My First Book Review - Enchantment

A couple of weeks ago, I was approached by Guy Kawasaki to review his latest book, Enchantment. Now, I'm not a book reviewer, I'll get that out of the way right now as to lower your expectations on the posting you are about to (are) read(ing), so I was a bit confused about why my opinion on his book would be important or even necessary. Keep in mind, that Guy is not a friend, colleague nor family member, so to ask me to review the book was really a bit of a surprise. I'm a nobody.

As it turns out, my business blog is listed on Alltop, Mr. Kawasaki's web site that lists top blogs in various fields - Tales from the Expedition is a marketing blog and fit the bill to review a book on marketing.

But, to simply call Enchantment a marketing book would be foolish and unedu-macated. Enchantment is a book about being better, about being enchanting, about so much more than just marketing... having said that, it can all be applied to marketing. The fact that it's not just about marketing is why I believe this book will do very well - it's a book about business, relationships, marketing, leadership, sales and about being someone people will like and trust. It's about being enchanting.

I learned while reading Enchantment that approaching nobodies like myself (a lot of us actually), that the message of this book can be spread. Well, we'll see about that... I'm sure if Guy had access to our Google Analytics, he wouldn't have approached us to begin with (LOL). Also, after learning of Guy's passion for hockey, I had an obligation to review this - it's the dressing room code. With his passion in mind, I took my review copy to the site of the NHL's Heritage Classic, where my team was fortunate enough to play one afternoon following the big NHL game, for a quick photo (above) - hockey is also a passion of mine.

OK, so, here it goes, my first book review:

At first I was afraid I was petrified...

While reading the book I was overcome with the thought that the secret is out - thanks Guy for telling everyone, thanks for ruining what we had. Not to say I am enchanting myself, but Guy goes on to tell people, in point form and with some very good examples on how to be enchanting - some of these techniques I use myself (although, admittedly, I didn't know they were techniques until after I read the book). I was mortified that this information could get into the wrong hands and only calmed down after convincing myself that not all horses drink when lead to water. Even when the water is so easily presented, with the fences removed.

Also, when you consider that everyone has access to the secret eleven herbs and spices used by the colonel (thanks to the interweb) and nobody is making it, that tells me that the secret is still mostly safe. Mostly. You must consider that the internet doesn't give you point form, step by step instructions on how to perfect the recipe, not like this book does.

The tag line on the book says, "The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions" and holds true to this throughout. There are lessons learned, great examples, stories and illustrated points - explaining how to be enchanting. The onus is on the reader however, to implement the content from this book and become an enchanting person. Now, really, it can't be hard, it's practically an instruction manual - and I don't mean that in a negative way, I just mean that you can't mistake or misconstrue the information in this book - it's clear and well written. It just requires action on the readers part after reading it. Quite simple, really.

Advice like, 'apologizing is a sign of weakness', you know, the kind of advice that a father may bestow on his son while driving him to the monster truck rally, is not what you'll find in this book. The advice is real, it's genuine and Guy does an amazing job of tying it all together with some real world examples and sound rationale. You begin to see exactly why enchanting people are enchanting.

Now, I have read many business books, many stinkers, ...too many. In fact, I've read so many bad ones that I've pretty much narrowed down the field of who I listen to and take seriously to include just a handful of people who's opinions I respect and believe. I'm happy to say that Guy Kawasaki was on my shortlist, even before he approached me to review this book. I've read his other books - they're good, really good. This one is great. Enchantment is packed full of what seems to be Guy's secrets to success, it's like listening to your mentor impart their wisdom upon you. I actually felt better for reading it, like I had learned something useful. I had.

Unlike a Christopher Hitchen's book where it takes 200 pages to make a single point (no offense to Hitchen fans, but business books need to be succinct IMHO), Enchantment makes several points and explains an entire way of conducting oneself while coming in at just under 200 pages. It's light and easy-going in nature, but don't let that fool you - it packs a serious punch if you let it. I know that this is one book that will be read repeatedly by myself and recommended to trusted colleagues.

However, the icing on the cake was the last chapter, "How to Resist Enchantment" - this for me, was the clincher,... reading chapter after chapter on how to be enchanting, one begins to wonder what would happen if this information got into the wrong hands. Well, luckily, Mr. Kawasaki takes care of this with useful advice on how to be aware of and resist enchantment, or pseudo enchantment. This made me feel so much better. Thanks Guy.

