The Journey to Better Marketing: Get the Right Mindset

Posted on by

“You can’t sell a product or service no one knows about (Levinson and Lautenslager, p. 2).” This is what I am confronted with every day in every conversation. We have great penguins and books, but how do we get people to find out about them? Marketing starts with your mindset. It requires energy, enthusiasm and passion. Every action, especially for an individually owned business, is a part of marketing. How people see you will transfer to how they view your business. In their book “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days,” the question that Levinson and Lautenslager say every member of the organization should ask themselves is “How am I building awareness with my prospects and clients through our marketing?”

I typically ask myself, “How do I best move forward?” Sometimes, it’s by creating something new – a book or an article. Sometimes, it’s by posting or reposting something to social media, and sometimes, I can’t answer that question at all because I am wondering how do I best stay afloat. It’s a balancing act – we have to cover our current moment and figure out how to move forward for the future. I don’t recall the two ever coming together.

Our marketing needs to be tied to our mission statement: Joy. Friendship. Travel. Penguins! That’s the closest we’ve got to a mission statement. It’s more of a slogan, I guess.

The first step in marketing, like creativity and any other activity, is believing that you can. Your actions will make a difference. Once you have this locked in, you can keep doing the activities you need to do in order to market. Those activities like laundry, dishes, and breathing, never stop.

One way to learn more about marketing is to simply observe what is already around us. Look at the emails that are spam: Which do you open and why? Which do you delete without opening? What works? Why do you open one and not the other? Adapt the successful ones to your business.

Always think about the customer. It’s not what you offer or what the features are; it’s what the benefit is for the person getting the product. Our penguins are soft, but that’s a feature. The benefit of a soft penguin is that you have someone who feels good to hold. Our penguins can comfort you and relieve stress (benefits) because there are no hard parts that can hurt you (features). Always discuss benefits. How do our penguins or books help improve your life?

This information has been adapted from “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days” from 2005. You can get an updated version through this affiliate link for “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days” from 2014.

Speakers’ Club: Overcoming Obstacles pt. 1

Posted on by

Rules: Make mistakes and learn from them.

Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers:

Schoolhouse Rocks! America: The Preamble to the Constitution:

(Friends and acquaintances)

The Challenges:

Visa, Green Card

Exchange rate, Income – How do we pay for it?

Finding work

Local resources?

Flights

Fear of Flying

School Differences (university, courses)

Language, accents

Traditions, customs

Food issues

What Do I Need to Do Better? A History

Posted on by

When I first started Penguinate.com in 2012, it was because I learned that people who were able to talk to classmates or others on the job were able to reinforce their learning. They retained more information and learned more than people who had to rely on themselves and their memory to learn. I was going to Disney World to be a part of their College Program, and I wanted to remember everything that I learned there. Not knowing if I would find people to talk to, I decided to start a website where I could keep my observations and put down what I learned, giving myself one more way to remember what I deemed as important and one more connection to tie the information to my brain.

I monetized the website, and as I went through school, I created movie and book reviews. When I started at examiner.com as a reporter, I posted videos on YouTube to support the news I was reporting. I monetized those as well. By the time I went to get my Master’s degree, I was making just enough to pay for my Internet usage, and all indications were that it would keep growing if I kept at it. Then everything changed.

When YouTube changed its policy about who could monetize their videos, I was on the outside looking in. I lost half of my web income. When my website hosting company decided to eliminate contact with Russia, I lost half of my income again. Then I made the drastic decision to move website hosting companies, and my income dropped to almost zero. I thought I had things moving in the right direction when I took another hit in August, my worst month at my website financially speaking, even though I was in the midst of a 251-day publishing streak. September responded in a “hold my beer” fashion, and I’m staring at two months of unexplained decline in income from my website – even while September was my best for “ads served.”

In the midst of all this, I turned to writing books as an additional source of income. My wife has made penguins to help supplement what we’re making. I’ve tried freelance editing with two paid jobs and one that didn’t pan out but kept me from working in September. I’ve started publishing at Medium, where I earn based on the number of views by members and their interaction with the articles I write. I’ve attempted to expand our Patreon base and failed with every offer that I’ve put out there. I have a small but mighty core of supporters. I tried starting an email list – my wife and I are the only ones on it, which makes it a lot less work. We’ve made two calendars – one of which we’ve offered for free to our Patreon members.

So, this is where we are – facing crickets with our web presence and our ability to get the word out about what we have available. I’ve gotten messages about how people love my books. Our penguins have gotten great reviews – in private, so it can’t be the products that are the problem. That leads me to believe my biggest issue is marketing. How do I inform people about what we have available and how they go about getting it?

I have read about marketing, watched videos about it, and participated in courses about it, but for some reason, there’s a block. Either I’m not using the things I have learned, or I am using them ineffectively. I’m not sure where the disconnect is, but it must be somewhere within me, or between me and the computer. Somehow, I’m not translating what I’ve read and thought about into something productive for me. It’s a lot of wheel spinning as I use social media and Google ads to little or no avail. How do I do it better?

If I am right, and marketing is the main problem, then it’s time for me to return the blog portion of the website back to what it was built for – to help me learn. It’s time for me to start going through the marketing materials I’ve already read once, and re-read it with an eye to distilling it down to the main points: Benefits marketing, tell-a-story marketing, and other marketing tactics. Whatever type of marketing I need to learn, it’s time to buckle down and do the research and figure out how to turn it into something usable.

And after all this talking, the one thing I probably need to learn most of all is to how to listen. People may have been telling me things that I have missed. Since I have missed them, I don’t know what they are.

If you have any ideas, please leave them in the comments.

Stories from an Alaskan Cabin: Chapter Four

Posted on by

Start with the Introduction.

“It must be my turn.” George looked up at the Moon, closed his eyes, and began speaking, “The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth in its orbit. It circles the Earth and shows the same face to us with little variation. The side we don’t see, the so-called dark side, was first revealed to us in 1959 when the Soviet Union’s Luna 3 passed around the Moon and took photos. Unfortunately, the photos showed something that didn’t make any sense to the scientists who saw them. They assumed that they had seen some defect in the film and only released the images that made sense with their understanding of what was up there. The rest they discarded.

Continue reading →

Stories from an Alaskan Cabin: Chapter Three

Posted on by

Read the introduction, prologue, chapter one, and chapter two.

Lee took a second to gather his thoughts. He looked into the cabin and noticed the unlit lantern. Moonlight flowed through the small window and onto the table where the lantern was. The stove was glowing orange but with much less intensity than before. Then he began:

Continue reading →

Speakers’ Club September 2019: Queen, Rolling Stones, Beatles

Posted on by

Rules:

Shad’s email:

Chip n Dale’s Rescue Rangers:

One-on-One, Round and Round:

Hi, my name is _______.

I’m a ______.

My favorite rock song is _____. ((Or) My favorite _____ song is ______)

Queen, debut album (1973): They used AC30 watt amplifiers the same type the Beatles used.

Read about “Creativity and Queen’s Freddie Mercury”: https://medium.com/@shadexaminer/creativity-with-queens-freddie-mercury-6db3f3b14acc

We Will Rock You:

Bohemian Rhapsody:

Somebody to Love:

Another One Bites the Dust:

We Are the Champions:

Under Pressure with David Bowie: Beat was used by Rapper Vanilla Ice for his song “Ice, Ice, Baby”

Flash Gordon (1980) soundtrack

Highlander movie and TV Series

Queen on the free concert – They were only going to get 30 pounds each anyway.

Freddie Mercury on John Lennon: (His response is a bit surprised, and he hesitates to find the right words. It’s okay to rephrase if you get off on the wrong track.) “It’s not a matter of less talent or more talent. It’s just that certain people are capable of doing certain things better than somebody else… John Lennon was just unique and a one-off… I admire John Lennon very much.” Mercury wants to be true to himself.

The Rolling Stones, debut album (1964), name from Muddy Waters song:

Read about Creativity Lessons with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: https://medium.com/@shadexaminer/creativity-lessons-with-the-rolling-stones-keith-richards-and-mick-jagger-73ff9cd96def

Jumping Jack Flash: Whoopie Goldberg film, Otherworld TV series.

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction: Justine Bateman movie.

Paint It Black

It’s only Rock N Roll (but I like It) with David Bowie:

Start Me Up:

Sympathy for the Devil: Jagger based his portrait of Satan as “a may-yun of way-elth and tay-ste” in part on Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novel The Master and Margarita. But he made the role his own.

The Beatles, debut album 1963, (The Oneders) They are the standard; they were the first to make it big from England to the U.S.:

Back in the USSR:

Across the Universe (also a movie) and in Pleasantville:

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Paul Is Dead?):

Blackbird (Civil Rights):

Hard Day’s Night:

Yesterday – the most covered song in history:

Can’t Buy Me Love movie

Yellow Submarine movie

Musicians on the Beatles:

Downloadable Scrabble game board and pieces. https://busyteacher.org/9830-old-scrabble-board-game.html

U.S. programs in Russia: https://ru.usembassy.gov/education-culture/

U.S. Visa guidelines: https://ru.usembassy.gov/visas/

Speakers’ Club First Day Back 2019: Welcome Back

Posted on by

Let’s set up the rules. We had four last year. Do we need to change them, add to them, subtract from them, or do they work?

What did you do this summer? Let’s talk about our great summer activities or our not so great ones.

Let’s talk songs: Which would you like to sing? I’m suggesting:

Ducktales:

Gummi Bears:

Chip N Dale’s Rescue Rangers:

Scooby-Do:

Kids Incorporated:

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:

Spider-Man:

Cheeseburger in Paradise

Sweet Caroline

Possible topics and activities: What do you want to talk about this year? Suggest topics and let’s see what you want to know about the U.S., its culture and language. (Or we can just learn things like “Why does this dog smell? Because it’s wet and dirty” if that’s helpful to you.)

Vote and weighting: We have a limited amount of time hanging out together this year, so let’s vote on the topics and cover the most important ones first.

Word Game: Everyone gets letters. The first decision is if the person can make a word of three-letters or more. If so, take the word and keep the letters. Then place a tile in the playing area. If not, place a tile from your hand into the playing area. Each letter is worth a certain number of points. The person with the highest number of points when all the letters are used, wins.