Your Tradeshow Objective

I'm preparing to give a talk at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston, May 4-5. The subject is tradeshows. And as I was thinking about the subject on my flight this morning, something became suddenly clear to me about a pervasive problem facing those trying to market at industry shows. It all boils down to a single question:

What's your objective when you attend a tradeshow?

Go ahead, ask any five people involved in your next big event and see is they say the same thing. Chances are they won't. 

You'll hear about getting leads. Some will talk about closing sales. Some may say it's all about PR. Some are interested in improving existing relationships. Some just want the free food. Others only care about the liquor. I've even heard the, "Gets me away from the family!" excuse trotted out.

I'm not writing this to disparage any of these objectives. (Well, maybe some of them. But certainly not most of them.) And really, all of these can be valid reasons for attending a tradeshow. What I'm trying to highlight is that the managers leading the teams at these trade events rarely bother to even ask the question, "Do we all understand our objective for being here?" And as a result, the team becomes ineffective through a simple lack of focus.

We're not talking about a lack of planning either, which is also something that can derail a good tradeshow effort. What I'm talking about is that group that goes to a show with a seemingly solid plan of action, yet still finds themselves being ineffective. If you're in this latter category, then consider these points:

Manage Competing Visions

Clearly there's no way to completely erase the individual objectives of a team. Sales people will be sales people and they will still be seeking their own commission first. However, a well managed tradeshow team will account for these individual motivations without letting them usurp the objective of the whole. Make sure you understand what people expect out of their attendance and then start to shape these passions to the organization's objective.

Clarify Roles

When we clarify what each person on the team gets personally out of the show, it helps us to assign roles in a way that is most effective
toward reaching the aims of the whole. It also gives us the opportunity
to clearly communicate to each person what they are working toward. Take time to help each person understand how their unique skills can contribute to the success of the event.

Invite Grand Thinking

Be careful not to squash the individual passions of the team along the way. There's no surer way to demotivate someone than to tell them to put aside their passions for your vision. So without compromising your show objectives, work with the team to see how individual objectives can still flourish while working toward the greater good. For instance, if you view the show as a lead show and marketing sees it as a customer appreciation opportunity, you could create an event that rewards customers for bringing leads. It's all in the spin.

Clarify Communications

When everyone knows the objective, brochures, talks, mailers and even the booth creation becomes a simplified task. You no longer need to throw in everything but the kitchen sink. You can target message to your aim. The more targeted your communication elements can be, the more success you will have in achieving your objective for the show.

Offer a Clear Path to Accomplishment

Never under-estimate an employee's desire to please a manager. Communicating clearly what you see as the objective of the show, can actually make the team happier and more engaged in the experience. It serves to manage expectations and keeps the team efforts focused on what you, the manager, will view as a success. So make sure you notice and appreciate these efforts.

Talking Content

Yesterday I tried my hand at something I've never done before. I led a discussion on marketing through content in a closed session for MarketingProfs Pro members. That, in itself, is not unusual. But the format was new to me, because it was completely conducted by typing posts in a text-based forum.

I'll call it "Speed Blogging." Because that's exactly what it felt like. A question would be posted and then the race was on for me to sound intelligent and answer thoroughly in as little time as possible. To say my fingers were tired is an understatement. In the course of an hour and a half I must have written the equivalent of three of my normal blog posts.

Now I'd love to share the entirety of my responses, but it was a closed session after all. So instead, I'll just highlight the main take-aways from the event.

Create for the Heart

When businesses think "content," they usually focus on product features or services offered. They may even stray into benefits or uses. But it's rare that a company will listen to the consumer and shape a message around what they hear.

Certainly push marketing should not be controlled by the customer. But when it comes to content, you should always be including your audience in the discussion.

Content should be shaped to appeal to the deeper issues felt by a customer. That's because for content to work effectively, it needs to be chosen by the customer. The customer needs to reach out and engage with it, because it meets some need they currently feel. It could be they need pictures for a presentation and you provide a ready database of royalty-free images centered around your industry. Or it you could just be an entertaining blogger who's fun (and informative) to read.

