“Our Mission is to provide valuable information… blah blah blah”

Who Cares? You know what customers care about?  Themselves.  They don’t care what services you provide or how often you win awards.  They only care about what’s in it for them.

Think about the last ad you remember.  Something made it memorable.  It connected with you.  It made you feel cool or happy or whatever.  It was all about you.

Think about the products you really like.  They make you feel good or beautiful or happy.  Same story.  It’s all about you.

Any time you are marketing to people (which is any time you’re speaking, networking or publishing content, which includes Facebook, Twitter, etc.), think about what’s in it for the other person.  Why should your customer (or potential customer) care?  What benefits are you offering them? What are you giving?

What’s In It For Them?

(photo by Samael Trip @ Flickr CC)

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting. Connect with her on Twitter,  Facebook or the Sazbean Facebook Page.

“Our Mission is to provide valuable information… blah blah blah”

Who Cares? You know what customers care about?  Themselves.  They don’t care what services you provide or how often you win awards.  They only care about what’s in it for them.

Think about the last ad you remember.  Something made it memorable.  It connected with you.  It made you feel cool or happy or whatever.  It was all about you.

Think about the products you really like.  They make you feel good or beautiful or happy.  Same story.  It’s all about you.

Any time you are marketing to people (which is any time you’re speaking, networking or publishing content, which includes Facebook, Twitter, etc.), think about what’s in it for the other person.  Why should your customer (or potential customer) care?  What benefits are you offering them? What are you giving?

What’s In It For Them?

(photo by Samael Trip @ Flickr CC)

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting. Connect with her on Twitter,  Facebook or the Sazbean Facebook Page.

Every piece of marketing material you create has an “energy signature”, which refers to the emotions (positive or negative) that piece creates in the mind of the recipient. For example, if your business card is professionally-designed, made of heavy card stock, is colorful, has your photo on it, and presents a professional image, that would be a positive energy signature. If it’s made of flimsy paper and looks like it was printed on a cheap inkjet printer, that doesn’t make for a good impression, and would be a pretty negative energy signature.

This principle applies to your brochures, website, blog, email signatures, voice mail message, the words that you write and speak, the demeanor that you exhibit when you meet someone in person, EVERYTHING you present to a customer or prospect.

Review your marketing materials and ask yourself what kind of impression they make. That impression is your “signature” – make sure it looks and feels good before you sign it!

 This is a guest post by Tom Harris, Your Marketing Coach. Tom helps entrepreneurs and small businesses develop and execute marketing plans. He specializes in website usability and effectiveness.

The energy signature is a concept covered in Organic Marketing, presented by the InSights Group.

Every piece of marketing material you create has an “energy signature”, which refers to the emotions (positive or negative) that piece creates in the mind of the recipient. For example, if your business card is professionally-designed, made of heavy card stock, is colorful, has your photo on it, and presents a professional image, that would be a positive energy signature. If it’s made of flimsy paper and looks like it was printed on a cheap inkjet printer, that doesn’t make for a good impression, and would be a pretty negative energy signature.

This principle applies to your brochures, website, blog, email signatures, voice mail message, the words that you write and speak, the demeanor that you exhibit when you meet someone in person, EVERYTHING you present to a customer or prospect.

Review your marketing materials and ask yourself what kind of impression they make. That impression is your “signature” – make sure it looks and feels good before you sign it!

 This is a guest post by Tom Harris, Your Marketing Coach. Tom helps entrepreneurs and small businesses develop and execute marketing plans. He specializes in website usability and effectiveness.

The energy signature is a concept covered in Organic Marketing, presented by the InSights Group.

Traditionally, you had an advertiser who was marketing at people. Think of television commercials, think of commercials when you’re listening to the radio, think of ads that come across either your computer screen or through the newspaper. The methods that interrupt people’s patterns of behavior are called just that – interruptive advertising.

Traditionally, advertisers and marketers have thought the more that they talk at people and interrupt people in what they are doing, the more people will pay attention to their message. We’ve seen that times are changing, and marketing is being done in a little bit different way now.

