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Archive for October, 2009

A “New” Small Business Marketing Rules

By: Dan Kennedy on: October 16th, 2009 10 Comments

In the 1950’s, “credibility” was THE critical factor in advertising, and integrally, inextricably linked to being believed. In the 1990’s, they became distinctly separate component parts of an advertising or sales story, and it became possible to function with zero credibility if you had sufficient believability. In the new millennium, believability takes precedence (except for customers over age 55 or 60.)

I’ve been talking about this quite a bit for the last 10 years or more. To quickly review, “credibility” is typically illustrated with years in business; years in the community; the firm having been founded by grand-dad, a direct descendant from the Pilgrims; a photograph of the big building housing the firm; that sort of thing.

“Believability” used to require “credibility” as its foundation. But that rule is broken. Anyway, “believability” is presented with social proof or peer proof, such as testimonials; dramatic, easy to grasp physical demonstrations (even if rigged), being seen on TV, being used or patronized or endorsed by celebrities (even if they have no credibility), as well as via the convincing style of the presenter/presentation.
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Small Business Marketing Tip: Capitalize on the Tumbsuckers

By: Dan Kennedy on: October 15th, 2009 10 Comments

The Today Show featured a story on “mother-daughter bonding boot camp”, a group therapy business, where mother-daughter pairs pay to go and share stories, light candles, play games and work out their angst with 100 or so other mother-daughter pairs.

Seriously.

The last night they roast marshmallows; the final morning they light candles and say one meaningful word to each other.
The same day CNN carried a story about the newest, most pathetic trend: parents, predominately mothers, going with their college age and college grad children to their job interviews, waiting in the waiting rooms or, when possible even going into the interview with them and answering questions on their behalf.

I have previously written elsewhere about the popularity in particularly affluent communities of “baby sleep coaches” who camp out in the home to “coach” mommies on getting their babies to sleep.

“Thumb-sucking dependency” (the polar opposite of the virtue I celebrate: self-reliance) isn’t new in America. It’s just increasingly dominant.
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Stop the B.S…You are in Control

By: Dan Kennedy on: October 14th, 2009 6 Comments

To quote one of my favorite wise philosophers, Billy Clyde Puckett: “Life’s a funny old dog, ain’t she?”

What all Renegade Millionaire Entrepreneurs must know and embrace is: “You just can’t foresee and predict the future, whether next week’s or next year’s, so enormous flexibility is required.”

People who are too rigid in their ideas about anything are hamstrung in relationship to everything.

A year or even a month before Burnett pitched him, it’s safe to assume that becoming a reality-TV star was the furthest thing from Trump’s mind.

Until satellite radio came to be, Howard Stern had no options.
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Is Being Fat Contagious?

By: Dan Kennedy on: October 13th, 2009 8 Comments

IS BEING FAT CONTAGIOUS? – so said The New England Journal of Medicine, reporting on a new,”groundbreaking” study from Harvard Medical School, which indicates that hanging out with fat friends, in person or even at a distance via phone, text, e-mail and Facebook, can”make you fat.”

This is good news for everybody in the weight loss industry; it provides yet another way to let the customer off the hook, to say “it’s not your fault.” (A necessary step in selling anyone anything intended to substitute for personal responsibility.)

Let’s be clear: your fat friends don’t make you fat or fatter unless you are prone to cannibalism. What you eat and the quantity of it eaten is the culprit. As a matter of fact, nobody makes you anything; you make you.
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Can You Get Up Everyday and Go to War?

By: Dan Kennedy on: October 12th, 2009 5 Comments

In the 2-hour CELEBRITY APPRENTICE aired the week of the Super Bowl last year, the actor from The Sopranos wimped out, quit, and went home, unable to handle the stress of the in-fighting and the competition.

He asked Trump a question and couldn’t understand Trump’s answer. He complained about the war-like atmosphere, it not good for his health, and asked Trump:

“Surely you don’t get up every morning and fight like this, do you?”

Trump was as confounded by the question as the actor was by Trump’s answer. Trump said:

“My whole life is a war. Everyday I get up and go to war.”
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What Scares Us? What Scares You?

By: Dan Kennedy on: October 9th, 2009 13 Comments

These are two actual news stories reported one right after the other, given nearly equal emphasis in CNN.

The first, lead story given the greatest emphasis is that polar bears’ testicles may be shrinking, somehow in response to global warming. Presumably Gore has been wandering around the North Pole with a ruler and a bag of bear treats, documenting this alarming phenomenon. I’m not sure why it’s alarming to anybody other than polar bears.

The newshounds on CNN thought it was a big deal and I’m willing to take their word for it.

The second story, deemed less scary, was that this year’s crop of kids taking the SAT’s achieved the worst scores in THIRTY-ONE YEARS. Nothing more was said about it.
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Avoid the “Monkey See, Monkey Do” Mentality in Your Small Business Marketing

By: Dan Kennedy on: October 8th, 2009 17 Comments

For years I’ve puzzled over – and never cease puzzling over – how people can have ‘the ways of success’ shown to them, visible to their naked eye, even pushed into their faces, and be told the principles behind what they are seeing, and still not copycat it, not do it, or even perversely do the opposite.

I’m a very open book – and I answer just about any and every question asked of me. In my various newsletters, I “reveal” everything I do to create continuing customer interest and involvement, foster retention, promote ascension, program good attitudes toward investing in resources, etc., etc.

It’s all right here out in the open. Side example: at a past Renegade Millionaire Retreat, over $70,000.00 of Glazer/Kennedy products were purchased at the “store” during the event with no “pitching” of any of the products.
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How to Get 500 Free Leads from Facebook with 1 Hour of Work

By: Brian Horn on: October 7th, 2009 35 Comments

GUEST POST FROM BRIAN HORN

One of the most powerful ways to build a Facebook Group or Fan Page size is virally. Whenever someone joins your Group, all their Friends will see that on their Wall.

The problem for us, as business owners, is that most people will not rush to join a business’s Group or Fan Page (especially if they are not familiar with you or your business).

So how can you use the power of the viral marketing in Facebook?

Well, I stumbled on this trick during the Presidential elections last year.
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Unique Selling Proposition vs Dumb Slogans

By: Dan Kennedy on: October 6th, 2009 26 Comments

I was reading an extensive survey to measure the impact of advertising slogans. Among the slogans and advertising tag lines for 22 of the biggest U.S. advertisers, only 6 were recognized by more than 10% of the consumers surveyed.

In other words, not even 1 out of 10 consumers could correctly identify 90% of the slogans. 16 of the 22 advertisers had slogans no one knew – each spending more than 100-million dollars a year advertising them!

Three of these much advertised slogans scored 0% recognition. 0%!

Take the test, see if you can name any of the big, dumb companies that match these slogans:

  1. We’re With You
  2. That Was Easy
  3. The Stuff Of Life

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Entitlement vs. Initiative

By: Dan Kennedy on: October 5th, 2009 15 Comments

I have a particular philosophy about entitlement vs. initiative.

This has always kept me oriented toward self-help; towards resourcefulness; towards responsibility, thus providing me with an exceptional level of control. (Imperfect, but exceptional.)

I was in an Italian neighborhood recently. An old Cleveland neighborhood originally populated by Italian immigrants, still populated by a lot of first generation Italian immigrants as well as second generation families.

Plus a slight homogenous mix of everything else.

I walked through a Lowe’s store and a Walgreens. Saw no signs in Italian. But Lowes and Walgreen stores in many parts of the country now have signs in Spanish for Mexican immigrants. On the chains’ part, this is obviously smart marketing.
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