Turning Down The Volume of Your Sales Pitch

"Stop Selling and Start Telling: Creating Yarn Spinning For Mobile Professionals"

I picked up a copy of an Advertising book over the weekend. The name slips me but it was a formal book on the subject meant for academic students. Inside were all sorts of cardinal corporate sins that make the youthful cringe in their sneakers.... Its THE MAN and its loud and in your face.....

..... most memorable is the beach sand advertisements for Skippy Peanut Butter.

I also came across this interesting tidbit of information....

"Our small company is launching a new product for the travel industry and I'd like to blog to help promote it. However, I thought about focusing the blog on something more interesting and substantial than just the product. As a musician, I considered blogging about outrageous tales and adventures of traveling musicians. The blog would be sponsored by our product, with our logo and ad attached. Would that be effective? "
—S.A., Madison, Miss.

Blogs are emerging as powerful marketing tools, particularly for small businesses. They are relatively inexpensive to start and maintain, and yet can be very effective at bringing potential customers to your Web site and keeping current customers in contact with your company (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/18/06, "The ABC's of Beginning Your Blog").

While our experts give your impulse a thumbs-up, they've got some reservations about your execution: "I think you're correct in looking for something beyond your product to blog about. That said, once you have customers, a blog is a great way to keep your customers updated with news about the product, so you don't necessarily want to avoid the topic," says Rex Hammock, a small-business blogger and publisher based in Nashville.

Teresa Valdez Klein of the Blog Business Summit agrees: "We often recommend lifestyle blogs to our clients. It's often a better idea to blog about the lifestyle that surrounds a product than about the product itself. The editorial draws in a larger audience, and the blog doesn't end up reading like a sales pitch," she says.

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This is a very sneaky way to get your message in and it becomes less of a harder sales pitch. It could be the doorway to creating something very memorable. You have to use this tactic with a lot of skill and tenacity but it can be done effectively.

Ted Cantu posted this on May 14, 2007 at 12:37 and can be found at http://www.1seomichigan.com