The point is, while push marketing is about pushing your main selling points, content marketing is about drawing the customer into deeper relationship with your brand.

Don't Force Your Media Channels

People always lambast the "brochure websites" out there. But frankly, not every company needs a great, deep and rich website. Don't get me wrong. If your site hasn't been updated in eons, it may be time for a makeover. But some industries have customers that will never use their site. Other companies have customers who prefer open forum discussions rather than website research.

My recommendation is always focus the majority of your spend on where your customers are. If your customers aren't online, send them a CD, DVD or whitepaper. If your customers hang out on Facebook, engage with them there. If they're Kindle users, distribute a free eBook through Amazon. If your customers are heavy podcast listeners, create audio content and feed it into iTunes.

This doesn't mean ignore your web site or don't have a blog. I'm simply saying don't force your customers in content channels they don't use. Meet them where they are first and evolve them to where you need them to be.

Let Pull Dominate Your Push

I spoke a little bit above about how in content marketing your customer needs to choose to engage with you. At the heart of this phrase is a philosophy of weaving a pull strategy into your content.

In my case, my show The BeanCast is focused first on entertainment and then second on content. Even though I'm lauded for the depth of the content, people would never even show up to listen if it wasn't entertaining.

Always be conscious of whether your content has an emotional value for your audience. The more you touch on this emotional value, the more engaged the customer will be with you, and the more likely they will be to get your underlying message.

Focus on the Feeling

I always sum up my content talks with a reminder that content marketing is more about branding than about selling. So I stress that you need to be asking the question, "How will this make my customer feel about my brand?"

Branding is not about an ad or a logo or a tagline. Branding, at its heart, is how the customer feels about you when they see your product, hears your name or sees you walking through the door. So decide what that feeling should be and carrying it out through all your marketing efforts, including your content. The result will be an investment in mindshare that will grow over time and enhance your ability to close your deals.

The Unexpected Power Of The Virtual Space

Joe Jaffe has been a good friend of The BeanCast Marketing Podcast. So I've continually deflected the criticisms I've heard of his support of Second Life since he started coming on the show. (And don't ask who's been criticizing, Joe, because I'm not gonna tell you.)

But here's the thing: Even I had to wonder, after all the negative publicity the man suffered as a result of his early promotion of Second Life, and the subsequent ribbing he's had to endure for this support, why he continued to use and stand by the service? Certainly he must have learned a lesson about being too gung-ho about new tech too early, because he's displayed a much more pragmatic approach since. But it seemed to me he should have immediately sought to distance himself from this "source of shame."

Instead, Joe and his team at Crayon (now Powered) continued to regularly meet and conduct business via Second Life. What's more, they all seemed to remain upbeat about it. You might even say they've been glowing about the service. It was completely baffling.

But then, in the most unlikely of places, I found my own fascination with virtual spaces. And now I'm here to capitulate.

Mall Hell

For those of you unfamiliar with the virtual realms out there, there's everything from World of Warcraft on the gaming side to Second Life on the adult community side. But nestled between those two extremes is the much-maligned virtual world of PlayStation Home.

Picture, if you will, a mall overrun with teenagers, without any parental supervision other than a persistent censor that knocks out foul language from chat scrolls, and you come dangerously close to describing Home. It's no wonder the gaming press hates it and most serious gamers avoid it. Why would anyone, other than hormonally charged teenagers in desperate need to be seen as a demon or to walk around in public places in bikinis, ever want to go there?

Well...apparently me for one. I'm almost ashamed to admit it. But yes, I now like PlayStation Home. And here's how it happened.

A Joke That Formed Community

A group of my gaming friends recently took on the challenge of Home. And I'm not talking teens. This is a group of 20-40 year-olds, both men and women. Their sole purpose? To mock the whole thing and cause some trouble.

I won't name all the participants, but the group was the brainchild of the EZMode Unlocked podcast, featuring Dana LaPorte,Rob Felt and Rob O'Connor. And as a lark, they decided that it would be fun to gather listeners and go cause trouble. So like a gang of rowdy teens heading to the mall, the group descended on the service.

