Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Forget Google Analytics. Forget landing pages. Forget a fancy email system. Sorry all my agency friends - this post is all about guerrilla marketing!

For those of us who are lucky to have a blog, use our own email accounts, and Tweet or use Facebook for fun or business, there are some pretty cool, free tools to test messaging and user engagement for our products and services.

(Never has it been more important to break through the noise online with your messages, and never has it been more important to keep marketing during an economic downturn.)

Say you want to test messaging into several different market segments. You can do so quickly with some pretty simple tools.

Hypothetical Scenario: Reaching Moms during the Holidays:

You want to reach moms during this busy holiday season with a special offer of some lovely bath products just for them.

You recognize the differences in the motivations and life patterns among moms:

• some prefer to stay at home
• some work outside the home
• all work inside the home - some for profit, some volunteer, some run the family

Subtle differences in anyone’s lifestyle, attitude and preferences are best served with subtly different messages.

Consider these (unscientific, on the fly, illustrative) examples:

Message 1: Stay at home mom - “Escape inside your own home - even for 30 minutes - and refresh your attitude! http://smub.it/jlj/escape” 104 characters - Tweet worthy! (Twitter limits you to 140 characters)

Message 2: Stay at home mom volunteer - “You give so much to everyone else - take just 30 minutes - and be good to yourself… http://smub.it/jlj/ahhh” 103 characters - Another winner for Twitter!

Message 3: Mom working outside the home - “Relax in the comfort of your own home - take just 30 minutes - and find peace. http://smub.it/jlj/peace” 103 characters - yes!

So Tweet these (assuming you’re following your market - moms who Tweet) and you can see how many times people follow your links using Smub, a tool to personalize and share links. (disclaimer: Smub is a client of mine, and there are other URL shortening tools that allow you to track links, but not personalize them.)

Your personal, secure MySmubs page will show you the number of “hits” you get from people who follow your Smubs (see the right-most column, below):

As those of you with REALLY good eyesight might see, I can easily track the number of click-thrus on any Smub. 

Want to test these messages in your blog, or send these messages in an email, or post them on your Facebook page (or your mom group’s Facebook page?) Go ahead. You can see the results immediately, and watch them over time.

The messages that are resonating (or interesting or…) are going to show up quickly in clicks.

So go ahead… take this time to test some messaging. Spread the word simply, and see the results. Without help from a web programmer, an agency, your IT guy or anyone else, for that matter.

Your guerrilla (free) marketing will be more effective as a result.

This morning I got an email from HighBeam Research letting me know my year-long subscription was almost up. In the note, it politely let me know exactly what would happen if I took no action:

I had found it to be a good research tool especially for clients in the health or biotech space, as it had catalogued many esoteric medical journals, etc. But not for $299.95. I decided to cancel my subscription. The friendly email reminder told me exactly how to do so, by clicking the customer service link in my account.

Imagine my surprise when I was made a special offer for those about to cancel:

I wasn’t surprised to see the special offer, that made sense. But see that last sentence there?

“…your annual membership will automatically return to the regular rate of $199.95 a year after one year.”

Having just been told my credit card would be automatically charged $299.95 for my next year, you can bet my next action was to say, “No thanks. Cancel my membership.”

Have I mentioned that nowhere on the Customer Service page was there an option to either speak with or chat with a representative?  (I could submit a form that would be answered within one business day. Never mind.)

I was a little nervous that canceling my membership early would shut down my account today (rather than waiting until Jan. 3) but was so irritated by their marketing and pricing inconsistencies that I took the chance. It would have been nice for them to spell that out on the cancellation page.

I was happy to find that I still had use of my subscription and a link on the cancellation confirmation page to a “billing questions” email form. So I sent them just a little feedback there… And Twittered about it, and am now blogging about it. I wonder which of my rants (if any) will get a response?

To try to milk people with accounts set up to auto-renew is appalling. I know many companies bank on auto-renew as their main source of recurring revenue… (how many of us ignore these messages/forget to call to cancel, etc.)

