January 24th, 2009
Show Me Yours And I’ll Show You Mine… Maybe I’ll Even Whack Your Business!
Once the Q&A session was over after my presentation, Dr. Joe Vitale came to the front of the room and said he had an “idea”…
Uhhh Ohhh… I had a feeling what he was up to. I was right.
He asked the audience to talk about their business and what they need some “Outrageous” or “WhackedOut” ideas on and Joe and I would come up with some ideas for them.
I’ve never had to come up with WhackedOut ideas on the spot in front of anyone on the fly, let alone an audience! But you know? I actually had a lot of fun doing it!
I’ve done something like that on this blog in the past - not on purpose… but in the middle of writing a blog post, an idea plopped into my head for someone who had posted on my blog and I just went with it… I blogged out my WhackedOut idea for them.
If you’d like to check them out, they are Jerk-A-Jerk and the other is BELIEVE.
So… feeling inspired, I’ve decided to do something a little… well… WhackedOut.
Get A Free Marketing Whack Job - Right Here!
Here’s the deal… I can’t promise anything, but if you would like to get a free WhackedOut marketing idea for your business - simply reply to this post and tell me a little about what you do. Feel free to provide your website address. And if you happen to be struggling with something right now in your marketing, let me know what that is and what you’re trying to accomplish with your marketing.
I have no idea how many people will respond. I have no idea if I’ll be able to come up with a WhackedOut Marketing idea for you, and obviously I cannot guarantee I can get to everyone if a lot of people respond. Anyway, you have nothing to lose and at the very least, a link to your website from my blog to gain. 
So let’s see it… show me your business and I’ll show you my WhackedOut Marketing idea…
Update… This post is closed. I’ll be doing this again - stay tuned! Follow me on Twitter… that’s where I’ll be announcing my next WhackedOut Idea Giveaway!
Trish Basanyi
On January 24th, 2009 10:51 pm
Hi! This post was interesting, people in my business tend to market on a lot of the same sites. I’d like to believe that I think outside the box quite often, but I’d be interested in hearing your marketing thoughts! I do voiceovers, which means I record my voice to use for radio/tv commercials, phone messages, web audio, corporate video narrations and basically everything else that you use voice recordings for. I have a home recording studio. Thanks ahead of time for the input! –Trish “The Dish” Basanyi, Voice Talent
Debbie Lattuga
On January 24th, 2009 11:03 pm
Wish I was there to see your presentation. Kind of new to the blogging arena and I’m following the ‘traditional recommendations for attracting readers/customers… article submission, press release, twitter and facebook, commenting on blogs, etc. Looking for something outrageous. Entertaining audio and/or video. Your input is hugely appreciated.
rob
On January 25th, 2009 12:40 am
Trish…
figures you’re the first one to reply - whew! Threw me for a loop on this one. I took a moment to quickly get a feel for the market by doing some searches on Google. For the most part the websites by other voiceover professionals shocked me quite a bit.
I felt like I had a flashback to 1996 and I was surfing the interwebernet! Many sites I found are like so 1990’s. Like really. What’s the deal with that?
OK… some initial things that come to mind:
1. Web 2.0…. I don’t see really anyone (there may be some, like I said, I did a quick look around the market) really taking advantage of great web 2.0 technologies available. (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and overall website design) Creating a personality that is connected to all of the social networking sites is something that I’m sure very few are doing. A personality that is fun, a little WhackedOut, etc…
2. Video - I looked at several sites out there… I didn’t see one site with a video of themselves on their home page saying hello to me and telling me about themselves. Why? Because I’m sure most figure they’re in the voiceover business, so why would they need a video of themselves? After all, no one else has a video! And that is EXACTLY why having a super cool web 2.0 site with a video that is staring me in the face of someone who I’m thinking about doing business with would be GREAT.
People like to do business with people - especially individual services. If I had the choice to buy product A from someone who had a video on their site introducing themselves or buying product B who has a ton of text and audio on their site… I’d go for A. I like to know who I’m doing business with!
