Don’t Avoid TV Commercials

The Dreaded Commercial

You wouldn’t be the only one if you confessed that during TV commercials  you ran to the kitchen for a snack.  Nor would you be the only one if you said you flip through other channels to see what’s going on.

Stop doing that!  Those repetitive commercials are there for one reason only. They work. And because they work, you can use them as your course in Commercial Marketing 101.

Paying attention to strategies that work and then modifying them so they work for your business is being a savvy marketer.

Listen to the words they use; the coolers; the benefits they focus on. What is the ratio between benefits and features?

Companies that run ongoing commercials have large marketing budgets which afford them access to top marketers.  Capitalize on that by learning from them what works in today’s market. You may even be able to deduce what works in your market

Consider first of all who their target market is. If it is the same as yours, then watch the commercial. If your market is different, then move on to a commercial that fits.

Don’t forget that different geographical areas will run different commercials to suit their demographics.  Pay attention. Professional marketers for big companies often have the research to back demographic decisions. You may be able to determine from the ad whether enough of your target market exists in your area to make locally targeted marketing worthwhile. After all, there isn’t much use spending time and money locally if your target group(s) isn’t there in sufficient numbers.

Maybe there is a particular station that speaks to your market. Find it; learn from It.; copy it, and if possible, use it

Day-to Day Use of Mission and Vision Statements

Talk to almost anybody about Mission and Vision statements and you will probably get a classic eye-roll in response. Everybody knows they were just a fad, right? Well, wrong! There may have been a faddish element to their development years ago. Every organization had to have one and considerable time and effort went into developing one of each. Generally, they were well done. They looked really good hanging on the wall in the lobby above the receptionist’s desk and that’s as far as they usually got in day-to day utility.

It’s a little like all the hype that surrounded brain-storming and other thinking tools that dominated business planning sessions for a while and then went off into oblivion, dismissed as ultimately over-hyped and of low utility. As Tim Hurson points out in his book, Think Better, people typically give up too soon on thinking tasks before the real rewards are reached because going deep is hard work. Typically, the low hanging fruit gets picked and people give up, blaming the task itself for their shortcomings.

Einstein summed it up well when he said, Thinking is the hardest work men do, that’s why so few do it,” or words to that effect. So it is that people give up on mission and vision statements once they are made. When the really hard work is needed, applying them in daily work and planning, most throw up their hands and walk away.

It’s tough subjecting everything you do daily and in the future to ideas and statements you created last month. A mission statement is going to be used to evaluate immediate plans and performance. It’s a standard created by the players and needs to be applied as it was meant, as a measuring stick. Take your plans or performance and ask the question, “How does this measure up against our standard?” does this activity advance our mission or push us toward achieving our vision. If the answer is no, maybe the whole thing needs to be reevaluated, or maybe just the activity in question. The point is that having a measuring stick allows all concerned to be systematic in advancing their business.

Likewise, a vision statement is a long-term measuring stick against which to measure daily activity. This is what we want to be someday. Is what we are planning and doing today going to get us there if we keep it up? If not, why are we doing it? Those can be tough questions against which to measure your business plans and performance in the short-term. It takes no small amount of will to haul those standards out and apply them in this way. Most businesspeople aren’t up to this much effort daily. Iron discipline is not that common. Unfortunately, it is the foundation of predictable success.

Share your thoughts on such statements and your business. Do you have one of each? Do you use them to guide your activity and planning daily? If not, what’s your alternative? Register and make a comment.

Automate Relationships – Not

Technology is a wonderful thing; especially when it works to save us time and money.  In business where time is money, Having things done for us automatically is a no brainer. Or is it?

Sometimes, using any form of automated communications with our customers seems like a really good idea but it isn’t always.  Our customers are savvy and very knowledgeable about automated responses. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to cut corners just to save a little time.


Today’s customer is looking for a relationship with the people who run the businesses they frequent. They want to be treated like a valued person, not some nameless cipher on a bottom line.

Today’s customer is savvy, knows they are in control and holds the purchasing power that can make or break a business. There are ways around that, of course, but that’s a story for another day.

Automation works when it is meant to deliver information but not for relationship building.  That needs to be done one on one.  So how can you do both?

By letting your customers control the automation you let them have access to the information delivered automatically. You post regularly to educate and they will ask to get it automatically in a preferred format.RSS feeds are a good example of this. The client can register to receive the blog information in a preferred format delivered automatically to a place they designate.

Your customers will appreciate your efforts.  The law of reciprocity dictates that they return favour.  And they will.  Trust them.

Blog Policy II: the downside of blogging

Since last we talked about policy for posting comments and “The Ease of Blogging” it now seems to be appropriate to deal with what is not so much fun about blogging,  and  the inbound marketing approach to marketing in general. We have been “discovered” as a business and a blog according to our traffic numbers. The problem seems to be that some of those who have discovered us are spammers. This has made looking after, or administering our blog, an ordeal and has necessitated the installation of WordPress’ spamming plugin, Akismet, for starters.

For my money, the spammers are a good place to start making changes.  As of today anybody with a nonsense comment, a vague comment or a too much used I.P. address, a non, relevant name (parts of the business name or other trivial non-name entries), bogus emails etc., all the symptoms of spam, will not be posted.

Thankfully, Word Press provides the ability to adjudicate comments. The place to start is by activating the A kismet plugin provided by Word Press as a means to help. We’ve done that as of this morning. The spammers that have found us have progressed beyond the bogus email stage. We’ll have to see what comes of our action in terms of traffic. Regardless, the spammers just make the whole thing too unpredictable. Something has to give.

Make no mistake, we will make this site successful in spite of spammers. They have tools, but so do we. Spammers are not a reason not to pursue an inbound marketing strategy any more than rats, like the one in the graphic, should prevent anybody form pursuing any other business idea.

This is definitely a down aspect of starting an SEO effort like a blog, but the end results are worth the effort
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If you are one of the unfortunates that gets their comments sidetracked by mistake, hang in there and send us a clarification via comments or email. Thankfully, again, like most everything else in Word Press, most actions are reversible. The good news is that this is almost as bad as it can get and there are tools and people to help put it right. After all, the spammers found you. That’s good news. You’ve been found, which is what you are trying to accomplish, right?