Now a decade old, the Country Music Marathon demonstrates a key marketing principle: Mixing Passions.

If you like to run and you like country music, you were in Nashville last weekend, pounding up and down the rolling terrain of the Music City. In all, more than 32,000 runners competed, colorfully clogging the city's arteries and flooding the economy with millions in tourist cash.

The marathon's incredible success - for the competitors, the city and the promoters - feeds on both running and music. Country music performers were strategically placed around the course to entertain the runners. Makes no difference that the runners only heard a few bars of a song as they dashed by; the creative combination of the two passions was enough to bring them to Nashville. (As if to compensate, all runners got into an evening concert free. )

If your service or product can be linked to another activity or idea that people love, consider the link. It might just give your marketing legs.

Labels: country music, ggcb, marathon, marketing, Nashville, running

One of the five key rules of building effective "buzz" is knowing and using "connectors" -- people who will tell your story to other folks -- especially the right ones.

At a meeting I was facilitating the other day, one of the participants called his connectors "sneezers." They, he said, are the "super connectors" -- the people who, when they sneeze, give other people colds.

Think about who your "sneezers" are. Are you keeping in touch? Do they know your story?

Labels: buzz, ggcb, marketing

Can you quantify the value that you offer your customers?

Traditionally, marketers draw the bright line between features and benefits with two simple questions. If it answers the question "What?", it's a feature. If it answers the question "So what?", it's a benefit.

Some go even further and argue that if it doesn't have a good answer to the question "What's in it for me?" (WIIFM), it isn't even a benefit at all.

Increasingly, in these difficult times, there is a further question: "How much is in it for me?"

Sales and marketing professionals who usually stopped at WIIFM are finding that they are losing to others who can quantify the benefits more clearly. It's especially challenging for professional and financial services professionals trying to sell intangibles like "experience" and "client service."

For example, imagine two large banks promoting their "global reach." Is the bank with offices in 80 countries more attractive than the bank with offices in 50? How much?

How about an accountant with 15 years of experience? Is he or she more valuable than one with 10 years? How much?

Consider a charity that serves 2,000 needy persons per year. Is it more worthy of a donation than one that serves 1,800?

The recession makes life tougher for anybody trying to sell anything. That's the downside. The upside is that it forces those of us who sell to explain our value proposition better.

And that's a good thing.

Labels: fundraising, ggcb, marketing, sales

It's a global trend. When times are tough, people pick quality first. They invest in Treasury bills. They shop for better cars and homes. Somehow, when every penny counts, people think more about how they spend or invest their money. It's called "The Flight to Quality."

So, explain this: why do some companies cheapen their products and services in a downturn? True, people look harder for value when times are tough, but less quality at a lower price is not a "deal."

"We have to do more with less," everybody says, but they don't mean it. They mean less with less. And they're going to deliver it with a bad attitude. Count on it.

So if you want to position yourself to make good money -- in bad times and in the better times that are coming -- all you have to do is deliver good value when everybody else is delivering junk.

Labels: ggcb, marketing, sales

From my hotel room, I look down into the hole that was the World Trade Center. Caterpillars grind their way through the mud, day and night, scratching at the scar that just won't heal.

New Yorkers, somehow always able to step around the ugliness in their city on their way to discover its many beauties, scurry up and down the sidewalk as if the defining disaster of this young century never happened. They duck into the gleaming towers around the hole, trade derivatives and complain about the market.

And I can't help thinking how much has gone down this hole. Thousands of lives all around the world. Billions of dollars. Countless billions of hours of wasted time.

And for what? Do you feel any safer now?

Labels: world trade center

Okay, I'm 60 today.

I was born before commercial television. When polio was a big problem. When Ike was just a general. Several wars, hot and cold, ago.

People congratulate me, as if three-score is a big accomplishment. But all I had to do was put one foot in front of the other, and here I am.

On the other hand, lots of other people deserve to be thanked. They raised me and taught me and paid me and supported me and loved me and worked with me and tolerated me and played with me and even listened to what I had to say.

For me, surviving to 60 is no big deal. They deserve the congratulations.

Labels: aging

There's an old saying that the best time to plant a tree is 30 years ago....and that the second best time is NOW.

Add this note to the thousands that have pointed out that this is the time to invest in the market, to reach out to your customers, to invent a new product, and to launch a new career. So why aren't more people doing just that?

Low energy. They don't call this a Depression for nothing.

It's just soooo hard to move when there seems to be so little traction available.

Yet there is opportunity everywhere. If you want some for yourself, you don't need inspiration, credit, or an engraved invitation. Just move. And if the traction is bad and you slip, get up and try it again.

"Nobody rings a bell when the market hits bottom," is the oldest saw in financial services.

Well, ding.

Labels: economics, enegy, ggcb