News curiousity pumps media

to suck more business dollars 

    You make a living by providing products and services to customers or to other businesses. You see this period of time as appropriate to cut back on expenses and so, wherever possible, you opt for standard cookie-cutter representations in your promotional efforts because they’re less expensive. BIG mistake!

     FIRST of all, you will NEVER make money by cutting costs. You can ONLY make money by making sales!

     SECOND, stop believing all the mainstream media reports that nothing is selling and that the sky is falling. These news stories, designed to sell advertising space and time, are simply not true! They are exaggerated and over-emphasized on purpose.

Here’s the real-deal truth:

Struggling economy reports attract curiousity. Who’s struggling? Where? How much? Curiousity sells newspapers and news magazines and builds broadcast news audiences. Increased print and broadcast sales figures are used to pump up rate cards to suck more advertising dollars out of naive businesses that are already financially beleagured. 

     Contrary to most network TV news slants, for example, many products and services ARE in fact selling, and selling well! You need only look around you at what the most successful companies are doing to make that happen. Promotional programs that look and feel like everybody elses’ don’t make sales.

     Customized marketing tools and messages do make sales! People are buying from businesses that cater to them, that take a personalized approach, that interact, that educate, that prove and demonstrate performance of benefits, that back up features with meaningful warrantees and guarantees, and that lean to the green whenever possible!  

     The bottom line is that savvy companies are shortening up on their long over-priced traditional media budgets, and lengthening out on their customization approaches to low-priced Internet marketing. If your business hasn’t fully explored this thinking, consider the 4th and 5th Blogroll recommendations on the bottom right of this page. Both are excellent resources for customized Internet marketing services.

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  Open Minds Open Doors 

 Thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Bite-The-Apple Time!

     An Amazon 5-star selection book that I wrote (DOCTOR BUSINESS…How To Boost Your Practice And Build Long-Term Relationships, for physicians) presents an example of a dentist who was running an expensive series of totally ineffective newspaper sports section ads headlined: “Yes, now we have mucosal blade inserts!” (Well, at least he used the magic number of seven words you always hear me harp on!)

     When I asked him about the message, he explained that the mucosal blade inserts were mushroom-shaped devices that he surgically implanted in the jaw to anchor dentures more securely than with the use of adhesives. He said patients would have much stronger use of their teeth.

     I redirected his ad into a major senior citizen news publication (at a much lower rate than he had been paying), and revised his ad to say, “Now you can bite an apple again!” My seven words outperformed his seven words by an astronomical amount. In fact, his phones wouldn’t stop ringing. Denture-wearers were lining up to be evaluated for the procedure.

     So, yes, choosing the right audience and the right vehicle to reach that audience is half the battle, so to speak, and simplifying the message to sell the benefit is the other half.

     What are your sales messages saying right now? Are they focused on product features or customer benefits? Are they running in inappropriate print environments or inappropriate broadcast environments? Are you making the best possible use of the Internet? Website(s)? Links? Blog(s)? Emails? Webinars? Podcasts? Social networks? Business networks?

     Did you know that most of these suggested Internet vehicles can be free, and can actually have more impact than pricey traditional advertising approaches? If you’re not at least actively exploring these options, you either have very deep pockets, an influential relative in traditional media sales, no budget, or (hopefully not) you’re invested in growing yourself a reputation for reckless spending!

     If you are exploring all this, but having trouble with the confusion crunch, or with sorting out the high-priced smoke and mirror SEO specialists from the outdated email database suppliers, who are looking to rent you their email lists that include prisoners, newly-born infants and 27,000 dead people… or you’re simply not sure that your message is the best it can be… send me an email Hal@TheWriterWorks.com with “Confusion Crunch” in the subject line. I’ll respond promptly.   

Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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Hope Is NOT The Answer.

(Neither is government spending nor business borrowing!)

     The old business adage, “NOTHING HAPPENS ‘TIL THE SALE IS MADE” applies more today than ever! I have noted here often that budget slashing, and save-on-expenses mentalities end up digging an even deeper hole because they divert energy away from what needs to be done to put the economy on a rebound and growth track.

     Economic recovery can ONLY happen when more businesses decide to make it happen. We have to blow off mainstream media’s efforts to drag the public into the maelstrom they’re busy creating in their relentless quest to sell more print advertising space and more broadcast commercial time.

     When businesses decide to focus on sales and entrepreneurial pursuits, we will see increased financial stability across the boards. Sounds simple, huh? Unfortunately, our own business-inexperienced government is essentially leading the blockade to progress on this front…token small business incentives don’t cut it!