But a funny thing happened. The Home meetups started occurring week after week. People started talking about it more and more on the EZMode Unlocked Forums. People even started to buy crap. Not real crap. Virtual crap. Not even resellable crap like in Second Life. We're talking crap crap, like glowing dumb-bells.

Pretty soon, the joking was left by the wayside. People were actually having fun. And even though we all participated in a forum to stay in touch with each other, Home was actually forming stronger relationships among the group than we'd ever had before.

The Power of the Eye

I attribute our sudden change of heart to one thing: Seeing a person (even if he or she is virtual) is a much more connecting experience than simply talking or writing to that person.

Think about how conversation works. It's not just about voice or words. It's also about visual cues. That's why people invest so much attention on user-account pictures and emoticons. These are both attempts at replacing the visual cues that are missed when conversation moves online.

But in a virtual world, these cues begin to approach real cues. For instance, in Home you can change your stance or show physical reactions to conversation. And most importantly, you can face another avatar who is speaking to you. It all sounds silly, but the result is a level of intimacy in conversation that is surprisingly effective and engaging.

And there was no way to discover this until I had a large group of associates online using the service. Until I had friends also adopting the service, it was simply a large, empty space with ghostly dancing bodies wandering around with lackluster activities to participate in. It takes a commitment to relationship for a virtual space to work. Once I had that, the world literally opened up with possibilities.

Visionary or Martyr

There's an old saying that if you're one step ahead of the curve you're a visionary and if you're two steps ahead you're a martyr. But in the end, it doesn't make you any less insightful about what the future holds. Joe may have leaped a little early into the virtual space, but I now think he may have been right to do so.

My experiences with Home are revealing to me that the problem with virtual spaces is not their usefulness, but rather the massive shift that is required to use them effectively. It's pretty unnatural to manipulate a virtual character on a screen. It feels silly and stilted at first. And frankly, the technology is not fully up to the promise. But to allow any of these negatives to outweigh the future benefits is foolish short-sightedness.

I can envision endless business and social applications that most haven't considered. Brainstorm sessions over distance can become more immersive, incorporating a sense of shared space and intimacy. Visual collaboration can become much more personal and effective as the tools evolve. Social meetups online can become more engaging, as we can go to the movies together with friends across the country and shoot snarky comments to each other during the film.

In many ways, it was good that the bubble burst on virtual spaces. It took the pressure off and allowed these applications to evolve more naturally. Now we can look to a more reasonable future in these digital realms, instead of dealing with the early hype and land-grab that went on with Second Life.

So to Joe, on behalf of all who care to join me, you were right. And I believe you'll be remembered for being so.

EDIT: I'm already thinking of about a zillion more angles on why virtual spaces are still good for the future of branding. Look for a follow-up post in a few days

You're Good Enough For Radio

People complimenting my performance with The BeanCast will often say something like, "We'll hear you on NPR yet," or, "You'll be on radio one day."

The reason this makes me feel good is the same reason people offer it as a compliment: If you have an audio program, radio means legitimacy. I haven't necessarily thought about it in those terms, but certainly I've half-heartedly pursued getting the show on-air in the past. So obviously I agree. But now I'm wondering if maybe I shouldn't be thinking like this. Maybe I'm positioned exactly where I need to be.

Late Night Lessons

In the wake of the recent late-night battle over at NBC, I made a comment on Twitter about Conan needing to take his show online. Sure, he could take the train over to FOX, but then he faces the very risky proposition of justifying his salary against a head-to-head competition with Leno and Letterman that he is sure to lose — at least in the short term.

But online, he could be king of the hill. He could be a first-mover and thumb his nose at the network stupidity of old-school media. He doesn't even need big numbers to be a success. All he needs are backers that believe in him. And Google is the perfect partner.

