I stumbled across this video as I was looking for some inspiration on Ted, www.ted.com. I have posted some videos from Ted from time to time on this blog as it is an amazing website full of very interesting and creative speakers. This particular video is a lecture given by Professor Randy Pausch, who was dying of pancreatic cancer, when he delivered a one-of-a-kind last lecture that made the world stop and pay attention. It is all about how he achieved the things he wanted to in life. It is long - just over an hour, however, it makes you think about how you need to be focused, don’t put things on hold go out and achieve your dreams.

I was doing some reading today as I am putting the final touches to a course on psychology and emotion in marketing. I picked up Buyology by Martin Lindstrom, which I have referred to in previous posts. It is a book all about the science behind why we buy and make the choices we do and I  found this interesting observation, which backed up the Brighter Marketing  argument that there is a lot more going on in our minds than we realised when we decide to buy stuff.

Dopamine is one of the most addictive substances known to man, it has its part to play in illegal drug use and it makes you feel great.

What’s interesting is that purchasing decisions are driven in some part by its seductive effects…

When you see a shiny car, diamond ring or a great pair of new shoes, dopamine subtly flushes your brain with pleasure, then WHAM!, before you know it, you’ve got your credit card out and the rest is history.

The only problem is, that as you leave the shop or the car show room, the dopamine in your brain will slowly subside and it’s then that logic kicks in. So if someone asks you why you bought the new shoes, car or jewellery, your mind will revert to logic to justify and explain the purchase. After all how could we admit that our minds were full of emotion and dopamine, why would anyone believe that. We all make purchasing decision made on logic don’t we

I receive a regular newsletter from Mel McGee at Super Mummy a Mumpreneurs network. Her newsletters are always upbeat and full of useful information to inspire the mummies of the world to do more and create amazing businesses from scratch. I would like to link to the article but you have to be a member so I have included the article for you to read below. It is a great reminder of how creating a buzz about your marketing is half the battle and if you can create an excitement about the products and services you have to sell, you are usually onto a winner. Here is the article, and here is a link to Mel’s website www.supermummymumpreneurs.com where you can join her community for free and gain access to articles and make friends with like minded mumpreneurs.

What You Can Learn About Marketing From Santa by Mel McGee

Have you ever thought about what a great brand Santa has?  Talk about consistency.  Year after year ‘brand Santa’ delivers the same results.  He never let’s us down.  The emotional appeal that brand Santa brings is incredible.  All that excitement and anticipation.  That is if you are a child of course! But, that’s the point here.  Santa’s target market is children, always has been.

Although he might have been tempted to appeal to to teenagers, adults and everyone. But could you see his magic still working? Even the tiniest of niches is huge and niches have a way of expanding by themselves.

At the end of the day, it’s the consistency that counts and sticking with your niche. Too many small businesses lose focus and try to please everyone. They get tired of their brand and decide to change things around, wasting time and money. Santa has stuck with the same style, colours and image forever.  Who else can you think of that wears red and white, rides on a sleigh and delivers presents? Postman Pat?  Santa is different.  He stands out from the crowd, his marketing message is consistent and we as marketers have much to learn from ‘brand Santa’. Ho, Ho, Ho!

I was reading the Sunday Times this morning and was looking through the business section, when a job advert caught my attention, not because I want a new job, but because I couldn’t actually understand what role they were trying to fill. Whoever had written the advert had obviously had a thesaurus at hand and used it every available opportunity to the point that nothing really made any sense any more. In fact, each week the columnist Roland White who writes his Atticus column in the Sunday Times, takes time to point out the most pointless job of the week and the language used to advertise the position. Which got me to thinking about how important it is keep things simple and straightforward, especially in the the world of marketing. People need to understand what the benefits of your product or service are quickly and easily, if you make it difficult for them you risk losing their attention. It then brought to mind the chaps at Common Craft, who have been making plain English videos to explain new or complex products for the past few years.

Here is one that is a couple of years old, but it explains how social networking works, it is fun to watch, easy to understand and most of all it is only a couple of minutes long, So the next time you sit down to write something, keep it simple, benefits focused and think about the person on the receiving end.

Oops, it has been almost three months since our last blog post and the words “decorator’s or builder’s house” come to mind. It always seems to be your own house that suffers most when you are an expert as you are busy doing work for other people. We decided to make our offline marketing more proactive over the summer months, i.e. more networking, telemarketing and some other marketing initiatives, which paid off. However, gaining more clients always means that while you are delivering work, it can be difficult to keep up with all your other marketing activities. It is a balancing act and inevitably sometimes something has to give. However, Christmas is coming and as we have a little bit more time as clients slow down for the festivities, we can make up for lost time and post some useful posts about some new marketing approaches we have been using. So in the meantime, here is an advert that we found on You Tube which we thought was simple yet had a really strong message, it made us smile…

In the last post we talked about how by rule breaking you can tap into your creativity and generate new ideas. It’s with this in mind that the following blog  from Innovation Zen made me think that even experts sometimes put self imposed rules on themselves that can stunt creativity.  I guess Siobhan and I do it  we give out advice on the best way to do a direct mail etc. However, sometimes we are proved wrong and we learn about new ways to undertake marketing activities. In fact we never stop learning about marketing and are always open to better and more ingeneous ways of doing things.

