You’re not Selling unless You’re Closing. You’re not Closing if you’re not doing a proposal. You’re not Doing a Proposal, if You’re not asking for your Clients Needs. If You’re not asking Your Clients needs You’re not Presenting your Proposal.
SEL-CLOSE-PROPOSE-CNA-CREATIVE-MEETING-PROSPECT
Pick a WORD above and do it NOW. (S.Mackenzie 1/22/22)
If you want a Free Radio Commercial or some Free ideas for your business or service, email me at NOW
Poised to return to the office? Ready or Not, here it comes! Whether you’ve returned to the office or are getting ready to do it. Listed below are some useful & tested tips upon your return to the “real” office.
I’ve been back in office and Flexi-Schedule/WFH for a few weeks. It was awkward and strange at first. Then was fun to see people, catch up with folks and be in a social setting. Now, at times it seems weird and useless. The time it takes to get there and back. The abrupt interruptions. ETC. After what was it? 16 months of WFH, a lot of it just doesn’t make sense anymore. I personally like the Flexi-Schedule. A portion of work in the office, like weekly meetings and free food days make sense. And a portion of outta office to get paperwork done, do proposals, go on meetings and the occasional “safe” lunch.
The world we were in is gone. Change is Good. I vote for the Flexi-Schedule to stay way down the line. I remember some nights in 2018-19 staying till 9:00pm and thinking that was normal. In 2021, that just doesn’t make much sense. Turn the computer off at 5:30 or 6:00 and binge some shows, go exercise, or cook a nice healthy dinner. Well, Unless it’s the occasional Large Project to Earn the Big Bucks, to stay (very) late on occasion is still ok with me.
How has it been for you? What tips would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments section below.
1. Change the Subject Line: Whether it’s business or personal email. I always change my subject line before sending an email. It’s simple, easy and one of the most effective ways to communicate better. Erase the whole subject line and replace it with a more up to date subject line. Or just erase a word or 2 and replace it with “update”. This simple step will help your communication tremendously. Who wants to see an email trail with last weeks subject line? No one. It makes zero sense when it’s so simple to change the subject line.
Take responsibility and be the person to change the subject line. Many don’t, do it and see how much easier it is to communicate with someone. Who wants to see Lunch on Friday? When lunch was last week and this week, you’re already doing the project for your customer. Changing the subject line may feel like it’s taking time out of your day. It’s not, it’s helping you and others communicate better, easier and less confused.
2. Don’t put the Content of the email in your subject line: Some people I work with ask me to do something with the first portion of the to-do info in the subject line and the 2nd part in the body of the email. I’m like you and don’t always see the subject or my email program doesn’t show it to me every time. So I reply to what is in the body of the email and not to what is in the subject line. It’s not saving you or the other person time by using the subject line with info that goes in the body of the email. It’s actually using up more of your time because it can confuse people.
3. Respond + Acknowledge each other: Even if its a quick Thank You, Got it or a more lengthy response. People need to feel that their actions and input are valued. Don’t leave them hanging. If someone helps you do something at your work. Acknowledge it with a response. It can be two words or two sentences. But it needs to be something. They went through the effort to help you. You can make the effort to acknowledge it.
4. Start with their Name/End with something Nice: Even if you’re in a hurry. Start your email by saying Hello with the persons first name. “A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie. It’s the polite and right thing to do. Not saying Hi or mentioning someone by name at the beginning of an email, tends to give you a rushed/moving to quickly vibe. Even if you’re in a hurry, take time to acknowledge the recipient by their name. And end your email with something nice. Like Have a nice evening, Enjoy the rest of your day/week. Whatever makes sense. End your email with something positive, nice or both. And change it up. It won’t carry the same meaning or Umph! if you use the same ending every time.
5. Proof it before sending: Re-read your email before sending. Check for flow, spelling and grammar. Some of the newer spell check programs can tend to add words you didn’t need and automatically change spelling on words that don’t need changing. And if you’re forwarding an email, make sure you erase sensitive information. Unless it’s needed, I tend to erase all superfluous info to keep things clean and to the point.
Looking for your clients Next Big Idea? Spending hours brainstorming, white-boarding, or scribbling notes on cocktail napkins! Your answer to their marketing dilemma might be, could be pretty SIMPLE.
