Apr 09
I don’t usually lift a post in its entirety but this one from 37 Signals is priceless:
“A few George Patton quotes:
“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”
“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”
“If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results.”
“Battle is an orgy of disorder.”
“Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.”
“I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.”
“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”
“Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.”
“Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.”
“Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.”
“The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!”“
Apr 09
Seth Godin, marketing guru and savant of small things, writes about how inbound calls are the most important and most ignored aspect of marketing. I couldn’t agree more.
We did an SEO/SEM campaign for a client that was completely focused on developing highly qualified inbound leads. The criteria was simple: Get potential customers to visit their site, then pick up the phone and call for more information. A secondary goal was an email request.
One of my first actions in planning this was to call the number on the website and experience what a prospect encounters… and it was not good. First, a person did not answer- I got a phone tree. My options did not clearly include ‘talk to a rep’ as the first option. When I did get to that option, I got voicemail.
A new customer for this business is worth 5-6 figures minimum revenue in the first year. Many become long term partners. An inbound call is a serious indicator of interest yet this otherwise savvy business was placing impediments every step of the way for that caller.
Our response was that before we even work on lead gen, they needed to dedicate a phone line and a live person to answer that line 24/7. This can be done with a call center whose script is to determine the caller’s physical location and connect them with the appropriate sales rep for that territory. The sales rep is trained that calls from this source are serious prospects that must be contacted within hours, at the latest (leads are time sensitive and rapidly get stale, often within hours).
Even before the lead gen work was done this change made a significant difference in sales volume. As much as I believe in the power of online marketing, the power of great service is far more important. Put the two together and things will explode.
Apr 07
I am a bit mystified by the hoopla over pizza.com going for 2.6 million dollars. I think the buyer got a major bargain. The current site isn’t much of anything and probably makes some money but revenues are not what this is all about. This is a brand issue even though it is a generic type-in domain.
If I ran one of the major pizza chains I’d spend a lot more than this to keep this out of my competitor’s hands. The person or company that owns a domain like this owns the gateway to a global pizza business. The URL is unforgettable and a major ad campaign could be built around it, a campaign with longevity and flexibility.
Somewhere in the pizza marketing world heads should be rolling for letting this thing go for a bargain price.
Apr 06
Viral marketing is truly guerrilla marketing as this guest post from Techcrunch shows. If you post videos on YouTube it is a must read.
2008 is going to be the year that revenue from online video explodes. I have a friend whose 18 year-old daughter’s music videos have been viewed millions of times. She made them at college and they are just her playing guitar, ukelele and singing original music.
Does she make money at this? She is selling 15-20 CDs daily at ten bucks each (they cost around $.50 each to have made). Because those buying are big fans they often put extra money in the envelope as a gift. She has serious interest from several major record labels and is opening for Ben Folds on tour. Because of the rapid change in the music business she may not need a record label.
That’s viral power…