In working with entrepreneurs, one of the challenges I repeatedly come across is the marketing of innovative products on a shoe string budget.  The challenge is that the massive marketing budgets of years past have literally wired consumers into certain ways of thinking and the only way to really undo that is to massively market your idea.  That is unless someone has already planted the seed for you.

To illustrate the point, I’ll use the topic of household laundry.  As a guy, I’ve been wired to use hot water and bleach for anything that looked funny or smelled funny.  Of course, that strategy is only for white clothes but that hasn’t kept me from razzing my Mom that I put bleach in with my colored clothes.    Best of all, bleach is cheap and you can literally buy it on any street corner.  Then came along three scientists, Dr. Hannah Howard, Dr. Erin Miller, and Dr. Rachel Williams, who figured out that a sodium percarbonate, Na₂CO₃•H₂O₂ to be exact, would do a better job and was safe with colors.  Yeh, let’s explain that to the world!

Marketing this to the world was not cheap!  You and I came to know the product by the brand name OxiClean through the company’s late spokes person Billy Mays.  They spent millions in infomercials and obviously had great success.  The challenge that many entrepreneurs and inventors face is that they don’t have the budgets nor the marketing knowledge to take their idea to the heights of OxiClean.  Still, there are things that they can leverage.  One of them is mainstream television.  Whether it be the news or a sitcom, someone has likely discussed the topic of your invention and this can be leveraged through online marketing and social media in a cost effective manner.

The Costanza

George Costanza and his whacked out parents were arguably the characters that made the epic sitcom Seinfeld the hit show that it was.   His antics were not only hilarious but they were memorable.  One of the most memorable episodes for me was the one about Costanza’s exploding wallet.  Basically, George had this huge wallet and the episode centered around everything he had in it and relevant topics like back pain and organization.  Unfortunately, YouTube has the embed code for this video disabled but you can view it here.

This past year we were introduced to an inventor who was looking for ways to take the marketing of one of his products to the next level.  The product is a mans wallet that is thin by design.  It is called the Savvy Caddy.  Though his initial efforts with the product have done very well, he was specifically interested in connecting with consumers looking to solve a problem that weren’t necessarily aware of the thin wallet category.  Some problems that men have with their wallet are disorganization, the destruction of magnetic strips on credit cards, cracking credit cards, and back pain caused by sitting on a large wallet.  Ironically, the inventor, Alan Beckley was not a Seinfeld fan.  Of course, during our first meeting, I said, “Well, we already have your spokesperson and it won’t cost you a dime!”  Of course, I was thinking of George Costanza and the Seinfeld episode.

Creating The Problem

One of the biggest challenges product marketers have is getting consumers to realize a problem and make a connection between their product and the problem.  We as consumers live within the realities of the past and are often quite fine with what they subject us to.  Our elevators still don’t have “Undo” buttons and every time we fill up our cars we go through the ridiculous exercise of unscrewing the gas cap.  Still, until the problem is clearly created in our mind, we will continue on in life without the urge for a solution.  Mens wallets have been a problem for a long time.  Yet, it took a 1/2 hour episode of Seinfeld to truly create the problem and you still don’t see men associating their wallet with their back problems.  Thus, a starting point like “the Costanza” will not make your product fly off the shelf but it does give you a launchpad for an online marketing campaign that cost millions to create and will not cost you a dime.

Summary

Not every inventor will find a perfect match like “the Costanza”.  Still, it is worth while to look at television and even stand up comedy for simple launchpads that could make sense for your product.  If they don’t exist, you might be able to find a local comedian or actor to help you create a short video that you can use on YouTube to get the ball rolling.

In full disclosure, I am writing this post with my wallet sitting on my desk next to me as it has gained some weight this week.  I’m actually about to call Alan and order a wallet!

