Niche Marketing Matters

Some of you may think “three dog night” is a rock band from the seventies. There may be others that think this means the neighbor’s dogs are barking too much. Still others may think it means it is cold outside.

If you think that “three dog night” means that it is cold outside, you are thinking like me. Here’s why. Early in the 20th century people in Newfoundland had a practice of tucking a dog under the blankets to warm the bed on cold nights. Thus, this is the tradition of describing a cold spell as a three dog night meaning that it so cold that you need three dogs to keep you warm.

The point is that what we say or write and what others understand can vary. When communicating with customers via web copy, direct mail, advertising, or any other form of marketing communications, you need to anticipate how others might interpret your message.

Factors to consider:

1. Avoid the use of dead metaphors such as three dog night, since it has lost its original meaning or context.
2. Beware of cultural differences. For example, avoid the use of baseball expressions like “go to bat”; this is a very US centric expression.
3. Beware of language disparities. We use gasoline in the US while people in England use petrol.
4. Avoid gender bias. Advertisements tend to be male dominated; increasingly women make up the majority of decision makers and buyers.
5. Avoid clichés. It can be like “the blind leading the blind”.
6. Avoid mixing metaphors such “as much fun as shooting monkeys in a barrel”. What does that mean?

Stop and think before you communicate with your customers.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2009 All rights reserved.

People learn, read, and communicate in many ways. Some people need or prefer more spatially effective communication with both words and images. In that case, consider a mind map.

A mind map is a visual outline. It has a central core or box at the highest level, uses topics as bullets below it, and can include sub-topics as a subtext for each bullet. A common use of a mind map is for a meeting where many ideas or possibilities are being generated. Call it a map or diagram—a mind map is more than a just a list of words.

Mind maps are effective because:

- they are easier to read than lists or plain text
- the images can go in any direction
- a mind map can stimulate out-of-box thinking
- spatial images are said to aid recall of existing memories
- brainstorming is more effective
- they display what people consider as options or paths

Similar to a mind map is a process map, which has a more hierarchical approach. Process maps display the relationship between concepts. For example, a decision tree is a form of a process map. In comparison, mind maps are more free form and less encumbered by rules.

Mind maps are more art than science—the goal is to communicate.

For more on mind mapping, what this YouTube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlabrWv25qQ

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2009 All rights reserved.

The ubiquitous business card is a critical tool for communicating your brand. Make sure it reflects your image and that you maximize its usefulness.

Here are 11 hints for better business cards:

1. Print the card using color. Study after study shows that color printing significantly impacts the readers’ ability to notice and remember.

2. Don’t cram too much printing or too many images on the card; leave white space for an easy-to-read look.

3. If you have your photo on your card, have a professional photographer take your photo; look your best. The photo card is a common practice in some industries such as real estate.

4. Include your tag line and logo. Beware that some logos look great when full-sized but lose detail when shrunk down for a business card. This is a design issue to avoid. In addition, some businesses or industries don’t put logos on cards; beware of protocol.

5. Make sure that the information on the card is typo free and accurate. If the information changes, buy new cards. Handwritten corrections look amateurish.

5. Use a standard-size card, since business card storage systems presume a standard size and shape.

6. Get your cards printed professionally on quality paper; although the do-it-yourself business cards for the laser printer are getting better, they still look homemade to me.

7. Include all pertinent information such phone, fax, website, e-mail address, mail address, cell phone, etc. Duh!

8. The back of the card is a great place for a mission statement, product information, or something that you want to communicate to everyone.

9. Don’t put pricing on the back since business cards are evergreen and prices are not.

10. It is OK to list services or products on the card, but remember that plans change and your cards could quickly be obsolete if you make changes to your product line.

11. Your business cards should reflect the theme, color, and logo used in all your marketing communications including your website. Send a consistent message.

May I have your business card?

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

At the end of every e-mail is the signature line which tells the reader how to contact you. It also tells them a lot about you and your brand. Surprisingly, many people don’t take advantage of this last step in the communication process in an e-mail letter.

The minimum contact information that you should include in the signature line is your full name, title, company name, mail address, office phone, fax, and website. I suggest that you also restate your e-mail address.

Cell phone numbers are a personal preference. What I don’t like about including them is the perceived notion that you are available 24/7. Do you really want your customers calling you after hours or on weekends? If you do include your cell phone, it would make checking your cell phone voice mail a critical task. This is up to you.

Some people include their address for social networks such as LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook. Once again this is personal preference.

Your e-mail signature says a lot about your brand as a professional. One way to make your e-mail signature unique and memorable is to include a personal tagline. A tagline should be no more than three to five words and it should tell your customers why you are special. My tagline is “Be First, Best, or Different” and it appears at the top of my e-mail signature.

