The Evil Marketer

Meeting Vs. Making

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:06:42 -0600

An interesting quick post from Seth Godin.

Website Smackdown: Which Homepage Wins?

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:56:54 -0600

Website Smackdown: Which Homepage Wins?:

Check out this article from Inc.com. Good reading, especially if web design and navigation are your responsibility (or interest).

Stop Following the Leader, Create Something

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 10:54:00 -0500

Too many of us marketers are complacent to simply consume what is produced for us. We look at industry trends, and follow the ones that are successful. However, very few marketers actually create. In a creative field like marketing, I’m surprised at this “follow the leader” mentality that has emerged lately.

I don’t mean to insult the accountants and financial wizards of the world (they do a great job of maximizing profit, and organizing finances), but what in the world are they doing making marketing decisions. Marketers of the world need to step up and do what they do. Stop letting non-marketers make decisions for you.

The best way to break away is to create something. Anything. Either a process, a tactic, or simply new content. Sure, it’s important to look at successful industry trends, but why settle for that? Instead of looking at the leaders, become that leader, and have your competition look at you for ideas. Blaze that trail. Be creative. Be a marketer.

"We fail when we fall in love and believe there is no next step."

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:52:02 -0500

“We fail when we fall in love and believe there is no next step.”

- Seth Godin

Top 10 ways to tilt your campaign From Crowdtilt

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:35:00 -0500

Top 10 ways to tilt your campaign From Crowdtilt:

Here is a very nice post from the folks at CrowdTilt discussing some advice on promotional campaigns. This is good stuff, well worth the read…

crowdtilt:

Here are a few quick tips on how to get your Crowdtilt campaign started off on the right foot.

1. Never stop promoting the campaign.

Send e-mail, facebook updates, or tweets to your friends and family. One of the single most important tips for an online campaign is to be persistent. While some people will contribute the first time you ask them, the reality is that it will take at least 2-3 friendly reminders before the majority of your friends and family open up their wallets for you. Campaign pages who keep their donor base engaged with frequent updates tend to be the most successful.

Keep in mind this doesn’t mean peppering people with links. (They will ignore it after a while) A well-timed and placed tweet, facebook post, or e-mail will go a long way. Here is a great guide to limit how to limit your outreach without becoming overbearing on your friend’s social feeds.

Tweets: 4-5 times a week.

Facebook posts: 1-3 times a week.

E-mails: 3-4 per duration of campaign

Some tips on generating traffic on social networks:

The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET.

The biggest spike occurs at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays.

Weekday usage is pretty steady, however Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET is consistently the busiest period.

Although most posts and comments appear around 3:00 p.m. ET, posts published in the morning tend to perform better than those published in the afternoon.

Fans are less active on Sunday compared to all other days of the week.

Remember: The campaign’s chance of success is directly related to the amount of work and promotion the campaign administrator is willing to put forth.

2. Promote Tactically.

While we recommend telling everyone you know about your campaign page, before you send out mass e-mails to everyone in the contact book, first send out e-mails to your closest family and friends. This is one of the most important tips for success. The reason you want to do this is because your inner circle of friends and family will be the most generous and easiest to recruit to help spread the momentum for your campaign by setting the tone for subsequent contributors. For instance, if your first four contributors each give you $75, future contributors will view this as the appropriate contribution size and will be more likely to give this or a similar amount as well. You can also manually set the donation amount in the campaign creation settings.

3. Start with a modest goal.

One of the keys to a successful Crowdtilt campaign is building momentum. Your friends and family will be more inclined to give if they think their contribution will help you reach your goal. By setting a modest tilt goal for the campaign and quickly reaching fundraising milestones like 10% and 25% of your goal you can build a lot of momentum and get your donors excited about the campaign. On the other hand, if you set your goal too high, some people will be discouraged from contribution because they’ll view your goal as unattainable and will feel like their $25 or $50 bucks won’t really make a difference.

4. Offer your contributors a chance to get something in return.

A great way to get people to contribute is by offering them a raffle prize. Example: When you e-mail your contacts you might include that you will be raffling off a $50 gift card to Home Depot [or whatever prize you choose] to the first 20 people to donate. This creates extra motivation for those people who are on the fence about donating. A well-run raffle with the right grand prize can raise incredible amounts of money for campaign. Most groups underestimate how much money a raffle can raise. Your choice of prize or prizes should vary depending on your financial goal, the size of your potential market, and how many volunteers you have to sell tickets.