The reason I liked Innovation Zen’s blog post is that it is all about predictions that experts have made over the years, which in retrospect look a little foolish. Such as

“There is no reason for any individuals to have a computer in their home.”
Ken Olsen, President, Chairman and Founder of DEC, 1977

Take a look, it might just get you to break your pattern of thinking, just click on this link http://innovationzen.com/blog/2006/07/17/predictions-gone-wrong/

and this link for the second part http://innovationzen.com/blog/2006/07/31/more-predictions-gone-wrong/

We run creativity and innovation workshops and the main challenge we have it getting people to break out of their normal thought patterns and start using their grey matter more effectively.  Getting individuals out of their routine and shaking up their “this is how we do things around here” mentality is one of the most important aspects to getting them to open up their minds and get their mental muscles working.  To think in a more creative way often means we have to break those unwritten rules about how we do stuff to break through to new ways of working or get new marketing ideas.

Roger Bannister was one such person that broke the rules and showed that the impossible was in fact possible. Read more…

We work with lots of clients and we are often asked  “what should we do with our website?” The answer differs depending on what you want your website to do for you. If it is your only route to market, then making sure that it sells your product or service successfully is paramount. In our book The Brighter Marketing Bible we devoted a whole chapter to the subject, but I just found this list that Seth Godin published on his blog which I thought was really useful. It gets you to think about the goals of your website and what you want to achieve from it to give you the impetus to make changes that will really make a difference. As he says these are the “difficult and important questions you have to answer before you spend a nickel”.  Here is the link to the list Seth Godin’s Website Questions

This is just a quick story that shows that with a little thought you can make customers feel valued and how it is often the most simple marketing ideas that can generate new customers.

My sister lives in New Zealand and loves Liz Earle cosmetic products, she can’t buy them out there, so I decided to surprise her with a gift box stuffed full of her favourite face creams and shower gels. I ordered the gift box on-line last Thursday afternoon and got a nice email thank you from them along with confirmation of the order. However, Liz Earle didn’t stop there, the next day (Friday) I received a small package, and inside was the following: Read more…

It has always been my dream to gallop along a windswept beach on a horse and a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to do just that. I guess you are wondering what on earth my dream has to do with marketing, well as it turns out quite a lot…

I was on a break with the family in Northumberland, somewhere we hadn’t visited before.  So before we set off to our holiday home for the week, I did some research and found out that there was a riding stables just down the road that offered beach rides for the experienced rider.  I learnt to ride about 10 years ago it was a challenge I set myself to learn something new when I turned 30 and within a few years I had become an OK rider, by no means stylish or accomplished, but I could control the horse, go on hacks and do some maneuvers in the menage. Then I took my hobby one step further and took some horse management and riding exams in anticipation of owning a horse in the future. I was riding at least once a week, learning the theory and mixing with people who knew a lot about horses. I was, I suppose riding fit, and ready for the next challenge my riding school teachers threw at me. Then just over three years ago I found out I was pregnant,  and decided that riding a horse, no matter how sound it was, was a risk too far and I hung up my riding boots.  Read more…

I got this link from John Alexander who sends me SEO tips during the week. I tried it out and it really is a good little tool, it lets you know the search volumes for key words so you know which are the most popular. Here’s what he had to say…

Have you ever tried http://www.spacky.com

It allows you to type in any keyword phrase and displays the approximate number of searches for your phrase and similar phrases for Google, Yahoo Search and Microsoft Network.

Very quick for finding busy phrases across all 3 search engines.

Plus the price is right - it’s Free!

You might also want to take a look at his article on how search engine spiders work

http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles/seo-spider-tips.html

It demystifies how Google and the other engines work and is an easy read.

I was just having a read through Drew McLellan’s marketing blog, when I spotted this article on whether or not you should have a marketing budget. It was quite a short article but it made me think about all the clients we have worked with that have asked us “should we have a marketing budget?” and I have to agree with Drew, the answer is yes. Whether you a one person consultancy or a large organisation, it is important to make sure that you budget funds for marketing. If you don’t,  then how do you know how much you have spent, what results you got and if your money was well used. Read more…

I recently posted an article, Marketing Non-Essentials, on how it is those little things, the critical non-essentials that can make a difference to your marketing or perception of your brand. So when I went on holiday with my family last week to the Lincolnshire coast, I saw first hand how a few small things can make a big difference.

We had rented a bungalow for a week, which was only 1 minute from the beach, ideal for my two daughters and a real bonus for me. I grew up in a seaside town and miss the sound of the sea and the thought of having access to long beach walks now I live in a city, was very tempting.  Anyway, we had great hopes of our holiday home, and made our way down to Lincolnshire. Read more…

I like this video that you can find on Ted from Charles Leadbeater on innovation. He looks at the fact that anyone can be innovative and it’s often your clients that provide the most creativity. As users of your product or service they can let you know what they need and help you to adapt what you already have into new products or services.

