Marketing | Justin Levy

Why You Should Buy Trust Agents

August 17, 2009 By Justin Levy 4 Comments

If you need yet ANOTHER reason why you should buy Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, today I explain what I’ve seen these two friends of mine go through over the past year to ensure that the best possible book that they could write hits bookshelves.

If you can’t view the video, you can also find it on YouTube.

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Note: Apparently I was tapping the laptop as I was recording so my apologies that it’s a little bumpy

To pick up a copy of Trust Agents, head on over to: http://bit.ly/buy-ta. I really hope that you’ll support them and pick up a copy of 20 of the book.

If you already received your copy, what did you think about it? You can let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or better yet, write/film a post reviewing the book and tag it #trustagents.

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Business, Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: Book Reviews, Business, chrisbrogan, Marketing, Social Media, trustagents

The Yellow Pages Equal Spam

July 11, 2009 By Justin Levy 9 Comments

Yesterday I stopped by my mailbox and to my surprise there was a Yellow Pages book sitting there waiting for me. I always ignore the stack of them that appears throughout the year by the mailboxes but this time it was actually inside yellowpages t of my mailbox. Seeing it sitting there and knowing that I actually had to take the phone book out of my mailbox made me stop and reflect for a minute. I can’t remember the last time I looked in a phone book for anything. It’s faster and I get more information from searching the web for whoever I’m trying to contact.

Usually I just sigh and walk by the stack of phone books wondering when they were going to figure out that it’s not aviable mode of providing information anymore. But, this time I felt a little different. I felt the same way as when someone opts me into their email list without my permission. Before you call me crazy, understand that it is exactly the same.

When you get opted-in to an email list by a company and an email arrives in your inbox, you’re bothered by it. Now I’m not talking about straight out spam from some foreign country that wants to give you a million dollars to help their son (though those types of spam count too). I’m talking about when you meet someone, exchange business cards and they make the assumption to add you into their email list. I know when this happens, and it happens often because of how much I travel, many times I’m bothered that they did it without at least asking me politely first (I would probably say yes, if they just asked). The Yellow Page arriving in my mailbox is the same concept. I don’t even have phone service and yet they opt me into being forced to receive this thick waste-of-paper in my mailbox. Now I have to do something with it. I have to take it out and throw it away. The same way I have to go through the unsubscribe process when something I didn’t opt into arrives in my inbox.

The Yellow Pages book or the email that I don’t give express permission to receiving are seen as spam.

Now, I understand that the entire world doesn’t spend their life behind a screen like I do. I know that there are still plenty of people that find value in receiving the Yellow Pages each time they’re issued. I agree that it can be nice to have as a back up in the rare instance that all computers go down, the router blows a whole through my wall and I’m left without internet or phone to call GOOG411. I think the Yellow Pages still have value. But, they have value to those people that want or need them.

How many Yellow Pages do you think are wasted each year by those of us who just throw them away? How much damage are we doing to our environment just by having thousands (if not more!) of Yellow Pages printed each year that just get tossed?

How do we fix this? The Yellow Pages should allow you to opt-in to receive the book. It would be a lot better if they sent you a postcard that allowed you to check off a little box and send it back in telling them that you would like to receive a copy (ahem, permission). They could even push you to a website where you could opt-in to receiving your copy. Even if they found that it took a couple mailings of these postcards to get people to respond, it would still be far cheaper and way better for the environment then printing thousands of Yellow Pages that were going to be thrown away, each containing hundreds if not thousands of pages in each one.

I understand that they have to be able to tell the businesses that they get to buy ads in the Yellow Pages that it will reach a certain number of households that will generate a certain number of impressions. Trust me, I get called every year at Caminito whether I want to buy advertising space. But, that is really a disservice to the companies that don’t know any better and do buy ad space. As a business owner I would rather a true number of households that are estimated to use the phone book with the price adjusted accordingly. Even as someone that lives in the online world, I would consider buying ad space because I know it would reach a section of my potential customers that I may otherwise miss. However, I won’t buy ads at the current rates because I don’t trust the numbers and for every person like me who throws out the phone book, I, as a business owner, lose money.

What are your thoughts? Am I crazy about my thoughts regarding the phone book or do you agree with me, either as someone who receives them at their household or as a business owner who is pitched to buy ad space? I’m curious to hear your thoughts….

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Photo by: Sabrina Tang

Filed Under: Advertising, Marketing Tagged With: Advertising, emailmarketing, Marketing, permission marketing, yellowpages

Give Your Facebook Page a Facelift

June 27, 2009 By Justin Levy 35 Comments

Recently Robert Scoble interviewed Caitlin O’Farrell for the new building43 site which was recently launched by Robert and the team over at RackSpace. Caitlin is the program manager for consumer marketing at Facebook. Caitlin spends her time working with celebrities or, as she notes, their publicists, to provide them with a Facebook presence.

