Spotlight on Marketing

I love Elizabeth Purvis, “The Marketing Goddess”. In the latest issue of her e-newsletter (November 10, 2010), Elizabeth wrote: “If you want to create more money in your business, add more value! So what does it mean to add value? Quite simply, it means: give people what they want.” But I’m confused about that. People don’t usually KNOW what they want, and they don’t know how to articulate what they want. Nobody WANTED a telephone, a pet rock or a Kindle before those things were offered to them, yet entrepreneurs took a calculated risk and chose to offer those products in the marketplace.

If I see one more of those crowd-breaks-into-spontaneous-dance-routine videos, I swear I’ll puke! The dance routines are clearly meant to LOOK as if they’re spontaneous, but they’re all obviously meticulously planned, choreographed, rehearsed and stage-managed. And all the videos are ads.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole affiliate system leaves an icky feeling in my gut, and I don’t want anything to do with it. OK, so maybe I’m not very business-minded or entrepreneurial. Some people are great at negotiating deals, putting sellers in touch with buyers and taking a cut; I’m just not like that, and I don’t want to be.

Many people tweet to recommend an article or blog posting by someone else, but do not credit the writer of that article or blog posting in their tweet. I find that odd, unhelpful, unethical and just plain rude. …it’s not just about common courtesy and giving credit where it’s due - I’d be more likely to click on a link to an article if I recognise the author’s name (especially if it’s someone famous or someone I respect).

Thanks to http://www.copyscape.com I just discovered that an advertising/marketing guy in India has plagiarised huge chunks of text verbatim from my website.

A potential client recently contacted me, asking me to edit her monthly e-newsletter. She proposed that because she has no budget for marketing, she’d pay me for my services by referring others to me. I say pay me AND offer referrals.

In recent months I’ve seen lots of e-mails, e-newsletters, invitations and tweets that use variations on the word “kill” in order to tempt me buy a product, use a service or attend an event. But I don’t want “killing” to have anything to do with how I do business or relate to people.