One Producer in the City

Want to grow? Find new conversations.

One of the most common concerns I hear from clients is that they feel they can't get beyond their existing customer base. Whether it involves raising money and they are trying to get beyond  friends and family, or trying to get to a new base of clients for a business, the issue always seems to be the plateau. 

My answer: 

Find new conversations. 

One of the best ways to gather outside interest in a project is to talk to someone new, but rather than just go and randomly tell people about you, find an existing conversation and get involved. For step by step instructions check out Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk. 

Right now there are tons of conversations for you to get involved in. If you comment on this blog today and I comment back, you've started a new conversation with me and my readers for one example. 

Some others: 

Like a Facebook page and comment

Support someone on Kickstarter or Indiegogo and comment on why you're supporting them

Respond to a forum post 

Attend a gathering of people outside of your business

The more conversations you become involved in, the wider your reach will be. 

So start a conversation today. 

Excelsior! 

P.S.- One seat left for Finding Center! 

"George Lucas" it.

When I think of people who have influenced my childhood, teens, and now adult life, George Lucas is at the top of my list and here's why: 

His stories enchanted me as a child so I went to see them again in my teens, and then was happy to see new stories in my twenties, and will regularly watch his films when on cable. 

This is the result of great marketing and many shows as well as businesses could benefit from taking a few pages from his book. Here are the top five things that Lucas did that you can apply to your marketing on any show or business.

1. Tell a story with multiple points of view- One of the coolest things about Star Wars was the fact that we got to be a fly on the wall as a villian was plotting, we got to be inside a starfighter, we got to see what the other characters saw from all angles. Often marketing is focused in one direction and we never provide alternate points of view. Have you ever shown someone what is behind the curtain of your show? Your business? How about done an email blast about what the director of development actually does in your organization? By taking alternate points of view and giving more people access, you can increase your level of outreach. 

2. Leave things out- In all of the films in the trilogy, the scenes usually ended with some sort of cliff hanger moment. Whether it was Han in Carbonite or Luke about to face Vader, Lucas would leave the scene to tell another part of the story which made you want to keep watching to find out what happens. Good marketing leaves something out so that your clients have a cliff hanger. They are waiting for some new piece of information or the conclusion to a point. You see this the most in email marketing when you have to click through to get the answer to a question. Think about your own marketing efforts. Is there a reason for people to stay on your mailing list? Is there a story you're telling that people are hungry for? 

3. If something's a hit, take it away- One of the smartest things Lucas ever did was wait to bring the original movies back to the big screen. He could have done a weekend with all three films as a massive welcome back, but instead he made his audience wait for each film to be re-released on the big screen and when he gave us one, he took it away as the next one came in. If people are clamoring for something, and it's not readily available, they will wait if they want it bad enough. All too often in marketing, we find something we're doing is working like gang-busters, so we milk it as fast as we can. Imagine if just when people started going crazy for something, we made them wait a bit. It may make the demand that much bigger. It did for Lucas. 

4. Galvanize your fan base- There is a reason that people go to Sci-fi conventions and Comic Con. It's because they are passionate fans of the material. Passionate fans want more than anybody else, so what did Lucas do? He took the trilogy, and added bonus features, collectible sets, merchandise and guess who bought them? The super passionate fans. Are there people who are really excited about your show or your business? What are the special bonuses that they get? How do you get your fan base to go to a convention and spread the word about you? 

5. Cultivate a new generation- Whether you loved or hated the new movies, there is one thing that is certain. If you went to any of those films with a kid, they had a good time. While many of us will comment on the power of the original trilogy and our issues with the acting, story line, etc. in the newest films, there is still a whole new young generation running around swinging light sabers. Once your fan base gets older, you have one of two choices, start cultivating a new young crowd, or keep pushing the older crowd to choose you over the others. By exciting a new group of youngsters, there will be teens and adults in the future still spreading the word about Mr. Lucas' stories. 

So the next time you are feeling stuck in your marketing efforts, stop for a second and ask are you George Lucas-ing it? 

If not, the force may NOT be with you. 

Excelsior!

Thanks to all who came out for the Webspinner's event last night!

P.S.- The next Solving for X is coming up! Grab your ticket HERE. 

 

Are you giving gifts that people keep or that people return?

I wanted to take a quick second to discuss email. We all get a ton of it and many times we delete it almost instantly. It occurred to me the other day how similar email marketing is to Christmas gift giving.

The gifts that we like are the ones that come from someone who actually listened when we told them what we wanted. They took the time to find us something that would be helpful, useful, or make us happy. The gifts that often get returned are the ones we feel we really don't need. The extra sweater that looks awful or the dreaded fruitcake.

In the world of email marketing, every day is Christmas. We open our inboxes to find many new "presents" and we ultimately decide if we want to keep them, give them back, or throw them away. We also "re-gift" coupons and offers that may not be right for us. 

