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Turning your Marketing Dial Tone into a Symphony

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March 24, 2011
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Yesterday’s post highlighted the importance of How your business is communicating. When you put the Tone of your business first, it directly targets the needs and desires of your customers. And, businesses that have great Tone, have loyal customers. So how is Tone developed? Through the honest evaluation of your value proposition. Naked honesty, while hard and humbling at times, is key to developing a Tone that rings authentic to your customers.

It could be that your Customer Service is hands down better then your competition. If that’s your greatest strength, then develop your Tone around it. Around it, being the key phrase. This is where the capability and quality of your marketing team will become evident. First, an example of bad Tone, or Tone Deafness as I call it.

Downtown Vancouver is lucky to have one of the best Internet Service Providers in Canada, if not North America. And you’ve likely NEVER HEARD OF THEM! Novus Entertainment provides Internet that is literally as fast as the speed of light, through their own fibre optic network. I’m talking double the speed of any competitor and much cheaper. AND, get this, no contracts, amazing technical support, and their customer service reps are personable and happy!

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Tone Deaf – And the pariah of digital marketing

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March 23, 2011
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Tone Deaf Marketing

As I’ve been hunting for the right job fit, I’ve been able to observe companies from a perspective that often gets overlooked: the customer perspective. I spend on average 30-45 seconds on a business’s website, looking for specific information, like who they are, what they do, and whether I’m interested in them. I don’t read… I scan, picking up text here and there, and in 30-45 seconds I make a black and white decision on whether they fit my needs.

As I AM looking for a marketing job, part of which would entail capturing the attention of customers, it’s shocking to me how many businesses websites are self-absorbed. Now before you start throwing rocks let me explain. This website, for example, is all about me…as self-absorbed as you get, but what I’m referring to is the overall Tone. If you are reading this blog post, you’ve made a sub-conscious decision that this topic interests you, and so you allocate more time to reading it. Even though this website is about me, I’ve worked hard to create a Tone that interests visitors, while asking them to commit more time to learning about me (more about this in my next post). In this way, my website’s Tone is actually about you and your interests, and that’s what many businesses miss in today’s age of digital marketing. Businesses build websites, social media, digital, and online campaigns with the intention of meeting customer expectations, but the execution comes off as Tone Deaf to their customers.

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Music Keeps the Kid’s Outta Trouble…at least it did for me

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March 22, 2011
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This past week, MuchMusic VJ Jesse Giddings took the local music scene to new levels with his new show ROCK CITY. Jesse and I both grew up in suburban Langley, BC. There wasn’t much to do there for the underage crowd, a trend that is amplified in small towns across Canada. The Langley area has become somewhat of an enigma for producing mainstream music with the likes of Headley, Nickleback, and Default all having bandmates coming from the local. And there are countless other indie bands from Langley as well (Zaac Pick, Doubting Paris, Dakona). The local music scene is a rite of passage to creating quality music, and I’ve seen it first hand.

One summer I was working with this grunge band called THRESHOLD. I’d picked up the guitar on occasion, but gravitated towards the art of live sound (aka The Soundman) so my circle of musician friends was large. The bass player, Jeremy, had long red hair and would spend the whole show head banging. We didn’t need lights. It was hypnotic just watching his hair going round and round. His older brother Dan thought we were good enough to headline a show (which we weren’t), and so he decided to sponsor a summer festival. He was on the prowl for a venue that would allow a couple hundred greasy teenagers to rock out to grunge/metal music. In suburban Langley, no one was interested. I don’t know how he found the venue, but he showed up at band practice to announce that the festival was a go. He had secured a field in an industrial part of town that the city would let us use for free. Then he showed us the poster. Written across the top of our picture was SEWAGE OVERFLOW ’95, Featuring THRESHOLD. When pressed about where the name came from he mumbled something about the field and a nearby overworked processing plant, but we were too excited about our first poster to care.

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The new blog

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March 13, 2010
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I started blogging maybe 10 years ago when Myspace was cool. This was before people were conscious of their online image and no one was creeping on anyone, in the professional sense. I blogged about anything and everything. I commented on blogs, IM’d, and actively embraced any new digital communications channel with fervor and without prejudice.

As digital expression became popular, and then professional, I did an online purge. Frankly, this was motivated by a feeling of forced conformity to this crazed expectation of digital communication, but I also was concerned with the uncontrolled nature of your digital identity. But, as with all inventions that have staying power, the kinks were ironed out and privacy became important and feasible. For the last 3 years or so, I dabbled back into the social conversation…blogging for our corporate blog, tweeting to promote events, but avoiding the personal foray until now.

I was concerned that allowing your digital identity to develop was dangerous, in that it’s difficult to control perception and showcase your growth due to its fragmented nature. Something you commented on years ago, is still commented on today, and where you can verbally change your opinion or showcase your characters evolution in person, your digital identity is more scattered and stoic.

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