The Wax Blog

20 Jan

Posted at 19:30h in Uncategorized by
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By Beth Graddon-Hodgson [caption id="attachment_2645" align="alignright" width="240" caption="not Beth's husband"]salesman[/caption] Most businesses use blogging as a marketing tool, and that’s the way it should be; but people are uncertain exactly what that means. Do you use traditional rules of marketing when you’re writing your blog posts? Write for a target audience? Try to sell a product? Include a call to action?  Well, those are more questions than I can answer here, and I’ve answered many of them before. But to summarize, yes to be an effective marketing tool you do have to think as you would when writing marketing copy (identify your target audience, make statements that are appealing and capture interest,  and she some light on your business). But the similarities end there.

18 Jan

Posted at 09:05h in Integrated Marketing, Small Business by
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letsblogoff_badgeI love this topic but thought I'd take a little twist on it today. After 16 years of a successful career in technology, I left corporate America in 2001 feeling stifled, sad and beaten down by the mini-recession that followed the tech bubble.  Although we were a young, vibrant company I realized that the larger we got, the less creative we became and the less willing we were (or our lawyers were) to think outside of the box. Since then, I've begun to work in a much more creative industry and I love it. I've had a few larger corporate clients but usually if I suggest something creative, it gets shot done because it might interrupt the process - I get that and I respect that. However for most bigger companies to continue to succeed, they will need to inject tolerance if not encouragement for creativity on the job. And cherish that creativity when it happens. I worked for a start-up in the early 1990's and we had some really creative thinkers on our team. These were guys who were technologists, but were able to think with both sides of their brain. So for me, creativity in a corporate sense always makes me think of  Paul, Shankaren, Ken, Salli...and many others.  We got the job done, but got it done in a new and fresh way. I've realized over the years it's easy to be creative in a creative profession, but to be creative in the corporate world takes real talent. Here's how we defined creativity back in the day:

17 Jan

Posted at 11:12h in Uncategorized by
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These days it seems like you need to have a bumpit to create new words. Sarah Palin might refudiate that remark but I think Snooki and her guidos feel it's high time to get some Jersey Shore lingo into the Oxford English Dictionary. Personally, I told someone I had spent considerable time catharterizing this weekend - not to be confused with being catheterized or jazzercizing - after getting dumped unceremoniously by a friend. (Note to readers - at this point I do not have a bumpit) [caption id="attachment_2640" align="alignright" width="204" caption="Snooki has a future as an English teacher"]Snooki has a future as an English teacher[/caption] It made me wonder how words evolved in the first place. How did certain words become accepted into normal use and eventually accepted in the main dictionaries we all use?  Like humongous. Or ginormous, or a zillion. For example, Humongous is in the Random House Dictionary as

11 Jan

Posted at 05:50h in Sales by
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Occasionally I get a pitch from an Internet retailer asking me to write about their site. Usually, it's some poorly designed site that survives on tiny affiliate commisions, with barely any added value to the customer who shops there. But Market America, the online retailer that recently bought shop.com, seems to be a new type of shopping site - one that incents its customers by offering considerable cashback opportunities, often highlighted on the Market America Blog. The Greensboro-based retailer is banking on the newly-created frugal shopper by enticing what looks to be mainly baby boomers with "MA Cashback" ranging from 8 to 35%. Looks like the strategy is working - Market America just announced it will be hiring 40 new staff members in 2011. So just how does this work? A page called Market America Facts indicates the company is a direct selling enterprise that sells a range of products, from supplements to home decor through partners like Walmart. More than 3 million "preferred customers" make commissions and 180,000 distributors make retail profits based on the use of this retail portal. The company is growing rapidly with more than 500 employees currently - it's one of the success stories of the true "new economy" - a rapidly growing business that exists solely because of the Internet.