a real-time experiment in marketing a new business

This is Week 25 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week here and at the Marketing Mix blog.

In hindsight, some years or months or weeks seem to take on themes, and this was one of those weeks.

I was a bit hobbled and fuzzy-headed from a cold, but it had cleared up enough by Friday afternoon for me to identify it: support. This week was all about support, both learning the difference it made for me personally, and realizing what a difference it would make if I applied some of the lessons to my own business in general and my marketing in particular.

It’s funny, because behavior-as-marketing is a concept I talk about to clients one-on-one and to groups during presentations. (We have an interview with Jonathan Baskin, who literally wrote the book on brand as behavior, both yours and your customers’, right here on the Marketing Mix.) I lean medium-hard on the idea before I launch into my new media marketing spiel because I’ve noticed that in the face of tools as glittery, new and (seemingly) free & easy as social media, we tend to dismiss things like follow-up, thoroughness, kindness and creating a feeling of safety as old fashioned or beside the point. Maybe they are, but I’ll tell you, just like getting a heartfelt, handwritten thank you note in the mail—not to mention an unexpected gift—real support is rare and feels amazing.

This week was a bonanza of lessons about the joy of support, and the difference it makes in the way I feel about products, services and people. How, exactly? Let’s enumerate… [click to continue…]

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This is Week 24 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week. See my companion blog, A Virgo’s Guide to Marketing, for some in-depth posts, additional links and other marketing-related goodness.

In addition to its cumulative positive effect on your business and cashflow, this week, I discovered another reason for doing your marketing chores regularly: you build up stamina!

For whatever reason, on top of a pretty crackling seven days preceding it, this past week was a whirlwind of activity that required heaping scoops of both energy and focus. Granted, the first day was devoted to, um, Disneyland, but believe me, while it was fun, it was a whole new level of exhausting (have you ever spent almost 13 hours with two tweens in the Happiest Place on Earth?) [click to continue…]

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This is Week 23 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week at The Marketing Mix blog, and right here. You can follow along here every Monday.

During a speaking gig I did yesterday at a local Freelancer Meetup, someone threw out the question of measurement, as in, yeah, sure, we can do all this marketing and networking and social media marketing and networking, but how is it converting into dollars? How do you decide how much time to put in, and when (and how) do you decide whether it’s working or not*?

A very valid question, and one worth looking at as the mid-year mark approaches.

Personally, while I’m nominally (and, to a degree, generally) interested in getting business—speaking gigs and consulting gigs—I’ve had to take a cold, hard look at what my marketing is netting me. And I’ll be honest: I’m not making a mint off this marketing stuff. My consulting business hasn’t gone through the roof, nor am I getting paid bazillions of dollars to speak (yet). Really, this year thus far has been about me building audience and getting speaking gigs, period. As far as those metrics go, life is good: my actively engaged audience is up over 25% from the end of ‘08, and I’ve done 10 (holy cats!) speaking gigs so far this year, with a few more lined up right now for July and August.

Still, I’ve suspected for a time that something is getting in the way of my forward movement. I say this because I’ve been through three different and successful career starts so far in my life—advertising, acting and design—and while they’ve each required as much work as this start, I made much better (faster, more lucrative, more internally rewarding) headway with any of them than I have been with this one. It may be that my current problem resides with my choice of direction, but I’m beginning to think rather the opposite: that it is because of my lack of choice in direction. I say I want one thing, but my actions are pulling me in multiple directions. And in this climate especially, without focus, it’s game over.

So, despite the craaaazy economy, I’m investing some time and money in a couple of classes that I believe will push me out of my comfort zone and force me to look at some stuff I’ve been maybe overlooking, if not flat-out avoiding. It feels a little funny floating that out there—I know that one of the mantras of the self-employed is “fake it till you make it”—but right now, faking it feels like a serious wrong turn. I have a much better idea of what I’m good at (and not so good at) after hitting it hard for these first six months; I’m looking forward to getting more focused so that I can hit the back end of the year not hard, but precisely.

Oh—and because yes, I’m still blogging this process out loud, this week I got my newsletter written and out, posted to my site four times (and this one once), put together a new presentation on getting attention for yourself in a crowded marketplace and delivered it at a meetup, did a few more free sample consultations, got one of the backlog of podcasts recorded and out the door, reached out to a WordPress Thesis theme designer to discuss some business, and even sang my inspirational song for a roomful of strangers at a party.

And Facebook, and Twitter, and yadda yadda yadda. Of course!

*If you’re interested in the maturation of social media in the marketplace, which includes more discussion about accountability, measurement, and mapping of the audience, a good entry point is Chris Brogan’s blog, where he’s begun talking about the subject.

