The Marketing Mix | official blog of the Marketing Mentor community

Register Now for HOW’s Biggest Event Ever

Marketing Mentor is thrilled to be involved for the fourth year with HOW Magazine and their growing powerhouse of conferences. We work with HOW to co-produce the Creative Freelancer Conference—which is one of the four events happening in Chicago during HOW Design Live week, June 24-27—and people are already signing up for it! Even though it’s a “design” week, the Creative Freelancer Conference is for all creative professionals. So, if you’re a creative pro, check out the details for CFC here.

More about the HOW Design Live week:

HOWDesignLive.com is up and running, packed with exciting details about all four design conferences taking place June 24-27 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. Register now and be part of HOW’s BIGGEST event ever!

Everything about HOW Design Live is BIG:

• It’s a mega-gathering of designers, freelancers, in-house managers and—new for 2011—packaging designers.
• Big-name speakers fill the lineup, including Pum and Jake Lefebure of Design Army, Andy Epstein of Designer Greetings, Steve Gordon of RDQLUS Creative, Moira Cullen of The Hershey Company, and Debbie Millman of Sterling Brands.
• HOW Design Live is being held in Chicago—one of the biggest, most exciting cities in the country.
• You’ll leave with BIG ideas about upgrading your career, invigorating your creative output, and finding the right tools and technologies to make you more effective at your job.

You can even register for The BIG Ticket—a full-access pass to ALL four HOW Design Live conferences!

Plus check out the BIG networking opportunities that are included in HOW Design Live’s program, including tours of Chicago’s coolest studios, networking lunches with speakers, Happy Hours and Receptions, and the not-to-be-missed exhibit-packed Resource Center.

This is the design event you can’t afford to miss—visit HOWDesignLive.com and register by April 1st to take advantage of the Early-Bird discount rates!

HOW Design Conference
The flagship HOW event, offering a hands-on educational program that lets designers better balance the three components of graphic design: creativity, business and technology.

InHOWse Managers Conference
The must-attend event for in-house managers, revealing the secrets to building and maintaining a respected, happy and downright indispensable creative team.

Creative Freelancer Conference
The only business conference for creative solopreneurs, offering practical information on how to target the right clients, effectively manage money, build effective business plans, and more.

NEW! The Dieline Package Design Conference
A brand-new event exclusively for package designers, providing a place for the package design community to learn, connect and get inspired.

The BIG Ticket
Get all-inclusive access to all four HOW Design Live events at a deeply discounted rate. The BIG Ticket is the absolute best way to wring every ounce of information and inspiration out of HOW Design Live – but only a limited number are available.

Are you like Julianne Moore?

Hi, I'm Deidre. In my posts, I talk about my voyage down the road of self-employment as a website copywriter, my achievements and roadblocks along the way, and what I’m learning as I go (with Marketing Mentor as my guide).

I recently saw the movie, The Kids are All Right. In the movie, Jules (Julianne Moore) was discussing her ideas for redoing Paul’s (Mark Ruffalo’s) garden. He paused for a moment to think, and she immediately thought he hated her ideas.

 

She apologized, saying, “Sometimes I mistake silence for criticism.”

I had to laugh. Damn, that one hit home. I definitely do that too. When my hubby doesn’t jump up and down about the amazing culinary grandeur of the lentil soup I made for dinner, and he simply says, “It’s really good,” I decide, in my head, that he hates it. (I mean, how excited should a person get about lentil soup?)

Many creatives I know strive for praise. They long for a job well done, a happy client, and maybe even a glowing testimonial. (After all, our businesses rely on these things, right?)  But I took a moment to think about the times when, in business, I might mistake silence for criticism. Do you do it too?

• Do you ever call someone, not hear back, and decide they don’t want to talk to you?
• Do you ever send a project, not hear back immediately, and decide they hate it?
• Do they ever say, “Let me look it over,” and you hear, “I’m so disappointed.”
• Do you ever follow up on a past due invoice, get no response, and decide they are never, ever, ever, going to pay you?
• Do you ever follow up on an estimate, not hear back right away, and decide they went with someone else?

If you have the silence = criticism mechanism working in your head too, let’s turn it off. Together. It only hinders our business and our ability to be creative!

From now on, for me, silence just means this: I have a few extra minutes to get a cup of coffee, and my only job is to keep the lines of communication open.

What does silence mean for you? What do you want it to mean?

How can you be a conference speaker?

We have been following Pam Saxon’s journey as she finds new prospects and tries to position herself as an expert by going after speaking gigs. (She is using thought leadership marketing tools, which will be focused on in the Advanced Marketing Group starting the week of November 15th).

Last week, her persistence paid off when she finally got in touch with the organizer of a conference she had been going after for a while to no avail. She didn’t give up, and ultimately got a call with him!