To brand yourself today, it requires people talking about you and with you, not you talking at them. Take television for example. You’re at the middle of the program. It’s the best part and the TV changes. They go to advertising – someone telling you about what it is that they want you to purchase from them.

Well, our lives our interrupted all the time, and we don’t like it anymore. And that’s where the traditional marketing has led, talking at the consumer and the consumer being badgered and bullied into buying. Things have changed. Today, we’re looking at getting people to talk about us.

Enter Social Media…

The Insights Group is an entrepreneur support community, where we are helping to empower small business people to take their businesses and their lives to the next level, to their next goal, to their next dream, whatever that may be.

 Social Media is one of the ways that business people can improve their marketing efforts without spending a lot of money. We would like to take you through some of the different ways that social media can help impact your business.  Join us for the launch of the Organic Marketing Club that will meet on Monday’s from 6pm-8pm at the InSights Group. The intro meeting takes place from 5pm-5:45pm. If you are interested in attending the meeting via the web, please send an email to info@insights-group.com and we’ll send you those instructions…

One of the topics we’ll cover in Organic Marketing: What is Social Media? Social Media is a method of marketing to people that’s a little bit different than what traditional marketing means have been. We are looking at an online presence, whether it’s Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or thousands of other possible sites.

*Social Media Explained by Sandi Maki and Allan Curtis

I feel compelled to share this clip from Seth Godin and Tom Peters today. I hope it resonates with you as it did with me.

I have figured out the social media secret formula!

The secret formula:

                1) Tell your story in small snipits

                2) Tell just enough so that your audience doesn’t put it all

                    together and realize that you are actually just a  nut  job

                3) Repeat 1 and 2

Where else can you hang out with the characters of the Wizard of Oz and promote your business at the same time? Each of the characters from the Wizard of Oz brings special qualities with them. Each is unqiue and wonderful in its own right. Join us on September 11th, 2009 as we bring the Wizard of Oz to life!

Ladies Nights at InSights are the place to meet, connect, and share
the story about your business. Visit with the other vendors and guests
who are here to try your products, sample your wares, and get to know
more about you!

With an emphasis on vendor/guest interaction, each Ladies Night has
a game and a theme to get those conversations started. This one will
be starring your friends as they enact the Wizard of Oz mystery game
so you can determine who melted the Wicked Witch. Complete with
the ShopKeepers of the Emerald City (YOU) We’ll have visits from the
Wicked Witch of the West, Glenda, her Sister and the Good Witch of
the East, and Dorothy, Toto, The Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow, and of
course the great and powerful OZ from behind the curtain.

The event opens at 6pm, show runs until 10pm. Each vendor also
provides a gift worth up to $25 for inclusion in the door prize drawing.
Vendors are eligible for a prize package…The business with the
most guests in attendance will receive a prize package worth over
$500, including a free pass to the September 17-18 Boot Camp!

Click here for the .pdf sign up form

I was out for a walk this morning, taking a route that I normally follow. About half way through my walk I noticed a house. I think this house has probably always been there. It’s not a new house, nor is there anything particularly special about the house, but today this house caught my eye. I am not sure what it was.

I noticed the house today, as if for the first time. I thought to myself “why haven’t I noticed this house before?” Did they just paint it? Was it facing a different direction last time I walked by (not likely). What is it about today that made me see this house? Now I am trying to figure out why I’ve not noticed the house before, what may have changed, and you can be sure I am going to talk to other people about the house…(hence this blog post).

Is your marketing like this house? Is it there and ever present in people’s lives just waiting for the right moment to be noticed? Once someone sees it, is there any possibility the could ever forget you? Does it inspire them to talk to their friends about you, or to try to figure you out?

Would you like to find out more? Join us on Monday, August 3rd @5pm for an Introduction to Organic Marketing and more fantastic concepts like the “house”.

(Photo not of acutual green house from the walk.)