Book Publishing – Michael Drew

Michael Drew shares his insights on the book publishing industry . . .

The Civic Cycle – Michael Drew’s ‘Pendulum Presentation’

A few months ago, I saw Michael Drew lead what he calls his ‘Pendulum Presentation’. He calls it that because of the notion that, every 40 years the economy swings between a more selfish, idealistic cycle and then back to a more civic, community cycle. Michael is a bit of a genius – having gotten over 65 books on the New York Times best seller list. This is worth watching.

What do you think? Are we really in a civic cycle? If so – what do you think it means for our businesses?

When Your Customers Set the Price – Chris Guillebeau

Here’s a piece from Business Week written by Chris Guillebeau, Blogger and owner UnconventionalGuides.com in Seattle.

On the morning of her 41st birthday, author Danielle LaPorte posted a promotion on her blog and then went to the spa in her home city of Vancouver, B.C. She had prepared something special for her readers that day—a “Pay-what-you-will” offer for her Firestarter Sessions help package, a digital strategy session for entrepreneurs, which normally retails at $150. How would it go over? She hoped it would do well, of course, but it was an unusual experiment.

An hour later, Danielle couldn’t resist the urge to see what was happening. Leaving her spa appointment, she flipped open her iPhone—and flipped out. From all over the world, offers to purchase her Firestarter were streaming in by the hundreds.

Danielle is a smart marketer (“I came out of the womb with a press release,” she likes to say), but she didn’t expect the response to be as great as it was. How great? Based on previous offers and a moderate but growing readership, she expected about 70 offers. Instead, over the course of 24 hours, Danielle received more than 700 offers, for a total of $30,000 in new income.

How did this experiment work so well? What went on behind the scenes to create such a big success?

Offers were made through public comments. Danielle encouraged her readers to post comments on the site containing their offer. Anonymity was available for those who wanted it, but 500-plus comments proved that most people were comfortable going live. The comments also provided social proof (“everyone’s doing it”) and public validity.

All offers accepted … almost. The smart marketer in Danielle didn’t tell people what amount to offer, but she did make clear that she wasn’t giving the goods away for free. “One person offered to pay $10 on their Visa card,” she said. “I told them, ‘Thanks but no thanks.’” By making a clear value proposition in the blog post, she set expectations for high offers without disqualifying most lower ones.

Community reigns supreme. Several of Danielle’s first readers proposed creative offers, which in turn encouraged other creative offers. Someone kicked off a trend of donating on behalf of others; someone offered $40 and a shipment of vegan baked goods; someone offered one amount to Danielle along with another contribution to Gulf cleanup efforts. The variety made it fun and interesting.

Danielle’s pay-what-you-will experiment was a big hit based on a risky principle: Throw out a creative idea, and let your customers loose. By embracing risk—while carefully defining a few parameters—she earned a nice payday while also strengthening the bond with her readers. If you’re willing to follow Danielle’s lead and take a creative risk in your business, watch out. You’ll definitely send a signal that business-as-usual is changing, and you might even end up starting a fire of new sales.

For more tips like this you can check out:

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/tips/

How to Sell Out Your Seminars

There’s a seminar I think you might want to go to. And, if you go, I want to give you a gift worth $100.

THE BACKSTORY: So, I just spent two days with 25 of the world’s leading small business marketing gurus. It was pretty great. More on that whole experience soon.

But, while I was there – I got to connect with Max Simon who was also participating. Max has got about to a decade of experience putting on high-quality live events, and it seems that he’s really nailed the formula for providing unparalleled content AND making six-figures per seminar. His dad is one of Deepak Chopra’s closest colleauges and Max grew up in the biz. He’s participated in and helped organize over 200 live events.

After dinner tonite, Max and I recorded a quick sit to chat about his upcoming program called “Sold Out Seminar Secrets“. Click play and check it out.

Max has put up some really useful free videos about his program. Check them out.

The Six Fundamental Things I Learned From Max About Filling Seminars:

LESSON #1: Focus on the experience. There are so many seminars and workshops available. And there will be more and more every year. And, being real, many with the virtually identical content. So, focus on the ‘experience’ pieces. Who else will be there? What kind of food will be served? Are there any parties included? Morning yoga? What could make it so special? What makes it memorable? If you pick a cool and unusual venue this can help draw people. Don’t focus on the content alone.

