So what does this mean to you? It means that if you are marketing and branding your company, you need to know what journalists are looking for and be ready to supply it. Maybe it’s information about a grand opening, a new product or service you are now offering or an expert opinion – find out what they cover, and when you have the right stuff be there to supply the information. This is where working with a branding consultant comes in handy – branding agencies often have the inside scoop on what journalists cover.

Of course, this does not mean you should flood anyone’s inbox with press releases about every single thing that happens in your company. But it does mean that you should research who covers what in your area, see what kind of articles they write, and when you have something that fits, don’t miss the chance to offer your information for their next assignment.

Wiki says, “An avatar is a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) or a one-dimensional username used on Internet forums and other communities… It is an object representing the user.”

Now that we have that straight… Choosing the right avatar to represent your personal brand is just as important as selecting a logo for your company. Perhaps more important in the world of social media because that is what people see every time they correspond with you on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

As a branding agency, we know the importance of being selective in choosing the right avatar for our various social media communication. Here are some of our top criteria in the selection of an avatar.

1. Don’t use a default avatar. Nothing screams newbie like selecting one of the default images as your avatar – make it personal.
2. Pick one avatar for all communication. No, you aren’t stuck with this avatar for life, but you should be consistent. Twitter, Facebook, your blog, forums – they should all get the same avatar. (Hello, this is your online branding strategy.)
3. KISS – Keep it Simple Stupid. Remember, your avatar will often appear smaller than a half inch. If you have a busy background, it is hard to see what’s going on.
4. Make it interesting. Don’t go crazy and break tip #3, but your avatar should be attractive, interesting and/or fun. Make people want to hear from you.
5. Logo or Photo. Depends. Personal branding – photo. Company branding – logo.

Alright, so those are our tips. Wanna see what we do? For our branding agency, we each have our own avatars to represent our voice. Look for us online.

There are photographic styles for every image, but a quick snapshot taken by your friend with poor lighting, a busy background and other people in the image is probably not the best image for your brand. A friend in the publishing industry tells the story of a famous actor – I dare not name – who was to appear in a magazine. When a request was made for the actor’s photo, he sent a picture of himself at what appeared to be a cocktail event with his arms around other partygoers. It was an all-around terrible photograph. A second request was sent for a better picture; the actor’s rep informed the publication that it was the best picture available. What? Surely, this is an exaggeration? I am afraid not. The friend made do with the image, but it was a poor representation.

While you may not have a magazine knocking today, what if one calls tomorrow? Are you ready? If not, it’s time to get a professional picture taken. A branding agency (like Celebrity Branding Agency) can steer you in the direction of an appropriate photographer (and other branding strategies to get those magazines and clients knocking).

Now, before you go deleting all of your party pics and family photos. There is a time and a place for those snapshots – think social media. Go ahead; share your favorite pics on Facebook, your blog, etc., wherever you connect with your clients on a personal level. But when it comes to the image for your brand, let a professional help you look professional.

Even in our highly digital world, branding consultants will tell you that the direct-mail campaign is still one of the most important tools in a branding agency’s bag. But even if you plan the best campaign, if your campaign doesn’t reach your intended recipients, you might as well throw your cash out the window.

When your mail piece arrives at the post office, it is feed into a machine to read the address and give it a barcode for delivery. That’s right, a machine. There is no guy in the backroom assigned to reading every addresses piece of mail that comes through the PO. Since you are dealing with a machine, you have to think like a machine, so while Florida, Fl, Fla, FL. and FL all mean the same thing to a human — to a machine reading a bulk list only one of these is correct. What does that mean? It means the other labels could delay or completely prevent your piece for ever reaching its destination. It’s true. (Wondering which one is correct? The two-letter state abbreviation in capital letters, no period.)

The problem with lists is that often the person entering the information is copying and pasting from another location. Sometimes that information is up to postal regulations, sometimes it is not. So, it is important for the person creating and maintaining your lists to know what is acceptable and what is not.

Here are some more pointers from USPS about addressing your mail:

• All capital letters
• No punctuation
• At least 10-point type
• One space between city and state
• Two spaces between state and ZIP Code
• Simple type fonts
• Left justified
• Put the attention line on top — never below the city and state or in the bottom corner of your mailpiece
• If you can’t fit the suite or apartment number on the same line as the delivery address, put it on the line ABOVE the delivery address, NOT on the line below
• Make sure your labels are straight — mail processing machines have trouble reading crooked or slanted information
• Words like “east” and “west” are VERY important

Learn this lesson now, friend. Otherwise you could loss a good portion of your list before you even get the mail out the door, and what will that do to the statistics for your personal branding?

Oh yeah and they made him his very own website as well:

www.datelance.com/

While this is a pretty funny prank that ever so timely in the month of February, what I want to call your attention to is how clear the message is here: Lance is looking for someone to date (or at least his friends are looking for someone for him to date!).

And while some might argue that he must have a strong desire to be miserable (that was a joke), lets assume that he’s looking for someone to enhance his life.

In dating we look for someone who is capable of enhancing our lives and fulfilling a portion of our personal lives that we are not capable of fulfilling on our own.

Now why don’t we do the same thing in our businesses? There are so many opportunities to find a great business “match” or as they are more commonly known: Joint Ventures (JV).

Finding the right JV can allow you to:

• reach an entirely new group of people for little to no up front cost
• leverage the relationship that another business has spent a lot of time and money creating with their customers and monetize it for your own benefit
• offer products and services to your existing customers that you don’t have to take the time to create or service and still make money
• Expand your business into new territories
• And so much more!

And this is just a very small list of things I wanted to outline just to get you thinking about these JV opportunities. There are thousands of other benefits, but you get the point. The opportunities are endless.

So, like Lance, why don’t you go out and try to find a great match for your business? Who knows, if you tell your friends they may even put up a billboard for you.

Press play below to find out!

I was talking to a client the other day and I realized something that I wanted to share with you. It’s the concept of the Audience of One.

As most of you know, my background is in the music business, and in the music business, everyone wants what? A record deal! In the business world, I found that everyone wants a book publishing deal and seemingly everyone in the world wants a reality television show deal. Why is that?

Well, when I really break it down, I’ve come to discover it’s because everyone thinks that if they get that record deal, that book publishing deal or that reality show deal, it’ll make all their marketing problems go away because someone else will then be in charge of marketing them, exposing them, and making their business grow.

Well, if you can’t figure out already– that’s absolutely false! I can tell you from the music business, a lot of bands work hard, and they finally get a record deal only to get “shelved.” They record a record—if they even get to producing the record, the record company may decide to use someone else’s record instead of yours. I actually have a friend who had signed a record deal and their record hit the label president’s desk the same day as the record of guess who? Barney the purple dinosaur. I’m going to let you guess which record got released, because it was a guaranteed money maker and which one got shelved. Three years of their life gone now from the time they signed the record deal, until the record got shelved, they then got let go from their deal and the band was in shambles.

Book Publishing deals—most of the time, when you get a book publishing deal, if you’re lucky enough to get the deal, when it comes time to release the book, the publishing company will meet with you and say, “So, what are your plans for marketing this book?” And you’re like, “well, I don’t know, I thought that was your job” and they will argue that it’s really your job. It’s a vicious cycle! Ninety-nine percent of books never get marketed well.

And again, we see the same problem with reality television show deals, why would you focus all your time building a business and trying to get to the pitch stage and trying to get a network to buy in on the stuff. It’s going to take you years, and likely it will never see the light of day. That’s what the Audience of One is. Why would you ever focus your time and effort trying to reach an audience of one—one executive, one book publisher, one record label—when you could be spending the same amount of time and effort building a true audience that will listen to you that you can nurture that will want everything you have to offer. If you take the time to build your audience, you build your value.

I’ll say that again, if you take the time to build your audience, you build your value!

So my encouragement to you is instead of thinking that there’s a cure-all pill for everything– that you need the record deal, you need the publishing deal or you need the TV deal, forget about that and start today! You can put out a record without a record label. You can put out a book without a major publishing company. You can have a TV show on the internet. So, instead of focusing on finding the one guy behind the desk that you think can change your life, take your time to build an audience of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands instead of just looking for the audience of one.

It’s a big problem, with a simple solution.

To learn the solution, watch this 2 minute video I prepared for you:

As always, I’m here to help and I wish you a very safe and prosperous New Year.

~ Nick

Would you trade places with a 3 foot man in a wheelchair?

Before you say “NO WAY!”you need to watch this video from a friend of mine, Sean Stephenson (it’s only about 3 minutes and TRUST ME, it’s worth watching):

Seriously, just watching this 3 minute video of Sean, will eliminate any and all self defeating beliefs within you.

I hope this helps you realize, as it did for me, that anything is possible and that you really can achieve anything.

This is beyond inspiring – it’s a wake up call for all of us.

And, if you like what you see, you can help-me-help Sean. Sean got a pilot deal for a show about his daily life, struggles and achievements, on the Biography Channel. He needs all of us to tune in, in order to get him enough viewers to push his show to the next level, so he’ll get it funded and can take his inspirational story to millions of people, to help them overcome adversity. If you like what you see on the short clip I just shared with you, PLEASE mark your calendar and tune in for Sean’s debut.

The show premiers Sunday, November 15th at 7PM

and 11PM PT, 10PM ET on the Biography Channel.

Make sure you tune in, and find out why Jimmy Kimmel calls him ‘the Yoda of personal development’.

If you watch *only one* tv show this year, make it this one.

Thanks for your help with this. Please feel free to forward this around and make it as “viral” as you like. It’s your chance to help a lot of people out there.

Nick

It’s an article written by AdWeek that shows that Business Leaders are the “Most Persuasive” Celebrity Endorsers of products in ads. Business Leaders Ranked Highest with 37% of the “Most Persuasive” vote, followed by athletes (21 percent), TV/movie stars (18 percent), singers/musicians (14 percent) and former political figures (10 percent).

Read the entire article here:
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/data-center/research/e3i26911e62ce1ee0f7592607732d0b6d57

So, that leads me to the question, what are you doing to become the business celebrity that endorses your own products or services?! If nothing, you need to start seriously considering it.

