Saturday, September 25, 2004
Escaping Your Own Mind-set
I've been working on developing some Marketing for Small Businesses workshop content.
It's been a great way to remind myself of the basics, refreshing my perspective on the 4 P's and the like.
But I've also had to think outside my current marketing box, which is so heavily weighted toward online and viral marketing that I've forgotten about good old print advertising, for example.
Each portion of the workshop includes various exercises for the group, both individual exercises and group exercises. When working on the outline for the online marketing portion of the workshop, my natural inclination was to go right to my favorite new marketing tool...the blog. I envisioned an exercise where everyone spent time thinking about how they could blog for their business:
Imagine what your customers might want to know about the day-to-day activities in your business.
Imagine what your potential customers might want to know about your product and service and inspiration.
Imagine what related and valuable resources you could reference and point your customers to on an ongoing basis as you discovered them.
I still think it's a great idea. And I still think that every business owner should be able to communicate with their market on a regular, ongoing, dynamic and interactive way.
But, as my boss on this project pointed out, some business owners might want to start out a little less visionary and figure out how to write an effective search engine ad.
And, given the limited workshop time frame, I had to concede that was wise. If you can't articulate your value in a 3-line ad, you won't be able to articulate it in an ongoing manner. Well, not without boring people.
And that's NOT the intent.
So, I sighed and thought outside my blogging box, and came up with a different group exercise. We'll save the blogging for another time.
It's been a great way to remind myself of the basics, refreshing my perspective on the 4 P's and the like.
But I've also had to think outside my current marketing box, which is so heavily weighted toward online and viral marketing that I've forgotten about good old print advertising, for example.
Each portion of the workshop includes various exercises for the group, both individual exercises and group exercises. When working on the outline for the online marketing portion of the workshop, my natural inclination was to go right to my favorite new marketing tool...the blog. I envisioned an exercise where everyone spent time thinking about how they could blog for their business:
Imagine what your customers might want to know about the day-to-day activities in your business.
Imagine what your potential customers might want to know about your product and service and inspiration.
Imagine what related and valuable resources you could reference and point your customers to on an ongoing basis as you discovered them.
I still think it's a great idea. And I still think that every business owner should be able to communicate with their market on a regular, ongoing, dynamic and interactive way.
But, as my boss on this project pointed out, some business owners might want to start out a little less visionary and figure out how to write an effective search engine ad.
And, given the limited workshop time frame, I had to concede that was wise. If you can't articulate your value in a 3-line ad, you won't be able to articulate it in an ongoing manner. Well, not without boring people.
And that's NOT the intent.
So, I sighed and thought outside my blogging box, and came up with a different group exercise. We'll save the blogging for another time.
// posted by ElisaC @ 6:35 PM 
