1) Evan.
2) Erika Harris.
3) Dean Saliba.
4) Leah Whitehorse.
5) Christine.
6) Thorsten.
7) Agata.

This is just the initial group and I will most likely be letting in more members soon.

If you’re on the list, I will be emailing you soon with info on how to register for the program.

More from Marketing Without Money. I don’t know if you’ll find it of any use – and it may be teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, but you can always just ignore it.

They point out that entrepreneur can enter mature markets and become popular quickly. It seems likely that many of us wanting to make money doing what we love will be in this situation. What these people do is offer great value – either finding a massively cheaper way (which they can keep to themselves) or offer some other value (either a personal approach or serving one particular area that is underserviced). It is then possible for word of mouth to do the marketing for you – which is always the preferred method (high credibility and very low cost).

They see this as a three stage process. Opportunity recognition, concept development, energetic follow through (ie. getting the details right). It is concept development that is usually left out. Everyone realises that being entrepreneurial is about finding an opportunity (no one tells you how to do this however). They also realise that it takes attention to detail, motivation and so on. They tend to leave out concept development (thinking up newer and/or smarter and/or different ways to do something). It is this part where value is more likely to be created. Otherwise you are awfully vulnerable to just being copied and undercut on price.

I find this very thought provoking. For creating value they list four considerations: your specific expertise, your profitable delivery, your sustainable position (finding a way that it can’t be easily copied), and deciding whether you want to go customised or standardised.

Hope you find this useful.

Three aspects of generating word of mouth.
1. Content. Promote the cause – what customers care about. Generate publicity/discussion of this. Have a natural solution available for the problem/opportunity. This way you don’t need to do hard sell. But people will buy the solution if they experience the problem/want the benefit.

2. Provocation. Do stuff to get attention. This can be anything from the typical stunt to a good headline. Richard Branson is a genius at this. What does parachuting naked have to do with any Virgin product? Nothing at all. It sure gets attention though.

3. Challenge. Provoke people’s curiosity or desire to do more. Eg can you (climb the Himalayas, make an income in the exciting toad sexing industry, Be a superb athlete, Handle your relationships with courtesy and genuiness).

I find this a really useful set of points. Specific enough to start me thinking of ideas, general enough to apply to any industry. Hope you find it helpful.

A thought regarding content and quality

My own view is that quality matters and that quality is not exactly the same as popularity (Happy Birthday to You) is not the worlds best song.

I think we need to be adding stuff of quality to the world not just making money. But how to do this? When discussion of this occurs on blogs the debate polarises very quickly – this happens with most issues. There are those who think that quality=popularity (give people what they want etc) and then those who find this awful but can’t give much of an alternative. I think you could help people with this by providing two pieces of content and asking people to figure out why one is better than the other. You could provide a few examples from different areas of interest. You could also do a review of a post in the same way as blog reviews are done on some sites. Or you could get students to submit content and ask for others content.

Hope this makes sense and is useful.

Evan

This sounds like a great plan – I’d love to be considered for your blog beta group. Like some of your readers, I too am very excited to start a new blog, am willing to put the time into it, and would really love some help in figuring out all of the nic-nac paddy-whacks of the blogging game

Thanks a lot.

Thanks!

Thanks.