Marketing on a Shoestring

Here's 3 ideas for effective marketing on a shoestring:

1. Instead of printing stationery, invest in a decent colour printer and develop Word templates for your letterhead and envelopes. Be sure to set your margins and set up your styles to ensure no one uses lime green Comic Sans for headlines :-). Purchase decent paper and use in tray 2. This will save you money in the long run, plus there will be much less waste.

2. Share your direct mail list with another marketing person that isn't a competitor, but sells to the same target, e.g., let's say you sell classroom-based software training. Find a company that provides user interface design, or an accounting firm that specializes in audits/tax issues for software development companies. You'd be surprised how many organizations will do this. I've done this three ways to my partners - provided a comma-delimited text file, an Excel spreadsheet, and printed labels. Usually we pony up the same number of names... 2,500 or 25,000 depending on the range of the partner's opportunities.

3. Make your marketing program web-centric. Provide all content in HTML and in PDF format. Upload all of your sales literature as PDF and make available on-line. When a call comes in to your call center, sales guy, etc., have him/her ask if the caller is in front of a computer, and if so, ask them to visit your web site. Lead the caller through to the appropriate place on the site to download information they've requested. This has a lot of benefits:

a. immediate response to your content (both web navigation and print materials). If you have holes in your content, or the person cannot quickly find the desired information, your sales department can provide this feedback and allow you to improve it.

b. immediate ability to either close or respond to negative feedback (which is good for marketing to know as well).

c. set up an HTML page where staff can select sales literature like product data sheets, download it and print on your colour printer. This enables your staff to print sales literature only when needed - minimal waste, no storage required, available 24/7 to reps on the road, provides version control (quick updating at little cost), and no client software required, just internet access and a free acrobat reader plug-in.

Networking vs. Cyber-Networking

Networking, they say, is the best way to find your next job. By nature, I'm not a networker. I feel uncomfortable in crowds, especially when I don't know anyone. In that situation, I don't present myself well, either. There are ways to network on-line, through sites such as linkedin.com as well as finding listserves dealing with your profession.

Linkedin has been very successful for me. With the number of companies I've worked with (I specialize in moving startups to the next level - usually to buyout or merger), I've found many people I haven't heard from in years. The opportunities I've received from that site alone have been very lucrative.

Another way to network is to set up a blog and write about your profession. The content, if well written, can position you as an expert in your field. This isn't a short-term solution - this may take a while to work, but keep up a conversation with anyone who responds to your blog. Even if they are in the same situation you are in, they may know someone who is looking for someone exactly like you!

If you like the hands-on approach, join any marketing associations in your locale. Do you have access to chambers of commerce, rotary clubs, etc. for potential speaking engagements? Have you considered volunteering your marketing services to a worthy cause with a board of directors packed with influential people in your industry? The last two may not pay anything, but it gets you in front of the right people who just might need your services in the “real world”. Plus it keeps you from sitting in your jammies all day in front of the TV waiting for the phone to ring… :-)

How I Find the Right Outsources for Writing & Design

For the writers and designers, I was just in the creative hiring process. I called up the visible companies I knew by reputation, asked for recommendations on ChicWIT (a listserv), and then hit up my professional network for names. My next step was on-line. If they didn’t have a polished web site, they weren’t even considered. If their portfolios were skimpy, I assumed they didn’t have the depth of experience required. If there were typos, I assumed a lack of attention to detail.

When I emailed the seven possible candidates, two never replied and another was a bounceback. Down to four. Of the four, two turned down the job because it was too small for them. Down to two: a recommendation from ChicWIT and someone in my professional network. We had them both come in, interviewed them and will be giving the job to the person in my network this Friday. Needless to say, the web sites were critical in my decision-making.

For marketing people, I’ve always maintained that if you can’t market yourself, you shouldn’t be in the marketing business! :-) Seriously, a decent web site will help you as well, but a proactive approach – selecting the companies in your industry, finding the stakeholders, marketing yourself to them directly with a personalized set of features and benefits you can bring to them, that can be quite compelling.

Finding a need they have and suggestions on how you could address it could work as well. I actually went out on an interview for a PR job at a school district, and I didn’t get the job. However, they created a job for me focusing only on web site PR/communications because of the ideas I brought to the table during my interview. I won a Webby from that job…

Coming to America - Finding Work from Overseas

I’ve seen numerous international applications for work here in the U.S. For those unfamiliar with the process and want to move here and haven’t succeeded, I’d just like to review.