It started in Los Angeles Monday night when I attended Richard Branson and his mother’s charity event “Rock the Kasbah”, a private function with 350 people in attendance who gathered to raise money for budding entrepreneurship in Morocco. It was a star-studded event where I got the chance to meet and even interview the Billionaire, check out his somewhat fumbled answer to my question here.

I also got to watch Lindsay Lohan walk the red carpet and even chatted with her for a minute. Check out the video I shot here. The evening was rounded out by performances from Estelle, Gavin Rossdale and Natasha Beddingfield and was overall a huge success. It was great to see so many people supporting entrepreneurship in the global economy even in these unique economic times.

The rest of the week, I spent at an invite only mastermind group for 7-figure speakers and best-selling authors. It was a room filled with 100 of the most prominent speakers, marketers and businessmen and women of today. I was absolutely humbled to be invited to share the stage and speak about how to leverage new media to grow your business. I got the opportunity to share the stage with:

Jay Abraham (legendary business strategist)
Chet Holmes (Consultant to more than 60 fortune 500 Companies)
Jeffrey Hayzlett (Chief Marketing Officer of Kodak)
Mark Victor Hansen & Jack Canfield (Authors of the 160 million-seller book series, Chicken Soup for the Soul)
Ron LeGrand and Robert Allen (Legendary Real Estate Educators)
Bill Bartman (Billionaire Oil Tycoon)
Bill Glazer (Dan Kennedy’s Business Partner)
Mari Smith (Social Media Expert)
Perry Marshall (World’s Leading Expert on Pay Per Click Marketing)
Alex Mandossian (Legendary Internet Marketer)
Joe Sugarman (Legendary Marketer and Founder of BluBlockers)
Ryan Lee (The Continuity King)
Andrew Lock, Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller (Internet TV Phenoms)
And the list goes on and on and on.

What struck me about this room was how genuinely friendly and willing to help all of these people were. They were all there to foster old relationships as well as to jump start new ones.

The conversation permeating the stage, every corner of the room, and the impromptu hallway brainstorming sessions was that of the new age of relationships. The main point being this:

Your customers and prospects are dying to engage online…but you’ve got to give them a good reason to engage with you!

And it was my good friend Andrew Lock, of HelpMyBusiness.com that spelled it out in a flash, almost as if it were second nature, and I believe many people missed it! But here is the new rule of engagement:

Entertainment + Education = Engagement

That’s it! The reason why many forms of traditional media are losing their audience is because they are only focusing on either Education of Entertainment. And the ones that aren’t focusing on either, are shutting their doors even faster! It’s a simple, but brilliant concept. It’s what I’ve always tried to say, albeit much more clumsily, but Andrew put it perfectly. If you can give your clients and prospects Education and Entertainment, you’ll be the one they want to engage with and ultimately do business with.

Most of you are great at providing educational content, so if you’re wondering how to Entertain a bit more, check out Andrew’s videos at www.HelpMyBusiness.com – he’ll give you some great ideas

Here’s the link:

http://blog.tunecore.com/2009/09/direct-to-fan.html

In any event, today they had a post titled “The Journalist’s Guide to YouTube” that had some great tips in it, but the one that really caught my eye was the last one was a section titled “How Journalists Can Use YouTube” that discussed a really cool way for people all over the world to broadcast local news, and a link to educational content that will teach you how to do it well.

They mentioned that one of the toughest things for broadcasters, traditionally, was to get video content from people in local communities, talking about news right as it happens around them. Twitter has obviously made this type of reporting available to anyone with a cell phone, but I hadn’t considered how video could revolutionize this new way of reporting by showing user generated videos on your local news channels. Think about the repercussions of that for not just news, but for TV programming in general as the web continues to take over “what” and “how” we watch video.

Check out the post here, hopefully it’ll get your juices flowing like it did mine!

It turns your photos and videos into movie preview style videos. They look better than just about anything else I’ve seen. Enjoy!

It turns your photos and videos into movie preview style videos. They look better than just about anything else I’ve seen. Enjoy!

We also had some great training sessions including a spectacular 3 hour social media marathon session with Peter Shankman from HelpAReporterOut.com on how he grew his following with social media from 0 to over 100,000 and built a million dollar business in a little over a year.

Our final adventure was on a private yacht (the same one they used on the show The Apprentice!) out to the Statue of Liberty to celebrate our Entrepreneurial Freedom. (here is a link to a pic I took of the Statue of Liberty: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=59418242&id=2008767#/photo.php?pid=7973266&id=507820116 )

As we were out there on the water, Jack gave a really moving speech about our entrepreneurial freedom that got me thinking.

What he said is that it’s up to you and I, the entrepreneurs in the country to take the bull by the horns, and blaze the trails for others to find their financial freedom. As entrepreneurs, we are the ones with the power to steer this new economy into greener pastures and bluer skies.

Whether you realize it or not, others in economic meltdown are literally waiting on you to show them the new way to operate and be successful in the new economy. The new economy is very different, and many people are having a rough time finding their way through it. To many, they have seen their longstanding business models get wiped away overnight, and now they’re looking for direction, from someone like you, to show them the way in this new economic environment.

The beauty of this, is that if you help others get what they want and need, you will ultimately get what you need! It’s a win-win for both of you!

The only problem is, if they don’t know you exist, how can you help them?! So, I ask you, are you doing everything you can to promote who you are and how you can help right now? There are many people out there searching for you, and you need to let them know where you are!

If you know you’re not marketing yourself, and your expertise as effectively as you could be, which isn’t allowing you to help more people (which as you know ultimately helps you), then email me and I will send you absolutely free a copy of our special report that tells you things you can do right now to get your message out. Now is not the time to sit back and wait for the economy to improve. Now is the time to take bold action and I think this report will help you. It’s my gift to get things moving.

1. Websites
2. Blogs
3. Articles

If you haven’t read that post yet, you can read it by clicking here

Now we’ll get to the other 2 that I promised you. Let’s get started:

4. Press Releases

This is an easy concept, but most people miss it. So, you may want to read this part twice.

People do not know what you are doing unless you tell them.

It’s as simple as that. Did you land a big settlement? Did your practice just celebrate its 20th anniversary? Are you under new management? Are you opening a new location? Are you involved in a charitable cause?
These are just a few of the questions that most of your clients would love to know. If they don’t know, you simply aren’t effectively communicating the answers. Having a “latest news” section on your Web site and in newsletters, where you can post press releases, allows you to post such items in a manner that makes them look like news, not like you’re bragging about yourself. Write in the third person for these posts, and they will really keep your clients in the loop.

Not to mention, if you didn’t already guess, you can syndicate the press releases for even more exposure! If you are using the same key words (the words you want to be found under when people type those words in Google), then you should start to dominate the first page of Google. Your competition will love this! And, of course it will make your potential clients’ decision to contact you an obvious one.

5. Newsletters

This is “an oldie but a goodie.” We’re talking about real paper here people, the kind you have printed with ink that you can mail to your clients and prospects and hand out to everyone you meet.

A newsletter is really just a collection of information presented in any fashion you want. Some people choose to have them in color with bright photos on glossy paper, and others choose to print them on their laser printer in black and white with nothing but text. Both strategies work. The key factor to realize here is that this is a way to stay at the top of your clients’ minds. With a newsletter, they will receive whatever information you want to give them at whatever time intervals you choose to give it to them.

You can fill your newsletter with the latest information in your practice area that will make your clients take action and call you. Or, you can write about helpful tips that will help them avoid needing a lawyer (don’t worry, try as they might, they always need you! But at least now they know you’re here to help not just to send bills.) The possibilities are endless, and this works in every practice area!

A newsletter is essentially a way for you to speak to all of your clients and prospects every month, to let them know how you can help them, just like you’ve been helping others, but you don’t have to pick up the phone or write an email to each one of them. You can do it all at once by writing a newsletter.

WARNING: Be prepared for people to get absolutely hooked on your newsletter. We have heard several stories about customers calling to ask why they hadn’t received their newsletters yet because they always look forward to them in their mailboxes at a certain time of the month! Wouldn’t you like to build a huge list of these loyal fans?

There you have it, 5 of the many strategies that will have your clients learning everything you want them to know about you. , Most importantly, you are building your reputation that you are the expert they should call when they need what you have to offer. If you would like to learn more strategies we invite you to sign up for our free newsletters and magazines at www.CelebrityBrandingAgency.com. Building Celebrity status can grow your practice exponentially, so get started today!

Interested now?!

Celebrity Branding® is a series of strategies used to get a specific market, those who are looking for what you have to offer, to find you everywhere they turn. When executed correctly, your prospects hardly know anyone else exists, but you. It’s all about finding out what your potential clients are searching for, and how they’re searching for it. Next, you develop specific ways for your prospect to find you and then finally, help your prospect learn more about you, your philosophy, why you’re right for them, and how they can reach you.

I can do this for people because I use the same strategies that big Hollywood PR agents use, to seed the media (online and offline, Mass Media and Targeted Media) with the information that I want my clients’ (the people who hire me), prospects and clients to know. It’s one of the oldest strategies around, but it’s been heavily guarded for years by Hollywood gatekeepers who want to keep the media, and the money, to themselves.

Let me show you five of my key strategies for building Celebrity status in your business or practice.

1. Websites

Notice I said Websites, plural. Yes, one great website it a great start but you should have multiple websites. One for your busienss, one about you personally, one with video and audio of you, one for social media connections, and the list goes on and on. Why? Because Google, except in very rare circumstances, will only show 1 website, 1 time in it’s organic rankings. That means that if you only have 1 website, you’re only going to get one listing in Google for it. If you have multiple sites, you get multiple listings in the rankings, not to mention if executed correctly it can really help your prospects see other dimensions of your personality.

I won’t tell you to give away your kids cell phone numbers, and the name of your proctologist or anything, however, sharing real life stories, photos, video and info, are all great ways to break down the barriers that often stop clients from reaching out to you in the first place. Most businesses don’t have TV commercials, newsletters or anything else that has more than 1 dimension. This is a great point to differentiate yourself from the rest of your competition.

2. Blogs

Many of you know what a blog is, but for those who don’t, it is a dedicated place for you to communicate with your clients and prospects.

