Sweetmantra: Domain Name Strategy

Discover "Minivertising" at 2009 CMA National Convention

Forget about thinking big. You need to think small!

That's the rallying cry for a presentation I am giving at the Canadian Marketing Association's National Convention in Toronto on April 28, 2009.

The Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) has invited me to present my newest talk, "Minivertising", at Canada's largest marketing conference. This national convention is held each spring in a different city and welcomes thousands of attendees.

Here are the details:

"Minivertising" – The Big Future in Targeting a Tiny Niche
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
10:30 - 11:30 AM
Register for the conference

Forget about thinking big. You need to think small! Until recently, it was expensive if not impossible to market to a highly segmented target audience. Not any longer. Discover how marketers and entrepreneurs can use social media and emerging Web tools for affordable and effective mini-targeting. No matter what the size of your company is, you can learn how to become a dominant player in a profitable niche.

If you’re a marketer, you will learn how to use the principles of minivertising to generate interest for your client’s products and services, no matter how constrained their budgets are. If you are an entrepreneur or business executive, you’ll discover affordable and measurable ways to attract highly motivated customers to you, almost overnight.

For more information and to register, visit the CMA National Convention Website.

I hope to see you there.

P.S. Here is a link to the list of Minivertising Resources.

Twitter IDs are the New Domain Names

It's 2009, so I would hope by now that any marketer reading this article online understands the importance of securing your company's brands as domain names. In other words, Acme Furniture should own and control the domain name acmefurniture.com (and, if it's a Canadian company, acmefurniture.ca as well) even if you don't yet have a Web site.

My question for you today is, "Have you done the same for Twitter?"

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that is growing in popularity at an astonishing rate. The purpose of this article is not to explain or promote the benefits of Twitter; that topic has been covered by others.

What I want you to understand today is that Twitter IDs (or "user names" or "handles") are the equivalent of domain names.

For instance, the Twitter ID for my personal brand, Bill Sweetman, is @billsweetman (which corresponds to the URL http://www.twitter.com/billsweetman).

Even if you don't understand Twitter or don't think it has a role to play in your company's marketing efforts today, I strongly urge you to still secure your Twitter ID now.

In my case, I do all my Tweeting (as its called) as @billsweetman but I made sure that I registered all my other professional brands as Twitter IDs so that when and if I want to use Twitter for those other brands I already have the most intuitive Twitter ID.

I predict that over the next few years, millions of dollars will be spent by companies buying, selling, and fighting over Twitter IDs. I have already seen a number of nasty legal spats develop, and I have personally brokered the sale of several Twitter IDs already. And this is only the very beginning...

If you are Acme Furniture, you should make sure you get your hands on @acmefurniture right away. Since there is no fee to register a Twitter ID, you have no excuse not to do this. Simply head on over to http://www.twitter.com and sign up for a free account.

Don't be the person who in a year or two is having to explain to their company President why you didn't secure the company name as a Twitter ID. Take two minutes and do it today.

One final tip: Twitter will eventually suspend an account if it has not been used for six months, so make sure you post something once a month just to keep your account active and not risk losing your valuable Twitter ID.

Torpedoes, Carrots, and Pythons: My Favourite Spam Subject Lines

While I despise spam email, I must confess that I get a certain guilty pleasure from the copywriting 'skills' of the spammers.

A few years ago, I started collecting some of the more outlandish and (at least to me) amusing email subject lines from the many thousands of spam emails I received promoting various 'solutions' related to my private parts.

It takes a certain twisted creative genius to make your spam message stand out from the rest. And whoever wrote these gems certainly has mad talent, at least by spammer standards. Sometimes the writing is clever. Sometimes it is accidentally funny. And sometimes it's just plain bizarre.

Here are 10 of my all-time favourites:

1. "Small friend is for hiding, big friend is for showing off."
Even if the product they are pitching works as promised, I still don't think I would be walking around the neighbourhood showing off the results.

2. "The hard friend in your pants will look up into the sky."
Thanks, but I would prefer it if my friends stayed out of my pants.

3. "Men will see your power in every public shower."
If they did, wouldn't I be arrested?

4. "Who doesn't love a big gun in the pants."
Isn't that what holsters are for?

5. "Make your love torpedo drive all the way to her tanker."
Maybe I missed that SexEd class, but I'm not entirely clear on where I would find a woman's tanker.

6. "Transform from a grass snake to a python."
Have you ever seen a python? Ick!

7. "Make your man's carrot grow."
What the heck are they selling, fertilizer?

8. "To the stars your manhood flies when you are happy with your size."
This writer's a poet and they don't even know it.

9. "We can make your man's volcano erupt like a famous Etna!"
Lava. Fire. Smoke. Thanks, but I can do without those in the bedroom.

10. "Put your doughnut in her oven."
If my 'thing' looks like a doughnut, I should see a doctor.

I hope the days of the spammer are numbered. Until then, at least we have can enjoy a good laugh at their expense.