Capturing the attention of your target audience is the “Holy Grail” of marketing. For decades eager marketers have produced goofy jingles, shocking images, and unique perspectives to make us stop, look, and listen.

Every once in awhile a marketing campaign works perfectly. It’s rare, but it can happen. Recently, I found myself spending almost an hour glued to a marketing campaign. In fact, my three kids were huddled around with me staring at the monitor. We were a hypnotically captured audience. (Pathetic!)

Within 15 minutes my kids were pushing me to buy a thousand dollar blender. A thousand dollar blender? That’s ridiculous to consider. I mean, what, am I going to start the next great smoothie shop? I don’t think so. But I was still very tempted to purchase something I had no real need for and at a price that’s about 15 times the price of a similar product I could find at Target or Walmart.

I’d like you to take a look at the best online marketing website I have ever seen. And I’ve analyzed thousands of them.

When you’re finished checking this out…and after you purchase your first thousand dollar blender; I’d like you to give me your opinion about why this site works so well. What stands out for you? Why does this site hit the Holy Grail of marketing? I’ll look forward to your comments…

Here’s the site…hide your credit card: www.willitblend.com

Check out these great blog posts for more information about this topic:

6 Brilliant Marketing Campaigns

8 Steps for Great Marketing

Marketing on a Small Budget

6 Great Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns

How to Refresh Your Marketing Campaign

One of my favorite entrepreneurial thought leaders, Guy Kawasaki, provides yet another extremely insightful article.  In a recent guest posting for Sun Microsystems, he spells out his 5 lessons of becoming a successful entrepreneur. I’ve summarized some of it here:

1. “Focus on cash flow”: Guy explains how P&L profitability is important, but that’s not specifically what pays the bills.  Cash on hand is what’s key. With cash you literally pay your employees, vendors, and all other overhead. Cash is king.

2. “Make a little progress everyday”: Guy is suggesting the value of small steps…it’s no longer about major marketing campaigns.  Instead, his focus has turned more toward closing another sale, focusing on a better product and even ensuring a website is just a little more user friendly.  These baby steps are essentially what’ll bring the big picture to life.

3. “Try stuff”: Guy Kawasaki explains that luck happens only to those who try new things – not those who wait for things to happen.  Some of us sit back and pass up opportunities only to see someone else take it and run. You became an entrepreneur to become adventurous, so don’t forget to go out on a limb and experiment every once in a while.

4. “Ignore schmexperts”: Sometimes our gut is screaming so loud that we can’t hear anything else.  When it does, listen to it and not those so called experts.  They’ll always say “I told you so” whether you succeed or fail. Your gut instinct is usually more reliable!

5. “Never ask anyone to something that you wouldn’t do”: Don’t ask your client, employee, or vendor to do something that you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself.  This includes the small stuff—if you aren’t willing to do it yourself when it makes sense, you won’t have the respect of those you lead.  Sometimes we forget that we are dealing with people with busy and active lives… treat everyone as equally as possible.

I’ve given a summary, but go get it from the horse’s mouth!

Read Guy’s original post here: Lessons of Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur

Here are some related blog posts about this topic:

10 Myths of Entrepreneurship

What Makes a Successful Entrepreneur

Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs

Four Steps to Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur

11 Killer Instincts of Entrepreneurship

Building a business is tough. It requires great determination and self-confidence. But there are unseen dangers lurking within both of those necessary ingredients.

Pride, arrogance, and stubbornness often become the siblings of determination and self-confidence.

In 1999 one of the founders of Webvan confidently faced reporters, answering questions about the company’s sweeping vision of home grocery delivery. The company had recently raised a staggering $375 million in an IPO and was valued at over $1 billion. He explained how they would continue to assemble a gigantic infrastructure spanning the U.S.

When reporters began to question “profitability” and “proof of concept”, asking pointed questions about exactly how they planned to ensure that the business would be a success, the founder chastised, “…what you have to understand, is that we are very, very smart…” This was a supreme example of pride, arrogance and stubbornness.

Webvan expanded from the San Francisco Bay area to eight U.S. cities and initiated a $1 billion network of high-tech warehouses. But considering the super-thin margins of the grocery industry, a lack of user adoption or demand, and rabid spending, the company failed to complete it’s proposed 26 city expansion. It closed in 2001, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, putting over 2,000 people out of work and dashing the hopes of thousands of shareholders.

As an entrepreneur, it is vital that you learn to balance determination and self-confidence with a healthy dose of humility and openness. Some of the best direction insight, you will uncover along the way will be the unexpected advice and feedback that will be provided from potential customers, investors, employees, vendors, or friends. Sometimes these are tough facts to face. It’s this advice that might force a change of plan or a painful course correction. But it’s that sort of insight that ultimately makes your business thrive.

Peter Drucker put it this way, “The greatest danger for the new venture is to “know better” than the customer what the product or service is or should be, how it should be bought, and what it should be used for…the new venture needs to be willing to see the unexpected as an opportunity rather than an affront to its expertise.”

Check out this great post for more information about this topic:

Success Starts With Humility

I received an email last week from a very well known marketing guru.

He’s been around for many years; a best-selling author, world renowned speaker, and adviser to some of America’s biggest brands. (I’m tempted to reveal his name, for my own selfish impact, but I can’t bring myself to do that! Hint: His name is not Seth)

The email invited me, “…to attend a special teleconference for business owners, entrepreneurs and people with start-up business ideas.”

Just the type of thing I like to investigate. So I registered.

Here is a part of the confirmation email I received on the morning of the teleconference. Read it carefully and see if you can find the key missing components:

You are confirmed to participate in the 90 minute special Business
Building Teleconference workshop for business owners, entrepreneurs,
professionals and people with start-up business ideas.

Mark your calendar.  The call takes place on Saturday, April 21, 2007
at   Please check your local time differences, to make certain you don’t
miss the correct start time.

To review: the call will last 90 minutes.  It’s broken down into two
integrated, progressive parts.  The call will begin promptly at the exact
start time.  We recommend you have a thick pad and more than one pencil
ready.

The special dial in number to use is:

The pass-code to get in/on is:

Needless to say, I have a feeling the attendance was low. I doubt they made much money on whatever the special offer was going to be at the end of the call.

There is a surprising amount of planning, preparation and thought that goes into any successful event. You can’t afford to blow it.

Here’s our obvious advice: You can avoid disaster by simply checking, double checking, and triple checking the vital elements like date, time, location, phone number, and website address.

Now, I have to be honest here, our team has made our share of communication errors with a few of our launches, so my simple advice does not come from a platform of perfection, but from experience.

Apparently, even great, experienced marketers like the one mentioned above can rush past the details. So, don’t underestimate the obvious.

Remember that old adage: “Measure Twice, Cut Once.”

Final note on this; I admit to watching “The Apprentice” (sigh); and you might recall a few weeks ago that “The Donald” fired a candidate for including the wrong number on a marketing brochure.

Need I say more?

Check out these great posts for more information about this topic:

Gross Writing Errors Found on the Web

5 Common Mistakes that Make You Look Dumb

8 Proofreading Tips and Techniques

Make it Big (to Proofread)

How to Proofread

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