Podcast Notes: “The offer was flattering, not humiliating. It showed sympathy and understanding. The evident desire was to serve.” – Claude Hopkins, My Life in Advertising Don’t you find it easy to tell when a company’s advertising is self serving? Even though advertising is self serving by nature, we are put off by it. We want our needs met. We aren’t always concerned with meeting the needs of the people we buy from.

Podcast Notes: “Perhaps one time in fifty, a guess might be right. But fifty times in fifty an actual test tells you what to do and avoid.” – Claude Hopkins, My Life in Advertising. Claude talks a lot about the guess work that brands do with their advertising. He scorns the typical, “by our brand and not theirs” message. He strongly advocates testing advertising ideas out on smaller markets before spending too much money on one tactic. In the digital world, this is so easy to do. A/B testing headlines, web pages, landing pages, email subject lines, calls to action and PPC ad copy is built into most services. You…

Podcast Notes: There’s a weird truth about greed. The more someone consumes the resources you produce, the more they feel they owe you a little. You can feed greed by promising more money, more popularity, and greater status, but the real power of greed is when you are generous.

Podcast Notes: Public Relations is a different discipline than advertising but it’s not separate. Organizations distribute PR material to news editors in hopes of free publicity. When your business releases a new product, service, achieves some milestone, or significantly impacts the community, it can be delivered as a news story. If your material is picked up by an editor, your story and brand are put in front of the editor’s audience. It can be good marketing. Bob Bly, a well known copywriter in marketing circles, writes about a simple PR tactic that drew attention from a major New Jersey newspaper. Bob writes in his book, “The Copywriter’s Handbook,” about his…

Podcast Notes: Rocketship.fm is a podcast for starups. They do weekly interviews with successful startups and ask the questions that new entrepreneurs are brooding over. They published a book called “Plan Twice. Build Once.” It’s a collection of 100 quotes from entrepreneurs they’ve interviewed. The quotes are action focused and motivational in nature. They are essentially monetizing their podcast. But it got me thinking about reversing their process. Write a book, the produce a podcast to promote it. You could also build a blog, record videos, create attractive graphics, or develop a free web tool (although that would be a tad pricey). The point is, marketing is media heavy. Always…

Podcast Notes: As of 2012, banner ad clickthrough rate was 0.2%. So unless you can afford to put your ad in front of millions of people, display ads are becoming quite inefficient.  What’s the answer? Well, there’s more than one option, but right now I want to talk about native advertising. The simplest definition of native advertising is “sponsored content that fits the usual content flow.” It’s a more commercial form of content marketing. An article, a Buzzfeed quiz, an embedded video, infographic, or any content that is commissioned by a company. It reads, looks, and feels like any other blog post or infographic you read or see, but it…

Podcast Notes: 30 or 40 years ago “Wine of the Month” or “ Book of the Month” clubs were popular. People would subscribe for a monthly fee and get a new book or wine every month. This has been done with coffee, medication, beauty and grooming products, self-help material, and who knows what else. These are called continuity programs. They don’t have to be monthly, the best programs allow the consumer to dictate the frequency of their shipments. Marketers of consumables and limited-life products have used continuity programs for a long time. How convenient is it for a customer to subscribe and never have to worry about getting their medication…