Debbie LaChusa

Like everyone else who gathered around a television set yesterday, I too was there just as much to witness the commercials as the game. Granted I probably would have been more into the game had my San Diego Chargers made it that far, but alas, it was not to be ... THIS year!

As the game began, I was anxious to view the highly promoted consumer generated spots to see if they stood up to the hype. And, of course, to see what breakthrough creative marketing would be deemed worthy of a $2.6 million advertising investment.

As I watched and listened, and watched and listened to the reactions of the "non-marketing folks" with me, I must admit that overall I was disappointed. But more than that, I realized that Super Bowl advertising has completely graduated from marketing to entertainment.

Even the spots we found funny (the Doritos "crash" spot had the whole room busting a gut), and the spots that almost made us cry (the banished GM robot plunging off the bridge) didn't do much to connect me to the brand. To make me feel compelled to go out and purchase.

And in the end, isn't that what marketing is all about? Creating a connection with your audience. And connecting with a compelling message that makes them not only laugh or cry, but makes them seriously consider going out and buying what you're selling.

I have to say, I think the Super Bowl has officially become a venue for adver-tainment, not marketing. What do you think?

Marketing is the profession I chose in college. Yes, I am one of the few people who is actually working in the field she studied in school!

Why did I choose marketing? Why do I still enjoy it after 21 years?

Here are the Top 10 Reasons I Love Marketing.

(1) It's never boring.
No two days are ever the same. Because no two projects are ever the same. And, because no two clients are ever the same. So even if I am doing the same task there are always enough variables to keep in interesting.

(2) It's creative.
Marketing is about generating ideas. It's about creating ways to make more, get more and sell more. It's a creative industry, filled with creative, idea-generating people. And I LOVE creating!

(3) I get to learn about all kinds of businesses.
Over the past 21 years I have created and implemented marketing plans for clients in every industry imaginable. I've marketed fitness, new cars, new homes, resale homes, newspapers, websites, hotels, restaurants, products, and the list goes on. In the process, I get to learn about each of these businesses and it's fascinating.

(4) It involves writing and I love to write.
Writing is one of my favorite creative outlets. To have the opportunity to do it every day in my work is pure joy!

(5) It enables me to have my own business.
When I decided I wanted to be home more with my kids, I was able to successfully open my own business because I knew how to market. And, it continues to allow me to successfully open new business ventures.

(6) It lends itself to freelance and independent work.
Marketing isn't just something you can do in a 9 to 5 job. There are many freelance and independent work opportunities available. Because of this I was able to easily transition from a full-time marketing job to my own business.

(7) I get to meet all kinds of interesting people.
From clients, to the media, to production vendors, to partners, to podcast interviewees, I have had the opportunity to meet so many interesting people over the past 21 years. And, I continue to meet new ones every single day. It's awesome!

(8) It's always changing so it keeps me on my toes.
It seems they are always inventing new ways to market. In the past two years alone I've had to completely learn about Internet Marketing, Blogging and Podcasting - things I knew nothing about before. I'm telling you, it keeps my brain young!

(9) There are so many facets to a marketing career.
Over the past 21 years, I've worked in advertising agencies in production, media and account services. I've been a marketing director on the client side. I've run my own virtual marketing agency, DLC Marketing. And, I've had the opportunity to create and build 10stepmarketing, Twin Connections and now 6FigureWorkAtHomeMom.

(10) It has supported me well over the past 21 years!
While I admit I didn't make much my first few years out of college (talk about living on peanuts!), for the most part, marketing has allowed me to make a good living doing work I enjoy.

What about you? Do you LOVE what you do? If so, I'd love to hear why. Post a comment and share.

This week we celebrated Valentine's Day. Probably the biggest sales day of the year for flowers, jewelry and greeting cards. So it's expected that we'll see advertising and sales on these items leading up to Valentine's Day.

But an interesting thing happened this year. I received three email promotions from business email lists I am on, offering special discounts in honor of Valentine's Day. These sales were presented with a message of "we appreciate you as a client so in honor of Valentine's Day, we're offering this discount."

I'm all for tying your marketing into trends and holidays. After all, I DID hold a sale in honor of my birthday last year. But I'm just curious how effective these kinds of holiday sales are when the product or service has nothing to do with the holiday being celebrated. I know my birthday sale was a big success. I'm curious about all of these Valentine's Day sales.

