Mar

19

Godin’s quick tips on Marketing

Filed Under Books, Marketing | Leave a Comment

I recently finished reading Small is the New Big by Seth Godin, which is basically a collection of his best blog posts and short writings all in one book. This is not your typical business book because it does not focus on one topic, but instead is filled with many short business ideas. This should be the first post of many about this book because I plan to write about several of my favorite passages.

To begin, I want to highlight a few marketing tips he lists on page 184. I want to point out just a few of my favorite tips from his list and briefly explain why I think they are important for effective marketing. Seth Godin doesn’t claim to know everything about marketing, but he certainly likes sharing his ideas with all his readers for them to interpret on their own.

Products that are remarkable inspire conversation.

This is certainly not a great new idea, but I think many marketers need to be reminded of this every now and then to refocus their efforts. Sure, a product may still be very successful and not be truly remarkable, but why stop there. Why not try and think of a way to further better the product to make it remarkable. That may be out of the hands of marketing and more in the hands of product development, but why don’t the marketers use the information they have available to come up with the ideas needed to make the right change? I think this statement is especially true with technology and web development in particular. Just follow a launch of a truly remarkable website and you will see how fast news spreads about a new site that has great potential to succeed.

Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills, and your returns policy.

I am a strong believer in attention to detail and this statement provides 3 great examples of just how important every little detail can be when it comes to marketing a company. Marketing professionals may not think that consumers notice these little details about the business, but they do. I can vouch for that because I am always making a note of every interaction I have with a company that I am dealing with. Everyone does it, but some people pay closer attention to the details when making their final purchasing decisions.

What people want is the extra, emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.

If you offer a product or service which you think people are attached to emotionally, then your have already done many things right. The moment consumers start adding their emotions into their buying decisions, the easier it will be to keep them as a customer and loyal to your brand for many years. At this point, it is important for the marketer to recognize exactly what it is that is causing this emotional bonus and make sure that it is not lost or even strengthened in all their new marketing efforts.

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Oct

22

Standout Jobs to help employers produce recruiting videos

Filed Under Marketing, Videos, Web | Leave a Comment

Standout Jobs is one of the first companies that will help employers produce short videos for open job positions or general recruiting. The main idea behind these videos is to illustrate to potential employees what it’s like to work for the company, which will hopefully gain their interest. Before, the only way to know about a great company was by hearing from friends and family or from someone on the inside through word-of-mouth. It is quite obvious that video recruiting will not take off fast because it is a very new type of recruiting, but it should be a steady, gradual growth.

I think being an early entry into this type of job recruiting will be a major advantage for Standout Jobs when they fully launch their service (Fall 2007) and become better established. I will go even further and say that I think they will be successful with creating the tipping point for video recruiting. But, I do not think video recruiting will completely replace online job listings.

I came across the first Standout Jobs video job ad at the FreshBooks website a while back and was reminded of this video when I read an article in Entrepreneur titled Recruiting 2.0. Freshbooks found out about Standout Jobs through their first job ad video uploaded to YouTube. The FreshBooks blog summarized this service and introduces us to how Standout Jobs was started by founders Fred Ngo and Benjamin Yoskovitz. The blog post encourages employers to:

Get away from the 1950s. Use the power of new services like YouTube to tell the human story. Show the quirks and personalities that characterize the company. Expose the culture and the emotional drive and the funny bone to the world. Demonstrate that your company is not your average a 100-person team, but a place where the inspired come to inspire.

What makes some of these videos very attractive to potential employees is the comedy and creative approaches taken in some of them so far to get attention. I am unsure if Standout Jobs is behind all creative development or if it’s a joint collaboration between them and their client. The main idea behind this creative approach is: Who wouldn’t want to work for a fun, creative company? The only problem I can foresee is that some companies might try to portray a “fun” environment just for the video, therefore misleading people about their company. Hopefully it will be easy to see past this by getting the sense that they tried too hard.

What surprised me so far about Standout Job’s strategy, is that it does not look like they will be hosting the videos, but instead they will be hosted elsewhere. Then the hiring company will decide how they want to showcase them, most likely by placing them in their blog or just hoping they spread by themselves on popular sites like YouTube. I think as Standout Jobs grows and builds a name for itself, more people will go to their site directly just to view the new video job ads.

These recruiting videos could be a huge success with similar young entrepreneurial tech companies like Xobni, which has also already consulted with Standout Jobs to help them produce a video. For example, I could also see a company like skinnyCorp (parent company of Threadless) using this type of recruiting. They are a young, successful company with a very cool environment. Connected Ventures (parent company of College Humor) made this video for fun and 4 million views later, their inbox was overflowed with resumes and they are still getting them to this day. Another thing that certainly surprised me was when I saw that Standout Jobs was not even making video ads for their own job opportunities. What’s up with that?

I certainly can’t see large companies like IBM or GE consulting with Standout Jobs anytime soon. If these ads prove to be successful, they might get the attention of other large companies like Apple, Netflix, and Amazon who like to promote their unique work environments. Some more examples of similar types of video recruiting are Yahoo’s video here and Google’s video here.

Check out the Standout Jobs website for their latest work and to get an idea of what video recruiting is if you are unsure. If the video is done right and it spreads successfully, the best candidates will come to you. This is currently an unconventional method of recruiting, but it can be a very effective way to attract great employees in the future. Well, that is if your hiring. If your not hiring, then I would advise against making a video with your employees for fun and posting it online.

Update: I received an email from one of the co-founders of Standout Jobs which points out that their focus will not only be on videos, but to also help market and build their client’s brand through other tools. Something else to look out for in the future.

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Oct

1

Interactive advertising agency’s portfolio

Filed Under Marketing, Videos, Web | Leave a Comment

I came across this video on the FastCompany website and really enjoyed it. The R/GA advertising agency has been around for 30 years and there is a very good chance you have seen a their work in your lifetime. Watch the video and see how many ads you can make a connection with:

 

Check out this news report and this article for more on R/GA.

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