It seems to me that the winners in email marketing are the caring individuals who get us what we want. They take the time to listen and they send us a "gift" that is wanted and needed. They don't give us things we don't desire and they take the time to make sure what they send is valuable specifically to us. In the fast paced world of customer service, I think it's easy to get lazy with our gifts. Who hasn't been shopping on Christmas eve and realized that the fastest way to get out of the store is to buy a gift certificate to Target and be on your way home in an hour? 

The problem is there are those who will take the time to one-up our lazy gifts by truly listening to what the customer actually wants and giving it to them and they'll be the one who gets thanked profusely Christmas morning.

Take a moment to think about the emails you are sending to your clients. What type of "gift" are you sending? Is it a sweater two sizes too big that will fit you instead of them? They'll see right through that. If you're sending emails out or sending email blasts, perhaps it's time to decide what your customers have on their Christmas list and get them something on there, rather than something that takes little or no thought and might not benefit them. 

The winner in the gift giving game is the one who listens. 

Do you hear what I hear?

Excelsior! 

Want to take a class in my new school? Click here.

I created an evening version of Solving for X for those who cannot do weekends here. 

 

 

He's got the power!

It's getting, it's getting, it's gettic kinda hectic...

Seriously though, below is a TED talk by arts marketing genius Adam Thurman. I personally subscribe to Adam's blog and it always delivers. He has insight into this business that comes from years of experience and he has a no nonsense way of telling these things that is just really awesome. Watch his video on Power and the Arts below.

Happy Monday!

Excelsior! 

 

5 Marketing choices that annoy me, and most likely lose business

I have recently been the target of a lot of marketing. My guess is that this is probably due to the number of networking events I attend and my open nature. As a result I have seen some really poor choices and wanted to highlight them here to save any marketer out there from losing more customers. 

1. If you only leave one form of contact, you lost me- I recently got something where the ONLY way I could contact the person providing the service was by phone. No email, no website to visit, no mailing address. I'm sorry but if you appraoch me that way, I'm most likely not going to answer.

2. If I didn't give you permission, don't talk to me like I did- It's one thing to get a request to be on someone's email list and it is another thing entirely to just be randomly added to it. The cute little "If you don't want to be on my list, just let me know!" says to me that you didn't care enough to ask me to be on it and now I have to take extra time to take it off. 

3. Once a day is tough enough, more than that, I better have opted in- If a blast tells me when signing up that I will receive 3 emails a day and it's providing value, I'm happy to have it in my inbox. If there is no warning and I keep getting hit, chances are I will unsubscribe and tell my friends. 

4. Didn't I unsubscribe?- This one is probably the worst. There are some companies out there, that no matter how much you unsubscribe, they still seem to find their way back. I'm likely to just delete and unsubscribe again and complain if the email "magically" returns

5. No one told me I had to do this- If you are offering something "free of charge, no strings attached" then it is considered a gift. Gifts are given freely with no additional rules and regulations once someone decides to receive it. If you are not giving a gift and this item I am being given is in exchange for my permission, say so. There's nothing worse than getting to the party, then finding out it's a two drink minimum to be there. 

The best marketing focuses on the consumer and treats the consumer with respect and dignity. The internet has made us much more savvy. We can see the tricks now and the less open you are with us the less we will buy. 

Take heed marketers, a change is in the wind. 

Excelsior! 

Match your marketing messages please...

If you wanted to get me to join your gym, would you have the guy above handing out flyers?

Believe it or not, this is what I see all the time. I'll be walking down the street and there is someone who is woefully out of shape trying to convince me as the consumer that I should invest in the gym when he obviously didn't. 

Maybe I'm crazy, but perhaps more people would take flyers from someone who looked like they belonged to the gym?

You really have to wonder what the owners of this gym think is being accomplished. Interestingly enough, the same thing happens with a ton of products. I have seen shows that are clearly not for children with images that look like they should be for kids, shows that are for kids with images that are down right scary, and the list goes on and on.

The lesson?

Match your marketing message. Make sure your marketing reflects your show and will appeal to the folks you're targeting. 

Otherwise you're just another out of shape person trying to sell a gym membership on a sidewalk...

Excelsior! 

Marketing and the martial arts

Many people have asked me about marketing for their show and in particular how they get sponsorships and marketing partners. The best way to explain this is through a particular style known as Jujutsu.

Jujutsu hinges on the concept that your opponent is most likely bigger and stronger than you so you need to use their energy against them. When I look at marketing partnerships I see a similar scenario. The organization I am approaching is usually bigger than my company and most often has more money. For that reason, I would not just go and directly ask them for a sponsorship because it's like throwing a punch at a guy twice your size. It probably won't end well.

