Dan was featured on “Today in St. Louis” on KSDK, St. Louis’ NBC Affiliate. Here are tips Dan shared for smart marketing in a bad economy:

1. Don’t stop marketing! Invest in marketing and grow market share.
   Most businesses are looking for ways to cut costs and the marketing budget is an easy short term target; don’t do it!  Invest wisely for the long term.
   1. Chances are your competitors are cutting their budgets, so it will be easier to stand out from the crowd.
   2. If print, TV and radio are your usual channels, this media has never been cheaper and today you can get greater reach with the same budget. Utilize this to again stand out from the crowd.
2. Know your customers. Listen to them and speak directly to them.Most large brands have a ‘mass media mindset’ and the giant budgets that go with it. This is great if you’re a big brand, but most likely you aren’t and you don’t have the budget to reach everyone, so you will need to focus on targeted marketing.If you looked around a room of 100 people chances are there are 2 or 3 qualified prospects that you need to reach. It would be much cheaper to talk to those 2 or 3 people directly than blast a general message to everyone and hope it finds the few people who care. Get to know who these potential clients are and deliver a message that is relevant to them.
3. It’s all about word of mouth. Especially in St. Louis.It seems everyone in St. Louis is connected by 1 or 2 degrees of separation. Word of mouth is the most authentic and affordable way for a person to learn about your business, but you need to make it easy for people to tell your story. I always use the line: ‘You haven’t told your story until someone else can tell it’.  To do this you need to learn to make your story unique, memorable and specific.It also helps to tell your story in several different ways – speak at events, write on a blog and use other social media (facebook, twitter, linkedin, etc) as ways to share stories with others.  For example, I was at newly re-opened Chuy’s restaurant and posted on Facebook: “I’m sitting on the patio at Chuy’s enjoying fajitas and a margarita”. Within a half hour there was 10 unsolicited comments. This is a great example of word of mouth.
4. Everyone is online – but are they doing it right? Online marketing doesn’t just mean just having a website anymore, it means using it right – using search engine optimization, pay-per-click, blogs, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. These can be inexpensive, but they can also be time consuming and confusing.Business owners think they have to do it all at the same time, we like to tell our clients it’s better to do one thing right than do them all wrong.  You should focus, pick a tactic / strategy, master it and then move on to the next tactic.
5. This thing called guerrilla marketing Guerrilla marketing is the use of unconventional and unexpected tactics. To do them, you have to think differently. Take it to the street, right where your buyers will be. For example, our client ANY LAB TEST NOW does STD testing, they hire attractive women to go into night clubs handing out risque messages, promoting their STD testing services. And in this case they are reaching their buyers with a memorable (and inexpensive) message.
6. Have a plan
   Don’t go blindly into marketing. The typical business owner’s next tactic is often dictated by the last sales person that walk in their door.  We all know plans change, but going through the discipline of creating one makes it more likely to be followed.When you create a plan, create it with the thought the plan itself is a marketing tactic (this will help you actually finish it) and if you need a loan or are trying to raise money, a marketing plan will help show the decision makers how the money will be spent.

RIM (Blackberry) has a 41% market share of smart phones and the overall smart phone market is 15.2% of all cell-phone users.  Blackberry’s are great phones (I use one personally), however one thing Blackberries don’t do is show you the alpha keypad translation like a land-line phone.
Go ahead, try calling a company phone system and typing in the name Swatorski, Zlinksy, or even Jones on your first try from a Blackberry.  Call 422-Blue to reach the St. Louis Blues or 1888-GET CHARTER… you get it.  Now try it while driving – whoops, watch out. 

Vanity numbers promise improved sales and brand recognition because a consumer can commit to memory and dial later – that still makes sense for consumers.  However, if your target audience is comprised of business people than give it up.  Companies should be striving to make it easier to buy or service their customers, but, now they are upsetting 41% of business users with a bad brand touch, or worse, no touch at all (I still haven’t figured out how to dial charter!).

Here’s the problem. 

Every time I see a commercial for the latest, biggest, bestest, newest TV…they show me how good my OLD TV looks (usually using a photo of a butterfly or a sailboat).  I have to admit, in their commercial the picture is FANTASTIC! Beautiful colors…the contrast is nice…WOW (it really is a very pretty butterfly).

In fact…the damn butterfly looks so good, I think I’ll keep my old TV. Now stop making me mock you and put the game back on…

I saw this ad on yahoo today for Oprah’s diet and thought that was an odd celebrity to base a diet on right now. Then I remembered that this ad is all over facebook advertising as well.

Is anchoring a diet to Oprah a good strategy?  Is her name alone enough to drive sales even if she is on the high end of the yo-yo at the moment?

If she loses weight again and uses another diet do you lose your fad diet credibility?

I thought about all these things and then I clicked the link which took me here. This is a “mom blog” who is linking (via paid referrals I’m sure) to products to sell this stuff. Since it’s multi-level she doesn’t really have her own brand and is trying to leverage Oprah’s name into selling her stuff.  If this mom really exists.

In a time when fake blogs abound – the obvious questions pop out at me – Is there really a Tina Collins, and is she really a mom who lost weight on this diet?

I’m skeptical. This site was started in October, has a bunch of fake looking comments and looks intentionally bad.  I hope I’m wrong.  Regardless if Tina is real or not – Marketing like this makes me feel like I’m being lied to. Good marketing shouldn’t do that.

Dear readers – let’s all agree to never fake it (no fake blogs, no fake moms, etc.).  I think the industry as a whole will be better for it.

Most commercials harmlessly play in the background, however I can’t help but nearly jump off the couch as soon Billy Mays starts yelling about Oxi Clean or some other home cleaning product.

I don’t understand why Billy Mays must yell at me every time he is on TV.  Also, why is this an acceptable and popular form of television advertising?

I’m sure he’s a nice guy and all.  But please stop yelling at me.