Monthly Archive for May, 2007

World Tour

Published
by
Matt
on May 24, 2007
in Reading
. 1 Comment

I know this page is beautiful, but if you're into feeds, you can subscribe and get all this ANM goodness right in your feed reader. And hey, do you love comments? I know I do. Feel free to let me know what you think!

Hey everyone. Now that I’ve graduated, I’m going to be traveling in Europe until June 11th. While I’m gone here’s a quick list of some great stuff to read, in no particular order (just search for the title on amazon).

Anything by Seth Godin
The Anatomy of Buzz
Beyond Buzz
Wikinomics
The 4 hour Work Week
The World is Flat
The Tipping Point
Blink
The book of 5 rings (written by a samurai)
Freakonomics
Ender’s Game (fiction)
Under the Black Flag (about pirates)

Well that’s it for me. What’s on your hot list right now?

Singing off (till 6/11).

The power of J.

Published
by
Matt
on May 23, 2007
in Blogging, Marketers and New Marketing
. 2 Comments

If you type your name into Google, where do you come up?

It depends on a lot of things. You could be lucky, like my friend Andrew Barbaccia, and have an uncommon name and a solid web presence. You could be very unlucky and be named Seth Godin (unless you are the Seth Godin). Most people fall somewhere in between.

There are a lot of Matt McDonald’s in the world. That’s a tough search engine battle to fight. As it stands right now, if you type in “Matt McDonald” into Google, this blog comes out in the 66th spot. That’s the 4th result on the 7th page, which is not so great. However, If you type in “Matt J McDonald”, I come out number 2. I can deal with that. So what’s the difference?

The “J”.

I decided I wanted to fight smart, not hard, so I started using the “J” in everything I did. Now when people think of me, they can think of “Matt J McDonald”. One letter moved me up from 66th to 2nd.

Sometimes there’s no use in breaking down the door if the window is unlocked.

What’s your “J”?

Big gets it right

Published
by
Matt
on May 22, 2007
in Marketers, New Marketing and Web 2.0
. 0 Comments

If you haven’t seen Warner Bros. new viral campaign for the new Batman movie, you should. Many times big companies are too slow or too entrenched in the old ways to pull off something as effective as what Warner Bros. put together. This is a great example of how to do things right.

Sometimes you can take notes from the big guys.

unMarketing

Published
by
Matt
on May 20, 2007
in Advertising, Bad Marketing, Marketers and New Marketing
. 1 Comment

Many times people see “New Marketing” and think “New Ways To Pry Into People’s Lives”. This is very wrong.

Advances in technology and techniques are great, except when they lead to more noise. With all the ways a marketer can now interact with customers/people/markets, the focus should be on accountability and transparency, not trickery.

You probably heard about this story on “undercover marketing” a few years ago. It talks about how companies plant actors and have them use their products in public to generate buzz. They sit in cafes with new computer peripherals or ask people to take pictures of them with the newest camera. All while tricking you into thinking that they’re just another anonymous person.

This may do a great job generating buzz, but what does it say about us as marketers? Do we really feel like the only way we can get someones attention is to trick them? Do we think that if people knew we were marketers they wouldn’t trust us? Maybe. And it’s things just like this that foster that notion.

“Undercover marketing” is a great idea - if no one realizes that you were undercover. Maybe it would have worked in the 70’s or 80’s, but not today. Information flows so quickly that one person can break a national news story in a matter of hours. All the goodwill and brand buzz that you create is erased by the feeling of betrayal that people feel when they find out they’ve been duped.

I think the answer is not to keep trying to find a way to barge into people lives (text message advertising), but to make the best of the opportunities we have and try to create new opportunities for meaningful, effective contact.

Maybe less really is more.

A New Marketing - Blog Carnival Ed. 1

Published
by
Matt
on May 19, 2007
in Blog Carnival, Marketers and New Marketing
. 1 Comment

Welcome to the first edition of the New Marketing Blog Carnival. I think these are a great idea because it gives you a chance to see what the definition of “new marketing” is to other people. There’s a lot of good stuff here. Get a look at some other perspectives.

Brandon Peele presents Marketing: The Authenticity Fallacy posted at GT.

Ashton presents Product Marketing: No Product That Has to do With Life is Boring posted at Product Global.

