EARTH 

CULTIVATE THE SOIL SO THAT YOUR MARKETING GROWS

Your business is your soil. It is also the where you cultivate new ideas, new customers, new visions.

There is nothing scientific about using your business as the incubator for new marketing ideas. You simply need to cultivate the soil and watch ideas grow.

Earth Tips

1. Look at your business from every angle. Dig up the soil and unearth new ideas. These new ideas become the seeds that sprout into success.

2. Plant only those seeds that you are sure will grow in your soil. In other words, if you know that your core strategy is to grow tomatoes, then grow tomatoes. But don't limit yourself to just one type of tomoatoe. Think variety and proudly shout "Largest variety of tomatoes in the world!" (if that's your goal).

Marketing correlation? Focus on the product you want to grow (all varieties). Make sure you have enough buyers to warrant toiling the soil for each variety. Plant the seeds. Cultivate and nourish the soil (target market). Harvest. Replant!

FIRE 

IGNITE THE MARKETING VISION

Now that you have unearthed the gems and you've decided to grow tomatoes (one variety or a veritable bushel basket full of varieties), use fire as the inspiration to generate new ideas and ignite your vision - just don't burn your crops!

FIRE TIPS

1. Let your mind run wild. Take your core team, your external team, your customers, your most trusted advisors and brainstorm. No idea is too crazy, because at this point they are just ideas. Step outside of your own group, industry or comfort zone and find a mentor or a mentor company. What threat are you to them? There not in your neck of the woods, so watch what they do, ask for an audience with their "chief wizard," and mimic their success!

2. For fun, pick one of the craziest ideas and thinking both traditionally and non-traditionally about marketing, figure out how you will make this idea a reality. Back to tomatoes. If your core differentiator selling tomatoes is that you have the widest variety, then prove it and market it as such. If your target is boutique grocers (probably one of the more likely targets for your tomatoes), then send their buyer a basket full of all of your tomatoes. Not literally, this is marketing and you know marketing has the smallest budgets.

a) Buy a cheap basket.
b) Have your child's kindergarten class cut-out construction paper in the shape of tomatoes (remember to use the right colors)
c) Write the names of each variety of tomatoes that you sell on individual cut outs
d) Fill the basket with all 50, 100, 200 different cut-outs of your tomatoes
e) Send it to the buyers in a package marked "perishable - open immediately"
f) Include the following short message "We were going to send you real samples of our tomatoes, but we didn't want to SPOIL the introduction!"

Ignite the marketing fire.

WOOD 

ADD SUPPORT AND STRUCTURE FOR MARKETING

The business soil is cultivated, the seedlings for growth are ready to be planted, but without structure, will your tomato plants topple over?

You need wood to provide structure. In marketing, this comes from a solid plan and framework for strategy and execution.

WOOD TIPS

1. Provide a structural framework. Tomato plants need a cage, wood and twine or some kind of solid structure to grow tall and support the weight of the fruit. It's that obvious in marketing as well. If you don't build a structure around your plan, you're visions won't grow. They need support.

2. Build according to plan but be ready to substitute materials, make change orders and use different types of woods to create a solid marketing structure. Some tomato plants will grow quicker in a metal cone cage. Others need simple twine and wood posts. Make your marketing plans adaptable to product your growing.

Suggested marketing woods ~ Internet, email, direct mail, WOMM (word of mouth marketing), print, events, etc.

METAL 

STRENGTHEN AND WELD MARKETING INITIATIVES

Metal is used to add strength, support, and bind. Marketing, when done correctly does the same.

METAL TIPS

1. Market your strengths. I know it is obvious but it is the most often missed aspect in marketing. Find the true strength of your product or service and support it. Back to tomatoes again! The true strength of your tomatoes is not only the variety that you sell, but the best variety "year round." Not all tomatoes are at their peak in July or August (gardeners don't shoot me if I am wrong when tomatoes are at their peak). Capitalize the strength of your "largest variety of tomatoes all year long."

2. Create a strong weld. Use your customer's experiences, partners, and WOMM (word of mouth marketing). Sure advertising, direct mail, etc. contribute to creating a strong weld to support "largest variety of tomatoes all year long." However, to truly strengthen the weld, make it real as real can be. Run a recipe contest using an out-of-the ordinary variety of tomato and award the winner with a year's supply of your tomatoes. Find an exclusive product at your partners' grocery store that would be complimented by your tomatoes and run a sampling of the products. No not inside the store%u2026outside the store before they even get inside! Let the buzz create itself and be ready for the rewards of a strong weld!

