keithmonaghan.com » Viral Marketing

The Funniest Lawyer Ad You’ll See Today

Keith Monaghan — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:07:30 +0000

The gang at Trolman, Glaser & Lichtman law firm in New York get it. Playing against the stereotype of stuffy, humorless law firms kind of makes you want to hire them, doesn’t it?

Can’t see the embedded video? Click here.See also:

Context Sells: Why Hands-On is the Best Marketing

Keith Monaghan — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:22:23 +0000

So, you have a great product and passionate customers. Congratulations. But how do you grow that precious customer base? Recruit new customers and spread the passion for your product?

Well, if you’re glassybabby, maker of beautiful one of a kind hand-made glass votives, you let people rent your product for their wedding reception or party and then return it.

Wait, what?

That’s right. It doesn’t work for every product, but it works for glassybaby. Here’s why:

Show Them, Don’t Tell Them

How many times have you heard companies tell you how great their product is? “Our widget is the best blah, blah, blah!”. You probably stopped listening before they finished the pitch. And rightly so, studies show most consumers tune out advertising.

By letting potential customers actually use your product they will immediately grasp its benefits without having to be told a thing. That’s Context, the setting in which your product can be fully understood. And it’s why glassybaby’s renting of their votives is a smart idea.

They could tell us how beautiful they’re votives are but, let’s face it, only by seeing them in person can one appreciate their glimmering beauty. And if I can try them out risk free, all the better.

I don’t know about you, but after a few glasses of wine surrounded by several hundred happy, celebrating people, I’d buy a few. I’d even tell some people about them.

The bottom line: Don’t tell me how great your product is, show me. Don’t bombard me with a list of features, let me discover them. I’ll remember how great your product is long after I’ve walked away, perhaps long enough to realize how much I want one. It’s basic stuff, but it’s powerful.

Could It Be Even Better?

glassybaby’s rental program is an example of great word-of-mouth marketing. They’ve figured out a way to get their product in front of large groups of people so they can see it in context: at a wedding reception, function or party, beautifying a space. Even better, their customers are doing the work for them by showing off the product in action.

But how could they extend their Context strategy even more? A few ideas:

Give non-profits free votive rental for their fund raising events.
Free glassybaby for the bride when she rents them for her reception.
Discount for romantic restaurants (and a display card on the table next to the glassybaby).

The big questions: How can you put your product in context for customers? How can you let them discover how great your product is on their own? Leave a comment or email blog at keithmonaghan dot com.

Thanks for reading.

See also:

5 Steps to Better Marketing

Keith Monaghan — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:53:07 +0000

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What makes a marketing campaign great? It’s the Big Question we all ask ourselves and, for what it’s worth, I have a partial answer.

Here are five things that are often overlooked by marketers but, done properly, can turn any campaign into a smashing success.

1. Start With a Better Product

Think your product is too boring to be great? Don’t tell that to the folks at the Sherwin-Williams. They revolutionized the retail paint industry by designing a paint can with an easy twist-off lid, comfortable side handle and no-drip spout. Oh, and it’s square to maximize shelf space. How’s that for making a boring product great?

It’s a lot easier to sell people a product that answers their needs–even needs they may not be aware of–than trying to convince them to buy an average or poorly designed one.

Consider this quote from Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. A master marketer if ever there was one:

It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. We just want to make great products. — Steve Jobs, Fortune Magazine

2. Be Clear

How many times have you watched a commercial and wondered what it was trying to sell? Quite a few, I’m willing to bet. How many campaigns have you created that did the same thing? Come on, be honest. We’ve all done it.

It’s easy to become blinded by the opinions of insiders, technology or the latest marketing trend and end up creating something that, while obscurely clever, fails to successfully market your product.

Some experts argue such campaigns are justified as “brand extension” or “customer experience”. Maybe. I say you’re better off creating a campaign that makes it easy for customers to understand what is great about your product why they should buy it.

A good example is this ad for Buckley’s Cough Syrup:

Funny, to the point, and it gets the message across. No list of unpronounceable ingredients, no baffling conceptual art, just a statement of the obvious: “It tastes awful”, followed by a gutsy claim: “And it works”. The TV commercials are brilliant too. Clear is always better than clever.

