Great post chock full of resources and tools for anyone who’s running a blog, website or other online presence. A veritable Swiss Army Knife of copywriting goodness.
blog, copywriting, grokdotcom, online media, web, web copy, website, writingIs your customer service capable of inspiring a post like this? If your employees or business isn’t capable or willing to respond like Zappos did, you’re gonna get your ass handed to you by those who can and do.
And the thing is, it cost them almost nothing.
business, customer retention, customer service, zapposIf you haven’t heard of Bumvertising ™, take a moment to click over and check it out. Go on, I’ll wait.
Bumvertising ™ was developed by PokerFaceBook as a way to get their name in front of as much traffic as possible. From their site:
Benjamin Rogovy, president and chief economist of Front Door Enterprises, developed this system after realizing the enormous potential in wasted homeless labor. Bums use a business model that takes advantage of high volume traffic, with the expectation that, on average, a certain number of people will donate to them in the form of cash, clothing, or food. Some people, by principle, will never give a homeless man money. Some will give food to them whenever they can. But what is the use of holding up a bum sign to 99% of car traffic that will only read but never donate to these vagrants? With such great exposure, Mr. Rogovy imagined that there had to be some value that was not being utilized.
According to their site, the advertiser pays the homeless sign-holders both in money and food, screens the applicants to make sure they are up to the job and otherwise deals with their contractors in an forthright, businesslike manner.
So, here’s the question: Is this exploitation of a vulnerable population, or a legitimate way for homeless people to earn money and food by doing real, valuable work?
advertising, bum, bumvertising, homeless, marketingWatch this video to see how you can make your marketing sparkle with the Make My Logo Bigger! Cream line of marketing enhancement products.
OMG. This is so funny, yet so relentlessly dead on. Really, just when you think they’ve gone as far as they can…they go farther. But, having been out on the web a bit myself, I have to say they must be selling this stuff by the warehouse full.
Hmmm…where’d I put my checkbook…
ad design, design, humor, logo, make my logo bigger, marketing, webpage design
Meet Scary Monkey (cadged from the collection of Ale Paiva over at the Stock Xchange). I’ve chosen Scary Monkey to be my mascot for all things craptacular in the business and marketing world. When you see Scary Monkey, you know someone has stepped in it. Let’s see who’s leaving stinky footprints today, shall we?
The Large Print Giveth, and the Small Print Taketh Away
The other day, I won one of those business card drawings at a local Chamber of Commerce event. Along with a nice package of handmade boutique soaps, I received a certificate from Mountain View Tire and Service here in Asheville for a free oil change. Sweet! As you can imagine, I was very excited to win this particular prize and since it was just about time for an oil change on my truck anyway, it was doubly pleasant.
BTW, this is a great way to get new customers. After all, many of you offer services and products that create repeat sales by their very nature and this is an easy, cheap way of entering new markets and getting a larger memeshare of the market. In this case, oil changes have to be done regularly and this brief explosion of joy on my part could have translated into a long-term customer relationship assuming they didn’t completely screw it up, which, since an oil change is a dead simple procedure, would have been very unlikely.
But that’s not going to happen now because, as they say, “The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.” Turns out that what I “won” wasn’t a free oil change certificate at all, but merely a discount coupon. In teeny-tiny print that’s barely visible in the shadow of the large-font exhortations of the fine “OIL, LUBE & FILTER WITH 14 POINT INSPECTION” that I didn’t really win is a note that says: ” With purchase of 4 select Goodyear tires.”
Uh, excuse me? A new set of tires is an expensive proposition, and one that is only considered when it’s actually time for new tires, not at random intervals and certainly not just to get a free oil change. An oil change with purchase of new tires is a nice premium - for people who are actually looking to buy tires. But it’s hardly a prize for someone who isn’t.
ROI and Customer Retention
Now, as anyone who’s been in business for more than a few minutes knows, unless you are running a monopoly (and probably even then) the cost of acquiring a new customer (making that first sale to the unsure, the wary and the potential one-night-stander) is far, far higher in terms of effort and actual expenses than the cost of selling to an existing customer (who, if they’re still a customer after that first sale, is already convinced that type of product or services you sell are worth throwing money at and has already established a habit of throwing that money at you to get them). So getting clients is expensive and keeping old ones is cheap and lucrative, since the “selling” has already been done.