But to have your marketing be so out of touch with your billing policies (perhaps they submit forms to each other as feedback) in this day and age, is simply absurd.

I hear Google Book Search is now indexing magazine content. Undoubtedly, even the esoteric medical journals.

I think I’ll be just fine or now without HighBeam Research.

Since I learned Monday how to take screen shots on my iPhone, I’m now ready to show the mobile side of me. I’m not particularly good at leveraging my iPhone to the hilt. Mostly, I use it for mundane things (compared to many I know), I:

• Talk on the phone sometimes
• Read CNN mobile at airports over dinners
• Take photos of my food from the airports to send home

(This is my new favorite dinner from the Go! Bistro at SFO where they proudly serve Japanese Curry with German Knockwurst for $12.99. No, thank you, I’ll have the spicy wontons and a Stella, please.)

• Send texts home from afield - “je suis ici and safe.“
• Tweet when the mood serves me
• Mostly, I keep connected to my work via email
  • Peeved that my old Comcast email account is POP, not IMAP, since nothing syncs and I have to manually delete messages by hand
  • Frustrated that I have to manually delete messages one at a time, Apple

Actually working online from my iPhone has been relegated to approving blog comments (thank you when you do! It’s always such a joy, even after four years of this, to get comments!), and occasionally searching for information I’ve been meaning to find “when I have a minute.”

The Mobile Clincher

Two things have happened to me recently (if you don’t count the cool iPhone screen shot lesson from @cowperthwait) that make me rethink how I use my iPhone.

1. As a result of my mention of my favorite mobile tools in ReadWriteWeb, a company called Mippin transformed my blog for mobile phones. And I have to say, it’s pretty cool. It looks increadibly readable, kind of like an RSS feed of my blog in a nice, mobile friendly format. To see it in action on your smartphone, go here (when you’re on your smartphone, please.) This isn’t entirely narcissistic, really. It just got me thinking about how mobile data should be, and there are plenty of companies working on that very problem.

Now, the second thing is best told in relation to the first. Mippin gave me a special URL to access my blog from my phone:

http://mippin.com/mippin44571

…Which is fairly unwieldy and pretty impossible to remember for a 51 year old woman from Oregon. Let’s face it, my brain doesn’t keep numbers in storage quite the way that it used to. Curious, I went to my blog via Mippin, and the actual URL is worse yet! It was something like this:

http://mippin.com/mip/prev/list.jsp?id=44571&z=1@1228436219855252

Uh huh… thank goodness they shortened it for me in the first place!

To be fair, the Mippin folks also provided a bar code for me to access my blog. (I had to ask them wtf? and they were very kind to ‘enlighten’ me with the bar code concept. Apparently I’m not the only one… Doh!)

Well, you just know I had to Smub that. (There it is, the second thing to happen to me recently that changed the way I use my phone. And I’ve told plenty of stories about Smub lately.) Now, if you want to see how my blog looks on your mobile you can go to:

http://smub.it/janet/moblog

But I won’t make you wait - with thanks to Cowperthwait - here it is:

I spend a lot of time online, and am not afraid to download widgets or tools or ’stuff’ to enhance my own online experience. Mostly I download tools that save me time and energy.

(I just, for example, finally downloaded TweetDeck yesterday, and am not sure I’m going to use it. I love the idea of being able to set up a group of Twitterers to watch, and the tag cloud, but mostly it feels too complicated and (literally) dark. I really like the basic, whimsical Twitter interface.)

I started working for a company last month that has just launched a cool little tool that has really changed the way I think of saving time and energy. Suddenly I can share my work and the savings more easily with others.

I have been entirely too selfish (in many ways) with my online experience, in spite of sharing my more ponderous thoughts here, and my more personal life in Twitter.

