Duct Tape Marketing

The Power of Sound

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Fabeku Fatunmise (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes

Marketers know that the senses play a big role in how we are attracted and what we ultimately buy. But the impact of our sensory experience reaches much deeper than that.

For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I’ve wandered a bit off the marketing path to interview Fabeku Fatunmise a Shaman, sacred sound healer and owner of Sankofa Song.

I know this kind of stuff can get a tad mystical for some folks, but entrepreneurs can benefit by focusing a great deal of attention on internal development as much as marketing development so every so often I dive into personal development themes.

I first encountered Fabeku when writing my most recent book The Referral Engine. A reader responded to my call for examples of companies that provide little special touches in their service. I shared my reader’s story about her experience with Sankofa Song and eventually that led to this interview.

In this podcast we talk about the impact of sound and specifically music on the way we work. I know I have playlists based on what I’m doing at the time and experience the impact of music in ways that I probably don’t fully understand.

Sound healing centers on helping people get focused, connected and unstuck. To me that’s a pretty good recipe for what it takes to find and do work that resonates.

Explore and have fun!

Here’s a sound sample for your listening pleasure – Blue Morpho make sure to use head phones

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Share or Die

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

If the explosion of the web and social media has taught business anything it’s that you must put out tons of great content and be willing share, let others copy, use and otherwise exploit it your, not their, benefit.

The old school model of proprietary content locked, either behind a 27 field form or worse, copyscape or encryption model, is not only silly it’s hurtful to your brand and business growth.

By making your content easily and freely passable, in fact encouraging folks to do so, you must acknowledge that even your most cherished secrets are nothing without the execution to bring them to life and the energy you invest in trying to protect your content could be better used connecting with clients anyway.

I’m not suggesting that people ripping your content off for their own commercial gain is a good thing. I am saying that letting people have and use and pass it in ways that ultimately lead to expanding your brand at the hands of your network, customers, providers and even competitors is a grand thing.

I attended a play last night performed at what I would call a well intentioned, but sadly behind the times, civic theater. As people do pretty much everywhere they go these days, attendees were streaming bits and pieces of the play and music to friends and networks. Throughout the performance the director of the theater jumped up and scolded what were season ticket holders and benefactors for filming and taking pictures.

At some point in time I’m sure that people with ill intent may have recorded events like this in an attempt to sell them and circumvent the copyrights of the individuals, but the only thing my terribly poor quality ten second clip of the song from act one uploaded to Facebook could do is sell more tickets and show my network what a good time I was having at this theater.

Venues like this need to embrace and encourage this practice or run the risk of becoming irrelevant in people’s lives and so do you. First off, 90% of those in attendance had a recording device in their pocket so you’re not going to stop it and they created a harsh environment for the venue’s best customers by attempting to do so. If instead the venue put a few guidelines down (I know flash photography can be disruptive to all) and then made sharing an integral part of the this experience (hello, a hashtag would be genius) the benefits would be so tremendous that their overall marketing would become so much less work.

As it stands, the director of this institution looked silly and out of touch.

This is the kind of counter intuitive thinking that marketers today must embrace.

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5 Ways For Small Businesses To Get In The Location Game

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Location based check-in type services are this year’s overhyped topic – with good reason. While you may not understand why someone wants to be the mayor of their barber shop, you do need to recognize the behavior that social location services such as Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp! and Facebook Places represents for the local business.

Shoppers these days are using the Internet to find everything locally and increasingly using mobile devices, services and apps to effectively bypass even the web to find a merchant. What that means is that local small businesses need to find ways to tap into the behavior and not necessarily try to ride the hype wave to Foursquare fame.

Below are five ways the local small businesses can capture their own personalized version of social location behavior and tap what may be the ultimate online to offline combo to produce sales.

Create virtual rewards programs – Rewards programs such as those offered by most coffee shop via punch cards or large retailers like Eddy Bauer have been around for years, but smart offerings by folks like PlacePop are making the punch card concept an easy virtual or online play. Merchants can offer their own version of a check in and capture rich data on their most loyal customers.

Ride the group buying craze – If you’re not familiar with group coupon buying services like Groupon, then you’re probably not reading this blog. Facebook app maker WildFire offers small businesses the ability to create their own group buying offers and take advantage of the viral and social nature of this play to create local Facebook engagement.

