Get Off to a Great Start in '08!

Happy New Year everyone! Today is my first day back from holiday vacation and I’m excited about what 2008 is going to bring…

After taking some time to reflect on 2007 I have begun to formulate a plan to make 2008 even more fulfilling. (And YOU will benefit along the way.)

One of the things that made the last year so rewarding was getting to talk to so many painters and painting business owners.

I had the privilege of helping literally hundreds of people start and/or grow their painting business. Painting for Profits became a best seller - and all the tips, strategies and techniques I reveal are now proven to work all over the world.

House Painters from Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, New Zealand and the U.S. have used the Painting for Profits – Painting Business Success System to bring in a consistent flow of new customers and earn higher profits (WITHOUT expensive traditional advertising).

…And before you say, "yeah but my painting business is different," let me tell you the Painting for Profits system has worked for painters from all different skill levels and backgrounds.

Whether you are a seasoned pro running a full time, full service, multi-crew painting business or you are new to the painting trade and will be starting from scratch my program will do the same for you.

Whether you are going to be targeting commercial properties, new construction or the 100’s of residential repaint jobs that are available every day right in your own backyard, you will benefit from Painting for Profits.

Unlike a lot of other painting blogs I will not talk a whole lot about painting techniques… I will concentrate on the “Business Side” of the painting business.

Topics like:

• Marketing
• Bidding and Estimating
• Employee Management
• Office Management
• Goal Setting
• Mind Set
• Etc…

I hope you find this blog both educational as well as entertaining. I encourage feedback and dialog so feel free to ask questions…

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Is It The Best You Can Do?

A new year brings a lot of talk about favourite advertising of the year that's passed and new campaigns being launched. It's interesting, but it also serves to remind me that agency people and media commentators look at advertising in a totally different way from the target audience due to their investment in the work and their attachment to the ironic referencing of cultural and, yes, advertising staples.

The whole process of pitching, working up ideas and then having to get them past the client is bewildering to me and is surely not the best way to do things. Despite the efforts of a lot of talented people, it is undeniable and unsurprising that a lot of wasted advertising is produced. The system places the focus on jumping a series of hurdles and it is a strong person who ignores that momentum and asks what I think are the vital questions - namely what's wrong with this ad in terms of its strategic message, its creative execution and its media buying? Is that the best we can do?

Even if it is the best that a bunch of very smart people have so far produced and normally cautious and uncreative marketing directors have approved it, should that be the end of it? The clutter above which you have to rise is louder and denser than before. We all know that, but let's not just pay lip-service to it. If it's not the absolute best you can do, then frankly what's the point of doing it?

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Marketing 2.0 Is Groucho Marketing.

The belonging/copying debate that is emerging from the world of Herd and Social Objects will get very loud this year as people seek to understand the social influences on buyer behaviour.

One of the discussions I'm having with various people involved in it is just how good/different your product/service has to be before people will view its possession as something worthy of copying. In other words, is your club worth joining? Groucho marketing if you will.

Coincidentally, Cynical Rob alluded to the same thing in the comments yesterday when he wrote

we've just done some work in Indonesia and found that the real reason behind certain brand choice/desirability was because it gave people a sense of 'belonging' [to the wider population] as opposed to it offering any inherent desirable quality.

Personally, I've always believed that, outside of the fashion/craze realm, the answer is that it has to be pretty damn good which leads back to one of my abiding beliefs - that marketing starts with product development. Maybe I'm overestimating that.


Image via spadepot.com

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Fan Or Fantasy?

Economic conditions have proven difficulty for retailers this past year and today there are announcements of profit warnings from some of the "pile it high" stores.

By contrast, the managing director of Waitrose supermarkets apparently receives 50 letters a week from people asking him to open branches in their neighbourhood.

They're definitely supermarkets, though physically smaller with a focussed product range aimed at a slightly upmarket clientele. Their market share may only be 4% but their differences clearly appeal and this creates the loyalty that other retailers lack.

The managing director can genuinely declare that "We don't have customers so much as fans." That's something that any contemporary would dearly love to repeat and which critics of the economic underpinnings of certain social network businesses should note.

Think of making people your fans rather than passive customers with "loyalty" cards and business gets a lot more interesting.

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Joined Up Marketing.

Holidays over, so let's get back up to speed with a pop quiz.

A letter arrives from a major national electrical goods retailer in response to my customer service query. It explains that

It is not always possible for the store to be aware of each of the television advertisements that we display. However, they can quickly check with our marketing department in order to establish this information for (you)

Can you spot the mistake?

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The Facebook Experience?

This Facebook spoof encompasses a useful lesson. If you bother truly to visualise your customers' experience and do so in as exaggerated way as you dare, you may get a feel for what you could be doing wrong.

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If You Don't Care, Why Should They?

My one prediction of 2008 is that Juno will be in your top ten list of best movies, so imagine my exasperation when the first TV spot I saw was in the middle of sports programming.

What made someone think that the mindset of the audience for live horse-racing would chime with that for a sharp youth-oriented movie that's garnering awards wherever it goes?

I know media buying is replete with deals, but the thinking here can only be that of relatively cheap TV exposure and that is box-ticking of the worst sort. If you can't afford more relevant spots, then spend the money in another way rather than do something that shows disdain for the audience and, even worse, disdain for what you're marketing.

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