Remember, bigger prizes mean more tickets must be sold to turn a profit, but they also mean substantially higher profits. Design your raffle prize offerings to match your community’s tastes.

The most successful raffles generally have between one and four prizes. When you decide on the selling price of your raffle tickets, keep in mind the market value of the raffle prizes. For high-end prizes ($800+) it is not uncommon to see prices on the raffle tickets of $6 or more.

Selling raffle tickets is really easy on Crowdtilt. Set up a campaign that has predetermined amount equal to the price of a raffle ticket. Contributors will also be able to purchase multiple tickets at once. The campaign administrator will be able to track who bought tickets and how many were purchased for the drawing. It brings a level of excitement and anticipation to the deadline from the contributors.

5. Get your story in the media.

The local paper will usually be more than happy to write about your campaign if it benefits the community in some fashion. The more exposure you get, the better your campaign will do especially if it’s a local campaign on the local news. It’s no secret that people like to be apart of something that is high profile within the community.

6. Make your campaign go viral.

The most successful fundraising campaigns are the ones that go “viral” on the Internet. The results can be astonishing with hundreds of people making contributions across the country and raising thousands of dollars for a cause. Although not every campaign will go viral, here are some tips to help get you there:

Ask friends and family to spread the world. When you send out your e-mail make sure to ask your contacts to share your campaign with their friend’s co-workers.

Create a 24-hour Facebook “Wallflower” Campaign where everyone donates their status message for one day to direct the participant’s networks to contribute to the cause.

Make sure to get off to a good start with a big donation off the bat (close friends and family can help). This will give you some quick momentum to get people excited about your campaign.

7. Thank your contributors.

When you create your campaign page, you can draft a thank you message that automatically goes out whenever someone makes a contribution. You can also send personalized thank you e-mails to your donors from their profile pages. Thanking each contributor individually is essential if you plan to fundraise again in the future and hope to ask the same people.

8. Create a blog about the campaign.

This will give the campaign a human face and a voice (yours) as well as providing an outlet to publish updates, stories, and highlight the people behind the campaign. It’s a great resource that builds credibility and enthusiasm about your campaign. Once the information gets rolling it will get picked up and re-blogged by other sources. We recommend tumblr.com for functionality and sharing capabilities.

Tumblr tip: Run a search for like-minded blogs to start following. If you follow a blog they will most likely start following you back. If you have good content then you are more likely to get your posts re-blogged.

9. Create an attractive campaign page

Personalize your fundraising page as much as possible with a heartfelt description and a striking photo.

The campaigns that do the best are the ones who really make an effort to tell their stories or are super descriptive about what the funds will be used for. Explain to your contributors what you are raising money for and why it is so important to you. If your friends and family see that you are passionate about the campaign, they are more likely to give and give generously.

Campaign photo:

Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words so make it count. Also remember you must choose a picture that will also be attractive and striking in thumbnail size from the search page.

A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself whether you would click on a link if you were scanning the page. Get advice from others as well. The larger a focus group you have the better shot you have at nailing down a picture that will get noticed.

10. Have Fun!

It’s always important to remember to have fun. Getting a campaign tilted can be hard work but it can also be very fun and if you’re not enthusiast about it will tough to fake. It should be a fun activity and if you’re having fun with it, the positive emotions become contagious and will make people want to contribute.

Posted by: G.Case

Why Every Marketer Should Have a Swipe File

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 13:12:00 -0500

First of all, you may be asking “what is a swipe file”? Basically a swipe file is a journal of ideas, keywords, concepts, etc that you’ve taken from other sources which you may or may not use in your own business.

You might be thinking to yourself ”that sounds kind of…. evil”. Well, what can I say, it kind of is. But that’s not to say that you shouldn’t have one. I think every marketer out there should have a swipe file, and I’ll tell you why.

Good ideas are good ideas. It doesn’t matter who or where they come from. Just stealing an idea outright is probably not the best way to go, but if you think about it, you may have ways to improve on that concept. Then it really isn’t stealing is it? You may have a different way to implement that idea or concept, or maybe just thinking about the idea brings you another different idea that you otherwise wouldn’t have thought of.

As a copywriter, I think it’s okay to take certain keywords or phrases and use them yourself. We do this anyway whether we think about it or not. Every word in our vocabulary has come from someone that has come before. We don’t invent new words when we talk to each other. Therefore I don’t really think it’s wrong. It’s not the same as stealing someones essay or blog post.