Google Places coupons – When local shoppers do turn to a search engine for local shopping they often uncover your Google Places Page (or at least you should be working to make sure they do) Google has a handy coupon tool that automatically creates mobile versions of your coupons and offer. Here’s more information on Google Places Mobile Coupons

Advertise on mobile coupon networks – You can also place your ads on Mobile coupon networks and get distribution of your coupons across many local sites.

Make your own game – The game playing aspect of many of social location biggies is an aspect that should not be overlooked when trying to develop your own strategy. The web app SCVNGR is a tool that allows you to create your own game and have it related to verified checkins for a specific QR code. This would be pretty cool for a merchant association to use to create their scavenger hunt check in game.

And, of course, make sure your business is listed with the major players – Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places

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Weekend Favs September Four

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr.

Good stuff I found this week:

Paper.li – organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag

12 Breeds of Clients and How to Work with Them – A must read even if just for the cartoons with each breed.

Skegeme – New online appointment scheduling calendar tool that has some nice business features.

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Delivery is the New It Thing

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

if you’re looking for a way to differentiate your business or products and create a killer competitive advantage you may not have to look any farther than how you delivery of your products and services.

Now, delivery is a fabulously flexible term when applied to business, so I use it here to talk about physical deliver of goods as well as digital delivery or information and even delivery of consulting or plumbing services.

I’ve done a fair amount of polling of late trying to find out why people choose one company over another and I have to tell you that while good service and cool products rate high – convenience is number one every time.

People will pay a premium to get what they want the way they want. While there’s a plethora of free, often dubiously packaged, information and tools available on the web, people are snapping up web apps that package and deliver that same information in a way that works for the user. The growth of paid web apps is a sure sign that people want things that work on their device, in their workflow, and on their schedule.

I’ve published a free podcast for years. You can get it on iTunes for free with a single click. Recently, I packaged it as an iPhone app, cuz everyone’s doing it, and priced it at $2.99. You can still get the free version, but hundreds have chosen to pay for the iPhone version because they prefer that form of delivery.

Here’s my message – figure out how to deliver your product or service in a format that few people have considered. Package your products in boxes that make people notice. Deconstruction how your industry has always delivered consulting services and figure out how to install a system.

More than anything, figure out how to make everything you do easier for the ideal customer and build your entire marketing message around the way you deliver the goods. You need a core delivery strategy!

Image credit: erlyrizrjr

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WiseStamp Brings Your Email Signature to Life

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

On the spectrum of really big marketing tactics, the email signature isn’t terribly sexy, but this little touch can say a lot about what you do and how you connect.

If you’re like me, you send a lot of email so why not make sure your email signature is working in the background for you. This doesn’t mean you need flashing lights and honking horns, but you should supply recipients, even those that contact you often, with all the necessary contact details, including social profiles, so that you are easy to connect with.

Creating an email signature, while not that technical, can take a little work and may even be limited on services like GMail. WiseStamp is a browser plugin (Firefox, Chrome, and Safari) that makes the act of creating multiple, highly engaging email signature profiles very easy. This free addon allows you to create rich HTML text, add images, add social profiles and even add applications such as your last tweet, your last blog post, or your latest eBay listing.

The signatures work in Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, and WindowsLive. Once you download and install the plugin you will see a WiseStamp option in your mail. The first step is to create your signatures using the simple online editor, connect your various social profiles and applications, and save your profiles. You can then toggle between personal and business signatures as needed.

Since this is a free application the default setting adds a little promo for WiseStamp at the bottom of your signature. You can remove this by opening setting and clicking that option off. On that same screen you’ll be given the option to make a donation. I recommend throwing a little coin to the creators of this nice tool. It’s good karma and it’s what makes the free app world such a cool place to hang out.

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Creating a Boutique Business

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Sarah Petty (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes

The term boutique is often associated with fashion or beauty related businesses, but it’s a concept that can apply to any business. Case in point is this week’s guest on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Sarah Petty, who by her own designation, owns and operates a “boutique” photography business called Sarah Petty Photography.

Her belief in the boutique way led her to launch a separate business, The Joy of Marketing, to teach other small business owners how to create a boutique brand.

In some ways it’s easy think about a boutique business as just another way to brand, but it’s much deeper in some ways. It’s a strategic decision that starts with a specific product and service mix and includes a very alert filter for every business, hiring, and communications message.

A boutique business is often built on creative brand flourishes, premium pricing and over the top customer service.

