You are here: Home / Archives for marketing

How pure are you?

October 14, 2011 By 4 Comments

cigaretteWhen you put money into a retire­ment fund, do you check if that fund sup­ports the tobacco industry?

If you buy baby for­mula, do you check if that com­pany mar­kets their for­mula aggres­sively to new moth­ers in devel­op­ing coun­tries — at the expense of their children’s health?

It’s hard to be pure in this world. Most deci­sions end up being the best of the mix we can find. Or we may not exam­ine all the fac­tors that go into a decision.

I’m often too lazy to exam­ine my deci­sions. And some­times I know the poten­tial down­sides to a deci­sion, but I make it anyway.

My friend Tim Gier, a vegan, makes most of his deci­sions with a very focused approach. I admire that.

What’s a deci­sion you made that you later regretted?

Filed Under: Life, marketing Tagged With:

Last mention

May 10, 2011 By 2 Comments

Greener Grass Media BlogHey friends.

Today, I’m writ­ing over at the blog on my busi­ness site, Greener Grass Media. I post some­thing there once or twice a week. I’d love for you to visit. Even if you’re not a busi­ness per­son, I think you’ll find some use­ful ideas.

This may be the last time I’ll men­tion that here, as I under­stand it may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Finally, if you would like auto­matic noti­fi­ca­tion of when I post some­thing there, start using an RSS reader. Here are some sim­ple instruc­tions on how and why. The dif­fer­ence is that you’ll start by click­ing the but­ton on your browser I’ve shown below.

Filed Under: marketing Tagged With: ,

Announcing Greener Grass Media!

April 27, 2011 By 5 Comments

I’m now work­ing full-time at the helm of my own busi­ness, Greener Grass Media.

I’m offer­ing social media ser­vices, mar­ket­ing, and visual design for your web sites and apps.

Why did I go so broad in my offer­ings? I’ve dis­cov­ered that many of the orga­ni­za­tions and peo­ple I work with need help in sev­eral of these areas and not just one. When I can’t han­dle the load or level of exper­tise needed for a par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge, I work with a team to pro­vide the solu­tions you need.

You can see some more specifics of what I can do for you on the site.

So if you need help, send me an email or give me a call at 720–235-9720. I’d love to lend you a hand. We’ll push your com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the next level!

Filed Under: marketing Tagged With:

Free vs. paid

April 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I’m post­ing today over at Greener Grass Media about free vs. paid.

I’ll give you some­thing to think about there, if you make the short trip.

And another com­pletely dif­fer­ent take on the whole idea of free vs. paid is at Becky McCray’s blog.

Filed Under: marketing Tagged With:

On positive marketing

April 5, 2011 By 1 Comment

Today, I’m post­ing about pos­i­tive mar­ket­ing — and the dif­fer­ence it can make — at Greener Grass Media.

Thanks for check­ing it out.

Filed Under: marketing

A daring step

March 31, 2011 By 3 Comments

I had never seen that before — a man on the cover of Good House­keep­ing.

I asked Heather if that cover would appeal to her more than their nor­mal cover, show­ing a female good house­keeper. She said a female.

Why? Maybe because she can relate with the woman more than with Dr. Oz.

In any case, I thought it was a noble exper­i­ment for Good House­keep­ing to put a man on their cover. (I was unable to con­tact their edi­to­r­ial staff to find out if news­stand sales dropped for the April 2011 issue, but my guess is that it did.)

What small act of dar­ing can you do today? Even if you fail, the risk might reveal new things you would not have known oth­er­wise. (And I admit that my head­line was a teaser — Good Housekeeping’s move was not as dar­ing as putting Gaddafi on their cover.)

Filed Under: Life, marketing Tagged With:

Using QR codes in marketing

March 14, 2011 By 5 Comments

Here at the South by South­west Inter­ac­tive con­fer­ence, QR codes are every­where. If you don’t know what they are, here’s the Wikipedia descrip­tion. (In short, they are smart­phone scannable codes that send users off to a web­site or mobile appli­ca­tion. They often allow the orig­i­na­tor to grab a poten­tial new customer.)

Prob­lem? Too many of these babies are all over the place here. It’s as if each com­pany said, “We need to get some­thing out there with a QR code on it — and it doesn’t mat­ter what it says or links to. Just get it out now, now. We only have two weeks till the event kicks off!”

Fail.

None of them (that I saw) thought of a hook to make them­selves stand out among the sea of other QR codes. Moral of the story? Take a lit­tle longer to think through your mar­ket­ing effort before you launch it.

Filed Under: marketing Tagged With:

Lack of proper research

February 23, 2011 By 8 Comments

Our son Jay is a junior in high school. This haul of mail was one day’s set of let­ters from col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties want­ing him to apply. Sadly for them, their mail­ings almost instantly end up in the recy­cle bin. Noth­ing dis­tin­guishes one from another.

If any of those uni­ver­si­ties’ mar­ket­ing depart­ments actu­ally had chil­dren in the tar­get age group for their mail­ings, they would try reach­ing their tar­get audi­ence another way.

Take­away: What are some ways your mes­sage can be dif­fer­ent than that of your competitors?

Filed Under: marketing Tagged With:

Slightly wonky

February 21, 2011 By 1 Comment

“Wonky” is a great word. Askew or amiss might have a close mean­ing, for those of you not from the UK.

Any­how, some­times it’s bet­ter for a thing to be slightly imper­fect for it to be more inter­est­ing. In the case of this lit­tle sign, if the clear back­ground por­tion were per­fectly aligned with the front por­tion, it would be boring.

Take­away: Can you be inten­tional about adding some inter­est to projects you are work­ing on? Adding a tiny bit of chaos could be a good thing.

Filed Under: art, communication, marketing Tagged With:

The details

February 17, 2011 By 5 Comments

A nearby cof­fee shop has a descrip­tive tag next to a piece of fab­ric art from India: “Embroi­dered Mir­rored Tapes­try, Gujarat.” But the thing is, that describes a tapes­try across the room, and not the one it’s next to. I brought that up to an employee, and she basi­cally said, “Oh.”

My gift is notic­ing details. Oth­ers notice the big pic­ture. Both are needed for a job to get done well.

Teams work best. If you work alone, find a way to join a team. I’m part of a mas­ter­mind group that meets occa­sion­ally (mostly online), and we all help each other. You can do the same, if you’re not part of a team.

Filed Under: communication, marketing Tagged With:
« Older Posts