This is not at all a trivial expense. The company has used its own empirical research to not only understand the customer but also to understand the frame of reference of the manufactures and the desire to feature the products in advertising and in stores. They did this to the tune of over $14 Million. We can thus conclude that this very, very successful company is not guessing at this, they know it because they empirically research it.

So there you have it. A personal perspective of the key selling triggers that turned my decision from a “I can’t now, but maybe next time” into a “hell’s yeah!” Keep posted for my progress with Earn 1k.

So here is Patrick McKenzie’s brilliant talk at Business of Software 2011 on engineering your marketing outcomes. Marketing comes naturally to some people. Unfortunately, few of them go on to found software companies. Patrick talks about types of marketing that use engineering skills and won’t be rabidly opposed to your developers. Instead of spending a few weeks cranking out one more feature that won’t be seen by 1% of your users and increase the value of your software by <1%, learn how you can use the same few weeks to create scalable systems that take much of the guesswork out of marketing.

Advanced Strategy of Preeminence

So here is Patrick McKenzie's brilliant talk at Business of Software 2011 on engineering your marketing outcomes. Marketing comes naturally to some people. Unfortunately, few of them go on to found software companies. Patrick talks about types of marketing that use engineering skills and won't be rabidly opposed to your developers. Instead of spending a few weeks cranking out one more feature that won't be seen by 1% of your users and increase the value of your software by <1%, learn how you can use the same few weeks to create scalable systems that take much of the guesswork out of marketing.

Wow this is a marketing masterpiece and very compelling

Absolutely fascinating story about how companies use analytics to predict what people will buy. Classic example of identifying when women are pregnant. Insights:
* People change shopping habits around life changes (new kids) so it's a great time to capture them then
* Febreze had to be repositioned since people cannot detect their own scents, even really bad animal ones, after a while
* “With the pregnancy products, though, we learned that some women react badly,” the executive said. “Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.

“And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we

Good interview Qs to ask marketing candidates

Don't be confused by the soft powder. Ski-nomics at Vail and Whistler/Blackcomb is a hardened and savvy industry. Meet the mile-high strategies that keep America's largest ski resorts in the black.

One of my most requested guests of all time. The creator of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, New York Times Best-Selling Author (affiliate), and amazing Internet entrepreneur – Ramit Sethi – is in the house and spilling the beans on all kinds of secrets, including how his blog got so popular, how he monetized by launching his first product (and what he learned from it), his rigorous research process, and much more in this super naked interview.

The one question people ask that raises a “red flag,” and proves that they’re destined to fail.
The “secret sauce” that powers an entrepreneurs wildly successful information business (and yes, this same “recipe” can work for you too).
Why you should spend more time telling people to unsubscribe from your site than convincing people to buy your products.
How you can charge what you’re worth and actually get it! (Hint: It’s all about understanding what goes on inside the mind of your customers)
Why you shouldn’t sell anything on your website… and how that leads to more money and better customers.

On a recent Saturday evening, about a hundred serious bicyclists, most of them young men, many tattooed and pierced and at least one wearing striped tights and a floral thrift-shop dress, arrived en masse at Alberta Park in northeast Portland, Ore. They gathered near a fenced-off hard-top court and, in teams of three, began a ''bike polo'' tournament. Almost all were bike messengers, about a third of them local (others from Seattle, San Francisco and elsewhere), and they lived up to the image of couriers as marginal, testosterone-charged troublemakers. They drank beer, smoked cigarettes and other things and yelled profane insults at each other.

Also, they had a corporate sponsor. What appeared to be a party in the park was part of the West Side Invite, prizes for which were underwritten by a $1,750 contribution from the Pabst Brewing Company. Virtually no banners or signs announced this, and no one from Pabst showed up to glad-hand the bikers.

Some good inbound marketing tips here

The man behind Grey Goose vodka understood that Americans want to pay moreYou just have to give them a good story. Now he has a new tale to tell. it’s about a tequila called Corazón.

On televisions across America, Tony Horton is selling a burning-sweat vision of physical fitness, and these days, a lot of people are buying. He is the pitchman and wise-cracking star of a brutal, make-it-stop workout called P90X, and he has won converts from Hollywood to Capitol Hill. The singer Sheryl Crow, the sportscaster Erin Andrews, the former NFL quarterback Kurt Warner, Representative Paul Ryan and a dozen or more of his Congressional colleagues, and the list goes on and on.