Petty offers a free eBook titled The Boutique Experience, a business model not a gift shop. This is a great read for any business concerned with building a stronger brand.

I also conducted a video interview with Petty for the COLOURLovers blog.

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Duct Tape Coaching or Going It Alone

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

One of my long-term missions is to build a network of small business marketing consultants that are equipped to install the Duct Tape Marketing system and essentially bring an end to all small business struggles.

I admit it’s an ambitious mission, but I love helping small business and so I created the Duct Tape Marketing Coach Network. This growing global enterprise uses our tools, systems, brand and network to create a marketing coaching business and attract small business owners that like the idea of a marketing system.

Occasionally I conduct live Discovery calls to help marketing professionals understand the benefits of joining a network like ours vs. going it alone. I’m conducting one of these call today (Aug 31st) at Noon CT (world time check) and invite you to join if this idea holds any appeal. Register for the call here.

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5 Ways to Make a Database For Your Customers

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Standard marketing CRM type practice suggests that you should create and supplement a database of customers and prospects with the idea that you build more and more information to use to help build deeper relationships and create additional selling opportunities.

What if you look at database building as a service you provided for your customers? Now, in some cases that might be a good service offering as a profit center, but I’m talking about providing a service that simply allows you to differentiate your business by adding value in ways that your competitors aren’t even thinking about.

RSS, search technology, and a slew of online apps have made the creation and streaming of database kind of content a pretty simple affair.

Below are some examples of the kind of information this way of thinking might produce.

1. The knowledge database

Create a custom RSS subscription database of blogs and news sites your customers would find interesting, either by virtue of information they provided you or based on an industry they should follow. You can set-up an RSS reader or upload and OPML file to the reader of their choice and magically create a hand crafted set of blogs they should follow. OPML files may sound a little techie, but essentially it’s a list of RSS feeds that can be imported to an RSS reader to create lots of subscriptions at one time.

2. The best of class database

Build a list of best of class service providers that can deliver all the products and services you know your customers may need that are unrelated to your actual offerings. Create a database with all of the contact information and notes about each provider. Offer this to your customers as a service to help them find great companies for everything they buy. This strategic partner kind of database is something you should be building and maintaining for your referral and lead generation activities anyway, but take it a step further and make it a formal offering using a tool like Central Desktop to invite your partners to build and maintain their listings, including monthly specials.

3. The real time roundup database

Create custom social media and reputation monitoring databases for your customers that include all brand and competitive mentions in real time streams like Twitter, Facebook, and Media distribution sites and teach your customers how to monitor this database. This may be totally unrelated to your services, but it’s such an essential bit of marketing wisdom that you can create incredible brand loyalty by being the organization that shows them how to do it. Use a tool like Trackur to create your own white label social media monitoring service.

4. The cutting edge B2B database

Create a database of web apps that can help your business customers do more with less using free and low cost tools for things like design, file backup, file storage, file streaming, collaboration, online meetings, CRM, finance and HR. This is another play that can allow your organization to be seen as an online thought leader and go to person for emerging tools. Simply gaining this reputation can open some doors to many other teaching and exposure opportunities in your industry – regardless of what you actually sell. Here’s a nice example – The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need

5. The reminder database

What if you offered a service that could help remind each customer of important dates? Give them the opportunity to put all the birthdays, anniversaries and other important dates in their lives into a database with the promise to remind them to take action when the date was coming up. Obviously, this is a no brainer if you also have a product or service to offer as something for that date, such as flowers or gifts, but it also works for just about any business as a way to stay top of mind. The heating and cooling service could offer a monthly home maintenance reminder tied to the season and featuring a different partner each month. The key is to provide value and personalization. You might also get some inspiration from LIfeHacker’s Top 10 Reminder Tools for Forgetful Minds

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Weekend Favs August Twenty Eight

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr.

Image credit: Charles Lam

Good stuff I found this week:

Color Blender – Input two colors and this tool will show you all the mid-point colors created by blending the two – very useful for finding complimentary colors

Building Community Sites with WordPress: 15 Plugins to Get Started. I think the title says it all, but WordPress is continuing to evolve into the Swiss Army Knife Web Tool

The Pomodoro Technique - Very interesting take on time and stress management with lots of tools and tactics.

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The Most Wasted Page On the Web

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Among the millions and millions of web site pages out there, one kind of page is often wasted space just begging for some marketing think. And no I’m not talking about the About Us page, but it might be close second.