3. Design Better

The average American is exposed to between 200 and 3,000 ads per day. If it’s going to cut through the clutter, a marketing campaign better convey your message quickly, clearly and powerfully. That means good design.

Badly designed campaigns can damage an otherwise healthy brand by creating doubt in a customer’s mind about you, your product and your company. If you can’t get your marketing together then why should they buy your product?

By way of example: What would happen if Microsoft redesigned Apple’s famously understated packaging for the iPod? Watch the video below to find out. It’s not pretty. Good design matters. A lot.

Can’t see the embedded video? Click here.

4. Improve Customer Service

What does customer service have to do with a great marketing campaign? Well, if the campaign succeeds people will be making purchases, calling and emailing you with questions and, heaven forbid, experiencing problems.

It’s not sexy or trendy but great customer service can produce better results than any PR or marketing initiative, not to mention happy and loyal customers (and you need those more than ever right now).

Give them a great story to spread about how effortless the purchase was, about how well you took care of them and how quickly you solved their problem. The word will spread, I promise. Great word-of-mouth is priceless marketing and good customer service is an easy way to make it happen.

For some interesting examples of both good and bad customer service, check out my podcast “Marketing in Tough Times – Improving Customer Service“.

5. Remember, Your Customers are Human

Sure, treating customers as a faceless mass of numbers has it’s upside: it makes things like accounting, valuation and profit analysis easier.

But this industrial revolution mentality has its limits in today’s hyper-connected world. With the social web, we’ve moved beyond the simplistic concept of an individual mass of customers to customers as a mass of individuals. As a result, learning how humans work, specifically your humans, can reap enormous rewards.

Case in point, the following quote from John Medina’s book, Brain Rules:

“We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.”

In short: learn how humans work and develop your message accordingly. Your efforts will be rewarded.

What other steps can businesses take to improving marketing? What would you add to this list? Leave a comment or email blog at keithmonaghan dot com.

Thanks for reading.See also:

Reality Check: How Augmented Reality Will Change Your Business

Keith Monaghan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:09:18 +0000

“I reject your reality and substitute my own.” — Adam Savage, host, Mythbusters.

Imagine walking down the street and spotting a pair of fancy shoes in a store window. You really like those shoes so you point your cell phone at them. It immediately tells you that a store two blocks down carries the same shoes at a lower price. Cool, you think, so you touch your phone’s screen and up pops a map that guides you, in real time, to the other store where you purchase your awesome shoes, saving a few bucks, and go on your way.

It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. You can see it at work in the video above in which a phone pointed at the Amsterdam skyline immediately shows which houses are for sale. (Can’t see the video? Click here.)

Awesome, isn’t it? It’s called Augmented Reality and it’s coming very soon to a smart phone near you. In fact, it is available right now for phones running Google’s Android operating system (Layar) and phone maker Nokia is currently beta testing its Point and Find system in the US and UK.

What does this have to do with marketing your business? Everything.

If you’ve paid attention to technology and the web over the years you probably know that you as a business are not in control. You never were. There is no stopping negative reviews online, only dealing with them honestly and head-on. The best strategy is to make a great product and reach out to people who will hopefully spread the word. That’s lack of control if I’ve ever heard it.

The Bad News

Augmented Reality is lack of control on steroids.

Now I can just point my phone at the front of your restaurant and see your reviews and health board rating. No more wasted time digging around on the web to see what others are saying about you. Everything about you now comes to my phone quickly and effortlessly. I can decide on the spot whether or not to eat at your place.

Or I could scan the conference floor with my phone, identify you, and see those embarrassing pictures on Facebook or that nasty twitter fight you had with a customer. I’ll know your dirty little secrets before we ever shake hands. If you’re smart, you’ll look for mine too.

And that shoe buying scenario I described earlier? It’s not possible yet, but it will be very soon. Retailers should be shaking in their boots.