Check out the picture above. It came across the midst of the usual 200+ emails on a Monday Morning. And not even sure who sent it. But it sure is effective and look how simple it is to create.
3 words below the counter: ALWAYS ORDER TWO. I’ve never been to this establishment-Burgers Never Say Die in L.A. or as their insta simplifies their name to BNSD. But if I do go here, I already know, I’m ordering TWO!
Subliminal or in your face, it doesn’t really matter, this is effective. Without doing much investigating reporting, I bet these 3 words work and sell a lot of extra burgers.
In the 90’s the Buzzword in advertising and marketing was the KISS principle. Keep It Super Simple. Keep it Simply Simple or the most used version, Keep It Simple…Stupid. There’s no better way to exemplify the power of this principle than ALWAYS ORDER TWO.
Have a nice rest of your day or night.
Be Amazed by the Victoria’s Secret and Zara Stories.
In the Late 80’s, when I was first in radio, I remember writing a :10 Live event commercial for the DJ’s. It said something like “Join us on January 24th at Masquarade to see…” Well, within a couple of days I got called into the bosses office. He told me some of the best advice I’ve ever heard when writing copy and some of the best advice that I still use to this day, but has not been passed along to enough people.Its a pretty simple, yet mostly overlooked “RULE” in copywriting. here it is:
PEOPLE DON’T THINK IN DATES, THEY THINK IN DAYS” Especially for people like me who think in pictures, I can barely remember what day it is let alone what date it is. And I am not the only one who doesn’t always know what Day a certain Date is. Thus, if a print ad, TV or Radio commercial is telling me to be somewhere on November 24th with no Day listed next to it, It’s going to be extra hard to advertise to me. I actually just mentally tallied it up and came up with Thursday. Not totally sure if that is correct, but pretty sure.
This poster is an example of someone who didn’t use a Day. It only says the date. And they have been putting ads like this in my elevator for months, DATES with no DAYS listed. It’s pretty frustrating for someone like me and probably you too? It’s really not their fault, no one mentored them or called them into their office to explain this easy “trick” to better remembrance of when to be somewhere. Please use Days to help your advertising in Hawaii or around the world become more effective.
Even today which is Halloween I was listening to the radio and a couple of the commercials didn’t say “Join us Tonight” Or even “Join us Monday October 31st”. It was playing today and just said “join us on October 31st” ugh! Yeah-I know, it’s a bit different since most people know October 31st is Halloween, but you get the point, if it was next Monday and it said “Join us November 7..” it would have been pretty easy not to know that it was That Monday night and not some other day since Tonight nor This Monday Night were not used in the commercial.
Here’s how I take care of updates for all of my clients.
1. A couple weeks out: Join us Thursday November 24th
2. The Monday before the Thursday: “Join us This Thursday” or “Join us this Thursday November 24th” Up to you on that one. I personally go for the simpler “Join us This Thursday”
3. Wednesday all day: Join us TOMORROW NIGHT ..How many radio spots do I hear on a daily basis that are still saying “join us November 24th EVEN the Day before the event! double ugh!
4. Thursday November 24th: “Join us Tonight” People think in days and even simpler-use tomorrow night the day before the event and Tonight the day of the event. Totally throw your dates out the window now!
People think in days not dates and this also goes back to the KISS principle..”Keep it Simply Simple” or as us Ol’ Schoolers used to say the politically incorrect KISS principle: “Keep It Simple Stupid”..LOL
You May not want to get this involved in your copywriting, In Such a fast passed world, many get lazy on these simple updates. But it really is the right thing to do. It’s what I do to be as effective as I can for my clients. However, if you remember one thing from this blog, remember that people remember DAYS much easier than DATES. I would recommend adding in Days to all of your print, TV and Radio Commercials. Even if you forget to all the different updates, for a better remembrance of your event ad, please add the day to your commercials, promos, and Ads. Have a Great November!!
If you need any ideas for upcoming events or promotions, send me an at scott.mackenzie@coxradio.com and I’ll get you a bunch of free ideas for your upcoming marketing dilemma.