A blog (short for a web log) is an online journal or diary that allows you to write and post information or ideas you feel will be of interest to your readers.

So, how can your blog help you grow your business or practice? Great question. To understand the answer you have to know a bit about how search engines work.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and all the others use what they call “spiders.” Spiders are software programs that “crawl” the Internet looking for new content and rank it based on this content and its relevance to a certain topic. This is all done by some very complex math, but the important thing you need to know is that if you write often and/or discuss topics that are often searched online (i.e. topics in the news), the search engines will consider your site “relevant.” If you also include “key words” (popular search terms) in your content that you know potential clients are searching for, there is a much better chance that they will actually find you when they type those words in a search engine. The more often you blog, the greater likelihood you will appear higher on a page when someone conducts a search using key words related to your expertise.

Our three principles of blogging for search engines are:

1. Write Often

2. Write Relevant

3. Write Using Key Words

What makes a good blog?

The only thing that really matters is the opinion of the audience you are trying to reach. Here are a few tips that will help you develop your blog to generate business.

1) Know who you are writing for. As a basic example, that hopefully won’t offend anyone: If your audience is 13-year-olds, writing about retiring next year probably isn’t going to get you a lot of return visitors. Writing about becoming a teenager, the best car to get when you turn 16 and how to attract the opposite sex will probably make you pretty popular.

2) Keep it short and to the point. Approximately 100-300 words is all most people have the time to read. Remember, in the online world, people are looking for actionable answers — not novels (or they would go to a bookstore). So, keep your blogs short and to-the-point. Over time, this will build a great deal of credibility with your readers.

3) Write actionable content. “How Tos” and “Top 10” lists are great. It gives your readers action steps that they can take and use in their everyday lives. Think about ways to use this type of content to point out how you are different from your competitors.

4) Don’t be afraid to tell some of your secrets. People love to hear about how to make something happen, and then they love to pay someone else to do it. Let’s be honest, even if someone just told us how to edit the code on our Web site to make it stick out like neon lights in a search engine, that doesn’t mean we want to do it ourselves. Just give us a way to contact and hire you. After all, you just showed us you are the expert.

5) Allow comments. Consider allowing people to post comments about your blogs. In fact, you should be the first one to post a comment after each blog. Pose a question or comment to simply get a discussion started. If visitors are interacting and writing comments about your blog, they are actually adding relevant content that the search engines are going to like.

THEN, the real secret is to syndicate your blogs. Syndicating your blogs takes them and posts them on thousands of sites around the web, and they all link back to your original post, giving your website a “vote” in Google for relevance (which helps it to climb higher in the organic rankings), gives you another listing in the organic rankings for the subject that people are searching for (remember we talked about having multiple websites so you showed up multiple times for a certain subject in Google? Yes, this counts too!), and if you give them great content, it will also continue to build your expert status.

You can find some great blog syndication sources online just by typing “Blog Syndication” in Google.

(Note: The other big objection I get often is that “the Bar/Board/Professional Association/Compliance won’t let me do that.” And while I don’t profess to know the rules of every association or board, think outside the box a bit here. If your Board or Association won’t let you talk about your business skills, don’t talk about your business skills! Talk about something more interesting! Talk about real life and the stories it constantly delivers to us and those we know! This also applies to everything below that we are going to cover.)

3. Articles

Articles work the same way as blogs in regard to driving up the relevancy of your Web site in search engines. And while you should certainly use your Articles in hard copy newsletters, etc, let’s talk about them in the online world for a minute. The online game is content driven, so the more relevant content you have on a subject; the more likely you are to get traffic to your site. Articles allow you to show your expertise in a manner that is easily digestible to your visitors. The key to these articles, similar to blogs but slightly longer, is to keep them short and actionable. Give your potential clients information that they can use, and they will trust you even more — getting you one step closer to earning their business.

Articles are usually a bit longer than blogs, but they don’t have to be. Tell what you need to, but keep it slim. Remember, you are trying to build credibility as well, so try to keep your headline relevant to the context of your article. You should also keep your “sales pitches” (like “call me now to get started on your case!”) to a minimum inside the content portion your article. There’s nothing worse than looking for good information on a topic, getting three sentences into an article and getting a blatant sales pitch. Articles are meant to be informative, so try to leave the sales pitch out of the meat of the article and add a byline at the end. At the end of your articles, consider adding a section like this:

To learn more about Celebrity Branding® You, to lock out your competition, increase your profits, and have the practice you always dreamed of, visit www.CelebrityBrandingAgency.com. JW Dicks, Esq. and Nick Nanton, Esq. founders of the Celebrity Branding® Agency, publish the “Celebrity Branding You™” e-zine monthly covering topics that every lawyer looking to build their practice needs to know. If you’re ready to take your practice to the next level, get more FREE info now at www.CelebrityBrandingAgency.com.

This text can serve as your sales pitch. By adding in a link to your Web site, if you syndicate your article, you create additional inbound links to your site. Again, just run a Google search for “article syndication” and you’ll find lots of sources.

Since this blog post is already a bit too long, I’ll save the last 2 strategies for the next post! Go ahead and take a guess and leave me a comment below! Or if you have something to add to the discussion, please post it in the comments!

But, our waitress was so unfriendly that I almost didn’t want to buy breakfast, and I was hungry! But our experience reminded me of a couple things that happened recently that I like to call “sales prevention.” And I do think some of the activity in this “new department” is responsible for the slump in many people’s businesses.

The other day I was placing an order for some new business cards for our Celebrity Branding Agency™ and the salesman from the print shot kept telling me that the things I asked for “were going to be expensive.” What he didn’t take into account was the fact that he’s used to seeing pricing on business cards. I’m not. So I have no idea what’s expensive and what’s not. I had my own pre-conceived notions of what I was willing to spend, but I can’t really tell you that I know how much the average business card costs. As a matter of fact, for the last few years I’ve been ordering my business cards from a company that only supplies materials to law firms, and I bet if I go compare their pricing, they’re probably twice the price of anywhere else! Their quality was great, so I paid for it, but their service lacks, which is why I was talking to a new printer to get my new cards done.

When I got the quote back and ended up getting exactly what I wanted, it was actually less money than I thought –and he probably could have up-sold me on some different finishes, coatings, die cuts, whatever. But, he had a preconceived notion of what he thought was expensive and he transferred that notion to me by verbalizing it, instead of asking me what my budget was or at least some additional cursory questions before he began. And if you analyzing your business, you may be making that same mistake unknowingly.

We often are of the mindset that our services are worth what we would pay for them, which is a big mistake because other people are coming to you from a completely different perspective. They don’t have your skill set so they would actually pay more for your skills. We all think what we do is pretty easy, and we wouldn’t pay someone much to do it (because we know how ourselves!). It’s pretty silly really, but it’s how most of us think. But we could likely charge people much more! The concept is called “price elasticity,” the price people will actually pay for what you have is usually much more “elastic,” meaning the price ceiling in our heads if often wrong, and people are usually willing to pay much higher prices than we think they will.

The second Sales Prevention Experience I want to share with you, starts because that the other day, I lost a credit card. I don’t do that often, but I did recently. So, I cancelled it. And due to this, one of the subscriptions I use for article syndication online, sent me an email saying my card got declined (because it was cancelled!). And it was interesting that I got a response from their administrator that said, “Hey Nick, if you want to cancel, you just need to let us know. If not, if you have another credit card please get it to us.” Think about that. I didn’t mention one thing about canceling, and somehow in their head, probably because they’ve been watching the news too much, they’ve got in their mind that a lot of people might want to cancel because of the “down economy.” Well, now I’m tempted to cancel, but I really just lost a credit card and needed to give them a new number.

So, the bottom line is this, I want you to stop and think about what you and your staff are doing that might be increasing your sales prevention (i.e. killing your revenue) rather than increasing your customer retention and customer acquisition.

Think about that for a bit, and let me know if you’ve got any sales prevention stories of your own!

They’ll even sell you an entire business concept!

Here is a quick video I filmed about it, check it out: http://tinyurl.com/qtnznp

If you are doing any flip videos or anything else where you need to video or photograph yourself, this is the best solution out there, it makes life so much easier!

UPDATE: Now, FOR THE RECORD, I’m NOT suggesting that you need to use this thing in public, although the two friendly girls in the marketing image suggest that may be a great idea. LOL

I’m suggesting that anywhere your comfort zone might let you use it (for me, that would be in my office), that it’s an easy way to get a good image of yourself. It’s never better than say…someone else you trust to shoot it for you.

ok, now that the air is clear, enjoy your day!

But the story I’m going to tell you about actually happened exactly a week ago, on Friday morning, at one of the biggest brunches you can be invited to, the BMI SXSW Brunch. BMI administers royalties to songwriters and music publishers all over the world to names like Aretha Franklin, Keith Urban, Tim McGraw, Shakira, Kanye West, Mariah Carey and about a million others. They always have GREAT music at the brunch, and you’ve rarely ever heard of anyone who they invite to play. They are usually artists who BMI is recognizing as “rising stars.”

I was eating my brunch and having a mimosa, chatting with some industry friends that I usually only see once or twice a year at events like this, when this guy came on stage. I heard about 3 notes and instinctively reached for my Flip camera (if you don’t have a Flip, do yourself a favor and go to Amazon.com now and buy one!). I couldn’t believe my ears. The vocals were amazing. I had to look at the program to see his name and I found it. Then I went on my iphone to Twitter and “tweeted” that I had just heard a great tune from a new artist named “Guy Sebastian”. I recorded a better video of him from a bit closer up and then went on my way for some more meetings and to see a few more of my artists play.

I left a few hours later because I got a call from my wife informing me that her and both of my little boys, Brock (4) and Bowen (16 months) were all sick. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say it was a bit of a “cookie toss” lol. But as I was at the airport, I logged onto my email and I saw that I had a bunch of new Twitter followers. I wasn’t sure why, but I had to shut down my computer and board my flight. When I got home, everyone was asleep, so I updated my Facebook account and posted my videos from SXSW and posted an update on Twitter that I had just uploaded the videos. Then I went to bed.