Most businesses online understand the need to capture leads through ebook, seminar and email newsletter sign-ups. Depending on the service you use the technology that drives these forms almost always redirects the subscriber to a success or thank you for joining kind of page. More often than not these pages are default generic pages created by the email service provider and left so by the user.

Allstate’s thank you page gives some nice instruction on what to expect next.

In my mind this is some prime wasted web real estate. Think about it, the person just decided what you were offering on your site or landing page was worthy of them paying with their email address (even free is more like paying these days.)

You haven’t produced the kind of trust that would call for an all out sales message, but you can use that thank you page to gently talk about a few more things you think the reader might like or make a low cost offer with some special one time bonuses to move them into the buyer category.

It’s also a great place to set the expectations for what’s to come or give out some bonus information. This is your subscriber’s first experience so make it rich, add audio and video instructions so you can make a deeper connections. Here’s an example of a nice instructional thank you page. AWeber does about as good a job as any email service provider with this kind of functionality.

Adding some personalization to your thank you page by passing the name of the person that enrolls can be a nice touch. Some services offer this but it’s pretty simple to do with a bit of JavaScripting – here’s a tutorial

You might considering using the form to ask for feedback, particularly if this is a thank you for your order kind of page. Survey.io is a tool that help create this tool

This is also a great place to offer the free ebook or newsletter subscription of a strategic partner – in return of course for the same. Or, you even monetize your page by showing ads using a service like AfterDownload. The key is to keep this relevant and not too over the top, but still use it as a marketing tool.

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5 Ways to Get Rockin Reviews

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Reviews and testimonials have always been a nice way to offer third party proof that your company does what it says it does and that your customers are happy campers and willing to talk about it. Reviews, however, have become even more important now that local search directories like Google Maps and Yelp! have made them a foundational element for ranking well for local search.

Getting reviews and testimonials on a routine basis takes a proactive and committed approach if you are going to generate them on a consistent basis and still generate them authentically. (Fake or over the top review generation campaigns can actually produce negative results.)

Below are five ways you can look at systematically creating reviews.

Do the reference track

I stumbled onto this idea quite by accident, but it’s very effective. Every now and then a prospect would ask me for several references. I would provide a list of 3-4 happy customers and that was that. If a prospect reached out to these customers, most often they would copy me on their response. The amazing thing is that because they we basically telling someone else why they should hire me, it turns out these were the best testimonials I ever received. Instead of them writing them to or for me, they were writing them to and for prospective customers.

This approach was so effective that I started requesting that future prospect contact some of my customers.

Repurpose testimonials

When you get that unsolicited testimonial, no matter where it comes from, make sure you are using it in several ways. I a happy customer writes a review on Yelp, post that review on your website, in your store and in next month’s newsletter. If a customer sends you a raving review by way of letter, phone them up and ask if they would provide that review for your Google Places page too.

Teach the review process

Since online reviews are so important these days make sure that all of your sales folks know how to show customers how and where they might post reviews. Create a page that walks people through the process of creating a Yelp or CitySearch account. I your clients are all businesses, hold a workshop to teach them some of what you’ve learned about the importance of rating and review sites and how they can

Give reviews

Of course I’m going to suggest this one, give to get works here too. By making reviews, recommending your network on LinkedIn, and reaching out to companies you do business you start one powerful part of the review and testimonial foundation. It’s always a great way to show how you value the process and in turn benefit from the occasional authentic reciprocation.

Hold a review party

I’ve written about this idea before, but it’s such a fun one I had to include it here. Invite your customers to a nice appreciation event, serve up some wine and then ask them if they would like to record a video testimonial or review with the camera crew you’ve hired for the night. People love to get on camera and you can further incentivize them by offering up a 5 minute video where they can talk about their business. This video content will be gold for your website and you’ll provide a great service by helping them create something for their site.

Rating and reviews from users and customers are crucial. Find some way to install one or more of these options and collecting them will simply become a part of the system.

Image credit: Adian Jones

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How To Increase Landing Page Conversion

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Rick Perreault and Oli Gardner of Unbounce (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes

Landing pages, those web pages you create and use to entice visitors to take a single action, have come a long way in terms of functionality and use. Internet Marketers have used them for years and with the introduction of services and practices dedicated to the use of these tools every small business can benefit from using highly optimized landing pages. I’ve been on a bit of rant about this topic so see the related posts below for more.