The company that was ready to give Yelp half a billion dollars and is still looking for ways to make YouTube profitable might offer Conan's best chance at continued relevance. Google might be very willing to pay Conan to make his show a daily, ad-supported event on YouTube. And they have the patience to wait out the network decline. At least more patience then NBC had to establish his new Tonight Show. It sounds like the perfect strategy to me. Even Ian Schafer over at Deep Focus kind of agrees, independently arriving at a similar conclusion just yesterday.

If we really believe that digital delivery of entertainment is the future, we need to start proving it with actions.

My Online Play

So with all this floating in my head, I once again received a, "You should be on radio," compliment yesterday. And for the first time I actively thought, "No. I shouldn't."

Yes, the money is better in radio. (Which is a sad comment in itself, but we won't dwell on the compensation levels for the bottom of the entertainment industry.) Certainly the audience is significantly better in radio, because of the bottleneck radio creates for those wanting to be heard. But all this is the narrow thinking that I always rail against. Just because it works today, doesn't mean it will work forever. And first-movers in whatever the future holds will be best positioned to be dominant players in that future.

Would I take an opportunity in radio right now, today? You betcha. All promotion is good promotion and radio is still a good audience builder. But would I do it at the expense of being online with a made-for-online-only podcast? No way.

I firmly believe that online delivery of content will become the dominant media source in the next decade. It won't be egalitarian as some have predicted and there will still be network-run bottlenecks, but the playing field will be dramatically changed, with first-mover online networks ruling the roost. I want to be a part of that. And any advertiser, marketer, producer or media executive who isn't whole-heartedly embracing and promoting this, is trading away their future in the business for a comfortable lifestyle today.

So today I'm not saying, "I'm with CoCo." Instead I'm asking, "Is CoCo with me?"

The Content Path To Credibility

I was recently asked by the good folks over at MarketingProfs to offer my thoughts on the subject of leveraging a content strategy for marketing. Obviously I'm very interested in this subject, considering I've based my entire self-promotion efforts on the approach. So I was only too happy to contribute.

They took my thoughts and put together an awesome interview piece, which you can read here. But in the meantime, I thought I'd share the entirety of the email I provided them in case BeanCast listeners can benefit from these expanded thoughts.

The Dilemma of The Start-Up

One of the disadvantages any startup finds itself saddled with is lack of a track record. Sure, you can point to your past experience elsewhere or even the past experiences of your employees, but essentially you are an unknown quantity.

In starting up The Cool Beans Group, I faced this dilemma. I needed instant credibility for this fledgling marketing consultancy. I needed to establish that I knew what I was talking about. I needed to somehow distinguish the name, without having completed any projects.

Tall order, right?

A Route of Engagement

Now, I could have easily filled my website with photos of my past projects and taken full credit for these efforts created with my past agency-employers. But I hated that option. I did it with a couple projects admittedly, but I'd spent too much time being critical in the past of others who adopted the practice. Plus, I've always been of the mind that an agency's past work tells a client nothing about who they are and what they can do today. It's like reading a history book and calling it cutting edge thinking.

So I took a different route. Instead of looking at the past, I decided that my brand would always be looking at the future. That meant not resting on the laurels of past achievement, and instead filling my brand with a constant stream of new and fresh content. For me that included the start of The BeanCast, a weekly marketing podcast that brings together the smartest minds in marketing to discuss the issues facing the industry. I also started an accompanying blog that focused on best practices for marketers, created short audio clips expressing my opinions on marketing subjects, a best-of show to give people a sampling of the deeper content and even made some video clips to augment the conversations on the blog.

I also went where the marketers were hanging out. I posted on the blogs of others and on the professional magazine web sites. I became a Twitter user and started a Facebook group for the show. I participated in online forums. There's even a Wikipedia page for The BeanCast. And everything is optimized for certain relevant marketing keywords.

The Benefits

The point of all this was three-fold:

First, it established me among the experts. Notice I didn't say "made me an expert." By being seen with the experts in online debate and through my show, I establish that I am an equal with these people. I make them look good and they make me look good in return. And thus I am among the experts and share in their credibility.

Second, it provides context for clients. My content depth has now been built to such a level that there is rarely a discussion or new business pitch conversation that doesn't involve me referencing a particular show or posting. This showcases a depth of thinking and credibility that no past work could prove. It's an amazing tool that over time continues to add value to my business.