LESSON #2: Go Narrow and Deep. The more broad you are about your topic base the harder the workshop will be to fill. A workshop called, “Empowerment for Everyone!” will get a much smaller response than, “Online Marketing for Massage Therapists”. Narrow your focus on who it’s for – this allows you to go deep into tailoring the event for that crowd. Most workshops are Broad and Shallow in their focus. But the wider you go with your topic base the fewer people will come – ironic but true. Focus is power here. Focus on a particular group experiencing a particular problem and promise a particular result.

LESSON #3: Something They Can Finish. Build the workshop around a central result. Some promise of something they will actually accomplish by the end of the event. This will keep your event from just being a data dump. People are no longer satisfied with ‘more information’. They want results. So pick a particular result and then help them achieve that by the time the workshop finishes. Don’t just give them ideas. Give them time to integrate and work with those ideas during the workshop. For example, if the workshop was about how to lose weight – by the end of it they would have created a customized plan, phoned people to build a support team, booked their times with a personal trainer etc. If the result was about financial management – that they would bring their laptops and actually create a spreadsheet of their finances there and a plan for the next 12 months on exactly what they can do.

LESSON #4: Price higher. The lower the price – the less people will come. They’ll assume it’s not valuable. Narrow & deep + higher price + promised result = “Ooooh. This looks good!”

LESSON #5: Do it for them. If your workshop is about helping people describe what they do – give them a bunch of written examples. Give them cookie cutter ‘fill in the blanks’ templates they can use. The easier you can make it for them – the better.

LESSON#6: Give them value before they come. Max has got a lot of ideas on tactics to fill workshops – but you could do worse than doing a video launch. Meaning, offering people a series of three videos that give people not only a sense of the value of the event – but some useful tools they can use right away. A basic format to follow is: Video #1 is the Free Content. Video #2 are video testimonials from past participants. Video #3 is the video where you describe the event (focusing on the experience not just the content). Tell them about the content – but not in detail. More like Chapter Headings. Max has got some videos like this up – check them out.

This is really just the start. Max gave us a 45 minute download on his seminar at the workshop which is absolutely going to improve the way I promote my own workshops. I’m super grateful.

Check out Max’s free Sold Out Seminar Secrets videos. And consider going to his workshop – I think you’ll be glad you did.

MY GIFT TO YOU: If you go – let me know – because I’d like to give you $100 of my time (30 minutes) to help you integrate it – as my way of saying, ‘Thanks for trusting me.’

But I invite you to share – what ideas and strategies do YOU have on filling up workshops? Share them below!

Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Campaign – Sincere or Cynical?

These days it can be hard to tell if companies are engaged in genuine good works and are genuinely transforming themselves to be more conscious or if it’s just a cynical marketing ploy that leaves people cynical about marketing. Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign hasn’t been without controversy. In this add they push further. What do you think? Authentic or ‘good washing’?

But before you decide – consider the fact that Dove is owned by Unilever. Who also owns Axe body spray. And the Axe commercials use the very same tactics decried by the Dove commercials. See the video below.

So, what does it mean for a company like Unilever to promote two contradictory messages at the same time?

And then there’s this from Greenpeace . . .

Today, we’re launching the next stage in our campaign to protect the rainforests of Indonesia from the expansion of the palm oil industry. Our volunteers, dressed as orang-utans, are currently climbing over the London headquarters of the company behind Dove, which uses palm oil as one of its ingredients.

Our latest research shows that Unilever, the makers of Dove, is buying palm oil from companies that are destroying valuable rainforest and peatland areas, which is bad news not only for the millions of people who depend on them for their way of life and endangered species such as the orang-utan, but also for the global climate.

Right now, four ‘orang-utans’ are perched on a balcony at Unilever’s headquarters in London, telling passers-by why Dove is responsible for the devastation happening in South East Asia. Down below on the road, a giant billboard mounted on a truck parked below apes (sorry) Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty advertising campaign, and huge speakers are playing jungle noises at top volume. Meanwhile, at a Unilever factory at Port Sunlight near Liverpool, sixty volunteers (many in orang-utan cosutmes) have overrun the premises, decorating the front entrace with a huge banner. The factory makes Persil, which also contains palm oil.

Write to Patrick Cescau, group chief executive, and tell Unilever to clean up its act.