OK, I guess this is the part where I sum it up and tell you to go buy the book. If you deal with people in any way shape or form, this is a must read book - buy it now.

Although I reviewed the hardcover of this book, I highly recommend the digital version, why? Read the book, you'll understand.

Direct Mail Advice

I love checking the mail. And, I get to do it up to three times a day - at work, at home, and at the post office.

There's something about not knowing what's going to be behind the tiny door - usually bills, but getting letters, cards and money are some of my favourite types of mail and make my day when they arrive.

Sometimes direct mail falls into that category too, but that all depends on how well it speaks to me - is it relevant to what I am looking for or think I need at that particular point in my life/day/week? Also, does the piece stand out visually and look like a legitimate product or service that I would use? I like a good piece of direct mail.

There's a few things that I've learned over the years when it comes to direct mail and it can be summed up pretty easy:

1. Frequency - you need to do several drops, a minimum of 3 drops with a consistently branded piece should do the trick.
2. Target - carefully select the area you want to target and only focus on the areas that you feel would be best to use your product/service.
3. Offer - don't just tell them who you are and what you do - tell them how you can do what you do right now for less or with some kind of added value.
4. Design - your mail pieces should be in line with your other advertising as well as your brand, consistent messaging and branding is important.
5. Timing - the offer you are presenting should be appropriate and relevant to the time of year that you are doing your campaign.

Without going into too much detail, those are the 5 key things to focus on for your direct mail campaign - your design team should come up with something that will stand out from the hoards of mail.

I'm a huge fan of online marketing, but direct mail has it's place and there's nothing like a tangible piece to give some products a bit of legitimacy and credit.

If you really want to take your direct mail to the next level consider building a micro-site that specifically handles the task of the offer in the direct mail pieces. For example, your call to action becomes, "visit do-something-now.com and sign up for free something today!" Now, the recipient can check out your site (no sales pressure or obligation, like a phone call might be perceived), which can answer way more questions than a post card ever could, and now provide you with contact information through a form.

Like in any other form of advertising and promotion - keep it simple. One offer, one form of contact... you don't need to clutter the piece up with info - direct them to a site for more information - the piece should be designed to do one thing, and one thing only: get the consumer to act... and they need clear directions on how to and why to.

We've done several direct mail pieces at Francomedia, some extremely successful (followed above advice to the letter) and others that were complete disasters (decided to self-deliver to save .09¢ and only got a few hundred pieces into the market) - it's surprising when clients don't follow the paid advice given by professionals. So, today the advice is free - take it and use it or ignore it.

Direct mail is inexpensive, but can be a costly endeavor if you get no results. Like anything in life, you need to do things a certain way to achieve results - not every try will be successful, but this only helps you refine the right approach. Above, I've given you 5 things to focus on that will help make your next campaign a success.

The Bottomline: Direct mail works and it works well, if it didn't people would have stopped a long time ago - you just have to follow the above free advice.

Master of the Domain

The end of August always leaves me feeling a bit cheated as the summer comes to an end. The leaves begin to turn yellow and the sun is going behind the mountains a lot earlier with each passing night. This feeling does not last long however, because I soon realize that it's the beginning of hockey season and the much anticipated death of all bugs, at least until Spring.

Fall is my favourite season but Winter is a close second.

Getting organized and cleaning up is the order of the season and doing so makes me feel good.

While getting things organized at the office, I had a quick peak at the domain names that I manage and own. I have about 100 in total. Seeing as how I have to pay for these every year, I need to review them every once in a while to determine that they are still useful or relevant to what I'm doing. Some have some real promise, others were bought on a whim with some ambition of doing something huge in the world of marketing - in either case, they're all valuable to me, for now.

Lately, I've noticed that a more and more clever marketers and business owners have taken advantage of the use of domain names in their marketing. Taking a creative slant on the domain and using offerings, descriptions and claims as domain names for otherwise existing brands is nothing new. I've been doing it for the better part of a decade, but I have begun to notice a few more companies begin to use this form of marketing for projects and brands and it makes me smile, I love to see smart marketing.

Here's an example of it in action: I have a stair company as a client, and while they do great work in building stairs, their name is sometimes hard for people to nail down, especially when it comes to typing in an exact match for the URL. The company is Spindle, Stairs & Railings and they are the top stair builder in Canada. Naturally, a web company would register the company's name for the URL (http://spindlestairsandrailings.com) - this is a must, but from a customers perspective, how are they going to remember which words are plural and which are singular? How we solved this and made it easy for the customer to find and remember their service, product and URL is that we created greatstairs.com. Not only is it easy to remember, but it reinforces the quality, service and craftsmanship in their product in a very succinct URL.

