Apartments that Suck and then Rebrand

The past two weeks I have been transferring units in the same apartment complex. That isn’t as terrible as moving fifty miles, but only in that I didn’t have to pack my car like a 3D jigsaw puzzle; there is still the same amount of hefting boxes. And this was a surprise transfer. Had my boyfriend, Ben, and I known that we would be moving a week into the new school term we would have boxed up and cleaned during the Christmas holiday. No such luck.

This transfer is an example of good marketing on the part of the apartment complex. They re-branded their management image to save their little tails.

So let me tell you something about this complex:

1. It isn’t run down. There are ducks and a walking path.
2. The location is excellent near the apex of two major freeways, and is exactly halfway between my work and my school, and my boyfriend’s work in another direction.
3. It is near lots of restaurants, entertainment, and shopping, and if the area’s establishments aren’t enough, we’re only a short hop from downtown Portland.

Perfect.

Except few things. Our first unit molded over right after we moved in. So we worked with the management and they transferred us. As soon as we were transferred, they changed their minds about being nice, and despite an immaculate cleaning job, we didn’t see a cent of our security deposit. When I visited Howard, the manager, he said the place wasn’t clean because we didn’t pull the stove and fridge out. Fine. I’ll give him that since we didn’t, but that doesn’t mean he can pocket the whole deposit. When Ben went to talk to him, Howard said that they should probably keep these issues between the men from now on.

After that, just a week into the new lease we were already counting down the days until we could move out. As the year rolled around, we got a notice for a lease resigning event with a $100 resigning credit. Ben and I went to check it out, but we were still pretty sure that we were leaving.

The new manager, Jenn, took one look at our unit, said we were overpaying, and found us an upgraded unit for $100 less a month. And two months free rent. And two weeks to move out of our old place. And she checked the old unit to make sure it was clean enough and told us not to pull the stove out. She was willing to work with us, and was there to help us instead of looking out for the best interests of the complex.

Now we are happy and willing to stay. We even turned around the old apartment early so they could re-rent it faster.

In marketing, the best interest of your business is the happiness of the people using your service. If they aren’t happy, they aren’t going to stay with you, and can choose from a million other people offering the same service.

This seems basic, but so many places don’t give a shit about you when you walk in. They consider your business a dime a dozen. It isn’t. Your dollar counts. Use it to vote for good service.

Brand v. Product Marketing

The difference between product marketing and brand marketing is that product marketing is about a physical thing and brand marketing is about ideas. Publishers rely on both, and I wouldn’t say that they are equally effective, but are two separate, necessary things. Publishers typically focus on the physical book object as a means to market their product, but if they have the ability to create a brand, either around their press or the book, they should do so. They are missing a critical aspect of marketing—unless of course the book appears on Oprah or The Daily Show.

My book marketing project for last term was to create a brand around my book by mock-marketing a fake book about my life as a barista and all of the sexy, intriguing, scary, and funny aspects of the job. The book was not to have big print run, so the publisher’s hope was to make sure that the audience knew that this title was legit, and did so by creating a brand around it.

The strategy was to use social networking on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter to sell the author as the right person to write this book. The brand I created was that the author is a funny person with a big personality that someone would want to spend 240 pages with. By giving the author a favorite coffee drink, pictures of her doing the barista thing, and coffee oriented readings and events, the author became a real person with knowledge of the industry.

Likewise, getting a book a slot on a major TV show also pegs the author as an expert since the audience sees them explain the book’s content.

The marketing of the physical product is more straight forward for publishers. Every aspect of editing through design lend to the marketing of the book. The type of paper markets the book, the binding, the size, the cover, the back cover copy. This is what publishers know how to do. They are grounded in the physicality of the object, and they’re all more or less good at it. This aspect of marketing is still very important because it is what the consumer can feel and pick up. Branding is beyond physical, and could be just that tipping point in this slow economy that a publisher needs.

Everything I Learned as an Undergrad I Could have Concisely Read in The Elements of Style

I just finished The Elements of Style for my book editing class. It was the best writing book I’ve ever read, which made me mad. Where had this book been this time last year when I was writing my undergraduate thesis in creative writing?