     Add to the government’s misguided energy and maniacal spend and borrow and tax mentality the sad truth is that many business people have simply given up, and the saving-grace focus we’re talking about turns out to not be so simple after all. 

     Government spending and business borrowing? Digest this (following) quote made 5 days ago in a European Parliament speech by Daniel Hannon MEP who was targeting the English Prime Minister with some realistic advice:

You cannot spend your way out of recession,

or borrow your way out of debt!”

[See www.Hannon.co.uk for more.]

     If you are an entrepreneur or run your own business, you need to be resolute in your thoughts and actions. You need to be literally invulnerable in your convictions that hope may spring eternal, but it simply does NOT fuel or grow business in any way–never has, never will. ONLY sales do that.

     Like throwing two baseballs at equal velocity with both arms simultaneously, the most difficult task for any entrepreneur or business owner is to be running your business and selling your business at the same time. Yet that is what has to happen.

     This means, you must be willing and able to go the extra mile with customers, prospects, employees, vendors, your industry, your community, your family, and your own health and fitness. Dropping any one of these from the pursuit equation will collapse the energy around those that remain.

     Okay, HOW? you ask. By paying attention to having fun instead of feeling pressure (the feeling-pressure guys have already boarded up and left town). By paying more attention to exercise and eating and sleeping right, by laughing more, and by learning and using stress management techniques , by taking a yoga class, a jog, a walk, another walk, more walks. 

     As for help, what’s suggested here isn’t much, but–like everything else in life–suggestions are what you make of them. It’s always your choice about how to proceed. The rest of what happens is up to you.  

Good Night and God Bless You!  

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I Am So Happy To See Your

Smiling Faces (and avatars!)

Thank you all my Twitter friends, and welcome to my daily business, personal and professional growth blog. I look forward to more of your visits and comments. Have a wonderful week ahead! Hal

Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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 Networking Is Selling.

Belt-tightening times require business, organization and professional practice people to get more done with less. But you already know that. Let’s zero in on something you don’t know (or have thus far chosen to not admit by owning up to the fact that…

No matter what your job is–whether you work with a church, a healthcare facility, a bank, the government, an educational or nonprofit institution, a trucking company, a restaurant, professional sports team, senior housing development–no matter WHAT your job is: YOU ARE IN SALES!

Got that? Okay. Next:

The secret of sales, marketing, advertising and public relations news releases and events is embodied in the acronym AIDAS, which stands for attract ATTENTION, create INTEREST, stimulate DESIRE, bring about ACTION and ensure SATISFACTION. 

[Hey, you’re doing fine out there, all you doctors and plumbers and camp directors and computer techies, chicken pluckers and grocery store checkers. Stay with this another minute.]

In years past, traditional salespeople who are out selling for a living have usually had the luxury of field houses full of expensive support tools and programs designed to drive prospects to their feet. You’ll find these eyeball-to-eyeball presenters hovering about abundantly in retail settings and trade and professional shows.

You’ll also find that these same folks are discovering with almost the same swiftness and embarrassed sense of loss one might experience with suddenly having his or her pants pulled down, that businesses and organizations are now and have been rapidly withdrawing budget support for advertising,  promotion and merchandising.

Therefore (Aha!) ingenuity must rise for salespeople to survive. And where do they turn? To networking of course, to the very most commonly understood and used sales promotional vehicle that all the non-salespeople have been using to sell themselves and their services and ideas for centuries . . .

Networking. Networking is a fancy term for meeting and greeting and staying in touch and asking for referrals. But guess what? If you don’t apply the AIDAS acronym to your networking efforts, even as a floor sweeper, you’re not likely to survive the mainstream media’s economic rumor mongering that’s sucking the life out of our families, friends, neighbors, and communities.

     So, before you go on stage each day, clean up your act, pull back your shoulders, take a deep breath, tell your mirror image that you are the greatest performer in the job that you do, that ever lived, and that you are going to sail through the day making good things happen at every turn.

     Then recite to yourself that you will attract ATTENTION, create INTEREST, stimulate DESIRE, bring about ACTION, and ensure SATISFACTION with every task and every person you encounter. Do that and you’ve got my 100% money-back guarantee (oh, right, this was all free!) that you will astound yourself. You WILL astound yourself! And that’s a good thing. 

                                             

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“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

PR IS NOT

A SERIES OF STUNTS!

     If your goal is to attract attention to your business or brand, go stand on your head in traffic and eat watermelon, but don’t believe for even one minute that Public Relations is the answer. PR is not a series of stunts.

