Test Your Ideas at the Cafe
If you’ve got something you want to get some feedback on, but don’t want to pay for a formal focus group:
The basic idea behind café testing is to situate yourself at a café, put up a sign to attract participants, and test the people that come to you. Because cafes appeal to a wide variety of individuals, and people at a café often have time to spare, café testing can be a great way to perform a quick litmus test in the marketplace.
Kind of like Rosa’s Coffee Tip.
What Can You Give Away for Free?
Jim Logan has some great tips for making some marketing hay with free offers. He gives several examples of businesses that have succeeded by giving things away to customers for free. Here are my favorites:
- A few consumer electronics companies are letting customers take big screen TVs home for a free 30 day trail, you don't pay a single cent until the 30 days are over. Delivery and pick-up, if you decide to return the TV, are free. Returns are almost non-existent.
- A lawn service business cut my grass and cleaned my yard free for one month, before we signed a contract for services. Every week they showed up on time, worked like dogs, and had the place looking and staying beautiful. I signed an agreement at the end of the free service.
- I was told of a donut shop that gives away donut holes, a dozen free, seven days a week. They report having seen their overall donut sales more than double. The donut holes are a marketing expense.
- Our carpet cleaner routinely offers to clean one room free, of any size, for new customers. Without obligation to purchase anything, they clean a room and say “Thanks for trying our service. Let us know if we can do anything for you in the future.” The guys told me they almost always are asked to clean additional rooms and are usually called back in 6 months.
The best tip is Jim’s own:
In my own business, I routinely structure consulting projects around defined phases, with payment following completion of the fist phase. It the client doesn't want to complete the project after the first phase, they don't pay and we end the engagement. In three years of doing business this way, I haven't had one client stop a project of fail to pay.
If you are a lawyer and want to set yourself apart, you’d be wise to try Jim’s model with one of your new clients.
Goflockyourselfable Language Test
I’m glad to see Go Flock Yourself is back. It’s a blog about the absurdity of all things Web 2.0, and pretty funny to boot. In a somewhat mean-spirited post ripping the use of the term “Syndicatable” in the new book by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, GFY’s anonymous author shared a pretty useful language tip:
The only people to whom the word “syndicatable” is going to mean anything are the ones who already know what syndication is. Think of it this way, in what I like to call the “Room-full-of-middle-aged-suburban-women-test.” In this test, you walk into a room full of middle-aged suburban women, and say “Blog content is SYNDICATABLE.” Take the number of purely blank stares, multiply it by the number of them that get up and head for the coffee table or the bathroom, and you have a direct index of that statement’s failure to convey even a lick of meaning in and of itself.
As lawyers, how often do we use terms in client conversations that wouldn’t pass this test?
Don't Advertise in the Lawyer Section of the YellowPages
Kevin Salwen of Worthwhile Magazine shares this advertising nugget:
What ads get your attention online? Probably not what you think. A new study of online advertising by behavioral marketing firm Tacoda shows that people tend to look at ads if they are not contextually connected to the rest of the information. In other words, if you want your pizza ad to stand out, put it into a technology story, not a food piece.
First exposures to ads for cars, computers and TV displayed out of context generated 17% more looks than when those ads were shown on pages where the content related to the ads, the research showed. And after the first exposure--when consumers are expected to tune out ads--out-of-context ads generated a stunning 54% more looks than in-context ones.
Still paying for that full page ad in the “lawyer” section of the yellowpages?
Write Your Firm Newsletter on a Postcard!
I came across Chuck Green’s Ideabook site yesterday, and once I found myself adding nearly every page of his to my daily links, I thought I’d devote an entry to this amazing resource. If you want to see how great design can improve business (and client) communication, you have to set aside some time to check out Chuck’s site. Just one great example: a postcard-sized newsletter. Freakin’ cool!
No Gain Without Solving Pain
Are you a lawyer who’s thinking of going solo? Take this advice from Joel Spolsky:
Don’t start a business if you can’t explain what pain it solves, for whom, and why your product will eliminate this pain, and how the customer will pay to solve this pain.
Wanna Love a Lawyer?