P90X fans swear by the workout, a mix of jumping, yoga, martial arts and strength training that, in fact, isn’t all that revolutionary. But the secret of P90X’s success is the marketing: Mr. Horton and his business partners say they have built a $400-million-a-year empire on what, to many, might seem like a foundation of schlock: TV infomercials.

All the time-tested strategies were on display: he offered bonuses or freebies as incentives, and heightened tensions by warning people that he only had a certain number of units on hand (“supplies are limited!”). He assigned numbers to his customers—”You’re number eight, you’re number nine,” and so on—which gave them the impression that you had to get in line to take advantage of the great deal he was offering up. He employed the classic countdown technique, where he systematically lowered the price as he neared the end of the pitch. and when he was at the very end and started accepting cash, he avoided selling the item to the last batch of eager customers, instead launching into a fresh pitch. To get new people to come over and watch a demonstration, it requires that other people be standing in rapt attention. “Wait, there’s something else i want to show you before you take this home with you,” he might say.

Abraham's Strategy of Preeminence

This is reinforced by the failures of most business people's attempts at advertising. How many times have you heard something along the lines of "well I tried doing a mailing and didn't get any response." <br />
<br />
They don't have an investment viewpoint. If they truly believed that spending $1,000 would give them $10,000, They would happily do that deal every day. If they truly believed that paying more for a skilled copywriter would have a corresponding increase in the bottom line profit, they would do that deal every day as well. <br />
<br />
Since "marketing doesn't really work," "one writer is pretty much the same as another" and "I only want to spend the minimum amount possible" it is a tough sell. <br />
<br />
Another favorite falsehood is "people won't read long copy." (sigh.)

Blank carrier envelopes usually out-perform envelopes with teasers.<br />
Longer letters perform better. Usually. There are exceptions.<br />
The most-read part of a fundraising letter is the P.S.<br />
Typos improve response. I can't prove this, but it seems to be true.<br />
Mail recipients spend more time looking at the back of the envelope than the front.<br />
Religious people give more to non-religious causes than non-religious people. Religious people give more to everything.<br />
The most powerful predictor that a donor will give is the recency of her previous gift.

Business Of Software presentations

Another classic from Altucher

Interview with me about choosing your audience intentionally and not appealing to everyone

"What we are selling is space,'' said Anthony Tangorra, a former transportation consultant who is chief executive of Airspace. "People pay us to sit instead of sitting for free 50 feet away. So we need to provide a compelling need to pay to sit.'

Fascinating...Infusionsoft requires new customers to spend $2k for initial setup with their onboarding team. They used to have it free, but people would cancel. Now they're committed.

Worth 1,000 business books. Probably one of the best business interviews of all time. 

Awesome advice from John Mayer about avoiding social media and creating actual value. <br />
<br />
“This time is a really important time for you guys because nobody knows who you are, and nobody should. This is not a time to promote yourself. It doesn’t matter. This is the time to get your stuff together. Promotion can be like that. You can have promotion in 30 seconds if your stuff is good. Good music is its own promotion.”<br />
“The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. You’re coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes long…I realized about a year ago that I couldn’t have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn’t write a song.”

Now THIS is how you use Groupon. For small-biz owners

I don't think that all marketing is manipulative. I loved how Ramit Sethi promoted his "Earn 1k" course on earning money on the side. He did free 30-day course on hustling, provided loads and loads of value for free, explained about his upcoming course, explained who should take it and who shouldn't take it , gave money-back guarantee and even forbid people with credit card debts to enter his course because they should clear they debts first. It was a lot to learn if you're interested in online marketing.<br />
It's not manipulative if you believe what you're selling and you're saying the truth. It is also awesome when seller says who should buy it and who shouldn't instead of claiming that his product is a magic bullet for everyone. Having legitimate testimonials is another great marketing tactic. Offering an unconditional money-back guarantee gives a person which is buying your product a safety net. There's such thing as an honest business.

Guy talks about charging a premium for good brands...Web2.0 crowd gets confused. The comments section should be requires reading for anyone in SV who thinks they are a marketer. "We don't need four dozen new ways to hand out coupons. We need ways to mitigate the need for distributing any coupons at all. Good marketing increases value, not decreases it."

 The Korean car manufacturer Hyundai took this cautious mood into account and began and offering very real assurances. They say, “Buy any new Hyundai, and if in the next year you lose your income, we'll let you return it.” In just a month Hyundai increased its sales by more than 20% in the U.S. alone. You may wonder if the company's sitting with a lot of returned stock. Well, as this goes to print, supposedly only two cars have been returned.

