A summary of things you should know about Escape The Expected according to Tom Trush: Introduction In this episode Tom Trush takes a deep dive into his book, Escape theRead More
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]]>In this episode Tom Trush takes a deep dive into his book, Escape the Expected, where he shares the secret psychology of selling to today’s skeptical consumers.
In his book Trush provides a step-by-step guide that teaches you marketing secrets you may have never heard of like what prospects don’t trust you, what pollutes the marketing world, and how to establish yourself as an authority in so much cluttered advertising. The goal of the book is to help you spend less time working, leverage your marketing better, and adapt to the constant changes in marketing.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are spending more than half their time marketing a business or have no idea where to start when it comes to marketing.
The difference in this book comes down to quick action items. The book is a little over 200 pages but you can get through it in one sitting.
You can open up to any chapter and get a tip or strategy that you can implement immediately.
Dare to be different because when your product or service marketing looks like everything else in its industry then you are forcing prospects to use price as a deciding factor when whether to buy your product or service.
This book has really short chapters and those chapters are broken down into three sections to create what I call The Trust Trilogy. I’ll tell you each piece of the trilogy and then we’ll dig in to each one. The first one is instead of marketing what you want to say, give your prospects what they need to succeed. Number two is trust requires consistent communication because it creates familiarity. And then number three is that your marketing must develop relationships before it can drive profits.
The first part of the trilogy, instead of marketing what you want to say give prospects what they need to succeed, ties into that consumers crave relationships with companies that they can trust these days. With today’s rapid technology development it has increased our interactions with other people and you have more ways to get in front of people now days and as a result we have more opportunities to attract prospects attention. The key is that you can have your prospects attention but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have their interest. Those who establish trust are the ones who get heard and that is what we dig into in this first section of the book.
The second part of the trust trilogy, trust requires consistent communication, the problem here is that so many business owners and entrepreneurs will only market when they need leads and market from a place of desperation. You prospects don’t care about your leads or you generating sales they just know that they have a problem to solve and they are looking for information in your marketing to solve that problem. When you are marketing your best bet is to market to people who have already expressed interest in what you offer.
The third part of the trust trilogy, marketing must develop relationships before you can drive profits, ties into a challenge that many business owners and entrepreneurs have. When they launch marketing campaigns they expect a significant and quick returns but those who consistently market realize that they take time especially when you have to educate your target market. In this third section I give you different ways on how you can consistently communicate with your audience and establish that trust over a long period of time. When you are creating your product you need to really think about what you want to be known for in your business because we operate in an economy today where you likely have more competitors than you can count.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 06:02
“The most effective marketing often doesn’t look like marketing.” – Tom Trush
I am a direct-response copywriter and I think sometimes you give that career name out there and people don’t necessarily understand what it is. The way I like to explain it is that I write marketing materials designed to generate response. One of the big things that I love about my job is figuring out why a marketing piece is poor or isn’t generating the response that people want.
Usually the way that I write is I stumble on marketing topics that interest me and then I’ll weave them into a theme. I wanted to give people some ideas for establishing trust in the marketing materials that you send out to attract leads and generate sales.
Ca$hvertising by Drew Eric Whitman
Buy Escape the Expected by Tom Trush on Amazon today
Visit EscapeTheExpected.com to learn more about the book
Visit TomTrush.com to learn more about Tom and his services
Follow Tom Trush on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Do It! Marketing by David Newman
Pocket Man by Scott Jordan
Moving Targets by Gabriel Aluisy
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Reasons Why Your Marketing Sucks
5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Marketing and Branding
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>5 Secrets for Developing Your Own Personal Brand What is the secret to successful brand building? Well, it is a combination of a great plan, and lots of hard work.Read More
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]]>What is the secret to successful brand building? Well, it is a combination of a great plan, and lots of hard work. Whether you are a multi-million dollar enterprise or a home-based small business, you need a clear idea if you want to build a brand identity.
Let’s take a look at the important pointers that can help you with developing your own personal brand:
Want a good example of brand storytelling done right? Just check out the Lego Movie. A fun representation of the possibilities that the brand creates, the movie is equally enjoyable for both children and adults.