One of the key ways of accomplishing this is through a Facebook Page. As being someone that manages multiple Pages and Groups on Facebook, I was very interested to watch this interview. Even though I spend hours each day on Facebook, there is so much development taking place by both Facebook and application developers that it’s hard to keep up.

Check out Robert’s interview with Caitlin:

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Two resources that Caitlin pointed out that I didn’t know Facebook provided were the Facebook Influencers and Facebook Marketing resource pages. I’m going to spend a little time poking around there for new ideas, best practices and to see what some the featured pages are doing.

Caitlin definitely left me with a list of ideas I now have for updating my fan pages and groups. It was also a nice prod to get in there and maintain interaction in the various pages. I think one of the normal things that happens in a lot of social networks (at least it happens to me) is that you set up a page, group, or forum where you want to build a community. But, because of other work, home or other page responsibilities, the pages, groups or forums don’t receive the level of attention that they deserve.

Remember when you build these communities you have to stay active in them. You have people that join them beacuse they care about the subject or brand that the community is based around. Be that community manager that they need and want whether it’s Facebook, LinkedIn or any other community you may be a part of.

If you want some more information on Facebook Pages, check out this excellent and comprehensive whitepaper by C.C. Chapman and his team over at The Advance Guard: About Face

If you’re so inclined, jump onboard my two main pages: Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse and Inbound Marketing Summit.

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Filed Under: Advertising, Community, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Videos Tagged With: Community, Facebook, Interview, Marketing, Social Media, Videos

A Little History on Jay-Z and What You Can Learn From It

May 25, 2009 By Justin Levy 47 Comments

For the past 13 years I’ve been a HUGE Jay-Z fan. I started listening to Jay-Z in 1996 with the release of his first record, Reasonable Doubt. Not only was it one of the best records I had ever heard, I was also intrigued at how he released the album.

When no major record label would give Jay-Z a deal, he formed Roc-A-Fella Records along partners Dame Dash and Kareem Biggs. Reasonable Doubt became a hip-hop classic and is ranked at #248 on the Rolling Stone’s “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time“. That album was the start of 13 years of what has been 13 years of 1/2 greatness mixed with 1/2 genius.

In case you don’t fully realize how successful Jay-Z has been, let’s take a peek at his history:

Since 1996 Jay-Z has released 10 solo albums, 5 compilation albums and 4 collaboration albums (full discography can be found here).
In 1997 Jay-Z sold half stake of Roc-A-Fella Records for $1.5 million then sold off the other 1/2 for $10 million in 2004.
Jay-Z has been nominated for 31 major awards, winning 8 of them.
Jay-Z has released or been featured in 6 movies/specials including: Streets Is Watching, Backstage, State Property, Paper Soldiers, Fade to Black, and Dairy of Jay-Z: Water for Life.
In 1999, Jay-Z co-founded Rocawear. Rocawear is a clothing and accessories line for men, women and children. Jay-Z sold the rights to the brand to Iconix Brand Group for $204 million. Jay-Z still oversees the creative direction, marketing, and product development for the men’s line.
In 2002, Jay-Z and partners purchased the sole United States distribution rights to Armadale Vodka, a premium vodka.
In 2006 Jay-Z became the co-brand director for Budweiser Select helping the company on strategic marketing and creative development.
Jay-Z founded the 40/40 sports club chain with locations all across the United States.
Jay-Z has an endorsement deal with Armand de Brignac’s Ace of Spades champagne.
Jay-Z is part owner of the New Jersey Nets NBA team. It is reported that Jay-Z paid $4.5 million for his share in the team. Jay-Z also has plans of moving the team to his hometown of Brooklyn.
Jay-Z was the first rapper to receive a sneaker deal with a mainstream shoe company with the release of his S.Carter line with Reebok. It was the first sneaker deal for a nonathlete. It quickly became a best-seller.
In 2008 Jay-Z signed a deal with Live Nation for reportedly $150 million which includes a 360 deal which will have Live Nation partnering with Jay on all of his creative ventures.
Recently Jay-Z invested in J Hotels, a real estate development venture, which recently purchased a $66 million property in Chelsea, New York.
…and many, many more accomplishments including many philanthropies, being named GQ International Man of the Year, several appearances in major mainstream product ads, and much more.

Forbes Magazine has estimated that Jay-Z takes in approximately $82 million per year with a net worth north of $350 million naming him to the Top 10 in the magazine’s celebrity money rankings.