Sometimes a short biography is appropriate. If a bio is used make sure that it is no more than 50 words. The bio is good selling tool for an independent professional such as a consultant, attorney, or CPA.

Pulling it all together, here is a sample of what I use on my e-mails:

“Be First, Best, or Different”

John Bradley Jackson has over twenty-five years of sales and marketing experience from Silicon Valley and Wall Street. He is the author of the new book “First, Best, or Different: What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know About Niche Marketing” and has written 100s of Internet articles on sales, marketing, and negotiation.

Mail address: XXXX Sunset Lane, Yorba Linda, California 92886
Phone: 714 777 XXXX
Fax: 714 777 XXXX
E-mail: johnbradleyjackson@gmail.com
Blog: http://www.firstbestordifferent.com/blog
Website: http://www.firstbestordifferent.com

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

Text messaging has created a new “language” of sorts that is destroying the written word and has infected all aspects of our society. Driven by young cell phone users who would rather text than talk, these abbreviations are appearing in advertising, new media, and college term papers.

SMS (Short Message Service) technology is a communications protocol allowing for short text messages to be sent between mobile telephone devices. Text messaging has become the most widely used data application in the world with 2.4 billion users—-74% of all mobile phones send or receive text messages.

What SMS has done is to create a new language based on the use of fewer key strokes. For example, consider the following:

• “how r u?” means “How are you?”
• “lol” means “Laugh out loud”.
• “brb” means “Be right back”.
• “ttyl” means “Talk to you later”.
• “pcb” means “Please Call Back”.

My concern is that I don’t think this destruction of the English language is going away; in fact, I think it will only become more common. While at first it may seem no big deal, when you dig deeper into text-speak, you will see that many discrepancies or exceptions exist. For example:

• “because” can be written as “cuz”, “bcuz”, “bcz”, “bcos”, “bc”, “coz”, and “bcoz”.
• “lol” may mean “Laugh out loud” or “Lots of love” or “Lots Of Laughter” .
• “Got to go” can be written as “g2g” or “gtg”.
• “Tomorrow” can be written as “tom”, “2moz”, “2moro”, “2mrw”, or “2mara”.

Honestly, English is hard enough without all this new slang. Yet, this phenomenon is real. The Associated Press is reporting that New Zealand is going to let high school students use text-speaking or texting acronyms in national exams. The move has been extremely controversial. New Zealand’s high school students will be able to use text-speak in national scholastic examinations.

Advertisers seem to be greeting this trend. AT&T /Cingular recently ran a highly successful commercial which featured a mother and daughter having a conversation talking in cell phone text-speak. You actually had to understand text-speak to be able to understand the advertisement’s message.

IMHO (in my humble opinion), text-speak does not belong in business communications, but I may be drowned out by the thundering herd of text message users. So, to you who are text speak illiterate, I recommend that you “rtfm” (read the flippin’ manual) and get on board.

The reason for my flip-flop on this issue is cuz (because) hcb! (Holy Cow Batman!), this text-speak is real.

Hand (have a nice day),

JBJ (John Bradley Jackson)
© Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

E-mails dominate B2B communication. E-mail volume dwarfs that of the telephone, fax, and direct mailer.

If you are like me, you are getting dozens if not hundreds of e-mail messages a day; most are spam and are deleted. The rest are scanned or put aside to be read later. The truth is most don’t get read.

Given this low survival rate of an e-mail, the writer must resolve to communicate efficiently with the hope to engage the reader. Here are a few thoughts about how to write better e-mails.

1. Always personalize the letter with the reader’s name. It is cliché, but no word is more important than the reader’s name.
2. Be brief. If you can’t get your point across in a few sentences, your e-mail will be deleted. Short e-mails rule.
3. Avoid attachments. Attachments are the domain of viruses, spam, and eye fatigue. Ever fearful of hackers, readers more and more are choosing not to open attachments.
4. Give context. If the reader does not know you by name, tell them how you came to contact them or where you met. Give them a reason to continue reading.
5. Use simple subject lines. Use a subject line that accurately describes the purpose of the e-mail. Don’t tease or fib. Clever subject lines reek of spam.
6. Be clear. Say what you mean. If there is a call to action, tell them. Be specific.
7. Tell the truth. If you are selling something say so. A good value proposition tells the reader why to buy.
8. Benefits sell while features tell. Speeds and feeds will be ignored. Focus on how your offering helps the reader.
9. Key points need white space. Present your key points with lists, dashes, asterisks, or bullets surrounded by white space. This says read me.
10. Call to action. Close with the next step, the call to action, or what is needed.
11. Contact information. Include your signature with all your contact information.
12. Consider a Postscript. Postscripts are a great place for a reminder about the call to action or for an incentive.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

Book titles play a huge role in a book’s success. I need your help in naming my next book which will be a follow up to “First, Best, or Different: What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know About Niche Marketing”. The new book will continue the exploration about how to successfully market products and services in a niche market environment.