For this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I spoke with the CEO and Director of Inbound Marketing for a landing page optimization firm Unbounce.

In this episode we talk about how and when to use landing pages and the most important elements to consider when creating and testing your landing pages. I can’t say enough about the need to use a tool like unbounce or Google Website Optimizer to do routine testing of your pages.

It’s amazing how often I find that some little seemingly insignificant tweak can make all the difference in the world in terms of conversion.

If you’re not testing video and audio on your landing pages and thank you pages you may be missing the boat as well. But, video and audio messages can have a negative impact if not done authentically, so again, test and test!

Unbounce provides some great information about landing page design courtesey of a blog written by Gardner – Here are a couple of my favorite posts – 7 Elements of a Winning Landing Page and The 12-Step Landing Page Rehab Program – the topic that covers the infographic in this post.

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Mooing On

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Linchpin will likely not be the last book Seth Godin publishes in a traditional way.

If you live primarily inside the echo chamber of the online marketing world you’ve undoubtedly heard that Seth Godin, author of at least 12 books that we know of, has pulled the plug on the publishing industry by proclaiming that he no longer intends to publish books the way they are traditionally published. You can get the full story on Seth’s blog, from MediaBistro and even the Wall Street Journal.

Now, before I go any further it must be stated that I am a fan – I am inspired by Seth’s writing and have been blessed by his support on more then one occasion. We have the same publisher and he was kind enough to write testimonials for the jacket of both my books. He is the real deal and has a following that any business or business person would envy. But, let’s keep this in perspective. This is not the end of traditional publishing as we know it, it’s not even the end of traditional publishing as Seth knows it.

Business books, and sadly marketing books, make up a very small chunk of the book publishing world, but even inside this rather small bubble, this is simply a statement that content consumption has evolved. We know that, we’ve all responded to that, but more than anyone else I know Seth has a knack for clearly stating the things we’ve all been standing around thinking – some may not agree, but that’s a skill set that turns people into thought leaders.

Business book writers don’t really have to be that good at writing. I include myself in that last statement. I don’t think my publisher cares so much about what I can write. They do care deeply about what I can sell. That’s the reality that irks some, but it’s a fact. I have no idea if I’m a good writer or not – although three or four pages into a Don DeLillo novel and I realize how terribly inappropriate it would be call myself an author – but I love that people are inspired to action by something I’ve figured out how to put on paper – the digital and print kind. Not that the world is waiting for me to weigh in, but I do intend to continue to publish in the traditional sense because I still enjoy it and think that the majority of content consumers enjoy it as well.

Seth Godin can afford to move to non-traditional forms of publishing because he has access to traditional forms of publishing and distribution. If you’re a book buyer, you are going to stock Seth Godin’s next hardback. If you’re a world class book editor, you’re going to enjoy editing Seth Godin’s next book. Seth Godin actually stands to make more money from a book he can self publish because he has the platform to do so. This move makes sense and is not a completely bold or trailblazing one. But, let’s wait and see when it hits the shelves.

The Wall Street Journal article cited above states that Linchpin has sold roughly 50,000 copies. That’s a nice number, that’s a number that gets you Wall Street Journal and New York Times Best Seller status in the world of business books. Jonathan Franzen has a new book coming out next week. (Yes, there’s a Kindle version) His last book sold 2.85 million copies and I’ll bet the majority of business book fans couldn’t name it. So, before we go off and do away with the traditional print and distribution models understand that more than anything else, Seth wants to have a conversation with his fans and if he has something to say, you can bet he will generously say it in as many forms as are deemed necessary.

Perhaps the biggest winners from the buzz of Seth moving on are the self-publishing industry and authors without a sufficient platform to attract the attention of a Portfolio.

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How to Automate a Lead Engagement System

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Technology has allowed us to move past the days when we simply drove a prospect to our website, captured their name and email address, and started them in a drip system in hopes that at some point they would click on a link in one of our emails and buy something.

Today’s lead generation system is a fully automated lead engagement system aimed at delivering the right information to the right person at the right time – and helping the sales team spot the perfect prospects ready for further engagement. By chaining together a series of web based applications you can create a system that engages, analyzes, and even gets pretty close to thinking about how to create better leads.

