Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it doesn’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here is also fav image of the week)

Enjoy!

Good stuff I ran across this week:
Twitter Gallery - Nice collection of free twitter backgrounds. This is an asset that should be branded, but at least dress it up a bit.

KnowEm – Search over 340 popular social media networks to instantly secure your brand across the social web. Recently added some features, including a paid option to register you.

Reel Director (warning iTunes link) – Fairly robust video editing app for the iPhone 3Gs

Image credit: katjung

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 31, 09 | 5:05 am
Category: DTM Favs | Tags: , KnowEm, Reel Director, Twitter Background

There are a few plugins and services out there for blogs that automatically create links to content on the web. Some of these tools, such as Chitika are simply ways to monetize content and traffic by showing pop-up ads related to contextual text and others, such as Snap show popups when readers hover over certain types of linked content.

Personally, while I like the idea of adding content that makes posts richer, I find both of these solutions annoying and self-serving – the added content in really just advertising that benefits the blogger and not the reader. Now, I have nothing against the bloggers out there making a living, but the main content area is a bit sacred and annoying popups don’t do much to keep it that way.

Recently, I came across what I think is a great solution that offers something I can only refer to as “useful popups”. Apture is a tool that installs inside of WordPress as a plugin (there are other versions too) and gives you an incredible library of videos, audios, images and text to draw from by hand to create pop-up links or embeds right into the post. So now when you write about a topic you can offer a multi-media smorgasbord of related content that helps tells the story – all from within WordPress.

The Apture interface is very slick and gives the blogger the ability to bring content like YouTube videos, NPR interviews, Wikipedia entries and Slideshare presentations right into each post. You can resize embeds by dragging them to the proper size and even create multiple links for a given phrase.

Here are a couple examples of Apture in action. (Click or hover on the links to see the added content)

Recently, I had David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, as a guest on my podcast. In the show notes I was also able to offer a useful popup of a video of David demonstrating some of what we discussed. Of course I could also offer David presenting at a conference or an overview of his latest book – Making It All Work.

None of this content is ad supported, it contributes, I believe, to the reader experience, and it takes about two seconds to find and embed. A win for all.

Here’s an example of multiple links using the Duct Tape Marketing book as the search term.

The idea of popups being useful might take some people time to get their head around, but the possibilities to enhance content with Apture are pretty intriguing.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 30, 09 | 5:05 am
Category: Blogging, Social Media | Tags: , Apture, WordPress

A lot of folks dream of being a sought after, highly paid speaker (some people wet themselves at the thought of it as well.) But, in this education based marketing environment we find ourselves in today, speaking for leads may be the best approach ever.

Getting up in front of a highly targeted, interested group of prospects and demonstrating for 45 minutes or so that, you’re not only a very likable chap, you know a heck of a lot about something they need, is today’s most effective form of lead generation and conversion all rolled into one.

So forget the paid speaking career for now and start speaking for leads. Let’s say you sell a pretty standard $4,000 web design package. Would you be better off charging a sponsor group $2,500 to share your brilliance or speaking for free and walking away with 20 hot prospects that eventually convert to 6 immediate design engagements? (I’ll do the math – that’s $24,000) Any business, regardless of industry, can benefit from this approach.

Here are 5 tips to keep in mind to make your free speaking career pay off big.

1) Get referred

You can create your own workshop events, but one of my favorite strategies is to approach two potential groups and offer to present great information to their clients and networks. The key here is that you have a topic that is very hot and seen as very valuable. This is not a sales presentation, it’s an education and value add tool. Approach your two partners with the idea that you’ll present a great topic, they offer it to their customers, and they get to cross promote to each others attendees as part of the deal. You simply get referred in as the expert. (Every time you do this you will get asked to speak at an event one of the attendees is involved with as well.)

2) Make a deal with the sponsor

You are a highly sought after speaker willing to waive your fee only if they permit your to elegantly reveal that there is a way for attendees to acquire your products and services and that you will also be offering some free stuff in exchange for contact information of those interested in the free stuff. Make it known that you have no intention of selling, merely informing. This approach raises the value of your presentation and gets you what you need as a lead generation opportunity. This can be a deal breaker for you or the sponsor. If you over promote, don’t expect to get asked back, if they won’t allow you to acquire leads, don’t bother.

3) Educate like crazy

Don’t be afraid to give away all of your secrets. Some folks suggest you should just tell them what they need, but not how to get it done. I don’t agree. If you tell them how, some may think they can do it themselves, but those who really want what you have will realize through your specific details, how tos, and examples that you do indeed possess the knowledge and tools to help them get what they want. Educate and you won’t have to sell!

4) Collect those addresses

In some cases people will rush up to you after a thought provoking presentation and ask how they can buy, but, in case they don’t, make sure you give all attendees a valuable reason to share their contact information for the purpose of follow-up. You can offer them the slides to your presentation, a free resource guide related to your topic, or a more detailed report based on the topic, in exchange for business cards. If you don’t have this preplanned you’ll find you won’t get a second chance to wow these folks. Of course, I hope it goes without saying that you should also have a follow-up process. Write a hand-written note, add them into a pre-written drip email campaign on the topic, or call them up after the event to measure their engagement.

