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Andy Sernovitz's Damn, I Wish I'd Thought of That!

Unusually Useful Ideas for Smart Marketers Good marketing doesn't have to be difficult. We write about stuff that you can actually do.

You should pay me ...Yesterday

I just got charged $3.50 to buy a gift certificate from a store. That's not right.

They should be paying me and thanking me instead.

When someone gives a gift certificate from your business--they are doing your marketing for you.  They are doing you a favor by bringing you a new customer, and even paying for their friend's first purchase.

You should consider how much you saved in getting a new customer--and REWARD the person who brought them to you.  Lettuce Entertain You restaurants in Chicago gets it right.  They give you a $25 gift certificate when you buy one for a friend.

Lesson: How can you encourage your customers to bring their friends?  How many gift certificates should you give away?

(A similar story from Ben and Jackie)

A name worth repeatingJanuary 6

You need to give yourself a name or category that is memorable and repeatable. 

People can't talk about you if they can't remember your name. People can't talk about you if you do the same thing as everyone else.  (That's branding/positioning lesson #1).

Here's a classic from the Derek Sivers, sent in by Laura Roeder:

Two words, to describe your music, can change your career.

David Feder and his band Salagua-Azul always wanted to get into big music festivals. They had been performing for years, and doing OK, but the agents that book music festivals would never give them a chance.

At a show, a drunk fan said, in between songs, “You know what? You guys are HILLBILLY FLAMENCO!” The crowd laughed, and so did the band. They joked about it again on stage that night, and again on the drive home.

The next day they started to notice that they all STILL remembered those two words, “hillbilly flamenco”. It was funny, but described their music well. The crowd liked it. They decided to use it more often.

They started telling the audience, each time they played, “If you are wondering what kind of music this is, this is hillbilly flamenco!” And the end of the show, they’d ask the audience, “And when you tell your friends what kind of music you heard tonight, what kind of music is it?” The crowd would say, “HILLBILLY FLAMENCO!”

And believe it or not… it worked! People started telling their friends about this band, because it was so easy (and fun) to describe.

And then, one day, they were talking to one of those booking agents who books festivals, and told him, “This music is perfect for your festivals. This is hillbilly flamenco!” The booking agent laughed and said, “Ok - I’ve GOT to hear this!”

Now David Feder and his band are playing the festivals they always dreamed of. He told me his career took a definite turn the day they started using those two words to describe their music.

Read the original post.

Here's what David Feder sounds like:

When ad targeting goes badJanuary 5

I'm a huge fan of Hulu -- because it works, but mostly because they are the first company to prove to the ailing/blind entertainment industry that there is an intelligent path to thrive (if they stop fighting the future and start getting smart).

But ... they need to do a little work on where they run the ads:

• Charities like Kiva probably don't want to be featured on the Porky's shower scene
• Children's shows like Sesame Street should not have ads at all
• HealthierUS.gov might be OK with their placement on Monty Python's Mr. Creosote.

The future of PRJanuary 4

Good thoughts from Valeria Maltoni on the future of PR and social media.

Good PR comes at a cost - research, the experience of knowing what's important, the relationships we build to offer content that people want to make part of their lives. New media helps do the rest - it helps reinforce the publics' decision to pay attention to you and your business. (Read the rest here.)

From a column I wrote for Smart Brief on Social Media, where I am Editor-at-Large:

PR executives make the best social media executives. There is a similar mindset. Traditional media relations requires finding the right influencers, building trust, and sharing credible, relevant stories. Translating those actions to social media — replacing reporters with the bigger community — is exactly how to run a great social media program. (Read the rest here.)

Rating the ratersJanuary 3

Do we trust the word of mouth from people who post online reviews?  In general, yes, although there are often a few a) suspicious/fake posts from marketers and b) idiots/asses.

So how do you fix it? Use the power of reviews to review the reviews. 

• Amazon: Users rank the reviews as helpful or not, comment on the reviews, and report spam.  Amazon lists the most helpful reviews first (not the most recent).
• YouTube: Next to each review is a "thumb up/thumb down" choice and a "report as spam" link.  When you look at comments on a video, those with too many thumbs down are filtered out.

How can you let your customers handle quality control of the content on your site?