In my writing classes, I had a notebook where I carefully wrote down what the professors said were writing dos and don’ts. When thesis time came, I combed through the entire big fat notebook for pearls of wisdom and compiled them into a logically ordered list. I revised my creative work based on that list.

The whole process of pearl farming was time consuming, frustrating, and when I was finished I felt like I had consolidated the worth of my student loans into a four page—single spaced, 12 point Times New Roman—document. As part of my thesis, I edited the document and gave it to everyone in class as reference material. What I should have given them was a copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, and a free afternoon to read the short book.

I had no formal grammar training in my creative writing program, no editing class, and I wish I had. In fact, I’d had no grammar lessons since middle school. I knew what sounded good, and I knew there must be rules and style guides, but I didn’t know how to go about finding them. I thought that’s why I was going to school, to learn these secrets that I found out today are concisely bound into a book that I can slip into my purse.

So, read the book if you haven’t already. My list might be worth my undergraduate education, but The Elements of Style is worth my graduate study.

Is Something Better than Nothing?

Although most of the online book sales are through online book retailers like Amazon, there’s no loss for a publisher to try and market books on their website. Maybe they lose the cost of hiring the person to build the website, but as the old adage goes: something is better than nothing.

If a publisher is getting only dollars on the book by selling traditionally through bookstores, then even if they sell only a few books directly from their website they make a greater profit. If they earn $2 on a book sold through Amazon, and $6 on a book that they sell directly, then selling directly is equivalent to selling three books through Amazon.

This would be true for other niche publishers like Timber, who have a corner of the horticulture market, and Underland Press, who specialize in underground dark fantasy. Timber and Underland both have done a good job of creating attractive websites where consumers know that they are getting high-end products with the content they want.

However, the lack of direct sales should affect the manner in which publishers present their websites to the general public. As they stand, most publisher’s websites act more like an insider tool for ordering books for one’s mother. I might send her to Ooligan’s website to pick out book she might like. So she might surf the site, but the general public does not. Why would they even go there when Amazon is a staple?

If publishers can offer something different than Amazon, or even physical bookstores, then they can probably see more web traffic and more direct sales. Publishers that provide extras to their market, such as educational materials to teachers on W.W. Norton and Co.’s website, or ways to buy in bulk, could drive direct sales. They should take advantage of the poor economy by increasing their online marketing towards direct sales, not backing off.

That is, if a publisher actually wants to improve direct sales. Perhaps they shouldn’t. Unless they are a self-publisher or a niche press, maybe they should let the big dogs, wholesalers and distributors, handle their sales. If a large portion of sales came directly through the website, then the publisher would need a system to handle all of the requests and probably a customer service department.

This costs money and would distract from the publisher’s overall focus of making physical book objects. With the added costs of direct sales, the publishers might as well pay the people who have streamlined the bookselling process and pick a different audience to target on the website instead of the general public.

Punctuation Still Counts in Country Music

When I was working at the drive thru coffee stand on Saturday with my co-worker, Renee, who loves country music, the song “It’s America” by Rodney Atkins came on. It begins:

Drivin down the street today
I saw a sign for lemonade
They were the cutest kids I’d ever seen in this front yard
As they handed me my glass, smilin thinkin to myself
Man what a picture perfect postcard this would make of America!

Although I’m mad that my childhood lemonade stands never made any money, that’s not the problem I have with this song. Neither is the dropped g at the end of the ings. Fine. I get the accent has been written into the lyrics just in case we forget Atkins has a country twang.

My problem is that the line, “They were the cutest kids I’d ever seen in this front yard” is ambiguous. Does he mean that of all the times he has driven by this yard, and of all the kids he has seen in the particular yard, that these are the cutest ones? Or does he mean that these are the cutest kids that he has ever seen in his life, and that they happen to be in this front yard selling lemonade? As it stands, I am inclined to believe the former.

This may be a country song, but punctuation and clarity still count.

“Nonsense,” Renee said. “No one else cares except you English types. Everyone knows what he means.”