Bhupendra Khanal presents Something about Marketing Analytics posted at Analytics Bhupe, saying, “Marketing Analytics is about knowing customers and using the knowledge to enhance business volume.”

iamawahm presents 10 Killer Ways To Multiply Your Sales posted at Working At Home Mom.

shedwa presents Australia’s Biggest Toy Sale Advertised with Giant Toy Men posted at shedwa.

Lead Optimize presents Make Your Site Say, “Can I help you?” posted at Lead Optimize.com, saying, “Make yourself available through your website to help your visitors find what they are looking for.”

Blogging

Robinson Go presents A Comprehensive Blogging Guide posted at Robinson Go dot Com, saying, “This is a future comprehensive blogging guide to help all aspiring bloggers from the newbie to the above average blogger. I believe this is a good tip for your readers who may exhibit enthusiasm for blogging online. Some Internet Marketing strategies will also be shared over the year. Thanks.”

Internet Marketing

Daniel Taylor presents My Experience With Affiliate Marketing posted at Online Hustlers.

Dianne M. Buxton presents Persisting Through Tedium to Success posted at manifestingsuccess.

Anna Farmery presents Widgets for Work posted at The Engaging Brand.

New marketing

Anna Farmery presents Communication - Push or Pull? posted at The Engaging Brand.

Sam presents Marketing Sizzlers! The Next Big Thing in Marketing! posted at Surfer Sam and Friends.

Steven Silvers presents Rankles over U.S. News best colleges list hint at bigger issue with media rankings. posted at Scatterbox at stevensilvers.com, saying, “Information-age transparency turns what used to be slam-dunk annual marketing promotions into ongoing controversies about media methods.”

Anna Farmery presents Why I love podcasting part 2: podcasts are sales tools posted at Women in Podcasting.

In re: Scumbags

Published
by
Matt
on May 16, 2007
in Marketers
. 0 Comments

Check out Ian’s post over at Conversation Marketing called Don’t Be A Scumbag

How many people do you know like this? Why is honesty and transparency so refreshing?

Just some things to think about.

The 4 C’s - The New Marketing Mix

Published
by
Matt
on May 15, 2007
in Marketers and New Marketing
. 5 Comments

Every marketer has heard of the four P’s - product, price, place and promotion. They’re the foundation of many marketing educations and the cornerstones of many marketer’s practices.

Recently, however, a new marketing mix has begun to emerge, no longer based on the four P’s. This New Marketing Mix is based on the four C’s - create, connect, correct and cancel.

Create - as in create something remarkable (see A Purple Cow). This is the basis of The New Marketing Mix. Gone are the days where you can just create a product and then spend all your money convincing people to care about it. In today’s marketplace, where information flows fast and free, it’s vital to put all your effort into creating something that people truly believe is worthwhile. If you can get them to care about it, then you’ve really accomplished something.

Connect - as in make it possible for you to connect with your customers and for your customers to connect with each other. This kind of connection is vital to the growth and success of any person/product/company/service. Start a blog, make a MySpace page, set up a message board, put together a monthly news letter, add a suggestion box to your website. Find out what people like and what they don’t like. All this connection creates a community, where the whole is always more than the sum of it’s parts.

Change - as in if it’s not working…change it. Test and measure over and over again. The solution is never to plow more money into it and wait for people to “catch on”. Why waste time and money on something that is not doing what it’s supposed to? Use analytics to test the success of your ad campaigns or landing pages. Measure the results, tweak it, and measure again… and then tweak it again, etc. In New Marketing, not only is there constant room for improvement, there is a need for it. Just because the ad is up or the copy done, doesn’t mean it’s set in stone.

Cancel - as in get rid of it. If you’ve tried to fix something, but it’s still not working - then stop doing it. Don’t be afraid to give an under performing ad/product/service/page the axe. With so many other, positive things you could find to spend your time and money on, why keep the lukewarm stuff in play? As the old poker saying goes: You have to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

My Key to Productivity

Published
by
Matt
on May 13, 2007
in New Marketing
. 3 Comments
hammock

Decide to be unproductive.

There. I said it.

Being productive is great, but sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to be anything but productive.

Take the day off and go for a walk. Go see an afternoon movie. Fall asleep in your yard. Play 4 hours of video games. Spend the day on twitter or myspace or linerider. Go to the gym. Write a book review on Amazon. Do anything but work.

It does wonders if, every once in a while, you take a little time to have fun when you’re not supposed to.

Written for The Instigator Blog - The Ultimate Guide to Productivity GWP