Consider who you are, what your business promises are, and how you started out to get some ideas about your brand’s story. Keep it crisp and concise. And be true about who you are. And you’ll have the base on which to build your brand.
Serious? Cool? Quirky? Every business has a personality of its own. It depends on a number of factors, such as your target market, your products/services, your approach, and so on.
While McDonalds and Burger King both serve burgers, they have a distinctive personality. If you sell video games to peppy teens, your brand needs to reflect a hip and cool image to attract the right crowd.
But it won’t surely suit your brand’s image if you offer technology solutions to new businesses. Again, either of these images won’t suit a luxury brand selling fragrances to the ultra high net worth individuals.
The simple logo, use of green and white, and the entire look and feel of Whole Foods Market convey the concepts of health, freshness and sustainability. Consistency is the key to brand building.
After you have identified the personality of your business, it is important to focus on how to reflect it at every step. Your logo, website design, color choice, text use, and every little detail needs to be consistent with the image you want to project.
If you aren’t on social media yet, it is high time you do it. Consider your brand’s personality and who your audience is before you decide which platforms to engage on and how to do it.
A jewelry designer hoping to reach out to women may do well on Pinterest (as Etsy established). But if you are a telecommunication solution provider aiming to connect with followers, Twitter and LinkedIn may be more advantageous.
You also need to come up with the right ways to engage on social media. Remember, a conversation is a two-way thing. And if you fail to converse, your presence alone won’t be of any help to your brand.
The best way to establish your personal brand is to be there for others. Whether it’s as simple as answering a question on social media or as complex as creating a how-to guide, extend a helping hand.
Not only will it make you feel good, it will also help you earn respect and admiration. And you never know when a good turn results in a new opportunity. While it is essential to learn to say no at times, it is also important to say yes, whenever you can.
Little tactics help create a brand identity that is known and valued by all.
Don’t expect overnight results. Developing your own personal brand takes time. You have to plan it well, put in the required work, and wait for the results. It may be slow, but once your brand identity catches on with the audience, it’ll grow on its own.
Lean Branding by Laura Busche
Hello My Name is Awesome by Alexandra Watkins
Pocket Man by Scott Jordan
Body of Work by Pamela Slim
Digital Bacon by Alex Rodriguez
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Credibility according to James Kouzes: Introduction In this episode James Kouzes reveals all his insights on Credibility where he discusses how successfulRead More
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]]>In this episode James Kouzes reveals all his insights on Credibility where he discusses how successful leaders gain credibility, lose their credibility and why people demand credibility.
In his book Kouzes and co-author Barry Posner provide you years of research, case studies, and data that uncover 6 disciplines that build true, long-lasting credibility that leadership experts are good at gaining. The goal of the book is to help you understand the basics of building credibility and why it is important for the growth of your personal and professional success.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are involved in every aspect in managing a business yet need help reinforcing their leadership abilities and building trust with others.
Many people talk about integrity and honesty as a leadership quality and intuitively that makes sense. But a couple guys at a university take that question to be also an empirical one. As so we decided to do research on that topic and found that’s one of the fundamental differences between our work and other people who write on leadership. Our work is evidence based and backed by many interviews with people who are practitioners. This book also specifically addresses what leaders can do to earn and sustain credibility.
It’s important that you start with the first couple of chapters and take a look at how we arrived at the conclusion that credibility is the foundation of leadership. From there you can read what is most relevant to you at the moment.
Remember the phase credibility is the foundation of leadership and behaviorally that is defined as do what you will say you will do.