Scary, eh? Sure, but only for the unprepared. And you’re definitely not one of them. Augmented Reality stands to be a very powerful tool in the hands savvy marketers.

The Good News

There is huge potential to engage customers and extend brands with Augmented Reality. Admittedly, the Wow Factor is a major part of the impact these campaigns will make, but I believe that with care they can be developed into highly effective marketing tools. A few ideas:

Digital ads or promotions that “appear” on the front of your building and are only visible through the screen of a phone.
Beautiful high-def pictures of your food on the gadgets of passersby when they scan your restaurant (coupons too).
Give customers who hold your product up to their computer’s web cam special access to exclusive online content like music, e-books and downloads.
Get people together and talking by providing Social Networking info on local customers who also love your products (opt-in, of course).
Finally, check out video of Disney and GE’s impressive early efforts with AR on YouTube: Disney’s Nightastic and GE’s Wind Turbine campaign.

Conclusion

Augmented Reality is here and I believe it’s going to be hugely popular in the near future, it’s just not widely distributed yet. But it will be. Now is the time to get ahead of the trend and start thinking about how you can best use it for your product and situation.

After the hype has died down I suspect we’ll find that the best way to use AR to market our businesses is the same as it’s always been: have a great product, be genuine, add value and, most importantly, remember that there are humans at the other end of the technology.

What do you think? How will Augmented Reality affect business? How can it be used for marketing? Leave a comment or email blog at keithmonaghan dot com.

Thanks for reading.See also:

Marketing in Tough Times: Improving Customer Service

Keith Monaghan — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:45:51 +0000

Join me as I explore the ideas in the e-book Marketing in Tough Times – 20 No-Cost Ideas in a new podcast that’s loaded with insight, case studies and interviews. The Marketing in Tough Times podcast is a quick, irreverent examination of what it takes to successfully market your business in this challenging economy. Tough times never last, but tough (and resourceful) marketers do.

In this episode: How United Airlines blew it big time and what Apple and Weber understand about customer service that many companies don’t.

Listen now:

Download audio file (ImprovingCustomerService.mp3)

Download: “Improving Customer Service” (.mp3/14MB/10 Min.)

Embedded player not working? Listen here.See also:

Social Media Marketing in 30 Minutes a Day

Keith Monaghan — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:20:04 +0000

Listen to this post:
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Social media is more than just feel good PR, the numbers show that it’s good business and an increasingly important part of a larger communication strategy.

If you believe, as I do, that all marketing is ultimately word-of-mouth, then spending a few minutes a day on social media makes sense.

Yes, you say, I’m aware of that, Mr. Marketing Guy, but I have a real job and a boss and deadlines to meet. Who has the time to friend and tweet?

You do. The secret: start small and stay highly focused.

In just thirty minutes a day you can participate in the communities that want to hear from you, listen for talk about your company or product and work some social media magic.

First Things First

First, get smart. Spend a few minutes reading these thoughts on Social Media and business. Even better, spend a few days searching out and reading a dozen more.

Jeremiah Owyang on Social Media Marketing [SlideShare]
5 Things You Need to Know About Social Media Marketing and PR [Page One PR]
Can Marketing Be Conversational? [Doc Searls]
Intel Social Media Guidelines [Intel]

Then, learn how to track the results. Contrary to the hype, Social Media marketing is not about “Return on Interest” or “Return on Influence”, in the business world it’s “Return on Investment” or die.

You need measurable results, so spend a little time learning how to track and interpret what happens with your Social Media efforts. Here are a few excellent articles to get you started.

Defining Social Media ROI Once and For All [The BrandBuilder Blog]
How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business [Mashable]
Social Media ROI [SlideShare]
Social Media ROI [Scribd]

The Strategy

The secret to Social Media in thirty minutes a day is simple: start small, limit your options, use the tools a few minutes a day. That’s it.

My suggestion is to use only three Social Media tools at a time: a blog, the current hot Social Media site (as of this writing, Twitter), and an online community specific to your industry or product (if it doesn’t exist you have an opportunity to create one).

For example, a corporation might use a company blog>twitter>online community, posting news, updates and resources on their blog and responding to talk about their products on twitter and in the online community.

