All You Need Is A Good Idea!

Out Of Date

I liked this sign promoting the new issue of the Zagat survey restaurant guide. But it got me thinking of dinosaurs.

Which is what I think their print issue is, or will soon become. Though it is the most recent edition, it is already out of date, since restaurants have opened, closed, hired new chefs, etc. since it was printed. The Internet offers easier access, more up to date restaurant guides, food blogs, foodie discussions, actual menus featuring diner opinions and links to restaurant web sites than any print edition can hope to match. And most are free. (Zagat online is an exception; it requires a paid subscription.)

Okay. Enough about Zagat. What about you? Where are you on the endangered species list? And what are you going to do about it? Do your products feature the latest technology? Are you offering 512M flash drives in an 8 gigabyte world? Do you have a phone tree for customer service that has more pushes than a cold blackjack table in Vegas?

And is your marketing antediluvian? Are you taking advantage of modern selling tools, podcasts, social networking, pay per click? They may not be right for you, but you should at least be aware of them, their strengths and weaknesses. Sure, they are just the mechanics, and you still need to first have your good idea. But aside from the classic cocktail, old-fashioned is not where you want to be.

Seth Godin's Tribe

Seth Godin is the main marketing guru, and has written more books on marketing than I have read in total the past year. Though I have never met him, I have seen him speak on TED, follow his blog every day, have always been very impressed with his energy, style and insights, and am always jealous when I go to a bookstore and see his many facings in the marketing section nestled near my solitary spine.

Yet I am puzzled. He recently announced, on his blog, his formation of a  members-only "Tribe."   It is, and I quote, "A tribe for marketers, for leaders, for those focused on building communities or creating products or spreading ideas. This online community will live on a site we've created that will feature blogs, forums, social networking, comments, photos, videos and a job board. And it's by invitation only until October. Spots are limited and early members get privileges and bragging rights."

Okay, seems interesting, has all the right marketing calls to action, such as invitation only, exclusive, limited time, only on my blog, for leaders, privileges for early enrollment. But I share a concern that was also mentioned on MediaBistro/Agency Spy.  As Seth points out, "It's not about selling more books, of course, it's about creating a small hurdle to get the right people in the door."

Well, it seems to be that someone as marketing savvy and intelligent as Seth could have figured out a method of creating a small hurdle that did not involve purchasing his book, if it were really not about selling more books. And the fact that he thought it necessary to say it was not about selling more books, even adding "of course," reinforces to me that it is about selling more books.

It may be a great way to do it, and another wonderful Seth marketing idea. And the Tribe might be a fantastic community. But couldn't the hurdle be a contribution to a charity?  Or the title page from one of his previous books? Or, well, Seth is better at this than I am. But I somehow feel these are the types of comments Seth would make if he saw the same  idea and hurdle on someone else's blog. What do you think?

I have been selected by Alltop!

  Alltop is, to quote from their press release: a news aggregation site that provides “all the top” stories for forty of the most popular topics on the Web. The headlines and first paragraph of the five most recent stories from forty to eighty sources for each topic are displayed. Alltop stories are refreshed approximately every ten minutes. You can read more about it on Guy Kawasaki's (he created it) blog.

My blog, yes the very same one you are now reading, has been chosen to be included in two topic areas, Marketing and Small Business. Of course, if you are reading this now, there is little reason for you to go to Alltop to read it again. But there are so many other topics, that you might want to pay a visit to their homepage. If you do decide to go to the Marketing and/or Small Business listings, you will have to really scroll down, and down, to find mine, since they seem to list the blogs in order of their having joined, rather than the much more practical and appealing alphabetical method, which works so much better for, well, me.

If you have a blog that you think might benefit from being on Alltop, check it out. Of course, (sorry Guy), it may turn out to be a big nothing, and people may not want to visit the site but rather stick to the more passive RSS feeds. Or they may play well together. Too early to tell, since Alltop is just about as new as my blog is, and the jury is still out on that.

One point about rushing to join the newest things. I have asked a bunch of business owners if they have joined Linkedin, and they have all said yes. When I asked them what they got out of it, they all hesitated, and couldn't name a real benefit that they had yet found. (In fact, my personal slogan for Linkedin is, "Many have joined. Few Know why"). I am sure that there are many real Linkedin benefits, but they may accrue to a fortunate group who know how to get what they want out of it, rather than those who regard invitations to join as a measure of their popularity.

But having said all that, I am somehow delighted to be listed on Alltop.I have visited it, found it useful and interesting, and wish it, and me, the best of luck.

Not So Fast

A colleague told me this story, which is worth passing on. He represented a graphic design firm, and was busy selling a prospective client, who suddenly asked him if he had done any work with trade shows. Peter couldn't wait to convince the prospect how much experience he had with trade shows, from booth design to trade show fliers to creating pre-show mailers to show promotions to unusual banners and displays, to, well, Peter ended by stating that trade shows were one of his specific areas of expertise.

Then Peter asked the question he should have asked first, which was, "Why do you ask?" The prospect's answer was basically that he had had some  experience attending trade shows, and just didn't see any real value in them for him.

If Peter had asked the "Why do you ask" question before he started spouting off, he would have given a very different answer. But like so many of us he got caught up in the quest to look good, and made a logical, though erroneous, assumption as to what the prospect was really asking. And his subsequent backtracking didn't help him close the deal either.

So when you are in the selling zone, adrenalin pumping, brain clicking and you can practically answer questions before they are asked, it may be a good idea to take a deep breath. And then another. It may slow your responses down, but it still takes less time than it does to remove your foot from your mouth.