I'd love to hear if you purchased a product unrelated to Valentine's Day, because it was offered at a discount. Or, even if you didn't, if a holiday sale would be enough to push you over the buying edge on a product you were on the fence about. Or lastly, if you are one of those business owners who ran a Valentine's Day sale, I'd love to hear how effective it was. Please post a comment and share your thoughts.

In case you're not familiar with squeeze pages, they are websites that give you one option, and that option is to provide your email address in exchange for something. That something might be an ezine subscription, a special report, a teleclass, a podcast, an e-course, or some other form of valuable information.

Squeeze pages have become a popular list-building tactic because they allow the website owner to get email addresses from visitors who are interested in more information. As opposed to making all of your content accessible to all visitors to your website.

A year ago I made the switch to a squeeze page at www.10stepmarketing.com. My goal was the same as any other Internet marketer. To grow my email list more quickly. This in effect made the rest of my site inaccessible to browsing visitors (the other pages weren't locked, there was just no obvious navigation to them from my squeeze page.)

What happened? Well, it's interesting. I've been using two different sets of website stats and while you'd think the stats for the same web pages would be consistent, they are not.

Based on one set of stats, my opt-in rate nearly doubled when I made the switch, from an average of 30% to 59%. For the following five months it hovered around 45%-50%. Needless to say I was very happy with this. It then settled back in for the rest of 2006 at just under 30% - pretty much right back where I started before switching to a squeeze page.

My second set of stats reflects different numbers, but a similar pattern. Currently my opt-in rate based on these stats runs consistently between 10% and 15%.

But here's the kicker: At the beginning of this month, I launched my new website WITHOUT a squeeze page. And my opt-in rate so far this month is a paltry 4%! I'm going to give it a bit longer to test, but I will be interested to see if this drop holds.

While I like the idea of offering full access to my website to all visitors, one of my primary goals is to build my list. And, a squeeze page may just be the best way to do this.

Have you tested a squeeze page vs. a standard home page? If so, I'd love to hear your conclusions. Post a comment to share.

My husband celebrated his 48th birthday in July. We had to postpone his birthday party for a few weeks for scheduling reasons (we have a big family and it's tough to get everyone together at one time) so his mom decided to take us out for dinner on his birthday to celebrate.

We didn't go anywhere fancy, just to our local Mimi's Cafe. It was a Wednesday night and I was surprised how busy the restaurant was for a weekday.

My mother-in-law made sure to let our waitress know that it was my husband's birthday. And, as it fairly typical, when he finished his meal, they brought him a free dessert with a candle and we all sang "Happy Birthday."

But it's what ELSE they did that caught my attention, especially after reading the chapter on restaurant direct marketing in Dan Kennedy's book, "No B.S. Direct Marketing." Along with the free dessert, they brought my husband a birthday card. And inside that birthday card, they inserted a coupon for a free appetizer. The waitress made sure to call my husband's attention to it before we left saying, "Be sure to come back - there's a coupon for a free appetizer in there." What a great client retention tool!

The next morning I noticed the little coupon card stuck on our refrigerator door. There it was, staring me in the face when I opened the refrigerator looking for something to eat. A little ad for Mimi's Cafe, promising me free food.

How smart is that? Every restaurant does the free birthday dessert. But I have never seen a restaurant deliver a birthday card along with it and include a free coupon. Do you think there's a better chance we'll go back to Mimi's Cafe knowing we can get something free? You bet!

This is a great example of doing a little something extra for your current clients (or guests), to encourage them to do business with you more often. How could you apply this idea to your business?

I've been blogging for over two years. In January 2006, I decided that was the year I needed to join the blogosphere. It just so happened that very month I was at a networking meeting and the guest speaker was a blogging and podcasting expert.

I wanted to use blogging to develop a two-way conversation with my audience and grow my list. When I shared these two goals with the "blog expert" he assured me that would be no problem.

I immediately invested in his program, worked with his team to create this blog and spent the next 12 months becoming an avid blogger and podcaster.

The numbers don't lie.

