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Monthly Archives: March 2012

5 Reasons Content Marketing is NOT Important

Content marketing is the new black. It’s everywhere. It’s necessary. It’s crucial to your business.

Tired of hearing about it yet?

Super. I’ve got five great reasons for you to ignore the stupor. Ready?

1. You don’t need any more clients.

Lucky you. You are thrilled with your work load and client list, have uber-optimized your relationships and are sittin’ pretty with what you’ve got. You get to ignore the content marketing whirlwind.

2. You don’t have a blog.

So why bother? You’re right, it’s a whole lotta trouble to get this content machine going. Better to stick with traditional newspaper advertising, cold-calling and list parsing.

3. You are not interested in educating the world.

Right. You’re in the business to sell stuff, not educate. Why give away valuable information? It seems like such a waste of time when, really, what you are after is the handshake and contract. What happened to features and benefits?

4. You have nothing to say.

Your product should speak for itself. Why should you spend your time giving people tips on how to use your product? Anyway, writing takes time and you have to think up things to say.

5. You don’t plan on staying in business much longer.

Perfect. You get a pass on content marketing while the rest of us compete to garner our prospects’ attention with valuable, appropriate and helpful content. Enjoy your nap and latte (make it a skinny, though–you aren’t burning too many calories as you shut down.)

So what do you think? Does content marketing have a place in your business marketing strategy?

If you are still stuck and wondering how to make this content marketing thing work, please call 530.638.3580 or email me. I’d love to help you formulate an effective plan. Click the tab on the side of the page and send me a note.

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Hobo Marketing: Six things panhandlers get very right.

19 Mar

“Hey Lady, can you spare a dollar? I need to feed my kids.”

In my town, panhandlers have become fixtures. I’m not a huge fan of their blight to small business who spend precious time shooing them away. Regardless, whether you deem them a nuisance or not, it seems they’ve landed on some marketing genius through real life marketing research.

Old fashioned marketing “best practices” still work and this schismatic group has proved these six low-tech marketing principles work:

Location, location, location.Successful panhandlers choose the busiest and most visible intersections.
Look for opportunity. Panhandlers who target bank exits benefit from loose cash in either direction. They choose intersections based on traffic flow and switch corners to gain the most exposure. How can we position ourselves to capture our clients at the moment they need us most?
Face time. Panhandlers do not hide behind social media. They have not forgotten that real, face time is always more effective than an electronic image. Do our customers really know who we are?
Message is everything. The more compelling your message, the more effective it will be.
Identify and solve a need. We need to identify our customer’s need and help them solve it. Panhandlers are aware that many of us are reluctant to end our day void of a good deed. They provide the solution.
Call to action. Panhandlers are not shy about closing the sale. They are specific about how they would like you to respond.