Last month we had the pleasure of joining Kevin Skarritt of Acorn Creative for an intense two-days of data downloading, relationship building, hosted meals and receptions, and brushes with power players in the corporate marketing world. (And we got to wake up to this view. Pretty sweet!)

That was the Global Marketing Summit in Myrtle Beach, SC, and despite the fact that people almost never go back through their notes from any workshop, speaking gig, or other event they attend, I’m going back through mine to share a few “A-Ha!” blasts from my notes …

Today, the formula for marketing planning success, from Greg Stuart, co-author of What Sticks:

1. Universal agreement on the goals of the campaign - and that means everyone, from the internal marketing team to every external group that helps make it a reality
2. Have a back-up plan - which means you also have to be able to measure whether the original plan is working in the first place, so you know if and when you need to make Plan B your new Plan A
3. Know the value of a dollar in your marketing spending - and Greg’s recommended formula is to spend 70% of your marketing budget on what’s already working, 20% on improvements to existing marketing, and 10% on brand new ideas

Can you say your marketing is in alignment with these three? Full disclosure - I can’t, either. Good thing I’m going back through my notes to remind myself…

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 6:43 am and is filed under Dances With Gurus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

As we were working on a client proposal on Friday, Lani siad this to me in her usual offhand way:

We’re using words to create energy.

For some reason, this made my brain go “Zing!” I got to thinking all weekend about the laws of thermodynamics - specifically the First Law, which says that matter and energy can neither be created or destroyed - you can only change their states, or transfer them. Words do have energy, and carry energy. And by that, I mean the power to cause action.

But then there’s the Second Law, which says there’s no such thing as a 100% efficient transfer of energy. In terms of writing marketing content, no matter how hard we try, we’re never going to get 100% conversion. So the best we can do is create content that carries our messages as well as we can - and that means testing, tweaking, and refining to make the marketing engine runs as smoothly as possible over time.

Finally, there’s the Third Law, which in natural scientific language is: “As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant.” And quite honestly, I can’t think of an apt marketing metaphor to apply to this one. (If you’ve got one, leave it in a comment!)

Even bad examples are good examples, as the old saw goes, and this is an example of how trying to shoehorn a common concept into a metaphoric context doesn’t always work as smoothly as you’d hope. But the effort - ahh, making the effort - is better than not making one at all.

The poet Allen Ginsburg (or the British scientist C.P. Snow, depending on  your Internet source) summarized the Third Law as “You can’t quit.” So if you can’t quit, you might as well make a play, right?

For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business (and get creative AND effective with your own marketing efforts), sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 7:06 am and is filed under All About Content, Fun With Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of attending Karyn Greenstreet’s marketing planning teleclass (don’t look for the link on her site as of today’s post - since the class already started, you can only find this link about it on her blog). It’s good foundational stuff, and I highly recommend it.

Though there are any number of great tidbits to quote from it, the one that really resonated with me today was this suggestion from Karyn about what to do with all the emails you receive from information marketers (I’m paraphrasing):

When you sign up to receive someone’s emails, don’t look at them right away. If you use Outlook, just put them in a folder until you have about 10 of them.

Then take a little time to read all 10, right in a row, in one sitting. If you’re not getting the kind of information you want, or if you’re not feeling a connection with the author, then unsubscribe yourself immediately.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got Outlook folders for about three dozen info marketers and their emails. And who knows how many more gurus I’ve got lurking in the “Grab Bag” folder I set up, because I was sick and tired of setting up new folders.

So that’s what I’m going to do - start weeding them out. Besides, if you believe in the Law of Attraction, then you must know that you don’t have to be an information pack-rat, keeping everything you ever received until the piles of email overflow so much that you crash your Outlook with every boot-up.

Trust that when you need to know something, the answer will come to you - even if you unsubscribed from the source years ago.

For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business (and get creative AND effective with your own marketing efforts), sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Dances With Gurus, Lessons Learned. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

ATTENTION ALL NH solo-professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who’d like to learn how to make more money, strategize creatively, ignite marketing efforts, and get totally fired up about current and future business ventures:

You’re invited to a truly special event.

Get the scoop in the press release pasted below, and remember — if you keep doing the same thing you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting the same results you always get!

GILFORD — Are you a small business owner seeking to increase your profit margin? Get your creative juices flowing and boost your bottom line with MicroCredit-NH’s “Brainstorm + Brand = Boom!” workshop in Gilford. This day-long workshop will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Southern New Hampshire University’s Gilford Campus on 2 Airport Road.

Participants will access dozens of new ideas and creative marketing strategies to effectively brand their businesses and increase customers. Local experts, including Kevin Skarritt of Acorn Creative; Lani Voivod of Epiphanies, Inc.; and Claudia Needham, MicroCredit-NH’s East Central Regional Manager, will facilitate different topic-related sessions.

Registration is required, as space is limited to 30 participants. The workshop registration fee is $40, which includes lunch. To register, contact MicroCredit-NH at 1-800-769-3482.

For more information about MicroCredit-NH, and to view the complete list of its statewide business events, visit http://www.microcreditnh.org and click on “Calendar of Events.”

For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business (and get creative AND effective with your own marketing efforts), sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Press 'n Such. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.