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This is Week 22 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. communicatrix | markets (a virgo’s guide to marketing) › Add New Post — WordPressArmed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week. I write a topline summary of the week’s theme, as I see it, for The Marketing Mix blog, and the full article here. You can follow along here every Monday.

Short weeks can be incredibly instructive when it comes to pointing out the value of planning, especially when your short week is someone else’s regular one. What the heck am I talking about?

Well, I started this calendar project a week ahead of everyone else, so that the week I’d be reviewing would be the one that everyone working the calendar would be doing that week. If you feel like Alice right now, stepping through the looking glass, that basically means that my “week 22″ (June 1 – 5) actually fell on the previous week (May 25 – 29)—a holiday week here in the U.S., so we had no Monday. Or we did, but most of us spent it doing something other than working.

While it’s great to have the extra day off from an R&R perspective (especially because I took almost a whole day off), it’s kind of disastrous in terms of non-essential project work. This past week I had scheduled a slew of free, fifteen-minute consults for attendees of a webinar I’d given the previous week. It’s important for me to try out these things as I refine my sales pipeline (boy, there’s a phrase I never thought I’d type), but it cut into the time I’d have spent on “regular” marketing tasks: I missed a day of posting to my blog in addition to the day I took off on purpose and I didn’t do any of my own cold calling or follow-up (although I did do some for PresentationCamp LA, the unconference I’m helping out with—if you’re in L.A. or traveling through on June 20 and you’re interested in any aspect of presenting or speaking, please check it out and consider joining us!).

Short weeks also point out some of my, um, areas for improvement. When I have so much less time available, it becomes glaringly obvious where my “leaks” are usually. I do best on a schedule, even though I resist it, and when I spend some time up front planning things out. Last week’s calendar was crazy-crowded with appointments, one after another, from the free consults to a speaking gig I needed to do some prep and rewriting for to two networking events (my bonus-extra was a surprise meetup with Peter Shankman of HARO fame; as I said to another attendee, “If a guy as busy as Peter can make time tape himself from an airport lounge and get it to me within 15 minutes of my asking so I can make a crazy video, I can make the time to come see him when he flies through town.” It was a great meetup, as they always are, and I highly recommend both that you sign up for HARO and make it a point to meet him the next time he comes through your town!)

I know it sounds a little ridiculous to say, 22 weeks into a project that’s all about the importance of scheduling, “Hey! It’s important to schedule!”, but sometimes, it takes a while and some real-life experience to drive things home.

So this weekend, I spent some time reviewing my list of goals AND scheduling stuff into my calendar. My hope is that a little more discipline with this will help me spend the time I should in Covey’s magical Quadrant Two, and help me realize more of the big-time goals I’ve set for myself in life and in business.

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This is Week 21 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week. I write a topline summary of the week’s theme, as I see it, for The Marketing Mix blog, and the full article here. You can follow along here every Monday.

Happy summer, everyone! (I know, right? How the hell did that happen!? One day at a time, of course, just like our marketing or anything else gets done…or doesn’t, sometimes.)

This was the first fun week I’ve had since getting sick over a month ago. Because I’m all about post-game analysis—mostly because I have gotten kind of tired of repeating the same mistakes, and also because, as I approach 50, I’m more and more aware of how little time I may have left—I spent some time analyzing why. Since this week is about NEWSLETTERS for anyone working the Veteran’s Calendar, I’ve included a bonus-extra analysis about my most successful newsletter mailing to date.

Hopefully, the lessons I’ve come away with will be useful to you on your own marketing (and other) journey. [click to continue…]

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This is Week 20 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week. I write a topline summary of the week’s theme, as I see it, for The Marketing Mix blog, and the full article here. You can follow along here every Monday. (Note: this week being a short entry, it’s just double-posted at each outlet.)

My health continues to improve, albeit slowly, and while I wasn’t able to make the bigger networking event I’d planned for this past week, I managed to get out twice for productive (and sanity-making) meetups with colleagues.

One of the nice things about sharing openly with people is that you start seeing how we all have our struggles and blind spots. And, of course, one of the other things that’s great about sharing is that you can end up with some great help seeing where your own blind spots are, and getting some good advice on how to get out of them. (This presupposes that you’re hanging out with bright, with-it people, but hey—if you’re reading this, of course you are!)

Additionally, there have been two great discoveries I’ve made as I’ve about my business at a reduced capacity.

The first is realizing that I can do less without stopping completely. My task list before was probably ambitious, possibly unrealistic and definitely unsustainable, although it was fun getting all that stuff done.

