The Blog of Lisa Morosky

In response to this post, I’ve decided to work through and write each of the ten blog posts I said I’d rather read. Here is my submission for number three!

Number three on my list of ten blog posts I’d rather read is sharing your own original thoughts on your market. I think I’m going to be an overachiever here and talk about both of the broad markets I’m invested in: blogging and Internet marketing, and personal finance.

So let’s talk about the blogging and Internet marketing market. I guess technically those can be split up into two markets – but I’m going to address them as one. If I had to narrow it down to just one big, over-arching theme for this market, it would be this:

“A little less conversation, a little more action please.” -Elvis Presley

Boy are we good at talking, huh? In this market, we will flap our gums and beat our chests until there’s no tomorrow. But the bottomline is that a very small percentage of people are actually taking action in this market. And it’s easy to point out the ones who are: it’s the ones making money.

Theories and guidelines and rules are great, but at some point you need to get in there and get your hands dirty and start making things happen on your blog and with your blogging business. I think that as bloggers in this market, we are often paralyzed by philosophy, and neglecting action.

What would happen if we all started acting on everything we knew? I think I’d probably start having some sort of blogging superpower – because I know a lot about this market. And it sits in my head getting dusty, most days.

So let’s talk about the personal finance market (aka. the market of SpendLessOnLife.com). If I’m going to be honest – I like this market a heck of a lot more than the other market because if you have the blogging and Internet marketing background, you’re going to excel here. You’re not necessarily surrounded by people who “know your tricks”.

But from my obsessive stalking of personal finance blogs, I’ve noticed these things:

• People are afraid to sell to other people in the personal finance market. For some reason, they think that because a big goal for people is saving money, they won’t purchase their products. Simply not true. If you fulfill a need, people will buy. And there are some personal finance bloggers that are doing just this and killing it.

• There’s a huge focus on saving money, but not necessarily making more of it.

• There are a ton of little niches. And because of that, there’s a ton of opportunity.

It’s an interesting exercise, sitting down and thinking about your blog’s market and evaluating it. Try it sometime.

In response to this post, I’ve decided to work through and write each of the ten blog posts I said I’d rather read. Here is my submission for number one!

In July of 2008, I was admitted into the hospital after an agonizing couple of days. Lucky for me, the issue wasn’t too serious, and I was sent home after a one night stay.

While I remember that hospital stay quite well (it was the only hospital stay I can remember, and I was alone and felt quite lonely as my husband had school to go to), it’s the leaving of the hospital that is most vividly painted in my mind.

At this particular hospital, it is policy for all patients who are leaving the facility to be wheeled out via wheelchair. Apparently, you can’t just get up out of bed and walk out the door. You need to call a wheelchair. And most of the people manning the wheelchairs, at this particular hospital, are volunteers.

So here I am. Waiting to go home. Waiting in my room with my husband for my wheelchair and wheelchair driver. Then, they arrive.

And it’s about the least likely person I could imagine for them to send up to wheel me out.

The person who appeared at my door was an elderly man. I assume he was in his 70s, perhaps even early 80s. I felt like I should be the one wheeling him out. When I went to stand up to get in the wheelchair, he quickly rushed to my side to take my arm (which wasn’t really needed, I could walk and stand perfectly fine). While wheeling me through the hallways, he spoke to me with great compassion in his voice. He wanted to make sure that I was going to be okay.

When we arrived outside, and my husband went to pull the car up, the old man said something to me I probably will never forget: he invited me to his church.

Now we’re all used to people inviting us to church. Sometimes you might even find it intrusive. And my husband and I already attend a church that we enjoy. But none of that is the point.

This invitation was different. He didn’t say it in a forceful way. In fact, I think we were talking about something and the conversation transition was seamless. He told me how his church wasn’t far from the hospital, and how they had just done a lot of renovations. He said he would be “delighted” if I ever wanted to come.

I thanked him for the invitation, felt my heart smile, and went to stand up to get in the car which was now parked in front of me with my husband in it. The old man rushed to my side again, grabbed my arm, and helped me into the car. He wished us well, and that was that.

It doesn’t seem like a life-changing experience. Things like this happen every day. But, being the person I am, I can draw a couple intense marketing lessons from this experience.

You want to close the deal? You want to make a sale? You need to go out of your way to meet your customers where they are – emotionally, physically, mentally, and in whatever other ways you can.

This man goes out of his way to get people to visit his church. He regularly volunteers to go to a place crawling with people who need some hope and fellowship, and he meets them where they are. He meets their physical needs (wheeling them out of the building). He meets their emotional needs (comfort, support, and understanding). I bet the number of familiar faces he sees at church are high, because people will remember someone who goes out of their way for them.

And most importantly, you need to give a pitch that doesn’t feel like a pitch at all.

If we boil it down, and looking back, I was pitched that day. He had an end goal and wanted to seal a deal with me (no matter how nice of a deal it was). He wanted me to visit and become a member of his church.

But at the time, I didn’t feel like I was being pitched. I didn’t feel threatened or defensive. I felt grateful that he thought about me and my needs and wanted to help me.

Imagine a world where the people you’re trying to sell to are grateful for your pitch.

This is how I want to be remembered as a marketer. I want to meet people where they are, meet their needs, care about them as people, and offer solutions that seem as unintimidating as the old man at the hospital that day.