In the case of my company, Francomedia.com, we have registered a few domain names to coincide, promote and track things, here are some of them:

CreativePanacea.com - I think it says it all. We use this as a testing site for web projects under construction right now.
Franco-Design.com - We place this in the code of some sites, just to see how many web designers are checking us out.
BirdieNumNum.com - We use this for our staff e-mail - a conversation starter and is very memorable.
FrancoMarketing.com - This allows for diversification in our offering and we can put a unique product on it's own URL down the road.

Of course, most of our domains point back to http://www.francomedia.com, but I think you get the point on the usefulness of having multiple domains names.

I can see this method of marketing becoming mainstream very quickly as more and more businesses catch on to the fact that it will help drive more traffic to their site and to their bottomline. And, like the unique 1-800 identifiers that businesses have in order for customers to remember their numbers, domain names have become equally important in their marketing.

A unique 1-800 number is equal to having a unique .com address... and for the record, 1-888 is to 1-800 as what .info is to .com - they all work, but 1-800 and .com are the cream of the crop and more desirable. So, if you have an idea for a domain, buy the .com before anyone else.

Seeing as how domain names are pretty inexpensive to register, I recommend registering as many as you can afford. Make sure they make sense, make sure they are relevant to what you are doing otherwise, you're just name squatting (not that there's anything wrong with that) and you're not getting any use out of your domains.

Buy them up and point them all to your main domain and you're set to go. They will be ready to use for anything you want at any time. Then one fall day, you can go through your list of domains and determine which you are going to capitalize on over the next year and which ones you are tired of renewing.


On a side note, I have also registered domains for each of my children as I see this uniqe URL for the kids as an investment, when they go to get jobs, their resume may reside there, or they can use them for their blogs or a personal web site or whatever. Or, they can sell them to other kids with the same name.

Contesting

Contests are a great way to promote your product, service or brand - if done correctly.

In any marketing, be it an advertisement, a web page, a vehicle design, apparel, logo or a contest, the messaging and purpose has to be relevant and on brand. What you do in anything related to marketing must not stray from your brand motto or your brand's core beliefs.

Recently, we have been putting a contest together for our tiny, little boutique creative shop. The contest has a purpose - to promote the win of a creative award for the design and concept of a custom envelope and stamp. And, the contest is relevant - to win the contest, you have to collect the very thing that we won the award with - our custom stamps.

Structuring the contest this way informs people about the win and gets them to notice and focus on the envelopes and stamps that may have been background noise up until then. Our goal is to promote to our customers and people who deal with us that we are an award winning creative shop that specializes in out-of-the-box thinking and design.

You can read about this contest here.

The goal of a contest is not to give away a specific prize but to promote your offering or brand. If the prize does this, that's great but not every business can do this. In our case, we are awarding lunch for the winner and eleven of their closest friends, delivered by our staff. This will award the winner, but also allow for interaction with our staff and their staff.

You want to give something away that is meaningful and/or has some relevance.

Immersing people in your brand and having them engage with it makes for a successful campaign. Just having people enter to win with no interaction can be misguided unless you are collecting data to follow up with at a latter date.

At the end of the day, people need to remember what your offering is and what you do. When planning a contest, think about this carefully, will your contest accomplish this?

I think ours will.

Marketing is like Self Help

Most people in their life have found themselves at one of those self-help type seminars put on by people like Steven Covey, Tony Robbins and the like.

And, most people walk away from these events energized and full of hope that they can be a better person, or at least remember 1 of the 7 important things they have heard. They learn 'tips' and 'tricks' on how to be more focused, more congenial, more positive, more everything.

The thing is, none of this positive self-help is news to anyone in the audience - there is nothing revolutionary being said and everyone knows it all ready. For the most part, it's common sense stuff. It's a good reminder of stuff we already know to be true but perhaps aren't acting on.

Whether it's the new infusion of thought, or the 12 coffees consumed during these seminars, people seem to come out of these seminars charged up and ready to change their lives for the better. And, for a couple of days they may even implement some of the philosophy and teachings. But it is soon forgotten because the two things they remembered to do, didn't really make an impact so they stop doing them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay the importance of self-help - it's good stuff, and we all need reminders now and then.

