Rick Wootten

Customer service is your best marketing

When thinking of marketing most people immediately think of advertising, marcom or public relations. But real marketing happens when you deal directly with your customers.

Take coffee shops for example. These days, nearly every street corner has a coffee shop. Competition is high and the product is not that differentiated. Sure some shops offer stronger coffee, darker brews or somewhat unique blends, but they are all selling the same basic product. Coffee.

So how do these vendors differentiate?

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Are you an appetizer, side dish or main course?

Competitive marketing is like a great meal. The first to the market is the appetizer, setting the initial conversation for the rest of the industry. But the appetizer is quickly forgotten when the second course is served.

Following the appetizer are several vaguely memorable courses. These are companies chasing the innovator and trying to establish themselves with a message indistinguishable from the innovator.

But in the end, one company will differentiate and become the main course. They will control the conversation and how customers evaluate products within an industry.

Is your marketing establishing your company as a main course? Do you control the conversation or are you following the leader?

Your email marketing is crying wolf

I worked with a guy who would mark every email he sent as urgent. Every single email. Even worse, he would even start each subject line with “Please read this” or “Urgent, this needs your attention.” After a few months, everyone stopped reading his emails and they became ineffective. My spam filter even started auto-tagging his email as “likely” spammer.

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How to dump your satellite service with Hulu, Amazon and Windows Media Center

Like many people, I have been paying for satellite television service for the last decade or so. After receiving a recent bill, I tortured myself by calculating what I’ve spent over the last 10 years. Let’s just say I could have purchased a new Hyundai for what I paid. The total was sobering and encouraged me to look at alternatives. At first I scoured the Internet for deals offered by other satellite service providers and even cable, but averaged over a few years they all cost about the same. Given this, I wanted to see if I could find a solution that utilized Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services such as Hulu, Joost, TV network websites, and pay services such as Apple, Amazon and Netflix.

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The cobbler’s children have no shoes

Why it is that web marketing people often lack a website themselves?