Out fished?

So Caden, my Dad and myself all went four wheeling and left the pole with Jenifer and Grandma. (Yea, we were not thinking) Anyway, I am told there was lots of screaming and such. I would have loved to see her remove the hook?

End of story is that Jenifer caught the largest fish of Labor Day weekend!

Proves one thing, sometimes being at the right place at the right time is as important or more important than skill.

Life's short you need a Treager?

What? That is the commercial running on the radio. If you do not know, Treager is a grill. So...
A Treager makes you live longer?
Makes your food taste that much better that it is ok that life is short?

Sorry, that one confuses me.

Maybe it is genius marketing since I listen carefully to the commercial every time it comes on looking for why a Treager has somthing to do with life being short.

Good thing I own one I guess?

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?

Yes I am!

You say, what about print!

Print? Ok, when I refer to print, I reference any print media. From email, twitter, postcards, enewsletters and such.

There are some good copyrighters. I however am not one. I can come up with some good idea's, but grammer is a HUGE challenge (as you can tell by the blog)

Anyway, recently some of the idea's I have are around getting people's attention.

We have all seen;
you can save money
you can make more money
buy from us...

Point is, it is old and worn out and does not make me want to read what they have to say. The titles like
Top 5 ways to save $250 or more a month
Learn the hidden secret that IT companies do not want you to know!
Beat the competition through these 3 new to market concepts.

Sure, you have to deliver some GREAT content. Again, unique, interesting and educational. Use statistics, build a case and present the solution. Build a process that you can repeat!

You want more good commercial examples?

Fine, try these! (PS you have to click on the words below!)

I am stuck on
Cereal?
How about this one with the classic line?
Toys?

There are so many. I could go on forever.

The point is, these were unique. Some of these were created over 30 years ago and still many remember these like they were yesterday. And sure, you never know what is going to be this successful and if it was that easy, everyone would do it. Find one of these and you can make a HUGE impact!

Good Marketing?

I was discussing good marketing versus bad (Well or average) marketing with Tammy the other day. I was looking at an insert in a newsletter and it was saying what a company does. You know, we serve this, we are great at this, customer service is wonderful and blah, blah, blah.

Really, I never got past the first line. I could have told you about what the rest of the print was going to say. Same old, Same Old.

I know that company paid a hefty sum to have this developed. And sure, the graphics were right on, the text would be right out of some English book for its accuracy and if I was classically trained in marketing, I am sure that I would appreciate the symmetry of the text, graphics and color across the page.

Well, I am not. The purpose of the marketing should be (As discussed earlier) to really help soften the market, bring brand awareness, and such. The piece that I was speaking with Tammy was a brand awareness piece. It said nothing unique, no real market distinguishing factors and did not really teach me anything.

Why not be unique, capture my interest (As we know,I have a short attention span) and give me value. At least entertain me!

Examples of some good marketing that crosses my mind.

Where's the Beef!
OK that one was old school. How about the new Kia commercial! Music alone is worth the view!
And speaking of music. What about the Bologna commercial lets face it, a whole generation learned to spell bologna from this commercial.

Sales and Marketing?

Ok, that is the title of this Blog. Question is, can sales and marketing be separated? Are they different?

I suppose the answer has to be yes. I know lots of really good companies that do sales, yet have no real marketing. Sure, some of the sales reps do some marketing. And yes, the companies do some "lunch and learns", however they do not really have much beyond that.

Many ask what is marketing?. Yea, I Googled it. No real help there other than to suggest I should define Marketing as I refer to it in this Blog.

Here is my definition.
1. A process to bring market awareness to your brand, company and services.
2. The building of a brand. (External and Internal)
3. The softening of the market to make it easier to sell into (Direct Sales)
4. The development of LEADS?
5. The Positioning of a company
a. As a leader in the field
b. As a good corporate citizen
c. As a "Green" company
6. I would also suggest that Marketing and Media Creation would be in one bucket. Media creation is the development of print, online media, Logo's and such.
7. The development of online presence and social media integration.

I will have more on marketing on going.

If the House is a ROCKIN

It is just the workers building the new street next to our house. They have some type of dirt compactor that must vibrate.

We were home for lunch the other day and I ask Jenifer if she was washing some heavy clothes. I had never felt the washing machine vibrate everything in the house before, but it was the only thing I could think of. I came to figure out that it was the new construction that was rockin the house.

The kids are going to have to learn to look both ways to cross the street and I am too when it comes to backing out of the driveway.