I know, as a married guy, I’m a bit out of touch with the dating scene, but is there an audience for this? From the website:
Lawyers in Love is the best place to meet successful, brainy lawyers, law students, and other legal professionals for friendship, dating, fun, romance and companionship. If your schedule makes it difficult for you to meet people, if you are still working during happy hours and other social events, if weekends are devoted to writing briefs, you will love this unique opportunity to find romance on the Web.
Benefits are in the Eye of the Beholder.
My friend Jim Logan (who still blogs at JSLogan) is now posting his great business advice to a new blog: Biz Informer. Great stuff from Jim, as always, and I highly recommend it. Here’s a bit of a taste, from his post If Your Market or Customer Doesn’t Care, You Can’t Call it a Benefit:
Assuming you’re not the only company on the planet that provides products and services similar to yours, what is it about your offering that’s unique? As with benefits you offer your customers, your uniqueness needs to be tied to things valued by your customer. Your uniqueness is your ‘orange’...your ‘orange’ as compared to other's ‘apple.’
Being different only counts to the extent your target customers acknowledge the difference as a benefit. For example, if your difference is that you support 1000+ color choices for your ‘widgets’ however, your target customers only buy or care about 4 basic colors, then your difference in having 1000+ color choices is of no benefit to your customer and has little to no market value.
Your difference shares space with your benefits as the ground you stand on to compete for your prospective customer’s business. The things you highlight as differences are the items you most want to compete on and are in effect ‘traps’ you set for your competition.
Look for difference in your offering that is tied to the use of your product and service. Your difference is your unfair advantage over your competitors. Another way to look at it is your benefits are what your customer gets from your products or services; your difference gives cause as to why your benefits and solution are unique.
Remember...Difference without benefit is of no value to your customer. Be sure to highlight difference that is recognized by your customers as benefits they are willing to pay for.
Take a look at your marketing materials. What “benefits” do you brag about. Do your customers really care?
Their Pain, Your Gain
Barry Moltz has a recap of the 10 Lessons his students should have learned in his entrepreneurship class. The best one:
Every Business is About Solving Pain. Find the People that will Pay for it.
This should be an easy one for lawyers in particular. What pain do you solve?
Grinders and Drones
There is an interesting conversation taking place between Neil Witmer (via Larry Bodine’s blog) and Gerry Riskin about the ability of legal “grinders and drones” to become rainmakers.
A question that seems a bit lost in the discussion is just how do big-firm lawyers become grinders or drones? With the tremendous number of billable hours big firms require, might the firms be responsible for their own plight — by turning otherwise social, interesting young lawyers into grinders and drones to get those billable hours in? I do know this, big firms aren’t complaining when a second year associate ignores his/her family, forgoes a social life, and loses touch with former classmates while clocking 2,417 billables.
If the firms spent more time nurturing the skills that help young lawyers become rainmakers, instead of letting those skills atrophy, perhaps there would be a bunch more rainmaking partners.
UPDATE: Check out the Greatest American Lawyer’s Post on the same topic. As usual, he says it better than I did.
New Niche for Lawyers?
Looking for a practice niche? Mike McLaughlin has an idea for you:
It’s estimated that more than 40 percent of employed workers plan to begin job searches during the next 12 months, and almost 25 percent are already looking.
This study, conducted by Yahoo/HotJobs, is unscientific but shows a noteworthy trend.
Most people are looking for new jobs because they’re not happy with their current compensation. And almost half of the respondents believe their current jobs offer "no potential for career growth." The news gets worse: One in four people feels underappreciated as "valued employees."
Imagine feeling stuck in a job, unappreciated and underpaid. That’s a dangerous combination, which leads to unnecessary turnover.
Some employers risk getting blindsided by this trend, so it’s a compelling topic for discussion with most any client.
With 40 percent of employed workers looking for different work, how about marketing yourself as the Career Change Lawyer? You could offer a flat-rate package that included review of (and advice concerning) any non-compete/confidentiality agreements, severance packages, benefit issues, etc.
Heck, you accountants, bankers, and financial planners out there should do the same.
Grab the domain now and start your blog tomorrow!