A retailer or restaurant could use twitter>yelp>brightkite, sending news and coupons via twitter, responding to reviews on yelp and using brightkite to send offers to their customers’ cell phones as they pass by on the street (seriously cool).

A wine shop might try a blog>twitter>corkd, blogging about wine and posting reviews, twittering special offers, recommendations and wine news and discussing wine with fellow oenophiles on corkd.

You’ll notice the retailer/restaurant example does not have a blog. That’s OK, they’re doing what works for them, which is exactly the point.

Now grab a fresh, steaming hot cup of your favorite caffeinated beverage and let’s get started.

The Routine

Blog: 15 Minutes a Day

Your online anchor. All of your Social Media tools point here, where there is more space for fleshing out ideas and communicating. Spend 15 minutes a day posting news, special offers, product updates, tutorials and resources, maybe even what’s happening inside the company. Nothing to post? Spend your time drafting ideas. 15 minutes a day means 1 hour and 15 minutes every work week to write something great. Here are two guides to help you get started with business blogging:

10 Tips for Becoming a Great Corporate Blogger [Scout Blogging]
A Guide to Corporate Blogging [ProBlogger]

Twitter: 5 Minutes a Day

The current Social Media darling is where the hyper-social hang out, but the web interface lacks the features to make it truly powerful. Consider using twitter management software like seesmic, tweetdeck or HootSuite. What to do? Set up and monitor a search for your company, reply to mentions of your product, and frequently retweet relevant ideas, giving credit and props. Reply, interact, build, engage.

If you’re new to Twitter here are several great articles on how to use it for business:

Twitter 101 for Business [Twitter]
50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business [Chris Brogan]
Newbie’s Guide to Twitter [CNET]

Community: 10 Minutes a Day

There are many out there, Yelp, facebook, beebo, seesmic, jaiku, LinkedIn, MySpace, superfan, etc. The plethora of choices is a good thing, in this case, because more than likely there is an online community for your business, whatever it is. In the travel biz? Try Passportstamp. Game developer? Wakoopa. You get the idea. Here’s a big ol’ list to get you started.

More ideas on business and online communities:

10 Best Practices of Business Networking [About]
Four Ways Social Networking Can Build Business [bnet]

Conclusion

This plan is a starting point, adjust the times and tools as you see fit and use the sites that make the most sense for you. You know your situation best. Measure consistently. Tweak accordingly. Repeat daily.

Remember, Social Media Marketing is about your space, not your product. It’s about how you can empower users, highlight others work and bring something of value to the community and to your customers. Business will follow. Seriously.

One more thing, many of these sites have search functions that allow you to set up and monitor keywords like your product or company. Use them. (Or as Chris Brogan puts it: Grow big ears.)

Good luck and let me know how you adapt this strategy to your situation. I’d love to hear about it in the comments or drop me and email at blog at keithmonaghan dot com.

Thanks for reading.See also:

Recession Marketing Japanese Style: 100 Small Improvements

Keith Monaghan — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:48:16 +0000

How an American Idea Adopted by the Japanese Can Help You Market Better Right Now.

Times are tough, budgets are tight and everyone has an opinion about what to do when it comes to recession marketing.

But what can you do if your marketing budget is nonexistent?

I’ve written about no-cost marketing ideas before (see 10 Ideas for Free Marketing in Tough Times and its sequel or download the e-book). But there is another way that requires little or no money and can dramatically improve your odds of success.

It’s so effective that it is practiced by business leaders like Jeff Bezos of Amazon and entire corporations like Toyota.

The Japanese call it Kaizen. It basically means making small, continuous improvements and it works exceptionally well. You may recognize it as a famous quote:

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. — Lao Tzu

Kaizen originated in America as the idea of “continuous improvement”. General MacArthur’s occupation forces took it to Japan after WWII to rebuild the devastated country.

Having been defeated by superior equipment and technology, the Japanese embraced the idea and, in the following years, rocketed their productivity to unheard of levels.

What does this have to do with marketing during a recession? Everything.

