Don Dodge hits the nail on the head:
The web, and more specifically blogs, have made it simple and cheap to promote your product. And it can all happen in 24 hours...without ever leaving your computer screen. This is transformational. It has been happening gradually over the last 5 years so we haven't really noticed how dramatic the change has been. It is huge.
Patrick Lamb passes on a great tip from an article by Charles Green about how a law firm, given 90 minutes to “pitch” themselves to the General Counsel of a Fortune 50 company threw the pitch away — and hit the ball out of the park. From the GC:
Then came firm three. They said, 'We have 90 minutes with you . We can either do a standard capabilities presentation--which we're very happy to do--or we can try something different. We suggest that we get started on the job, right now--as if you had already given us the contract--and begin the job, right here, right now. After 85 minutes, we'll stop and you'll have firsthand experience of exactly how it feels to work with us.'
Consider this approach for your next pitch — and let me know how it goes.
Dave Pollard sums up marketing 101: “Know what urgent problem you’re uniquely solving.” Dave continues:
Over the years I have advised many entrepreneurs, worked with a lot of consultants, and coached executives. All three groups repeatedly make the same mistake: They try to introduce 'solutions' that are really interesting, quite feasible, and well within their area of competency, but which fail to uniquely solve an urgent problem (in the eyes of whoever is paying for it).
Here’s another nugget:
Unless you're willing to resort to such advertising hype, and burn a lot of bridges behind you, you need to focus on offering products and services that meet real needs. And if you're wise, you'll focus on urgent needs before important ones, because to most of us, there is always tomorrow to look after that important need, while the urgent need must be addressed today.
Go read his entire post. It’s really great.
The Marketing Concept by guest blogger Ron Baker
There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. -Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart (1918-1992)
I miss Peter Drucker. He was one of the few management consultants who had original insights, could write without making his readers feel like they were watching a fly ascend a drape, and has taught me so many lessons there is no way I can even separate his thinking from my own. He deserved a Nobel Prize, and it's a shame he didn't get one (they are not given posthumously).
One of his lessons was you are not in business to make a profit. Profit is merely oxygen for the body; it is not the reason for being. Profit is nothing more than a lagging indicator of what is in the hearts and minds of your customers.
He indefatigably pointed out that "there is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer." This is known as the marketing concept.
The purpose of any organization--from a governmental agency, non-profit foundation to a corporation--exists to create results outside of itself. The result of a school is an educated student, as is a cured patient for a hospital. For a law firm, a happy and loyal customer who returns is the ultimate result.
The only things that exist inside of a business are costs, activities, efforts, problems, mediocrity, friction, politics, and crises. There is no such thing as a profit center in a business; there are only cost and effort centers. In fact, Peter Drucker said in a 1997 interview, "One of the biggest mistakes I have made during my career was coining the term profit center, around 1945."
The only profit center is a customer's check that doesn't bounce. Customers are absolutely indifferent to the internal workings of your firm in terms of costs, desired profits levels and efforts. Value is only created when you have produced something the customer voluntarily, and willingly, pays for.
For example, cosmetic companies, as Revlon founder Charles Revson pointed out, sell hope. What makes the marketing concept so breathtakingly brilliant is the focus is always on the outside of the organization. It doesn't look inside and ask, "What do we want and need?" but rather it looks outside to the customer and asks, "What do you desire and value?"
Your firm exists to serve real flesh and blood people, not some mass of demographics known as "the market." In the final analysis, a business doesn't exist to be efficient, to do cost accounting, or to give people fancy titles and power over the lives of others.
It exists to create results and wealth outside of itself. This profound lesson must not be forgotten.
Thank you Mr. Drucker. R.I.P.
Technorati Tags: peter+drucker, cost, profit, law+firm, ron+bakerLooking for that next great place to … uh … “reach” your male customers? Decent Marketing may have just the ticket: Heat Activated Urinal Billboards. I know, you are wondering how it works, aren’t you?
The heat in a male's urine will deliver the message and the automatic flush from the toilet will re-set it for the next unsuspecting visitor... A perfect repetitive marketing tactic.
If you’ve got something you want to get some feedback on, but don’t want to pay for a formal focus group:
The basic idea behind café testing is to situate yourself at a café, put up a sign to attract participants, and test the people that come to you. Because cafes appeal to a wide variety of individuals, and people at a café often have time to spare, café testing can be a great way to perform a quick litmus test in the marketplace.
Kind of like Rosa’s Coffee Tip.
Jim Logan has some great tips for making some marketing hay with free offers. He gives several examples of businesses that have succeeded by giving things away to customers for free. Here are my favorites:
The best tip is Jim’s own:
In my own business, I routinely structure consulting projects around defined phases, with payment following completion of the fist phase. It the client doesn't want to complete the project after the first phase, they don't pay and we end the engagement. In three years of doing business this way, I haven't had one client stop a project of fail to pay.
If you are a lawyer and want to set yourself apart, you’d be wise to try Jim’s model with one of your new clients.
I’m glad to see Go Flock Yourself is back. It’s a blog about the absurdity of all things Web 2.0, and pretty funny to boot. In a somewhat mean-spirited post ripping the use of the term “Syndicatable” in the new book by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, GFY’s anonymous author shared a pretty useful language tip:
The only people to whom the word “syndicatable” is going to mean anything are the ones who already know what syndication is. Think of it this way, in what I like to call the “Room-full-of-middle-aged-suburban-women-test.” In this test, you walk into a room full of middle-aged suburban women, and say “Blog content is SYNDICATABLE.” Take the number of purely blank stares, multiply it by the number of them that get up and head for the coffee table or the bathroom, and you have a direct index of that statement’s failure to convey even a lick of meaning in and of itself.
As lawyers, how often do we use terms in client conversations that wouldn’t pass this test?
Kevin Salwen of Worthwhile Magazine shares this advertising nugget:
What ads get your attention online? Probably not what you think. A new study of online advertising by behavioral marketing firm Tacoda shows that people tend to look at ads if they are not contextually connected to the rest of the information. In other words, if you want your pizza ad to stand out, put it into a technology story, not a food piece.
First exposures to ads for cars, computers and TV displayed out of context generated 17% more looks than when those ads were shown on pages where the content related to the ads, the research showed. And after the first exposure--when consumers are expected to tune out ads--out-of-context ads generated a stunning 54% more looks than in-context ones.
Still paying for that full page ad in the “lawyer” section of the yellowpages?
I came across Chuck Green’s Ideabook site yesterday, and once I found myself adding nearly every page of his to my daily links, I thought I’d devote an entry to this amazing resource. If you want to see how great design can improve business (and client) communication, you have to set aside some time to check out Chuck’s site. Just one great example: a postcard-sized newsletter. Freakin’ cool!