Several years ago, a very sincere guy who ran a chain of donut shops came to see me. He wanted to do an advertising campaign.
"We're different," he explained. "We're a commune. Everyone who works here owns an equal part. We work cooperatively. It's a model for how businesses should be run. It's a vision of the future. I think we should do an ad campaign about it. I think people will really respond."
"How are your donuts?" I asked.
"They're very good." He said.
"Then forget the philosophy," I said. "Nobody needs better philosophy. They need better donuts."

The simplest way to explain it: Marketing channels create demand. Sales channels harvest demand.

Customers value and will pay more for urgency - example ... Fedex "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight" or the 1hr photo processing being twice the price of the 24hour processing.Customers value and will pay more for self-esteem - example ... brand name bags like Prada and Louis Vuitton or products aligned with the latest fashion, the latest social cause or the latest tech. innovation.Customers value and will pay more for pain relief - example ... road side vehicle breakdown service like RACQ in Queensland Australia or the locksmith that opens the door for a person that has locked themselves out of their apartment at 11:00pm at night.Customers value and will pay more for fear mitigation - example ... every insurance product and the 'stock in trade' product for most legal services.

Fascinating story about the rise, fall, and perhaps re-rise of Starbucks. Background on Howard Schultz

Charlie's monster post on marketing 4HBody

Family members recoil as they recall an LVMH official’s suggestion that Hermès bolster sales by creating a line of lower-priced bags.
“It’s exactly what you shouldn’t do,” Mr. Dumas says. “Because you will make a cheap Hermès bag which will sell like hotcakes for three years, and after three years people will say, ‘Hermès is not what it used to be.’ ”
Mr. Thomas says: “If you tell me I have to double the profit of Hermès, I will do it tomorrow. But then you’d have no Hermès left in five years.”

Absolutely briliant marketing campaign that shows meth users' faces before-and-after. Combine with MTV "I'm a Mom at 16" and show why this cuts right to the core of what the target consumers (teens/etc) care about: Their looks and free time

Guy talks about why a porn site uses customer research to truly understand its customers -- and it shows

Really excellent analysis of how this product is dominating

Good examples of social proof / credibility in online personalities' sites

Just how many people does it take to propel a story onto the Times' influential most-emailed list? And can it be gamed? Thomas E. Weber finds the answers.

Today on Tumblr, photo site Photojojo conducted a little experiment. They asked Tumblr users to reblog a post about their Fuji Instax Mini Instant Camera. Every time someone reblogged their offer before 4P, the camera's price went down $.10. They were hoping to sell 50 cameras at a steadily reducing price by 4P.

our users bombarded us with suggestions for alternate ways to price the product – more than 90 different proposals in all. In 100% of the cases, the proposals would reduce the amount paid by that user, transferring costs to a different category of user. Users with a lot of team members wanted to pay for storage, users with a lot of storage wanted to pay for team members, etc. Some of them tried the claim that my business would be totally, utterly ruined if users like themselves were forced to leave as the result of a misguided pricing model that forces them to pay more than $2/month - without stopping to think about how little money is actually lost if they leave. . In other words, not one single user out of 90 actually gave good advice. This is why you should not take pricing advice from your customers. They are smart peoplebut deep in their reptilian brains they are incapable of giving you pricing advice that will meet your goals.

Interesting - all about Safeway's private-label brands

If your market is wrong, no amount of tweaking/optimization will dramatically improve sales. "I believe there is an essential factor which isn't being articulated; the different demographics and psychology of android phone purchasers vs. iphone purchasers. I think Apple attracts a large portion of the "eager to spend money on technology" customer base. If you are someone who is eager to spend a lot of time playing with your phone, you are likely to buy an iphone. If you want smartphone functionality but are not inclined to make a hobby of your phone use, you are likely to buy an android phone. I love my android phone, but I am simply not interested in spending additional money on applications, and no matter how good app store search and discovery is and no matter how painless payment is, I can't imagine any phone application I would be interested in purchasing."

Twinsumer - Jordan points this out to me. Nice. People looking for others LIKE THEM. "After all, what good is a jubilant hotel recommendation on Tripadvisor.com (a travel review site with more than 1.8 million consumer reviews) to a 27 year old bachelor from Vancouver looking for some sun and fun near Singapore, if the reviewer happens to be a father of four from Stockholm, whose positive rating of the Shangri La Rasa Sentosa Resort was heavily influenced by the abundance of kid-friendly amenities, or the presence of dozens of other families?"

Kevin H. shows how he hustled his way into exec meeting

Excellent overview of what every B2C business should be doing for its users.

