How to tell a client their ‘baby’ is ugly
February 26th, 2010
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In honor of being incredibly lazy this week, here’s one of my fave 2009 posts – the last Friday of every month I’ll throw a repeat of one of the more popular posts, just in case you missed it!
A product, service or book is probably the greatest thing in the world – to its creator. But when an editor or producers says “pass” it’s the publicist who has to tell the client. Sometimes ZERO media are interested. And for anyone who has written a book, started a business or provided a service, that can be a pretty personally hurtful message no matter how carefully it’s couched. For me, it’s the equivalent of having to tell clients “your baby is ugly” 95% of the time, without hurting their feelings. Nearly impossible. (more…)
It’s important to change up your marketing efforts and try new things…without throwing out the things that work.One of the hardest things to measure is the synergy that develops when you combine marketing mediums. It’s the basis for integrated marketing communications (IMC) concepts but no one has really captured where the actual motivation occurs to get your customer to buy, call, whatever. To keep tweaking your marketing recipe you constantly have to look for new ways to get your message out there…here are a few ways to do that each month that won’t take much time. 
Marketing – as opposed to sales remember – is one of those proactive tasks that seems to get pushed aside for more urgent ones. An astute commenter in my last post mentioned you need to always be planting seeds for future business to grow. Just like your workouts if you put marketing time on your schedule each week and hold it sacred, you’ll see the benefits very quickly. Here are some tips for finding the right time to work on your promotions, social media, advertising, whatever you consider ‘marketing’. 
How much time should you spend on a weekly basis doing marketing and promotion tasks? It will vary of course but there are some rules I’ve learned working with a broad swath of companies and industries over the past couple decades including B2B, B2C, online and retail.Feel free to poke holes in my theories here…but tell us all WHY so we can learn from your successes. 
Rather than reinvent the wheel, here are some links to blog posts and articles to help you figure out the right mix for your business…
I tell my clients that marketing is a lot like working out – you have to be consistent or you won’t see results. No one expects to see muscles popping out all over after one visit to the gym. For the same reaons you can’t expect immediate, lasting results from one promotional campaign. As you look toward 2010 and what will surely be a better year for all of us, it might help to build a marketing practice that looks a bit more like a workout schedule. Here are few ways to do just that. 
There are so many books out there for business owners on how to do your own marketing and/or public relations. Frankly most of them say the same thing – know the reporter, don’t be too salesy, etc. Here are my top five picks – not only are these books current, they go into real tactics that you can use right away. I think if you read these books, whether you’re a small business owner, author, entrepreneur…. you can start promoting or upgrade what you’re already doing and get some results fast.
by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Smith and Brogan describe not only HOW to use social media, but WHY you want to use it and most importantly, how to measure your success. The book covers the basics of social media so a newbie can learn but also dives into the more sophisticated aspects of the medium 
