Monthly Archives: October 2019

Three Benefits of Our Stuffed Penguin Plush Toys

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Life is too serious. Our penguins help to lighten things up and provide laughter and joy to prevent the darkness from closing in. As a soft and squishy companion, our stuffed penguin plush toys provide a pleasing and calming tactile experience.

Talk out Your Problems

When you’re faced with a problem and you have no one else to go to, a stuffed penguin can listen to what you need to say. The mere act of verbalizing a problem is often enough to see it in the light that it deserves.

When you talk out a problem, even to a stuffed penguin, you are giving yourself the opportunity to state the problem I a way that you can understand it. Too often, people let a problem roam the mind where the imagination grabs it and allows it to grow out of control.

Giving voice to your fears allows you to get a handle on them. When you can label the problem, you can begin to understand it. Our penguins act as your confidante giving you a way to talk to someone without receiving judgement from that person. The essential part of this act gives you emotional and psychological protection, you may not otherwise experience. Our penguins always understand you.

Express Your Emotions

Our penguins reflect your inner emotions. Each face is unique and created so that your personality shines through them. Because of their innate cuteness, they help to make the emotions softer, so that you can deal with them better. Introverts can use our penguins as the starting point for their social media interactions or as a way to express themselves to friends and family when it would be too painful or difficult otherwise.

Boost Your Creativity

Our stuffed penguin plush toys bring out the child in you. They allow you to practice using your imagination and telling stories. When you exercise your abilities to be childlike, you are practicing for creativity. Every interaction with a stuffed penguin will help you grow your creativity. Take photos with it, tell its story, and find its personality. You will find joy, friendship, travel and penguins in your imagination.

The Journey to Better Marketing: Benefits vs. Features

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The basis of capitalism is “the individual will do what’s good for the individual.” When you consider marketing your product or service, you need to consider it from your customers’ perspectives. What’s in it for them?

If you talk about how cold your refrigerator is, you’re talking about a feature. The refrigerator is cold. So what? What does that mean to your customer? The refrigerator will keep food fresher longer because of its cold temperature. The feature is “cold;” the benefit is “fresher food.” Too many businesses list features and think they are benefits.

A feature is not a benefit. A benefit explains how a product or service will make the consumers’ lives better, and just because it’s a benefit for you, doesn’t mean it’s a benefit for someone else. The most compelling benefits are emotional or financial.

A competitive advantage is a special kind of benefit. It is one that is unique to you or it is something that only you talk about. It’s a benefit that gets the buyer’s attention, sells your product, keeps customers coming back, and causes people to talk about your product. The right competitive advantage buries your competition and should become the focus of your overall marketing plan.

Adapted from “Guerrilla Maketing in 30 days.”

The Journey to Better Marketing: Build a Marketing Plan

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A marketing plan requires information, brain power, and initiative. Brain power is broken down into analysis, ideas, creativity, and imagination.

You can make a seven-sentence marketing plan. It should include the purpose of the marketing, the target market, the niche, the benefits or competitive advantage, identity, the tools you have in your marketing bag, and your budget.  Guerrilla Marketing adds “investigate new markets in the coming year.”

A good marketing plan requires you to know the market, what customers expect and want, and how to satisfy them. Plans need to be flexible. They should include how to attract potential customers, how to convert those potential customers into purchasers, and how to keep them coming back.

Adapted from “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days.”

The Journey to Better Marketing: Niche vs. Mass Marketing

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Niche marketing is the opposite of mass marketing. With a niche, you have a specific target segment to aim at; mass marketing is like a shotgun blast. Niche marketing takes advantage of the opportunity to really connect with your target market; mass marketing is the Super Bowl commercial that reaches millions of people, who may or may not be interested in your product or services.

To put it terms of technology: If mass marketing were a phone, it would be a Smartphone. It takes pictures, accesses the Internet, allows you to order pizza, and, yes, you could even make a phone call with it. However, it has so many features that you probably use fewer than half of them. All of those unused features are things that you paid for and don’t need. Mass marketing may reach thousands of people, but if only a couple of them are your target market, it’s a lot of wasted effort, time, and money.

Niche marketing, on the other hand, would be your old-fashioned, Ma Bell rent-a-phone. It did one thing: Allowed you to make calls. Those phones lasted forever!

For niche marketing to work, you need to become the expert in your field. A niche will help you know where to market and to whom, and it will give you an identity that your competitors don’t have.

Inspired by “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days.”

The Journey to Better Marketing: Positioning

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When you create a positioning statement, you aren’t creating a product or service. You are creating a basis for everything you do. You are positioning your company in the minds of your potential customers. Positioning is your business’ true identity and its true value.