The second is that I’ve found if I ask for help, I generally get it, and cheerfully at that. People are incredibly understanding and supportive, which they probably were all along—I was just too busy feeling like I had to do it all myself to notice.

So this week, while I didn’t get out all that much, just by asking for stuff I managed to create some new opportunities and deepen some beginning connections. When I saw that my friend, Pamela Slim, had posted her summer travel itinerary for promoting her new book, Escape from Cubicle Nation (a wonderful book which I’ve reviewed on my own blog), and that her schedule had her doing an all-day workshop in July, I floated out the possibility of me joining her to do a sidebar on branding or social media marketing and, good sport that Pam is, she jumped at it. So I immediately started putting out feelers with some of my other Chicago connections about doing some presentations while I’m in town; nothing locked down so far, but the wheels are in motion and I’m fired up about turning it into a little project.

I’ve also set up a little ongoing accountability tete-a-tete with an L.A. writer friend who is also itching to write a book, planted a seed with a friend who is starting to do women-centric marketing workshop about collaborating and firmed up plans for a fun blog co-promotion with—I kid you not—an archivist from Wisconsin.

Am I itching to do more? Yes…and no. Truthfully, right now I’m still in a delicate enough state that while I’m looking forward to doing more when I feel better, I’ve grown more sanguine about my current level of activity. I appreciate what my inability to do everything has taught me about the advisability of trying to.

Still, I will feel better when I’m again able to shoulder both the regular load of marketing and the bigger, ongoing projects contained in the calendar. They really have helped move my business forward in the past; right now, I’m just dreaming—and plotting—about how they’ll do so in the future.

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This is Week 19 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week. I write a topline summary of the week’s theme, as I see it, for The Marketing Mix blog, and the full article here. You can follow along here every Monday. (Note: this week being a short entry, it’s just double-posted at each outlet.)

I hate to disappoint you—believe me, I do—but my physical recovery is happening much, much more slowly than I’d like (for the record, what I’d like is “immediately.”)

This means I’m doing pretty much everything on less of an as-needed basis than a “how much is this on fire?” basis, which from a marketing standpoint translates to:

• Minimum blog postings I can get by with I’d been posting 5x/week on my blog, plus once weekly here and at the Virgo Guide (a double-posting, but a little bit of work to reformat for WordPress).
• Minimal 2-way social media involvement I’m still checking in with everything—in fact, because my energy is so low, I’m probably checking in more than usual—but I’m posting less stuff on Twitter and Facebook. When my energy is this low and I’m feeling punk, I’m loathe to post much, since I’m pretty sure it won’t be up to my usual standards.
• Swapping in-person for online contact where I can I’ve missed two weeks of in-person networking events in a row, which really bums me out (especially since one had been paid for!). But the wear and tear on me is too great to do much mingling in the real world, plus I tend to turn into a pumpkin at around 7pm these days—no kidding! I’m getting 10 hours of sleep per night, but those hours are coming out of somewhere.

I did manage to get my monthly newsletter out last week, catch up on podcast recordings, and consult with a colleague on best practices for mounting an unconference. (Have I mentioned that while I was still feeling pretty good, I volunteered to help organize the first PresentationCamp here in L.A.? It’s gonna be great: check it out and buy your tickets now!) And I’ve definitely been catching up on my reading, since it (and sleeping, and watching old episodes of the Rockford Files on Hulu) is about all I’ve got the attention span for these days.

Lessons I’ve learned from this? I’m really, really grateful that I already had some kind of marketing machine in place.

In the same way that having products or books for sale can keep earning you money when for whatever reason you’re unable to take time work, having a machine in place means that there’s still stuff out there pulling in new people: blog posts, newsletter archives (two years as of this month!), articles, presentations and podcasts. I’ve been at this long enough that I feel like having to cut back to half- or quarter-speed won’t have me starting from zero when I finally feel better.

That said, while I’m going to keep a closer eye on my work-life balance in the future, I’m really looking forward to feeling up to doing all that in-the-trenches work I sometimes groaned about in the past. In the same way that I’m storing up recipes for food I can eat once my insides are up to it, I’m quietly stacking away ideas for projects I can’t wait to hit when my energy is back.

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This is Week 18 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week. I write a topline summary of the week’s theme, as I see it, for The Marketing Mix blog, and the full article here. You can follow along here every Monday. (Note: this week being a short entry, it’s just double-posted at each outlet.)

I sincerely hope, for everyone’s sake (and especially mine) that this is the last post I make to this series with this particular flavor.