Below is an example of how a system like this might flow

• Run a series of ads using Adwords and Facebook promoting a free downloadable eBook
• Create seriously interactive and user friendly landing page forms with wufoo
• Automatically test two versions of landing pages using a landing page tool like Unbounce or Google website Optimizer
• Landing page success page includes Audio Acrobat audio recorded instructions on what to expect next
• When prospect requests copy of free eBook Solve 360 CRM creates a record and sends email to Flowtown
• Flowtown analyzes the social media activity associated with email and appends CRM record with social media data
• Based on social media activity criteria Flowtown creates influencer alerts and tags records for segmentation
• Segmentation information is sent to Constant Contact to enroll prospect in one of a series of email follow-up campaigns based on social media participation
• Email series invites prospects back to a series of video landing pages using personalized URL technology from SendPepper that also creates a post card mailing with personalized data from the campaign
• When a SendPepper pURL landing page is visited the Solve 360 CRM creates a task and the appropriate sales person receives a mobile alert to call the prospect

A system like this can be created by any size small business and gives you the kind of fire power that would make a salesperson at a Fortune 100 company giddy – as long as you also monitor every aspect using a tool like Google Analytics to help improve conversion at every step.

The entire process can be designed, monitored and tuned in such a way that it feels appropriate and elegant for each prospect that experiences it. While few things will ever replace person to person contact in the world of engagement a well designed lead engagement system is the front line tool that can help you create the know, like, and trust required to get that all important first meeting.

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Are You Creating Art or Creating a Factory

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

I have to warn you that today’s post is a bit of a ramble because I’m working through something that feels kind of big, but that I don’t know that I’ve concluded.

If you’ve read this blog or, for that matter, anything I’ve written you know that I believe a business is a system and marketing is perhaps the most important component system in any business. While this notion resonates with most of the small business owners I speak with, the practical application can be rather difficult to master.

Most business employ systems, whether they know it or not. We are naturally drawn to those systematic experiences that make things feel more effective and efficient, but often lose site of just what makes them so. The villain is this case is not systems or even a lack of systems, it’s our flawed systematic thought. If we look at improving our marketing return by tearing down failed systems or installing new ones, but do so with the same flawed systems thinking, we run the risk of simply producing another set of flawed processes.

Most people who work with marketing think of it as a set of tools that can be forged to produce and keep a result, a customer. It’s this thinking or rationality that must be changed first in order to truly impact the system that produces results.

So often when we think of building systems, or even the smallest of processes, we think about the steps we need to take in order to make sure something gets done in the most efficient manner – even if that work feels completely meaningless to the person operating the process.

What if instead we viewed every decision, every action, every system with the end impact in mind first and worked backwards?

You can have any number of desired results in mind, even breaking them down in a hierarchy of departments like lead generation and customer service. But, the key to any systems thinking is to get very clear about a specific tangible result and drive back to every point that can logically come into play to deliver that result.

Instead of thinking we need to develop a customer service system, think we want to make sure that 100% of our customer willingly refer us to their friends. Instead of thinking we need to develop a lead conversion system, think we want every prospect to conclude they would be crazy to choose someone else. Could that kind of thinking change how and what you built by way of a system? Could this kind of thinking pump meaning into every task, operated by every employee, at every level?

If this way of viewing any challenge or initiative crept into your business at the most foundational level I believe you would find systems creation much more like creating art than creating a factory.

Image credit: jaci XIII

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Weekend Favs August Twenty One

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr.

Image credit: Haydn Blackey

Good stuff I found this week:

“Mad Libs” Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40% - A totally engaging way to create forms that makes people want to complete them.

Print What You Like – Very cool little web app allows you to grab parts of web pages and only print those parts – saves paper and formats pages for print

The Oatmeal Guide to Getting 5 Million Unique Visitors a Month – a fan breaks down why Matthew Inman’s blog aka The Oatmeal gets so much attention

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5 Reasons Why Facebook Places Is Kind of a Big Deal

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Facebook announced what can clearly be called a “me too” location check in function yesterday, but hey, when you have half a billion people using something, even a copied innovation can have huge immediate impact. Facebook Places is a smart-phone location check-in feature that allows users to share their location, find the location of their friends, and discover new places based on other Facebook user recommendations – much like Loopt, Foursquare and Yelp! provide.