A positioning statement should say who you are, what business you’re really in, who buys your products or services, what they demand and what unique value you bring to them. Our second draft:

At Penguinate.com, we inspire happiness and creativity in professional adults by helping them embrace their inner child through our handmade stuffed animals and plush toys and their costumes.

Positioning statement, our second draft.

The positioning statement should address a real benefit the target audience wants that separates the business from its competition in a unique or difficult to copy way. Positioning should be benefit focused. Joy. Friendship. Travel. Penguins!

Idea adapted from “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 days.”

Satori School October 2019: How to Get a Job in the U.S.

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Rules:

Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers:

Get a Job, The Silhouettes:

The want ads: Monster.com, craigslist, just do a search – you’ll probably have to apply in person, unless you’re going for an upper level management position.

LinkedIn not available in Russia. (It’s servers are not located within the country.)

The Application: Places like McDonald’s often have applications that can replace the resume; you should still have a resume.

mcdonalds-job-applicationDownload

The Resume (CV): This is a listing of your work, education and other experiences. We don’t use the term CV; that’s used in Europe.

The Interview:

Tell me about yourself.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

What is your greatest weakness?

What is your greatest strength?

What motivates you?

Tell me about a time that you failed.

Why do you want to work here?

How many couches are there in America? (What? Seriously. But you still have to answer it.)

The Journey to Better Marketing: Archery, Aiming and the Niche

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“Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days” advises to find your niche. Your business needs to know who it wants to sell to in every key demographic, including gender, age, income level, when they do their shopping, where they do their shopping, do they have pets, and more. You don’t have to stalk your customers; you may ask them some questions. If you don’t have any customers, you want to just imagine who your ideal customer is. EVERYONE is not a niche, and EVERYONE is not your customer.

Once you have your niche, you want to aim your marketing at it. In archery, this is known as aiming small, which is a direct contrast to the phrase “aim big.” Because the bull’s eye is the smallest part of the target, the closer you can get to it the better. If you “aim big,” you might get the arrow in the general direction of the target, but you’re not likely to hit the bull’s eye. If you aim small, you’ll more likely get the hit you want.

In marketing for small businesses, you want to aim your marketing at specific people who are going to purchase your product or service. If you’re objective is to sell sweat-proof makeup to mimes in Las Vegas, as long as there are enough mimes in Vegas, you have a niche. If there aren’t enough mimes, you might want to extend it to stage performers or expand your mime reach to all of Nevada. Your niche needs to be large enough to provide you with an income, but small enough that the larger companies aren’t serving them. Take out your bow, string it, pull back your marketing arrow, and aim small.

The Journey to Better Marketing: Competitive Advantage

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Every business needs to have a competitive advantage. This is something that the business does that others do not, or it is something that the business talks about that others do not. It needs to be a positive benefit, communicated with a few well-selected words, and something that people will relate only to you.

So, what is our competitive advantage? Our penguins are unique from the norm; have you seen another white penguin on the market? They’re rare in the wild, too. Our penguins are also unique from each other. No two penguins look exactly the same because their eyes are hand-embroidered. Their height fluctuates within a half-inch because they are hand-sewn. How much stuffing gets used for different penguins is variable as well. Our penguins are also rare. They are handmade. We only have one maker, so supply is limited. For collectors, the rarity and uniqueness are benefits.

Nathaniel and Eudora Atwater, Steampunk Penguins
Nathaniel and Eudora Atwater, Steampunk Penguins

A second competitive advantage is that we can make penguins in costumes that can’t be found anywhere else. If someone wants a particular style of penguin or costume, Jenya can make it. We’ve done steampunk penguins as a special order.

A third advantage is our Penguin Passports. Our penguins are travelers. You can take them with you and use them for Instagram photos and fun while you travel. The passports reveal their names and their likes. These names are never the same.

This information is adapted from the 2005 version of “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days.” Get an updated version of “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days.”

Get a Stuffed Penguin Friend for Your Next Encounter

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Do you long for companionship? Do you want to look into another’s face and see your feelings reflected there? Do you need another to be there for candlelight dinners with a selfie and for Instagram posts? Do you like warm hugs? Do you love penguins?

If you’ve answered “Yes” to any of the above questions, consider adopting one or more of our handmade, stuffed penguins. Every penguin is made with love – and you can see it in their eyes and face. When you have a stuffed penguin friend, you always have someone who will go with you wherever you want to go. As long as you have space in your purse or a pocket, you and your adopted penguin are good to go.

Adopt a penguin friend now and experience the joy and comfort of stuffed animals as they transport you back to your childhood.