Twitter - if you’re not super active on there - get super active. There are a lot of NEW companies Twittering around. There are a lot of forward-thinking people there. Build a big following and post some tweets about voice overs. Get people excited about them… build yourself some buzz…..
OK… I’m getting warmed up… Oh boy… here we go… WHACKED OUT TIME!
Friday: Naked Voice Over Day!
Friday’s are the days that you do naked voice overs. Now obviously you don’t have to be naked doing voice overs on Friday, but it would be an angle that you could use for an attention-getting and fun press release.
Maybe you could say that any orders placed on a Friday gets 10% off their first order - and if they are a repeat customer, they get 20% off.
Press Release Angle to get TONS of traffic to your website….
“Voiceover Professional Creates “Twoiceovers: Voiceovers For Twitter Users”
In the PR, it talks about how as a voiceover professional you are totally OUTRAGED on how quiet it is on Twitter. You want to hear people talking! You offer a service where you’ll do a voice over of people’s tweets for the day so their followers can listen to them. Create a website called something like: VoiceTweet.com or something (not sure if that is available). Make the site look real, heck, even charge people $97 to read one page of tweets.
Obviously this is just a WhackedOut publicity stunt… but RUN with it. Have fun with it. Make a BIG deal about it with the PR. Get on some radio shows. Start a petition on your website that people sign (a simple comment on a blog post) that is for people who are upset about all of the silence on Twitter.
$%&# how about this! Instead of the whole “Stop The Violence” term you see EVERYWHERE… How about you start… “Stop The Silence!” Go see if that domain name is available - that would be perfect for all of the above.
You then post articles, contact bloggers, create tee-shirts, sell tee-shirts on your site, which is ALL about stopping the silence on Twitter. It’s too damn quiet on Twitter. You are here to change the face of Twitter and help people get a voice by YOU being their voice. In the PR, on your website, on podcasts, on the radio, on interviews, and on and on, make it believable. Make people really think you are totally serious.
People will start blogging about you and your website. On your website, have links to your ‘real’ services. Have your phone number, contact form, etc. etc. Also put a link to your Twitter account.
How funny is that? A voiceover professional freaking out because it’s so quiet on Twitter and starts a whole new “stop the silence” movement. If that domain is taken… that’s ok…. there are many work-arounds. So there is an idea… play around with it, expand on it, have fun with it.
Bottom line is this: Look for ways to do things different. Look for holes you can fill. Look at things that are HOT right now that you can plug your business into - and if it doesn’t fit (like Twitter - since it’s ALL text) find a way to do some sort of marketing and publicity stunt around that hot whatever it is. Your market is WIDE open for some WhackedOut marketing and publicity. And hey… Facebook is VERY quiet too, isn’t it? While you’ve got the Twitter thing going on, go after Facebook. Start a whole campaign “Open Your Face And Make Noise!” or something like that. Maybe just “Open Your Face!” I dunnow… worst case is that all the above is not your style or nothing that you’re interested in doing, hopefully it sparked an idea that does make you excited and is something that you’ll jump on.
Whew… my fingers hurt… OK….
Debbie….
Wish you were there too - Joe Vitale puts on great events! Don’t miss the next one!
So you’ve got a blog. A blog on gardening tools. OK…. I just have to say something first here…
Your blog is about gardening tools but you have a picture to the right of a computer and hands. I would really change that image. You could…
A…. Have an image of a gardening tool or two or three…
B… Have gardening tools shooting out of the screen…
C… Image of a garden
Just an initial thought.
OK… this one is actually even tougher than Trish’s because you don’t have your own products - you’re making cashola through affiliate marketing I see.
My WhackedOut Marketing ideas are best, well, really for businesses who own their own products or services… but I’ll see what I can do for you here….
I would suggest creating a cool gardening tool ebook and giving it away for free when people opt into your list. (You should have a form on your website so people can subscribe to your newsletter. Uhhh… Ok Ok. You got me on that one. I just have a newsletter opt-in here and I’m not giving away a free report myself. I know, I’m breaking a BIG rule here. Believe me, I plan on adding that soon.
)
OK… This will be a first…. Getting WhackedOut with Affiliate Marketing.