To get started, you’ll need the most recent version of the Facebook application for iPhone. (As of last night you had to search and download as it was not showing up as an update) You also can access Places from touch.facebook.com if your mobile browser supports HTML 5 and geolocation. A lot of information about how this service works is still evolving (Only available in the US right now as well) but you here’s the current FAQ page from Facebook

This is a big deal because location check-in has exploded as a habitual way of connecting and it stands to reason that a large number of people using Gowalla and Foursquare today will migrate their location check-ins to the network where they spend most of their time already – Facebook. This move kind of makes my status as the Mayor of my local coffee shop look a whole lot less interesting.

Facebook seems very invested in this function and were adamant about the fact that users will have the ability to set and restrict privacy using Places. By default your checkins will go to your profile and news stream. If you want to change who can see your checkins, go to your account’s privacy settings. You’ll see that “Places I check in” is by default shared with “Friends Only.” You can change who views your checkins from this area.

Why It’s a Big Deal for Business

• Facebook is building a suite of advertising tools that will allow you to list, claim and advertise your place on Facebook
• You no longer have to educate your customers – they all know what Facebook is
• People checking in at your business are naturally telling some part of the word about your business
• Offering coupons and special offers for people who check in is a natural way to tap the power of using online tools to drive offline sales.
• Data that you can collect on users and amount of times they checkin will prove extremely valuable in tracking customers and advertising spend

If your business is not already listed on Places you can add it by following these instructions. The roll-out is a bit spotty across the US today, but my guess is that by next week people will be Places happy.

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Turning an Email Address Into a Social Profile

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Ethan Bloch (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes

Imagine this scenario. You run an ad that directs someone to your landing page for a free report. They fill out the form, providing only their email address, and fifteen seconds later you receive an alert that tells you this person is a very high profile blogger, connector and influencer in your industry – just the kind of person you are looking for to pilot your new white labeled service.

The process described above is no longer fiction due to an innovative new service called Flowtown. In this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I visited with Flowtown cofounder and CEO Ethan Bloch. Flowtown’s mission, according to Bloch, is to help businesses paint a really rich story about their customers by appending each customer’s social media activity to their record. Or, as they put it on their website – turn an email into a social profile. I equate this to the high tech version of the salesperson of past days that knew how to quickly establish some sort of common ground with a prospect or customer.

The use of social data in the business world has become so essential and so expected that I believe the day is coming when customer and prospects will assume you know a great deal about them and expect that they can discover a great deal about the people and companies that they are considering working with through their own social networks.

Bloch shares a quote from his cofounder Dan Martell that I think is so true these days – “you already know everyone you need to know, you just don’t know who they are”

The power of Flowtown is simplicity and the growing number of integrations with service providers such as MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, Wufoo, and Unbounce.

In case you hadn’t gathered, I think Flowtown is a tool that every marketer needs in the toolbox.

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Fairfield Inn & Suites Small Business Road-to-Success Challenge

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Status Tagging Your Facebook Updates

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

As Facebook continues to grow and provide more and more search functionality so does the need to think strategically about optimizing some of your status updates.

About six months ago Facebook introduced status tagging, a feature that allows you to tag and link to pages and people that you like from your updates. When writing an update you simply start with @ and the person you want to tag and Facebook will add a link in the update to that person and (depending on privacy settings) post your update to their wall and notify them they’ve been tagged. (The tagged person can always undo the tag)

Careful use of this practice can lead to increased exposure of your updates and pages. Somewhat recently Facebook also started building “community pages” – a way to build pages on topics and help bring people together around common interests. While most of these pages exist purely from people saying they like something on their profile, some have begun to get some real niche followers and traction.

It’s beginning to make sense for people on Facebook to start to take the time to research topics related to their business, interests and industry and start “liking” a number of popular community pages with an eye on status tagging these pages in your updates.

Here’s an example. Yesterday I wrote about public speaking and mentioned the popular TED Talks and Toastmasters groups in my post. I went to Facebook to share the link for the blog post and tagged the public speaking, TED talks, and Toastmasters International community pages. This action placed my update on all three of these community pages and exposed it to another 30,000 or so potential readers. (You must be a fan of these pages to use the tagging feature and there may be a lag in the time you like them and they show up in tagging.)

Because TED is so popular (over 500,000 fans) I also took the time to post to the TED page wall. Understand that this was content that was very relevant to this audience and not just a post to grab eyeballs. Strategic optimization of your status updates can take a little more time and thought, but the additional exposure through sharing quality content and updates is becoming well worth the time.

I wonder how this might become a play for local businesses routinely tagging community pages for their city?

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