Third, it makes me better at my job. Part of credibility is living up to the promise. By constantly engaging in debate on marketing subjects in all these different venues, I avoid stagnating. I am always engaged with the latest best practices, which in turn offers obvious benefits to my clients. The value of this cannot be overstated.

I know not all businesses are alike and copying my strategy exactly won't yield the same results for every organization. But I'd be hard-pressed to name a business that couldn't benefit from a portion of the strategies I'm applying. Having your customers engage with a growing body of content is one of the surest ways to raise the perception that you are expert in your given field, as well as create a path toward ongoing loyalty and advocacy with your brand.

The Emotional Connection To Cars

Over the last year I made an important choice that had repercussions far beyond what I anticipated. It was an experience that taught me something about a product that mere involvement with that product could never have taught.

Early in 2009 my car gave up the ghost. I mean seriously gave up the ghost. As in the price to fix it was more than the blue book value and even charities wouldn't come and take it from driveway. We're talking seriously big-piece-of-garbage dead.

Thus, a choice was brought before me. I work from home and for some time Mrs. Bean and I had been debating on whether we even needed two cars. We knew it would be hard to negotiate a schedule and share rides, but the idea of buying a new car that would sit in the driveway for days on end made very little sense.

Living Carless

So we made the decision to live with one car. Good for our wallets. Good for the environment. Good as an example to others. We were practically saints in our own minds.

Really, it wasn't that hard to manage the schedule either. I didn't leave the house all that much. And when I traveled it was usually by air, so a quick trip to the airport was easy to arrange.

But over time I started becoming increasingly irritable about the situation. It wasn't that I needed the car. Sure, there were conflicts over who would get the car on certain days, but most of the time I just didn't need it. It wasn't even the discomfort of walking places in 90 degree heat or having to take my wife in to work. This was something bigger. I was beginning to feeltrapped. It wasn't that I needed to go somewhere on a whim. It was that I couldn't go somehwere on a whim.

I began to realize that I had always had a car I could call my own since I was 16 years old. It was a freedom that I couldn't put into words. Even the crappy cars I owned had a special place in my heart. Good Lord! I even wrote an Ode to a Car for a POS that I hated worse than people who abuse animals or troll dolls.

Powerful and Untapped Emotions

It strikes me now that I have NEVER seen this depth of emotional attachment for a car expressed in a car commercial. (One comes close, but we'll get to that in a second.) Certainly there have been lame attempts to communicate "freedom" and "empowerment." There have been stunts like a man licking a car handle to mark his choice at the dealer or people washing their car roof with near sexual glee. But never once have I seen the level of devotion that I feel for the act of driving seriously communicated in a car ad.

Maybe it's because guys can't communicate emotions well and men are largely tasked with writing car ads. Maybe it's because this insight is not product focused enough for an industry obsessed with leather seats and center consoles. Maybe it's too hard to put into words. Maybe there aren't enough breasts in this idea. But I think the biggest disconnect comes from the fact that few of us have ever had to live without a means of transportation, so we just don't remember how important our cars have become to our identity.

To put it another way, with most products an ad team would immerse themselves in the experience of using and understanding what they would be promoting. But with cars, they have become such a staple of life that we forget what a powerfully motivating factor "car freedom" can be.

Show A Little Understanding

Detroit remains in turmoil. GM is emerging from bankruptcy, but struggling to communicate its value. Chrysler has one foot out the door and has still not found its voice. Ford, despite its successes of late, is still tied to the fate of the others through is supply chain needs. With such uncertainty, maybe it's time to regroup and not push lifestyle (I Jeep? Please!) and feature messages (Just shut up already, Howie!) and start speaking to the heart again.

It's ironic that Ford would be leading the way on this, considering it was Henry Ford's simple message of freedom for the average man that first positioned the car to the masses. I mentioned that one campaign comes close to what I'm speaking of and their latest ads do a passingly good job of capturing the emotions I described. A car is my space, as valuable as any room in my house. And it's intrinsically tied to my identity. These ads capture a bit of the sense of identity people find in their cars, while still talking features.