Here’s what happened:

I spoke with the head honcho who hires the speakers for the new organization I'm going after... FINALLY. We have some very important contacts in common (he had gone to the trouble of googling me and finding my bio somewhere out there on the web, probably on my website).
 
He asked me what my ideas are for workshops/seminars, and I briefly told him. He wants me to send a title and blurb for each one, kind of like a mini-proposal, and then they are going to look at everything they have and make the decision about who fits for next year's conference early in January. He told me exactly what they pay, what is covered, there were absolutely no questions. It was great!
 
I was a little nervous talking to him, just because I'm not accustomed to trying to sell myself as a speaker. But I think it went pretty well. My feeling is that once I am able to get one of these things, I'll be able to get more…
 
Thanks to Pam for sharing her story. We will keep you posted on the outcome.

How can you make something big happen for your business? By setting a goal – and not giving up until you get there. If you need accountability, take a look at the Beginner and Advanced Marketing Groups (starting the week of November 15th) to keep you on track.

Should you have a price list for design services?

The process of familiarizing prospects with the cost for your services can be a tricky one. On the LinkedIn Marketing Plan Group, Dawn Mitchell, Owner at G4G Interactive, wonders whether creating a set price list, and posting it on her website, might help.

Here is her question:

What do you think of having a price list?

I've recently noticed that I'm getting more and more tire kickers than usual. I'm starting to get very frustrated because they seem very interested and then drop off once I mention any type of pricing (even if it's a roundabout number). A few that I've talked to are taking ungodly cheaper routes and I'm trying to teach that I'm negotiable and my work is custom work, that general numbers are just a starting point. I have tried to talk about budget and it seems to be a sales game to most people... that or they just don't have any idea what anything costs.

I am in a small business coaching group with a few small business owners like myself and they suggested putting together somewhat of a design menu / price list. I already have one that I can follow, but do you think it would be a good idea to share that? Also, do you think it would be something good to post on your website so you can try to weed out the tire kickers before they even get to you? If I do, I'd be putting a wide range from minimum to maximum and try to fit in the middle with most projects.

What do you think?

Is bartering for you? One creative's experience.

Many creatives find that bartering is a helpful component of their business, and some networking groups even make it possible to barter on the bigger picture -- because bartering is the main purpose of the group.

Dawn Mitchell, owner at G4G Interactive, shares what she’s learned from being a member of a national bartering group, and gives suggestions for others to navigate one effectively. She says:

- It's not that expensive and opens doors to certain opportunities and meeting new people.

- I see it as a little hidden savings account. There is a massage spa in our group and I like to use my bartering money to spoil myself sometimes. It's money I'd probably not spend in other circumstances.

- The clients I've received from it tend to be cheap because they want something for nothing. It's mainly for small jobs and networking to meet other people.

- Make sure that there are other businesses in the group that you want to do business with. If you don't, you may make money that you can't spend. Remember that it's not "real" money in your account and you can't withdraw it. Make sure your account doesn't get too high.

- I give limits on how much I will accept on trade. For instance, I'm only accepting $500 total for any project. If it's a $5,000 website, $4,500 is cash and $500 is trade. You can adjust how much you barter at any time with any bartering group.

- It gives me an excuse to not do any other bartering if I don't wish to. If someone suggests bartering and I don't want to, I mention that I only do bartering through this service. If they join, I can barter, if they don't, I can't barter.

- Sometimes I'm busy with a lot of bartering clients and prospects and sometimes I'm not.

- I would recommend only bartering your time and not any of your out of pocket expenses. If you are working on a barter project that requires printing and you receive a printing commission, consider bartering the design portion only. It's a good way to make a few bucks on a barter project. Also, if there's a printer in the bartering group, consider using them for your printing for barter and non-barter projects. That's a good way to keep cash in your pocket for all projects.

Dawn’s bartering group is Velocity Trade Exchange. The website has a very creative video (featuring Dawn!) that shows how the group works.

Do you have experiences with bartering? Are you in a group like Dawn’s? Please share.

Does your email say "open me"?

We love email marketing. We love Emma for email marketing. And we love Emma’s blog for email marketing best practices. We love them so much we offer a partner discount of 20% off “everything Emma.” 

On the Emma blog, Matt McCutchan shares five effective subject lines that defy conventional wisdom – and they really do! Even though they might go against the rules, they stood out in his inbox and made him open the message. He says:

If you’ve ever seen tips for writing an effective subject line or maybe even attended a conference about email marketing best practices, you’ve probably been advised to abide by a certain set of tried-and-true principles.

First, the experts often say, include your company or brand name so that the mailing becomes instantly trusted and recognizable. Next, keep it short to make the most of the fixed space for subject lines in most email clients and webmail applications. And lastly, use the subject line to highlight the most important part of your campaign message and get your readers to click.

