Image by Hysterical Bertha

A while back I went through the Publisher’s Clearing House process online to register to win a million dollars.

Yes it’s a long shot and no I don’t normally sign up for these kinds of contests, I guess I was bored and figured, why not?

A little while into it I began to notice how I was skipping through all the advertisement pages offering magazine subscriptions. They were there, I saw them, but I didn’t look at them. All I wanted to do was get to the end of the registration process and cross my fingers for a million.

Being that so many people register to win the million, I’d be willing to bet a large number of registrants to the contest really don’t care about ordering magazines. Like me, they keep clicking until the page says, “Enter Your Name Here.”

Once I noticed how I was skipping through to the end, I started analyzing the blind marketing system these magazine companies are doing.

1. Cost of leads = your marketing costs / the number of leads
2. Gross margin = revenue - cost of goods
3. Rate of return = profits / investment

Ok, so I cheated, they’re not sentences. But they are good to know.

Questions? Post’em in the comment section.

Like the Confucius way of learning? Subscribe to my blog.

This is the first post of a new concept of posts I’m about to start writing once a week involving only three sentences per post. The question is, if Confucius had a blog, is this how he’d do it?

If a sentence sparks an idea or question, feel free to comment.

1. It takes three times as much money to acquire a new customer as it does to keep an existing one.
2. Don’t spend more money marketing your product or service than you expect to make back at some point.
3. Figure out who your niche customers are and set off a trigger in them that gets them to relate and want to hear you.

Image by iChris

Approaching product development, services, and situations by way of odd associations can spark that creative idea marketers love to develop.

I had an interesting email come in the other day in regards to an article I wrote a while back called 8+ Ways To Train Yourself To Be Creative. The person mentioned how they loved the techniques I suggested and like me, they love the book Purple Cow by Seth Godin.

The question brought to me was, “These are all great techniques, but how do you suggest going about creatively finding a Purple Cow for your business?”

“Wow - what a great question,” I thought as I swiveled my chair around and walked over to the bookshelf housing Seth’s insightful book.

There of course is no one method or plan for developing a remarkable product, service, or business that stands out from the rest. For every idea out there, there’s an infinite number of ways to approach its development.

Where’s my Starbucks!

Image by nic0

How you market your product and who you market it to is essential. If you hit the wrong crowd and deliver the wrong (or boring) message your product will probably fail or achieve only a limited amount of success.

Always keep in mind the essential Ps of marketing. It could be just one of those Ps that wins big for you, but a good combination is always your best bet.

Take for example Starbucks. They sell, uh . . . coffee; oh how exciting.

They did well because they didn’t advertise just coffee, they advertised a coffee bar where you could come and hangout, listen to music, or read the newspaper while you drink your coffee.

They didn’t advertise how great their coffee was; they advertised the coffee drinking experience.

Could you imagine if today you decided to try and start selling your own brand of coffee? The competition is stiff!

If you’re an entrepreneur and marketing is an important part of your business (it should be), then you need to get to know Seth Godin. He’s the best-selling author of my favorite marketing book, Purple Cow, and in my opinion is way ahead of his time.

His Blog is the only one I subscribe to by email, the rest I subscribe by RSS. I enjoy and look forward to his thought provoking messages every day or so.

He has a new book out called Meatball Sunday which I highly suggest you pick up.

So, here he is, the man of the hour talking about curiosity (click picture to watch video).

You can subscribe to Seth’s Blog by clicking here.

If you enjoy letting me do the work for you and bringing great content and entrepreneurs to you, why not subscribe to my blog while you’re at it.

About 3 months ago I noticed a big For Sale sign go up in the yard of the building shown above (before it was painted pink). It was once a residential property but was rezoned for commercial. It sits on a relatively busy intersection with lots of shopping across the street (grocery stores, UPS, fast food, etc.).

As a real estate guy I spent some time thinking about what I would do with this property if I were to buy it. What kind of business would I create and how would it stand out? It looked nearly identical to the residential property sitting next to it and down the street. Simply putting a sign in the front yard wasn’t good enough to draw attention. People pass this “house” going 45 miles per hour and there are a lot more interesting stuff to look at on the other side of the street.