5) Simple call to action

When I first starting speaking in the manner I’ve described here, I would pour my heart out, mindful of not selling, and then come to the end and there would be this awkward moment when I knew people wanted to buy something, but I didn’t have an offer. Well, I quickly learned that didn’t serve either of us very well. If you provide great information and a clear road map to solve someone’s problems, you’ll often find them wanting you to reveal how they could take the next step. But here’s the key – in that environment, they want a deal for acting right now. Not every audience or speaking engagement will present this opportunity, but I’ve found that in a straight free speaking gig, where I’ve been given permission to introduce my products and services, this 3-step approach is well received.

a)tell your audience right up front you’re going to give them great information and tell them at the end about what you do

b) about half way through, after you’ve built some trust, take a quick minute to reveal, for instance, a paid workshop or program you have coming up, tell them the price and go on

c) at the end answer questions, make free offers, and, almost as an afterthought, agree to let them also bring a friend to the event you mentioned at the same price if they sign-up today. (You’ve just made the event half price in their mind, turned them into a recruiter, and given your potential attendee a valuable tool to offer to a friend or colleague) So, all of a sudden, anyone considering the offer is now highly motivated by this compelling change of events. Don’t hard sell this, simply put it out there and let people do the math. Don’t risk tainting your wonderful information with a sales pitch, but don’t leave those who want to buy without an option either.

Make sure you also read Cliff Atkinson’s awesome book – Beyond Bullet Points. It’s one of best on helping structure and create presentations that keep people interested and engaged.

Image credit: jwyg

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 29, 09 | 4:04 am
Category: Lead Conversion, Lead Generation, Referral Marketing, inbound marketing | Tags: , Beyond Bullet Points, Speaking for Leads

Marketing podcast with David Allen (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes

Getting all the stuff you’ve got to manage done as a business owner, might be the greatest challenge of all. Then of course all the new social media stuff comes along and the job of managing it all just got tougher. It seems, to some at least, that monitoring, managing, engaging and following is a full time job.

I’ve always been a big fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD), but I think we may need his simple system for collecting, doing, delegating and deferring more than ever.

I spent a few minutes chatting with David for this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast and if you’re one of those feeling a little overwhelmed these days I suggest you start with by grabbing Getting Things Done and then work your way up to his latest – Making It All Work. You can get David’s products and books at his Davidco site

There are so many layers to David’s work that I have found people who have changed their lives by adhering to the “2 minutes or less” principle while others have developed a deep sense of vision for their business because they’ve cleared the clutter for the first time.

In this podcast we cover:

• Components of the GTD system
• Tools for GTD
• Using the GTD system in an organization
• De-cluttering to move forward
• About Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life
• How to get involved with GTD

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 27, 09 | 9:09 am
Category: Podcast | Tags: , David Allen, Getting things done, GTD, Making It All Work

Email service provider Constant Contact long ago established their role as leader in the industry. Today they unveiled Event Marketing a tool that may prove to widen that gap.

Event marketing online has become an important piece of the small business marketing puzzle. With so much focus these days on education, publishing, and content driven marketing initiatives, it’s no wonder that in person and online webinars and workshops are all the rage. Of course, the event promotion, registration, and tracking process generally involves an additional system of some sort to make it run smoothly.

Event creation inside the admin panel (Click to enlarge)

I feel the need to disclose that I have no affiliate, sponsor, or other relationship with Constant Contact because I want to make sure you hear this as the unbiased suggestion that it is – Constant Contact’s Event Marketing module rocks.

If you are already a Constant Contact user this is a no-brainer. Now you have another tool to help promote your events to the list you already maintain there. If you’re not a Constant Contact user, this tool is still available as a stand alone and, while there are other event tools, such as EventBrite, Constant Contact’s tool seems far more complete for the typical small business user.

The way Event Marketing works is that you create an event by filling in all the details necessary and the system builds your email templates, a registration landing page (with Paypal integration), and tracking system to analyze your event promotion results. You can send email updates to registrants and manage your event sign-up list from with the tool. The cost of the tool is based on the number of events you hold and starts at $15/mo for up to five events, a number that should cover most small businesses I would think.

There’s a nice demo of Event Marketing here and they offer a free 60-day trial.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 26, 09 | 7:07 am
Category: Marketing Strategy, Web Marketing | Tags: , Constant Contact, Event Marketing, Eventbrite

Hubspot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah have synthesized, condensed and packaged what I believe is one heck of a book on the new reality of lead generation. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs is written in a style that makes it extremely accessible to the smallest of businesses and gets my highest recommendation as a must read.

Brian was a guest on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast not long ago – click to have a listen.

The overriding premise of the book is to persuade readers to come to grips with the fact that the old ways of lead generation, shouting and broadcasting, have given way to being found – by producing something that will be found online and is worthy of people talking about. No surprise here that they too think every small business should be producing content on a blog. One of my favorite ideas in this vein is the notion that we as marketers must start looking at our jobs as half publishing, half marketing.