Let’s face it. The gardening niche is extremely competitive. Over 67,000,000 pages come up when you search for gardening. Eeeks. I hope you are comfortable with being uncomfortable because you’ll REALLY have to get WhackedOut to get noticed in this niche.
Take a look around at what other sites are doing when they review gardening tools.
I did a little research and just about fell asleep looking at other sites. *YAWN* Man, talk about a niche that is WIDE OPEN for some WhackedOut Marketing.
So, so, so, so, so, so, so much potential here.
OK… here’s what plopped into my head.
You need to make the gardening tool review FUN!!!! Make someone like me who has no interest in gardening tools want to visit your site. What would make me visit your site? One could be laughter!
How? One idea…
Review garden tools in a funny way. Let’s say that you are reviewing a hoe. Record a video of you or someone using that hoe for 30 different things that have nothing to do with gardening.
One idea… you could use it as a baseball bat. Another idea, you could use it to scratch someone’s back. Another idea, you could use it as a door-knocker. Try to come up with ever 10 funny things you can do. But be totally serious in the videos. Also, be VERY creative.
Next step is IMPORTANT. VERY IMPORTANT. At the end of your blog post, ask your readers what they’d use a hoe for and ask them to comment on your post. Once you have a bunch of followers and you’re making money, offer the gardening tool to the person who came up with the best use for it. Have people record videos and post them onto YouTube. The best idea wins the tool!
Over time, let’s say you’ve done 30 of these crazy reviews where you’re reviewing gardening tools with video - but again, you’re using the tool for everything you can think of besides gardening and being FUNNY.
The next step once you had a lot of followers would be to contact some companies who sell gardening tools online and provide them a GREAT offer. They send you some gardening tools to you every week FOR FREE, and in exchange for the tools, you put their logo on your website and in the videos you say, “This rake is sponsored by: Blah, blah, blah garden tools.com!
They get advertising, you get tools, people get laughs… and maybe even a free tool if you run some fun contests.
There are of course TONS of things you can do with press releases almost any time you post a new video review. One example headline…
“Florida Gardener Discovers New Use For Rake - Husband Unable To Walk For A Week.”
Or another one…
“Florida Gardener Takes An Ordinary $14 Rake And Transforms It Into The Latest $8900 Fashion Accessory Sweeping South Beach!”
There are at least 43,383,209 and 1/2 ways you can run with this WhackedOut idea. If video isn’t your thing, you can take 10 photos or something… but video always makes people laugh more and has a better chance of becoming viral.
Bottom line here - gardening tool reviews all do the same thing. They show pictures and then write about it. So you have 16,000,000 people all doing the same thing day in and day out. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to compete with 16,000,000. Dare to get a little WhackedOut and the only people you will be competing with for ideas are the TONS and TONS of people flocking to your website - - - and that is a very, very good thing.
OK. It’s official.
Fingers are about to fall off…
Dave Earle
On January 25th, 2009 12:56 am
I believe that squeeze pages, and the like are key to building a strong subscriber list; but why should I have to shell out extra money to an online autoresponder service, when I can set these things up through my hosting account?
I have asked this of several marketers, and they all seem to say the same thing: if your list gets too big, and your sending a lot of mail through your web host, it could get you shut down for ’spamming’.
Your thoughts?
rob
On January 25th, 2009 1:10 am
Dave,
Squeeze pages are an absolute MUST - you are right.
In fact, I created a squeeze recently with the help of a silent partner that is converting around 72.3% right now. Crazy, yes. WhackedOut, no.
I’m not technical enough to understand all of the logistics of running and managing your own mailing list on your own server, or even how to do that for that matter.
An auto-responder only runs like $20 bucks a month. That is a small price to pay to have piece of mind knowing that your list is safe somewhere else, that you’re not going to get shut down for spam (using double opt-in), you have a ton of reporting tools, you have a TON of options such as building sub-lists during launches, tracking, and on and on.
A third-party auto-responder is a must-have for any marketer. If spending $20 a month on a auto-responder service is tough to swallow, that is a sure-sign that you’re not in the right market.