These are great guidelines and are always a helpful place to start. But it’s worth going your own route sometimes, too. I’ve recently noticed five subject lines in my inbox that have seemingly ignored or temporarily kicked conventional wisdom to the curb, yet still grabbed my attention…

See them here: http://myemma.com/blog/2010/07/16/subject-line-remix/

If you need to create an email newsletter – we can't recommend Emma highy enough. Use Marketing Mentor code “MM0701” when you sign up and receive a 20% discount.

Talking directly to your market

I talk a lot about how to speak directly to your market using the terms and language they understand.

Here is a perfect example of this from Pam Saxon of Saxon Design. She has posted, Want Raving Fans? Break the Fourth Wall, on her Facebook page. Although the post makes sense for any business owner who wants “raving fans,” it is particularly relatable to the people in one of her markets, show biz. 

Here is an excerpt:

Snarky is 'out' and authenticity is 'in'
There exists a huge gap between what is real and what is perceived in the marketplace, and consumers know this, which is why it is harder than ever to gain trust. Closing that gap (breaking the fourth wall) helps to create trust. For instance, when a business positions itself as carrying a certain value or experience, and that doesn't resonate with the story they are telling (their personal updates on Facebook, for instance), it gives their prospects a reason to look somewhere else; consumers will quickly shift their attention to a brand that consistently 'rings true'.

So how do we do that? The answer is simple, but simple is not always easy -- be ourselves. And since there are many aspects to 'who we are', make sure to choose that part of you that is consistent with the part of you that is your brand. Remember who you are talking to, and under what conditions. For instance, your LinkedIn updates wouldn't necessarily be the same as your Tweets. Different situations, different platforms, and the inferred rules of the game-spaces are distinctly different.

Read the rest here: http://www.facebook.com/notes/saxon-design-creating-trust-in-marketing/want-raving-fans-break-the-fourth-wall/133651199997950

How can you use the specialized language that your audience understands?

Have you gotten jobs from LinkedIn?

Are you using LinkedIn?

So many people are – but we get questions all the time about exactly how to use it. There are so many things you can do on LinkedIn, and one thing we really love is LinkedIn Groups. Here’s a video about how to use the groups. http://learn.linkedin.com/groups/

LinkedIn Groups is great because everyone in the group shares something in common. It helps narrow down your connections and makes real relationships more possible, because you can get to know people over time through the group community.

In the group setting, you can start or contribute to discussions, ask and answer questions, share news and more. We’ve heard about people finding collaborators, getting publicity, and even getting new clients on LinkedIn from within their group.

One copywriter says:

Quite a few of my LinkedIn group members have gotten in touch with me to discuss projects. They needed a copywriter and found me from within their group. Even though we didn’t know each other personally (yet), the fact that we were in the same group meant we shared connections and common interests. I had known their names from seeing their comments and contributions, and they had known mine for the same reason.

What you have you noticed about using LinkedIn? Have you gotten jobs from LinkedIn? Developed new relationships? Please share.

World’s Best Subject Line – The Exciting Conclusion

Ready to write subject lines that land in computers and smart phones with irresistible appeal, interrupting quiet walks with iPhones on the beach, luring BBQ-goers off to a quiet corner to read their BlackBerry, and providing welcome distraction to drivers gridlocked in holiday traffic (only when you're at a complete stop, now)?

Then as the follow-up to my first post, World’s Best Subject Line, here are a few more tips on writing subject lines that get noticed:

• Focus on expressing a clear idea and don't worry about writing a complete sentence.

• If your email is part of a series, make all the subject lines distinctly different. You don't want anyone thinking you're sending the same email you already sent.

• Feel free to tease; give just enough away to entice without giving away the story.

• Be honest. Make sure your email is related to the email content. No one likes being tricked.

• Avoid spammy words like free, save and money. If your email service is any good, it will flag the "dirty" words for you.

Lastly, take a chance and do something interesting. With the amount of email people get these days, you have to.

For more tips like this, sign up to receive Conrad’s newsletter “a little something from backpocket copywriter” at www.backpocketcopywriter.com/tips.htm.

Permission to network

The reason we attend networking events, is to network, right?

But it seems that often, despite the title, “networking event,” people still have a hard time networking.

At least week’s Freelancers Union speed networking event, Practice Your 10-Word Blurb, Dyana Valentine and I gave attendees “permission” to network. This meant it was ok to say, “Hi, my name is…” and “Excuse me, I’m going to mingle and meet some more people.”  We found that it’s not even about the language that is used – it’s about having the permission in the room.

Our goal was to create an atmosphere where networking was the goal -- because when you practice networking, you get better at it. Then, ultimately, you will feel more comfortable networking in “networking” environments, or any environment at all.

Do you have a favorite exit line when you’re ready to finish a conversation and talk to someone new?