Anything You Want:
40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur
– Derek Sivers – 2011
Develop a small group of loyal fans.
Gear your business towards pleasing a small group of people. It is hard to make a product or service that fits everyone, but if you find your niche, you will be able to make this small group of fans happy and loyal.
Business, Marketing
Question: How can you find a small group of fans that you cannot live without your products?
Inbound Marketing:
Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs
– Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah – 2009
Make your customers’ needs the center of your marketing messages.
People care about themselves and how your product will help them. The customer should be the focus, not the bells and whistles of your product or service. Create content that convinces your target audience that your product or service will make their life easier, better, or solve a problem they have.
Business, Marketing, Product
Question: What do customers in your industry care about?
Epic Content Marketing:
How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less
– Joe Pulizzi – 2013
Create content once and deliver it in all the formats your target market uses.
If you write a book on a topic, you can break the content into multiple pieces. You may create a video, blog posts, and podcasts from the content that you previously created for your book. This allows you to create it once but distributes it to your customers in their preferred media format.
Business, Marketing
Question: What content can you re-purpose?
Marketing to Women:
How to Increase Your Share of the World’s Largest Market
– Marti Barletta – 2003
Women make most household buying decisions and often look for different product attributes than men look for.
Traditionally, marketing norms have been set by men, even if men are not the target audience. Women often make the household decisions and marketers need to take this into consideration.
Business, Marketing, Product
Question: What are some products that men may not be great at marketing?
Hatching Twitter:
A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
– Nick Bilton – 2013
The legacy story of a business can change over time in the perception of the media.
The story involving the founding of Twitter has been shaped over time and in the perception of the public. Individual founders have each told their sides of the story and books, TV, movies and other media have helped shape what people think. What really happens and what is perceived are two different things, and in some cases, perception becomes more important for a brand than what really happened.
Business, Marketing
Question: What founding myths have you heard that may not be accurate?
Brand Real:
How Smart Companies Live Their Brand Promise and Inspire Fierce Customer Loyalty
– Laurence Vincent – 2012
A company’s brand is a collection of beliefs that a customer or group of customers hold.
When you think of the company Apple, this single word can trigger multiple ideas and feelings. You may think “innovative”, “cool”, “expensive” or “easy to use”. This collection of beliefs is what the Apple brand stands for in your mind.
Business, Marketing
Question: What collection of beliefs do you want your customers to hold about your business?
Brandwashed:
Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy
– Martin Lindstrom – 2011
Companies use predictable fears and psychological traits to sell products.
Humans are hardwired to be nostalgic. For example, a simple smell can influence shoppers. Marketing can be directed at new mothers who are worried about their children. These and many other predictable psychological influences are well understood by marketers and are used to help businesses sell products.
Business, Marketing, Psychology
Question: What are some predictable fears that customers may have?
Cashvertising:
How to Use More Than 100 Secrets of Ad-Agency Psychology to Make Big Money Selling Anything to Anyone
– Drew Eric Whitman – 2012
Social proof can help people feel they made a smart purchasing decision.
It is not always easy to know whether you are buying the right product. Knowing that other people have purchased it reduces anxiety during the purchasing process.
Business, Marketing, Psychology
Question: Where have you observed social proof being used?
Real-Time Marketing and PR:
How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now
– David Meerman Scott – 2011
The strategies that work in public relations have changed because of new technology and incentives.
The types of stories, their depth and the speed of delivery all have a bearing on how reporters work and what they are looking for in the next article or news piece. If you want to pitch your story to a reporter, you must understand the specific incentives of the organization or journalist and how the traditional rules regarding operations may have changed.
Business, Marketing, Media, PR
Question: What new incentives may journalists have that they would not have had 50 years ago?
Primalbranding:
Create Zealots for Your Brand, Your Company, and Your Future
– Patrick Hanlon – 2006
A brand’s values should match the target market’s values.
It is much easier to find a target audience that appreciates a company’s values than to change the customer’s values with the brand. If you sell organic local produce, it is more effective to target people that also think organic, fresh food is good. This is much easier than trying to change the kind of food people care about.
As you create your business, make sure that you understand what your target audience cares about or find an audience that already cares about your mission.
Business, Marketing
Question: What values does your business have? Does your target audience have these values too?
Brand Warfare:
10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand
– David F. D’Alessandro – 2001
Branding goes beyond the marketing department.