The website or blog is the hub of an inbound marketing strategy while social media activity creates the outposts and plays a role in the creation of inbound links. The book certainly supports everything the two have been building over at Hubspot, and that’s no surprise, but I was pleasantly surprised with some ideas in the book’s final chapter. Particularly one that addresses hiring Digital Citizens as employees. The grading scale for this is pretty fascinating.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 23, 09 | 5:05 am
Category: Lead Generation, Podcast, Social Media, Web Marketing | Tags: , Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, hubspot, inbound marketing

So much about the world we live and work in has changed. I suppose every generation feels that to some extent, but now it’s my turn to acknowledge it. I’ve owned my business for over twenty years and the changes in how we market, interact, collaborate, congregate, follow and lead have changed unalterably.

And with it, a new breed of leader has emerged – in part because the world is desperate for it. Seth covered this new kind of leader well in Tribes. I have the pleasure of addressing the network of Duct Tape Marketing coaches for the opening session of our conference in Boulder this morning – and I plan to challenge this group to embrace the traits of today’s leader.

1) Trust themselves

An authentic trust in one’s self allows a leader to make decisions for the right reason and not out a hidden agenda or attempt to prop up self-worth. This trait also comes shining through when risk and uncertainly knock at the door,

2) Make meaning

The greatest leaders I encounter are doing what they are doing for love of a higher purpose. This doesn’t mean a spiritual or religious purpose, although it can, but they are trying to guide people on a journey worth taking. Chris Brogan is making the world a better place by blogging about engagement. His “make meaning” why he’s found a way to turn it into make money.

3) Embrace change

Well, I guess we’ve all seen what the Internet has done to companies and entire industries unwilling to embrace change – think newspapers? Today’s leader is downright giddy about the speed at which things are happening all around them and in every aspect of their life.

4) Keep learning

Today’s teacher understands the speed of change and further understands that in order to have any reason for people to follow, they must provide a sense of what’s next, what’s ahead – the only way to do that is inquire vigorously, every day.

5) Are the example

How is it possible to lead if you aren’t willing to walk the talk, if you aren’t an example to those who would follow. Or worse, to be driven by a higher purpose and not let it shine through your actions. Do as I say, not as I do just won’t cut it anymore. The most attractive form of leadership involves no words.

6) Act congruent

I suppose this one goes hand in hand with the last trait, but it shows up in the value proposition. Today’s leader knows what value they bring, what results they produce, and what all of that is worth. They have no issues charging what they are worth and looking a prospect or customer in the eye when they educate them. What are your feet doing when you speak.

7) Practice abundance

Today’s leader gets cooperation like never before – there is so much business out there waiting to be attracted in this Internet world that we now find ourselves without competition. Let’s all play together to make a better world!

I know most of you read this blog to get my take on marketing stuff, but every now and then I just have to address the whole entrepreneur in all of us.

Image credit: Garry Knight

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 22, 09 | 7:07 am
Category: Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Referral Marketing | Tags: , leadership

One of the tactics I enjoy using on twitter is to bookmark blog posts and web sites that I think are amazing and share them with my followers. This is one part of my overall twitter posting strategy. (Having a strategy for twitter and employing tactics to meet objectives kind of sounds like how you would approach any aspect of your marketing doesn’t it?)

While I firmly believe this is worth the time it takes to hand select these links, I’m all for finding tools that help me do these kinds of things more easily. There’s a twitter based tool, called twitterfeed, that’s been around for a while that essentially allows you to automatically publish any RSS feed to twitter. Now, it’s easy for me to imagine some silly and spammy uses for this. Blindly autoposting a bunch of blog feeds into twitter doesn’t smack me as a very good tactic, but people do it all the time. That’s not what I’m suggesting here at all.

There are lots of ways to create RSS content, including ways that allow you to hand curate and bookmark content that goes into a feed.

I use Google Reader to subscribe to and read lots of blogs. One feature built into this reader is the ability to “share” posts I find and mark them for others to see. I can make my shared marks public and people that interact with on my Google Profile or through GMail can view what I thought shareworthy. The shared items category also produces it’s own RSS feed. More on Shared Google Readers items. (To find your shared items feed url, click on shared items in “Your Stuff” in the left sidebar and then “details” and you will see the url for your shared items feed. Make sure to check your shared settings are set to public. )

So, you know that means, right? I can be waiting in line somewhere, scrolling through my blog subscription on my phone and decide to hit share on one that I really like, and because I’ve set that select RSS feed up on twitterfeed, it posts that hand selected item to twitter. Mind you, this is something I do on twitter anyway, but now there are less steps involved.

Twitterfeed has settings that allow you to add a little text before or after each tweet, something like: Reading or Liked . . . and the link is automatically shortened. You could do this kind of bookmarking to twitter just as easily with a delicious tag feed to twitterfeed also.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 21, 09 | 4:04 am
Category: Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Web Marketing | Tags: , Google Reader, twitterfeed