How we came to the conclusion that credibility is the foundation of leadership is we asked people what they look for and admire in leaders. So in the opening of the book we talk about what we discovered. We discovered that there are four qualities which people consistently and globally have selected as the most important qualities that they would look for in a leader they would willingly follow. At the top of the list is honesty and that’s followed by being forward looking, then competent, and then inspiring. Three of those four words that people look for and admire in a leader make up what researchers call source credibility which is defined as trustworthiness or honesty, competence or expertise, and dynamism or being inspiring and upbeat. Those three comprise source credibility or what it takes for you to believe in someone who is delivering a message. And when they are speaking you have to believe that the person has integrity, that they are expert in what they are talking about, and that they have some energy that they put behind it. With that as the foundation we asked the people that were involved in our research to answer the question what is credibility behaviorally, how do you know it when you see it. People look for somebody who does what he/she says they will do and that observation about behavioral credibility lead then to us taking a look at what one does to sustain credibility. We came up with a framework that has three parts to it. And from that there were six disciplines which are discover yourself, appreciate continuance, affirmed shared values, develop capacity, serve a purpose, and lastly is to sustain hope.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 04:37
“If you don’t believe in the messenger you won’t believe the message.” – Kouzes and Posner first law of leadership.
I am co-author of The Leadership Challenge with Barry Posner which was our first book. I am also Dean’s Executive Fellow of Leadership at The Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University.
Barry and I wrote our first paper together at Santa Clara University where we met on shared values make a difference and that was in the early 80’s. And as part of that research we asked the question what do you look for and admire in a leader. And we found then, and when we did research on our second publication together, we asked that same question again and found a similar response. And that response was that essentially credibility is the foundation of leadership and so we decided that our second book together would be about that topic.
Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer
Give and Take by Adam Grant
Buy Credibility by James Kouzes on Amazon today
Visit LeadershipChallenge.com to learn more about James and his books
Follow James Kouzes on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Prosperous Leader by Jacob Engel
Powerhouse by Mike Clayton
Pocket Man by Scott Jordan
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Crossing the Chasm according to Geoffrey Moore: Introduction In this episode Geoffrey Moore shares all his insights on his bestselling book, CrossingRead More
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]]>In this episode Geoffrey Moore shares all his insights on his bestselling book, Crossing the Chasm, where he discusses his revised and updated expertise on marketing and selling disruptive products to mainstream customers.
In his book Moore provides dozens of successful high-tech marketing examples, his in-depth research on technology adoption models for high-tech consumers, and many new marketing strategies that are specifically built for bring high-tech products to larger markets. The goal of the book is to help you master the Technology Adoption Life cycle and accelerate your marketing efforts.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are selling high-tech products that are new the market and need help broaden their marketing efforts to cover all segments of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle.
Most of the books in high-tech marketing understood that there were early adopters but they hadn’t recognized that there was this chasm separating the early adopters from everybody else. And as a result they thought they could just transition across very smoothly but in fact we lost many high-tech startups to the chasm.
I designed the book to be read from front to back.
The notion that when you are crossing the chasm you have to show up with a complete solution. The only way that is really feasible is if you specialize in one particular use case. So it’s the idea of pick a single use case and make sure it’s one that’s very urgent and compelling.
The key thing of the first part of the book is that we use a framework called the Technology Adoption Life Cycle to help entrepreneurs understand how high-tech markets develop. The key idea that we insert into it is this chasm idea which is the early adopting market really aligns with the entrepreneur very voluntarily. And the chasm then separates them from the rest of the marketplace which is more skeptical and pragmatic. So the strategy for marketing high-tech changes dramatically when it’s time to cross the chasm.
The last 2/3 of the book puts out a playbook and it’s organized around five key principles, there are five chapters in the playbook. The first chapter is when you cross the chasm you have to go initially to a very targeted niche market of people who have a very urgent and compelling use case for your new technology. The next thing you have to do is sit down and work through the target customer and the compelling reason to buy.
That lets you go to the third chapter in this book which is called Symbol the Invasion Force. The idea here is to bring together the other partners in the ecosystem that are necessary to work with you in order to solve that use case that the target customer has.
Once you have that then you can go to what we call Define the Battle which is the fourth of these chapters. And that is who is your competition and how are you positioned differently?
The last one is launching the invasion which has to do with your distribution strategy and your pricing strategy and how to pull that together to make that work.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:01
“First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.” – Geoffrey Moore
I have an academic background originally; I was going to be a professor of English. But back in the 70’s I moved out to California, joined a high-tech firm, and been involved in tech marketing and high tech strategy since 1978. In the late 80’s I worked with a company called Regis McKenna and it gave me a chance to write this book which originally came out in 1990-1991.It’s about marketing and selling products to mainstream customers.
