work to make those side effects good ones.

The cool thing about this list is that it's not dependent on what you were born with or who you know. Or how much you can lift.

Traditional job requirements: show up, sober. Listen to the boss, lift heavy objects.

Here's what I'd want if I were hiring a marketer:

You're relentlessly positive. You can visualize complex projects and imagine alternative possible outcomes. It's one thing to talk about thinking outside the box, it's quite another to have a long history of doing it successfully. You can ride a unicycle, or can read ancient Greek.

Show me that you've taken on and completed audacious projects, and run them as the lead, not as a hanger on. I'm interested in whether you've become the best in the world at something, and completely unimpressed that you are good at following instructions (playing Little League baseball is worth far less than organizing a non-profit organization).

You have charisma in that you easily engage with strangers and actually enjoy selling ideas to others. You are comfortable with ambiguity, and rarely ask for detail or permission. Test, measure, repeat and go work just fine for you.

You like to tell stories and you're good at it. You're good at listening to stories, and using them to change your mind.

I'd prefer to hire someone who is largely self-motivated, who finds satisfaction in reaching self-imposed goals, and is willing to regularly raise the bar on those goals.

You're intellectually restless. You care enough about new ideas to read plenty of blogs and books, and you're curious enough about your own ideas that you blog or publish your thoughts for others to react to. You're an engaging writer and speaker and you can demonstrate how the right visuals can change your story.

And you understand that the system is intertwined, that your actions have side effects and you not only care about them but work to make those side effects good ones.

The cool thing about this list is that it's not dependent on what you were born with or who you know. Or how much you can lift.

The good response

This morning I met with Rob from Corinthian Fine Homes, a client we recently rebranded and are helping expand his marketing in 2009. He recently met with one of the city's top Realtor's who was impressed with his business cards and the key message we helped him develop:  We build unique, personal homes with no surprises. It's all coming together and working to Rob's benefit.

Check out Rob's portfolio and sign up for his newsletter to keep updated on an up and coming premier building in Indianapolis.

Carrier notices the importance of design

I have worked with a few businesses inside the HVAC market over the last six years, so I tend to notice and keep up on HVAC trends out of habit. I typically consistently ready two industry publications and especially take notice on new product releases. What caught my eye this month is the new Carrier EDGE Thermostat. Who says thermostats can't be cool?

For some reason, I'm kind of fasinated with thermostats anyway, let alone nicely designed gadgety stats. The EDGE is this super slim stat that looks like a mini plasma television. It comes in six optional faceplates so you can fit the stat to your home decor. I like that. The fun design tool on their site allows you to see each faceplate on the stat. I'm partial to quartz.

What's even more cool about this is that Carrier gets it. Go to the EDGE site and check out how they have delivered this product to you. Visually, it's a nicely deisgned site and they have taken the extra measure to speak to most of the more common spacial themes in a home and tied that to how the EDGE fits in to that style. Nice. The music helps deepen your experience and capture that style's emotional draw. It's just well done!

The marketing brilliance here is that people will want this and when they do, they have to call a Carrier dealer. This is a perfect example of how the big business is keeping up on trends and delivering technology and applications people want, then helping promote their contractors, the face of their business, for the product. I have nothing Carrier in my house, but it makes me want to call just to get this stat. Maybe Carrier will read this blog and send someone out... I'll take the programmable one, please.