On the spectrum of really big marketing tactics, the email signature isn’t terribly sexy, but this little touch can say a lot about what you do and how you connect.

If you’re like me, you send a lot of email so why not make sure your email signature is working in the background for you. This doesn’t mean you need flashing lights and honking horns, but you should supply recipients, even those that contact you often, with all the necessary contact details, including social profiles, so that you are easy to connect with.

Creating an email signature, while not that technical, can take a little work and may even be limited on services like GMail. WiseStamp is a browser plugin (Firefox, Chrome, and Safari) that makes the act of creating multiple, highly engaging email signature profiles very easy. This free addon allows you to create rich HTML text, add images, add social profiles and even add applications such as your last tweet, your last blog post, or your latest eBay listing.

The signatures work in Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, and WindowsLive. Once you download and install the plugin you will see a WiseStamp option in your mail. The first step is to create your signatures using the simple online editor, connect your various social profiles and applications, and save your profiles. You can then toggle between personal and business signatures as needed.

Since this is a free application the default setting adds a little promo for WiseStamp at the bottom of your signature. You can remove this by opening setting and clicking that option off. On that same screen you’ll be given the option to make a donation. I recommend throwing a little coin to the creators of this nice tool. It’s good karma and it’s what makes the free app world such a cool place to hang out.

Marketing podcast with Sarah Petty (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes

The term boutique is often associated with fashion or beauty related businesses, but it’s a concept that can apply to any business. Case in point is this week’s guest on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Sarah Petty, who by her own designation, owns and operates a “boutique” photography business called Sarah Petty Photography.

Her belief in the boutique way led her to launch a separate business, The Joy of Marketing, to teach other small business owners how to create a boutique brand.

In some ways it’s easy think about a boutique business as just another way to brand, but it’s much deeper in some ways. It’s a strategic decision that starts with a specific product and service mix and includes a very alert filter for every business, hiring, and communications message.

A boutique business is often built on creative brand flourishes, premium pricing and over the top customer service.

Petty offers a free eBook titled The Boutique Experience, a business model not a gift shop. This is a great read for any business concerned with building a stronger brand.

I also conducted a video interview with Petty for the COLOURLovers blog.

One of my long-term missions is to build a network of small business marketing consultants that are equipped to install the Duct Tape Marketing system and essentially bring an end to all small business struggles.

I admit it’s an ambitious mission, but I love helping small business and so I created the Duct Tape Marketing Coach Network. This growing global enterprise uses our tools, systems, brand and network to create a marketing coaching business and attract small business owners that like the idea of a marketing system.

Occasionally I conduct live Discovery calls to help marketing professionals understand the benefits of joining a network like ours vs. going it alone. I’m conducting one of these call today (Aug 31st) at Noon CT (world time check) and invite you to join if this idea holds any appeal. Register for the call here.

If you’d like to inject some inspiration and momentum into your creative career, enroll in Mark McGuinness' new course: The Creative Pathfinder.

It’s a 25-week program designed to equip you with the creative and professional skills you need to succeed in your chosen career path -- whether you’re an employee, freelancer or creative entrepreneur.

Things you’ll learn include:

read more

Standard marketing CRM type practice suggests that you should create and supplement a database of customers and prospects with the idea that you build more and more information to use to help build deeper relationships and create additional selling opportunities.

What if you look at database building as a service you provided for your customers? Now, in some cases that might be a good service offering as a profit center, but I’m talking about providing a service that simply allows you to differentiate your business by adding value in ways that your competitors aren’t even thinking about.

RSS, search technology, and a slew of online apps have made the creation and streaming of database kind of content a pretty simple affair.

Below are some examples of the kind of information this way of thinking might produce.

1. The knowledge database

Create a custom RSS subscription database of blogs and news sites your customers would find interesting, either by virtue of information they provided you or based on an industry they should follow. You can set-up an RSS reader or upload and OPML file to the reader of their choice and magically create a hand crafted set of blogs they should follow. OPML files may sound a little techie, but essentially it’s a list of RSS feeds that can be imported to an RSS reader to create lots of subscriptions at one time.

2. The best of class database

Build a list of best of class service providers that can deliver all the products and services you know your customers may need that are unrelated to your actual offerings. Create a database with all of the contact information and notes about each provider. Offer this to your customers as a service to help them find great companies for everything they buy. This strategic partner kind of database is something you should be building and maintaining for your referral and lead generation activities anyway, but take it a step further and make it a formal offering using a tool like Central Desktop to invite your partners to build and maintain their listings, including monthly specials.

3. The real time roundup database

Create custom social media and reputation monitoring databases for your customers that include all brand and competitive mentions in real time streams like Twitter, Facebook, and Media distribution sites and teach your customers how to monitor this database. This may be totally unrelated to your services, but it’s such an essential bit of marketing wisdom that you can create incredible brand loyalty by being the organization that shows them how to do it. Use a tool like Trackur to create your own white label social media monitoring service.