The next morning, I had about 50 Facebook friend requests. And I also started seeing the messages. Messages all about Guy Sebastian. Well, it seems that I wasn’t aware that Guy is from Australia and he won the first season of Australian Idol and had gone 6x Platinum in Australia. WOW. That’s impressive. And it made me stop and think back to 2 concepts I always teach when I’m speaking:

1. The only people who need to know who you are, are your target audience. I often give an example of walking through the mall with one of my bands, and how the teenagers freak out, and the parents have no idea what the commotion is about. But it doesn’t matter, the target audience, the teenagers, know exactly who they are! And the same applies to your business. You don’t need to be a Celebrity to everyone in the world, just your target market that would be suited to hire you and pay for your services.

Well, Guy’s fans in Australia knew EXACTLY who he was, and I can tell you that you all will too very soon. This guy is too good. Check out some of my videos (and become my friend on Facebook! at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=138863210116 ).

2. When you join the conversation that is already occurring in people’s heads, they take notice. It’s the old concept that we are all on a “Moving Parade” through life. As we move through life on our “parade,” our wants, needs and desires change, and we take notice of different things as these wants and needs change. Ever notice how you start thinking about getting a new car, and all of a sudden you start hearing about 100 car commercials on the radio every hour, and you start seeing all sorts of promotions on financing for cars, etc. Well, it’s because you are subconsciously paying attention to them on your “parade.”

The value in this concept is that your prospects and even your clients are often distracted as they move along their parade. You can try to “interrupt” them and get them to notice you, but it’s SO much easier to get noticed if you join the conversation that is already going on in their minds. Right now, no matter what business you are in, you could gain a lot of attention from talking about the things that are on top of people’s minds at this moment: Barack Obama, The Federal Bailout, The Recession, Bad Economy, Income Taxes, Spring, etc. There are lots of things that are already on people’s minds right now. If you talk about those things, and relate what you really want to tell your clients and prospects (about your product or service or whatever else) to what’s going on in their minds, they will take note much faster.

Obviously these Australians were already talking and thinking about Guy Sebastian and when I mentioned his name, they caught wind of it like wild fire. My posts hit their message boards in a matter of hours and they were all stalking me to learn more! Well, you see, it seems as if Guy is recording a new album in the US and the Aussie population is dying to hear it, so even a glimpse of a new song, which I gave them, is what they’re dying for! So by joining that conversation, I became very relevant to a whole new group of people, across the world no less, that now were interested in what I had to say. Think about how you can become relevant to the audience that you really want to pay attention to you, and start hopping in the conversation. I think you’ll be as stunned as I was, when you hit the right note!

That’s all for now! I’m off to Chicago to speak at a conference next week for the Senior Living market, for two of our clients, Traci Bild (www.TraciBild.com) and Richard Seppala, “The ROI Guy,” (www.YourROIguy.com). I’ll be sharing the stage with Bill Rancic, winner of Season 1 of the Apprentice with Donald Trump. I’m sure I’ll have some more stories for you soon!

Feel free to email me or post comments on this blog to let me know how the above lessons have applied to your marketing!

Well, here is an example of me taking my own advice (notice that the birds weren’t added sound effects! they were just part of the background, and I was still able to get my message across!)

Here is a link to the video: http://www.celebritybrandingyou.com/cby-video/

What he essentially asked me is, “How is Celebrity Branding® different from personality branding, and the long-standing concept of a personality driven business?”

While I can’t summarize everything that Celebrity Branding® includes in one short article, let me tell you one of the main differences. The main difference is in the magnitude of focus and commitment you give to your positioning. You can have personality in any brand. But Celebrity Branding® is taking your personality and making you the focus, not the back-story for your product or service. Once you make that switch, you develop a system of marketing that is centered on you as the celebrity expert, which separates you from your competition. No longer is your product or service a commodity that anyone can supply. To get what you are now offering, the client or customer must utilize you and your business.

Let me give you an example to illustrate the difference.

Let’s assume we’ve got two different financial planners that are in the same market. It doesn’t matter whether their customer base is local or national, what matters is that they compete for the same customers.

Financial Planner 1 has his photo on his business card, has ads featuring his image in several publications that his target audience reads, and his website also has his picture on it. This financial planner understands that “people buy people,” so he has put his picture on his materials so that people can identify who he is. This is personality branding.

Financial Planner 2 has some or all of the things that financial planner 1 has. These things are a great start, but she also realizes that the true value of Celebrity Branding® is to create devoted fans out of her prospects and clients. And she realizes that while having her photo on her marketing materials is a great start, ultimately she must connect with her audience in order to turn them into fans. She has to let her audience know who she is (and include some details about her “real” life outside of work, when appropriate), what her expertise is, why she’s an expert, that she’s constantly at the forefront of her industry, and just how she can help her prospects and clients. You can’t get any of this across with a photo alone! You’ve got to take the time to develop methods to communicate with your audience.

If you want to create true Celebrity Expert status, you’ve got to show your audience why they should listen to you. You’ve got to display your expertise to them and create a personal relationship in order for them to develop an affinity for you and what you do.

The difference is huge between the value of these two financial planners to their audiences. If you want to develop Celebrity Status, you’ve got to create a system for communicating with your clients and prospects. Clients should obviously get more of your time than prospects should, but the key here is to develop some methods of communicating with your entire audience that you can replicate through the use of systems.

Marketing systems for Celebrity Branding® involve multiple facets of “touch points” with your customers. Utilizing an email system that allows you to write one message and send it out in a manner that makes it look personalized to your list, instead of a generic blast, developing an ezine which contains specific content rich information about you and your business, physical newsletters that allow people to hold and feel your business in their hand, or a blog that allows you to keep in constant contact with your audience via multiple forms of social networking and social media are all examples of new ways to reach your client and create the relationship that both bonds and builds. It is this level of commitment and focus that allows you to take your brand to another level beyond even your closest competitor.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter what you include in your marketing system, the key is that you actually have a marketing system for building a relationship with your fan base. Additionally, the system should incorporate a method, or methods, to continually drive the relationship forward, whether you have the time to literally speak with every person or not. This is what we mean by Celebrity Branding®, and you can see that it is much more than people realize — which is why it is so powerful. Take a look at your current system for prospecting and follow up communication with customers and see how you can better optimize your system to create a Celebrity Brand, rather than just a personality driven business. As always, if we can help, you know where to find us.

Anyhow, as I was packing, I was reminded of the last time I flew on a plane, a few weeks ago when I was coming back from France. I had so much time on the plane I actually ran out of things to do, watch, read etc, so I resorted to the airline’s shopping catalogue…in german.

I saw an image very similar to this one:

Now I can tell you, I would be willing to bet that the first time that the tobacco companies in the EU were told that they would have to start using this label on their tobacco products, they probably weren’t really excited about it. We can be they felt blindsided and had a lot of emotions. This is a very far departure from the cigarette commercials of old that used to have Doctors giving testimonials on the benefits of smoking (seriously, here in the U.S. too). I know what you’re thinking, “Wow, I sure am glad that I don’t have to deal with that in my industry. That would really kill my sales.” But instead of just dismissing the notion for a moment, let’s play it out in our heads.

Many of us rely on the way we are doing things right now, and assume that nothing will change. We find strategies that work, and rightly so, they become easy to rely on– you might say as easy to rely on as testimonials from Doctors when selling cigarettes– but, at some point, something will change, that will affect one of your key strategies.

I know, I know, the people who relied on cold-calling consumers to sell products didn’t think that the “Do Not Call Registry” was a real threat…until it became law

and yes, I know, I know, marketers who were sending out faxes, like they were going out of style, never thought that fax broadcasts would be banned…until “junk faxes” became illegal

I’m also sure that those of you who have started to discover text messaging in your marketing, are also not excited about some recent propositions for businesses to start paying a “tax” on each and every text message they send out marketing their products and services. This free media, is about to become not so free.

I’m not here to be “Mr. Gloom and Doom,” but I do want to remind you to be conscious of the fact that things always change, and sometimes when you least expect them to, so be sure to have a plan B and continue to test new and different methods of reaching your market, even when things are going great with what you are currently doing!

But, in any event, check out the video she has up on her site:

http://www.leannrimesworld.com/splash/splash_wicc.php

It’s to promote her song, “What I cannot Change.” What I want you to notice is that even big stars don’t always spend lots of money and time to get a great quality video up online. Many of us hide behind the fact that we can’t get into the studio, cost etc, in order to get a video up. We all need to take a lesson from this video, it’s heartfelt and connects with the audience. She’s got her hair up and you can tell she’s “just like you and me.”

This is ALL YOU NEED in a video! So, get out there with those FLIP cameras and start recording! If you don’t have a FLIP camera, just go to www.Amazon.com and type in FLIP Mino.

There were thousands of local and regional contests that all culminated in the final that was hosted last night, by Leann Rymes, with the top 5 winners from the final 5 regions. Johnny was the winner from the Southeast region. Anyway, Johnny WON last night! So big congrats to him and we’re looking forward to lots of big things from him!

I’m heading home now for about 24 hours and then I’m off to Cannes, France for MiDEM, the world’s largest music festival for a few days. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Anyhow, I was talking with a good friend the other day and he was confiding in me that he was working with a non-profit and couldn’t figure out why the division he was working with wasn’t doing quite as well as all of the other divisions. All divisions were located in different parts of his town, but the division he was involved in just hadn’t been performing up to par.

We went through the usual excuses, the location wasn’t right, the community wasn’t as involved, etc. but when I asked the right questions, we both got the light bulb over our heads.

Between this division and the others, it was the person running the division, we’ll call him Tom for now, that was actually the problem. When you’re involved in a business that requires community support like most non-profit, philanthropic, businesses do, you’ve got to get the community personally and financially invested. Which you might say is even tougher than being a consumer business in the retail market, because while you have to get your customers to buy into what you’re doing, there is usually a correlation between how much your product or service meets the needs of your target audience and how many actually decide to give you their money. When you are looking at a philanthropic model, this usually isn’t the case.

The problem we discovered was that Tom, the guy responsible for the mission and direction of the division, was not compelling to his audience. Everyone liked him, but at the end of the day, they had no burning desire to rally around him, help fund Tom’s project and ultimately to be recognized and embraced by Tom as a contributor to the cause. The other division leaders on the other hand, were seen as pillars in their communities that everyone loved seeing, knowing, speaking with and being recognized by.

