Co-marketing is a powerful lead generation tactic|ducttapemarketing

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One of the greatest lead generation tactics around is the trusted referral. I mean, I know you know that, but what are you actually doing to take advantage of it?

photo credit: Wicked LIttle Cake Company via photopin cc

What are you doing to make certain that every single day dozens of unpaid sales calls are being made on your behalf?Sound intriguing? Co-marketing, or getting others to actively market your business, isn’t a new concept, but surprisingly few do it actively.

The basic idea behind it is to form a small network of “best of class” providers who can act as an additional arm of marketing for each other. I’ve seen this done with remarkable results – sometimes tripling and quintupling the number of leads an organization creates –  particularly for businesses that operate on a the local level.

Read on for how to set it up.

Big Brother – Facebook Style

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My friend Ben Hillman is an animator and graphic artist who has his own firm in New York. He possesses an acerbic wit and very definite political opinions. When he learned that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerman was a proponent of (and investor in) the Keystone Pipeline and drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Reserve, he developed a little graphic to display his ire:

fuckzuck blank

Ben posted this on his wall on Facebook. Shortly thereafter (less than a minute) I saw the post and shared it on my wall. It appeared on my wall for less than one minute. There was a page refresh and then it was gone. It was also removed from Ben’s wall as well. 

The take away is this: Everything you post is being monitored by Facebook in real time. You have no privacy. They will censor your political and social opinions.

Finally, Mark Zuckerberg is a thin skinned douchebag.

For some interesting reading on the same subject, click here.

The censor of the graphic is mine. We’re trying to run a relatively PG blog here. For the actual, uncensored NSFW graphic, click here – Ed.

Crutch Phrase | Urban Dictionary

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April 29: Crutch phrase

An overworked figure of speech, such as, inter alia, “at the end of the day,” or “it is what is,” or “thinking outside the box,” or “leverage our resources.” Crutchphrases are a common refuge of speakers who have difficulty articulating ideas or concepts without reflexively using jargon and cliché. Often relied upon by powerpoint-user speakers who simply repeat what is already printed on the Powerpoint slide.

The use of a crutchphrase is often an open admission of an unwillingness or inability to think, let alone use language effectively.

“At the end of the day,” the speaker droned, “we have to think out of the box if we are to successfully leverage our resources.” Note the split infinitive.

“But,” protested a listener, “you’re not making any sense at all, you’re just babbling a bunch of crutch phrases!”

“It is what it is,” replied the speaker, retreating to the safe territory of a crutch phrase. 

Every presentation I pray I don’t fall prey to these, easy, useless words. It’s  so hard to stay fresh – Ed.

What the Rolling Stones Can Teach You About Business | Inc.com

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In December, my wife, Elaine, and I attended a 50th-anniversary concert of the Rolling Stones at Brooklyn, New York’s new Barclays Center. They’re often referred to as the Strolling Bones these days, and with good reason. They’re old. You can’t help noticing how weathered their faces look. So it’s all the more amazing to watch Mick Jagger, at 69, strutting around the stage just like he did half a century ago. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He and I are about the same age. “Why is he doing this?” I asked myself. “He doesn’t need the money. What is it?”

Then it hit me. I dropped down into my seat and started to laugh. “Why are you laughing?” Elaine shouted over the din. “I just figured out what’s been driving me all these years,” I shouted back.

As I told her later, I’d had an epiphany. I’d suddenly understood the meaning of the word passion. Mick Jagger, I realized, keeps doing what he does for the same reason that I keep doing what I do: because he has to. Performing defines him. He has to do it in order to feel alive–which is also why I start and build businesses.

Read More.

eBay: We Tested Google Advertising & It Didn’t Pay | MarketingVOX

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eBay has been one of the largest advertisers on Google, but that might not be the case for much longer. It decided to do an A-B split test to determine how many of those clicks they would have eventually seen even without those paid placements; even going so far as to go dark in 30 market areas to provide a control. In a study conducted with eBay Labs along including fancy degree holders from Berkeley and U. Chicago, it showed that it only made back about 25 cents on the dollar spent.

The study shows that brand ads – and by that they mean ads that focus on the brand names of the products to be theoretically purchased, rather than “branding” ads – can be efficiently effective for potential new users to the retailer, but tend to be unnecessary for those who are already familiar with the retailer. eBay, more than most, would suffer from a high familiarity ratio, thus making its relative efficiency low.

One thing the full version of the study appears to miss, however, is that very high clickthrough rate experienced by an ad due to a specific brand reference that is common to the search term may have another financial benefit to the advertiser: increasing the “quality score” of the ad campaign, and thus reducing the expense of other clicks in the campaign.

eBay bids on a universe of more than 170 million keywords. It spends more than $50 million a year on online advertising.

Read More.

The Real Cost of Self-Publishing: Beyond Vanity | Bloomberg

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Beyond Vanity

Stephen King rocked the publishing world when he began distributing books online in 2000. J.K. Rowling roiled the industry again in 2011 when she decided to self-publish her Harry Potter series through her own platform, Pottermore. Such big names join thousands of others who are self-publishing books — though many do so because it’s their only option.

More than 235,000 books and e-books were self-published in 2011 in the U.S., four times the number in 2006, according to Bowker, an agency that assigns books unique identification codes.

Read More.

Kitchen Appliance Garage | IKEA Hackers.net

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Materials: Varde glass door wall cabinet, standard Ikea base cabinets & Ekby Bjarnum wall shelves

Description: We were looking for a built in storage unit/appliance garage to store all of our small counter-top appliances. The problems we were facing were:

1) Cost…highly expensive to have custom built

2) Availability…we could find roller door cabinetry but most was too shallow to house our large kitchen aid mixer and Magimix…so

IKEA to the rescue. We wanted all of the clutter HIDDEN and we wanted something that looked custom built to fit the space.

See Instructions.