Let’s look at the facts:

• Unemployment in America is staggering
• This Week Obama Recognized Small Business Needs Help
• Google dominates the market (aka – no need for brand marketing)
• 2010 Super Bowl ads went for 2.6 milion for 30 seconds
• You can be an idiot and still derive value from Google.
• The Super Bowl Has Little Significance outside of North America

Super Bowl 44 provided sports fans what they expected.  Sunday February 7th gave viewers nail biting sports drama, nostalgic music, and a line up of commercials for all to enjoy.  One of those commercials was the first Super Bowl commercial ever produced by Google.  Upon its airing, Twitter lit up with energy and the blogosphere proclaimed that Google had produced the greatest commercial of Super Bowl 44.  The problem is that Google failed America.  Here’s why.

Google dominates the Internet.  So much so that they can actually entertain an action that no American business has ever considered–pulling out China.  While Americans are being displaced from their homes in the largest foreclosure market to hit the United States in decades and small business owners struggle to operate in the worst credit conditions since The Great Depression, Google employees are bathing in stock options and bonuses that were last seen in the dot.com bubble.  Don’t get me wrong as I think it is great that Google is doing well as a business and that the careers of their employees are secure.  Still, when you decide to spend 2.6 million dollars, you would think that Google would make some sort of attempt to connect with the reality in this country.  It is a Web 2.0 kind of thing to do.

Google’s Super Bowl ad accomplished the equivalent of a “How To Use Google” in the context of finding services in Paris, France.  Let’s work through the facts again:

• Paris has nothing to do with the Super Bowl and Americans really can’t afford to go Paris this year.
• People use Google by default and with suggested search they need no additional help
• At .44 cents per stamp, Google sent letters to every small business in the country trying to explain their Local Business service.

Let’s skip forward to the last point.  Google had the opportunity to highlight its Local Business service during Super Bowl 44.  The 2.6 million dollars it would have cost to accomplish this would have been a fraction of the price tag it cost to “snail mail” letters to every small business owner in the United States.  In doing so, they could have inspired small business owners to update their listings and at the same time educated consumers as to how to search for local services.  They could have also focused on searches, products, and services that were relevant to the Super Bowl’s host city Miami.

The Super Bowl has historically been the advertising platform for advertisers to mark their place in brand and creative history.  With a brand that is as solid as “Kleenex” and creative that is becoming of a company full of mathematicians, one has to ask what Google’s Super Bowl 44 advertisement accomplished.  A naysayer would quickly point out that they are filthy rich and that 2.6 million dollars is a drop in the bucket.  My response would be that their approach was very Web 1.0.  Google shouted at people versus providing them with information that they needed.  Somewhere in New Orleans there is a small family owned business who is faced with an invoice from a telephone company who is trying to impress upon them that the phone book is their avenue to connecting with customers.  In their Sunday afternoon attempt to take a break from the reality of business in a tanking economy, Google could have provided them with insight that could have changed their small business course tomorrow morning.

Google Marketing, you failed America on February 7, 2010.

Catch phrases are helpful in marketing, but if a brand can move beyond just a catch phrase to a point of sale, it is even more valuable.  Consider Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan from years ago. It still rings in the minds of athletes and non-athletes alike.  “The best part of wakin’ up, is Folgers in your cup” has been sung by both the caffeinated patron and the non-patron.  Slogans such as these run through our minds and bring back a sense of warmth and wonder of a particular season of life when we were watching the commercials and seeing the billboards.  They influence our choices as we peruse the aisles, guiding us to the brand that we purchase.

When considering service companies, branding can go much further than a catchy slogan and drive the potential client to initiate a phone call to your company.  What is your point of sale and how quickly can you get an interested buyer involved?

A great example of this comes to mind when ordering flowers.  When an unexpected occasion comes up and you need to find flowers, what is the first slogan that pops into your head? Is it a slogan, or is it a phone number? I couldn’t tell you the slogan for 1-800-FLOWERS (if they even have one), but I can tell you their phone number. I know that when a last minute floral need arrives, that is the place I’m going to call.  In other words, “Cha-ching!”