This makes all the difference not only in the non-profit sector, but in your business as well. So, think about it, are you allowing your prospects to get to know your personality well enough to be compelling to them? If you’re not, a few quick changes will take your business to new heights in 2009!

These celebrities, at one time or another, had millions of dollars media (radio, television, internet and newspaper), F-R-E-E media, talking about them and giving them publicity because what they had to offer, whether it was simply an entertaining personality, answers to a burning question the fans wanted to know, or the answer to a common problem the world is facing, was in high demand. And that’s a wonderful position to be in. The problem is that 99% of them never planned for the next phase of their career. Whether it’s an athlete, actor, musician, reality television star or any other personality that gets some media coverage, the simple truth is that in all but the rarest of circumstances, their current method of making substantial dollars is going to change. And likely it’s going to change before they even know what hit them.

If these celebrities and “talking heads” had taken the time to use the media they were given to create a funnel of interested prospects that they could sell products and services to, then they would be in a totally different position than they are in today.

Here’s an example.

Too Tall Jones is an amazing college basketballl player. It doesn’t matter what side of the court he is on, every time he lobs a ball up in the air he scores. He is so good that the media just can’t stop talking about him. He gets interviewed daily in every national newspaper, radio station, television market and even the biggest internet blogs. He is the MVP of the year and he’s about to get drafted into the NBA and finally make some money. He signs with the NBA, with a big signing bonus. He is making more money than he ever thought possible. He is a blockbuster hit for his team and the league as a whole. But, as his lifestyle grows, so do his expenses, and as ridiculous as it may sound to the rest of us, he’s basically getting by with great cash flow but not building up his wealth at all. He’s spending all the money he earns. He’s really helping out his family, his friends, and even some charities with huge gifts, but he’s not putting any money away. He’ll do that in a couple of years.

Fast forward to season 3, just after he put whatever money he could get his hands on into a big real estate investment that looks like it’s going to turn sour, he gets injured and he will never play basketball again. He gets dropped from the team, and even Hi-Top brand shoes pulls his endorsement. Then, as expected, the real-estate deal goes sour and his last millions are lost and gone forever.

What happens? He could use the notoriety he built to land a good job where he can build a customer base on the back of his star power and how great of an athlete he was. He could go coach high school or college basketball. There are any number of things he could be doing, but, he certainly won’t be making the kind of dollars he was making, or could have been making. Why? Because he now has to start all over in a new business.

What could he have done? While he was really getting some press during the first years of his professional career he could have been building his a business on the back of his fame. A few examples would be a membership-based website where fans would pay monthly fees to see videos of his technique and strategies so they could learn to be as good of a player as him, and where fans could connect with other die-hard fans so they could discuss their favorite plays he made, and favorite games of all time. He could have been selling DVD sets and workbooks on how to be the best player on the court and he could have even been building a list of fans online by offering them a free online video or basketball card or whatever, just so he could build his own business off the back of the fans that were trickling in based on the free publicity he was getting. Even if he was charging $10 a month, if he had several thousand fans paying to get access to his site and his videos, or paying to get the new plays of the month in their email or mailbox, he could have built up a consistent stream of income that was not reliant on the team cutting him a check.

But he didn’t. And he certainly is not alone.

When things are going great, we often don’t take the time to plan a few steps beyond our current success. We don’t take the time to build a list of our own fans so that if circumstances change beyond our control, or if we want to change them ourselves, we don’t have to start from scratch because we have a list of fans who are anxious to connect with us and hear what we have to offer next, that they will come along with us.

And while you probably aren’t lucky enough to be getting media coverage without paying for it, if you have a large influx of customers and prospects that are coming to you because they like what you have to offer, whether they learned about it from an advertisement or from a friend, you should be capturing the hearts, minds and contact information of those fans and starting to test market other things to them. Do you realize how much profit you could stack onto your business if you just sold another product or service to your existing clients and prospects without having to go out and find new people to sell to? The numbers are staggering. Take a few moments to think about what they could do for you and I’m sure you’ll quickly start writing down your plan to build a business on the back of your current Blockbuster hit.

As I was driving into my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago (before I moved into our new house, which is tiring to even think about, and why I didn’t get a chance to send you this sooner!) I saw a sign taped to a stop sign that read:

College Babysitter
555-555-1212*
*(actual number withheld to spare the poor kid)

Now, it doesn’t take more than about 4 seconds to find your own punchline, but if you’re like me, the first thing your mind conjures up, is probably something like one of the above pictures, or this:

No one gave this “well-educated” college kid the first lesson in marketing! You’ve got to make your message CLEAR and it’s a huge mistake for you to leave room in your message for the consumer to come up with their own objections in their mind, before you even get a chance to sell them on your product or service and why you’re the best for the job.

So, while I’m sure it took a lot of effort for this college kid to write out these words without any text messaging abbreviations (like Nd BBsttr? Txt Me), it would have helped to take a few more minutes to type out a message that might actually get someone to call you that is looking for a babysitter instead of a dogsitter. Here would be my suggestion:

Responsible College Student with 3.99 GPA NOW interviewing for babysitting opportunities for the summer.

*Resume and References Available on Request

Isn’t that a little better? It’s not as much copy as I usually like to write (and I didn’t even make the prospects call a recorded hotline to see if they could follow directions!) but it at least makes it a bit more appealing for parents to call the number to check out the opportunity. Once you get them live on the phone, then it’s much easier to get the job.

The lesson here is don’t take shortcuts when trying to get your message out there. Sure, there are times when you only have a few lines of text, but don’t be lazy, analyze every word to see what needs to be there, what gives the wrong impression, and what doesn’t give the prospect enough information to qualify themselves. If you follow these simple steps, you’ll be ahead of 99% of your competition.

http://tinyurl.com/6kvog9

When I finalized my trip to New York, I decided to take up George Ross, Donald Trump’s Lawyer and Chief Negotiator as well as his board room co-star on The Apprentice, on his offer to visit him at his office next time I was in the city. So I emailed George and we set up a time to visit yesterday morning.

You can see a picture of George and I in his office as well as a short 2 minute video I recorded after our meeting by clicking here:

Photos: http://tinyurl.com/5peokz

Video:

In the short video I reveal a marketing lesson that George and I discussed that you may not be aware of but it’s a great way to isolate yourself from the current economic situation and gives you a tip that you shouldn’t be ignoring in your business.

George and I disagreed a bit on a few issues, but it was a healthy discussion and I am sure George and I will continue to stay in touch and even debate a bit here and there. Hey, we’re lawyers, what do you expect!

Another profound comment that George made, which I think will be useful to you is the fact that:

1. he has been practicing law for over 50 years
2. has been teaching a course on negotiation at NYU, one of the greatest educational institutions in the world, for many years, and
3, has been involved in negotiating some of the biggest real estate deals in history for that past 30 years alongside Donald Trump, who is one of the biggest Celebrity Experts in the media today

but until he got on the Apprentice, no one really cared. He was known in small professional circles and certainly to those who were looking to do a deal with “The Donald,” but he certainly wasn’t known to or revered by the general public the way he is today. Now, George is a very highly sought –after (and highly paid!) lecturer and speaker brought in to many organizations and conferences to reveal his art of negotiation. And the funny thing is he’s no better at it than before he was on the Apprentice! Before, his target audience just didn’t know who he was or what he was great at.

The key point here is: his credentials are secondary to his celebrity status. To paraphrase his own words, he said its awful peculiar how sitting at a board room table sparring with eager young minds once a week for a few months a year, at the right hand of Donald Trump has completely changed his life and gained the respect of the American public as a whole. Isn’t it neat what kind of credibility you can have virtually “assigned” to you just by being in the media with the right message at the right time? I agree and its one of the strategies I teach when I’m lecturing on Celebrity Branding®™. I encourage you to think about how you can reach out to your own audience in a similar way to increase your visibility, your demand and your fees.

By the way, if you’re looking for a way to get the George Ross/Apprentice effect in your own business and personal life, shoot me an email at Nick@CelebrityBrandingYou.com. Jack and I have found a way to guarantee that 20 business owners and entrepreneurs will be seen on NBC, ABC, FOX and CBS as well as seen in USA Today, The Wall St. Journal and Newsweek all within the next 12 months.

Alright, that’s about it, hope you have a great rest of the week. As for me I’m heading off to St. Lucia with my wife for our anniversary this weekend. See you when I get back!

Dedicated to bringing out the Celebrity in YOU!

Nick

I can assure you the marketing conferences and meetings I have been
attending have been well worth the trips or you would never get me to
leave my wife and 2 sons to go to any such place! And yes, for those
of you who are wondering, I spend a lot of time and money on personal
development and coaching every year. As a matter of fact, I will
spend well over $30,000.00 this year on seminars, coaching and
information products. I can also tell you that since I have more than
tripled my spending on these items the last 3 years, my income has
tripled as well. Just a quick gut check: are you dedicating the time,
effort and resources to develop your skills so you can make more
money? If you aren’t you should be!

In my travels, I often run into business owners who are caught up in
comparing their businesses to local or national competitors in their
industry. While this can be an effective way to measure some things,
it is also a guaranteed way to achieve moderate success. In order to
achieve extraordinary success, you have to look to extraordinary (or
even “unorthodox”) methods. You’ve got to get outside of what
everyone else is doing in your industry and find some successful
methods that are working in other industries.

*For one example of this, check out Lowe’s Supercenters (yup the
hardware store!) monthly publication Lowe’s for Pro’s this month where
I was interviewed and gave some secrets for unorthodox marketing
practices for landscapers. I can assure you I have never marketed
anything for a landscaper, but the principles I revealed can and
should be used in every business. For a copy, email me.

