marketing

Pyro Marketing by Greg Stielstra is a marketing book based on the idea that if you promote your product to the people most likely to buy, then give them the right experience, your public will sell your product or service for you.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the book on a number of detail items, the guy has a pretty good premise. And I started thinking about his four step process for “pyro-marketing.”

Again, I saw things a little differently. Here’s my idea as to what the four step process should be to market effectively today in a world awash in ineffective advertising:

Internet marketing “gurus” are like ants on a sugar cube.There are hundreds of them swarming all over the Internet. And the vast majority of them are full of crap.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there are some people out there who really know their stuff. But how do you tell whether you’re going to get a first class, up to date education in Internet Marketing or sold a bunch of old tired “tricks” that haven’t worked for years or are rehashes of off-line marketing ideas?

Here’s my bullshit detector:

Who are their testimonials from?

That may seem like a strange headline for a blog that’s supposed to be about small business marketing, search engine optimization, online marketing and copywriting. Believe it or not, it has everything to do with all of these things.

This was the headline for a marketing postcard we received from Surdyk’s Liquor & Cheese Shop. It had a picture of a housewife circa maybe 1958, with a glass of champagne. We liked it so much we put it on the refrigerator.

The sub-heading at the bottom of the postcard read:

“If you’re going to steal, rob a bank, not a grocery store.”

I read this quote many years ago in a magazine article that chronicled the career of General Motors Chief Designer Bill Mitchell. Bill was a car designer with General Motors who worked his way up the ranks to Chief Designer at Chevrolet in the Fifties and then Chief Designer for all of General Motors in the Sixties.

Bill was the man responsible for the “split-window” in the famous ‘63 Corvette. Bill oversaw and approved the designs for many of the striking and exciting cars that rolled out of GM’s divisions in the Fifties and Sixties (the cars collectors are coveting today).

I received this in the Entireweb Newsletter today. While it belabors (to me) the obvious, it makes a very good point that all small businesses need to learn but never seem to get:

Be Unique
Make sure your visual marketing is as distinct and individual as your organization. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you see (or hear) a commercial for an automobile dealership? There seems to be an unwritten rule that they must all be loud and overbearing. You know which spots we’re talking about: 20 font styles with 20 different colors; flashing, flying and spinning video and graphics; and an extremely loud voiceover. Does the similarity of these commercials help one dealership stand out from the others?The same holds true for visual communication efforts that use templates, clip art, or overused formats. You deserve a visual presence that is as unique as your organization. Don’t follow the crowd–rise above it!

I was amazed by how many of the booths at the Business After Hours were really badly set up. The most basic tenets of trade show booth design were completely ignored by most of the small and mid-sized businesses there. The interesting thing is, most of them made the same mistakes that small businesses make on all their marketing materials, including websites.

One of the things that good marketing materials (including websites and show booths) should do is weed out the people you don’t want to talk to. How many times have you been at a show and watched people go by because you were talking to someone that turned out to be a waste of your time? Don’t put the name of your company at the top of your show panel.