Anyways, you get the idea. If you don’t already have one, go out and buy a composition book, a spiral, whatever, and start jotting down ideas from different sources. You may be surprised when those ideas may come in handy.

How to Use Twitter as a Marketing Channel

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 21:10:30 -0500

Here is an interesting graphic that I’ve taken from the MindJumpers blog.

Developing Intellectual Firepower

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:49:00 -0500

I was doing my rounds, checking out the usual marketing blogs the other day, and found an interesting article on Robert Middleton’s site Action Plan Marketing about what he called intellectual firepower. Basically he talks about how in order to be successful you have to put in the work. This is all really easy to agree with; I’ve always been a fan of hard work. The truth of the matter is that lately I feel that many marketers out there are just plain lazy. What can be done about this? Read on…

It really starts with motivation. Before even trying to develop intellectual firepower, you have to genuinely want to improve yourself. If you’re just trying to motivate yourself, then you should already know which buttons need to be pushed. However, if you’re a manager, tyring to motivate a team or specific members of a team, you’ll need to really understand what motivates them both professionally and personally. Once you and/or your team is at the point of genuine motivation, then you can begin to arm yourself with intellectual firepower. How do you do this…

Back in school, you’re given homework. Why should it be any different at work. Give your employees reading assignments, and spend some time addressing new marketing ideas and emerging concepts. I think that most businesses merely exist with no real emphasis on growth, development, or innovation. Of course, the CEO’s of the world are looking for growth, but what about the average employee? Find some way to arm your employees with knowledge, and show them that their development is important to the future of your business. Then maybe you’ll see some real effort. Motivate and then educate.

Of course, developing intellectual firepower is about more than just reading. You have to put in the work. This means that management has to be approachable, and flexible. Listen to what your employees tell you and take it into consideration. Reward good ideas, and encourage everyone to bring their A game to work. I could go on and on, but you get what I’m saying.

What do you do to develop intellectual firepower? Let me know in the comments below or email me privately at edwardviator@evil-marketer.com.

How to Alienate Fans and Lose Millions of Dollars in Free Marketing

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 10:19:00 -0500

Anyone that knows me, knows that I’m a gamer. You can read all about it on my other blog. Sometimes I spend some time looking through videos on YouTube of games that I’m interested in buying so that I can see if they’re worth the purchase or not. Why then are video game companies forcing YouTubers to take down videos of playthroughs and such? Don’t they understand that this is how gamers find their products? I just saw a video by a well known YouTube commentator that pretty much sums up my feelings as well. He uses some vulgar language so it may not be safe for work, but here’s a link to the video anyway.

This is what happens when you let accountants and financial folks take control of your business. They do a great job of organizing, and re-investing your money. But why are marketers letting them do their job for them? As a marketer, it’s your decision as to how your products and / or services get promoted. I’m of the philosophy that you should use any and all tools in the box to get your message across.

In this day in age where consumers (especially gamers) are spending less time watching / listening / paying attention to commercials, why would you want to take your products out of a media that they are paying attention to? It makes no sense to me. I was just talking to a friend yesterday about how video game marketers usually do a horrible job (someone please hire me, I won’t let you down), and today I see yet another example of that.

If you are a decision maker at your company, please do not limit your marketing opportunities, or alienate your customers by trying to stop them from using current technology to promote your products or services. Use these guys to your benefit, and profit by them.

What do you guys think? Agree, disagree? Are there any other examples out there that you can think of where companies have done this? Let me know in the comments below.

Study: Mature Consumers Less Likely to Cut Back

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:33:31 -0500

Study: Mature Consumers Less Likely to Cut Back:

Check out this link from the Marketing Charts website. It’s a new study that shows that older consumers are less likely to cut back on products and services than their younger counterparts. Even if you don’t specifically target older demographics, understanding this data may be worth some money to you and your company. The folks at Marketing Charts have their own ideas about why this is the case which you can read on their website, but let me tell you what I think…

Quality of life:I think this is probably the most overlooked reason why older consumers are less likely to make cuts. Older people know that they have a finite amount of sand in the hourglass, are are therefore doing their best to enjoy life. Why deprive yourself of something that you enjoy?

Old Fashioned: When you’ve been doing the same things for a long time, it’s hard to change your ways. If you’ve subscribed to the newspaper for 30 years, it’s a bit more difficult to decide to cut it than it is for the person that’s only subscribed for 3 years.