All parts of a company make up the brand, not just the logos, fonts, imagery and colors. How the phone is answered, what the hours of operation are, when the product is delivered and how easily problems are solved are all part of the brand of an e-commerce store that has nothing to do with the logo or website colors. It is the complete picture that a person holds in their head about the company
Companies can have multiple brand identities as well. A store may want to be a trendy place for customers, an efficient place for suppliers and a fun place for employees.
Business, Marketing
Question: What aspects of your business influence branding?
Demand:
Creating What People Love Before They Know They Want It
– Adrian Slywotzky and Karl Weber – 2011
There is no such thing as an average customer.
Creating personas and preparing different products or offerings for each type of customer is be better than providing a sub-par experience for an average customer. If half of your target audience likes short shorts and the other half likes long pants, providing only knickers will be a failed strategy.
Business, Marketing
Question: What are some of your business customers’ personas?
All Marketers Are Liars:
The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low Trust World
– Seth Godin – 2005
Marketing is about telling a story to people who are open to that story.
Make sure to target people who are open to what you want to say. This is much easier than changing their minds. Tell them a story about your product that fits their worldview. If you want to sell health food to one person with a vegan diet and one with a paleo diet, you may want to tell two different stories about health.
Business, Marketing
Question: What do the people who you market to already believe?
Yes!
50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion
– Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, Robert B. Cialdini – 2007
Other people’s behavior has an enormous impact on our behavior.
When infomercials change the words “operators are waiting, please call now” to “due to larger numbers of orders, operators may be busy” it changes the perception about a product people are viewing. They may think, “This product must be popular, I should get it before it is gone.” This change can help encourage people to choose the popular product as they do not want to miss out on a great deal that others must also think is a great deal. Changing the wording in your marketing efforts to show that other people want your product or service can shape how people think about it.
Business, Marketing, Psychology
Question: How can you demonstrate both scarcity and popularity in your marketing copy?
Free Marketing:
101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business, Online and Off
– Jim Cockrum – 2011
Influence the influencer and spend their social capital.
If you can get someone well-connected to recommend your product or service, you are spending the influencer’s social capital. This is why friends’, celebrities’, and experts’ endorsements are so valuable to marketers.
Business, Marketing
Question: How can you find someone with a lot of influence to promote your product or service?
Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead
What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History
– David Meerman Scott, Brian Halligan – 2010
Make loyal fans feel special.
Give them free items, special offers and make them feel as if they are part of the tribe. The loyal fans of any business or organizations are likely to be better customers and tell more people about your products or services. It is important to nurture this relationship and make sure they do not funnel their passion in some other direction.
Business, Marketing
Question: How can you make customers feel important?
Evergreen:
Cultivate the Enduring Customer Loyalty That Keeps Your Business Thriving
– Noah Fleming – 2015
Most people can only remember a few things about your company.
Choose one or two messages you want people to associate with your brand and make them very clear. If you offer the lowest-priced, fastest delivered and best-tasting pizza in town along with the healthiest options, funnest atmosphere and a donation to charity for every pizza ordered, customers will be confused about what your real brand value is.
Business, Marketing
Question: What do you want people to think about your business?
The New Rules of Marketing & PR
How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases & Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly
– David Meerman Scott – 2007
To go viral, you must create content that people will share.
Your content must inspire, entertain, be thought-provoking or fascinate the audience if you want them to share it. People want to look good if they post your content and want it to be easy to share as well. It is not easy to make something go viral but knowing this can help increase the odds.
Business, Marketing, Media
Question: How can you create content that people will want to share?
Delivering Happiness:
A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
– Tony Hsieh – 2013
Repeat customers and word-of-mouth can be examined as its own form of marketing.
The cost of unparalleled customer service can be paid back through the long-term value generated from repeat customers and word-of-mouth referrals. Instead of spending money on more marketing, you may receive a better return on your investment if you focus on great customer service. You can think of the extra expense as part of your marketing budget.
Business, Marketing
Question: How can you encourage both repeat and word-of-mouth business at less cost than paying for marketing?
Brand Real:
How Smart Companies Live Their Brand Promise and Inspire Fierce Customer Loyalty
– Laurence Vincent – 2012
A company’s brand is a collection of beliefs that a customer or group of customers hold.
When you think of Apple Computers, the single word can trigger many ideas and feelings. You may think “innovative, cool, expensive, easy to use and trendy.” The collection of beliefs about the company is the brand.
Business, Marketing
Question: What collection of beliefs do you want your company to stand for?
Media
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