Marketing in the Time of Cholera
Fundamentals For Thriving in a Toxic Economy
I’m a PC….. I’m Clueless
It must be great to have so much money coming in that you don’t have to have effective advertising. All over the BART station in San Francisco I use, Microsoft has advertisements that say “I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea”. Now I realize this advertising is meant to create awareness and Microsoft can certainly do that easily but what the heck are they thinking in Redmond? I have never been impressed with Microsoft’s marketing. They try to be so cutsie that you don’t even know what the intent is? My personal perspective is that this advertising campaign is horrid. Are they trying to say they listened to what people wanted and that’s what this release is about? Candidly, I don’t want the people in the ads to have created my operating system. I want a group of hyper intelligent forward thinking people who understand reliability and usability to have the idea for my next OS. Not a bunch of average schmoes (which I am one) to have the idea. I’m sure millions was spent analyzing what they should say and how to win back all the people who are disillusioned in Microsoft products. However, it’s the same as it ever was. If Microsoft spent has as much time over-delivering instead of overthinking, I think they would serve themselves well.
Focus on the Phase
Currently at work we are about to release a new website with new messaging. It’s interesting the number of ways you can be distracted into all sorts of pursuits that are not relevant to what you need to do. Today someone brought up the idea that we need to find a way to get all the varying types of conversations we support up on our website. I took them through the sales process again and they agreed it was not our main focus. Sure, could we find time on this area that is interested in helping prove we are the right solution? Sure. But it would distract from generating more interest in our products. You have limited resources and need to focus where you will get the biggest benefit.
Not Freemium – Goldenrulesque
A friend and colleague, Dwyane Melancon, wrote a post on his blog about Marketing in the Time of Cholera. It’s interesting because he wonders why I don’t ask for email addresses on my book. The bottom line is that the goal of the book is not to make money….. but to just help people. Thus, I’m not trying to use a Freemium model or anything like that. I guess it’s more of a goldenrulesque approach. Help people out and good things will come your way…. and if not, who cares. 
Or put better by Mr Dickens a while ago:
“‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
Mr Marley Giving Advice
Infectious
Someone downloaded the book and I asked them how it was and their response was “infectious”. Very cute.
A Blog, A Blog, My Kingdom for a Blog
It’s funny that my website designer left me high and dry without a functioning blog. What to do? What to do? Well I am hoping as I get a few more people to the site that we can drive some good content. Lots of people discussing how to improve their marketing….. tough times for many.
Recession Going Away?
I had someone ask me if I am worried about my book coming out soon with the recession coming to an end. The first think I told them is that I think the fundamentals that the book is focusing on are still applicable during any economic time but are more useful in a recession. Second, I question whether we are coming out of the recession. Put another way, if we are coming out of the recession, I think everyone needs to brace for the recovery. Seems like many companies are still challenged by the economic times we are in and the need for good solid marketing is not going away anytime soon.
Website Comes Alive
Well the MITTOC website is starting to take form. Still needs a few functional things but the overall look is very attractive and simple. Greg Johnson at Bustatheme has done a great job, even if it took a while for us to get to this point.
Now if I can just practice what I preach in the book and keep the text simple and relevant……..
Good and Best
My friend Suzanne commented this week that good today is better than better tomorrow. Obviously this is a play on the adage “best is the enemy of good enough”.
I am a big believer that the smaller the company, the more it should attempt to use this as a guiding light. I’m not saying to be reckless, but I think moving fast is the main advantage in marketing that a small company has….. so use it.
Those who can’t move fast usually are embroiled with the true enemy…… fear.
Does God Need Twitter?
I read this recent article.
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090728/wr_nm/us_britain_tweet_life_2
It’s sort of interesting from a marketing perspective. What are they really trying to do? What’s the core issue?
Interesting to watch old school practices attempt to figure out what new technologies mean.
Revision Messaging
Had a successful messaging session at my last day of work at the company I was consulting. We were able to change their messaging which should be reflected on the website this next week. This will go a long way towards solving the issue of confusion around what the company does. There were many debates, such as whether the word “rich” was useful or not. It was decided it was a useful word, albeit vague.
It’s amazing how passionate people are about messaging. It’s a horribly difficult thing to create good messaging, mainly because everyone has an opinion and the concepts are usually very subjective. It’s always interesting to see how everyone comes at problems from a different perspective.