One of my favorite examples is from a friend of mine, Scott Mueller
who I saw today, who runs a funeral home business. Scott came to a
lot of marketing meetings absolutely green with envy that he could not
do what most other smart businesses are doing: creating what we call
“Continuity Income” in their businesses. For the uninitiated,
Continuity Income is income built on recurring fees like monthly
membership fees, subscription fees or any other fee that you can
charge on a recurring monthly basis. It’s the greatest way to make
money…from the first of the month when you open your doors, you have
made a profit and you just have to be on the lookout for ways to grow
your continuity income and not lose the members you already have. It
sure beats “pay to play” business models where customers come and go
as they please, without being tied to the business in any way or
possibly ever spending any money with you again! Which, by the way,
is the fastest way to a mediocre business that is more of a job than a
profit center. But I digress…

Scott was determined to find a way to grow his profits so he set out
to be the first Funeral Home with Continuity Income. And I will
definitely hand it to him, what he did next was brilliant! Scott
realized that a funeral was really just a stop on the journey that a
family has to embark on, whether it is convenient or not, when they
experience the death of a loved one. What happens before and after
the funeral is a long, often painful, process for many families filled
with fear and worry. Scott realized that what families really wanted,
besides a comforting funeral service, was a way to heal and recover
from the loss of a loved one. So Scott created the only Guaranteed
Family Recovery program. Now Scott’s customers are offered the
opportunity to join a paid grief counseling and recovery program that
walks the family through the recovery process before and after the
funeral. The results have been amazing. Not only in profitability,
but also because his clients are now MUCH more satisfied customers.
Scott now provides a full solution to the problems his customers are
facing.

If Scott hadn’t taken the time to study some other industries and
innovate, then he never would have had this breakthrough. I encourage
you to look for ways to interact with and study what’s working in
other industries and to look for ways to innovate in your own
business. It’s the only way to create an extraordinary business with
extraordinary profits.

If you’d like to challenge Jack and I to find a way to add continuity
to your business, just email us at info@dicksnanton.com. I will post
our answers to the best challenges in my next blog.

P.S. – Our book, Celebrity Branding You, is coming out in bookstores
nationwide within the next 30 days and I’m going on a mini book tour
to launch it. I started the tour in Orlando on June 11 at the Rock
Your Business Power Lunch where I was given the honor of smashing a
guitar! It was quite a thrill. You can see pictures HERE.

If you live in Pittsburgh or Las Vegas, here are some details on the
next couple of events. Come on out and say hi!

June 24 – Pittsburgh, PA
4:30PM-6:30PM

Up A Notch Marketing Seminar
The Pittsburgh Marriott City Center
112 Washington Place, Pittsburgh, Pa 15219
Contact Kathy for details @ Kathy@upanotchmarketing.com

June 26 – Las Vegas, NV
11:30AM-1:30PM

Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, Las Vegas Chapter Meeting
Antique Mall
1495 E Flamingo
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Contact Richelle Shaw for details at richelleshaw@gmail.com

If you can stay relevant, and integrate current events, pop culture and news items that your prospects and customers are paying attention to into your marketing, your message will be much better received and it will be more likely that your audience will act on your message.

If you have been reading my posts and articles for the past few months, you’ll notice that I have posted several times about American Idol. It’s currently the biggest show on TV, and I have found several ways to relate it to what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen those posts (as well as my CORRECT prediction for the American Idol 2008 Top 2 Finalists, David Archuletta and David Cook more than 9 weeks ago!) you can view those here:

The Idol Factor

American Idol 2008 Picks

Ok, so now onto the even better news. The better news is that relevant chatter can have an even bigger effect than the one you expected! Because I have been talking about American Idol and making predictions, I got quoted last year in the Arizona Republic Newspaper on my thoughts on the career of last year’s American Idol winner, Jordin Sparks. And just this week, I was quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune on what I thought about David Archuleta’s prospects for a successful career. And the interesting thing about this article is that my quote is not in the company of hacks or has-beens. My quote is right alongside Julianne Hough, winner of Dancing with the Stars, 4 Time Grammy(R) Award Winner, Erykah Badu, and the late, great Waylon Jennings’ son and popular musician, Mason Jennings as well as a who’s who of industry pundits. All of this took place because I was relevant.

And because I am here to show you how I use these strategies to continue the Celebrity Branding® process to get you more clients, here’s what else I did: I had a press release written about my quote in the Salt Lake Times. You can view it here:

Orlando Music Lawyer Nick Nanton Speaks Out on American Idol Finalist David Archuleta

Now the first thing you might ask is, “who cares about a quote in a newspaper? Is any news outlet really going to pick that kind of press up? No way!” This is a great question, and you’re right, no major news outlet will pick this story up, HOWEVER, it is important to note that online traffic is driven through key words and getting press syndicated online is much easier to do than getting it picked up in a major news outlet. That press release will be picked up by literally tens of thousands of websites through online syndication. (If you want to know how to do that, send me an email and I’ll tell you). And every time its syndicated, it includes my key words as well as, the most important part, a link back to my website. Now this link is important because people can now link from the article back to my website, but the even more important factor is that there will now be tens of thousands of websites syndicating my press release that will have a link back to my website, and will be giving Google a “vote” that says, that site is so good I’m going to send my visitors there! This is huge for Search Engine Marketing and for getting great organic rankings (non-paid rankings in Google.

Notice that the subject line contains Key Words I was trying to get attention with: Orlando Music Lawyer (I use this to attract entertainment clients) as well as using David Archuleta’s full name in the subject line. And guess when I released it, May 20th, the day of the final performances. And guess when I’m releasing this blog? May 21st, the day the new American Idol winner will be crowned. Coincidence? I’ll let you decide.

Just so you don’t have to think it through, lets recap the lesson that can be learned here:

In the past week, the week of the American Idol finals, I have been quoted in a major newspaper along with other celebrities on a subject that is extremely relevant in pop culture (not to mention to my audience of musicians and songwriters who are interested in hiring me to represent them), I had a press release sent out on the wire and posted to my websites on the day of the final American Idol performances and I posted a blog on the day the American Idol for the 2008 season is crowned that discusses the same subject matter. I have also used the key words: David Archuleta, American Idol (no less than 14 times!), David Cook, Jordin Sparks and Orlando Music Lawyer within this post. Do you see a pattern here?

Stay relevant and use keywords online to drive your audience to you. Its one of the most magnetic strategies you can find for attracting people to you.

And now, since I know you’ve all been waiting for my American Idol 2008 pick for the winner, here it is (drum roll please)………

And the Winner of American Idol 2008 will be: DAVID.

If I was smart I would stop there, but I can’t help but try to keep my prediction train rolling. I really think David Archuleta will win (he has the teeny bopper vote on lock down), but I think David Cook will sell more records. I’m more confident that David Cook will sell more records than I am that he will come in second place, but there you have it. And I promise, this is the last you’ll hear from me about American Idol– at least until it becomes relevant again.

http://www.dicksnantonagency.com/blog/the-idol-factor.php

When there were 10 left, I made my top 5 picks for American Idol.

Interestingly enough I got the top 2 right and Brooke White did make the top 5. 3 out of 5 isn’t bad odds for the music biz!

I think David Archuletta will win, however, when he puts out his first record, if he tries to go too pop I believe he will be eaten alive. I believe he will do best in the A/C market with Josh Groban and Michael Buble. We’ll have to wait and see.

I do feel that David Cook will sell way more records, and that he’s a more mainstream artist, but I don’t think he can overcome the 12 year old girls who are in love with David Archuletta that will hang out for hours and text into the show. Tune in next week and we’ll see.

In the book, Dr. Luntz discusses the “Beer Factor.” He says that, although many factors weigh into electing a President, one of the most important things a candidate can do to create a loyal following is to sit down and have a beer with potential voters. Bill Clinton was wildly successful due to his charisma and an overwhelming majority of people found him interesting whether or not they agreed with his past. Thus, he passed the Beer Factor test.

The underlying principle here is that he had the ability to connect with people. This principle is one of the pillars on which the concept of Celebrity Branding® stands. The reason “people buy people” is that a person can engage you more concretely than an inanimate object, logo, or slogan. When was the last time you really wanted to have a beer with Nike? What about Donald Trump?

If I had said Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan, your answer would likely have also been yes – but these are not the business minds at work at Nike. They are hired personas Nike chose so that consumers could connect better with the Nike brand. But that is a lesson in itself: a company without a Celebrity CEO has to hire someone else to fill the role.

So our question to you is: Even if you could hire Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan, why wouldn’t you also want to leverage your own Celebrity status to get people to connect with your business? We know that it’s much easier on your budget, not to mention the fact that you can control yourself much better than you can control a third party. Just think about what might have happened had your company hired Michael Vick to promote your product. Pretty scary, huh?

You have the power to connect with consumers based on the fact that you share similar traits. We all know that you can’t connect on a personal level with every consumer and, arguably, you shouldn’t try, but you’ve got a better shot at it than anyone else. You know more about your product or service than anyone else and you probably have a great deal more passion for what you do than a Celebrity who just shows up for a paycheck.

Take advantage of this fact! People love to learn more about other people, which is why Celebrity culture has dominated the newsstands and television outlets for years. Take the chance to let your audience know more about you. Take the chance to connect. Let your audience know more about your hobbies, your family, your favorite foods, favorite places to vacation, and even some of the stuff you’re not crazy about talking about. All of these little facts, as insignificant as they may seem to you, make you human and allow others who have similar feelings to connect with you in ways that create much stronger bonds than if they were just reading corporate rhetoric.

Connecting with your consumers breeds much higher customer loyalty and, when leveraged correctly, much higher transaction sizes and profits.

What I have done is started a conversation with them through blogs,
articles, press releases and newsletters. I have literally written my
way into their heads and started a one way conversation. What then
happens, is when I see them, they are eager to fill me in on their
side of the conversation. Its as if the flood gates have finally
opened for them and they can finally tell me what has been on their
minds for months! And what normally ensues is a great conversation
that allows us to get past the normal process of getting to know
someone and earning their trust, even though this is the first time
I’ve ever really met the individual.

Better yet, a lot of times I get direct business or referrals out of
these conversations.

The point here is that you have to take the opportunity to start the
conversation with your prospects– and even your existing clients. I
actually just contributed to an article for a very prominent website
that offers business advice to contractors in the residential and
commercial construction industries about unconventional marketing.
What I told the reporter was that a printed newsletter (yes one that
is actually printed on paper and delivered by the mail man!) is the
most powerful marketing tool any business owner can have.