You may not have the budget or management buy-in for a new campaign, but by making 10, 20 or 100 easy little changes to existing marketing campaigns & initiatives you can dramatically improve their messaging and response rates. Result: better branding and greater ROI for minimal effort at little or no cost.

A few Ideas:

Edit the copy on your web site so it motivates visitors to take action.
Find better images for that brochure you hand out at conventions at iStockphoto.
Call your best customers and thank them for their business.
Fine tune a presentation into a masterpiece of persuasion.
Make it easier to opt-out. Seriously easy.
Learn how to write better blog posts.
Fix that nagging little product feature. You know the one.

Great change is made through small steps and, in tough times, small steps may be all you have. That’s good news because through constant small changes you can have a very large impact. What improvements can you make right now?

Don’t Read This, Read That

Keith Monaghan — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:06:43 +0000

Busy with projects and random business. In the mean time, please enjoy these marketing articles from around the web:

Major companies like PepsiCo, General Mills and McDonalds are turning to nostalgia marketing in hopes that warm, fuzzy feelings about the past will help make people feel better about the present and future. Good luck with that. [NYTimes]
A raging debate over the future of online advertising. I won’t spoil it for you, but if your site is ad-supported things are going to get interesting in the near future. [TechCrunch]
Nice piece of marketing by the producers of the new Star Trek movie: have a major cast member from the original series surprise unsuspecting fans with a showing hours before the international opening. Twitter nearly explodes with excitement. Well played. [Wired]
Lastly, something good for the soul: 10 Swoon-Worthy Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. [delish]

See also:

New E-Book: Marketing in Tough Times – 20 No-Cost Ideas

Keith Monaghan — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:40:22 +0000

You know what’s great about the Internet? I mean besides hulu.

For me, it’s putting my work on the Interwebs and hearing from people who find it useful.

I was lucky enough to have that happen with two posts of mine. They’ve been modest hits. Thank you to everyone who read them and responded.

I’ve updated both posts and combined them in a new free e-book about spreading the word without spending any cash: Marketing in Tough Times – 20 No-Cost Ideas. (Direct download here or read it on Scribd).

Give it a read. If you like it, feel free to forward it to someone who could use it, print it out and give it away at a convention or your local coffee shop, or post it on your web site or blog. I’d appreciate it. (And you’ll look like the resourceful and savvy marketer that you are.)

Want more? The new e-books page at KeithMonaghan.com is chock full of great e-books about marketing, courtesy of ChangeThis. All thought provoking. All free to download, read, and share. Check it out.

And thanks for reading.See also:

10 More Ideas for Free Marketing in Tough Times

Keith Monaghan — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:33:37 +0000

If you enjoy this article, please check out my free e-book: Marketing In Tough Times – 20 No-Cost Ideas to help you engage customers and spread the word without spending any money.

My post, “10 Ideas for Free Marketing in Tough Times“, received a decent response both here and over at Marketing 2.0. Thank you for reading, I deeply appreciate it.

So, how to follow that modest success? Why, with “10 More Ideas for Free Marketing in Tough Times”, of course.

After ingesting even more tea and thinking about no-cost marketing further, ten additional ideas sprang to mind to help you engage customers even if your budget has been slashed by the current economic chaos. Of course, your mileage may vary.

As with the previous ten, these ideas range from basic tactics to high level strategies, but what they all have in common is that the only cost to implement them is time and effort.

And if you have any ideas of your own to share, please leave them in the comments, I’ll gather them into a future mega-post of free marketing ideas. (Be sure to provide a site link so I can give you proper credit).

Even better: start a list on your own blog. Let’s grow this list to 50 or 100 no-cost marketing ideas. This could be fun.

On to the ideas:

1. Follow Up After the First Purchase – Number 10 in the previous list was “Let Customers Know You Appreciate Them“. Good advice, but it was focused on existing customers. I’d like to amend that: It’s important to let new customers know you appreciate them too. And because they’re new, you have a unique opportunity to ask them how they discovered you, what they thought of the sales/set-up process, and how you can help them further while it’s fresh in their mind. Oh, yeah, make sure they know you’re glad to have them aboard.