Here are a few rules about naming a book according to Seth Godin’s blog (he is the most successful marketing blogger on the planet and a very successful book author). He says that you have three options.

1. “You can pick a completely descriptive, generic, boring name that precisely describes what’s inside. Like “Shredded Wheat” or “12 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Blog” or “Installing Linux on the 8088 Platform in 24 Hours”. The advantage of this approach is that Google likes it, and so do people who are quite goal directed. If you’ve got a Linux installation problem and you find that book at your local B&N, not only are you going to buy it immediately, you’re going to do it with a smile on your face.
2. You can pick a clever name that’s designed to entice the reader to read the subtitle, or the first few lines of your post or the back of the cereal box. An example of that would be “The World is Flat”, which is a famous business book.
3. The third approach is to pick a name that gets talked about. To create a phrase that you hope will enter the vocabulary. His goal is to have people call something a Purple Cow or eviscerate the boss for suggesting yet another Meatball Sundae. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, you sell ten books, not one.”

I chose to go with rule number 2 and use a clever name for my first book. One more thing—a second book or follow up book often extends the first title to leverage the first book’s image or equity. For example, the book series “Chicken Soup for the XXX” leverages chicken and soup. Maybe they overdid that one.

A couple more things for you to think about when naming a book—it would be best if the book title fits nicely into a dot.com URL. You will soon discover, if you don’t know already, that virtually all two and three word URLs are taken with a dot.com suffix. You can see how naming a book can be challenging. The good news is that most business books use a subtitle to explain the meaningless or absurd main title. You can see how I did this with “What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know About Niche Marketing” since it tells the reader what I meant by “First, Best, or Different”.

Here are some of my current ideas:

1. “Different is Best” (extends the first title and the URL is available)
2. “Different and Best” (extends the first title and the URL is available)
3. “Marketing Safari” (this title was a first runner up to the title of the original title and I have the URL, but it does not extend the first book title)
4. “Blogs, Poetry, and Spam” (OK, I just made that up and, yes, it really sucks).

The truth is that I have a list of over 200 titles that are discards from the first book title effort. What do you think the title of my next book should be? I need your help badly.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2006 All rights reserved.

Marketing mantras say how you are different.

A mantra is a religious prayer or mystical phrase or poem that instills concentration when repeated and is used for meditation and prayer. The key is to focus on the mantra and to block out everything else.

A marketing mantra is three to five words that describes how your business or offering is different. It must be easy to say and remember while being easily understood. If it is in writing, it should leap off the page with authenticity and integrity. It can be used internally or externally. It should say how you are different instead of how you are the same.

Your marketing mantra should be positive. Study after study shows that positive messages sell better than negative messages and so it is with mantras. Many marketing messages are negative. Who can forget “American Express: Don’t Leave Home without it?” I always feared what might happen if chose to leave without it, so I switched to MasterCard.

Mantras help focus your employees and your customers on what makes your offering different. This focus is critical since customers buy because of your differences, not because you are like the competition or have similar benefits. An example of a marketing mantra is “Diamonds Are Forever” by DeBeers Corporation. It accentuates the point that unlike other gifts, diamonds will outlast them all and they will never go out of style.

Another example of a mantra is Burger King’s “Have it Your Way”; this mantra told us that fast food could be customized at Burger King, unlike the food at McDonalds. During its time, this was a very powerful message about how Burger King was different from Mickey D’s.

You can write a mantra by first writing down a list of your distinctive competencies, which are the unique benefits of your offering that your customers value. Try to boil it down to a few words while experimenting with the order of the words. Reduce it to three to five unique words that say how your firm is different. Alliteration can help and shorter is better.

Next, test it with friends, employees, and customers. See if they react positively and if they agree that it says how your offering is different. Change it if necessary. And try it again. When you get the message right, blanket the earth with your mantra. For this is the most important message you will ever tell your customers and prospects.

By the way, the difference between a tag line and a marketing mantra is mostly intention. Tag lines can deliver any type of message while a marketing mantra focuses on how your offering is different.

Be first, best, or different. Be first, best, or different. Be first, best, or different. Be first, best, or different. Be first, best, or different…….

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

P.S. Special thanks to Guy Kawasaki who popularized the use of marketing mantras.

No, this is not a flashback to the psychedelic sixties. Instead, this is a serious discussion about color and how it can be used in marketing.

While perceptions of color are somewhat subjective, there are some color effects that have universal meaning. Colors in the red area of the color spectrum are known as warm colors and include red, orange, and yellow. These warm colors evoke emotions ranging from feelings of warmth and comfort to feelings of anger and hostility.