The flavor of the week was Despair, a complex and unappetizing blend of illness, exhaustion and mental anguish—both over being ill and exhausted and being pulled from my work. (See? Cra-a-azy Virgo.) This, on top of last week (which was no party), did nothing to brighten my outlook about my marketing plan, my business or life in general. Outside of one highly productive day full of things I’d committed to and couldn’t renege on, I spent the entire week trying to dig my way out of a flare-up of Crohn’s disease; mostly, this meant getting ridiculous amounts of rest (10 – 12 hours per day of sleep) and eating whatever food I literally could stomach.

I even missed a day of blogging on my main site, communicatrix—something I don’t think I’ve done yet this year. I cancelled anything else non-essential, and rescheduled it for a later date.

There’s stuff to be learned even from a bad week like this, and here’s what I took away:

• Store up for winter “Winter” being anything from illness to a crush of work you really want to take. I can’t believe that I’ve been blogging for four years and have nothing in the pipeline ready to go in case of emergencies, but there it is. That’s one of the main rules for a successful blog that my friend, Chris Guillebeau talks about in his fantastic free downloadable PDF, 279 Days to Overnight Success. No wonder his blog has been such a stunning success!
• Find backup The great thing about partnering up is that there’s someone to pick up the slack for each other. I started co-hosting my monthly Biznik event here in L.A. with my friend, designer Heather Parlato, because I thought it would be fun for both, and be good for her to get more involved. As it turned out, it was great for me that she was involved: I was able to secure the venue and prep from the phone, and she handled the event with such aplomb, I wasn’t missed! (Well, they say I was missed, but we’ll see next month, won’t we!?)
• Your marketing plan is missing Saturday and Sunday for a reason You heard it here first: I’m officially human; I can’t work seven days per week. At least, not pushing 50 with a chronic illness. Nor, have I discovered this week, do I particularly want to. I’m sure that it’s not going to be completely smooth, this transition to a more balanced lifestyle, but it’s imperative, if for no other reason than I cannot work at all when I become ill or exhausted.

So this week, while I scan the Calendar against my calendar and what, realistically, I think I can accomplish, I’m soliciting advice on balance: what do you do? And how do you do it?

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This is Week 17 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week. I’ll provide a topline of my experience here every Monday; see my companion blog, A Virgo’s Guide to Marketing, for the full story, additional links and other marketing-related goodness.

Careful readers will note that this weekly update, which typically posts of a Monday, is posting instead on a Wednesday.

This is due to circumstances which were completely within my control, but which I failed to accept as such. I assumed that there would be time and energy to write this post when we arrived at our destination motel on Sunday night, after a full day of driving. I assumed that there would be high-speed Internet (we only stay at the cheapest motels, which seem to be much better about delivering the goods than the ritzy, business-traveler ones). I assumed that if, for some reason, there was not, I’d be able to use my boyfriend’s high-speed travel modem as a backup.

You all remember that Odd Couple episode where Felix shows the group what happens when you A-S-S-U-M-E: you make an ass out of “u” and…

This week—week 17, just over a third of the way in—was FAIL week. Failing to write, failing to post, failing to plan. While we’re at it, other than the most basic of marketing duties—following up with prospects, posting to my regular blog, maintaining a minimal presence on Twitter and Facebook—this week was also a big FAIL. I’ll be honest: in my panic to get as many things as I could out the door before I left for a five-day road trip (at least it was to some kind of networking event), I did not even crack open the calendar.

Ilise and I gave a webinar on cold calling this Tuesday—one of the many things I was racing to finish prep on before heading for the desert and its spotty, spotty 3G reception—and something struck me during the course of the call: it is so easy to throw in the towel when things don’t go well. Just as Deidre was grappling with things a couple of weeks ago, this week, during many stretches on the drive home, I listened to MP3s of Joe Frank radio shows and let my thoughts drift to fantasies of a Stupid Day Job that would leave me with time and energy to just write. Or be a Buddhist nun. (There’s a lot of Jack Kornfield in those episodes.)

But I was reinvigorated by today’s call, and today’s results. Despite not feeling well or energetic, as I’m very much under the weather, I managed to have a useful and productive day. Not the best-planned of days, but that’s good, too: it’s helping me to see the value of planning.

I hope you’re chugging along with your calendar. I intend to get back on the horse tomorrow, and make sure I’m well-rested for my monthly Biznik meetup in the evening. And I intend to make some of those calls and chip away at a page or two on the website I’ve been meaning to update.

And then, I intend to use this next weekend’s trip for rest and reflection—a pre-mid-year look at where I’m at, where I’ve gone off the rails, and what I want the rest of the year to look like…realistically.

How are you doing? And if you’re going strong, I’d love to hear what you’re doing (besides reading these updates!) to keep yourself in the game and motivated.

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