On Saturday I went to another Pacific New Media Class. The class was entitled: “How to Use Social Media to Build your Professional and Personal Brand” taught by “Neenz” Faleafine. Neenz was the social media director for Governor Abercrombie, now works at Oceanit, and is the chief evangelist for Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop Website.
I personally think many of you would enjoy taking her class in the Spring, thus I won’t tell you everything I learned, but I will tell you a few pretty cool things:
1. the Hottest, Newest social media site is called Chime.In. It’s where all the cutting edge Techies are going to last week and this week. And did you know that there are over 500 Social Media sites in existence!!! OMG! But Facebook still rules with over 800 Million people on it! So, for marketing purposes, if you only choose one SM avenue, I would still advise using and getting good at FB.
2. Check out contxts.com. At this site you can set up your own electronic SMS business card. First just go there. Then after you are set yours up, you just take a new friends phone, put 50500 in the “To:” section then in the text section write your name. Then within 6 seconds, an electronic business card pops on to their smartphone screen. in plain English”text your name to 50500″. I love it, it’s almost as fun as QR codes, but I’m still pretty attached to those!
3. Set up Google Alerts for your name at Google.com\alerts, purchase your own domain name with your real name, check knowem.com to see how many you can still get using your own name, tag all your photos, tag your content relevent to your brand and as we learned before…Create Content because as Dan Z said “Content is King” and @NEENZrecommends that when you create content make sure it conveys what you want your personal brand to be, spell correclty and be specific!
I just got home from work a little while ago, so I need to go now, time to relax a bit before the new day starts. If you need some free ideas for any type of promotion or marketing campaign you are working on, feel free to email me anytime at scott.mackenzie@coxradio.com or give me a call at 275-1106. Take care and have a Great Mega Halloween Weekend!
http://video.mynet.com/faytkilap/Iste-iPhone-5/1303894/
Who knows how real this maybe-most likely an artists vision of the new iPhone. Whether it’s real or not, this vid sure is fun to watch. According to this Vid the keyboard comes out of the phone and on to your desk and you can watch movies in mid air. Thanks to Tom Asacker for the tip on the Vid. Enjoy! SM
Even though QR (Quick Read) codes have been around for a while, this is the year that I’ve personally really enjoyed them. It started at Christmas When my friend Charles gave me a New York Times and it had a HUGE really colorful QR code on it and I sat at lunch trying to take a picture of it, which of course did not work. From a Blog earlier, I mentioned that you would need a QR Code reader or scanner on your iPhone to get it to work. Since December, I have made QR code business cards, stuck QR Code Stickers up all over the world and made QR codes for many friends including Non Stop Travel, Power 104.3, and Oceanic Cable.
Now, check out this video, I know it’s in Croatian, but even in Croatian it shows you how simple and easy it is to use a QR Code. And as I’ve been studying the usage of QR codes in Advertising, I noticed that many take the customer to a website, which is cool and all. That’s what most of my QR codes do, but as we continue to use them, I love all of the really awesome things we can do with them!
For example this QR code is on the back of a Ronhill cigarette package and it takes you to a regional mobile website that gives the smoker current locations of where smoking is allowed. And similar to Foursquare-users can also update the list of places themselves. Thanks to Springwise.com for the tip and for more information on TDR click here.
On the subject of cool things to do with QR codes. Feel free to use any of these ideas or use them as a springboard to your own QR code Fun, Advertising, and Marketing! (These arent real or if they are it’s a total coincidence because I just made them all up today 9/15/11)
1. Red Bull/Energy Drink/Soda Company: The QR code could click to a site that shows all the cool places Red Bull events are being held this year and you’d be entered to win VIP access. Or even more fun, the QR code would lead you to Travis Pastrana’s backyard-where he could teach us some new tricks on Moto X or Subaru.
2.Clearthesmoke.org/Lung Association: Since we did an article on cool things you can do with smoking, I figured I’d better add in some PSA type info on quiting smoking. So, instead of taking you their websites homepage, the QR code can take you to an entry form to enter the “Quit Smoking Today” art contest. Here you would upload your art and then the next time you scan the QR code it would take you to the Clear the Smoke dot org Art Gallery where you could see all of the great works of art and vote on your favorites. Winner received a smoking HOT trip to the Bahamas.