My point is this; these seminars teach many 'tips' and 'tricks' to be a better person, and doing one or two of them really will not make that big of difference in any one person's life - it's when they start doing several or all of these things that you start to see improvement. If you are committed to it and stick to it.

And, folks, that is exactly how marketing works.

Marketing success is the sum of its parts. It's not just doing a newspaper ad, or re-vamping your web site or cleaning up your logo. Everything must be firing on all cylinders if you truly want results. Nothing should be overlooked. Any one part of an automobile is not an automobile - it doesn't take you to point B until everything is is assembled together.

Remember, everything is marketing.

If you truly want to create a memorable or remarkable customer experience everything must be looked at, everything must be on brand and true to your brand motto. For when everything you do and say, reflects the core message or is relevant to your brand, that is when you are really marketing - then it just becomes a game of promoting.

So many companies believe that their logo is their brand. Let me tell you this, people don't interact with your logo, they interact with you or your staff. They go through your web site, hopefully you do a job in immersing them in your brand by giving them a great experience in your store or office. The logo just helps them remember their experience - the logo should reflect the brand and set the expectation, as in all your marketing.

What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) is used a lot in our industry, mostly for printing and proofing. In marketing, you must step back and look at your business through a customers eyes. Their perception is reality. What they see is what they are expecting to get. You set the expectation in many ways, think about what a dirty logo'd vehicle tells people that have never dealt with you. Everyone has seen third rate business cards, the impression and perception formed immediately (first impressions) is that your firm is as crappy as your business card.

Cleaning your company vehicle and getting professional calling cards are not earth shaking ideas. In fact, common sense already told you that these were good ideas before I even told you. But, if you don't implement them they won't help. Now, on their own they are not going to save a company, or increase profits, or double your sales - they are just two little things on a list of hundreds.

The bottom line is, you need to follow through on everything to be better, in life and in marketing.

Remember, marketing is everything.

When Marketing Backfires

On two separate occasions Direct Energy sent a solicitor to my door to get me to combine my gas and electric bill onto just one bill.

Sounds like a pretty good idea, but the pushy people (actually downright rude) and tactics they employed to explain this left me feeling less comfortable with Direct Energy as a provider of any service.

Just to clarify things - I was happy with the status quo, meaning two bills weren't bothering me and I was happy with both Direct Energy for my gas and Enmax for my electricity.

As a rule, I don't like door to door solicitation. But, I try to put on my least bothered face and listen for a few seconds, at least until they get their pitch out. The fella Direct Energy sent asked if I was paying two bills and I said yes, then he asked me to get them.... 'scuse me? I'm two thirds through Dancing With The Stars!

I explained I wasn't interested in doing this at my door step and asked if they had a web site. Then I could check things out when it was convenient, or not at all (that's convenient too).

The salesman pushed for a close saying today's the last opportunity to save $20 per month on my bill and that all of my neighbors have signed up tonight and I'm the only hold up. At this point, I said I'm not interested in saving $20 per month (I just want to get rid of him now). He responded with, and I kid you not, "that's dumb, everyone of your neighbors has signed up...". Now aggravated, I ask him to please leave my property and that I will be closing the door.

He leaves, I go to the web site to complain. I contact Direct Energy and try to complain but am told that the person that was at my door was from a different company of the same name. Hmmm.

Fast forward two months.

A lady comes to the door, says she's with Direct Energy. I say "Oh good, the last person you sent was very rude." To which the fast thinking lady responds with, "I'm the supervisor, I can help you."

So far so good I'm thinking, but then she asks to see my two energy bills - it's a sales pitch. I politely turn her down, she wasn't as relentless and rude as the previous chap, but still a bit pushy. Pushy enough to cause me to act.

The next day, I do a web search to see who their competitors are in the combining bills market. As it turns out, Enmax has a product called EasyMax that does this very thing. Now I've heard of EasyMax before but didn't understand what it was (either I wasn't listening because I was satisfied with the status quo or they didn't market it effectively to me). I signed up right there and then.

So, Direct Energy tried bullshit marketing and sales tactics to get all of my energy bill business and ended up losing the half they had in the first place.

I guess their marketing worked - it got me to take action on a problem that I didn't know I had. It just kind of backfired on them. Direct Energy lost my business because of their marketing - a result that was the exact opposite of what they had planned for.

So, if you're going to learn something from this, think of this old saying, "you attract more bees with honey than with vinegar". And, remember, the people you are marketing to are people too and they will likely respond and react the same way you might... treat people with respect.