It was that high-tech firms would have experience of having early success with a handful of customers who were very enthusiastic about their disruptive innovation and that would make them think that they were ready to pour on the gas. And it just felt like the marketing kept on collapsing underneath them every time and this happened often enough that we knew we needed to find a solution and tell others about it.
The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
The Regis Touch by Regis McKenna
Buy Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore on Amazon today
Visit GeoffreyAMoore.com to learn more about Geoff and his book
Follow Geoffrey Moore on Twitter and LinkedIn
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
The Innovator’s Method by Nathan Furr
Pocket Man by Scott Jordan
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Marketing and Branding
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Crossing The Chasm with Geoffrey Moore appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about Pocket Man according to Scott Jordan: Introduction In this episode Scott Jordan shares his book, Pocket Man, where he shares what itRead More
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]]>In this episode Scott Jordan shares his book, Pocket Man, where he shares what it took him to be featured in thousands of major press articles, made millions of dollars, and made an appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank.
In his book, Jordan reveals the successes and failures he learned when it comes to reinventing yourself by pursuing your passions and mastering the art of personal promotion. The goal of the book is teach you how to get the attention of the public in order to stand above your competition.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are having trouble promoting themselves to the media and need an example of what it takes to get your name or product out the public effectively.
I don’t think there are any other books on the same topic. This book was written in a style that I call unauthorized autobiography.
You can jump in and out or read straight through. I think the reader will be sucked in from the very first chapter. This is a book that you start reading and you don’t want to put it down.
If you want to be a successful entrepreneur you have to be willing to put yourself on the line, step outside your comfort zone, and channel your passion for your company into promoting it. If you don’t have the passion to promote your business you’re in the wrong line of work.
The book begins where I begin as a child. I didn’t have a good relationship with my father and he’s been one of the driving forces in my life. I have always been a gadget guy and even as a kid I would collect radios and little TV’s and things like that. My company SCOTTeVEST sells clothing with lots of hidden pockets for gadgets and that was the early connection. I majored in entrepreneurship in college which was before there were majors in entrepreneurship. My first real taste of being an entrepreneur was when I started a calendar company while I was in school and the book goes into some of the things that I learned in that process.
After college my dad tricked me into working for him at the family business cemetery. I went door to door selling cemetery lots and one thing I learned from that was that I needed to believe in something in order to sell it. It’s really hard to believe in selling cemetery lots and as a result I was not successful. My father ended up selling the business out from under me which was a terrible experience and devastating to me at that time but looking back it was the best thing for me.
After that I went to Law school at Case Western Reserve where I graduated at the very top of my class and became a lawyer for years. It was then that I realized just how much I hated practicing law but I found myself in a job that was paying well and I didn’t know how to get out of it.
SCOTTeVEST was founded based upon all the travels I did as a lawyer trying to juggle all my devices and how to carry them in a business casual environment. I knew there had to be a better way to carry your devices stylishly and much to my surprise there wasn’t a solution on the market that looked at clothing as a carrying device. The rest of the book is about how I built SCOTTeVEST by promoting it and the various things I did, some controversial and some not. I talk about the time I went on Shark Tank and the behind the scenes aspects of it all.
“I believe in anything worth doing is worth doing fast.” – Scott Jordan
I just turned 50 years old and I live in Sun Valley, Idaho. I have my wife and three poodles and I am a passionate personal promoter for my product, the SCOTTeVEST, which is a full line of clothing designed to hold your electronic devices.
Buy Pocket Man by Scott Jordan on Amazon today
Visit ScottEvest.com to learn more about Scott and his company
Follow Scott Jordan on Twitter
For questions contact Scott by email here
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Lean Branding by Laura Busche | Hello My Name is Awesome by Alexanda Watkins | Digital Bacon by Alex Rodriguez
Relevant advice and tips: 5 Reasons Why Your Marketing Sucks | 5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Marketing and Branding
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Pocket Man with Scott Jordan appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
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