Bottom line, there is not one marketer that I know (someone making $2 a month or $2,000,000 a month) in their business who hosts their own lists. They ALL use other services.
Jeff Fraga
On January 25th, 2009 1:53 am
Odd that someone with a marketing/advertising background would respond to this - but maybe not so odd (cobbler’s children and all). I’m targeting a very specific audience: public companies doing annual reports. Too narrow? Any thoughts come to mind? Thanks much.
Ghada
On January 25th, 2009 2:18 am
Hi, I think this whacked out marketing idea of yours is uber cool! I know alot of the things I need to be doing to my site, just need to now action them. Also, you have given me alot of ideas with your responses above.
My website is a review blog for mums (baby stuff and mum stuff) - though this is a very popular concept in the US, pretty new in NZ. I’d have to say I’m only 1 of 3 other sites like this - the other 2 are not really active.
I have also combined it with a social media angle also for mumpreneurs - this is just getting started but I have 8 people enrolled in My Twitter for newbies course that I launched 4-5 days ago. But, having trouble getting people to actually enter a competition to win free stuff??!! Help!
Thanks in advance
Ghada
rob
On January 25th, 2009 3:03 am
You guys are killing me here!
Where are all the easy one’s like a pet product store, or some information publishing business?
Whew! And now Jeff, you come along… someone who has a client list of: AT&T, Microsoft, Intel, Boeing, and even Coca-Cola. You were the copy director for Nordstorm… one of my first stops at the mall by the way (which is about once a year… What can I say, I’m a guy and I’m not a big fan of shopping!)
Anyway, You’ve been helping your clients for more than 20 years…. And above all else, you’re a copywriter.
OK. I can’t promise anything here… let me think… think… think…. think…
think…. think…. think… you want to focus on your VERY specific audience…. public companies doing annual reports…
thinking…. thinking….
Annual reports… HA! OK, here’s the first one that comes to mind. This would require hiring a few people and a video crew to create a WhackedOut video. OK, whole video plopped into my head.. will try to type fast to get this into words….
Setting: A VERY busy office with people running all around, bumping into each other, people spilling coffee on themselves and others as people bump into them, papers flying everywhere as someone is knocked over carrying a big stack of papers.
Camera then moves to a woman with brown hair wearing a red women’s business suit (I’m telling you, when these ideas plop into my head, I see everything! And no, she is not wearing white underwear…). Anyway, she is running down the hallway and opens the door to the President’s office.
In the office there are 4 guy wearing suite all arguing and shouting and the woman said, “Sir, we’re almost finished with the annual report.”
The 4 guys move to the side and you see the President of the company sitting at his desk thumbing through a bunch of papers frantically. He says, “Mary, we needed to get that report out 20 minutes ago - whatever it takes, get the annual report out the door and sent to our investors pronto!”
“Yes sir!” Mary then runs down the hall and stops at a door that has a small plaque on it that says, “Temps”. You see her put her hand on the door nob, let out a big sigh and open the door.
Inside you see 4-5 “young geeks” all sitting there doing different things. One is shooting paperclips around using a rubber band. Another is braiding her own hair and it’s all messed up and funny looking. Another is playing with his pet rat in a small cage on his desk. Another is playing video games, and another is sleeping with head tilted back and bubbles coming from his moth and drool dripping down his cheek.
Mary screams, “Wake up everyone! We need the annual report completed and sent to our 50,000 investors PRONTO!”
Everyone jumps up from their desks and runs over to some computer stations. They then start tying 30,000 miles an hour.
The camera then zooms in on the on computer screen as you see you see the words “2009 Annual Report” being typed.
Suddenly one of them knocks over a cup of coffee on the kid’s lap who was typing the words above, he jumps up, knocks the keyboard over, and what he just typed is erased.
At that very moment, Mary opens the door, and yells, “We need it sent now!” The geek then picks up the key board and you see him type, “2009 An….”
and at that moment the girl geek screams… the camera shows the rat that one of the geeks was playing with was on her shoulder. Then all the geeks start screaming, and the kid typing quickly finishes what he was typing while still looking at the rat…
“al Report”
You then see him grab the mouse and click on the send button… a little screen appears on the computer screen showing a bar moving across the screen and a little blurb “Sending” is flashing while numbers go from 1 to 50,000 very quickly.