Colors on the blue side of the spectrum are known as cool colors and include blue, purple, and green. These colors are often described as calm, but can also call to mind feelings of sadness or indifference. But, first a history lesson.

Ancient cultures, including the Egyptians and Chinese, practiced chromotherapy, or using colors to heal. Red was used to stimulate the body and mind and to increase circulation. Yellow was thought to stimulate the nerves and purify the body. Orange was used to heal the lungs and to increase energy levels. Blue was believed to soothe illnesses and treat pain. Indigo shades were thought to alleviate skin problems.

Today, most psychologists view color therapy with skepticism and point out that the supposed effects of color have been exaggerated. Colors also have different meanings in different cultures. Research has demonstrated in many cases that the mood-altering effects of color may only be temporary.

Yet, when it comes to web design and creative work, colors define a business and a brand. When designing printed materials, logos, and websites, many factors come into play. One factor of great importance is color since your brand is expressed through your choice of color. Color evokes a mood or feeling and must be chosen carefully. It must be consistent with the image that you want to communicate to your target audience.

Red is a call to action, is aggressive and can be exciting. It is a great color for logos and for accents when it is used with other more neutral background colors. It can clash with green, blue, and purple. It is best used with other warm colors like yellow, brown, or orange. Red demands attention; it says stop and come look at me. It is too strong for a background color since it would be irritating or overwhelming.

Black can be a depressing, if not a mournful color. It feels heavy. Yet, it can also be sophisticated and alluring; it can feel luxurious and prestigious. It functions well as a backdrop for an artist’s work or with photographic images. It seems to go well with technical images or presentations. Black can be a great color for text on the website.

White is an excellent background for a professional business on a website. It denotes cleanliness, purity, and youth. It feels simple and innocent. Many of the best consumer websites choose white as the background of choice, Note that Google’s home page is white and very simple; they spell out the Google name in primary colors making it fun, if not child-like.

Green is the color of nature and the environment. Light green is a great background for professional service firms like a law firm or a CPA firm. Green communicates safety and encourages you to go forward. Bright green is trendy right now for high tech firms; it has a retro feel that reminds us of the sixties.

Blue can create an image of tranquillity and peacefulness. Light blue is a common background for service-based businesses such as consulting firms; it communicates a calm solution. Blue can be authoritative while dark blue is heavy and morose; think police officer. Medium blue can also be over-the-top and goofy.

Beige is a great neutral color, which speaks of conservatism. By itself it is boring or plain. Paired up with accent colors like green or brown or blue, beige is very readable. Beige can make a super background, if complemented with the right accent colors.

Brown is a great color for text in print and on a website. Generally, brown is viewed as earthy or natural, while to others it might be dirty or dingy. Brown works well with green. It can also communicate a natural or rural or primitive look. Brown is warm and comfortable.

Yellow is the most irritating color out there and is great for getting your attention, but use it sparingly. Many great logos use yellow (often paired with red). Yellow is the color of cowardice or caution.

When choosing a color, you should consider the 216 colors supported by web browsers. It is generally recommended that you start with color choices compatible with the web palette and then consider color on paper. Go to Google and enter the words “web palette” and you will find all 216 vibrant colors. If you start with color on paper, it might not be found in the web palette. Consistency is a huge factor in building brand awareness with logos.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

Be different this holiday season. Don’t be like everyone else and send holiday cards and gifts for Christmas, Hanukah, and New Years. Instead send Thanksgiving cards or gifts.

Your well-intentioned best wishes during the year end holidays will only get watered down by the crush of others doing the same thing. Additionally, sending a Christmas card to someone of another faith is inconsiderate, if not dumb.

But, let me digress and tell you a little about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is uniquely North American holiday and universal in its appeal. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and on the second Monday of October in Canada. The four day weekend and some sympathetic marketing have made the holiday a bigger deal in the United States.

According to Wikipedia, the early settlers of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts were particularly grateful to Squanto, the Native American who taught them how to both catch eel and grow corn and also served as their native interpreter (as Squanto had converted to Christianity and learned English as a slave in Europe). Without Squanto’s assistance, the settlers might not have survived in the New World.

The Plymouth settlers (who came to be called “Pilgrims” later) set apart a holiday immediately after their first harvest in 1621. They held an autumn celebration of food, feasting, and praising God. The Pilgrims invited the Native Americans for a feast that lasted three days.

Historical revisionists tend to take a harsher view and tell a story that includes lots of ale, abuse of the Native Americans, and land grabbing by the whites, but I prefer to dwell on the current message of Thanksgiving which modern marketers describe as a time of thanks and fellowship with family and friends.

Therefore, be like the Pilgrims and invite your neighbors over for Thanksgiving dinner. Send your customers and colleagues cards expressing your gratitude.

Do this and you will be remembered for being different from the crowd.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2007 All rights reserved.