But let's not stop here. Let's move the needle on emotion and tie into the need to buy a car. This isn't an option. This is a necessity. Let's see more communication of what freedom really means and a little less of insufferably beautiful people with wind in their hair. This is life or death people. After all, if you avoid buying that next car you could end up like Bob, sitting at home, bumming rides from people. And that would be a terrible fate. (Feel free to use that in your next commercial, guys. I need cash to buy a new car anyway.)

Is It The Creative Or The Promotion

Have you seen the horrors that comprise the Boost Mobile ad campaign?

People eating sandwiches off of dead people. A woman with long armpit hair. Pigs eating pork. These are some pretty darn disgusting ads that 180LA is churning out. And targeting aside (yes, we know you have to be all "edgy" for the young'uns) they do nothing to attract people to the brand. They shock. End of story.

Yet customers are flocking to the product. According to Adweek, they added 1 million new customers in 2009 and now Boost is planning their first Super Bowl spot. Oh, happy day!

Here's the rub, though. Boost offers something pretty unusual in terms of mobile plans. They have a $50 all-you-can-eat promotion going, when the other carriers charge a minimum of $99 for similar offerings. Which begs the questions: What is really driving the customer acquisition rate -- the promotion or the ads?

Obviously Boost and their agency would politically say that it's a combination of the two. But who are we fooling? There's no brand-building going on here. There's no identity management or core beliefs being communicated. They are shocking you to pay attention to an offer. It's all about the promotion.

In fact, I would suggest that if you had put the late Billy Mays up there and had him shout about the all-you-can-eat plant for 60 seconds, you would get the same results and maybe even do a little better. Hey wait! What am I saying?!? This is a Boost commercial. We should just put the real dead Billy Mays up there rotting away to stay in keeping with the theme they've created.

I want to be clear that I am not necessarily recommending this tactic of doing a direct spot with a pitchman, alive or dead. Certainly I believe it could pull better than what they're doing now and might even avoid offending people along the way. But I bring it up to highlight another example of how advertisers and their agencies often will credit their creative for what their promotion is achieving.

In this case, the creative is only used to shock people into paying attention. In my mind, while this is effective for direct marketing (think loud, shouting guy that shocks you out of complacency), it makes for a lousy brand impression. It builds nothing in terms of long-term value or over-all customer relationship. So in the end, it's a missed opportunity. They are achieving the results of their promotion at the expense of their brand value. This is a premise that's unsustainable and at some point, as their market penetration matures, they'll most likely find themselves with heavy attrition and low advocacy -- unless, of course, they're spinning webs of gold in terms of customer service.

I won't be so bold as to suggest a better course of action creatively. But I will say that wild ideas designed only to shock don't live long in a promotional vacuum. The best ideas offer a sustainable path toward growth and brand equity. And clearly neither are offered in this work.

The Painful Road

I ended 2009 with a catastrophic hard drive failure.

Literally on the morning of the last day of the second crappiest year of my life, that sight all Mac users fear appeared on my screen: 

The Question Mark Folder

. What a cap to the year, huh? It epitomized the feeling of failure that was so pervasive in the ad industry during 2009. Crash. Lose everything. Reboot. Start over. Erik Proulx even made a movie about it called Lemonade.

Which kind of brings me to the point of writing about this. Erik was on the show this week, and after discussing his movie and the new transparent turnaround effort from Domino's (along with all the hell I went through rebuilding my computer) I had an epiphany: As painful as admission and acceptance of our shortcomings can be, it's sometimes exactly the path we need to walk for a better future.

You Can't Be What You're Not

Now don't mistake all this for sentimentalism. This isn't some kind of Zen statement of balance to the universe. This is a practical truth for all marketers. When it comes to turnarounds or rebranding efforts, too many times I see examples of brands that simply ignore who they are in the eyes of their customers in an effort to create something new.

