I think most of us business owners are done for the year and gearing up for next year. If you haven't started planning your marketing activities for next year, now is the time to get squared away.
Successful business owners are planners. It's important to get your business strategy down on paper and review your plans quarterly, making adjustments along the way. Maintaining a marketing calendar helps you execute your marketing efforts and keep you focused on your goals in a structured and thought-out manner, making your job much easier.
If you decide to fire yourself as the Marketing Director of your business in 2011, I am here to help you find the right marketing vehicles to promote your business.
Good luck to you in 2011! May you prosper and live life abundantly!
On Monday, November 29th, I went to see Roger Waters at Staples Center. For those of you who don't know Mr. Waters, he was a founding member of the band Pink Floyd. My friends and I were in a suite straight across from the stage - what an incredible view.
This post is about marketing, I promise.
The stage was set up like a partial wall with blocks missing. My impression was that, hey, he's playing songs from The Wall album - this makes sense. However, what he did with that wall during the performance was the most visually stimulating thing I've ever seen at a concert.
After the first couple of songs filled with pyrotechnics and crashing planes, he stepped up to the microphone and told the audience that he had done some calculating back in his dressing room and realized it had been 30 years, ___ months and ___ days since he had performed The Wall in Los Angeles. It was at the Sports Arena. People cheered and I'm willing to bet many of them had attended that performance.
The smell of pot was wafting through the Staples Center. I watched in awe as the wall became a projection screen. Perfectly timed with the music, the images flashed before my eyes sprinkled with quick audio and visual clips of Martin Luther King and past presidents' speaking. There were B-52 bombers dropping religious, Mercedes and Shell symbols, pictures of people who perished because of war, common graves and starving children.
One video clip in particular really hit me hard. An American girl was sitting in her classroom clapping to welcome a mystery guest. Then, slowly, there was a look of shock that took her over as she recognized the person who just walked in the door was her dad, still in his fatigues, who had just come back from the war. She slowly rises, hands over her mouth, and stumbles into his arms.
The images continued through the performance - answering questions that he asks in the song "Mother", goose-stepping hammers, Pink Floyd icons as the wall was gradually built... together, the all told a story and no one left that concert with some level of awareness.
Yes, it was a million-dollar production with a huge crew, lights, music, imagery, flame cannons and a really tall wall that came tumbling down at the end. We may not have this at our disposal, but it helped me to remember there are many marketing tools at our fingertips that we may not be using to tell our story.
Video commercials posted on websites and social media sites are becoming more and more popular. It's because a video is worth a thousand printed words. Combining images, music and well written scripts, you have a chance to impact your audience like never before.
If you want to take your marketing to a new level, video commercials will do just that. I know an amazing videographer. Let me know if you would like me to put you in touch with him!
I think most of us business owners are done for the year and gearing up for next year. If you haven't started planning your marketing activities for next year, now is the time to get squared away.