Less Disposable Income:It’s no secret that younger people have more disposable income than older people. With less disposable income there are fewer ways to cut back. You can cut back on frivolous activities, but when all you have left are necessities, it’s a bit harder to make cuts.

I know I’m just scratching the surface here, so what do you guys think?

"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them."

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:40:52 -0600

“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”

- Walt Disney

The Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:55:58 -0600

The Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization:

If you’re new to Search Engine Optimization, or just want a recap, check this out. It’s a free online manual from SEOMOZ (a company that provides SEO tools). Very cool stuff. Know any other guides or places of knowledge? Drop your links in the comments below and share the knowledge.

Be Solution Oriented

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:57:00 -0600

It’s very easy to complain about something. All you have to do is point out faults and you’re done. But to actually be useful to your company, you need to be focused on actionable issues that you can solve. You need to be solution oriented. This means that instead of just looking at what is wrong, you need to focus on what you can do to correct those errors, mistakes, problems, etc. It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Really, it’s just a simple attitude adjustment.

Most people are not satisfied with thier jobs for one reason or another. The first thing you should do when trying to become solution oriented is to look inward at yourself. If you aren’t satisfied with your job, ask yourself why, and more importantly ask yourself what you can do to make things better. You cannot control anyone but yourself, so you need to be able to find a way to take action and solve your problem. Once you can do this, you’ll be ready to apply that thinking to other problems. The trick is to look at what you yourself can do to solve the issue.

Weather you’re a manager or not, it’s your job to get things done, and to do so, you will need help at some point. Sometimes you just don’t have the expertise, or talent, or whatever to fix the problem yourself. It seems like an easy task; all you have to do is ask for help after all. But the fact is that you need to get buy-in from your team first. No one is going to throw their back into the work if they don’t believe in it. The best way to get buy-in is to clearly identify the problem, and communicate why your team should care. If you can’t do that, then you’re done. To be effective at this, you can’t just point out the problem. You need to focus on what your team can do to solve the problem, and what the possible outcomes will be.

Not every problem is solvable. Sometimes there are things outside of your control. The economy, for example, is something you can’t really control. What you can do is try to take advantage of the situation in some way. You can only play with the cards you’re dealt, and sometimes you are given a bad hand. The game is still winnable… if you are smart and bold enough to do what you have to do.

I guess to sum it all up, please don’t be one of those people that just sits around and complains about things. Be the person that gets things done. To become a true asset to your company, try to be the problem solver, not the complainer.

Be Aggressive

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:26:34 -0600

If you want business, you have to be willing to do what it takes to get it. The days of sitting back and waiting for your phone to ring are over (and have been over for a long time). Not only do you need to actively look for new opportunities, you need to know when and how to negotiate. Why let some new business walk out the door, when you could easily come to some sort of agreement. I think many businesses hide behind policy, and don’t empower their employees enough to negotiate with prospects (which is a whole other problem).

Policy is usually there for a good reason, but in today’s marketplace, business people need to be flexible enough to understand that one size doesn’t fit all anymore. Sometimes there are exceptions to rules, and at the end of the day you have to do what you can to keep business coming in. If you are a decision maker at your company, please look at your current policies and see if there is something there that could be hurting your business. Better yet, call up your salespeople (or whoever interacts with clients the most) and ask them what they think. You may find something that needs to be updated or changed.

Being aggressive doesn’t mean offering deep discounts or huge concessions. Obviously you need to know when to say no. However, think about your competition. If they are passive and you are active, who do you think is going to get the business? If they say no to a client, and you say yes, who do you think just made a new client? Look for opportunities like this in your market, and you may be pleasantly surprised.

The bottom line? In business, or any other kind of competition for that matter, effective aggression is one of your biggest allies. What do you guys think? Am I full of it?

Traditional Weapons of Marketing Part 3: Sponsorship

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 12:46:03 -0600

You may be thinking, sponsorship isn’t really that big of a weapon. Yeah, tell that to Subway who for years has been beating us over the head with the story of Jared. Jared is a guy that reportedly lost a ton of weight by walking to a local subway and eating one of their sandwiches every day. Now he’s basically the face of Subway. Sponsorship can help you communicate to your intended audience in ways that other marketing tools can’t. It’s a great way to clearly tell everyone what your brand stands for.