Quickly, it moves to the next scene of a guy (maybe a lawyer or something) checking his email, he sees the attached report, clicks on it and right there in
big letters on the first page it says,
2009 ANAL REPORT
Wombat Corporation
A Fortune 500 Company
Scene changes to a conference room with 30-40 people sitting around the table and immediately on a big screen you see the same front page of the report as the lawyer guy saw. Everyone’s jaw drops sitting around the conference table…
Then, you see a scene of Wall Street and the ticker for Wombat Corporation go from 50, to 40, to 20, to 10…
Then the screen goes blank… and a voice says, “Let someone else get anal over your putting together your annual report…. Jeff Fraga… proving top-notch annual reports for the world’s best corporations for over 20 years.”
The end.
OK, so that is more like a big budget 30 second commercial you’d see on TV. But maybe scale it down a tad and publish it on YouTube - or… EVEN BETTER…
The domain name: http://www.AnalReport.com is available!
You could grab that domain, have the above video made (or a variation of), put the video on that page along with a form for companies to contact you about their annual reports, and then get down with the marketing…
Send out some press releases… send the link to past clients who will watch the video and then forward it onto their friends, who may be the decision-makers with potential clients, find out (well, I’m sure you know) the top websites that your key decision makers visit on a daily basis. Submit your video / site to them hoping they’ll feature it. If there are any trade publications they read, see if you can get your site mentioned there.
Bottom line: While doing some digging, I see that the “annual report” business is quite dry. I saw your website on Google being advertised on Google Adwords - no worries, I didn’t click on your ad. I just checked out everyone else to see what they were doing
Just what I expected. Dry, dry, dry.
When everyone is going in one direction, dare to get WhackedOut with your marketing and go another direction. If everyone is dry, get a little wet. Make people laugh. Catch them totally off guard.
To take this several steps further, you could create a report called, “Why You Should Never Write Your Own Anal Report”…. or “The Top 10 Reasons Why You Have Every Right To be So Anal About Your Annual Report”… or “Getting Anal Over Your Annual Report Is My Business”.
Wait… the last one is actually a good potential headline…
Anyway, the above is what first plopped into my head and that’s what I’m doing here… just sharing what’s plopping first. Remind me never to use that last sentence again by the way…
So there you have it Jeff. May be way too WhackedOut for this market. May be too expensive. Or maybe…. just maybe is WhackedOut enough to work!
rob
On January 25th, 2009 3:41 am
Hi Ghada,
Whew - your comment snuck in while I was writing out my WhackedOut idea for Jeff.
At this point my fingers are so numb I’m having to type with my toes. So please know that because this post will be shorter than the rest, it is now 2:07 AM here and I’m a very, very slow toe typer.
OK… I looked at your site. First of all, great blog and great WP theme.
Here’s the deal…
I have several blogs out there. Some of them are in niches where there are not too many other fish swimming around and they get some traffic and it’s fairly easy to rank on page 1 of Google with any blog post with some medium to long-tail keywords that get traffic.
And then I have some blogs that are in pools where there are so many fish you wonder how in the heck you’re going to compete with any of them. There’s gotta be at least 1,000,000 or more other blogs in the same niche.
Which pool do you think that I prefer?
A little tiny bit of competition, or one that has a TON TON TON of competition, with a million of us all fighting over the same keywords and traffic?
My choice? I choose the one that has the most competition. Why? Because I look for holes other people have missed. I often do things backwards to get people’s attention. And I try to find one or two things (or more) that I can do that will REALLY make me stand out and get noticed in a niche.
I’ve done this very, very recently - and I’m actually very actively doing this now with a blog that I’m a *TOP SECRET* partner on. The blog went from nothing to getting over 500-600 unique visitors a day in just under 2 weeks. The blog hasn’t been up even one month yet - and it’s already beginning to generate quite a buzz with some BIG things happening soon…
Anyway, I say all of the above for a few reasons. The first, the fact that there are only 2 other sites doing what you are doing in NZ and they are not very active tells me one of two things: One, you are a VERY early adapter and you may have to wait awhile until others start adapting, or two, there isn’t a hungry market in your niche, in your location.