3. Broke2.com/Clothing Company: Click on the QR code and it takes you to a fun interactive video game where you get to dress up Celebrities in some fun destination appropriate clothes to go on a road trip race all over the world. Changing clothes as you go to each destination. Racing against all sorts of people all around the world. Fun to do, fun to race and fun to meet new people from around the World. You could get badges, points or money coupons each time you get to a new country and use them to purchase a special limited edition line of clothing designed for the game.
4. G-Shock/Watches in general: Put the QR code underneath the crown or on the band. Wearers of the brand get the exclusive code to be in the VIP Watch Club. Along with the usual cool VIP things brands like to give you. This Club would check the time and show you a video of the coolest thing happening at that moment in time. Like an all night party in Ibiza, backstage at Fashion Week, a sneak peek at a celebrity partying in Maui, behind the scenes at a Victoria Secret’s Fashion show, on the set of Hawaii Five-0, Carnivale in Rio, St. Pats Day in Dublin etc. Whatever, wherever is HOT at this TIME, they will take you there!
Oh-What fun to be had with QR codes and just think I couldn’t even download one of these things 8 months ago. The World sure is moving fast! Best way to get a hold of me this week and weekend is by text at 808 479-9928. Cheers and Aloha! SM
Getting your website, blog or whatever you’re trying to promote on the first page of Google takes some time and effort. Here’s a bit of the basics, after a bit more testing of something’s I’ve been learning over the last few months, I’ll add some more advanced SEO information to this blog in about 3 weeks-I just want to make sure that they work first. So for now, let’s look at some things we all need to know to fuel the Search Engines out there!
First: What is a Search Engine:
An article on bbc.co.uk states that: “A Search Engine makes it possible to find a specific bit of information in the huge mass of data stored on the web”.
Second: Who are these Search Engines that we should care about:
According to Rob Croll there are actually thousands of Search Engines-Who would know that there are that many! But, to get found on the web as of today August 26, 2011, we should concentrate on having Google, Bing and Yahoo! find us. And Google is by far the main Engine we want to feed most of our fueling efforts towards.
Third: What do the Search Engines Do? as of today I gotta say.
The Search engines like Google and Bing are known as crawler based engines and at the moment operate similarly to each other. These engines do three things to find our blogs and websites:
A. They use Spiders also known as Bots and Crawlers that search the web for content by finding links and getting directed to in a few other ways-that sentence it a bit vague, but don’t worry or get confused. Basically Spiders, Bots and Crawlers are all the same thing and what they do is look for you and me. I’d draw a fun picture if I didn’t need to sleep tonight. Maybe I’ll draw it another day and add it in here.
B. Once the Spiders find you or me, the information is indexed into a database to allow for future retrieval for the time when someone does a search-Types a word into the Google search box or as some people call it the google rectangle. the Google search box Which BTW is on the top right or the middle of your page. The top middle area where the web address is called the browser. I’m sure many of you know what a browser is but For many years our IT guy would ask us to copy and paste things into our browser and for the life of me I could never find it on my email-duh it appears when I turn my internet on. So I never did anything, but I managed to get by for many a year. I think learning to copy and paste and what a browser actually is, was the best thing I’ve ever learned on the computer-it now saves me tons of time and frustration and gives me more leisure time and how super easy is it? OMG!
C. Now when someone goes to Google, Bing or Yahoo! and types in a word, a sentence or question into the “search box”(ah I like that name-easy to remember and use) an algorithm tries to identify the most relevant results from their indexing.
Fourth: What do Search Engines look for?
Each search engine has its own criteria and their own algorithm but they all basically look to see if there is a relationship between your page and a searchers inquiry. The closer your page fits what the person is looking for, the easier you are to find. After you’ve read this simple explanation, look to the bottom of the page for many of the helpful things to learn about to increase your Search Engine Optimization.
Fifth: How do they know which blog or site is best for your inquiry:
They use their “secret” algorithms. Ahh, i love that word, its my favorite word when I explain how Pandora finds the songs you like, they use a complex algorithm. So, what’s an algorithm? It’s basically a pretty complicated mathematical formula. Google will even tell you it’s so complex it uses 200 different variables! And the search engines change these algorithms frequently. Actually, Google has admitted according to Rob Croll at Marlannah Digital Marketing to changing their algorithm at least once a day! Wow! now that’s pretty crazy, but I suspect they will change them more than once a day in the near future, who knows they probably already are doing this.