As a seasoned marketer I have been trained to track all of my marketing activities to see what works and what doesn't. Common sense says do more of what's working and stop doing what isn't.

After spending countless hours posting to my blog at least three times per week and recording a weekly podcast show, my marketing results were pretty dismal.

While the blog was getting good traffic, it hadn't done much to grow my list and I was hard-pressed to find a ROI on all the time and energy I had invested into it.

While I had gotten very positive feedback on my podcasts, when push came to shove, the ROI just wasn't there for them either.

So I did what all good marketers do, I made changes based on my results.

I abandoned my podcasting show, and cut way back on my blog posting. It was a sad day for me because I really wanted to believe both would provide me a great way to share with my audience, and enable them to share back.

Problem was, NO ONE was sharing back! In two years of blogging I can count the number of comments posted on two hands.

I know I am not alone in this. I frequently visit other blogs, and there is WAY more posting going on than comments.

Yes, some blogs are very dynamic, but in my experience they are few and far between. Just ask yourself how often you've taken the time to comment on a blog post that you've read. See what I mean?

So what is the verdict on blogging? Should you employ it as a marketing tactic?
Well, here are a few things to consider.

(1) Search engines love blogs

Search engines love fresh content and because blogs are constantly updated with new posts, and potentially comments, they are quite dynamic.

Using your keywords in blog posts can help them come up in relevant online searches faster and easier than traditional website content.

I use Google Alerts to track mentions of my name and each of my companies online and 90% of the results I see are from my blog posts.

So from a traffic generating aspect, blogs can be a great marketing tool.

(2) How tight is your niche?

One of the things I realized AFTER I got into the blogging game was that my blog was too general. Small business marketing is a terribly crowded category online, which means lots of competition.

If I had it to do over again, I would pick a much tighter niche for my blog.

(3) A separate blog or a blog on your website?

My blog links to my various websites but it is a separate site with its own URL: www.10stepmarketingConnection.com

This means it's one more "place" I have to market to drive traffic to. AND, more importantly, it means that my main websites don't benefit from all the increased traffic the blog receives as a result of the search engine friendliness.

If I had it to do over again, I would incorporate my blog into my website. In fact one model I am looking at right now for a new business I am planning is to build the website on a blog platform, making the home page in essence a blog.

That way I can drive traffic to ONE site, and I enjoy all of the benefits of search engine friendliness to my MAIN website.

(4) Is your audience a community-oriented group?

If your audience thrives on community, interaction and information sharing, then they may be very likely to comment on your blog posts.

If however, they are merely an information-seeking audience (which is what I determined my audience was) then you can post until the cows come home, and very rarely will anyone comment.

You may be okay with this, as long as one of your goals is not to create a two-way conversation.

As with all marketing strategies, think about your audience and choose marketing that fits them. Sometimes you may not know until after the fact (as in my case), but often if you ask the questions up front, you can be pretty sure of the answer and you can make your decisions accordingly.

(5) Are you committed to posting to your blog regularly?

Maintaining a blog can be a very time intensive endeavor. To create a robust blog you need to post at least several times per week - I know some folks who post daily!

While you can write all of your blog posts ahead of time and schedule them to post every couple of days (a strategy that I used that made it much easier to manage), you still need to commit to setting aside the time to come up with content ideas and do the writing.

If you cannot commit to a regular blogging schedule, or you wonder what the heck you will post about, then creating a blog probably isn't for you.

So, to blog or not to blog?

In the end, the decision about whether blogging makes sense for you is a question only you can answer. These 5 points can help you find that answer.

First and foremost, you will want to determine what your objective for creating a blog is, and then track your results to make sure your blog is delivering those results.

After all, tracking is the ONLY sure way to know what works for YOUR business and what doesn't.

In the end, I am glad I learned about blogging and created my blog. While it was tough to admit that it didn't accomplish the goals I set for it after a significant investment of time and money, I know that as is the case with all of my marketing efforts, there are valuable lessons in everything I do.

The important thing is to learn those lessons and apply what you learn to the next marketing endeavor.

For me, I continue to blog, but I don't spend as much time on it as I used to. Instead, I choose to focus that time on other marketing avenues that have proved more profitable for me.

What about you?

If you've had a difference experience with blogging, I encourage you to post a comment and share.