Ok, so maybe we can give Mr. Atkins the benefit of the doubt about these cutest kids. Maybe. But I won’t. He should know better, or at least be able to afford a song editor who does. And so should Renee. She may work at a coffee stand on the weekends, but during the week, she teaches America’s fifth graders.


It is Unambiguously America

Driving down the street today
I saw a sign for lemonade.
These were the cutest kids I’d ever seen, right here in this front yard.
As they handed me my glass, I smiled, thinking to myself:
Man, what a picture-perfect postcard this would make of America!

How would you change the lyrics?

To see the music video with the unedited lyrics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f33KzjrjTg0

Publisher’s Website Audiences: Concise vs. Random

So Publishers: if you’re going to have a publisher website, what the heck should it do for you? It isn’t enough to simply have one. When I made my publisher site for my fake book in my real marketing class http://baristapb.yolasite.com/, it was to create a brand around the book, its author, and its publisher. Branding is easy for a single book—you can go for humor and personality.

However, for an entire publishing house, the website needs to be created with their potential—or at least target—audiences in mind. One publisher that does a particularly swell job is W.W. Norton and Company http://books.wwnorton.com/books/index.aspx. The website has a clean look with clear navigation for their audiences. Their website targets an academic audience by providing textbooks and literary fiction with corresponding course materials.

Educators can copy study questions straight into their lesson plan. Giving away free information offsets a book’s price and increases net worth. My mother taught high school English when I was a child, so I know that writing lesson plans and grading papers takes up a lot of a teacher’s weekend. Any device that adds even one free hour to a Saturday may tip the scale in favor of buying a classroom set of W.W. Norton’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyall Mueenuddin.

One audience that was absent from W.W. Norton’s website was that of the potential author wishing to submit a query letter or manuscript. That doesn’t mean that the information isn’t there, but if it is then it wasn’t meant to be found easily. The publisher probably doesn’t want blind submissions and instead only wishes to work with literary agents.

The publisher Random House http://www.randomhouse.com/, however, does explicitly state that they will only work with agents. Potential authors may not be a target audience, but they are drawn to Random House’s website. Random House (snarkily) suggests several agents an author might contact:

“If you would like to have your work or manuscript considered for publication by a major book publisher, we recommend that you work with an established literary agent. Each agency has manuscript submission guidelines. You may wish to refer to The Literary MarketPlace (the LMP), a reference guide that contains a listing of literary agencies. It can be found in most libraries.”

Random House has strengths and weaknesses in its random philosophy. It can diversify project choices, not commit to any one genre, and can take on projects that are experimental. Fine. Good for them. They are big enough not to need a market niche. Although, if a niche audience is defined as a small group of like-minded people, then Random House must have a random audience, a large group of people with different interests. That makes it hard to target their website to any specific audience.

Their website is hard to navigate because it the shear volume of things on it. It pulled here and there, and I clicked links I hadn’t intended in hopes of finding the information I sought. Sometimes I found what I was looking for, sometimes I didn’t. The audience for Random House is hard to determine. Good thing they have imprints.

Guerrilla Marketing Pretest

Last fall in my marketing class I tried to come up with some guerrilla marketing techniques to drive traffic to my book’s website. We’ll call what’s below a pretest to Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet by Jay Conrad Levinson, which arrived in the mail yesterday, that I have to read for Online Marketing this term.

The Pretest

It is one thing to have a website. I did when I was 13 and my friends loved it, but no one else saw it. However, when I’m marketing a book it is with the hope that my efforts will help sell the book and my friends and mother already have a copy. There are methods to get other people to come to a particular website; some are free and some are expensive. Below I focus on the free ways because book marketers have small budgets.

1. Have a blog. A real blog boosts Google relevancy numbers. For Baristas I would have a blog about what happened at the readings, updates in the coffee industry, and stories not shared in the book. There are directories to which a blog’s URL can be posted that also boost a blog’s relevancy and bring readers to the blog. This particular graduate project did not work on the timescale of a blog.

2. Post comments on other people’s blogs. Making intelligent comments with a link to your website can bring viewers. I posted a response to the blog, “An Espresso to Grind: Should you tip baristas, and if so, how much?” and could have put a link to my website at the bottom if I had one at the time. I could post comments on other barista blogs where they tell stories about their experiences on the job.

