DISQUS

Thanks for the link!

I was actually about to start doing more of this until I read this post. As a new Twitterer, thank you for not allowing myself to turn into a personal spammer!

I couldn't agree more with this post. Let's be realistic. It's a tough time for many SMBs right now, so nebulous, fluffy advice and rhetoric is useless and blinding to many entrepreneurs. That said, innovation will always be rewarded.

Right to the point & helpful. Got just what I needed. Thanks!

Well, now I know what I'll be doing the next 5 hours. How amazing is this?

Jonathan loves Innovative Marketing's last blog post..Waiters are Good Marketers

Sadly, I've had to eliminate many great business names based on domain availability alone. Not a fan of domain squatters!

Brian, Well, the salesman only cleaned a small portion, but money-strapped as we were at the time, he still didn't buy the stuff!

Replace "Workaholics" with "Passionate People" and this article is spot on. What you want is passionate people who can give their all for a cause, not someone who works themselves to death. Innovation and passion are what makes startups successful.

I am not alone! I can't believe it. I thought I was the only person in the universe to have an aversion to buttons, and I've been reading this blog daily to see if this post would ever come! I can handle buttons on clothes if they're well attached and regular size, but tiny buttons or very large ones are just unbearable. Loose buttons are out of the question, and don't get me started on beads!

Gil, That is an interesting theory, and I have to say I think you might be right. If nothing else, the drastic fluctuations in price and uncertainty of oil futures would probably have a significant impact on the amount of inventory any filling station would want to have on hand. I'm still not sure that low quantities of gas make the pumps pump slower.

Chris, you're 100% right. With so much information about customers, there is so much more pizza companies could do with their marketing efforts (the same goes for grocery stores). I would start, however, with hiring great customer service people.

Schurrbart, thanks for the pointer. I've been wondering!

Curt, it's true isn't it? The last frontier of marketing is (and will always be, IMHO) creativity. That's perhaps the biggest influencer to making things interesting, memorable and actionable.

Ben, in my experience, everyone has a personal brand whether or not they've actively worked on building it in the same way every company has a brand, be it good or bad, regardless of whether the business is aware of what that is. Since you're going to have a personal brand anyway, you may as well take an active role in how what it is.

Tanner, I think they are strongly related. To me, talking straight is telling it like it is, being direct, and getting to the point without all the fluff. How much fluff can a person really take, honestly?

Restricted, I suggest making your conference call into a webinar (which is just a conference call + a presentation that everyone can see and follow along with). The best tool to use for that that I know of for smaller organizations is Yugma. It's cheap and will allow presentations + collaborations.

As for publicity, send emails to all your customers and leads inviting them to sign up for your presentation. Briefly outline what will be discussed and why they should attend. Start now to build relationships with the top bloggers in your specific industry (comment on their blogs often, create discussion as it makes sense), then when the time comes to announce your webinar, ask them to help publicize it. Some will help, some won't, but it's a good way to get a lot of people interested and signed up.

@ Restricted, It sounds like you have one of the more difficult circumstances for creative marketing. The finance industry is tough, but without knowing all the red tape you have to deal with, I have a few ideas:

- Social Security estimator. We all know SS is in a crisis; why not help people realize how much they really need to save for retirement using a simple SS calculator that shows how little SS money there will be left by the time they retire?

- Debt Payoff Calculator. A free tool you can put on your profile page (or link to it from there) that shows folks how long it will take to pay off their consumer debt.

- Cash vs. credit estimator. A free tool that would show people how much they can save by saving and paying w/ cash rather than using credit cards.

- Go to a local university or college sporting event and do a push-up contest during halftime (or just outside the event). Choose 10 people randomly and give them 2 minutes to do as many push ups as possible. The winner's pushups are worth $5 each, 2nd place's are worth $2, and third's are worth $1 a piece. The money they win helps them start a savings account. Hand out fliers to everyone you can offering free financial planning consultations.

Would any of those work?

@ Tanner: It's definitely getting increasingly difficult to stand out among all the marketing noise out there, and lots of companies are wasting lots of money trying to stand out, when really all that is necessary it simple, creative marketing.

@ Boring: Welcome aboard! Nice to have you. You're absolutely right that word of mouth marketing and strong customer relationships are some of the most powerful tools a company can have, especially when the product is tough to sell through traditional marketing.

What if you combined all the smells?

@ Paul: I would do the Batman one, but only for the free phone.

@ Paul: Now buy me that iPhone :)

@ jesakaa: It's possible this is done on purpose just to get people to pay attention to it, but you'd think they would fill the label up with copy that promotes the product or company instead of making philosophical arguments. But you never really know...

Nice quote Paul. Where from?

The painting is of Seuss, but it's painted by Nicole Declerk, who did paintings of this style of a lot of famous people: http://www.art.com/asp/display_artist-asp/_/cri...

Enabling is obviously of utmost importance to success, but finding someone who is passionate about what they do is far and away the best motivation anyone can have. I like having a nice computer, but that will always take a back seat to doing something I truly love.

@ Tanner: Thanks for the feedback. If you know of any mimes looking for work, let me know!

@ Shama: Welcome to the Manizesto blog. I'm glad you like what you've seen so far. Don't forget to subscribe, and of course, the more feedback, the better!