Why are you limiting yourself. The web is global! Spread your wings and fly. Fly to new lands. Fly over oceans. Fly to any country that has an internet connection.
You’d have a MUCH larger audience to go after. Millions and millions actually. So what, maybe you have to get a new domain. I’d suggest a .com name. And maybe a new logo. No biggie either.
What is crazy is that you have blog posts from 2005 there. Wow. Anyway, just think about what I said above. Don’t make any crazy decisions quickly. Think about it, talk to people about it, etc. It MAY or may not be the best move for you above - I’ve just taken a quick look and just calling it how I initially see it. Also, if at some point you do decide to make a move, I would do something with your current domain right away. I’m sure it has aged a little like a fine wine and search engines love the taste of an old domain.
Maybe there is something else that could be done with the domain in NZ that has a larger market? Again, just throwing out ideas for you here…
As far as having trouble getting people to enter a competition to win free stuff, I have a feeling that you may not have the traffic to support that type of marketing right now. Contests work, and they can work VERY well, but you need to have a large audience to make them fly. Without an audience, the world will never know about your contests, or even your site.
For this one, I am going to have to go WhackedOut Idealess. I’m sorry. The one thing I cannot do is create a market out of thin air. If people just aren’t interested or you’re just way ahead of the curve, there are no WhackedOut things I can think of to make magic happen.
If by chance you know by your research there are say 500,000 entrepreneur moms in NZ, and for some reason they just haven’t found your blog, then that does open a whole new can of worms and something VERY Whacked Out needs to be done. If that was the case, I would first start advertising on the sites that you know they frequent. Sorry I wasn’t too much help on this one…
rob
On January 25th, 2009 12:13 pm
UPDATE….
I need to take a breather here! You are more than welcome to post comments, but I will be holding off on providing WhackedOut ideas for your business for a few days - follow me on Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/WhackedOut
I’ll be posting there when I launch a new WhackedOut Idea Fest!
Jeff
On January 25th, 2009 12:33 pm
Hey! That’s pretty whacked out - which is great! It actually does give me something to think about. I’m glad to be following you!
rob
On January 25th, 2009 12:54 pm
Hey Jeff - Thanks! If anything else, hopefully it created a spark that ignited the WhackedOut Idea Generation Machine inside of your head. Keep me posted whenever you launch something WhackedOut!
Debbie Lattuga
On January 25th, 2009 2:42 pm
Hey Rob, I’m Whacking Out! Totally love your idea. Really comfortable with being outrageous! Can’t wait to get started. I’ll be tweeting you later. Thanks again!
Trish Basanyi
On January 26th, 2009 11:48 am
Rob,
Ok it’s official. You’re a freakin’ genius! hehe Thanks for the ideas……I totally love them all! I thought of something similar to this but wasn’t sure how to go about it……your ideas have def helped with the “outline” in my head. Sorry about yer fingers! –Trish
rob
On January 26th, 2009 11:58 am
Debbie - Excellent to hear! Keep me posted on what you do and the results!
Trish - LOL Well, let’s see you RUN with it! Keep me posted and I can’t wait to see what you come up with and how it all works out for you.
Renee
On January 26th, 2009 1:04 pm
You haven’t put up a new post yet, so maybe I’m in time for some of your whacked out marketing ideas?
I sell pull-up cloth diapers for toddlers. The usual marketing message is all about the green movement, keeping chemicals away from baby and supporting WAHMs. I run across a lot of marketing tips for information products but would love your take on reaching Moms and Grandmas of newly-walking toddlers.
rob
On January 31st, 2009 12:50 pm
Hey Renee,
I’m sorry, but I have to stick to my guns and keep this one closed. I will be doing another one of these WhackedOut idea posts again soon - watch for it on my Twitter posts: http://www.twitter.com/WhackedOut
I may have some ideas for you….