More Friday Fun
I think I’ll use some of these charts and graphs in my next presentation. (Found via one of my new favorite blogs: Creative Generalist).
Women-owned Businesses as Clients
An interesting bit from Michele Miller’s Wonderbranding:
Article says women-owned construction companies grew 30 percent from 1998 to 2004, according to a study by the Center for Women's Business Research.
I’d guess that stat is not that far off for other kinds of businesses in traditionally male-dominated industries. What are you doing to capture that business?
As an aside, anyone know if there are many women-owned law firms?
What's the Client Benefit You Promise?
I ran across this David Ogilvy quote in this post at AdPulp:
If you spend your advertising budget entertaining the consumer, you’re a bloody fool. Housewives don’t buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night. They buy the new detergent because it promises a benefit. – David Ogilvy
What benefit does your business promise?
Personal Brilliance Buzz
My friend, Don the Idea Guy, introduced me to Jim Canterucci, author of the new book Personal Brilliance. Don is masterminding the blog promotion of the book, and pointed me to some “blogger resources” he and Jim put together to make it easier for bloggers to blog about the book. I just spoke with the book’s author and he’s sending me a copy to review. I’ll let you know what I think, when I finish it.
What Don is doing is pretty interesting. He’s working with the author to promote (and presumably profit from) sales of the book while he heartily recommends it on his blog. Does his credibility suffer? Or has Don built up enough good will among his blog readers for us to assume he wouldn’t recommend a product or an idea without believing in it? For me, the answer is yes.
I am quite certain this is a question more and more blog writers will be asked as the line between “advertising” and “content” is blurred. What do you think?
P.S. I’m not picking on Don here. I know him and trust him, and frankly, I’d buy the book on his recommendation alone. I’ve just been thinking a lot lately about the intersection of blogs, advertising, paid endorsements, and the advertorial.
P.P.S. Don is coming to BlawgThink, so feel free to ask him yourself.
Ask for "Sales" to make more.
Lori Richardson shares a great tip for reaching a decision maker in a large organization:
… and one of the best strategies I've used is to call in and ask for SALES - you will get someone on the other end of the phone who understands what you are going through - unless they are an admin person, they make calls like you do as well. Determine if you are in the right sales area. Ask them if they have a moment, and then ask about their boss, or boss's boss. Get enough information to make a direct call or email - then fire it off. You'll be surprised at the reply rate when you know a little something about your target or about their organization. Don't forget to send a hand-written thank you note to the person in sales who gave you the inside scoop if you end up with an appointment or had a vaulable conversation - because that will motivate your original contact. It's about goodwill, and what goes around does come around.
RSS is the new black.
Bill Flitter, Chief Marketing Officer of Pheedo, speaking at the AMA hot topics seminar in Atlanta:
RSS is the new e-mail.
Podcasts are the new webinars.
Blogs are the new whitepapers.
Atlanta Marketing Wonk Meet-Up
I'm in Atlanta this Friday speaking at the American Marketing Association’s Hot Topic Series: Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website. Afterwards, the speakers are having a Marketing Wonk Meet-Up at Loca Luna. If you want to talk about Blogs over dinner and drinks, this is the place to be. See you there.
Get Good in a Room
I’m at the National Speakers Association’s event in Palm Springs. It is one of the best events I’ve ever attended, and I’ll be posting my thoughts in a few days. One of the best things about going to a conference a bit outside your comfort zone is the number of amazing people you meet you’d have never met otherwise.
One person who fits that description is Stephanie Palmer, a former Hollywood executive who “teaches creative professionals how to present themselves and their ideas so their projects get purchased and produced .”
We’ve just spent a tremendous hour talking and she is definitely the kind of person who should be blogging. Until I twist her arm some more tomorrow to share some of her great tips with everyone, check out her website, Good in a Room.
Advise vs. Serve
Via AdPulp comes this link to Neil French’s Communication Arts Column. The best piece:
Next time you see the agency credentials PowerPoint, strike out every “serve” you see, and substitute “advise.” You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes to your own self-worth, for a start.
Take a look at your marketing materials and try this change yourself. I think you’ll notice a positive change.