The best analogy I can think of would be a description of Pixar University I read about. At Pixar University, accountants, chefs, and any one who works at Pixar are encouraged to take drawing classes.  When questioned about the appropriateness of teaching accountants to draw, the head of Pixar University answered, “Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn’t just teach people to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There’s no company on earth that wouldn’t benefit from having people become more observant.”

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

by Dan Ariely

This behavioral economics book offers a wide variety of experiments and explanations about why people act the way they do and more importantly, how to recognize subtle marketing tactics in everyday life.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

by David Allen

The simple premise of this amazing book is that if you can close the endless thought loops in your mind then you will get more done by not over thinking (or maybe better put, redundant thinking).
Three simple steps:

• One “inbox” with all the tasks/emails/projects that you need to analyze or want to remember.
• Categorize the information, determine what you need to do to complete it, schedule it.
• Forget about it.

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future

by Daniel H. Pink

A broad base of ideas to help people become better problem solvers and thinkers. Encourages better communication and better ways to communicate. Explains why creativity can be beneficial to all professionals.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

If you have to give a speech, give a presentation, write a paper, write ad copy, COMMUNICATE, read this book. The principles and conclusions in this book make presenting ideas (that will be remembered) straight-forward and easy.

Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers

by Seth Godin

Seth Godin is a marketing genius. This book is widely accepted as how marketing should be done in the 20th century. People don’t want to be sold to. But people want information about products and companies they are already interested in. This book tells businesses, step-by-step, how to build relationships with customers online, as well as, in real life.

The WSJ has a fantastic overview of internet marketing in their article called The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World. The following are bullet points from the article and additional links.

• Don’t just talk at consumers — work with them throughout the marketing process.
• Give consumers a reason to participate.
• Listen to — and join — the conversation outside your site.
• Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell.
• Don’t control, let it go.
• Find a ‘marketing technopologist.’
• Embrace experimentation.

Harnessing the Power of the Oh-So-Social Web
Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration
Beyond Enterprise 2.0
Systems Marketing for the Information Age
How to Market to Generation M(obile)

The basics for conveying a viral Idea from the book, Small is the New Big, by Seth Godin.

1. 1) The first impression (of the idea) demands further investigation.
2. 2) They (the audience) already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea.
3. 3) They (the audience) trust or respect the sender must invest the time

For a more detailed analysis of conveying viral ideas, I recommend the book, Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath.

madetostick.com

A recent article on Sphinn.com called Twitter has Made Dell $1 Million in revenue caught my attention.

When you take into account Dell’s total revenue, the contribution from twittering is negligible.  The development costs and management probably has a high return on investment even though the model isn’t scalable.  Consumers have to choose to follow Dell.  Dell can not interrupt consumers.

Mashable has an interesting article on Brands on Twitter.  The article boils down to the two strategies that enables a business on Twitter to resonate with users:

1. 1) Is the conversation on Twitter one-sided? A business should respond to users.
2. 2) Does the brand have a “personality” (I believe some marketers call this positioning).

The Mashable article has a nice quote that sums up my position:

“I think that authentic and transparent personal Twitter accounts – being yourself in an uncontrived way – may indirectly and intimately influence organizational brands, because of the level of trust involved in sharing information with someone over the course of time.”

David Wallace agrees with pairing a personality with a brand on Twitter and offers some additional suggestions for social marketing on Twitter in his article, Can Twitter be Useful for Business?

I think the most important thing to remember for a business is that Twitter is an investment in time (maybe more then you anticipate) and to be successful, you are going to have to commit to a long term strategy to reap the benefits.

Managing a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign for a brick-n-mortar store has its advantages and disadvantages. Internet marketing professionals are accustom to studying analytic data, crunching numbers, and optimizing campaigns on conclusive data. But for brick-n-mortar stores, internet marketers are forced to rely on the same subjective data used for TV, radio, and print marketing. A lot of marketing managers focus on impressions and a lot of mangers focus on clicks but most internet marketers know that either of these metrics are easily manipulated by bid, position, ad copy, keyword relevance, etc.

This Costco ad caught my attention recently:

Costco AdWord Ad

Initially, I thought the ad was odd because it was promoting Black Friday (Friday, November 28) and I was viewing the ad on Sunday, December 21. I let this obvious error go because I figured Costco was referring to “all” Fridays before Christmas as Black Friday.

Second, I tried to figure out what triggered the ad. My Gmail account is almost empty (keeping with good GTD principles) but there was a Kohl’s email (you get a Kohl’s email everyday). Either Costco was using a very broad term like “Christmas” or “Sale” or the competitor term “Kohls” but neither term seemed very targeted or relevant.  It would have been much wiser for focus on the keyword “Costco” or use keywords relevent to the products in the promotion.

The most asinine aspect of the campaign was the landing page:

Costco Landing Page

Not only was the Google AdWord ad copy out of date, the campaign expired six days ago on December, 15. Costco’s marketing manager or Costco’s SEM firm had forgotten to pull-down the campaign after it had expired and were now just wasting money.

Excerpt from Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing.   Short checklist from Peppers and Rogers on what businesses should focus on when selling to customers.

• Increase your “share of wallet”.  Figure out what needs you can satisfy, then use the knowledge you have, and the trust you have built with the customer, to make the additional sale.
• Increase the durability of the relationship.  invest money in customer retention because it is a small fraction of the cost of customer acquistion.
• Increase your product offerings to customers by being customer-focused, not retail-focused or factory-focused.  Offer products based on what the customer wants not on how you define your business.
• Create an interactive relationship that leads to meeting more customer needs.  By constantly encouraging the customer to give more information, the marketer can offer more products.