Category: marketing

Last week I received five direct mail envelopes from five different magazine publishers. Only two of those magazines have I actually had subscriptions (guess which ones). That means those two magazine publishers sell my name to other publications with similar demographic audiences.

Are polymaths extinct? In the ancient world polymaths shared expertise in various fields of knowledge. One example is Leonardo da Vinci — not merely a painter, but sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, cartographer, botanist and writer. More recently, Thomas Jefferson fits that definition as a horticulturist, political leader, architect, inventor, and founder of the University of Virginia. Is it possible to be a polymath in this modern world? As it relates to blogging, can effective bloggers be polymaths?

Copyblogger offers some habits of effective bloggers. The list includes:

• prolific
• concise
• focused and consistent

(Link: 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers)

One of the things stated as an attribute of an effective blogger is:

Successful bloggers choose a topic and stick to it.

They write consistently about their chosen subject… Even when they write about something that seems to be off-topic, they relate it back to the niche they know…

This makes practical sense as far as marketability. You don’t expect comic books sold at a doughnut shop. But what about a gas station? Of course, you purchase gas at a gas station, but most gas station owners don’t make profits from the sale of gasoline. Most of their revenue comes from products sold inside the gas station. In high school, I stopped by the gas station routinely to purchase comic books. Should blogs be doughnut shops or gas stations?

In the marketing world, as in the blogosphere, an individual who chooses a topic and sticks to it is a specialist or consultant. In Peter Rubie’s Telling the Story, he presents this definition of genres:

The development of genres came about as a marketing necessity. “Category” and “genre” are marketing terms… Their purpose is basically to help you more easily find what it is you’re looking for.

Telling the Story then goes on to list seven narrative nonfiction categories: adventure, travel books, biography, history, military, memoir and true crimes. The music industry follows the same protocol: country, pop, rock, hip-hop, and so on into the sub-genres of goth-metal, indie-folk-americana, afro-celt, etc. What Copyblogger proposes is to be marketable to your online audience. If you’re a tech blog, write about technology. If you’re an organic gardener, write about gardening. If you’re a mom, write about mommy stuff. That way your online readers are trained to expect only doughnuts at the doughnut shop.

The question is this: if blogs are specialized, will that make the community more or less knowledgable? I’ve noticed that art blogs often link to other art blogs. I understand that the reason for this is to create a strong community. The challenge with specializing content is that the specialists become islands of highly focused, topical knowledge surrounded by the waters of ignorance of other general knowledge. Jacques Barzun explores the idea of specialized knowledge and more in The House of Intellect. Let me go back to the opening paragraph where I stated “more recently, Thomas Jefferson…” Between Thomas Jefferson and our present information age, the society and culture has changed so dramatically that I wonder if our institutions of intellect suppress the nurture and nature of polymaths.

From AdPulp:

The web is social. Coffee is social.

Link.

Imagine my surprise when I visited one of my favorite marketing weblogs, The Marketing Playbook, and found that they had linked to my weblog. The Marketing Playbook linked to a meager post about strategy and tactics. All I did was post two quotes (one from a book I read and the other from a post from The Marketing Playbook.

The reason I have been studying marketing (specifically strategy and tactics) is partly to support marketing clients at my current company and partly for the marketing of my upcoming poetry book. Trust me, poetry books need all the marketing genius you can throw at them.

Like a narrative, marketing will do you no good unless you know the desired target. The first thing most established writers will tell a novice is that you can’t start writing a novel unless you know the ending. Marketing without strategy (the plot) and tactics (chapters, paragraphs, sentences) is pointless.

Now if I can just make sense of distribution…

Strategy and tactics intertwine in their usefulness, but they are not synonymous.

“Strategy is the art of making war upon the map, and comprehends the whole theater of operations. Grand Tactics is the art of posting troops upon the battle-field according to the accidents of the ground, of bringing them into action, and the art of fighting upon the ground, in contradistinction to planning upon a map.”
–from the The Art of War by Baron Henri de Jomini

And here’s how it applies to marketing:

“To really understand the terrain you have to go to it. If trying to understand the gaps/needs of your targets/customers – be one, use your products, talk to other users, spend a day with them (not just an hour in a focus group drugging them with M&Ms). If trying to understand your competition don’t just read their website and read their reports – use their products, go to their trade-show booths, interview their customers, try to think like them, maybe even hire some of them. And if trying to understand your own strengths and vulnerabilities, don’t rely on yourself – go back and ask those above. It’s great to map all the gaps in your playing field, but remember the map is not the terrain.”
–from the post The map is not the terrain by Marketing Playbook

With homage to and help from Seth Godin’s Music Industry: Aspen Report, I assembled this strategy.

Last summer I suggested to a publisher of a national newsmagazine the possibility of creating downloadable (PDF) versions of his publication. With micro payment purchases ($0.50), he could add revenue to the Web side the company. I withdrew that position recently after reading up on the concept of permission marketing.

Here’s two reasons why I think newsmagazine Web content should be free:

One, the Web audience contains individuals that will copy/paste, reference or hyperlink to the newsmagazine’s Web site. It’s a personal positioning statement (here are my friends’ links and my trusted news source link). The newsmagazine does not pay them and they spread news content more efficiently than the USPS. These individuals trust this newsmagazine as a reliable source and in turn share it with people who trust them. It’s the best and cheapest public relations effort.

Two, the newsmagazine’s Web site could potentially provide an enormous email list for potential paid subscribers. In order to read the newsmagazine content, a reader must click on “This week’s issue.” With one click, the newsmagazine can ask a reader to submit their email address. That’s all. Simple and free. The “email request” window could offer a monthly “newsletter direct to your email box” message or something along that line. This would offer newsmagazine’s marketing department an avenue to target online marketing and deliver value to already loyal, influential readers.

How is this newsmagazine supposed to the bills with that kind of strategy? Simple. It’s the same basic principle as direct mailing.

OLD STRATEGY: On a small direct mail campaign of 500,000 names, the newsmagazine might acquire 5000 new subscribers. Of those new subscribers, the newsmagazine may lose as much as 1500 due to unpaid subscribers. Direct mail campaigns cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire 3500 new paid subscribers.

NEW STRATEGY: What if the newsmagazine received 20,000 new email addresses monthly? If we apply the same numbers, then the newsmagazine could benefit from 100 to 200 new paid subscribers. Though the newsmagazine may want to offer something other than subscriptions (gift subscriptions may work) in email campaigns. Possible product suggestions would include company branded day-timers, coffee mugs or other existing branded product. Each one of these branded product ideas would help maintain loyal online readers and support their personal positioning as well as promote the newsmagazine beyond our current subscriber base.

Any thoughts on this strategy are welcomed.