Word Chef | Tea Silvestre - Marketing Consultant, Writer
Helping You Find and Share Your Secret Sauce with the World!
Every once in awhile, a book comes along that really makes sense. This? Yep, this is definitely one of them. If you’ve read Mike Michaelowicz’s The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, then you’re already familiar with his friendly and accessible style, his sense of humor, and…well, his enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. But even if you’re asking, “Mike ‘Mik-whats-his-name?” [...]
It used to be (in the olden days) that if you wanted to really understand your customers, you would need to pay dearly for the information. Market Research firms around the world still command a pretty penny for conducting statistically valid research projects for the big corporations who can afford to foot the bill. Guess [...]
No one wants to work with less-than-ideal customers, but how do you find them? Our September Word Carnival bloggers tackled this topic with gusto! Here are our posts: Clare Price of Find Your Online Voice: You Can’t WIN ‘Em All Sharon Hurley Hall of Get Paid to Write Online: Connecting with Your Writing Clients Ivana S. Taylor of DIY Marketers: How [...]
Admit it. You work pretty hard to find new clients. You network, advertise and (gasp!) maybe even cold-call. Sometimes you feel like a hamster on a wheel: going nowhere fast. It’s hard enough to run a small business. You’ve got to take good care of your existing customers, manage the money, figure out the technology, [...]
Meet Joshua Bell. He’s HUGE in the classical music world. A few years ago, he posed as a street musician in in Washington DC, and nobody paid him any attention. Normally, if you want to see this guy play, you have to shell out a minimum of $100 (that’s for the cheap seats). But on [...]
A few weeks ago, I finished reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin and was immediately struck by this passage:
The future belongs to chefs, not to cooks or bottle washers…A cook is not an artist. A cook follows a recipe, and he’s a good cook if he follows the recipe correctly. A chef is an artist. She’s an artist when she invents a new way of cooking or a new type of dish that creates surprise or joy or pleasure for the person she created it for.
I’d been mulling that over until what finally came out was my Entrepreneur’s Manifesto, which starts off: Be a Chef, not a Cook.
Except for my client Rebecca Joseph (aka The Rabbi Chef), your goal is probably not to be the Next Food Network Star.
But there’s a whole lot that celebrity chefs can teach us about working in a crowded marketplace. The successful ones truly excel at building their brands and growing their fan base. How do they do it? Here are five of their marketing strategies that you can (and should) adopt today:
When I was still a youngster (in the days before the Internet was considered a valid way to get your message out), I spent my nights and weekends at the UC Davis Extension learning the “official” rules of “Product-Price-Place-Promotion.”
One of my first professors (I think his name was Mr. Aguilar) had a strange attachment to the term “pasta marketing.” He must’ve used this term at least twice in every class. His point was that lots of people do their marketing like they cook their pasta: they throw it against the wall to see if it’s done. If it sticks, they think it’s good. And if doesn’t, well…you go back to the drawing board.
There’s a guy in San Diego named Charlie who likes to fry things. Weird things that most people would never think of. Stuff like Klondike bars, Girl Scout cookies, and Pop Tarts.
I was introduced to Laura via Nicole Fende (aka The Numbers Whisperer) and immediately took a shine to her writing. And not just because she works … [Read More...]