2. Set up a Company Blog – Many companies are making great use of blogs. Amazon uses a variety of blogs to cross market products. The CEO of Zappos keeps investors and customers up to date via his blog. Even Fortune 500 companies understand the value of engaging customers through blogs. Start by having the free, open source, and highly popular WordPress installed on your site, then do your homework. Here are two guides to help you find the right tone and strategy: 10 Tips for Becoming a Great Corporate Blogger, and Problogger’s Guide to Corporate Blogging.

3. Give Away e-books – You probably have enough blog posts, white papers, interviews, and collateral lying around to create a great e-book to give away to customers and prospects. The trick: make it relevant and valuable. Maybe a simple How-To guide or analysis of your market. Maybe something more in-depth. You know what your customers need. Just make it interesting enough to drive them to the next step: contacting you directly. Create the e-book in PDF format freely with Google Docs, Zoho Writer, or OpenOffice. Then put it on your site and upload it to Scribd, a popular document sharing site. Similarly, upload PowerPoint presentations to slideshare.

4. Create a Widget - What’s a widget? It’s a piece of code that can easily be installed on a web page or blog without the need for geek-like talent. People like you and me use them on many of the social networking sites to customize our pages with video, pictures, music, and more. Papa John’s Pizza lets customers order online with a variety of widgets for computer desktops, start pages, and social networks. Coke has CokeTags, a link sharing widget for Facebook. It’s easy (and free) to create them on sites like Widgetbox. Then, like everything else, make sure visitors to your web site know they’re available.

5. Get on TV – It sounds like a stretch, but according to Tim Ferris, author of the best-selling The 4-Hour Work Week, it’s easier than it sounds. He explains his strategy for getting on TV: “Find statistics that indicate a new trend, tie yourself into the trend, add experts, case studies, PhDs, and other guests to help fill 30 entertaining and credible minutes about this topic. Give it a good headline and pitch it to producers at the top shows. It’s a simple concept and it works.” Who knew? I may have to try this one myself.

6. Search For Yourself - People are talking about you online. Find them with Google Blog Search, twitter search, Technorati, and whatever other tools you like. Once you find them, make contact. Respond to their comment. Address a complaint. Right a wrong. Say thank you. Start a conversation. Just let them know you appreciate the comment. Most of them will be happy to hear from you. See also: “Help Your Fans Spread the Love”.

7. Make it Easy to Email Your Pages - Ever notice how web sites like Time Magazine and Amazon have a little “email this” button next to the printing and sharing options? That’s because some visitors just want to skip the social media stuff and go old school. I email myself pages all the time as a way to archive them. Sometimes I even use it as intended: to share a web page with friends. Just remember, people are submitting their email address for a one-time use, not opting-in to your marketing. Respect their trust in you and you’ll be rewarded.

8. Know Your Numbers – Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern business management said “What’s measured improves“. Are you measuring your web site traffic? Google Analytics is free, includes enterprise level tools, and features Conversion University, where you can learn how to make sense of the numbers and improve traffic to your site. Now there is no excuse.

9. Go Back to Old Customers – We’ve all heard the old adage that it’s easier to keep an existing customer than win a new one. But it may also be worth going through your list of older inactive customers and trying to reactivate a few of the better ones. Give them a call, tell them you value them, ask what it will take to get them back. You might be surprised at how simple or low-cost it is. If they say no thanks, consider it a learning opportunity and wish them the best. Then call them back in a year and ask again.

10. Put Great Review Front and Center – In the book “Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive“, author Robert Cialdini asks, “How can we show off without being labeled a show-off?”. The answer is get someone to speak about your awesomeness for you. Studies show that social proof–the tendency to look to others for ques on how to behave–plays a critical role in how others evaluate you. If one person says your widget is great, many others will think it must be. Seriously, it’s that simple, and it’s why many web sites prominently display quotes and reviews.

Have your own ideas about no-cost marketing? Share them in the comments or, better yet, start a list on your own blog. I’d love to see what you come up with.–Keith

Photo: caitlinburkeSee also: