Thursday, February 26, 2009

An Important Word

In today's world of business and marketing, an important word is making its presence felt. That word is RELEVANCE.

Unfortunately, as with any word that starts getting used more often, the word can lose its significance and meaning due to overuse and hype. I hope that does not happen with RELEVANCE. It's a meaningful word for me in my business. In the area of marketing, people are talking about personalized and targeted marketing. All of that boils down to this - "is the message I am communicating relevant to the person I am talking to?"

If my communication is face-to-face, I can very quickly judge whether my conversation is relevant to the person I am speaking with. But, since not all communication is occuring face-to-face (is any?), how do we ensure that what we say has real meaning to the person on the receiving end?

In order to answer this question, I believe that first, marketers have to own up to a truth. As marketers, we have often assumed that just because we have been so creative or written the copy so well or packaged it all up so nicely - well, of course, we are relevant and people are interested in what we are telling them. They have to be. No, they don't! No, they have not (all) been listening. Until, we can own up to this, will we really look for a new way to market and to communicate? We definitely won't look for answers to the question - "is my message relevant to you?"

Well, I didn't expect to jump right into shop talk on my second blog post...but can't help it.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The first blog

How creative is that title? Today, I was inspired by my blog guru, Seth Godin, to create my own blog.

His is one of the few blogs I read and the only one I read regularly. I started reading it because of who he is and what his expertise is in. Marketing. Now, I just read it because he always has some great tips for the marketer, the professional, the business person, the person.

Anyway, back to why I started the blog. Today was Mr.Godin's 3000th consecutive posting, and in today's blog he urged his readers to go start their own.

So, here I am.

All I can say is, that wasn't so bad.

And, thanks for the inspiration, Mr. Godin.