Vanity numbers can be one of the most effective ways to drive a point of sale to your business.  They work excellently for generic service needs.  There are other service companies that are using this technique of branding their businesses including: 1-800-Plumber and 1-800-Lawyers.

In writing this article we spoke with Keith Glass of 1-800-Plumber.Com, a national based plumbing company that just recently launched franchises offering plumbing services in Naples and plumbing repair in San Antonio, who commented, “People only call a plumber when they need one and many times it is a flat out emergency.  We built the 1-800-Plumber.Com brand on the premise of being a nationwide, one phone number to call for all your plumbing needs.”

800 vanity branding also sets an expectation of high quality service levels and immediate response.  “Prior to launching the brand, our focus groups confirmed that our phones would need to be answered 24X7 and that our franchisees would need to be outfitted with the most modern technology in the plumbing business.  We had already committed that level of service; yet, the brand expectations re-enforced our need to deliver upon it,” commented Glass.

The one downside with vanity phone numbers in general is that the numbers and letters in today’s modern phone devices do not line up on BlackBerry hand helds and other phones that have computer style keyboards like they did on the old rotary and standard key pad phones you found hanging on the wall in your Mom’s kitchen.  I bring up this point not in an effort to steer you away from vanity branding but it is a point that should lead you to ensure fine details such as including the actual numerical version of the number in your marketing as well as having hyper-link clickable versions of the phone number on your website so that modern phone users can Google, click, and call.

Marketers are finding that vanity 800 numbers are effective in information retention for potential clients and are  training people to look for vanity numbers.  Vanity 800 numbers such as 1-800-Call-ATT make ATT customers feel at ease, knowing that they won’t have to shuffle through numbers in order to find the customer service line when they have account problems. The goal of every successful marketing campaign is to make systems simple and your company, where they’ll spend money easy to reach.  Vanity 800 numbers are one excellent solution to reaching that point of sale.

The title of a blog post is extremely important.  Most blogging software takes the title and uses it both internally and external in the management of content.  Some places where the title of the blog appears are:

• The URL of the post.
• The H1 title or the actual post titles that a reader sees.
• The HTML title tag

The problem you will find in most blog posts is that the HTML “title tag” is the single most important piece of content to a search engine but is often written to target human interests.   HTML title tags should be strategically used to drive search engine traffic versus copy that entices human readers.  According to a post in High Rankings, Title tags are considered to be in the big three which also includes visible copy and inbound link anchor text.  Still they are often overlooked by web masters and amateur bloggers.

Most blogging software and websites will allow title tags to be defined independently of content.  This is very important as humans and search engines are two different audiences.  I’m going to use a post on the website/blog of McCuistion TV as an example.

On October 25th, 2009, McCuistion TV broadcast a show on addiction which featured Chris Lawford Kenedy.   The title of the show was “The Causes of Addiction”.  The title of this show is excellent for human beings in that it is a teaser eluding to the fact that the show will reveal some of the causes of addiction.  From a search engine perspective, however, this title leaves a lot on the table.

The 2 word keyword pair “addiction causes” gets about 5,400 searches a month in Google.  The downside is that there are over 10 billion pages associated with this keyword pair in Google’s index.  Chris Lawford Kennedy gets about 2,000 searches per month and Chris Lawford Kennedy adiction only has 38,000 pages associated with it.  Though there are more searches associated with “addiction causes” the real opportunity is around Chris Lawford’s name the competition is much more approachable.  Thus, we published the McCuistion TV post “The Causes of Addiction” with a title tag that read “The Causes of Addiction – Christopher Lawson Kennedy”.  The result is that this post ranks in the top 4 hits in Google for both Lawford’s name as well as his name combined with the keyword “addiction”.

Title tags are very important as they are a blogger and/or webmaster’s interface to search engines.