4. The cutting edge B2B database

Create a database of web apps that can help your business customers do more with less using free and low cost tools for things like design, file backup, file storage, file streaming, collaboration, online meetings, CRM, finance and HR. This is another play that can allow your organization to be seen as an online thought leader and go to person for emerging tools. Simply gaining this reputation can open some doors to many other teaching and exposure opportunities in your industry – regardless of what you actually sell. Here’s a nice example – The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need

5. The reminder database

What if you offered a service that could help remind each customer of important dates? Give them the opportunity to put all the birthdays, anniversaries and other important dates in their lives into a database with the promise to remind them to take action when the date was coming up. Obviously, this is a no brainer if you also have a product or service to offer as something for that date, such as flowers or gifts, but it also works for just about any business as a way to stay top of mind. The heating and cooling service could offer a monthly home maintenance reminder tied to the season and featuring a different partner each month. The key is to provide value and personalization. You might also get some inspiration from LIfeHacker’s Top 10 Reminder Tools for Forgetful Minds

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr.

Image credit: Charles Lam

Good stuff I found this week:

Color Blender – Input two colors and this tool will show you all the mid-point colors created by blending the two – very useful for finding complimentary colors

Building Community Sites with WordPress: 15 Plugins to Get Started. I think the title says it all, but WordPress is continuing to evolve into the Swiss Army Knife Web Tool

The Pomodoro Technique - Very interesting take on time and stress management with lots of tools and tactics.

Among the millions and millions of web site pages out there, one kind of page is often wasted space just begging for some marketing think. And no I’m not talking about the About Us page, but it might be close second.

Most businesses online understand the need to capture leads through ebook, seminar and email newsletter sign-ups. Depending on the service you use the technology that drives these forms almost always redirects the subscriber to a success or thank you for joining kind of page. More often than not these pages are default generic pages created by the email service provider and left so by the user.

Allstate’s thank you page gives some nice instruction on what to expect next.

In my mind this is some prime wasted web real estate. Think about it, the person just decided what you were offering on your site or landing page was worthy of them paying with their email address (even free is more like paying these days.)

You haven’t produced the kind of trust that would call for an all out sales message, but you can use that thank you page to gently talk about a few more things you think the reader might like or make a low cost offer with some special one time bonuses to move them into the buyer category.

It’s also a great place to set the expectations for what’s to come or give out some bonus information. This is your subscriber’s first experience so make it rich, add audio and video instructions so you can make a deeper connections. Here’s an example of a nice instructional thank you page. AWeber does about as good a job as any email service provider with this kind of functionality.

Adding some personalization to your thank you page by passing the name of the person that enrolls can be a nice touch. Some services offer this but it’s pretty simple to do with a bit of JavaScripting – here’s a tutorial

You might considering using the form to ask for feedback, particularly if this is a thank you for your order kind of page. Survey.io is a tool that help create this tool

This is also a great place to offer the free ebook or newsletter subscription of a strategic partner – in return of course for the same. Or, you even monetize your page by showing ads using a service like AfterDownload. The key is to keep this relevant and not too over the top, but still use it as a marketing tool.

Reviews and testimonials have always been a nice way to offer third party proof that your company does what it says it does and that your customers are happy campers and willing to talk about it. Reviews, however, have become even more important now that local search directories like Google Maps and Yelp! have made them a foundational element for ranking well for local search.

Getting reviews and testimonials on a routine basis takes a proactive and committed approach if you are going to generate them on a consistent basis and still generate them authentically. (Fake or over the top review generation campaigns can actually produce negative results.)

Below are five ways you can look at systematically creating reviews.

Do the reference track

I stumbled onto this idea quite by accident, but it’s very effective. Every now and then a prospect would ask me for several references. I would provide a list of 3-4 happy customers and that was that. If a prospect reached out to these customers, most often they would copy me on their response. The amazing thing is that because they we basically telling someone else why they should hire me, it turns out these were the best testimonials I ever received. Instead of them writing them to or for me, they were writing them to and for prospective customers.

This approach was so effective that I started requesting that future prospect contact some of my customers.

Repurpose testimonials

When you get that unsolicited testimonial, no matter where it comes from, make sure you are using it in several ways. I a happy customer writes a review on Yelp, post that review on your website, in your store and in next month’s newsletter. If a customer sends you a raving review by way of letter, phone them up and ask if they would provide that review for your Google Places page too.

Teach the review process

Since online reviews are so important these days make sure that all of your sales folks know how to show customers how and where they might post reviews. Create a page that walks people through the process of creating a Yelp or CitySearch account. I your clients are all businesses, hold a workshop to teach them some of what you’ve learned about the importance of rating and review sites and how they can

Give reviews

Of course I’m going to suggest this one, give to get works here too. By making reviews, recommending your network on LinkedIn, and reaching out to companies you do business you start one powerful part of the review and testimonial foundation. It’s always a great way to show how you value the process and in turn benefit from the occasional authentic reciprocation.

