Archive for January, 2010

Which movie theater do you pick?

Until last weekend, I thought of movie theaters as expensive, fattening, and inconvenient.  Personally – I’d rather stay home.  After all, there are a ton of movies on DVD I haven’t seen yet.    

Here’s how the conversation at our house usually goes:

HIM:  Let’s go to a movie tonight.

ME:  Maybe.  What do you want to see?

HIM: (after an hour of research)  Let’s go see this movie.

ME: (reflecting on expense vs. pay-off)  Eh, forget it, let’s stay home and watch a movie here.  We can open a nice bottle of wine for all the money we’re saving.

What happened last weekend? 

I discovered a movie theater that had differentiated itself to appeal to me, to fix all the things I hate about going to the movie theaters.   Sundance 608 is unique, it’s different, and it’s going to dominate my demographic. 

Really, I don’t think I’ll ever go to another movie theater in Madison,WI again. 

What I love about Sundance 608 is:

• They have healthy and affordable food (salads, etc).
• They offer wine, beer and good coffee.
• They offer a place to eat right on-site, making the evening more social.
• You can reserve your seats.  Whoo-hoo!
• They cut out all the annoying advertising.
• They support local artists.

You get all this extra service for just a nominal amenities fee of $1 to $3 per ticket.  A price that’s totally worth it!

The marketing lesson here is that you CAN stand out.  There are thousands of ho-hum struggling movie theaters out there in the world today.  Sundance 608 is not one of them.  Sundance 608 didn’t concern itself with appealing to everybody.  They went after the 35+ market, and created an environment that appealed to them. 

The question won’t be, “Want to go see a movie tonight?” It’ll be, “Any good movies at Sundance 608?”

What can you do to make YOUR business stand out?  What can you do to knock all competitors out of even being an option?

I almost died this morning.

At least I felt like I was going to die.  My heart was racing.  My face was bright red.  I was dying of thirst.  I have to reluctantly admit that taking the Advanced PowerStep class after a 4-month hiatus from the gym was not a wise idea. 

How did I get so out of shape?  What make me think I could just jump right back into it?

(sigh)

My story is sadly typical.  And it doesn’t just happen with the gym.

The same thing happens in business.  All of a sudden (it seems) you realize – My pipeline has dried up.  No fresh leads are coming in.  What happened?  I better get MOVING!  So you put forth a BURST of activity, but if you are out of (marketing) shape, you could damage your business instead of helping it.   You might do the wrong things, and instead of generating leads, you are just blowing your marketing budget. 

Ooops. 

Big oops.

If you find yourself in this spot, I want you to start taking action, but start slowly.  Test what you are doing before you blow it out onto a larger scale.  Make sure it works!  For every product, every service, and every campaign, you need to ask these simple questions:

• Who am I targeting?
• What problem am I solving?
• What makes my solution better or different than everyone else’s?
• What is the next action I want them to take?

Once you have crafted your messaging, test out subject lines and offers using email marketing, Google Adwords or a simple business letter that goes out to a small group of people.   Once you have validated that your marketing message is on target, that’s when you can start expanding your campaign.

Think big. But start small.  Make sense?  I’m taking that advice myself.  After I take two Advil.

I spent New Year’s Eve with my parents this year.  My dad is recovering from open heart surgery and had a tough year overall.  Our New Years’ toast went something like,

“To hell with 2009.  May we never see your like again.  To a bright new future in 2010.”

We weren’t alone in that sentiment.  2009 was a tough year!  But it wasn’t all bad.   And sometimes the good gets forgotten.  We set our New Year’s Resolutions on what we want to improve, but we forget to pat ourselves on the back for the goals we did accomplish.   

Personally, I achieved two huge goals in 2010. 

1. I moved my family across the country to a location where I wanted to live.
2. I launched a second business, The Art of Online Marketing, focused on one-to-many marketing training. 

What did you do that WORKED this year?  What went right?   Is there a way that you can continue to capitalize on what you did?  By focusing on the positive and reinforcing your ability to create what you want, you just might be inspired with the confidence you need to make other changes.   In marketing.  In life!

By the way, if one of your goals is to figure out this “social media stuff,” we have an intro training session coming up on January 20^th at 10:00 a.m. PST.  Find out more at http://www.theartofonlinemarketing.com