Scott’s Blog

SUCCESS STARTS WITH SCHEDULES

I’ve been working with companies for nearly three decades. I’ve seen a lot of marketing programs succeed, and I’ve seen a lot crash and burn. Many different factors play roles in that success or failure, but you might be surprised at the one element that always seems to be part of successful efforts.

It’s organization. Something as simple as a rigid schedule often spells the difference between success and failure. Whether it’s trying to sustain a monthly newsletter, produce an annual report, or stretch a marketing budget across a full year, the discipline of some sort of schedule is critical.

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THE DEATH OF APPRENTICESHIP

A wise boss once lamented what he called the death of apprenticeship. As organizations downsized, the paths to management were compressed, and people found themselves making decisions that they would have previously waited a decade or two to make.

Where a generation before, a marketing decision-maker would approach those decisions having spent many years working under other decision-makers and learning from them, today, it’s not at all unusual for people fresh out of college to find themselves in control of what companies do. Of course, most leave school with more focused education than in days past, but there’s still a lot to be said for experience.

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YOUR SILENT SALESMAN

What is a brochure? An ad? A radio commercial? A website? You get 5 points if you said they’re all marketing communications channels. But they’re also something more.

You can’t be everywhere, and that includes everywhere your prospective customers are. So you develop materials such as ads and brochures to stand in for you. In essence, they’re actually salespeople for your organization, conveying messages when you can’t be there to do it.

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THE ROYAL WE AND YOUR BUSINESS

Way back when I started my business (in the days when the Internet was powered by squirrels in exercise wheels and nearly all websites were blue), I spent a lot of time in online forums and other sites that catered to the small-business crowd. Like the rest of the denizens, I was looking for sound advice. Frankly, I found little.

But I still remember that one conundrum really seemed to vex visitors to those sites. “When writing about my business, should I use ‘I’ or ‘we’?” Oh, there were impassioned arguments about this topic, and I see the same arguments today on sites that cater to budding entrepreneurs. So what is the answer?

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YOU ARE THE GOVERNMENT

(Please pardon me if I move away from my usual neighborhood and become somewhat political and perhaps a bit strident for a moment or two.)

Yesterday, I read a letter to the editor from a frustrated teenager. She was filing her income taxes for the first time and was aghast that “the government” was “stealing” her money. I’m reasonably certain that she’s not among my three regular readers, but in the chance she happens upon my blog, I’d like to respond.

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RESUMES ARE LIKE ROMANCE

Not long ago, I spoke to a group of high school students about resume writing. My goal was to help them understand what resumes really are – a tool that allows companies to quickly eliminate people from the application and interview process.

I spoke with some experience, having been the resume screener at several jobs. When the company would run an ad and 200 resumes showed up in response, the first responsibility is to cut that number to something manageable. So I’d spend five to ten seconds with each resume, determining whether it went into the “maybe” pile or the trash.

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ADVERTISERS, DON’T GIVE IN TO GUILT

Nearly every local newspaper publishes special editorial sections and pages like the Spring Sports Review, the Home Improvement Preview, or the Celebrate America’s Freedom tabloid.

I call them “guilt sections” because many sales reps use guilt to sell the space. “You don’t want to support high school basketball? You don’t think Independence Day is important? You know, your competitor down the street is going to be in there.” Have you ever known a point guard to sit depressed on the bench or miss a shot because a particular business didn’t buy an ad?

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CHEAP PAINT JOBS

I suspect that anyone who has ever lived in an apartment or a college dorm knows that toothpaste offers a fast way to hide nail holes and other small injuries to the walls. And anyone who has ever tried to sell a house has probably heard that slapping a quick coat of paint on the walls can make the house look newer and fresher. Nearly everyone who visits a dentist subjects his or her teeth to the most vigorous brushing an hour before the appointment. We also seem to have a growing percentage of the population who thinks a body spray can replace a good-old-fashioned shower.

Those are all quick cover-ups, and we all know that they don’t really fool anyone. Oh, they might divert our attention, but when we look (or sniff) more closely, we see the truth very clearly.

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FISH WHERE YOU KNOW THERE’S FISH

Imagine that your family is starving. You live an equal distance from three lakes, and you have one fishing pole, two hooks, and two worms.

You’ve fished in only one of lakes, and have caught plenty of palm-sized bluegills and decent catfish there. You’ve heard that the second lake contains some big bass, but you’ve never been there. And you think the third lake is really attractive, and you’ve had a nibble or two while fishing there, but you’ve never landed anything. So with your family starving, where should you fish?

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