In this video, Charles uses the example of mountain bikes, which weren’t the invention of some multi-national bike company. They were developed by cyclists in the USA, who were adapting their bikes to go over rough terrain and it was 10 or 15 years before the big bike companies realised that there was potential in the market. In 2005 65% of bike sales in america were attributed to mountain bikes and the industry was worth around $58billion, most importantly it was a product category entirely created by consumers because they had the incentive to innovate.

So just take a minute to think about your busienss or organisation, image what you could achieve if your employees, clients and suppliers had the incentive to innovate…? Could you create the next multi-billion pound industry, it is really worth thinking about.

We have been running our blog for over six months now and it really does seem to be helping with our search engine rankings. This is mainly because it is attached to our main website and as we keep adding new content about marketing, our www.brightermarketing.com domain appears to be going up in Google’s ranking of our site. Deciding to set up and run a blog seems like an easy decision.

However, unless you have the time to post at least one blog post a week then, your blog can look old, out of date and unloved and kind of defeats the purpose of having it. On the other side, if you do decide that you can keep publishing relevant articles and thoughts about your industry then a blog can be a great way of helping your search engine optimisation efforts.

In this blog by Charlotte Britton - Setting Up Your Blog for SEO, she takes you through the main areas that you need to consider to help you develop your blog and improve your Google rankings. It will give you an outline of what you need to consider and what you need to do to get your blog ranked by Google and other search engines.

I am halfway through reading The Absolutley Critical Non-Essentials, by Dr Paddi Lund, an Australian Dentist who has written all about customer serice and why it is the small things in your business that really matter to your clients. It is a great little book and is worth a read as it is packed full of some really great ideas. It’s things like the cleanliness of your reception, the way you are greeted on arrival, or the fresh flowers and toiletries in your hotel room. He has shown that the “non-core” areas of your business are very very important contributors to your client’s perceptions of what you do. Read more…

“Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing”

John D. Rockefeller

Which is why shouting about the successful projects and products you have provided to your customers is a vital part of the marketing process. It really is important to build up a  good selection of case studies or testimonials from satisfied clients that you can use on your website, promotional material or in proposals to show prospective clients that you can really do what you say you can do.

Having somebody else validate the quality of your service or client is important. In a recent blog post by Robert Wheeler he talks about the importance of third party validation http://youngmillionairegroup.com/blog/2008/08/15/3rd-party-validation/ and how they can make a difference to your business. Using someone else to sing your praises is a great way of making sure that your story is believable Read more…

I was flicking through an old book this week,  Awaken The Giant Within which I hadn’t read in a while, by Anthony Robbins,  as I felt like I needed some inspiration. For those of you who don’t know Mr Robbins, he is an American self help writer and speaker, who helps individuals become motivated and take charge of their lives and careers. Whilst he’s not for everyone, a lot of what he says is true and this quote from his book, stood out for me.

“You see in life, lots of people know what to do, they read and listen to books and other people, but few people actually do what they know or find out. Knowing is NOT enough! You must take action.”

Working with our clients we know from experience that reading doesn’t always translate into action.They can have written beautifully bounded marketing strategies, which don’t actually achieve anything unless action is taken and they are implemented.

So if you have a marketing plan sat there on your shelf, take it down, blow the dust off it and find at least two actions you can take this week that will make a difference to your business or marketing team.

As Anthony Robbins says you have to “take action, take massive action” if you want to achieve anything in life, and I think he is right; theorising and knowing is great, but where does it actually get you?

Siobhan got back from her holiday in Greece last week, she went to Agassi in Zante and ended up staying in the same apartments my husband I went to a few years ago.  Before she went I told her about this great little restaurant on the main street in Agassi called Ethnic which did great grilled meat and sea foods. In fact it was the only restaurant I remembered from that holiday and they had a great marketing strategy, which Siobhan confirmed they were still using and was still working. It’s quite simple but it ticks a lot of marketing boxes, and it is as follows: Read more…

What does cooking a family meal have to do with positioning your products and services. Well quite  a lot really. I realised quite a long time ago that the name you give to certain meals influences how it is received by your target audience i.e my children.

Take my 12 year old, vegetable phobic daughter, no matter how hard I have tried over the years to promote healthy living, she has turned her nose up at many a meal that I have put before her. Until I tried a new approach a few years ago, I simply renamed the food that I made and cut the vegetables up a bit smaller. So… Read more…

I was starting to write a post on social media and the use of Web 2.o when I came across this blog post from Chris Brogan. It is a great article and gives you 50 ideas for how social media could help you improve your marketing. If you are new to social media it is a bit technical in places, but it includes some good ideas such as making sure your blog posts use relevant key words and how video can make a big difference to your search engine rankings. To take a look at what Chris has to say visit the article here. http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ways-marketers-can-use-social-media-to-improve-their-marketing/.

For more articles on this blog about Social Media take a look at

Social Media FAQ

Twitter for Beginners