This prize, had it been an actual prize and not a crappy coupon, could have created a long-term customer out of me for the price of a basic service (which has a very low cost to the provider and a high markup to the customer, says she who has taken two years of auto maintenance and knows exactly what goes into this service, money- and otherwise). After all, it’s not like I’ll never be needing another oil change again. Or some other related service. Or even tires, for that matter. (Although I buy Cooper, not Goodyear. Yes that’s a plug. They’re great tires.).
But now, instead of a satisfied customer with the rosy, happy association to this company of someone who’s been given something they needed for free, they have a pissed off blogger with an internet connection and a burning desire (akin to the feeling you get from an STD) never to go anywhere near them in the future and to make sure no one else does either. (Just in case you think I’m just ranting over a lost oil change, I’m not. Hubs and I aren’t rolling in dough, but we do okay. I can afford the oil change. It’s the whole “treating the customer like an eternally fleecy sheep to be shorn” bit that rankles.)
Good work, Mountain View Tire and Service of Asheville (yes, I am Google-baiting, why do you ask)! You’ve managed to turn what could have been a great promotional idea into a massively negative opinion that is far out of proportion to the actual damage done, because not only do I not have a free oil change that I thought I had, I also feel jerked around and treated like some sort of mentally deficient idiot who would say, “Sure, I’ll buy a set of expensive tires I don’t need, because otherwise I’ll lose this here free oil change, worth less than $50.00.”
I feel disrespected, insulted, ripped off (even though I bought nothing, I “had” something that was then taken away) and angry. All that for the price of an oil change.
Don’t Be a Selfish Bastard
The moral of the story is, don’t be a selfish bastard if you want to make new customers. Coupons are all well and good, and premiums have their place. But if you’re handing out prizes, freebies, giveaways, samples, etc., don’t tie them down with craptacular fine print. Generosity is its own reward and Scrooging your customers because you’re a scarcity-minded loser is a negative-sum way to do business.
Asheville, customer, customer acquisition, customer retention, freebie, give away, giveaway, marketing, Mountain View Tire and Service, prize, promotion, sales, word of mouthThe ladies over at the Bitchery are discussing the concept of authors promoting their books in Second Life:
…not only can authors promote themselves in the “real world,” but they can promote themselves in virtual worlds as well, with avatars representing their actual selves, interacting with an entirely different audience of potential readers. (Or you can be really pessimistic about it and shriek to yourself, “OMGWTF I have to promote myself in TWO UNIVERSES NOW?!”
It’s 1:30am. Do you know where your avatar is?
(BTW, if you’re interested in some weapons-grade visual humor and not offended by a little man-titty - okay, a lot of man-titty…a lot of scary, scary man-titty - spend some time working through their Covers Gone Wild category on the Archives page, where they roast God-awful romance and erotica book covers. But save it for home. Some items are most definitely not safe for work, and most of them will provoke sounds that could cause co-workers to call in EMS on account of your having a choking seizure in the next cubicle over. A recent commenter’s angst sums up this collection quite effectively: Saying “behind the fold” isn’t nearly warning enough. You ought to add “viewing these covers may permanently damage your DNA and affect future generations.”)
author, bitchery, books, marketing, promotion, publishing, second life, virtual worldOne of the best things about being a word-nerd is being able to play with words - use them in creative ways, create new ones, find new uses for old ones, dredge up archaic terms and phrases from their musty sleep and make them dance for my entertainment…bwaahhaahhahaa! Ahem…
Since this blog is sort of a dumping grounds for the stuff I’m always thinking about, there will likely be memes, neologisms, portmanteaux, turns of phrase, conceptual shortcuts and other such linguistic jiggery-pokery that could prove unfamiliar or confusing. To make life easier on the reader, I’ve set up a page (OGM Glossary). So if you see a term, word or usage that you don’t recognize, there’s a good chance the Glossary can help you out.
And I can play with all my shiny toys without feeling guilty.
glossary, jiggery pokery, meme, neologism, portmanteau, wordsBack in September, Wil Wheaton’s Sept. 12th Geek in Review column at the Suicide Girls website did a good job of describing the effect of the meteor of the Conversation Economy on the fragile Jurassic habitat of Business As Usual:
There is a communications revolution happening right now. It crosses generations, and it scares the absolute shit out of a lot of people who benefit from ignorance and the control of information…Communication empowers people, and an empowered people are very, very scary to the powerful upper class who hope that we’ll just go away, right after we buy a lot of crap from them that we don’t need. And holy shit are they scared right now. The revolution may not be televised, but it’s being blogged, YouTubed, MySpaced, Facebooked, Dugg and Netscaped.