In America, we don’t use CV’s – they are quite rare outside the academic arena. Most companies expect a Cover Letter that discusses your best accomplishments and what differentiates you from the other candidates. You will also need to clarify your status to work in the U.S. There are not as many opportunities as there have been in the past to get an employer to pay for your H1-B visa status, which basically means “there is no one in the US with this person’s particular skills, so we are hiring internationally”. It’s a lot of red tape, involves a lawyer, and costs the employer money. This increases the risk for hiring you. Many companies expect you to remain an employee for a certain number of months, or repay the costs for your H1-B visa, or both. Before you can get another job, you will need the new employer to agree to sponsor your H-1B status, so you end up going through the process all over again. There is some risk. Without it, you can get in trouble with the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) and they have no sense of humor.

The next item would be your Resume. BE SURE TO INCLUDE CONTACT INFORMATION: Name, address, city, state, zip/postal code, country, telephone, fax, email, and web site if you have one, preferably on all pages. There are a number of web sites that can help you with formatting a resume. Try monster.com or sixfigurejobs.com. It should be brief (2 pages at most for someone with a lot of experience), plus you can include addenda such as project highlights, teaching experience, etc. Make sure you format your pages carefully. Even if your CV is quite extensive and impressive in content, if your document comes to a hiring manager with pages landscaped, some pages left justified, some pages right justified, and some with columns that don’t line up, your resume will end up straight in the trash bin. You may want to have a few formats available, 1) text only, 2) Word document, and 3) Adobe PDF.

One other thing you may want to do is provide a link to a web site where your resume and projects can be found. For example, on the web version of my resume, I include links to PDFs that chronicle the kind of work I did at certain companies: http://www.graphicawareness.com/about_founder_experience.asp

Scroll down and click on anything that says [PROJECT REVIEW]. (I’m in marketing. Your projects may differ obviously.) And use as many good quality photos of your completed projects – exteriors and interiors if possible. The more professional you look, the more impressed your potential employer will be.

FINALLY, Make sure you use American English, not British. Most Americans just think you don’t know how to spell. In that vein, check your spelling and grammar carefully. If you are not confident with your English writing skills, have someone else check your cover letter and resume for you. I wish you all the best of luck in coming here.

Are You Looking For A Writing Job? Not All Writers Are Created Equal

Many HR people think that a writer is a writer is a writer. That a technical writer can do sales copy, and a B2B copywriter can write for B2B. I don’t agree that if you’re a good writer, you’ll be a good writer with other types of accounts. There is a significant difference in tones, approaches, even reading levels based on the type of account and the individual writer. I’ve marketed to engineers, rocket scientists and other brainiacs and in my experience, you have to “speak” to them at their level with logic and facts. Selling to this crowd required much less of an emotional attachment or desire, however they needed to be able to support their buying decision. This type of B2B writing is more suited to a person with a background in technical writing or enterprise-wide computer software or hardware sales than for someone with a background selling beer or soap and toothpaste. It’s a completely different mindset.

There is a significant learning curve to marketing B2B intangibles. (I would think B2C intangibles have many of the same issues.) The sales cycle is much, much longer, and the copywriting tends to be less sales-oriented and more informational. Right now, I am marketing to lawyers in the B2B market and am undergoing a rebranding project. Frankly, I was very humbled at my lack of understanding my target audience. I thought: bright, logical – got it; I didn’t see the conservative, risk-adverse component with the competitive streak. What I thought would be stellar concepts were completely vetoed by my focus groups. I had to start over with a far different, much more subdued and conservative brand, and very organized, logic-focused informational writing. Very cut and dry. Very focused on the win in court.

There’s a lot of dotbomb leftover creatives out there vying for jobs we’ve earned through our years of experience, and they’re younger and cheaper. What differentiates us IS our particular specializations. For me, I specialize in taking small B2B tech companies to the entrepreneur’s exit strategy, be that a buyout, merger, acquisition, franchising, etc. Finding my professional niche is how I market myself, and, let’s face it. If we can’t market ourselves well, how can we do it for someone else?