Hold a review party

I’ve written about this idea before, but it’s such a fun one I had to include it here. Invite your customers to a nice appreciation event, serve up some wine and then ask them if they would like to record a video testimonial or review with the camera crew you’ve hired for the night. People love to get on camera and you can further incentivize them by offering up a 5 minute video where they can talk about their business. This video content will be gold for your website and you’ll provide a great service by helping them create something for their site.

Rating and reviews from users and customers are crucial. Find some way to install one or more of these options and collecting them will simply become a part of the system.

Image credit: Adian Jones

Marketing podcast with Rick Perreault and Oli Gardner of Unbounce (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes

Landing pages, those web pages you create and use to entice visitors to take a single action, have come a long way in terms of functionality and use. Internet Marketers have used them for years and with the introduction of services and practices dedicated to the use of these tools every small business can benefit from using highly optimized landing pages. I’ve been on a bit of rant about this topic so see the related posts below for more.

For this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I spoke with the CEO and Director of Inbound Marketing for a landing page optimization firm Unbounce.

In this episode we talk about how and when to use landing pages and the most important elements to consider when creating and testing your landing pages. I can’t say enough about the need to use a tool like unbounce or Google Website Optimizer to do routine testing of your pages.

It’s amazing how often I find that some little seemingly insignificant tweak can make all the difference in the world in terms of conversion.

If you’re not testing video and audio on your landing pages and thank you pages you may be missing the boat as well. But, video and audio messages can have a negative impact if not done authentically, so again, test and test!

Unbounce provides some great information about landing page design courtesey of a blog written by Gardner – Here are a couple of my favorite posts – 7 Elements of a Winning Landing Page and The 12-Step Landing Page Rehab Program – the topic that covers the infographic in this post.

Linchpin will likely not be the last book Seth Godin publishes in a traditional way.

If you live primarily inside the echo chamber of the online marketing world you’ve undoubtedly heard that Seth Godin, author of at least 12 books that we know of, has pulled the plug on the publishing industry by proclaiming that he no longer intends to publish books the way they are traditionally published. You can get the full story on Seth’s blog, from MediaBistro and even the Wall Street Journal.

Now, before I go any further it must be stated that I am a fan – I am inspired by Seth’s writing and have been blessed by his support on more then one occasion. We have the same publisher and he was kind enough to write testimonials for the jacket of both my books. He is the real deal and has a following that any business or business person would envy. But, let’s keep this in perspective. This is not the end of traditional publishing as we know it, it’s not even the end of traditional publishing as Seth knows it.

Business books, and sadly marketing books, make up a very small chunk of the book publishing world, but even inside this rather small bubble, this is simply a statement that content consumption has evolved. We know that, we’ve all responded to that, but more than anyone else I know Seth has a knack for clearly stating the things we’ve all been standing around thinking – some may not agree, but that’s a skill set that turns people into thought leaders.

Business book writers don’t really have to be that good at writing. I include myself in that last statement. I don’t think my publisher cares so much about what I can write. They do care deeply about what I can sell. That’s the reality that irks some, but it’s a fact. I have no idea if I’m a good writer or not – although three or four pages into a Don DeLillo novel and I realize how terribly inappropriate it would be call myself an author – but I love that people are inspired to action by something I’ve figured out how to put on paper – the digital and print kind. Not that the world is waiting for me to weigh in, but I do intend to continue to publish in the traditional sense because I still enjoy it and think that the majority of content consumers enjoy it as well.

Seth Godin can afford to move to non-traditional forms of publishing because he has access to traditional forms of publishing and distribution. If you’re a book buyer, you are going to stock Seth Godin’s next hardback. If you’re a world class book editor, you’re going to enjoy editing Seth Godin’s next book. Seth Godin actually stands to make more money from a book he can self publish because he has the platform to do so. This move makes sense and is not a completely bold or trailblazing one. But, let’s wait and see when it hits the shelves.

The Wall Street Journal article cited above states that Linchpin has sold roughly 50,000 copies. That’s a nice number, that’s a number that gets you Wall Street Journal and New York Times Best Seller status in the world of business books. Jonathan Franzen has a new book coming out next week. (Yes, there’s a Kindle version) His last book sold 2.85 million copies and I’ll bet the majority of business book fans couldn’t name it. So, before we go off and do away with the traditional print and distribution models understand that more than anything else, Seth wants to have a conversation with his fans and if he has something to say, you can bet he will generously say it in as many forms as are deemed necessary.

Perhaps the biggest winners from the buzz of Seth moving on are the self-publishing industry and authors without a sufficient platform to attract the attention of a Portfolio.