First I’ll tell you about the gadget. Then, if it’s not immediately apparent, I’ll explain why anyone involved in sales must have one immediately.

It’s a pen. But it’s like no other that you have ever seen, used, or even heard of. Its makers call it a paper-based computing system, and they’re not exaggerating.

Imagine a pen that remembers everything you write. When your day draws to a close, you dock it in its cradle, and flawless images of all of your notes are uploaded to its software on your desktop. Even better, if your writing is reasonably legible, you can text-search your notes or even convert them to editable text.

If that’s not exciting enough… imagine that this pen records (with astounding audio quality) everything that’s being said as you take your notes – and links the audio to what you write.

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I conduct a monthly executive dialogue with members of the Retail Merchants Association in Virginia. Business owners attend a lunch session that we call Smart Marketing, and I have the chance to watch and counsel them in their responses to our ailing economy. These days, the decision making patterns of most of them is so consistent that I find it hard to contain myself.

When the economy slows down, the ad sales people crank up.
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Regardless of what you sell, people will ask others before they buy. And guess what. They trust what they hear from their friends more than anything you’ll ever say in your advertising.

This is hardly breaking news. Since the first caveman started selling clubs and spears, people have been voicing their vendor related gripes and praises to their friends.

Word-of-mouth just happens.  And that’s how most of us still view it… something that happens as opposed to something we can actually influence.

If that’s still your view, you’re missing the boat and probably losing business as a result.
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Twice in two days, I’ve had the same conversation with marketers suffering from the same confusion. Both are organizations that rely on lead generation as the first step in their sales processes. That is to say, they expose prospects to their marketing message in an effort to move them to contact the company, learn more, and finalize a sale.

The problem both companies had (and I see this all the time) is they were falling into the trap of over-communicating in their marketing materials… telling their whole stories… every detail… forgetting that the goal of their marketing is not to close the sale on the spot. Rather, the goal is to motivate a prospect to call and engage in the sales process.

I find this happens most often when companies write their own marketing copy. They are so close to what they’re doing, they lose their ability to trim down their story. They can no longer write copy that engages prospects quickly, established the firm’s credibility, yet leaves enough to talk about that it makes sense for the prospect to call.

This problem is VERY easy to stumble into. I struggle with it myself when I’m writing about products or services that I’ve been part of creating.

Here’s what seems to happen…
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I got my 5th invitation today to join the 6 Degrees of Separation group on Facebook.

I decided to investigate it. I’m seriously intrigued (as we all should be) by the social networking phenomenon and how it will impact the marketing world in the months and years ahead. Clearly there’s a viral potential for ideas and applications within social networks that is unprecedented.

Yet, I’m still waiting and watching for case studies that demonstrate the marketing ROI on these initiatives. There is no doubt these concepts draw eyeballs… and can be sticky (at least for short bursts of time). But is anyone other that the app developers making money?
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I’m a big fan of user reviews.

As a consumer, I refer to them whenever they’re available, and I find that they influence my purchase decisions. Short of a product demonstration, as an instrument of persuasion, the user review has to be among the most effective tools we have at our disposal.

Consider for a moment the difference in your own mind between a user review and its big brother, the testimonial.

As similar as I suppose they are in theory, I regard the two very differently.

To me the very designation – testimonial – suggests that the message will be positive… one notch down from its slippery sibling, the endorsement.

Particularly online, testimonials have been so abused, bastardized and corrupted that unless they are particularly well presented, I find that I view them all as counterfeit… sales copy from deceptive marketers.

User reviews on the other hand, at least for now, remain relatively pure in my mind.

For some reason, I feel like the user review is a more authentic, unscripted expression of a real person’s real-life experience with a product or service. Probably naively, I expect to hear both the good and the bad.

I trust them more.

So what do if you’re a testimonial junkie and don’t yet have the facilities to cultivate and display user reviews?

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A professional marketer recently suggested that the marketing principles I’ve been addressing related to overt benefit, dramatic difference, and real reasons to believe are outdated… they no longer apply since the dawn of category competition.

The example that she cited was that of GM, Ford, and Chrysler perfecting these principles only to converge on a “commodity position” and obviously struggle in the marketplace.

At times it would be easier to draw this conclusion and search for an easier path to resolve our most fundamental marketing challenges. But respectfully, I disagree. These principles are not outdated.  Rather, I think that these tired organizations have forgotten (or possibly can no longer deliver on) the concepts of REAL reasons to believe and DRAMATIC difference. Their products are painfully inferior to their foreign competitors, and sadly, they no longer have a benefit to offer that is more pronounced than 0% financing.

In fairness to their marketers, the weight of the business economic issues plaguing our auto makers (the burden of healthcare costs, etc.) is probably as much or more to blame for this than anything else.

However, when your category becomes crowded, and if ever wellspring of product innovation runs dry, differentiation can always be found in the provision of service… making bold declarations and standing behind them… building new and REAL reasons to believe.
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I had the pleasure last week of kicking off the 2008 First Friday Forum series for the Retail Merchants Association (RMA) in Virginia. The content of this talk was pulled from a series of my posts on the laws of marketing physics as defined by Doug Hall at the Eureka! Ranch and other helpful insights from such authors as Dr. Robert Cialdini and Chip & Dan Heath (Made to Stick).

Filmed before a group of about 200 Virginia retailers, the RMA produced a nicely edited version of the talk.

As I’ve been asked repeatedly by my readers to provide a video post, I thought this might be of interest to some of you who have gotten to know me only by way of my writing. The talk has been abridged (sacrificing my infomercial humor), but they did a nice job of capturing much of the substance. If you would like to receive the slides from the presentation, shoot me an email or comment.

If you’re not doing ROI calculations before and after your marketing initiatives, you certainly should.  Let me remove any excuse for not doing this…

I’m surprised by how easy it is for marketers to overlook this important calculation as they weigh their creative options and plan their campaigns.  So, let this first act as a simple reminder not to undertake anything marketing-related this year without at least considering your anticipated return… and the return you got the last time you did something similar.

Sometimes it’s admittedly difficult to arrive at solid ROI forecasts in the marketing arena.  Your investment in PR… in word-of-mouth… brand-building….  That’s not to excuse those who turn a blind eye all-together to ROI relative to these activities, but there is no denying that it can be tough.

But when it comes to direct marketing and pay-per-click advertising, you’re insane if you aren’t being diligent about ROI.

This is why I’ve taken a couple of my own ROI calculators and published them here for you to use whenever you like. Bookmark the page. Send it to your colleagues. And never again accept another DM or PPC marketing proposal without a clear calculation of ROI (along with the underlying assumptions).
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A short while ago, I wrote a post discussing one of three key marketing principles discovered and well-documented by the Eureka! Ranch (Overt Benefit). I’ve gotten a lot of feedback since, and thought it would be worthwhile to complete my review of all three principles as we should all have them at the forefront of our minds as we undertake our work.

The second principle speaks to the skepticism that all of us feel when confronted with marketing. Let’s face it… life experience has taught us to believe little of what we hear from marketers.

For this reason, strong statements of benefits – no matter how compelling – fail to move people to action without the help of REAL reasons to believe what you’re saying.

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