What I do instead is get the person from the organization to tell me about their company and what they are looking for. I try and get at the heart of what the problem is that they are facing, and then when they are in the midst of venting their frustration, I offer how my company may be a potential solution. I talk about how partnering with us may be able to heal that pain. Usually they are at least interested in hearing more even if they don't end up partnering with me. 

In my opinion the key to landing a sponsor or a marketing partner is letting them do the talking first, let them throw the first punch. If you're smart you'll see the opportunity in the statement and use that information to your advantage. For example if someone tells me that they are finding that there seem to be less people between the ages of 18- 25 that are buying the product, I may show data that we have a mailing list of that demographic. Now I have offered a solution to a problem. Had I just asked for the sponsorship, I would have never known that. Give the marketing partner the floor and then use what you're given.

Will it always work?

Probably not.

But it's better than being knocked out in the first round.  

Excelsior!

P.S.

When last  we flew is 97% capitalized! Help get them over the top!

Also you can still get the TRU blog reader discount for the pitching and presentation skills workshop. Send an email to [email protected] to get in before it disappears!

Social networks make you lazy

And frankly, it's a bit annoying.

So what am I talking about?

It's pretty simple:

With things like twitter, facebook, linkedin etc. there is a major marketing assumption that really kills your outreach potential. That assumption is that every one of your followers, friends, connections etc. is actually READING what you send out into the universe.

I'm really sorry if I'm breaking some hearts here.

They're not.

People are busy and only a small percentage of them are getting a chance to read your tweet about the cute face your dog made when you told him he was going to the vet.

So what does this mean in terms of marketing your show?

You can't be lazy. You have to have a facebook invite, a mailing list, a post, a tweet and PERSONAL interaction in order to make the kind of sales you need to keep your show running.

I get very frustrated when I see someone at a show and they ask why I missed their show the previous week. I ask if they emailed me and they say, "I sent you a facebook invite"

Game over.

I'm getting hundreds of those a day and so are all of my colleagues. The invite is just one step, one impression. You need multiple impressions to make a sale. If you really are trying to get a specific person to your show, invite them personally. That does NOT mean a form letter where you fill in their name, that means a real message that you took the time to write. That also means investing time in it.

I know, I know, we don't have a lot of time.

I get it.

But, it makes no sense investing the time to create a facebook invite and inviting all of your friends and then doing no follow up. You just wasted 10 minutes or more.

So tweet, facebook, email, link in, send up signal flares, and throw a party.

But please don't rely on one tool to sell your show. It shows the people who you are inviting that you're lazy and that they aren't important enough for another form of communication.

And then no one wins.

Reminder: Underworld is tonight!!! Hope to see some of you there!

Excelsior!

Email list squatters

I was meeting with a colleague this past weekend and we were discussing email marketing. The conversation went something like this:

Me: So how many people are on your email list?

Colleague: about 3,000

Me: And how many of those people are actually opening the email?

Colleague: Not many. I feel like we have a low open rate and very few click-throughs. I don't understand it.

Me: Have you gone through the list recently to see who is on there and reach out to them individually?

Colleague Hmm. No. I'll bet there are some folks on there who don't even realize they are on the list. I'll have to try that.

It's a simple question, but an important one. If the people on your email list are not responding or doing anything. If they aren't true fans, then how powerful is that email list? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a targeted group of 500 people who anxiously await every email from your company, then 3,000 who are just saying "meh" when it arrives in their inbox? 

Take the time to check in with the folks on your mailing list and see if they actually enjoy being there or if they are just squatters who are hanging out on your list because there's nothing else to do.

The more concentrated that list, the more powerful it is and a strong permission-based tiny list, will beat a nonchalant gigantic list every time.

Excelsior!

Playing catch with your customer

When I was younger I was bad at playing catch.

I mean really bad.

As a result, I would end up running all over the field trying to grab the ball, while the thrower waited. Little did I know that there would be a metaphor lurking in this story, but it just turned up so here we go:

As a producer marketing your project, you have the ball and you throw it to your customer. The ball is your project, service, advertisement etc. Your customer used to really suck at catching the ball, because they had no way of reaching back out to you other than some long phone chain or a letter or meeting with you in person.

Things have changed and now the customer is really good at catching the message and returning the ball. With the advent of real-time technology my customer can tell me what's wrong with my product or service the second they receive it and now it's up to me to be ready to catch that message and do something with it. If I miss the toss, well now I'm the one scrambling while my customer waits for me to find the ball and throw it back. While I'm running after the ball, they can go and play catch with someone else.

So in the marketing of my product, I have to ask a very important question about how well I play catch with my customer: Do I respond to their tweets, email messages, facebook postings etc?

If so, how fast?

Whether we like it or not, our customers are getting much better at playing catch. The question now is:

What do we do when they throw the ball back?

Excelsior!