Growing Your Business with Marketing, Week 16: Marketing on the go

This is Week 16 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.

It was a jam-packed week of travel and planning for it that had me thinking a lot about about marketing—my definition of it, how it worked and what it was really about.

Back in January, a professor from my alma mater invited me to sit on a panel about social networking as part of the university’s annual Entrepreneur Celebration. Cornell has made a big commitment to fostering and supporting entrepreneurship both at the university level, where there’s now an entrepreneurial track, and amongst alumni, via the Cornell Entrepreneur Network. (I’ve attended numerous events and spoken at a couple, and they’ve been fantastic for building my own business network in L.A.)

I hate to say it, but in the sometimes-grind of keeping one’s marketing machine running, it can be easy to lose sight of the “why” behind it. Meeting some incredible entrepreneurs during my couple of days here and, on the way out here, reading the awesomely inspiring story of what one entrepreneur is doing to change the world, really reinvigorated me. At its most basic, marketing is about telling the stories that connect people to products and services and other people; done right, it can be a tool for helping to change the world.

Entrepreneurs are people who change the world

I’ve been privileged to assist many wonderful entrepreneurs to hone and refine their marketing messages, either through actual paid work or just the kind of assistance we all provide each other via blog comment threads, message boards, one-on-one meetups and every other kind of on- and offline networking.

For whatever reason, though—maybe the like attracting like factor—most of the entrepreneurs I’ve met and worked with have businesses like my own. They may not be communicatrices, of course, but they are very small or one-person businesses, with heavy emphasis on the creative services, doing fine work but doing it for a clientele much like themselves in many ways.

At the Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration, I was suddenly exposed to entrepreneurs with business models of all shapes and sizes. There were a lot of Internet business start-ups, which is to be expected, I guess, but there are also a lot of folks out there making stuff I’d never heard of nor imagined: an undergrad with an idea for a motorized bike he’d dreamed up after pulling apart engines with his dad. A startup seeking to become the premier nanotech-driven textile treatment service (better mousetrap for fibers). Another startup with a less expensive, less invasive, more effective treatment for restoring eyesight than corneal replacement. (You can read about the finalists in this year’s entrepreneurial challenge competition here.)

Before our panel, we took almost half an hour to go around the room and hear every attendee’s business story. It was a little daunting, heading into that discussion after hearing how diverse (and, um, smart) our audience was. But it felt great to be able to translate what I’d learned about using social media to reach people into basic, usable principles that would help anyone there draw attention to her story.

Lesson? Part of the value of a lifetime spent in marketing is learning how the principles apply across the board.

Marketing and microfinance and changing the world

Several weeks back, via Seth Godin, I applied to be a “sneezer” about The Blue Sweater, Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz’s new book about poverty, wealth and the bridges that connect the two.

Due to bad timing and a mixup on my part, I ended up getting the book a little late; then, to tell the 100% truth, I was a bit underwhelmed when I pulled the book from the envelope. It has a pretty enough jacket design, but it looked…well…kind of dull and earnest: not my favorite combo in reading material.

Once I cracked it open, though, I couldn’t stop. Novogratz’s story, which takes up much of the book, is wildly interesting: how she, as a young banker, showed up passionate but largely clueless for her first job in Africa (how often have I been there, minus the Africa part); how, with the patient help and support of equally passionate native citizens, she slowly learned the skills and systems she’d need to address the challenges of lifting people up from poverty in a new and effective way. (Hint: the first 90 out of 100 skills have to do with listening.)

It’s an incredibly inspiring story just in terms of what she’s been able to accomplish, but what was at least equally fascinating to me was how she used time-tested tools—like very basic marketing—to help further the goals of the various programs she set up. There are some achingly familiar stories of the struggles one bakery collective had when it came to getting out there and promoting their product; my circumstances are cushier and I don’t sell doughnuts, but I related every step of the way.

VCs, entrepreneurs and the web that connects us all

It was a stroke of wholly unintended genius on my part to be reading The Blue Sweater while I was attending a mini-conference on entrepreneurship. Everywhere I looked, I saw parallels: between solopreneurs with a small service business and entrepreneurs with a vision for a huge business, between the poor workers in developing nations and the wealthy ones here at home.

In a panel discussion about dealing with the ups and downs of entrepreneurial ventures, I started taking note when something these high-level players talked about applied across the board; by the end of the session, my notebook was filled with evergreen, pan-applicable bits of advice like “dealing with what’s really in front of you vs. the way you want things to be” or not being afraid to fail, or not being married to a particular outcome, or the importance of surrounding yourself with good people and then empowering them to do their jobs. At one point, someone even flat-out admitted, “It’s kind of a miracle when it works.”

And it is. Whether that thing is something mechanical, like a plane, or has a lot of other moving parts, like a film, there’s always a bit of luck involved in getting a complex project off the ground.

Nuts and bolts

Before I left for Ithaca, I took a long, hard look at the calendar. I thought about how I wanted to spend my time here (seeing friends, exploring my old stomping grounds, networking with new people) and decided to write a number of scheduled posts for the blog. It’s been really helpful having features: every Friday is now reserved for recommending some small business, and I’m starting to release something that’s poetry-like (I still refuse to say I write poetry) for a longstanding blog tradition of Poetry Thursday. I twittered when I could, checked in with Facebook and took care of some email followup. Not the most fun on my creaky old 12″ PowerBook, but doable, and I’m glad I did it.

Obviously—or maybe not, but it happened—I got the chance to do quite a bit of networking while I was in Ithaca. It’s doubtful that everyone I met would be a prospect, but as I move toward my bigger goal of becoming a writer who speaks (as opposed to a speaker who writes), I think it’s good form to get out and meet as many people as I can who are out there changing the world in their way, and just connecting on some kind of meaningful level. (Ilise, feel free to disagree with me!)

The professor who brought me here wants me to come back in the fall to talk to her class, which is the best news of all: it gives me time and a reason to plan a trip around, so I can put together more of a mini-tour. (Back in January, I thought I’d have time to plan something for this trip; I looked up and it was a week before d-day. So much for that!)

And besides, in the fall? Ithaca truly is gorges!