Jay-Z embodies being a hustler. You don’t accomplish what Jay has been able to accomplish in 13 years without hustling and a raw business sense. Of course, it takes money to make money but he started with a concept of success and has done whatever it takes to keep pushing forward. He hasn’t followed the path of many other music artists but instead has blazed new paths into industries that wouldn’t allow a rapper in (and still many probably wouldn’t).

Why has Jay been successful?

Because he realized that he could do so much more if he broke away from being just a rapper but instead a business man. While Jay has many memorable verses, this verse on Kanye West‘s Diamonds from Sierra Leone (remix) shows just exactly how Jay think:

Difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week / I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man / Let me handle my business, damn!

What’s the lesson to learn here?

Whatever industry you’re in, don’t get stuck. Look at other ways to extend yourself, your product, your brand or your industry. Stop talking about where you want to get to in life and instead put together a plan which will help you to get there. Impossible you say? I bet Jay-Z always pictured taking 8 figures a year. He might have not known the exact way he would get there but he never settled. He always is looking for another industry to extend himself into.

What are you doing to realize your goals? If you’re sitting on the couch enjoying the newest episode of American Idol, I bet that some of your competition has Jay-Z blasting while they come up with their next move. If you and I are competition, I can guarantee that’s what’s happening. I gave up cable television just so I could focus and hustle more. Sure, I watch a tv show or two per week using Fancast (client) or Hulu but the other 100 hours a week I’m working on crushing it.

As you can probably tell, I find a lot of inspiration in Jay-Z. So, who do you look to for inspiration? What is it that they teach you? Most importantly, what do you do with the lessons you learn from them? If the answer is nothing, then you mind as well go back to watching American Idol.

Want to learn more about Jay-Z?

I highly recommend picking up the June 2009 issue of Cigar Aficiando for a multi-page article on Jay-Z. Also, if you haven’t ever seen Fade to Black , order it from Netflix or your local video rental store.

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Photo by: SOCIALisBETTER & NRK-P3

Filed Under: Hustle, Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: Hustle, jayz, Marketing, Social Media

Are You Marketing to Buyer Personas

May 11, 2009 By Justin Levy 5 Comments

Wouldn’t it be great if you had a profile of who your exact customer was? Imagine all of the things you could do with that information. You could do research specifically on that ideal customer. You could design your marketing creatives and programs around exactly what that ideal customer likes and is receptive to. You could get rid of the fluff and only target those leads who fit that ideal customer profile. No more wasting time having to call, email or meet everyone…you only seek to interact with those who meet that profile. Sounds great huh? Sounds like something impossible or that you have to pay tons of money to a consultant to develop a lengthy report right? Wrong.

This “ideal customer profile”, as I refer to it, is actually called a “buyer persona”. A buyer persona is a detailed profile of an example buyer that represents your audience – an archetype of the ideal customer. The word “buyer” actually represents whoever your target customer is. As Adele Revella explains:

The goal for buyer personas is to make them so real and persuasive that the company will be willing to take direction from them…Their [the buyer persona] purpose is to tell a story to internal audiences about how a particular type of buyer views the decision to buy the company’s product, service or idea. The story must be real, even though the persona is not. Persona developers need to continously interact with buyers to keep the story real, reiterating the buyers’ perspective whenever an internal decision loses its focus.

Want to see what a buyer persona looks like?

David Meerman Scott highlights Kadient, a SaaS application provider, who have successfully implemented buyer personas. To check out a couple of the buyer personas they have developed, check out David’s post.

How can you develop your own buyer persona(s)?

While there are a bunch of ways to develop your buyer personas, here are just 3 that I think will keep you pretty busy for a little while and will help you to start to gain a better detailed picture of your ideal customer.

1. Analyze you current customer data – If you collect any demographic or user data, analyze to see what your average customer looks like. Of course, the more information you collect during the customer acquisition phase of your sales cycle, the easier this will be to develop a complete picture.

2. Listen to your team – Listen to what your internal sales and marketing team tell you about interactions they have with people about your company’s products or services. Are consistently noticing that they’re talking to a middle-aged woman with kids yelling in the background and who always seems to be in a rush? That’s important to note. You have a lot less time to get your message across with that person then you might with others. Maybe your marketing team runs into the same type of people at every conference you set up a booth at. Again, important to note, analyze and target your messaging towards.

3. Ask for feedback – Ask your customers for feedback on what they would like to see. Did they really like that last website refresh because it made their life easier to find some information because of how busy they are in meetings all day? That’s important to know. Then you need to make your messaging snackable. Marketing delivered to that persona in any other manner will crash and burn because they’re too busy to read it and just delete it or never get around to it.

Have you developed buyer personas at your company? If so, have they been successful? If you’re not using buyer personas at your company, what are you waiting for?

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Photo by: emery.josh