I really didn’t mean to write this much tonite and I do need to get some sleep, but before I go I’ll give you the list to increase your SEO that I promised you.
1. Content relevancy: Whatever your site or blogs name is, write about it. Like today, If I was trying to increase my SEO rankings, I would have written the word “advertising” or “radio advertising” or better yet “advertising in Hawaii” in this blog. but today, I’m just writing to help out. Hah, but I did just write it, but not to increase My Ranking, but to tell a simple example.
2. Popularity: How many views have you had today, yesterday and over the years that your site has been around. Also, Who is following you or your blog. Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare fans and friends help you here too. Over the last year or so, your Social Media competency helps a lot with your popularity.
3. Inbound Links: These are the links on other people’s pages that link to you. In many of my posts I link you to various sites mainly to help you find the information, sources, people, places and things easier, but these outbound links from my site DO help others Inbound links, which helps one get higher on the Google food chain. Today I’m trying to go linkless, mainly to keep this all about learning and not about increasing my sites Google search ranking.
4. Outbound Links: These aren’t nearly as important as inbound links. But, I like to use them because they help you the reader find things easier and who knows, they may bring me an inbound link or two if people are using the spiritual law of reciprocity.
5. Title Tags: The words in your title tag are what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP). They also can be seen in the top of internet browsers. From what I gather, they are extremely important, some say if you don’t fix this, don’t bother with the rest. Others say this is 1 of the top 3 things to pay attention to for increased views of your page. I suspect I need to fix my title tag on some of my sites. From looking on the web, it seems most advise to put what you are selling/doing first, then keywords that make sense next to each other and end with your company’s name. So Something like this would be a good start for a Pizza Joint: Pizza, Eat in-Take Out, the best pepperoni Pizza in Hawaii, Hawaii Pizza Company. There’s a ton of good advice if you do a search in Google.
6. Page Rank: Google uses this to rank your site/blog. A link analysis algorithm. Basically doing all of these other things on this list will help to increase your page Rank. Which will in turn help you get found faster and easier.
7. Domain Age: From what I’ve read on the net, Google likes sites better that have either been around for a while or the name has been purchased for 3 years or more. Less than a 3 year lease on your site’s name decreases your ranking.
8. Useability: Attribute, description of how easy your site is to use. Method or technique to get things done easier for the user. People who come to your blog/site can use it easily with high satisfaction.
10. Site Maps: Visual or textually organised model of a websites content that allows visitors to find what they are looking for easily and make sure that all of your links and connecting words work! A site map is like an interactable table of contents on your site. The bigger your site the better your site map should be, if you have a pretty simple blog, I’d work on some of the other of the top 10 first.
These 10 words come from “Epic Strategies for Small Business” How Search Engines Work written by Rob Croll on July 11, 2011 for marketingzeus.com the information written after the 10 words, I wrote from mostly reading all sorts of things, seminars and of course by “doing” my various websites and blogs. I’m a big believer in “don’t just think about it, wonder if its right or wrong, just jump in and start doing it” No one’s perfect at writing a blog or getting their site to page one on Google, but its better to try things than wait around until you “think” you’re ready and/or perfect. If you do that, five years could go by as you wait, that’s a lot of lost practice time!
You can comment and I’ll add in your thoughts and recommendations and add a link to your site if you like on what they mean. For more information on anything listed above, just google it, there’s a lot more information out there on all of these 10 items. We could do a whole one page blog on each of them if we wanted. For additional information on Search Engine Optimization check out Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide or Bings blog has a post entitled Search Engine Optimization for Bing. Or check back here in a month or two and we’ll add new things. As we’ve all learned, it’s an ever-changing landscape, but just working on the basics will work wonders for you and people searching for you. The simplest thing I ever did was moved from Web.Me to WordPress and my views double in a week. That was so, super easy, should have done it years ago! Have a nice weekend-Stay Dry!.
Advertising In Hawaii 