My dad, who is a 3 year prostate cancer survivor, decided to stay in shape so that he could limit his chances of a recurrence, and began running in 5K races. Every race, he wears a sign on his shirt that displays the logos of all the businesses and non-profits that have helped him in his fight against cancer. One of those businesses, USMD Prostate Cancer Center, thought that it was such a good idea that they started sponsoring his runs. By sponsoring my dad, he is able to run in more races, and thus promote these organizations more effectively. He’s become a vocal spokesperson for USMD’s services (which did indeed save his life), and gets the message out in a very low cost way. By the way, you can check out my dad’s latest racing exploits on his blog here.

You don’t necessarily have to sponsor a person to get your point across. Sponsoring an event, or a cause of some kind also has the same effect. It gets your brand name out to people that are interested in what you do, and goes a long way in describing the intangibles of your company. What do you stand for (besides making money), and why should your target audience care? Speaking of targets, like all good and effective marketing, sponsorships should be targeted. You want to make sure that whoever, or whatever you are sponsoring has some interest to your target audience. Otherwise, what’s the point.

Anyone else have anything to add?

More about advertising

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:06:00 -0600

I struggled to make a point about advertising the other day, but there is really quite a bit more to the discussion than what I had originally posted. One of my friends saw the post and sent me a link to a recent article by buysight.com (thanks Francisco). They post a graphic and host a discussion about how advertising has changed over the last 50 years or so.

This is some interesting stuff, so if you haven’t checked it out already, I recommend doing so now. There are a ton of interesting viewpoints on display, and really got me thinking. Not only is advertising more targeted, but people actually opt in for advertising and marketing messages (using twitter, facebook, and all that stuff), which was unheard of back in the day.

Also, check out the amount of spending on media (according to the chart). There are some interesting things going on there. I was completely surprised to see that spending on newspaper ads was significant in 2000 then started dropping off (coincidentally) as the internet spending started increasing. I think many advertisers used newspaper ads to communicate with local consumers, but now are starting to use the internet to reach these local audiences.

Anyway, check it out, and let me know what you think.

Traditional Weapons of Marketing Part 2: Advertising

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 11:02:24 -0600

We all know what advertising is, so there really isn’t much to say here. The first thing most people think of when you talk about marketing is advertising. It’s been such a big tool for marketers in the past, and continues to be one of the dominant weapons in the arsenal. Over time though, the nature of advertising has changed quite a bit. In the old days, you simply had to reach a mass audience and sales would follow. Today however, advertisements are much more focused. With the maturation of digital, online, and social media, this trend will not only continue, but will be taken to the next degree.

Targeted ads are when a company places ads in a location where they will reach their intended audience. If you’re selling toys, sponsor a children’s program on TV. If you’re selling to women, put an advertisement in a women’s magazine. Stuff like that. Even those are kind of broad examples, but you get the idea. This same philosophy works for online media as well. Look at how Google AdSense works. If you’re page is all about sports, then sports ads will pop up on you page. All of this is really a no brainer for marketers, and is simply the natural evolution of the advertising model.

One of the biggest advantages to targeting your ads is that you are not wasting any resources. By focusing only on media that your target audience relies on, you are not wasting money on people that don’t care about your offering. Of course, there is still a huge focus on mass appeal, but this is usually for products that have mass appeal themselves. Things like beer and food for example.

Personally, I think that we’ll see even more segmenting and targeting as time goes on. And why not. I think in the future we’ll see more advertisers decide to sponsor specific websites (instead of relying on AdSense), and make online ads more interactive. When you focus your ads on the people that are most interested in what you’re offering, then only good things can happen.

Kind of off topic here, but I took these pics on Friday night...

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:44:08 -0500

Kind of off topic here, but I took these pics on Friday night when I went with my dad to the now historic game 6 ALCS where the Texas Rangers finally won their first championship. I’m reblogging these from my brothers blog, realsportsfan. If you are a sports fan of any kind, go visit his blog and start following. This guy is like an encyclopedia of information.

Anyway, I’ll never forget how I felt at that moment. Whenever I feel depressed or whatever, I’ll be able to look back and remember how it felt to be surrounded by 50,000 people all united in joy. As a marketer, I think it’s important to store away memories like this. They help carry you over when you need something to get you through a tough day.

