A Marketing Lesson From TV's The Apprentice

 Advertising and marketing are creative disciplines.  That's one reason I love being a part of the marketing industry. Finding creative solutions to help clients sell their products and services is a fun way to make a living. Having said that, I must also say that too often I see marketers going too far.

In my opinion it is certainly possible to be too creative for your own good. What exactly do I mean by that? Let me share a very public example to explain.

My example comes from the reality television show, "The Apprentice." Okay, so I admit it, I LOVE that show. I'm not much of a reality TV fan, but there's something about watching these teams compete on business challenges week in and week out that intrigues and entertains me.

Quite often they are given marketing-related tasks on the show. Let’s face it, marketing is one of THE most important jobs you’ll ever have in business. If you can do it well, your business will more than likely do well.  If you can’t market well, your business is in trouble.  

In a recent episode of “The Apprentice” the task was to create a TV commercial for Dove Body Wash. The teams were instructed to come up with an "out of the box" 30-second spot to promote the product. The result? 

Both teams created garbage! I guess some may argue they certainly did think "out of the box," and both teams tried to justify that's what they did, but in the end, they failed miserably at their number one task: to sell the product!

And that's what I think happens to many marketers who try to be too creative. They lose sight of the fact their job is to sell a product or service. To do that effectively, your marketing has to be one word: relevant. 

You can be as clever or creative as you want, but in the end if your marketing is not relevant to the product and to those who are most likely to buy it, you have failed.

Look, I realize we have to be creative to capture our audience's attention. After all we are trying to cut through a sea of marketing clutter. I just wish more marketers tried harder to connect with their audience vs. simply entertain them. 

Heck, I sometimes wonder if marketers even know who their audience is. This definitely came into play in The Apprentice with both teams showing men using Dove Body Wash in their commercials. C'mon, it doesn't take a lot of sense to recognize this product is for women! But because they were so focused on being clever, they lost sight of this very basic fact. 

If I can leave you with one thought it is this: Identify and know your audience and then aim to connect with them and jump into the conversation they are already having in their head about your product or service. 

If you can do this, you will be effective in capturing their attention, AND selling your product or service. 

5 Tips to Help You Market When You Think You're Too Busy

 What if you've taken the time to create a marketing plan but now you're so busy servicing your current clients that you're having a hard time keeping on track with your plan?

Is it okay to set the plan aside for awhile? After all you've got enough business to keep you busy. And, you're not sure you could handle additional clients right now anyway.

While marketing may not seem like a necessary activity when your business is going gang-busters, it's only a matter of time before your lack of marketing starts to impact your business. 

Staying on top of your marketing plan, even when you're busy, ensures you always have a pipeline full of prospects and clients into your business.

While you may be busy right now, if you stop marketing for the next three months, you may find yourself high and dry when it comes to clients, because you've stopped the flow.

As an independent professional myself, I can totally relate to being too busy to market. It seems the days are never long enough to get everything on my to-do list done.  But as a marketing professional I know I can't afford to NOT get my marketing done.

So what's a busy gal (or guy) to do?!?

Here are 5 suggestions ... these are things I do and recommend to all my clients in my 10stepmarketing System. 

(1) If you haven't already, create a marketing calendar. Schedule all of your marketing activities in the calendar according to how frequently you planned to do them in your marketing plan.

If you planned to do something monthly, enter it on the calendar once each month. Weekly? Enter it four times per month. Do this for every planned activity.

(2) Hang your marketing calendar over your desk on a bulletin board or on the wall. Make a habit of looking at it every morning. This way you won't have the problem of "out of site out of mind."

I can't tell you how many clients I've had whose marketing plans have ended up in a file folder in a drawer. You're certainly NOT going to grow your business that way!

(3) Try incorporating your marketing activities into your weekly and daily to-do list.  Enter the activities as to-do tasks in your calendar or PDA just like all your appointments and other business activities.

I do this with all my marketing activities. I use Microsoft Outlook and a Pocket PC and it's the only way I know I'll keep myself on track. If something is on my calendar, I treat it like any other meeting or appointment and I do it.

For example, every Wednesday, a little notice pops up to remind me to write my weekly ezine. If that didn't happen I'd either be writing it on Monday's at midnight, or it wouldn't get done.

(4) Pick one day per month to review your marketing calendar in detail and to look three months ahead. What is coming up that you need to prepare for now? What do you need to transfer into your to-do list or PDA to make sure you don't forget to do it?

I usually do this at the end of the month when I'm doing all my month-end work ... things like running sales reports, doing billing, and updating my marketing tracking reports.

Make it a habit to review your marketing at the same time you do these tasks. After a few months you won't even have to think about it anymore, it'll become a habit.

(5) Consider hiring an assistant or support person to help. If they can take some of the tasks off your plate that really don't require your expertise, it will free you up to focus on what I call "revenue producing activities."

These are things like working with clients, creating products and services and marketing. I couldn't believe the difference it made when I hired some help.

I didn't think I could afford it, but now I don't see how I lasted so long without help!

When you find a way to get back on track with your marketing and you do it on regular basis, it really does become a part of the way you do business.

Suddenly it doesn't seem like marketing anymore. It's just what you do to run your business. That's when it becomes effortless.

And, that's when you know your business will be continue to be busy and profitable for the long-haul.

2 Ways To Eliminate Your Competition – It’s Easy!

 Eliminating your competition is the easiest way to increase your chances of business success. And I don’t mean literally eliminate them, in the sense of doing something “bad” to them.

 When I say eliminate, I mean ... take them out of your prospect’s consideration set for your product or service category.  Make it so your prospects ONLY think of your business, product or service when they are contemplating making a purchase.  That way you get their business, instead of your competition making the sale.

What this means is if you sell widgets, you want your prospects to only think of your widgets when they are thinking of buying widgets.  This is pretty easy to do if your business is not in a competitive industry. 

But let’s suppose there are all kinds of businesses selling what you are selling, or filling the same consumer or business need you are filling.  

 

How can you make sure your prospects ONLY think of you — and therefore only BUY from you — and not all those other companies? 

Answer:  By thoroughly understanding those competing businesses and then doing one of two things:

(1)  Finding a position in the category you can own. 

This will separate you from all the other businesses and will make you uniquely qualified in the eyes of your prospect to fill their need.  

This usually requires finding a specific market niche you can focus on, or finding a specific product or service attribute or benefit, that is of value to your prospects, that none of your competitors can claim or are currently promoting.  

This puts you in a class of your own and virtually eliminates the competition. No one does exactly what you do. Or in the quite the way you do it. 

(2)  By turning your competitors into “co-opitors.”  

What the heck is a “co-opitor?”  It is a competitor that you turn into a partner or a cooperator. Are there businesses or individuals with whom you could partner, with the idea of referring business to each other? 

For example, a wellness coach could partner with a weight watchers clinic or a health club or a massage therapist. All of these practitioners are selling improved health and well being, but they can also be positioned as complementary services.

Or, let’s say you are a web site designer and you decide to focus primarily on working with small businesses (a market niche). You could create a partnership with another web site designer who has decided to focus on large corporations. 

If you both agree to only take on business that fits your identified niche, and to refer business outside your niche to the partner, you both win. 

You can partner with other businesses in your exact business in this manner, by identifying niches, by geographic area served, or by size or type of clients served. 

And you can partner with businesses in different categories that fill a similar customer need by agreeing to work together to help each other get customers.

There is not a business out there that cannot effectively use one of these two strategies to significantly reduce their competition.  So figure out which strategy fits your business best, and make it a priority to eliminate your competition this year.