In theory, there's nothing wrong with this. WalMart was a big blue box with a happy face. Now they're a big blue box with a disclosure mark. Done and done. We all feel better with WalMart looking a little less like a cheap dime store. And yet, there's a part of me that remains reluctant to go there because their brand is so intrinsically tied to being the cheapest of the cheap. They can tell me "Save money. Live better." (a great tag that hearkens to their roots), but all I wonder is, "What do they know about living better?"

What Domino's is doing is different. As painful as it was to admit, their brand was synonymous with "pizza that tastes like cardboard." But instead of just burying the past and launching fresh with a new recipe, they embraced the truth.

Why is this great? Two reasons.

Proof That You Understand

No matter what your brand stands for, it's still your brand. And ignoring what your brand is to your market is tantamount to saying you don't understand your market. Even if that brand is rife with negatives, pretending those negatives don't exist doesn't make them go away. A large portion of your audience will always remember.

But more importantly, a change without an admission of failing doesn't really say you understand where you went wrong in the first place. How can you establish a new trajectory for operations when people aren't sure where you're coming from in the first place? No matter how right you get the turnaround, a part of your market will grudgingly hold onto the perception that you're bound to fall back into how you did things before.

Leave No Customer Behind

The other thing that can't be understated is that leading with your weakness acknowledge 

all

 of your market, rather than just focusing on the part of your market willing to believe in you. You're bringing along everyone for the ride -- naysayers and advocates alike. Certainly there will always be those who remain reticent (

our very own George Parker, for one

), but every sales person knows you acknowledge the pain before you go for the sell. It's the surest way to establish affinity and relationship, as well as position yourself as a problem solver. And we all know the best customer is one who gets a problem solved, not the ones who never had a problem or never had their problem even acknowledged.

God knows if all this will work out for Domino's in the end. For one thing, all the best strategy advice in the world can't fix bad dough or sauce tasting like ketchup. But if all the forces align and they hold to their guns, and people actually like their new product, the marketing portion of things is some solid thinking. And just like with my own hard drive fiasco, they should wind up with a more functional and nimble system of operations (and back-ups) that they should have had in place all along. It's a bitch admitting you were wrong. Kudos to them for having the guts to do it.

Making Radio Work

Since I'm starting to offer some ad space on the show, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what makes a "radio" spot work.

For those who don't know, radio is how I got my start in this business. Way back in the day, marketing podcast host and consultant, Bob Knorpp, was commission-sales, low-on-the-totem-pole sales grunt. I was a inconsequential radio sales guy, trying to scrape by enough accounts so that I could write and produce spots. It was low-budget and a terrible mess to be sure, but it was real-world experience and I loved it.

Slowly, though, I realized it was the absolute bottom of the entertainment industry (you'll hear my story about that on the upcoming outtake show), and I needed to be a producer of content, rather than a seller of it. But I never forgot my roots in radio and I've spent two decades as a closet fan of the medium. So I thought I'd share just a few of my personal insights about what makes for good radio advertising:

Offer Testing

For God's sake! Don't run a radio ad without an offer and don't assume the spot doesn't work because your offer didn't attract people. THAT'S how important offer is in radio.

Low production costs and easy insertions, make radio a great medium for testing new strategies for increasing response. So don't be afraid to test different offers on different stations or adjust an offer that doesn't work. And even if your goal is to just brand a product (like a beer ad), there's no reason not to push a person to some kind of response. Downloading an app or visiting a site will make the branding that much more effective.

Simple Call-To-Actions

Speaking of response, let's be reasonable about what we can achieve here. Asking someone to stop off at your store on main street or download your app from the 

iTunes

 store is completely reasonable. Providing instructions for reaching your obscure location or repeatedly shouting your phone number is just a waste of time.

We live in a digital/mobile age. Not only has spitting out phone numbers always been a bad practice of radio, now it's nearly irrelevant. No one wants to call you. But texting "[insert store name]" for an offer code or searching "[insert search string]" on Google are practical ways to get people to respond. And all radio stations (and podcasts, for that matter) have websites. Don't be afraid to make their site your destination and provide a link from there. But whatever you do, make it easy and memorable. That's what works best.

