Category Archives: Business

July 20, 2014

Brilliant Marketing

By Paul Stagg

I was listening to the Motley Fool podcast for last week, and they interviewed Wharton Professor David Robertson, author of Brick by Brick:  How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry.

Lego got y’all to take your kids and pay to watch a commercial.

He talked about the timing of the release of the movie.  The producers wanted to release it at Christmas; and Lego management said no.  They don’t need help selling Legos at Christmas.  They need help selling them in February.  So that’s when the movie was released.

That is some powerful brand marketing, right there.   It’s all about storytelling.

 

Advertisement

Leave a comment   |  tags: , | posted in Business

February 27, 2014

The Wrong Path

By Paul Stagg

Facebook has gone wrong.  I noticed today that I can pay to promote a status update, to ‘tell friends this is important’.  Based on what has clearly happened over the course of several years, Facebook no longer shows me every update from all of my friends, and now, wants me to pay to make sure my friends see the things I have to say.

No.

That’s not going to work.  Leadership at Facebook needs to hear the word ‘MySpace’; if you don’t provide what your users want, they will take another Path.

Which is where I’m headed for personal use.

So while our business will remain on Facebook for now because it is part of our short term business strategy, we will also more actively engage on Google Plus, and of course, Twitter.  But we will never again pay to boost a post, and we’ll be ready when the solid competition to Facebook comes along… and it will.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Business, Life Stories

February 24, 2014

Relationship Marketing ProTip

By Paul Stagg

If you are a title company account representative, you should work on building a relationship with me, a real estate agent, through common interests, general conversation, and offers of advice or help.

You should not send me a LinkedIn request (for which my default response is to ‘accept’ because I am always open to building my network), then sending an email to both my personal and business email addresses (because figuring out which one is business is too much trouble) telling me you are awesome, giving me prices, and asking to meet me to present your sales pitch.

That’s not how relationship marketing works.

Add value, build the relationship, show me you value my time, show me we will work well together.  THEN ask me for business.  He could have simply sent me an email introducing himself and his firm, and then said ‘if there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.  If you are going to be in my section of town and have some time, I would love to have lunch/drink/coffee and meet you’.

What happened?  I removed him as a LinkedIn contact.  I deleted his email.

 

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Business, Real Estate

January 4, 2013

Sales Tip

By Paul Stagg

I just got the following email. This is unedited, a direct copy/paste of an email I got this morning.

Hi Paul

i’m surprised I cant imagine building a real estate site without it. more agents dont even have this new technology.we also have our support and web developement department that can help you as well with custom work. feel free to give me a call.

Steve

It doesn’t matter what you are selling, if you can’t take the time to use proper grammar/capitalization/punctuation in your email to me (where I told you I wasn’t interested in your product now, but might be in the future), I probably won’t buy your product at all, and will certainly not buy it from you.

Leave a comment   |  tags: | posted in Business

November 30, 2012

Free Marketing Advice

By Paul Stagg

Inc. has a quick post on how to keep your emails from going into a black hole.  I think they miss the biggest opportunity to get people to listen to you.

Add value.

Every marketing communication with every client/customer should add value.  As Seth Godin says, you need to earn the right to talk to them.  If you send marketing without adding value, you will get marked as spam.

 

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in Business, Real Estate

%d bloggers like this: