Why waste time with bad pitches?

It amazes me how many people are using the “shoot and pray” method when pitching their products, services or clients. Why not use better and more effective techniques? 

But sometimes, just sometimes… I answer to people sending me bad pitches, and today was one of those days. 

Dear Website Owner,

65% of people searching the Internet will never find your web site unless you’re ranked on first page of Google, MSN, or Yahoo. If I help you obtain as much as 4 times more WEB traffic to your online business by promoting you to the first page of the search engines would you be interested?

Our company is on the first page when you search on Google for our primary search term “SEO Company.” We would like to do the same for your web site so you can come up for your main keywords as well? All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized. 

This special SEO program includes:
 No upfront fees
 A month-to-month program
 More traffic guaranteed

Please reply to my email and I would be happy to send you a proposal.
______________________________________________________________________
Sincerely, 
Josh HF

Dear Josh HF,

65% of people hiring anyone via Internet will never hire you unless you state your company name, use a company email-address and use your full name when pitching companies offering your SEO services. I can not verify that your company is on the top 10 Google search results for “SEO Company” because you don’t actually state your company’s name.

If I can help you to obtain as much as 4 times more paying customers by giving you a few tips how to market your company, interact with people and above all create an effective pitch email, would you be interested?

Please reply to my email and I would be happy to send you a proposal.

Sincerely,

Katja Presnal

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Great Photos Equal Great PR

Case study:

Amanda is a mompreneur, who couldn’t find a product she was looking for when she had her first baby 8 years ago, so she decided to create it herself. Her unique baby product got her friends asking for one for their babies too and soon she was making the products so often for friends and their friends, that she decided to start her own company and start selling her products for other parents as well. Her revolutionary baby product was hitting the retailers and she also started her own online store in 2004. Her website was getting decent amount of traffic and sales, and all the customers who bought the product absolutely loved it, and Amanda started visioning for more. She wanted to have her baby product featured in magazines, written about in blogs and used by celebrity babies. She pitched her product, and was rejected again and again. All this at the same time while getting a lot of positive feedback on the product itself.

In 2006 another mompreneur Hannah saw Amanda’s product and also loved it, but was hoping for getting it in a different color options that what Amanda was offering. Hannah was trying to find the same product from other companies to get it in a color she liked, but couldn’t find a similar product in the market. Hannah had an idea - she wanted to start a company making the baby product like Amanda’s was, and offer it in new color schemes. In early 2007 Hannah’s website launched with inviting graphics and high quality product photos of the baby product in use. In now time Hannah’s baby product was in the baby magazines, featured on TV shows and blogged in mommy blogs.

Amanda’s original product was actually better made, and their price points were around the same, the products are very much alike, but it was Hannah who was getting all the good PR. There are several reasons of course, but one really big reason is pictures and the visual branding. Better pictures, better PR, and ultimately, more sales.

3 Reasons Why You Need Great Product Photos for Great PR:

1. Everyone wants their website or magazine to look good, if your product makes them look good, they are more likely to feature it.

2. The easier you make it for people, the more willing they are to help you. While most magazines take their own photos, websites and blogs don’t. If you offer them great photos they can use to feature you, they are more likely to feature your product.

3. You want your photos to represent you and your product correctly, and it doesn’t matter how great your product is if your photos say “poor quality” - that will automatically be the first impression of your product as well.

The bottom line is.. Better photos means more PR and ultimately better sales numbers.

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Pantene Knows Marketing - Secret Shampoo Revealed

Pantene is the world’s best-selling haircare brand, offering a variety of shampoo, conditioner and styling products, sold in around 100 countries.

But how does a shampoo become the best selling shampoo in the world? Is it the price? Is it the quality? Is it the branding and marketing? It’s the combination of all of them.

Pantene hair care products by Procter & Gamble are the number one selling hair care brand in the world, and after reading numerous (negative) product reviews in the online forums, seems like it still might not be voted as the “best shampoo in the world” *. This is an important note to take for the marketers when doing your marketing research, both quantitative and qualitative research is needed. The same people who vote another (higher priced) brand as “better shampoo”, still go and purchase the lower priced Pantene - the shampoo, which is giving them the overall better value than the “better shampoo”.

Pantene is a low price point shampoo, and the success of Pantene being the most sold shampoo in the world probably has a lot to do it being an inexpensive shampoo beating other cheap shampoos in the quality. What is worth the notice here, is that the Pantene advertising does not focus on their low price point, it focuses on quality of the shampoo, great visuals and to the feedback they hear from the consumers.

QUALITY OF THE SHAMPOO

2007 ad. Strong Hair, Glamorous, Hollywood Worthy

GREAT VISUALS

2008 ad. Strong Hair, No Questions Asked. Very strong visual

GREAT VISUALS INTERACTING WITH ENVIRONMENT

2008 ad. Stop Split Ends. Very strong visual, the message combined with the environment, the double light post.

2008 campaign. Strong hair. Interactive display, free shampoo samples distributed.

CONSUMER BASED & INTERACTIVE

Pantene doesn’t just encourage women to use their hair care products, but also cutting the hair - for charity. Pantene started Beautiful Lenghts last year to collect hair, 8 inches at the time, to be used for wigs for cancer patients. Pantene works together with American Cancer Society, who distributes the wigs made out of donated hair to women who have lost their hair due cancer treatments. Even the writer herself was inspired to cut her hair earlier this year. The Beautiful Lengths campaign is an excellent example of Pantene’s community involvement, philantrophy and interactive marketing. They for example host hair cutting events across the nation.

Another great example of Pantene’s community based marketing is their new song used in their commercials. Pantene held a user generated song writing contest at Midem in Cannes. “We are always looking for new ways to emotionally connect Pantene, the number one haircare brand in the world, with consumers,” said Freddy Bharucha, Marketing Director for Pantene North America about the song writing contest. The winning song was “Shine” by Rosi Golan, which has already aired in TV commercials like in the one below.

This TV commercial with the happy woman & girl also targets one of Pantene’s important target market: moms.

SALON SECRET SHAMPOO CAMPAIGN

As I write this blog post, Pantene’s “Salon Secret Shampoo” campaign is going on, and I am actually spoiling the secret here by telling, yes, the TV commercial with Stacy London telling you about the “secret shampoo” is about Pantene Pro-V.

Pantene teamed up with Walmart to create a Salon Secret Shampoo campaign, and the secret being told at Walmarts on November 24th. Walmart’s Eleven Moms **, real life mothers and also bloggers in Walmart’s social media reach out campaign, got to test the shampoo in a blind test and Pantene interviewed moms about their hair dilemmas. Pantene had done similar type testing in hair salons country wide and their results was that 70% of people liked Pantene shampoo better than the salon brand.

The participating moms of the Walmart’s Eleven Moms campaign are also featured in the Secret to Great Hair website and the videos, like the one above, are also in the campaign’s YouTube channel. The women are offering their honest opinions in the videos. What makes this campaign brilliant, is that the same women also promoted the campaign in their individual blogs.

They were not told what the shampoo was, but all of the Eleven Moms received a mystery box of the secret shampoo in mail and the anticipation was built online by their blog posts and videos. The bloggers also posted the Secret Shampoo badges to their blogs and told their readers they also they could receive free samples of the shampoo to test it at home.

A few weeks later, the blogger moms received another mystery box - revealing the sectet. This time with a lock and a note that the number code for the lock would arrive a few days later. The anticipation grew now even among the testers, and many bloggers (writer included) couldn’t wait the code to arrive and used creative ways to open the box to reveal the shampoo in fact was Pantene Pro-V.

The video star is Alyssa, Kingdom First Mom.

I will be very interested to hear what kind of results Pantene is getting with the Salon Secret campaign. But according the information on hand now, their target market was reached well so far online and off line. They participated in the community of their target market via the Eleven Moms, who made the campaign spread organically online. The beauty of the campaign was also that it was the real life consumers marketing the product by their honest opinions.

Ps. This Blog Post was mentioned at Advertising Age even before I hit the publish button.

* The writer hasn’t been using Pantene before, but received free samples of Pantene’s Pro-V Hair Care line during the Salon Secrets Campaign and was pleasantly surprised, but won’t quit using her salon brand shampoo. The negative comments can be found anywhere where Pantene Shampoo is reviewed, and no, the writer did not do any type of quantitative research whether Pantene got more positive or negative reviews.

** The writer is one of Walmart’s Eleven Moms, but did not participate the salon testing and this is the only blog post she has written about the “Secret Shampoo”.

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Babywearing International’s Response to Motrin

The Motrin ad campaign couldn’t have come out at a worse time for
Babywearing International, a non-profit group dedicated to babywearing advocacy and education. It is The International Babywearing Week, and their organization has been focusing on celebrating, promoting and advocating the many benefits of babywearing during this time. Part of this has been a media outreach and educating people about the facts of babywearing.

Babywearing International sent the following response concerning the Motrin mom-alogue campaign to McNeil Consumer Healthcare on November 17, 2008:

Kathy Widmer
VP of Marketing - Pain, Pediatrics, GI, Specialty
McNeil Consumer Healthcare
Dear Ms. Widmer:

I am Susie Spence, president of Babywearing International, Inc., a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote babywearing, with benefits for both child and caregiver, through education and support. I write to you on behalf of the Babywearing International Board of Directors concerning the mom-alogue advertising campaign for Motrin, which purports to be from the point of view of a babywearing mother.

We are deeply troubled by this campaign for the following reasons:

- It disparages babywearing mothers by portraying them as victims of a painful fashion trend;

- It falsely states that baby carriers “put a ton of strain” on the wearer’s back, neck, and shoulders;

- It falsely implies that mothers who wear their babies “cry more” than those who don’t;

- It portrays the research-proven benefits of babywearing as rumor or speculation subject to doubt;

- It disparagingly implies that babywearing mothers look “tired and crazy;” and

- It was timed to run during International Babywearing Week, November 12-18, 2008, when nonprofit babywearing groups all over the world are celebrating babywearing, and thousands of volunteers are working to publicize the benefits of babywearing and to encourage the practice of babywearing.

Just as we are working to create community support for this beneficial practice so that no parent will ever again be harassed or ridiculed for babywearing, McNeil is perpetuating an image of babywearing parents as silly people who make irrational choices to be in fashion. Your “mom-alogue” could hardly be more ill-timed, off-base, or damaging to babywearing parents or to parents who have yet to reap the benefits of babywearing.

While we do sincerely appreciate that McNeil Consumer Healthcare is not so crass a corporate citizen as to continue showing the mom-alogue on the Motrin website in the face of the uproar it created on social networking sites and through email, merely discontiuing the campaign is no step toward repairing the damage it has caused and continues to cause.

Babywearing International, Inc., calls upon McNeil Consumer Healthcare to counter the effects of this offensive ad campaign in the following ways:

- Completely discontinue the campaign by not allowing any further publication of it in any media;

- Undertake an equally prominent campaign that portrays babywearing mothers as the savvy parents and consumers they actually are;

- Undertake an equally prominent campaign that explains the proven benefits of babywearing and directly counters the portrayal of babywearing as painful or as a practice that makes babywearing mothers cry;

- Undertake a campaign to educate healthcare providers as well as patients about the research-proven benefits of babywearing. In fact, babywearing makes mothers more confident and results in fewer tears for both mothers and children.

Recognizing that Motrin is a brand that has heretofore been mother-friendly as well as child-friendly, Babywearing International would consider assisting Motrin in partially repairing the recent damage to its image by having Motrin’s collaboration in our Medical Outreach Campaign, through which we provide research-based information to medical doctors, counselors, and parents concerning the health benefits of babywearing.

Most sincerely yours,

Susie Spence
President
Babywearing International, Inc.
www.babywearinginternational.org

Looking forward seeing what happens next.

Links:
More about Babywearing at Adventures in Babywearing

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Motrin Heard the News *UPDATED*

It has been interesting to see how this has been unfolding today.

My YouTube video has gotten over 2500 views, my blog posts mentioned at Peter Shankman’s blog, and at Mashable, written by Sarah Evans. Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting posted my video, so did 5 Minutes for Mom. And over 60 blogs blogged about it today and linked to Skimbaco Lifestyle.

A lot of upset moms.
Bad PR.
And silence from Motrin - until just an hour ago, when Motrin.com was taken down - for little upkeep called taking the ad down.

I also just received an email from Kathy Widmer, Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare.

Dear Katja -

I am the Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare. I have responsibility for the Motrin Brand, and am responding to concerns about recent advertising on our website. I am, myself, a mom of 3 daughters.

We certainly did not mean to offend moms through our advertising. Instead, we had intended to demonstrate genuine sympathy and appreciation for all that parents do for their babies. We believe deeply that moms know best and we sincerely apologize for disappointing you. Please know that we take your feedback seriously and will take swift action with regard to this ad. We are in process of removing it from our website. It will take longer, unfortunately, for it to be removed from magazine print as it is currently on newstands and in distribution.

-Kathy

Kathy Widmer
VP of Marketing - Pain, Pediatrics, GI, Specialty
McNeil Consumer Healthcare

Great - looks like the clean up of the mess has started, and so far done right. Looking forward seeing what happens next.

Motrin’s website was down for good 15 hours, and now this message has replaced the ad:

This is a great start, and hopefully a wake up call, not just for companies involved but for the rest of corporate America. Companies need to be on social media, and communicate with their target market.

Even if people don’t agree that the ad was/wasn’t offensive (which by the way is a personal opinion, and same way that we can’t say someone is wrong because they don’t like tuna fish, you can’t say that moms who found this ad offensive are wrong), the fact reminds that it took 24 hours from Motrin to response anything to those who were offended. Many in social media think 24 hours is a long time to response, we are used to instant gratification, but for a company who isn’t involved in social media, it was some what impressive to get any type of response within 24 hours and on a Sunday evening.

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Do you do business with Companies or People? Essential Social Media Marketing Lesson.

Me and Beth Schoenfeldt at Collective-E launch party

One of the mantras I learned from my entrepreneur Dad a long time ago is

“Businesses do not do business with businesses. There is always a person in a company doing business with another person in a company.”

Let me explain why understanding this is vital for your success in social media marketing.

TWO WAY COMMUNICATION

The main thing about social media marketing is that it’s not one way communication. It’s TWO way - you talk to your audience/community and it talks to you and you listen, take notes, act and that’s how you make the results!

There are several how-to-get-rich-on-social-media handbooks telling you to send auto-response notes and teaching how to do advertising on social media sites. The same type of handbooks tell you how to increase the number of followers or subscribers, how to “catch” people’s email addresses and how to build “landing pages”.

Don’t waste your money or time on those handbooks.

While learning how to make Facebook fan pages or how to really use Twitter for self-promotion is important, SEO is important and advertising is important, the most important thing about social media marketing is to learn to do two-way-one-to-one-communication, not how to blast out information to masses.

See, blasting out information is the old school way of doing things, also called “shoot and pray” - blasting out information to large quantities and praying something sticks somewhere and you receive the wanted result. The new way of doing things is to send out information to a trusted network of people who already know you.

CASE STUDY: BLASTING TO MASSES VERSUS CONTACTING YOUR NETWORK

I was recently working with a project that needed bloggers’ participation and I needed to get 5-10 bloggers involved. I contacted 10 bloggers who already knew who I was, and 10 bloggers who didn’t know me, but who blogged in the target market I was looking for. Out the first group, of ten people who already knew me, nine said yes to the project. Out of the ten who didn’t know me, nobody said yes.
Out of 20 bloggers I contacted I got 9, that’s 45% return rate on the whole group, and 90% return rate on the group who already knew me. Sadly, in this example the return rate on the “shoot and pray” method was 0% - I wonder how many unknown to me bloggers I would have had to contact to get the 9 bloggers I needed for the project.

Katja Presnal

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS MAKES DOING BUSINESS A PLEASURE

Don’t get me wrong here - I’m not even close to suggesting mixing business and pleasure, but saying that doing business with people you like and know is much more pleasurable than doing business with someone you don’t like. Me? Frankly, I try to avoid doing business with people I don’t like.

The personal relationships matter in business, and with the social media tools people can easier find the people they want to do business. Social media sites also make referring people easy and finding business partners people who you already know recommend. The whole beauty of sites like Twitter is that you can easily jump into a conversation with people and get connected without even having to just talk business. When people know who you are as a person, they are more likely to do business with you.

Also, when you get to know a business person you like, you will want to do business with her/him and often can create something new and exciting with a company that on the first look may have seemed like the unlikely match with your company.

CASE STUDY: CROSS-PROMOTION WITH A “FRIEND” OR AN “ENEMY”

Sam’s Sandwich Shop had been open for a year and Sam wanted to do a big birthday party to get more potential customers to visit his shop. Sam sort of wanted to do cross-promotion with one of the other store-owners in the same strip-mall. A lot of customers bought both, a sandwich from Sam and a smoothie from Pete’s Smoothies next door, and it would have been a natural connection to do cross-promotion. However, Sam and Pete didn’t get along at all.

Sam mentioned this to Ashley, the flower shop owner, and since they had been helping each others out in with other business questions, they decided to do a cross-promotional campaign together. Sam’s Sandwich Shop was decorated by flowers (giving ideas what kind of bouquets work for birthdays) and Ashley hosted a “How to make centerpieces” class and served sandwiches for her clients. They advertised both events on a same newspaper ad, splitting the cost. Many people had only visited either one of the businesses before and now were introduced to another business in the same location. Both Sam and Ashley received positive feedback for their events, and received new customers for their businesses.

Many people in the social media world focus more on the word “media” and they even call it “new media” instead of social media. However, the “social” part is essential, and being the gal or guy who everyone wants to do business with is the key to success. You do not get there by just blasting self-promotional information.

When your business partners and customers become part of your community, you will have a word-of-mouth marketing network built in, and you can leverage it for business when needed. These people already know you and trust you, and know that you are not just using them to promote your business, they know they can trust you to give your helping hand for them too.

Me? I have taken social media to the next level - I am meeting people in person, like Beth Schoenfeldt, Sabina Ptacin and Katie Hellmuth from the recently launched Collective-E, a women’s networking company offering support and advice for womenpreneurs. It would be risky to take your online business relations offline, if you are not being authentic and honest online, my tip is - be yourself, no matter what.

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The World’s Worst Press Release

Tip of today: if you don’t know how to write a great press release, don’t do it at all.

PRESS RELEASE TIPS

1. Many PR people advise companies writing one press release a month, if not for anything else, but to post at free press release distribution service sites to get back linking to the company’s website and using relevant key words to get a good Google spot.

2. They also say “don’t do a press release, if you don’t have anything new to say”. This get tricky, huh? You’re suppose to get “news” out, but if you don’t really have news, you still should “get your name out” anyway.

3. Another great tip is to use statistical numbers by some well known source. Or state a problem and offer a solution.

4. Other tip PR folks like to say “use a current angle” in your press release, something to tie in with current news. For example now would be a great time for companies pitch “frugal Holiday gifts” since the economy has made everyone thinking how we can afford Christmas this year.

THE HOME BACK-UP PROTECTION COMPANY FOLLOWED ALL THESE TIPS BUT WROTE THE WORST PRESS RELEASE OF OUR TIMES

Using a good press release distributing site, stating statistical numbers, and showing a need and a solution, using a current angle - sounds like there is a lot the company did right in the press release.

But it is ALL WRONG and caused the company a tremendous amount of Very Bad PR and I among many other PR people vote this the Worst Press Release of Our Times.

The Back-Up company sells bedside shotgun racks (and I want to make sure you understand I hate the product, but it would be a whole another blog post why I think the whole product is all wrong, let’s now just discuss this one particular press release) and yesterday The Back-Up company released a press release that has been raising eyebrows among the PR people world wide.

The press release was written by using all the tips above, and the “current angle” was exploiting the horrible triple murder than happened for Jennifer Hudson’s family. What a distasteful and despicable thing to do - use someone’s tragedy to sell your products!

The original press release is copied here, because it was starting to stir the Bad PR pot for the company, the original press release was changed while I was still writing this blog post.

Too late for Back-Up company though - Chicago Tribune already published the story - and many bloggers, me included had already copied the original press release:

COULD A BEDSIDE SHOTGUN RACK HAVE SAVED JENNIFER HUDSON’S FAMILY FROM TRAGIC DEATH?




Chicago, IL (MMD Newswire) October 28, 2008 — Tragedy strikes in a Chicago home leaving 3 people dead and an Oscar winner forced to identify the bodies of her family.

Jennifer Hudson’s mother and brother were gunned down in their home Friday. Could an invaluable device have saved their lives?

It’s called The BackUp and it is a bedside shotgun rack.

Everyday, there are over 8,000 home invasions in America, many resulting in assault, rape, and murder. That’s according to a report by the US Department of Justice. 



Whether it is someone known or a stranger entering the home, too many people in this country are paying with their lives during these home invasions. The Hudson family is just one of far too many Americans gunned down in their own home.



What can be done? Law enforcement and the government aren’t solving the problem. So law-abiding citizens are now forced to take their safety, security, and life into their own hands. 



Shotguns are often weapons of choice at home because of their deterrent effect on assailants, their close-range stopping power, their affordability and their reduced risk of injury to innocent others from stray shot. But the problem is storing them in a place where you don’t have to turn your back on your assailant. Propped in the corner or under the bed takes valuable time to get to, and could cost you your life. 



For more information, visit the website at www.the-backup.com 

Available for immediate interview, contact company president John Peters at
(612) 605-3613 or email at press-info@the-backup.com.

Interestingly Chicago Tribune run a follow up story with an interview of the president of the shotgun rack company Home Back-Up Protection, A. John Peters, who said “that he didn’t issue the news release to capitalize on the Chicago family’s pain” and the interview continues “asked if he thought the ad might offend people, Peters said he expected it might. “Just having a gun rack offends a lot of people.””

But changing the press release and trying to say it wasn’t exploiting, which it clearly was, is all too late. Changing the press release just tells that the company knew it was wrong to do it the first place, and is now trying to cover their bases.

The blogs are running wild with this story. The damage for The Back-Up is already done.

“Good news” is that the Home Back-Up Protection company will get the amount of PR they ever imagined - people even say they deserve all the bad PR they can get, and they sure are getting a full load of it.

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Case Study - Carol’s Cuties

Is the more retailers you have the better? Not necessary as our case study shows. Read first more about the four Ps in marketing mix, and especially how “Place” should be one of important pieces of your marketing strategy. Told by a girl to a girl, and trying to avoid all the difficult words so even small biz owners with no business education can follow.

CASE STUDY CAROL’S CUTIES - MORE RETAILERS ISN’T ALWAYS THE SOLUTION

I have a great example of a designer who makes handmade products and has almost 200 retailers but her company is not using the retailers as a marketing tool as effectively as they could. In fact the designer told me, that she feels she is competing with her retailers and wishes she could get all the sales from her own onlinestore. Let’s call her company “Carol’s Cuties”, but so you will know - this is not the real name of the company, nor her name is Carol. Carol’s Cuties is a 6 year old company. And with almost 200 retailers Carol’s Cuties is still struggling, and sounds like having 200 retailers might actually be worse than having 50 good ones.

What did Carol do right?

Carol got her products to almost 200 stores, that’s amazing isn’t it?! She wanted to raise the awareness of Carol’s Cuties so she did exactly what I would suggest her to do - got her products in many stores, even if it meant lowering the price or doing drop-shipping for online stores. The retailers were her marketing force, they told their customers of her handmade product. Carol’s Cuties reached their target market very effectively, and probably in a very short period of time. You might even call it a marketing miracle, but just don’t do it yet.

What did Carol do wrong?

She didn’t choose retailers who share the message she is trying to voice out with her product. The product is sold in variety of stores, having totally mixed and opposite messages. So even though she got her product known and out there - this by selling for anyone who would buy- didn’t actually work as a brand builder. And her price was too low, now she is selling too many products on too low wholesale price and her business is struggling.

HANDLING 200 STORES

Carol’s Cuties is a handmade product Carol still makes herself. Yes, it is possible even with 200 retailers. Because over half of those retailers are online retailers and Carol just drop-ships for many of them. Some of the retailers sell only 5-10 Carol’s Cuties a year, so she can still handle tens of drop-shipping accounts herself. And can you believe this, but Carol is one superwoman, she also handles all of her retailers herself. Selling, staying in contact etc. with her close to 200 retailers! As amazing as it sounds, but also sounds like she is wasting a lot of time. While “brand building” is important and I’d keep the high profile stores that goes with my product’s brand, even with 10 product sales a year, sounds like she was collecting retailers just for the sake of it. And she should just drop some of them and focus on getting sales from the good ones.

MESSAGE 200 STORES SENDS OUT

You know when you graduate from school and you don’t have a lot of experience, you add things in your resume to make it look better; like you were the team captain in a sports team or won spelling bee several times. But someday you will have some real work experience, and you won’t show these in your resume anymore.

(And to be honest, doesn’t it become a bit embarrassing at some point to keep showing your hobbies from high school in your resume? Especially if now you are 200 pound “ballet dancer”. Just saying.)

Well, Carol has that amazing resume now - when I talk about resume, I call her retailer list a resume- but she is still showing the “spelling bee wins”, “swim team accomplishments” and everything else from Kindergarten, and unfortunately some of the real accomplishments, in this case the high quality stores, which carry her products, don’t shine through and be the effective marketing tool as she hopes they would be. People are not “wow, her products are even in Laura’s Luxury Store” because the list of stores just is that: a long list of stores, sending a message “Carla’s Cuties are available everywhere”.

Which message of course isn’t bad - if the truth was that the products are also sold in quantities in all these places and Carol’s Cuties actually were everywhere. But when some of these stores sell only 10 Carol’s Cuties a year - there is no way Carols products are “everywhere” with those sale numbers. Now it just looks “nice product, sold everywhere, but why haven’t I seen it before”. Don’t have your products “sold everywhere” if they actually don’t sell everywhere. Especially if the stores are not sending the messages you want your product to send.

Like I said, Carol’s product is a handmade product she makes herself. The “available everywhere” message doesn’t really go well with the “handmade with love” message. You start thinking, how does she have time to make products for 200 stores and still say they are all handmade by her. A mixed message again.

RETAILERS AS CAROL’S COMPETITORS? NO!!!!! THEY ARE YOUR TEAM MEMBERS!

Carol feels that the retailers are not making her enough money and she is just making, packing and shipping her products from her home all the time, and still not making enough money to pay herself a good salary. Her company actually has some cash flow problems. She feels that her own retailers are her competitors and she is trying to get the sales from her own website carolscuties.com instead of customers buying them from her retailers.

There are so many things wrong here that I don’t even know where to start.

First of all, retailers are never your competitors, they are your team members, they are helping you to get your product sold. Look again that little circle I did about Your Marketing Mix - the “Place”, your retailer is INSIDE your marketing mix circle. It is not an external thing totally out of your control, your retailers are part of your team, part of the sales force you have created, they are in your circle. They are not your competitors and liability, they are your asset.

If you feel your retailers are a liability or your competitors, you should make changes as soon as possible.

The retailers think they are doing you a favor by selling and promoting your product, and I can assure you that they would rather put their money on a product from a company who actually wants them to succeed and sell their products - this is the way they get profit too.

Retailers want to sell your product.

If you don’t want them to sell your product, drop them as your retailer.

No wonder the retailers are not making enough sales for Carol, if Carol doesn’t even want them to make many sales.

Over all seems like this is a big mess Carol should fix as soon as possible.

HOW TO FIX IT?

Most important thing right now would be branding Carol’s Cutie - to get the “message” down. What is “Carol’s Cuties”, what is the image, who buys it, why they buy it, and everything involved with branding the Carol’s Cutie. And after that everything Carol does has to be in the same line as the brand. Also “where the customer buys it”.

If Carol wants her product “available everywhere”, she should start thinking of a distribution center, and how she can handle the “available everywhere”. Obviously she has now reached her limit making the product from home, so she should also start thinking of how to start making the product in bigger quantities, maybe even how to lower her manufacturing costs. Maybe she can hire a friend to make them with her to start with, or have a part of the product pre-manufactured. If the message is “available everywhere” Carol should work with her retailers to get more sales from all of them to achieve this goal to really get her product not just available everywhere, but sold everywhere. Big problem here might be the cost.

If Carol wants to keep her product “special and handmade to order” she should drop half of her retailers immediately, especially all of the stores who don’t have any other products “special and handmade to order” - all those stores which do not go together with the brand Carol is trying to build for Carol’s Cuties. After all, half of the retailers are not really making money to her anyway and other half Carol feels are her competitors.

Also, if you are not making enough money with your wholesale price, your price is wrong. It is understandable Carol feels her retailers are her competitors - because she is selling her product way too cheap for them. You should always be happy with your wholesale price, and to be able to celebrate each wholesale contract. If you have your own website, the sales from there are just cream on the top, because you are making so much more than with the price you are happy to sell your product = wholesale price.

If you sell your product directly to the customers, your retail price should always be the same as the retail price at your retailers. If you offer your product cheaper on your own website than what your retailers are selling it in their stores for - then you are competing against your retailers. And why would they want to sell your product, if they are competing against you? They have enough competitors that they don’t want one of their own vendors to be one!

ONE POSSIBLE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

1. Re-think Carol’s Cuties Brand.

2. Higher the price of a Carol’s Cutie. And be comfortable with your new wholesale price.

3. Price might already drop some retailers, and drop most of or all of the retailers who do not go with the Carol’s Cuties brand.

4. Offer drop-shipping only for the stores with high visibility or which you feel are the stores you would proudly like to have in your “my retailers” list. If a store has been successful with your drop-shipping program and continuously brings you sales, you might even ask if they would be willing to start stocking your product. This would save you some time from packing and shipping.

5. Start working together more and better with your retailers. Keep them updated and excited about your product. Do joint-marketing efforts with them and help them to sell your product. When your retailers are excited about your product, they will want to sell more of them.

YOUR INPUT

Please leave your comments. What do you think Carol should do?

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