To market to market…
For three weeks I’ve felt behind-the-eight-ball. Too much to do, not enough time to do it. It’s been good practice in priority setting. Many things are important to me and it’s always been difficult figuring out which ones to let slide when there’s not enough time to do them all. And how not to tweak about letting them slide.
All along I knew that I only had to make it through each day by itself and that when today finally came, I could rest. I’ve extended that into tomorrow.
I have simple goals for today. Nap. Do the dishes. Nap. Pick up around the apartment. Nap. Read a book. Nap. Get the laundry ready for tomorrow. Nap. Stay away from all forms of business except the two weekly updates I have to make to two sites. And even those can slide into tomorrow with no great harm.
Looking back on my calendar I see I forgot to pay RoadRunner on Wednesday, so maybe I’ll do that too today. If I feel like using the phone.
The big time consumer in these past weeks is a new product launch and all the related marketing stuff that goes with it. After a year of threatening to do so, I now have an advertising campaign. It rolls out in the October print edition of the The Empty Closet.
I’ve placed two ads in the EC. One is a general-purpose ad for the business. The second is specifically for the new product. I’ll be advertising that soon on the Internet too.
Ego wanted me to place big, color ads in the EC. Miserly habits wanted me to go only with the 1/16th page black-and-white ad. I settled on 1/8th page ads in greyscale and signed a three month contract for that.
I decided against advertising with ImageOut this year. ImageOut is Rochester’s annual GLBTI film festival. I decided it was ego, not good business, that wanted me to see my ad on the theater screens before each showing. Maybe next year.
Advertising in the program just doesn’t seem like it’s very effective. It wasn’t until after examining the rate card that I even knew they had advertising in the program. I’d never noticed it before. I figure I can’t be the only one who doesn’t even see that there are ads there, so that’s a no-go.
As an aside, I’m fairly ambivalent about this year’s offerings at ImageOut. Nothing really grabs me, there are a lot of films in areas that I avoid or am just not interested in, and the remainder seem like filler.
Then again, I haven’t really spent any focused time with the program, so that could all change after I curl up with it on the couch for an hour or two.
In any event, the big new product I’ve launched is Web Studio, a do-it-yourself tool for instant web sites.
My gut tells me there are a lot of people, businesses and organizations who feel they don’t have the time, talent or budget for a web site. That’s the target market for Web Studio. The next few months will tell if that gut feeling is right, or just indigestion.
My biggest cost is the advertising, so if it flies, it’s a huge cash cow. If it flops, I’m not really out anything since the ads build name-recognition for the business anyway. I suppose there’s also a middle ground in there somewhere too.
Before the ads hit I want to rework the companion web site. I have a hard time with the differences between marketing, sales and product information. The home page of that site, especially, is far too heavy on product information and far too light on marketing.
Working with an ad designer really drove that point home. It was a painful process for me because I’m highly product information oriented.
My general-purpose ad was strictly marketing, image and positioning. This is who we are and what we do. Seven single-word bullet points and gobs of white-space. I was happy with the layout when I first created it months and months ago. The ad designer loved it and made only a minor tweak or two.
The Web Studio ad, however, was another story entirely. I just couldn’t get it stripped down to the same simplicity as the general-purpose ad. I see it as a wonderful product with loads of great features. I’m exuberant over it and could prattle on for days and weeks over who should use it, why they should use it and convincing them that they can use it.
We eventually distilled it down to one line of product description—do-it-yourself personal web sites—three big, fat bullet points:
- fast
- easy
- inexpensive
and a dozen words to go with each bullet point.
The result is a very strong family resemblance to the general-purpose ad and a very strong marketing message. This is what it is, here are the benefits. A little less white-space than the general-purpose ad, but gobs more than you see in most ads.
Even if it doesn’t generate a single sale, it was worth the time, pain and money strictly for the marketing education.
And I think I’m over the bad feelings—guilt mostly—over not generating a single billable hour in weeks.