3. YouTube videos. I wanted to give a reading and post on Youtube but I didn’t get the chance. If I wasn’t so YouTube illiterate, I would either record readings at home, or have my intern record the readings I gave at coffee houses and post them to YouTube. There would of course be a link to the website.

4. Article submission directories. I would have an intern crank out a few short articles, have an editor look them over, and post them to directories to boost website relevance.

5. Link directories. They are sometimes free and sometimes not. I would try and post in the free ones and assess my marketing budget for the paid locations.

6. Email signatures. I didn’t do it with my Ooligan address, but on my other email address I included a message at the bottom saying, “If you have a moment, visit my fake website for my marketing class and leave a comment on the contact page. I really appreciate it.” I also provided a link. If it was real website I would be a little less obtrusive about it and probably have a line that said, “Check out our new title: linkToTheNewTitle.com.”

7. Twitter. Learn to be an excellent tweeter.

8. Myspace. Basically dead, but people can be friended if they belong to the target audience or have interests similar to the book’s subject matter. It also lets current friends know what is going on with the book through the blogging feature.

9. Facebook. Facebook is used to post regular updates about events and fun, personable things happening in the author’s life that may or may not be related to the book. This keeps the author’s brand fresh in people’s minds.

10. Guerrilla Tactics.
• I see postcards left around campus for various events and websites and sometimes check them out. I would create a catchy postcard and leave them around different lounges.
• I could also put up fliers on community boards in coffee houses.
• I could slip bookmarks into related titles at bookstores (including those books that are just coffee recipes).
• I might also leave the book at different coffee houses hoping that they get picked up and passed around.
• Dutch Bros. Coffee gives out free stickers and I could write the website on the back and pass them out to people or leave them around the same sorts of lounges that the postcards could be left at.

11. The last thing is that it is ok to give information away for free. If people trust someone as an expert they are more likely to buy from them later because of product trust. And if the free stuff has a logo on it, all the better.

I Just Had to Buy a Marketing Book

During my first quarter in the Book Publishing Program at Portland State University, I was immersed in marketing through Kent Watson’s Book Marketing class, through creating the marketing materials for my Intro to Publishing mock press, and through 4 credits in the Ooligan Press Marketing Work Group.

Marketing was new to me, and overwhelming at first, but as I became more immersed, I began to enjoy its creativity. I found guerrilla marketing in Kent’s class particularly intriguing. It is free (my budget), and it works. For the final project, I made it integral to my book marketing plan by researching and developing my own guerrilla book marketing techniques. That’s why when I read the reading list for this quarter’s Online Marketing class the book Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet by Jay Conrad Levinson stood out to me. Here I had been bumbling about with guerrilla marketing when there was a whole book on how to do it.

However, there were many books on the reading list, and I thought I should do my research before I ordered my book. I don’t know a lot about Twitter and why it is a big deal, so I thought a Twitter book would be great. When I logged on to Amazon.com to look up the book description for Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business and Market Online by Warren Whitlock, the book description was short and focused solely on Twitter. That’s fine, I do want to know more about Twitter, but I want Twitter placed within a broader context of online marketing and be able to apply the entire book to my own pursuits. The short book description did not imply that that would be my reading experience despite the book’s ambitious title.

Insufficient book descriptions were as bad as the over-bulky ones. I abandoned long, unbroken blocks of texts after reading about a line and a half. I preferred book descriptions that combined shorter paragraphs with bullet point lists for the topics covered in the book.

Decision time came down to two books: the original Guerrilla Marketing and The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today’s Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture by Denise Shiffman. This second book focuses more on theoretical aspects of marketing whereas Guerrilla has a more practical flare that I hope I can make use of in my own marketing campaigns. However, The Age of Engage did have 100 fewer pages, a fabulous selling point for the grad student on the go. I really wanted to choose Guerrilla, but Molly, who sits next to me in class, said she had already ordered her copy of Guerrilla, and I didn’t want to look suspicious choosing the same thing. But I chose it anyway because I really want a book I can use long after this class ends.