Smub: All-in-One Link Branding, Bookmarking, Sharing Tool 

Smub, (sounds like pub, unless you pronounce it with the fabulous French accents the founders have, then it sounds a little like poub) is a remarkably simple tool with a surprising breadth of real world applications. I’ll explain the overview here, and walk through a few case studies here and there over the next few days.

Once you sign up for your Smub account, you simply type Smub.it/ to the left of http:// in any browser (on your PC, your iPhone, your Blackberry…) and you’ll be able to personalize and name your Smub.

Once you see it, you ‘get’ it. Follow this smub to the video on YouTube (I tried to embed the code and it messed up my fancy blog formatting, so I’m smubbing instead!):

smub.it/janet/video

(the actual link reads http://smub.it/janet/video)

Pretty easy to remember. Even for someone on information overload like me.

The Perfect Smub Scenario

Let’s say I’m going to Poppy in Seattle for lunch this weekend. I’ve never been there before, so I head over to Google Maps, where I can see a street by street view of how to get there. It gives me a lovely URL that I can share with others:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=105949487557353234306.00045bff21bb4e60713df

Uh huh. I can type smub.it/ in front of that behemoth and save it under a memorable, share-able name…

smub.it/janet/poppy

That’s something even my mom can hear and remember. So (inevitably, when she calls) I can be in my car going 60 miles an hour up the road, and give her the map I’ve already made for myself by simply saying, “mom, type in http://smub.it/janet/poppy” and you’ll be able to see where we’re going.

I know I could have used TinyURL to do the same thing, but neither my mom nor I would remember this:

tinyurl.com/5wopqr

“No, mom, it’s five… w… o… p…, yes, p as in Peter, QUE r….”

“Yes, P as in Peter.”

“No, I think it’s five w, not four…”

And anyone can read a Smub. You don’t have to be a registered user to do so.

Just type in http://smub.it/janet/smubrelease to any browser and you’re there.

Try it from your smartphone for extra credit. Really, do. The mobile application is especially cool, because you can stay on one page and capture the link to rename, bookmark and share it. Smub is free, and in beta, looking for feedback. I encourage folks to give it a try.

Warning to my friends: pretty soon I’ll be speaking in Smubs: “just go to Janet/video.” “Just go to jlj/twitter”… etc.

People who follow me on Twitter will know much more about me than I’ve ever shared in my business relationships. You can decide whether that’s a good thing, but I have always believed that people do business with people; not with companies, or with brands, or with employees. Ask anyone in sales, business development, marketing or product management: knowing more about the people you’re doing business with is invaluable.

Tuesday’s example: I wanted to talk with someone about some upcoming news. In checking her Twitter feed, I found out she was preparing for a live, online event. I popped over to the live event to catch her wisdom, and found they were having trouble with the audio feed in trying to “join her” to the event. I certainly didn’t want to interrupt her day at that potentially stressful point, did I? Nope.

Wednesday’s example: I needed to get in touch with one of my key influencers on a project. I had sent them an email, and hadn’t heard back within the “normal” time in which he’d usually respond. I checked his Twitter feed, and found they had just landed in SFO for three days in order to attend a conference. I knew immediately that I’d need to find another resource for my project.

I have examples every week like this. Multiply them by the personal delights:

• Getting an offer of fresh arugula from @thisKat’s garden
• Being able to broadcast Stacy Hewett found my wallet in Old Town, and having @TopLingo in LA pass on the goodness
• Finding a presentation by @Turoczy put online that I could enjoy even though I couldn’t make it to the @OEN event (that’s both business and personal, admittedly… but it saved me time)

I hear all the time, “I just don’t understand Twitter…” Perhaps this will convince another person or two to try it out for themselves - both for business and personal use.

Remember though,  you’ve got to give to get. Being active and interesting in Twitter is about more than “I’m eating oatmeal…” It’s a glimpse into your life, yes. But it’s also an explanation of your interests, where you’re going, where you’ve been, and how you’re enchanted/engaged in the moment.