Live Reads Are Best...

There's a reason Paul Harvey and Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh command such high dollar figures for live read spots. It's because they work. And not just work. They kill!

Talk show hosts command a lot of respect with their audience. And when they talk about something, even when it's clearly mentioned as an ad, it becomes a personal recommendation in the minds of the audience. That's why many hosts (including myself) are choosy about what ads they accept for live reads.

Yes, they are more expensive. Yes, you have to jump through hoops to convince a host to do it sometimes. But if you can get it, go for it. It's the epitome of radio advertising at this point.

...But Only In The Right Hands

Let me point out, though, that not all live reads are worth your time. Someone like Leo Laporte on TWiT is a master of the live read, incorporating the ad into playful banter with other guests and oozing sincerity. Your average disc jockey can't pull out of the radio voice long enough to deliver these kind of results.

Choose your live readers carefully. And don't look for audience size as much as audience loyalty. You want someone who already commands respect with their listeners. Because even a small audience of loyal followers will deliver phenomenal results if there is sincerity and trust. That's why I've been recently calling radio the original social media.

Concept Spots Must Features Benefits

Now I realize that not everyone can do a live read, so when it comes to produced material make sure your ad incorporates benefits into the entertainment.

I've heard lots of funny advertisements on radio that had me rolling on the floor. And most of them I can't remember the product they were advertising — at least not in any clear way. This is because radio ads are notorious for being entertainment plays for 50 seconds and ads for the last 10 seconds.

The best ads on radio are entertainments that are created around the benefit being promoted. That's because even though you mostly have a captive audience (caught at work or in the car) it's a distracted audience performing other tasks. The entertainments will end up blending together with the rest of the entertainments, unless the memory of what was funny or interesting involved your product or service. So don't forget the basics of advertising. Go back to the brief and make sure the spot is communicating your core strategy.

Hope this little primer helps. I still love audio mediums (which should be obvious, I guess) and I'd love to see more of you benefit from the advantages this type of advertising can bring.

Permission Or Submission

Since when did a hotel stay become permission to bombard me with several emails a week?

I'm not talking hotel chain, either. Those can be over-the-top excessive in frequency as well. I'm talking about going to a specific hotel and getting drowned in spam.

I stayed one time at the Las Vegas Hilton. (They get no link in protest.) Three unimpressed days in a so-so room at the home of the Barry Manilow live show. What's more, this being the nearest hotel to the convention center, I stayed there not for its amenities, but rather for its walking distance.

I could NOT be more disconnected from this place. It was like the Shoney's of Las Vegas hotels. I did the breakfast bar, so believe me, the comparison is fair.

Further, this 2008 stay was only the second time I'd been to Vegas, the first being back in 1991. Seriously, folks. And, I've never played a single real gambling game anywhere, at any time. In my life. Not even for pennies.

And yet, in the mind of some computerized logic, my stay has made me a prime candidate for every imaginable weekend getaway, dancing-girl extravaganza and spa treatment that this fine establishment has to offer.

It just reminds me that in the email game, ease and lack of expense are not justifications for ignoring the basic like the RFM model of response marketing. Recency, Frequency and Monetary — account for when was the last time I spent money with you, how often I spent money with you and how much money I spent money with you, when segmenting your list.

This simple model has its detractors and certainly it's much more important to mail where every package sent adds additional cost, but it still matters to relevancy. Because if we are embracing a more relationship focused and social approach to our marketing, marketing out of context can be worse than ineffective. In fact by contrast, a marketing program that totally ignores who I am repeatedly serves to completely annoy me, a consumer has come to expect more, and actively sets my ire against the brand.

Who knows? An email program like this might even annoy a recipient so much, he might write a blog post specifically naming the Las Vegas Hilton and recommending that you never stay there. Ever. It could happen.

EDIT: Corrected the dates of my stays. Had erroneously listed my last stay as 1998 and my previous stay as 1981. I believe I was in junior high in 1981 and definitely not traveling to Vegas.