     Businesses that insist on misusing PR as a tool to take them on a promotional binge from one event to the next will soon lose enough credibility to cost them press release coverage at times when it counts most, and will end up hanging around, hands in pockets watching their blog sites go down the tubes, probably pulling their websites down along with them since search engine rankings are very much a function of blog activity.

     Why do PR-abusive companies create this downward spiral to start with? Because the public (whether it’s industrial trade, clients, patients, other professionals, or John Q. off the street) isn’t stupid. And media writers and editors, even less so…when careers are on the line, there’s a whole lot less tolerance of artificially-inflated newsworthiness tossed to the wind by overzealous organizations that are too preoccupied with day-to-day sales survival tactics to appreciate the need for strategic planning.    

     Effective PR is all about building SOLID relationships with the news media by consistently demonstrating the value of what it is that your product or service does and the value of whom you are in your industry, profession, and community.

     Why does the relationship need to be so emphatically “solid”? PR is a trade-off. For you to get free promotional mentions and news release and photo coverage (that, incidentally, research shows to be ten times more credible than paid advertising messages), you must be willing to perform at the whimsy of the editors and writers who decide on whether or not to accept what you provide them with.

     They will always be much more receptivity to what you provide when what you provide is professionally written and executed and followed-up on. My guess is that 80% of effective PR is follow-up. Ah, but that is what builds relationships, right?  

     And, by the way, effective PR will boost your branding efforts far beyond advertising for usually a fraction of the costs associated with advertising. A recent study finds this is particularly true for businesses connected with engaging and complicated product manufacturing and marketing processes.

     In fields like financial services, automobiles and consumer electronics, almost 30% of brand value is associated with solid PR performances that result in increased brand name mentions in print, broadcast and electronic news media. 

     What this means is that in economic downturns like the one we’re experiencing, it is wise to boost  your PR efforts and reduce your advertising expenditures. But that’s not to imply a straight exchange.

     It is to say that your PR efforts need to be professional, and your advertising needs to be more focused and more contiguous with your media relations efforts. There’s some delicate balancing and juggling acts involved, but you’re already a pro at that or you wouldn’t have your own business to start with, right?  

 Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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Twitter Is What It Is. Period.

     Hardly a day passes anymore when I don’t hear some business or professional practice owner or operator or manager, or an entrepreneur talk nervously about “not getting the Twitter thing.”

     Usually, the fearful comments end with some justification for not dipping a toe in the water by cavalierly tossing off a laundry list of non-business-related “Tweets” that they saw or heard about. Twitter won’t have any value to you if you start out seeking for it to BE something.

     Twitter is what it is. While there appear to be some basic Twitter Etiquette guidelines, they seem to me to only be for the benefit of those who want them. And many Twitter users simply don’t care what those folks want. Other than for legal purposes, and in abiding with contractual agreements, there is no right or wrong Twitter use. The medium is free to flow as those who use it choose for it to flow for themselves.

     So, unlike any other media, Twitter has a mind all its own and those who work and play with it find it far exceeds what most people would probably define as a “social” vehicle. It is both one-way and two-way (and actually a multiple-way) form of communication.

     Many believe the whole purpose of Twitter is to acquire and constantly add as many “followers” as humanly possible so that every statement they make will be seen by 88 skillion people that they’ve attracted. Many others could care less about massive followings and are looking instead for people with similar interests. And so it goes on and on, varying according to human nature and whimsy.

     Twitter participants can be categorized (some steady and ongoing, and others changing with the wind) as sometimes or all the time or alternatingly or multiplicitingly fitting what we might characterize, in no particular order, as:

Parent~~Adult~~Child~~Crusader~~Politico~~Professor~~

Preacher~~Motivator~~Problem-Maker~~Problem-Presenter

~~Problem-Solver~~Popularity Contestant~~ Control Freak

~~Bitch~~Networker~~Tree-Hugger~~Active Adventurer~~

Business Promoter~~Teeny Bopper~~Flake~~Peacenik-Hippie (yeah, still a few of these around)

~~Animal Lover~~Mystic~~Goofball~~Irate Egotist~~Joker

~~Gay Pride Activist~~Black Rights Activist~~Womens

Rights Activist~~News Reporter~~Rhymer~~Dear Abby

~~Counselor~~Advisor~~Consultant~~Game Player~~

Headline Writer~~Cartoonist~~Recruiter~~ Solicitor~~

Salesperson~~Shrink~~Sports Fanatic~~Political Fanatic

~~Religious Fanatic~~ADD YOUR OWN 80 OR 90 MORE

TO THIS LIST!

     The point is that if you have a business or professional practice and the above cluster of characters have scared you away from making good solid business use of this social media phenomenon, you are not thinking like a true entrepreneur.

