Vox Fortis Communications

I have a black lab pup who has an extraordinarily quirky habit: she makes piles of things. You let her outside, and she will literally spend hours nosing around in the woods, dragging sticks (and sometimes parts of fallen trees) into a designated area of the yard. (I have yet to figure out how she picks her coordinates). She will do this repeatedly, and you can’t distract her from it. She gets tunnel vision, and takes this personal task very seriously.

I was sitting on my front porch in the morning chill drinking that almighty first cup of coffee, watching her engage in her ritual. On this particular morning, she was working on two piles across the yard from one another as my gears were turning on a marketing plan for a client.

It suddenly hit me that her mystifying and endearing habit actually has some merit in the marketing world.

You make choices when you market.

Much like the aforementioned stick piles, you survey the landscape and pick certain things out of it to focus on:

1. What do you want your campaign to do? Sell stuff? Get people to hang around and comment? Entice people to pay your bills? (Good luck on that one.)
2. Who should you be asking to perform this action?
3. Where do you find those people?
4. How do you bridge those above three together?

Pile of Sticks #1: Your objective

You can’t do anything else until you figure out what you want the consumer to do. Trudge into your Forest of Big Ideas, and force yourself to pluck out a few twigs or maybe one or two big sticks. Avoid picking out a ginormous shrub, no matter how pretty it looks…too much going on, and besides, they can attract bees. These piles shouldn’t be too big. Resist that urge to grab the branch labeled “branding,” the one across from it named, “buy stuff” and the other one named “all information possible in the world so that hopefully something will stick.” (That’s a big sucker and it’s probably rotting with maggots all over it. I think that makes it clear how I feel about that method, no?)

You waste energy trying to drag the whole forest when you just need a few logs. Pick what’s most compelling and don’t get tempted by the stuff around it that will serve no purpose other than creating noise.

Pile of Sticks #2: Who might want to do the action?

I know that all of us would like to think what we offer appeals to everyone. As a business, it’s hard to get away from saying, “But who wouldn’t WANT to do this?” The answer to that is: plenty of people.

There are obvious examples, like trying to sell palm trees to someone in Maine. If you’re reading this, hopefully you’re not that guy, and if you are, I refuse to help you. My apologies.

If you’re selling something like propane to residential customers (which, frankly, is on my mind because AmeriGas is an evil empire and I just want my fireplace to work…but I digress) then you’re not going to pass out flyers at an apartment complex. So, that automatically has you pick out the sticks in the Demographic Forest for homeowners. Seems pretty obvious, but there are some other twigs you should throw on that pile. How about homebuilders? Strike up a deal for the neighborhood they’re building where you’ll provide a discounted service if they recommend you. Talk to realtors that might be selling newly constructed homes, or those that are selling existing ones to put in a good word for you.  (I’ll touch on that in a future entry about how NOT to get another referral, ever again….for now, read SmallFuel’s advice on Ditching the Hard Sell.)

Once you start seeking out your big sticks, you’ll see a lot of twigs on it. Make your pile.

Pile of Sticks #3: Finding these people

Thanks to the Internet, this can either be really easy, or really hard, depending on how you look at it. There’s tons of information, forums, online communities and more to find these people. That’s also the rain pain-in-the-butt part. There are SO many. If you are purely trying to network locally, city sites and getting out there to give the handshake is going to be effective for you. Hire someone to draw up press releases for you and get them into the local paper.

If location is no object for your business, then you have a lot of digging you can do. Network with people online constantly. Have a website, and be sure it doesn’t make people weep. (I have a whole list of examples.) Refresh your content, participate in communities, and seek possibilities to get connected through others via sites like LinkedIn.com.

Pile of Sticks #4: Create your message and disseminate accordingly.

See these piles you have, now? You have your objective, your market, your methods. Planning’s over, it’s time for the true test. Hopefuly before all this you have set up your brand and have all of that locked down. Now all you have to do is communicate it. How do you do that?

Put those piles together, grab a match, and light the fire.