I gave an example that even in an industry like landscape maintenance,
not only will you get more clients, but you will retain more clients
as well just by “starting the conversation” with clients and
prospects. Stop and think about it for a second– do you ever get the
chance to stop and chat with your gardener or lawn maintenance
personnel? Do you know if they have kids, that they have hobbies and
what they would advise you to do to keep your lawn and garden looking
great with just a few small tips? I would guess the answer is no, but
I would also guess that if you actually knew who this person was you
probably would feel a bit of loyalty and wouldn’t go out looking for
another vendor based solely on price. This is a very simple strategy
that consistently yields amazing results.

And before you go and write off the idea of doing this because it will
take too much effort, don’t be ridiculous. You could simply write a
letter every month in microsoft word and send it out to your clients
and prospects. The tools you use to start the conversation to not
have to be complex, costly, full color and glossy or made up of any
other preconceived notion that you already have. The content is much
more important than the look. Not that a great look isn’t also helpful,
I’m just suggesting that you not get bogged down in the details, just
get started!

So, the next time you are looking for a new way to drum up clients,
increase customer retention and transaction size, just remember, all
you have to do is start the conversation. Myself and the rest of your
prospects will be ready and waiting.

Songwriters & Sales Letters 2008, originally uploaded by ndnproductions.

We held a client appreciation party called Songwriters and Sales Letters at this year’s Glazer Kennedy Insider’s Circle™ SuperConference in Nashville, TN (April 3-6, 2008) along with Chris Hurn of Mercantile Commercial Capital (2007 Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies).

Our friends and clients got the extremely rare opportunity to hear four of the greatest songwriters of all time play their hits. These songwriters don’t go out into public often but, due to a few of our connections in the music business, we were able to steal them away from the Nashville’s yearly summit!

P4043551.JPG, originally uploaded by ndnproductions.

Here are a few of the highlights:

Harley Allen (3 time GRAMMY® Award Winner)
- “Man of Constant Sorrow” – from O’ Brother Where Art Thou
- “If Nobody Believed in You” and “I’ll Wait for You” – Joe Nichols
- “The Baby” – Blake Shelton (Billboard #1 Song)
- “Tough Little Boys” – Gary Allan (Billboard #1 Song)
- “The Little Girl” – John Michael Montgomery (Billboard #1 Song)
- “Between the Devil & Me” – Alan Jackson (Billboard #1 Song)

Billy Montana
- “More than a Memory” – Garth Brooks (Billboard #1 song)
- “Suds in the Bucket” – Sara Evans (Most Performed Song by a Female Artist in 2004)
- “Bring on the Rain” – Jo Dee Messina & Tim McGraw (GRAMMY Nomination)

Kevin Denney (Lyric Street Records)
- “Cadillac Tears”
- “That’s Just Jesse”

Jamie Teachenor
- “How Do You Get That Lonely” – Blaine Larson
- New duet coming next month with Gretchen Wilson and Montgomery Gentry!

These guys have had songs recorded by Garth Brooks, Sara Evans, Tim McGraw, Jo Dee Messina, George Jones, Alan Jackson, Joe Nichols, Gary Allan, John Michael Montgomery, Darryl Worley, Alison Krauss, Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley…and that’s just A FEW!

P4043607.JPG, originally uploaded by ndnproductions.

Nick even got coaxed (or maybe blackmailed!) into performing a few of his original songs. Here’s a clip:

The combination of some of the best marketers and songwriters in the world made for a really great combination. We all learned a lot about putting emotion and personality into our writing and, most importantly, using imagery to help the reader feel what the writer intends.

We hope to see you at our next event!

Songwriters with Jack, Nick and Chris, originally uploaded by ndnproductions.

]]> http://www.celebritybrandingagency.com/nicknanton/event-update-songwriters-and-sales-letters-2008.php/feed 0 http://www.celebritybrandingagency.com/nicknanton/why-you-are-such-an-important-part-of-celebrity-branding-2.php http://www.celebritybrandingagency.com/nicknanton/why-you-are-such-an-important-part-of-celebrity-branding-2.php#comments Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:09:38 +0000 admin http://www.celebritybrandingagency.com/?p=969 I spoke at the University of Florida’s Music Law Conference just a few weeks ago and the topic of discussion that surfaced (as it always does) was, “Where music is headed and is there a solution to stop piracy and free digital downloading?” When I gave my answer, there was a puzzled look on many faces, not because it was a profound answer, but more likely because it was an “I knew that!” kind of answer.

The computer has made many things possible and many common tasks easier. But every sword cuts both ways, and the fact that digital data can be perfectly duplicated has wreaked havoc on many industries. Even though many industries have felt the effects of this phenomenon, one of the most high-profile industries that has received much of the media attention regarding this issue is the music industry.

My answer to the question was that the solution to this problem is what it always has been — there is only one YOU. By that I mean that you can only be in one place at one time, period. You can record a moment in time and duplicate it all you want, but there is a unique and special allure to seeing a celebrity in the flesh. Sure a photo is great, but getting the chance to stand next to you and talk to you is a totally different experience that no perfect copy can recreate.

Most people haven’t taken the time to notice that the live-concert industry has been making money hand-over-fist throughout all of this controversy because nothing takes the place of being in the same place at the same time as the celebrities on stage performing for you. That’s the reason Live Nation, the largest concert promoter in the world, has been able to dominate the industry and grow into a multi-billion-dollar entertainment behemoth. The recent news that Madonna signed a deal with Live Nation instead of a traditional record label caught many of us in the industry off-guard, but in hindsight it should have been obvious! In its own words,

“Live Nation is the future of the music business. With the most live concerts, music venues and festivals in the world and the most comprehensive concert search engine on the web, Live Nation is revolutionizing the music industry: onstage and online.”

You’ll note that even though Live Nation has an online presence, its main focus is to exploit the offline concerts that it promotes.

So, what does this mean for your business? Well, there is only one YOU. Everything else is relatively easy to copy. A great product, service or process is pretty easy for your competitors to duplicate. The imitations may not be perfect, but they are usually good enough. The one factor that you can control, that has the ability to magnetically attract customers like nothing else, that no one can duplicate is your presence in the business.

No one else can speak to customers in print ads, on the radio, on television and in person the same way you can. No one can connect with the same individuals you can. And most importantly, no one can control how you make your customers feel quite like you can… NO ONE!

So, the best way to avoid what has happened to the music business is to put yourself out in front of your business. Use your unique qualities, qualifications and life experiences to connect with consumers and you’ll quickly see how your competitors will scramble to try keep up, but they won’t ever quite be able to.

The interesting thing about American Idol is, if you watch from the beginning of the season through the first few weeks of auditions, you can clearly see who is talented and who is not and you can usually see why the judges would let certain parties through to Hollywood week. Once you hit hollywood week the “It” factor becomes even more evident. But once the hopefuls take the mainstage, as the top 24, its funny how often I hear myself saying “This guy/girl needs to pack their bags and head home! They are a one trick pony and they already played out the one song they know how to sing in auditions to get to this point.”

The point is that you really only get clarity on who deserves to be there, when you can line up all of the talent at once and COMPARE them. When you can do this it becomes obvious who the best are. This is something that very few of us get to do with the opportunities in our lives. Whether it be investments, business opportunities or even the chance, which I take on every now and then, to pitch a client to the major record labels for a record deal.

When I hear someone sing for the first time in my board room or at a live concert, I can tell if they are talented or not. But, even if I think they’ve got a shot at making it, what I don’t have access to is a place where I can conjure up everyone else at that moment who is going to be making a run at it during the same period of time. That info would make life much easier wouldn’t it?

Well, that’s a tall order, but the real question is: Are you taking the time to lay out all of the opportunities in front of you so you can find the real hits? If not you’re spending a lot of time and energy on opportunities that just may not be hit material. They may look like great opportunities, but they may not look so great next to a couple of other opportunities.

So, take the time to review what’s in front of you, do your research and make sure you are spending your time on the things that will reap the greatest rewards…not on a business that Simon Cowell would call “self-indulgent” or a waste of time.

****
And now what you’ve all been waiting for, here are my 2008 American Idol Picks for who I think will make the top 5:

(There may be some variance here for sure depending on the song choices and how well the contestants can reveal enough personality to cut through the clutter and take the focus off of their voices. But its a bit early to tell that at this point)

1. David Archuletta (and I think he will probably win if he can stay humble)
2. David Cook
3. Michael Johns
4. Carly Smithson
5. Brooke Whitem

The meeting took place in a midwestern town that was practically in the middle of nowhere. I assume this is because it was very inconspicuous and no one there would recognize the celebrities who were present, 20 of the best marketers in the world to be exact.

I don’t know for sure how many total there were, but I do know there were at least 3 private jets at the airport from the members of this group. All that to tell you that this was not a vacation or some gimmicky trade show, these guys were collectively worth hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour and we met for two full days.

I learned about all sorts of new business ventures and consumer trends that are going to take the world by storm in 2008. I learned that in these “hard times” consumer electronics giant Best Buy sold more televisions leading up to the Super Bowl than they ever have before. We even looked at the driving force behind both political parties and what was taking place behind the scenes in order to mount a successful 2008 presidential election campaign.

But what I was really fascinated by, is that fact that no matter what industry these marketers specialized in (including real estate, which is arguably in a very tough position), the fact remains that there is PLENTY of money to be made in this market.

We all hear talk of a recession and it seems like every news channel on television is predicting that “the sky will fall” at any moment. But what makes these marketers so successful is the fact that they don’t listen to anyone, including the news. They find ways to make money in any market. And there’s really only one secret to that: Find the point of pain for the consumer and find a way to meet the need.

It doesn’t matter what economy we are facing, there are always needs that need to be met. And depending on the market, the needs change. If you sit in a corner and sulk about how the world no longer needs your product or service (even temporarily) then you are going to feel the pinch of a tighter economy. If on the other hand, like these uber-successful marketers, you are willing to adapt to meet the needs of the consumer then these times are no different than any others. You still stand to make a fortune (and possible more of a fortune than in good times when everyone else is competing in the market too).