1. Drive targeted traffic to homepage
Aim: Get the right potential customers onto the homepage.

2. Signup
Aim: Get them to sign up for a free account.

3 Induction immediately after signup
Aim: Get the user to set up their account ready to actually use it.

4 Activation: keep them going
Aim: Ensure user is still using the site 30 days later.

5. Push them to Pay
Aim: Encourage payment within 30 days through roadblocks and desirable features.

6. Payment
Aim: A smooth payment process with minimal dropout.

7. Retention
Aim: Ensure user accounts remain active.

* How to develop an enduring content strategy
* Why pitching bloggers doesn’t work (and what does)
* The acceleration strategy that took Tim beyond books and blogs
* The novel launch tactics he used for the new book
* The credibility benefits of generous content marketing

Genius..."Of the teens surveyed, 82 percent said the MTV series helped them witness the challenges in having a baby at such a young age and, in doing so, helped them view pregnancy as something best avoided." If patronizing "experts" had it up to them, they would lecture teens about safety, responsibility, etc to prevent teen pregnancy. MTV knew the #1 thing young people care about -- free time -- and have used that in a genius bit of marketing.

The Algorithmic Future of Love 7:21 Discuss
Tear Down That Pay Wall 2:41 Discuss
Demographics and the Digital Mate Market 4:46 Discuss
Parsing Online Data to Find You a Date 6:49 Discuss
Why Finding Love Online Will Change the World 2:51 Discuss
Data-Driven Tips for Online Daters

I love the understated name.

He could get a smaller stake by buying into a private-equity fund Goldman is raising money for called Goldman Sachs Partners Private Opportunities Fund.

Good post about ramping users up on social apps like Quora, Instagram, etc. Shows how important it is to make it easy...and to understand the KPIs that make users stick

The profitability of each and every disk and promotion effort was tracked and analyzed. We conducted approximately 2000 different tests each year and used these results to develop future programs. Despite the label "carpet bombing," there was actually a very high level of marketing sophistication and almost all decisions were data and results driven. (Some efforts like TV and and other efforts were intended for branding, or part branding and part direct response and less easily tracked, but this was a relatively small portion of the marketing budget.)

One of my favorite stories came a few years ago, on Cyber Monday. A business leader told me that he saw Cyber Monday promotions from his competitors in his e-mail inbox at 7:00am, then told the e-mail marketing manager to hold the delivery of the e-mail campaign for an hour so that the promotion could be changed, from 25% off plus free shipping, to 35% off plus free shipping. I asked the business leader why the change was made? The business leader replied ... "Because we had to remain competitive!"

This is an example of chasing returns in a market that one does not understand.

A lot! I don't remember the total spending but do recall in the early 1990s our target was to spend 10% of lifetime revenue to get a new subscriber. At that time I believe the average subscriber life was about 25 months and revenue was about $350 so we spent about $35 to acquire subscribrs. As

Moleskines are so popular because we all crave to be a part of something larger. To share in a tradition that transcends us and involves people, places, or entities that capture our imagination. Moleskine does this brilliantly by invoking Van Gough, Picasso, Hemmingway, and Wilde. In combination with these luminaries, Moleskine ties a direct thread between these little books filled with paper and history running from the 19th century through today.

The researchers ran a number of fascinating field experiments to test whether subtle signs of disorder in the environment could create bad behavior in other domains. The results revealed that whereas 33% of the bicycle owners littered the paper when there was no graffiti, 69% did so when the environment was vandalized with the graffiti. When the bicycles were simply positioned next to the fence, 27% stepped through the gap in the fence in violation of the signage. However, when the four bikes were locked to the fence in violation of the other signage, a whopping 82% of the participants stepped through the gap. When there was no litter around the mailbox, 13% stole the envelope and the money inside it. However, when the environment was littered, the theft rate nearly doubled—25% stole the envelope!

Story behind Tickle

Some really good different results from being on TV

Dutch women's refusal to seek longer hours has long bewildered economists. In the spring, the United Nations, suspicious that there was something keeping women from full-time jobs, launched an inquiry to see whether the Netherlands was in compliance with the women's rights treaty. A comprehensive 2009 study by Alison L. Booth & Jan C. Van Ours looked at the amount of time women in the Netherlands spend at work compared with women in other European countries. The authors assumed that part-time work was less desirable but ultimately confirmed that Dutch women don't want to spend more time at work. The NIS News Bulletin interpreted the results of the study as: "Attempts to get more women working full-time are doomed to failure because nobody has a desire for this. Both the women themselves and their partners and employers are satisfied with the Dutch part-time culture for women."