     You need to try it before deciding it’s not for you. Isn’t that what you would do with anything else? Don’t choose to feel intimidated by Twitter just because you don’t get it. It’s really quite simple. And, in fact, as I noted many months ago, it forces you to strengthen two major communication tools: Conciseness and Persuasion, plus it requires high level focus on the “here-and-now” present moment, which is also a critically strong business building block.

     There is no rule about having to get addicted to Twitter, though many apparently are (and even brag about it)! You can plug and promote business and professional practice ideas, products and services in a way that gets response– in just 10-15 minutes a day! (Yes, I’ll tell you how for free if you call me: 302.933.0116)

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READY . . . SET . . .

Security? Check. Employee I.D. badges? Check. Food and beverage service areas? Check. Trash pails? Check. Entertainment and sound system set-ups? Check. Parking? Check. Clean up? Check. Handouts? Check. Prizes for drawings? Check. News conference agenda? Check…

     Tonight’s grand opening of a new (years-in-the-making) BMW and Mercedes-Benz dealerships state-of-the-art-one-of-a-kind building sets the stage for an entire regional business community journey into economic recovery.

     But nothing about coordinating two diverse and highly competitive luxury car-makers interests under one single roof has been easy or accidental. Tonight’s event promises to host over 700 people. Many of the RSVP’s came from BMW and Mercedes-Benz owners who want to see the new sales and service center firsthand because it is such an exceptional facility.

     The owner/customers will get a better understanding of the fiber optics communication systems that allow this unique building to be in instantaneous purchase, service, and repair communication with car-maker headquarters in Germany.

     They’ll see the green process that recycles used car oil into heating the huge service-bay area. Building tours will also highlight owner observation windows and closed circuit TV system that allow owners to monitor technician work on their vehicles, among many other features.   

So what are you getting from this special event announcement? 

1) Businesses that plan ahead for better customer service capabilities AS they continue to manage day-to-day activities, eventually come to the day of reckoning, and economic conditions need not have and negative or delaying impact on that day, or days that follow

2) Regarding the invitations, keep focused on the truism that the best source of business is existing and past business, and continue to knock yourself out to please your past and present customers above all other marketing targets

3) If you think this kind of razzmatazz is only worthy of pursuit by abandoning other functions like customer service, think again. Cherishing and nurturing long-term customer and community relationships all the while is what makes it all work. 

4) When you have something new and exciting to bring to market, turn your tendancy to brag into a commitment to share and show appreciation to the community that supports your business. What goes around comes around.  

BOTTOM LINE? Don’t let exaggerated media reports get you so focused on business survival tactics that you start to overlook the need for planning. Planning needs to stay in the mix. It will give birth down the road to those big “15 minutes of fame” type moments when your business can step into the spotlight and get the boost it deserves. If you’ve dropped this ball because of economic woes, pick it back up and run with it . . . before your competitor recovers the fumble!  

God Bless You and Good Night!  halalpiar     

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HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL.

OH?

…time to examine both the cause of business failures and the solution.

The cause is something like a one-two punch:

1) For the past 18 months, mainstream media have been delivering a staggering succession of doom and gloom jabs to keep professional practices and businesses off balance by focusing one of every three headlines on how bad things are, and then beating the economic woes into the ground. 

[And guess what, mainstream media? — Professional practice and business owners and  operators and managers, are sick of your negativity! We have stopped buying your poor excuses for print and broadcast news, and many of us have withdrawn our advertising dollars. And so now you are starting to suffer. Time magazine’s list of top ten newspapers that are about to go under is startling to say the least, but, unfortunately, well deserved.]

2) The federal government‘s pitifully naive and sorely misdirected “bailouts” and “stimulous package” reactions (note “reactions” not “responses”) that actually fail to bail out or stimulate anything of any consequence in the direction of economic revitalization, have done their damnedest to deliver the knockout punch!

     Only trouble is that the entrepreneurial spirit lives on, and will never be destroyed wherever free-thinking people exist. Small business people know that it’s small business people who produce the vast majority of jobs in America. And small business people know that the ONLY way the economy gets stimulated is with incentives for small business to create jobs. And small business people know that there’s not a single penny allocated for this purpose in government’s (almost laughable were it not for the fact it’s our taxes being fed to those who choose not to work!) stimulus guise.