Traditional Weapons of Marketing Part 1: Marketing Research

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:31:00 -0500

Check out any marketing blog today and you’ll see pages of posts about social media and relationship marketing. While social media is a very important and effective tactic, I think we all need to step back and realize that it will take more than one tactic to win in this game called marketing. While you may say that traditional marketing is not as effective as it has been in the past, I would argue that these tactics are the foundation of a solid marketing plan. Perhaps they need to be applied in a different way to be effective in this new era of marketing, but whatever. Anyway, I’m beginning a new series: Traditional Weapons of Marketing, starting with my favorite subject marketing research.

Marketing research is my favorite of the traditional tactics, but that’s not the only reason why I’m discussing it first. Your marketing plan begins with solid research. Let me be very clear, all of your marketing decisions should be based on facts (I didn’t understand this when I first started my career, but it is in fact true). Research is where you get those facts. You can either collect and analyze the data yourself, or you can take it from a 3rd party’s already established results. This breakdown looks like this:

- Primary Research: If you need to know something specific, sometimes the best way to find out is to conduct your own research. There are alot of elements to gathering quality data, such as your collection methodology, survey design, incentives, analysis methods, and so on, but I’ll leave that for the research pros to discuss… or maybe for a future discussion.

- Secondary Research: Why go through the expense and effort of conducting your own research when the hard work may have already been done by someone else. There are tons of research findings, reports, and statistics out there for you to find. Sometimes it seems like these findings have nothing to do with you or your business, but you still may be able to apply them somewhere. The new US Census data for example is invaluable to marketers in that it describes what the standard US household looks like in each geographic region. Pretty handy if you’re looking to open a new market, or simply gain a better understanding of your current market.

All research is either quantitative or qualitative. Meaning that it can either be expressed in numbers or in a more abstract way. I’ve seen many companies only focus on quantitative research, or statistics. This is a mistake and is the reason why focus groups exist. Talk to your prospects and customers and try and understand their mindset. You may have a great product, but it may not be practical for the common user. Your inexpensive food may taste excellent, but perhaps your customers want a healthier choice. You need to know the right questions to ask so that you can get the information you need to make a good decision.

Just one type of research isn’t going to cut it. So you put together an excellent survey, and collected data from a very good sample. You’re still only looking at the results of one study. You should also look for existing data (like the census), conduct focus groups (have a discussion with your prospects and customers), and in general find ways to conduct research in your everyday business (go to a fast food restaurant and look at your receipt… you see that phone number to take a survey?). Research is not something that you do and then forget about, it should be conducted year round so that you can be sure that you are making sound business decisions.

So how can I use social media to conduct research? In this era, people are more connected than ever before, not just to each other, but to your business as well. Use this connection to open discussions with your customers. Ask some questions, and you may find some eye opening points that you never realized before. There are more obvious ways to use social media to your benefit (emailing surveys to people and so on), but you should look at the non-obvious and most importantly the non-intrusive ways to getting your information.

Anyways, enough of that. You get the idea. To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from The Godfather, a marketing plan that doesn’t include research is not really a marketing plan. (the original line is “A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.” and is my favorite line of that great film).

Profiting from your competitors

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:29:41 -0500

A while back, some information came to my attention that just made me smile my evil marketer smile. It was something I had never really thought of before, but is a real no-brainer common sense move. I’m not going to name any names, because that’s not the point. Apparently this company has learned a way to make some bucks off of its competition. Let me explain how…

Company A owns a facility that receives goods from wholesalers and distributes to retail locations all around the US. This type of set up is pretty routine, as most retailers do this type of thing. However, instead of branding the facility with company A’s name, they use a generic company name for the facility… and then they run it like it’s own separate company. This means that the facility is free to accept orders from other locations that aren’t owned by company A, and may even be competing against their corporate masters. What? You may be thinking that it doesn’t sound very smart, but indeed it is.

If you’re doing business in a free economy then you will have competition. This comes in the form of direct competitors and indirect competitors. For example, if you make soda then you are competing against other soda companies, as well as the guys that produce juice, sports drinks, lemonade, tea, and other beverages. They all serve a similar purpose, and they are all competing for a similar market. Like my man Luke Skywalker says “you can profit by this or be destroyed.”

By providing the same service to your competition that you provide to your own company, you can capitalize on this competition and make some money off of them. If they don’t come to you, they will get it from somewhere so it’s not like you’re going to put them out of business by denying service. On top of all that, if the competition begins to rely heavily on your services, you can always pick a strategic time to cease services and kick them while they are down. Hahaha, there’s nothing like pulling the rug from under your competition just when they need you the most. Suckers!