I would have blogged about it then, but I didn’t have the blog up and running yet (you’ll probably be seeing a lot of this in the near future - I have a whole folder of “to blog” links I’ve been squirreling away over the past few months). But the passage of a few months has done absolutely nothing to dull the fatal sharpness and ninja-like accuracy of his point.
Mature Content Alert: Although Wil’s column is safe for work, the Suicide Girls is a punk/goth/alt softcore “pin-up” site, and as such there will likely be adult advertising, topics, verbiage, etc., on the same page as his column. Might want to save this one for when you get home.
blog, business, business as usual, conversation economy, digg, facebook, geek in review, netscape, social media, suicide girls, wil wheaton, youtubeFrom BusinessWeek’s SmallBiz Magazine comes this quick take about an entrepreneur in Second Life:
Rhonda Lillie makes about $12,000 a year selling virtual shoes to virtual people in a virtual world…Lillie, 38, who lives in Oxnard, Calif., rents land in Second Life for about $8 a month. She sells her shoes for $4 to $10. Because the shoes are just images, Lillie has an unlimited supply.
Lillie, 38, currently does not have a day job. Says Lillie: “I wouldn’t have any idea how to run a real-life business.”
Yes, folks, this is the new face of business. Granted, she’s not setting the Fortune 100 track on fire. But others are. How are you planning to meet your customers who view Second Life and other online worlds as just an extension of their meatspace reality? Do you have any idea how to compete with, collaborate with or learn from her and others like her?
Know this: this is reality. It’s going on right now, it’s growing very quickly and “real world” money is flowing through the virtual world in big, splashy gouts that are only getting bigger and splashier. If you’re not at least aware of it and how it can affect your business for good or ill - and how your competitors may be using it to do an end run around your meatspace-only biz - you’re missing some vital data from your business plan.
business, business week, cyberspace, entrepreneur, meatspace, second life, small biz magazine, virtual worldThink your business is too stodgy, too conservative to do anything fun or creative?
Think again.
Consider the retail jewelry business: Jewelry stores are known for their conservative, subtle and elegant ads. Their understated, yet luxurious, decor. Their be-suited salesmen and quiet reserve. Their bubble-bath-filled showrooms full of bikini-clad women…
Wait, what?
No, that’s not a typo, or a hallucination. From the Wall Street Journal:
A few years ago, white scrawl on a black billboard along Interstate 95 in Philadelphia screamed: “I hate Steven Singer!”
Speculation swirled among those who saw it. A popular theory was that it was the work of a jilted girlfriend.
In fact, the sign was paid for by Steven Singer Jewelers, a 35-employee retail store on Philadelphia’s historic Jewelers’ Row.Over the years, the business has marketed itself with humorous ads and gimmicks that, while offending some people, tend to appeal to its coveted younger male audience. Along with the billboards, efforts include spots and giveaways on radio shows that have a mainly male following, including shock jock Howard Stern’s; sponsorship of chicken-wing eating contests; and hosting what it calls the world’s largest bubble bath in the store each year, where lingerie-clad women wade through bubbles.
Jewelry store mogul Steven Singer understands two of the basics of Marketing 2.0 - you can’t stand out from the crowd if you’re afraid to do anything they wouldn’t do, and people love to have fun and will reward you exhaustively if you’re the one providing the entertainment.
Does he drive away some customers? No doubt. But then again, he probably attracts a huge number of casual-lifestyle men who would otherwise end up shopping in one of his competitor’s stores and feeling like a gorilla at a debutante ball as they did so.
Does he piss people off? Surely, although a decent handful of those people are likely his business competitors.
But does he sell jewelry? I’d say so. According to the WSJ article, Mr. Singer’s business has been rising between 15% and 20% a year, brings in over 6 mil in annual revenue from one store and is building an entire second floor just to handle internet sales and private customer meetings.
Yes, Virginia, insanity can be a valid business model, for values of insanity that include homing in on a specific audience and then laser-targeting your marketing to land smack-dead at their feet instead of trying to steer them off the path they’re already on and onto the one that’s unfamiliar and scary.
Listen, if someone can turn the stodgy, ossified business of retail jewelry on its head - and shake a metric buttload of cash out of it’s pockets while he’s doing it - then so can you.
bikini, business, entertainment, howard stern, jewelry, marketing, steven singer, worlds biggest bubble bath