So here’s the 2-way solution:

1) Mainstream media pulls itself up and starts pounding our ears and eyes with positive, inspirational, motivational messages, and

2) The federal government hires a team of independent small business management consultants and proven entrepreneurs to show the corporate giants how it’s done (economic survival) with no cash and no bailouts and no stimulus, and how to take that survive mode into a thrive mode with 6-7 days-a-week of hard “lean and mean” work, networking, some reasonable risk-taking, some tough ROI due-dated venture capital, and the rallying support of familiy and friends.

Yeah, right. And how sick is it that reality renders this solution not even worthy of dreaming about? Oh, right, I almost forgot, times have changed.

Besides, who needs dreams now that we’re up to our ears in “hope”?       

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Having grown up a mailman’s

son, maybe I’m just sentimental

(or simply as stupid as the PO?) 

     On top of their idiotic, money-wasting, survey last December [Click on December Archives in right column and go to DEC 15 “NO MORE ROOM FOR “SNAIL MAIL – Gutless, Incompetent, Greedy, The US Postal Service” for the ugly details], the amazing U.S. Postal Service management team has been making some astonishingly whacko business decisions.

     Since revenues are off, they’ve cut back hours, increased postage prices, increased their elaborate sample mailing campaign to entice more small businesses to do more mailings with (you guessed it) stuff that’s prohibitively expensive to the typical small business to even think about mailing anyway.

     I’ve received two personalized t-shirts, a metal hinged and color-labeled box filled with expensive die-cut printing samples, and the list goes on. And now. Now they’re pulling the blue drop boxes off the sidewalks!

     How utterly brilliant! Hey, nobody’s using them, so take them away. How many things can you think of that those boxes could be used for if YOU had them for YOUR business? I’ll bet there are at least 10,000 ideas.

     Okay, here’s where I’m stupid. I’m going to give away my consulting expertise for free to the U.S. Postal Service. Right here. Right now. Think they’ll take it? Not a chance, but I’m going to put it out there anyway just because they are chewing off their own arms and legs and I hate to just stand around watching them self-destruct.

SO… Here’s what the U.S.P.S. needs to do:

1. Stop wasting time and money and effort on useless dumb surveys. Just listen to your customers!
2. Stop with the radical cost-cutting methods and ideas that only serve to prevent future sales and revenue streams. You can’t make money by turning off lights! Only sales make money!
3. Stop throwing good money after bad with products and services no one wants. Stick to your knitting, and remember innovation is taking an idea all the way to completion! 
4. Take some pages from FedEx and other competitors who train their drivers to go beyond being just drivers and to become account managers– as responsible for promoting and selling and customer servicing as for driving and delivering.
5. Start an Email delivery service (Call me for details!).
6. Learn how to use and promote via social media options. Visit Twitter for two hours!
7. Initiate customer service training at ALL levels. When was the last time anyone got a thank you note from the U.S.P.S. when it wasn’t a thinly-veiled give-me-a-tip-for-Christmas card?
8. Put a P.O. Box in every P.O. Box (Call me on this one too!).
9. Recruit community groups to garden and landscape your ugly buildings (inside and out).
10. SPONSOR community events; get out there and mix with your customers! They don’t bite! Show them you’re (like State Farm) a good neighbor! 
11. SELL AD SPACE ON THE INSIDE OF EVERY P.O.BOX DOOR!!!! 
12. SELL AD SPACE ON STAMPS!!!!
13. Provide shelves for the poor souls with heavy packages standing on lines waiting for the incompetent counter clerks to finish their coffee. 
14. PIPE IN SOME MUSIC!!!
15. Make it “A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE” to go to the post office!
16. How about an occasional (NON-Christmastime) slip in empty mailboxes that the carriers sign that says: “I noticed you didn’t get any mail today, but I wanted you to know I was thinking of you anyway. Have a great week!” 
17. Barter some direct mail advertising for media time and space… other services! 
18. Run direct mail training sessions for small businesses in P.O. lobbies – serve coffee for free! 
19. START A REAL BLOG that actually addresses real customer situations on a daily basis! (If you actually read this far, definitely call me on this one!)
20. Teach small business owners/operators how to tie direct mail to website and other ad and promotion programs.
21. Offer (Put in all business P.O. Boxes) detailed info on direct mail programs with package rates for use of postcards and self-mailers, with sizes and deals and discounts and coupons!
22. Offer quantity discounts!
23. Offer and arrange shared delivery discounts (to same office or building, for example).

     NUTS, huh? Well, I’ll tell you what: If you continue the course you’re on, YOU’RE NUTS BECAUSE YOU WILL END UP KILLING YOURSELF and that would be a terrible waste of assets, resources, some super-nice people who work for you and bring about the demise of a still much-needed service.

     God Bless and Good Night!  halalpiar     

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