New York Marketer

Book talk.

We just launched the blog for our book, Build Your Practice the Logical Way:  Maximize Your Client Relationships.  Attorneys and other professionals are invited to stop by and join the conversation.

We interrupt this irregularly scheduled lack of programming

My book on marketing for law firms, coauthored with Carol Schiro Greenwald, is now available.   If you are an attorney or have no better use for $80 (hey, it was published by the Bar Association), you can find it here. 

Everybody loves a bargain, but...

I remember my grandparents grousing about having to buy new things.  For those of us who came of age after WWII, the orientation is more towards wanting to buy things.  We have grown accustomed to a ludicrous abundance of cheap goods and inexpensive services.  We ask "how much does it cost?" without considering what it will do to make things better for our business or personal lives in the long term.  A new book from Atlantic correspondent Ellen Ruppel Shell argues that cheap stuff usually costs more in the long term and there are many hidden costs we don’t take into account (also check out the review in Salon). 

If you’re marketing a professional service, chasing “right now” needs and wants or providing a “bargain” can often turn into an endless grind of transactional (or one-shot) sales.  You not only forgo the chance to build a relationship with clients, but you also spend more of your time and money to land each sale.  Sure, you have to innovate to meet changing needs, but you can’t afford the cost of being disposable – or dispensable.  One of my grandfathers always bought Kenmore appliances because he felt they delivered on their promises and offered the best value over time.  How do you frame your promises and offer value that builds that kind of loyalty?

 

The real meaning of strategic

Seth Godin has a very interesting piece today about what "pro-business" really means.  He looks at how, in the quest for short-term gains we so often end up with longer-term shortfalls. I particularly like his definition of "factory" as any business that focuses on doing what it did yesterday, but cheaper and faster.  Especially with the economy in the doldrums, that's an easy trap to fall into.  So I wonder, what can I do today that's profoundly different from what I did yesterday?  How can I invite my clients to stop focusing on the immediate cost and look at the eventual value?  What am I doing to leave things better than they were when I found them?  Finally, what's the most interesting problem I can solve today?

It's All About Me

Not this blog, but an entry on my friend Andrea Nierenberg's Nierenblog.  Thanks, Andrea!  Andrea and I met some years ago at a networking breakfast.  Even though I hate talking to anyone that early in the morning, this proved to be well worth it.  In case you missed it, Andrea was interviewed for the second-ever Evoke newsletter.  The most important thing to getting business for a professional service (like mine or most of my clients') is to get people to talk about you in a good way, and the more public the forum, the better. 

Through the Blog Smog

I sometimes hate to admit it, but I'm a generalist.  Clients often call on me to design and manage complete marketing programs from soup to nuts, starting with branding. This occasionally means that my knowledge of specific things like blogging can be a bit fuzzy.  Well, I got asked to speak later this week on precisely that topic at a Gotham Networking business roundtable in Connecticut.  So what I was I to do?  Easy.  Find an "expert's expert" and devour everything they've put together.  Although I looked at a lot of things, including a secret resource only marketing consultants have, I was really impressed with Ted Demopolous.  You can download his free ebook, Effective Internet Presence, which covers just about all aspects of developing an online presence that can help you build business.  You should also check out his terrific, easily digested book, What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting.  After you've taken a look, let me know what you think.

Becoming an Overnight Success (in Just 279 Days)

When you write and speak all the time -- and help clients figure out how to write and speak -- you get pretty comfortable with your own position as an expert. As I was poking around the 'net one day (wasting my precious expert billable time), I came upon an interesting thinker who has a lot to say about some of my own subject matter.  Chris Guillebeau wanted to travel the world -- and wondered how to support himself while doing it.  He's written some very accessible, often funny, bits about helping people live life on their own terms while changing the world for others. I particularly liked his manifesto, 279 Days to Overnight Success, describing how he managed to make just enough money to live on as a professional blogger.  Check him out.