Why Dove and Unilever? For a start, Unilever is one of the largest users of palm oil in the world, funnelling up to one in every 20 litres produced from Indonesia into some of the many well-known brands it owns. This one fact means Unilever has a huge influence on the way palm oil is made.

And being chair of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), Unilever has even more clout. The RSPO is a group of retailers, manufacturers and suppliers whose aim is create standards for the production of sustainable palm oil. But as things are, it’s little more than a greenwashing operation because card-carrying members of the RSPO continue to be involved in the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests. The RSPO has developed a certification scheme, but as yet not a drop of certified oil is available, six years after the scheme was set up. Even when certified palm oil becomes available later this year, there is nothing to prevent certified palm oil being blended with non-certified palm oil. This will make it impossible for RSPO members to guarantee that their palm oil does not come from recently deforested areas. Just ask Unilever.

This was documented in the Cooking the Climate report we produced last November and Unilever featured prominently, but since then we’ve collected fresh evidence of Unilever’s role in deforestation. Our latest report, How Unilever’s Palm Oil Suppliers Are Burning Up Borneo, details how some of Unilever’s key palm oil suppliers – Sinar Mas, Wilmar, Sime Darby and IOI among them – are devastating forest and peatland areas in Central Kalimantan. Not only are millions of people who live in or rely on the forests for their survival being put at risk, but as these areas are destroyed many endangered species are at even greater risk of extinction, including Sumatran tigers, Javan rhinoceroses and orang-utans.

There are also devastating consequences for the climate. As the forests and tropical peatlands of Indonesia are destroyed and converted into oil palm plantations, huge volumes of greenhouse gases are released, accelerating climate change. Indonesia is the third largest emitter of these gases in the world, in large part due to the destruction of its forests at the hands of the palm oil industry.

This is not great going for a company that paints itself as green and responsible: Unilever’s website makes a great deal of its efforts to be both environmentally and socially responsible, but when it comes to palm oil the reality is very different. pressure the RSPO to also support a moratorium.

We want Unilever to clean up its act, not just with the palm oil it uses in Dove but in all its products. To start the ball rolling, we’ve devised a three-point action plan for Unilever to follow:

1. support an immediate moratorium on the destruction of rainforest and peatland areas in Indonesia to grow palm oil;
2. stop trading with palm oil suppliers who are involved in this destruction;

And then of course, there’s their use of animal testing.

And . . . there’s the use of toxic chemicals in their products.

But notice how good washing can work. You do lots of really bad things but try to hide them and then, very publicly, engage in a (sometimes legitimately) very good campaign. And it washes you clean of any negative perceptions and people think, ‘oh! what a good company. you shouldn’t criticize them – at least they’re trying . . .’

What do you think?

Why working at home is both awesome and horrible – The Oatmeal

If you haven’t checked out The Oatmeal yet – you really need to.

This one is particularly great for home based entrepreneurs.

Enjoy . . .

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home

How to Organize Sales Pages to Avoid Overwhelm – Mark Silver

Mark Silver is my favourite person in the world of marketing these days. Brilliant man. So I was incredibly flattered when he featured me (something he tells me he rarely does) in a post about sales pages on websites.

To read the article – click here.

Tad Hargrave and Jessie McPhee Performing at Pecha Kucha

Me and Jessie McPhee performing at Edmonton Next Gen’s Pecha Kucha #7 event at the Citadel Theatre. Basically, we were given 20 random slides that had nothing to do with each other. Each slide stays up for 20 seconds. We got a suggestion, “head shaver” and had to tie every slide into that. There were 9 planned presentations before us and we closed the night with a ‘made up’ one. Fun!

The hidden influence of social networks – Nicholas Christakis

We’re all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits — from happiness to obesity — can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don’t even know.

Do not Trust Profile Pictures!

Anyone who’s done any internet dating knows that you can’t trust pictures. Just like most of us know that you can’t trust marketing. People are suspicious. They assume you are putting your product and services best features forward. Here’s a great, and funny, example of how this can happen.

Lesson: Tell the truth. Be upfront about your flaws. Let people know where you’re not perfect and don’t 100% embody your values as a company. They just want to know that you’re trying – not lying. People want something real. They want to know your strengths – but also your weaknesses. And often your weaknesses can be a source of strength anyways.

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