Marketing metal will give you strength to grow your strategies and support your tactics, and your tomatoes won't lie in a heap on the ground!

WATER 

MARKETING SHOULD BE FLUID LIKE WATER

Water is a fluid substance. It also sustains, quenches thirst, and provides energy. If you think in these terms when applying fluidity to your marketing programs, you will be able to adapt and morph to the changing tides of the business environment.

WATER TIPS

1. Design your marketing programs to be fluid and adaptable to the environment. Set your strategy but deploy tactics that can easily be adapted to the container in which they are poured. Just like your tomatoes! For maximum growth, tomatoes need the right soil, climate and water to produce succulent fruit. But you must be ready to fluidly adapt your tomato growing strategies for changes in the soil, climate and lack or abundance of water!

2. Use your marketing programs to nourish and provide energy. Each interaction with you and your business should quench the buyers thirst and energize your strategy. Do you think you'd sell many tomatoes if they didn't taste good and satisfy the tomato lovers hunger? Rotten tomatoes + sour customers = just plain dirt!

Fluidly integrate all your marketing programs so that they flow together for growth, stability, and strength.

Small Philosophies For Marketing Harmony 

Use 'Em or Lose 'Em

1. Stay focused and execute against your strategy, but be flexible to change!
2. Market where it fits, but fit where you market!
3. Invite chaos, then control it!
4. Let your customer drive and you control the speed!
5. Start with your dream, live it, breath it, wake up! If it's still there, follow your dream!
6. Find a mentor!
7. The problem with a risk, is not taking it (most of the time)!
8. Being big doesn't mean success!
9. Stop, smell the roses, eat some cotton candy, play hopscotch! Repeat! Then go back to work!
10. Marketing isn't sales and sales isn't marketing. Their just the yin & yang to get you where your going!

These Blogs Fire Me Up 

Buring With Vision

Diva Marketing

She's a Diva and she knows it, but don't hold it against her. She's got a point of view that works.

Blog Writing For CEO's

Straight-forward, easy to understand. She rocks! Well actually she's got good soil that supports growth!

Boing Boing

Hold a meeting with the stuffiest of your crowd. Go to this blog. Read! Repeat to get the creative juices flowing.

Marketing Profs Daily Fix

Hold the same meeting as suggested for Boing Boing. Go to this blog. Read! And redeem yourself with the stuffed shirts.

Click Z

Just about everything you click, and how it's analyzed, is here!

About Me, If You Really Must Know! 

Not That You Asked, But You Might Want To Know!

COST EFFECTIVE MARKETING ELEMENTS 

Help Me Add More Tools!

Stupid Mistakes I Made And Didn't Get Fired For! 

Learn From My Mistakes

• Direct Mail - Dumb Moron Move.
  Leading the design team on a very hip, eye-catching direct mail piece and forgetting to leave room for the address. Both the return and mail to.
• Last Minute MadnessIf you're going to work right up to deadline on a tradeshow, make sure the printer sends the last minute brochures to the show floor, not the office! That's like standing on the show floor with your pants down.
• Name Change - Who Are You Today?
  If your going to go through an acquisition and stay on as the "Chief Marketing Guy," have a lobotomy to remove the old brand identity from your brain so you don't accidently place the old logo on a press release, six months later!
• Keep It Simple Stupid
  Make sure you know your boss, the CEO, or whomever you report to well enough before you blurt it out to their face. In a fit of frustration, after a branding strategy meeting, I looked directly at the CEO and said, "Keep it simple (long, long pause - direct look at the CEO, way to long pause) STUPID (unconsciously and very pointedly directed at him.)
• 50,000 Of Anything Is A Lot of Stuff
  Read the quantity on the order form before you have logo's and taglines emblazoned on little rubber duckies with Hawaiian Lei's for a customers user group and tradeshow. Theme - Hawaiian Luau! Attendance - 500. Go to eBay and buy them from me for $.25!

CONCENTRIC OBSERVATIONS 

ADVICE, TIPS, TRICKS, FAQ'S

Here's my take (blog) on the world of marketing. Keep in touch and let me know if you want to explore a particular subject or have a marketing issue your trying to solve. We'll work it out together.

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