Here’s a principle from my upcoming book on “Marketing That Fills the Soul”. This section I’ve cut from the book to only allow for my blog readers:

PUTTING OUT TO THE UNIVERSE: THE CLARITY OF PROMOTION

There is little doubt that by expressing what we need, or putting out our requests to the universe in a clearly defined manner over a regular period of time, that we’ll receive what we ask for. Devout worshippers and business leaders have been utilizing this practice for centuries. Politicians develop slogans to espouse their merits throughout their campaigns. Mohammed and Jesus preached their beliefs to the masses to bring their followers joy, peace and education.

With the same purpose, albeit not as deep in spiritual focus, advertisers create commercials to educate and entertain with the purpose of helping people find what they want or need.

Critics feel ads compel people to be greedy and create desire for unnecessary items. While there are certainly plenty of unneeded items advertised on tv, magazines, newspapers and websites, it is not the advertiser creating greed, but rather the value system of the person watching or reading the ad.

UNDERMINING OURSELVES

Naturally, if we are undermining the ability to receive what we want, get in our own way, or are not qualified to do what we promote,  our requests won’t be met.

But, my experience working with business owners is that they are usually quite realistic in knowing what they want, they just need help defining it in specific terms and they don’t ask for it in their promotion. They don’t “put out to the universe” their true spirit or unique attributes and explain how that will help their prospective market.

Appropriate methods for this practice, such as a series of educational articles, blogs, presentations or similar – when sent to potential clients – can prove exceptionally successful when the message rings true to the reader. More importantly, it allows the business owner to express their own spirit and beliefs, so they will attract like-minded clients who want what they have.

There are as many ways to apply this spiritual practice of ‘putting out there’ or promotion as one can creatively dream up—from postcards to websites, from live events to billboards or sliding down a chimney—to get your point across.

The point is that the marketing tactic cannot be properly selected until the request is defined. Mistakenly, most businesses put the tool before the horse, to horribly mix metaphors, and don’t clearly define their request or their message first. They create materials with vague or nebulous messages that confuse their market and waste thousands of promotional dollars.

Once promotion is clearly defined, it’s relatively easy to select and test the various tools to determine what attracts the kinds of people you want to help. A marketing consultant will know which tool to use to send which message to each market over time for each specific product saving the company expense and time.

YOPLAIT’S EXAMPLE

For example, Yoplait yogurt decided to promote their product to a health market by becoming a prominent sponsor of “The Race For the Cure”, proceeds of which go to find the cure for breast cancer.

They were clear about what female market they targeted with their product and found a visible way to reach them through publicity for the races, signage at events, handing out their product to race runners, and visibility in just about every direction at the race itself.

Additionally, they run broadcast commercial promotion to a wide consumer market. Selecting these two avenues for promotion in tandem has not only given the product exposure but also helped them develop an image of healing women. Most people feel better buying products they know are using proceeds to help support a cause they believe in called “cause marketing”.

When Fedex created its “Absolutely, positively gets there overnight” campaign, don’t you think they were obviously responding to an unfulfilled need in the market? They used this extremely clear message to easily demonstrate exactly how they helped people and businesses? Sure, it was a huge risk to guarantee overnight delivery, and they paid dearly in their learning process. But the company developed such careful management systems for distribution and verification that they set the standard for their industry and have branded their service far faster and more clearly than any of their competitors.

That’s good promotion! How can you apply that to your business?

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Sharing wisdom is actually what advertising and promotion is all about. Educating those who need our help is the soul of marketing. And helping our clients is the purpose of our business. That’s why I think of marketing as if it’s a kind of ’spiritual’ practice. No, not religious, but soulful or the outward direction of the spirit of our business goals.

Almost every spiritual practice has a priest, wise woman (or man), holy person, shaman or spiritual leader who professes the truth to those who wish to learn.

As a business owner, it is our own spiritual quest to profess this truth—our knowledge or education about how our products can help others—in an inspired message to those in need.

A common mistake of business owners, usually in their early stages of development, is to not reinforce this sharing of information often enough.

For example, common marketing wisdom states that if a company plans to run an advertisement, it should run at least 6-12 times before evaluating its effectiveness, as it takes that many “impressions” of seeing it before it sinks in and takes hold of the very busy people from whom we are trying to evoke a response.

It is important to educate your customers or potential market so they can understand how to use what you offer. The world’s great leaders, like the Ghandi, spent most of their lives educating their “market” -their constituents-  or those they were trying to influence through their teachings, prayer, and practices. As business owners, we could learn a lesson from them: If we spend more time teaching and less time telling people they need our products, we may move further along in our divine purpose.

As one observes the great world leaders from the Dalai Lama to Martin Luther King, we notice that even our great leaders spread their message through the use of many media—from word of mouth, to television interviews, direct mail, teaching and lecturing, and e-news or websites.

It is important to mix our messages into many type of media in order to reach as wide a target market as we can since not everyone watches tv, opens direct mail pieces, or follows Twitter.

And lest you think I’m being sacriligious comparing the gospel of our great leaders to marketing, well, it’s time you rethink your perception of marketing: It’s a practice that’s all about helping people. And in the thousands of clients I’ve helped, I’ve only ever met one person who was just in business to make money and not truly devoted to helping people in some way.

After all, Knowledge is Bliss.

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Thanks to Xplane’s terrific video on Social Media for this information which I believe is changing our ‘world order’ in marketing communications. Here are my ‘clif notes’ but the full video can be seen here: From Xplane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8&feature=player_embedded#t=30.

Here are my clif notes pullled from this video:

This year advertising is in steep decline:

• print down 18%
• TV down 10%
• radio down 11%
• magazines down 14.8%

the number of unique visitors each month for major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS):

10 million

Meanwhile, digital advertising is growing rapidly:

• cel phone ads are up 18%
• internet ads are up 11%

The number of unique visitors each month on Social Media (YouTube, Facebook and MySpace):

250 million

If you want the full report, watch the video.

WHEN YOU’RE READY TO LEARN HOW TO MAKE THIS WORK:

Take a look at our action tool to show you how to set up social media to attract clients who need you! http://www.allisonbliss.com/services.htm#socialmedia.

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from my old blog: Saturday, April 5, 2008


I just read that Kaiser, the behemoth healthcare association in California, only signed up 100,000 new members last year. And that despite their fabulous ad campaign about ‘thriving’ using Allison Janney to voice over clever scripts about how eating blueberries and staying healthy is Kaiser’s mission. Well, of course it is. If you stay healthy, Kaiser saves money. Still, it was such a nice campaign, don’t you think?

It seems to me that Kaiser must have one awful sales force of brokers (or they’re not incentivized enough to sell Kaiser) if they can only find 100K new members.

As a small business owner, I can authoritatively comment on the awful selection of health coverage today–insane prices for awful coverage. Or programs that are so confusing to understand you can’t possibly get your value from the coverage. Or insurance providers like Aetna who loses every claim one submits, has the absolute worst customer service and earns their money apparently by ripping off customers.

Sure, this is a rant, but there’s a marketing lesson here. Advertising alone just doesn’t work. A successful company in today’s world needs a great product with decent customer service, great marketing and a solid sales force.

If Kaiser can’t even get it right in this aging baby boomer society of ours, who can? I think it’s the small businesses who are filling these needed niches. What do you think?

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