The Power Punch
By Carolyn Goodman
About Carolyn
A blog that challenges B-to-B marketers to learn, share, question, and focus on getting it right—the first time.
Carolyn Goodman is President/Creative Director of Goodman Marketing Partners. An award-winning creative director, writer and in-demand speaker, Carolyn has spent her 30-year career helping both B-to-B and B-to-C clients cut through business challenges in order to deliver strategically sound, creatively brilliant marketing solutions that deliver on program objectives. To keep her mind sharp, Carolyn can be found most evenings in the boxing ring, practicing various combinations.
You can find her at the Goodman Marketing website, on LinkedIn, or on Twitter @CarolynGoodman.
Think Mobility
Ask Yourself These 3 Questions Before Moving Forward With Any Mobile Solution
May 20, 2013I often get super excited when I see other businesses doing cool and innovative things in mobile. You read an...
Marketing Sustainably
Direct Mail Benchmarks From DMA
May 20, 2013In my years following the direct marketing field, one of the resources I've most appreciated is the Direct Marketing Association's...
The Brand Matters Blog
The A-Z List of Stop That! Behaviors
May 16, 2013In the April issue of Target Marketing, I wrote about 26 verbs that sometimes get in our way when we're building brands...
Yblog
Wearable Mobile Devices Are the New Black
May 15, 2013This year's hot trend in fashion is computers. Whether at SXSW or in the tech and media hubs on the...
The Integrated Email
What Is the Best Day to Send Emails?
May 13, 2013Somewhere, in the world just on the other side of the rainbow, there is a magical day for sending emails....
Making Social Sell
Convince Prospects You Can Change Their Success Rates
May 10, 2013Is generating leads with LinkedIn proving frustrating and difficult? Probably because you're failing at tempting prospects to click more deeply...
Online Video Marketing Deep Dive
Top 10 Ways to Improve YouTube Video Search Ranking
May 8, 2013YouTube recently announced reaching a new milestone of 1 billion unique monthly visitors, or 15 percent of the planet. Those...
Ruthless B-to-B Marketing
B-to-B Marketers Should Take Another Look at E-commerce
May 6, 2013E-commerce opportunity is evolving fast, but only 25 percent of B-to-B marketers are taking advantage of it, according to a...
Triple Venti Dolce Data...
The Data Czar and His Ministers
May 1, 2013I live in a relatively small, rural town of 50,000 residents spread over 61 square miles. My specific neighborhood still...
Muscle Marketing
List-building 2.0: 7 Tips for Using ‘Power’ Polls For Prospecting
Apr 8, 2013Most people know Web 2.0 is simply the evolution of the Internet into an environment of interactivity, reader participation and...
Who's Your Data?
Instagram: Does It Matter That It Will Make Money on Your Pics?
Dec 19, 2012Instagram announced the company will soon begin using your content to sell targeted advertising products to the highest bidder. Does...
The Whole Magilla
What Marketers Can Learn From Maine's Political Email Idiocy
Feb 24, 2012It finally happened. Politicians' idiotic email practices had a measurable negative effect. "Maine Republican Party chairman Charlie Webster has admitted...
Denny Hatch's Blog
The Internet Can Make You a Chump—Forever!
Sep 25, 2010Trouble is, the Internet is rife with misinformation and if you get caught advertently or inadvertently propagating this nonsense in...
SEO & Content Marketing Revue
5 Tips for Top Positioning (And Converting) Page Titles
Aug 11, 2010Wondering about a SEO content strategy that offers the biggest impact in the shortest time? Try tweaking your page titles....
Help Me Connect the Dots! (A Buyer's Lament)
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"It says 'enter device passcode,' but that's not an option on the unit itself. Instead my choices are 'device registration number', 'secret code' or 'PIN key,'" he lamented. After several false starts (and error messages that generated warnings that sounded like the device might explode), he finally got everything working properly.
After three or four of these complaints from him and his other two brothers, it became obvious that many sales and marketing departments get an "F" for their lack of helpfulness and logical thinking. It seems simple enough: Label a code by one name on the device, and then replicate that same name in the instructions. Duh. So why do companies make it so hard?
I'm sure somebody in IT created the code itself (and probably created the name of that code), and product marketing was responsible for writing the copy for the instructions (whether contained in the box and/or online) ... but why not use the same labeling terminology? Was one group working in another country and couldn't communicate, in English, with those writing the instructions? Perhaps.
The people at Ikea (who have figured out how to ensure language won't be a barrier), provided a link to a YouTube video where I could watch Sally and Stan (or Svetlana and Sven) assemble my new furniture without so much as a word, sound or manual. My husband laughingly called it "The Epitome of a Dummy's Guide to Assembly." Personally, I loved it—they even supplied the tools you need for assembly in the product box so my new desk was operational within an hour of unwrapping.
Amazon, those amazingly straightforward folks who brought me my Kindle, also clearly understand how to make it simple. One of my kids (who hates to read any kind of instructional manual), figured out to how to set up his new Kindle, link it to my Amazon account (um.. wait...), download 3 or 4 books and start reading, all before I had a chance to shout, "Use your own credit card!"
The i-anything was easy to set up and use—exactly what you'd expect from those Apple people—while the new GoPro camera came with a small book, with small type, that will require a magnifying glass to read. As was to be expected, the college-age son tossed the manual in this backpack (where it will get ripped into several un-usable pieces) and said he'd figure it out on his own.
After a lovely morning sitting around the tree, followed by a frustrating hour or so trying to set up each new gift, I retreated to the kitchen to start working on Christmas dinner. Thankfully, I already know how to read a recipe book. The food processor, and all its attachments, however, might take me until the new year to figure out.
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