So the next time you hear anyone talking about how the sky is going to fall or that a recession is coming, just be sure to smile and nod while you laugh inside…mostly because that’s one less person competing with you for consumers’ money.

Let’s look at an example. It seems if you slap the word “organic” on any product these days you won’t be able to keep it in stock (and you’ll be able to charge about 10 times the price for it!). You can look at many industries from food to cosmetics and you’ll see that if organic products aren’t already the fastest growing sector, then they will be very soon.

What is Organic? Well there are about a million different definitions online but lets look at a simple definition in the food industry:

Food produced without artificial or chemical fertilizers or pesticides. (source: thefoody.com/glossary/glossaryo.html)

Translation: food grown the “old fashioned” way. Organic food has become a new craze but if you were able to communicate with your great-great grandmother, she would tell you that you’d be a fool to try to grow food any other way. It was just the way things were done back then…and now it’s the hottest thing you can do.

What was old is new again.

And here are just a few examples of other industries “bringing back the old school” and making a killing doing it:

1. Custom Made Clothing – http://www.makeyourownjeans.com/
2. “Vintage” T-shirts – http://www.revolveclothing.com/DisplayProduct.jsp?product=TRUNK-WS252&c=Trunk
3. Vinyl Records – http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1702369,00.html
4. New Cars that look like their “classic” predecessors – http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2005-06-27-mustang-usat_x.htm

And those are just a few examples.

The Point is, What’s Old is New Again!

So, take a look back in the archives of your business or industry and see what you can “bring back” and charge higher prices for!

Come up with some examples, send them to me and I’ll post them.

To counter attack the loss, advertisers and the people that sell to them are creating new and different ways of placing your product directly in the main event. This is referred to as “product placement.”

This weekend while both working and watching the football playoff games I had turned my attention to the post-game show. “What to my eyes did appear” but Jared …the spokesperson for Subway, giving live advice to all of the sports announcers about which one of the subway sandwiches sitting on the table would be the best for them to feast on. Yes, Jared was wearing his Colts game jersey and that did offer a little tie-in between the Subway sandwich and the game, but what it was all about was pure advertising and everyone got it because you could not click away fast enough.

This is the future of advertising and learning how to ask for it, apply it, and take advantage of it will offer some big rewards for sellers of ads and sellers of products. Each of us needs to be on the lookout for new ways to create product placement opportunities. Television shows are one opportunity for product placement but movies, sports events, concerts and perhaps even newscasts will all offer new opportunities to present your message. The new ads will be more effective for a while and your audience will be more receptive to your message because the ad won’t look like the traditional and disliked advertising.

Game On!

If you didn’t get a chance to read that, you can click here to read
it. Now for the solution:

What should she have done? She should have told me “the story.” She should have taken the time to understand what I was trying to accomplish and then proceeded to paint me a picture about how much better my business would be 1, 2 3 and 6 months from now because I was smart enough to invest in her marketing system. She should have told me success stories about other clients who had used her services and had skyrocketed their sales. She should have made me like her so much that I couldn’t say no! These are just a few of the things she could have done.

But instead of making me understand “the story” and see how I could be a part of it, she mindlessly read features off of a piece of paper. What a waste. Are you making the same mistakes? Are your sales people trained to tell “the story?” Whether you talk to people over the phone, in person or even a fixed medium like direct mail or newspaper ads the concept is the same. If you’re not telling the story, I suggest you walk over to your sales department and anyone
else who has direct contact with customers right this moment and make a few changes.

And if you don’t have a story or you don’t know how best to tell it, give us a call and we’d be glad to help.

So I took the call and a pleasant sales woman and I began to discuss how she could help us market our producs. From the moment I asked her about the different “packages” she turned into a sales drone. I could tell she was literally reading word for word off of a sheet of “features.” She must have gone on for 5 minutes just listing feature after feature after feature, which as you know if you’ve spent any time at any of the courses I teach or reading any of my blogs and newsletters, features are useless, I need benefits! But that’s a subject for another day…

In any event, what happened is that first off, she didn’t know her information cold. If you are going to sell me something you’d better know what you have to offer and be able to recite it twice backwards in your sleep or face down at your favorite local “watering hole.” Take your pick which angle you prefer, but you’ve got to know this stuff inside and out.

But to get to my real point, she went from being an interesting human being during our “howdy do’s” to a lifeless piece of paper. She just took the most effective sales medium known to man, person to person selling, and reduced it to the equivalent of a pre-recorded voice message.

So, now that I’ve identified the problem, what should she have done? Be on the lookout for my next blog in a few days and I’ll tell you the answer.

It also has some great commentary about why an indie act would even want to consider getting a record deal…or not.

Check out this post for a great perspective and some advice you can actually use:

www.copyblogger.com/radiohead-the-4-hour-work-week/

Daily Blog Tips

For those of you who don’t know what RSS is, here’s a link to “Feed 101” from Feedburner, the best in the biz!
Feed 101

1. Attorney
2. Lawyer

What we do know is that lawyers prefer the “high-brow” word Attorney and so many of them use it in their marketing too. In their opinion, it increases the perceived value of their services.

What we didn’t know is whether the general public felt the same way or not. We both had a hunch that the word lawyer was more commonplace, and therefore a better keyword for us to use in our online marketing and pay-per-click campaigns.

Now, one year later, WE KNOW WHICH WORD IS BETTER. Let me tell you how we found out:

We used a keyword tool to find out what people are searching for. You can try out the Overture Keyword Selector Tool Here. What it told us was that in the context we are using, people search for the term “lawyer” at least 25% more of the time than they do “attorney.”

There it is the answer for the ages. The important question you need to ask in the online world — or the offline world — is “What Key Terms Connect with the Maximum Amount of People?” Well, thanks to pay-per-click advertising, now you know without all the esoteric junk that a marketing agency will feed you in order to run up your bill. 10 minutes of searching will tell you instantly which term is better.

Now, go ahead and give it a try, but set a time limit, because I’m warning you this is really addictive. Oh, and make sure you actually get some work done today!

#1) Can you “plus” a product, service or business you have? “Plussing” is adding something to a current product you currently have, to create something else. Look at the beverage industry and all of the flavors of Coke that have come out in recent years. How about the many flavors of water? What will be added to our water next?

#2) Can we can “minus” the product, service or business? In the information business, we do it all the time when you take a book and break it up into chapters or special reports.

#3) Can you change with size adjustment? Look at the restaurant business and see how different sizes are altered. Chick-Fil-A’s are much smaller than McDonalds stores and frequently don’t allow inside eating (I still refuse to call it dining). How about the trend in multiple franchises operating in the same store?

#4) Can you take an item and change its use? This is always fun to play with. Have you ever seen items thrown away by one business only to be use by another. Wine barrels are one. People cut them in half and came up with flower planters. Railroad ties became landscape dividers and parking retainers. One of the big ones today is ocean storage containers. If you are in a big shipping port area, you can buy them for a small amount compared to what you might pay for business storage containers in other cities.

#5) Can you change it with color? Just think about the variations in phone colors when black was the only color a few years ago.

#6) Can you change its market? The phone industry comes immediately to mind again. The new Iphone is a phone, camera, gps, email, internet and more.

#7) Can you make a price change? Just look at what “residual income” pricing models have done for business where their customers have accepted it. Info businesses offer subscriptions, software companies offer data feeds, and now, even medical products and services use monthly membership plans.

#8) Can you resurrect the old? I love my convertible but until Iacocca brought them back to life at Chrysler you couldn’t buy one.

These are 8 quick ideas to keep handy and use when you feel a change is needed to your bottom line.

Utilizing this type of ‘creative thinking” grouped on a checklist helps you look at a given product, service or business from many different perspectives.

Tell them about your company:
a. when it was founded
b. where you are located
c. who the principals are
d. who the core management team is
e. who some of your customers are
f. what you do

Show them pictures of:
a. big events that you have attended (trade shows, symposiums, seminars)
b. your Office
c. your products
d. key executives
e. recreational activities and events with clients and staff members

These are just a few examples, but just remember to treat them as if they were walking into your office for the first time. What do you have in your lobby that tells clients who you are, what about your office? Do you have pictures on your desk? Do you have diplomas on the wall?

Just remember that clients on the internet cannot see these things, so try to show them in the best way you can. Make sure they know that you are real people and that will clear a huge hurdle in getting business in the online world.

When you go to the store and buy something, what happens next? I’ll tell you. 99% of the time the answer is NOTHING. You can buy a television, groceries, a car, or anything else you so desire and 99% of the time they let you walk out without thinking twice and if you’re lucky you may get a half hearted “thank you please come again.”

So, you can imagine how I felt when I got a thank you note in the mail at my house from a high end shoe store about 3 days after I bought a pair of shoes. I’ll tell you how I felt, I couldn’t wait to go back and buy another pair of shoes! (and I actually did just that.)

You see, some smart salesperson thought about the fact that sending a simple 4 or 5 line thank you note, was enough to make that sales person stand out in a crowd over the hundreds of other salespeople I’ve bought shoes from in the past. And even though it is a very small gesture, it shocked me so much that I now look forward to going to buy shoes from this store. I now have a mental “sweet spot” when I think about this brand of shoes!

Can you imagine how much one of the big companies would pay to have this little sweet spot in my head? And do you think any of them thought that they could have it for a 41 cent stamp and a couple of hand written lines? I doubt it.

Is your business just like every other business? Are you doing anything to set yourself apart? If you’re not, you should be.

If you are having knee problems, do you go to a family practice doctor, or do you go to an orthopedic specialist? Well, I go to the orthopedic specialist and I would guess most of the rest of America does too. And you (or your insurance company) usually pays more for a visit to the specialist. This is just one example of many that I could discuss, but you get the point.

You see, we’ve been taught in today’s society to go see experts. And we’ve also been preconditioned to pay these experts more for their services. This is a perfect example of Niche-ing. While you may be tempted to be a generalist so you don’t turn clients away, I challenge you to look at your business to see if there are any segments of your business that are causing you problems, and get rid of them. Narrow down your expertise and serve a niche. You will be surprised to find, like many of our clients have, that when you focus on a specific niche, business is actually easier to find.