Why OKTrends's posts on data draw so much attention

This guy rips UX purists a new one -- and he's right. *

This is where you stop looking at your startup as a self-masturbatory piece of UX genius and start looking at it as a business. That is why Ebay and Orbitz are publicly listed companies, warts and all, and you are not. Business decisions were made, fiduciary duty was upheld, jobs were saved and customers served etc.

AWESOME writeup on how whiny teenagers/early 20-somethings have all the free time in the world, so they can pirate stuff...as you get older, you would rather pay. God I am getting old

RISE #137: Learn How Tim Ferriss Created An International Sensation For Less Than $10,000 & How He Plans On Doing It Again

Read more: http://blog.therisetothetop.com/2010/10/how-tim-ferriss-created-an-international-sensation-and-how-he-plans-on-doing-it-again/#ixzz147yQTkNf

Absolutely amazing analysis of for-pay dating site...look at the way they break down the #s. So useful for any person beginning an online business

Marketing Automation vs. Inbound Marketing

AWESOME Obama marketing video. 16:00 - Obama Landing Page. 25:00 - Fascinating segmentation on signed out, signed in, donors, all respond to different button text. 33:00 - Donate for more pulls 2x more than simple selling t-shirt. "Donate $30 OR MORE"

(CNN) -- If you want to understand the way prescription drugs are marketed today, have a look at the 1928 book, "Propaganda," by Edward Bernays, the father of public relations in America.

For Bernays, the public relations business was less about selling things than about creating the conditions for things to sell themselves. When Bernays was working as a salesman for Mozart pianos, for example, he did not simply place advertisements for pianos in newspapers. That would have been too obvious.

Instead, Bernays persuaded reporters to write about a new trend: Sophisticated people were putting aside a special room in the home for playing music. Once a person had a music room, Bernays believed, he would naturally think of buying a piano. As Bernays wrote, "It will come to him as his own idea."

Just as Bernays sold pianos by selling the music room, pharmaceutical marketers now sell drugs by selling the diseases that they treat. The buzzword is "disease branding."

Superb case study of a sub chain that noticed sales declining and took corrective action -- even though their first move was wrong. Very, very good.

Fascinating discussion of how being mentioned on Oprah doesn't result in the kind of direct sales/traffic that you'd think -- at least for a website

I was doing a lot of marketing “things” but why was I doing them? I had approached my activities as simply as a task-list to get through. With my tail between my legs I was left to ponder; what was the function of marketing in a startup?

Strategy is Not a To Do List, It Drives a To Do List

Best comments on Groupon marketing controversy so far. "
For a merchant to make effective use of Groupon, he must use it for one purpose: to acquire customers. Once someone comes to you via a third party, you must convert them into your own customer. This generally requires getting their personal info so that you can engage them directly in the future.

Amazon merchants have been doing this for years. Pay Amazon their commission for the first sale, then move the name to their permanent data base. 15% of the first sale is a reasonable customer acquisition cost; 15% of every sale is not sustainable (unless you have ridiculous margins).

Since many Groupon merchants meet their customers in person, an extra step is required: collecting personal info. Skip this step and you've just lost 2 things: your money and a name on your customer list."

Question 1: "What circumstances would lead to a 10X increase in the value of your product or business?"
Question 2: "What can you realistically *do* to accomplish the circumstances that will 10X your company?"

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING ARTICLE #1 about why marketers are stupid by jumping onto the Groupon bandwagon. Article #1 is at http://blog.minethatdata.com/2010/09/are-we-marketers-just-plain-stupid.html

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING ARTICLE #1 about why marketers are stupid by jumping onto the Groupon bandwagon. Article #2 is at http://blog.minethatdata.com/2010/09/stupid-marketers-part-2.html

Why did Wesabe shut down, while Mint did so well?
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They were very similar products at heart, and users had quite a lot of good things to say about Wesabe too. Their community was strong, but the difference in outcome could not have been more different

Variety of distribution mechanisms: Referral, content marketing, affiliate, PPC, social, mobile, api

A group of early 50 carrot farmers, headed by Bolthouse Farms, have teamed up with Crispin Porter + Bogusky to rebrand baby carrots and advertise them in a way that mimics snack brands like Doritos. The campaign is designed to encourage kids to choose carrots over other unhealthy snack foods, and is currently being tested in cooled vending machines at schools. What do you think of this campaign? Share your thoughts below!

Steve Jobs explains branding (youtube.com)