the goose

Coming up with a good marketing strategy is (I find) much harder than coming up with a product idea.  It is easy enough to dream up ideas that ’someone would want’ but identifying how to market to that ’someone’ is a little trickier.  In an attempt to organise the process a little more, I have come up with a simple process for pushing your creativity when devising a way to find and attract people to your product.

Step 1:  Whip out an excel spreadsheet

Excel might not seem like the most creative of tools but I find it great for brainstorming.  Many years ago Brian Tracey advised me (via an audio tape) that if you want to come up with some creative sales strategies, whip out a lined sheet of foolscap and start writing down lead generation ideas until the sheet was full.  Bringing the technique up to date a little, I start with a blank excel sheet and start to write down different possible marketing strategies.  In many cases, these strategies will be the same from product to product but there may be a few differences.  Here is a fairly standard.

The first 10 places to market come easily enough.  The next 5 are tougher.  The 5 after that are really tough but the best ideas often come in around idea 25 – 30.  It might not be the most glamorous way to brainstorm but it is effective.

2.  You should now have a good list of potential marketing strategies.  The list above includes particular channels (e.g.:  post on www.askaboutmoney.com) as well as techniques (e.g.: email marketing) but I don’t get too fussy about mixing them for now.  Just get the ideas down.  Next put a target sales figure against each strategy.  For example, in this case we expected 50 sales via email marketing to our personal lists.

3.  The sales estimates already help to identify which strategies would yield the best result.  You could fire ahead and simply pick the techniques you feel would give you the best bang for your buck. Next up to evaluating the particular promotion you are going to under take.  I’ll talk about this a little more in a later post.

For now – how do you come up with marketing ideas?  How do you brainstorm?  Any tips or tricks for me?

I recently set up a brand new piehole website. The site is a carbon copy of our ‘on-site’ optimised UK and Ireland versions.  I ran the new site through website grader.  The site scored 21 out of a 100 as opposed to 85 out of 100 for our Irish site  (which includes offsite optimisation).  So how much of your effort should you spend on onsite optimisation vs offsite?

80/20

The Pareto Principle isn’t wrong.  I’m assuming of course that the Irish site would be at 100% if it were fully off-site optimsed.

Rory from www.thecreativityhub.com sent me a link to a springwise article I thought was cute.  Springwise is a monthlyish newsletter that sends out lists of innovative business idea.  They provide good inspiration if you are grubbing around for and idea or two.

Last summer we wrote about Lifebooker, a free service that lets users search, browse and book discounted appointments at health and beauty spots in New York City. In much the same vein—and in the same city—ZocDoc brings similar time-saving capabilities to the booking of appointments with doctors and dentists.

Aiming to make healthcare simpler, ZocDoc lets users make appointments with the Big Apple’s dentists and doctors instantly and online, 24/7. Users simply search for the type of appointment they need—the site currently offers primary care, dermatology, ophthalmology, ENT, orthopedics, OB/GYN and dentistry—and they get a list of immediately bookable appointments in their area. Background details and patient reviews are available for each doctor and dentist listed on the site, and ZocDoc can also filter results by location and insurance accepted. Launched into beta in late 2007, the site is free to use.

Last month, ZocDoc was named the winner of the Forbes.com Boost Your Business Contest. And, of particular note for Springwise readers, the site is working with Dr. Jay Parkinson—whose ideas for Web 2.0 medicine we’ve covered twice before—with an API for Hello Health’s platform. One to partner with or emulate in other parts of the world….?

Website: www.zocdoc.com
Contact: service@zocdoc.com

It has become more and more apparent to me over the last year that my marketing skills needed a serious upgrade.  The Sprint events have evolved from a product development exercise to an almost purely market analysis exercise as we have all learned a little more about what it takes to make some money online.  Last week Dan from www.travelaffiliate.ie asked me what I thought of the http://www.arbitrageconspiracy.com/. I had to admit to not know much about affiliate schemes at all.

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