Marketing success comes from listening, understanding and then serving well (based on listening and understanding).  Service needs to come before sales.  Sadly, customer service is the often overlooked “ugly step child” of marketing, taking a backseat to “sexier” arenas like pure sales or awareness activities (advertising, social media, etc).  It is my job to re-train your brain and help you help yourselves, so keep reading to see how sexy service can be to your bottom line!  (it can, really!)

My work as the Marketing Therapist is never done.  What keeps me going is the positive web vibes from positive role models like Misty Gibbs, Web Gemologist and Founder of a wild web site called My Inspiration Lounge. Her latest marketing work can inspire you in your marketing efforts (and show you how sexy service AND SURVEYS can be)!

Misty hired Web Marketing Therapy last year for light advisory (which she took and used all our tips thankyouverymuch) and since then, has been rocking the wild web building:

-Awareness
-Educating and Distributing Information
-Connection (yep, relationship making baby!)
-Building Sales
-Offering Great Customer Service

Misty is dedicated to building a community of inspired women – in the name of healthy marketing, she looked within and tapped a gargantuan marketing asset – her community!  Recently, Misty reached out to her organization of women (via her email list) and did a simple online survey that yielded some very sophisticated (and sexy-service-centric) results.  Learn the Three Things Misty Learned From Surveying.

My healthy marketing advice to you is simple – rely on WHAT YOU HAVE and cultivate your assets.

Look within to be successful as you branch out to = meaningful marketing!

Start meaningful marketing by listening to your existing customers.  To learn what your customers want, ASK THEM! Tap tools like online survey tools to ask clarifying questions.  I am a fan of Zoomerang, other online survey sites include Survey Monkey and email companies like Constant Contact and My Emma have survey tools bundled in with their email services.

If you want to make money and make marketing matter, serve your customers.  Get over your ego that you know your customers needs and do not fear that you may get negative feedback.  All feedback is great feedback.

Listen, learn and grow!

Example of the Email Misty Sent to Survey Her Customers - Ask, Learn, Adapt then Succeed!

As we promised on the show, here are links to Misty’s Inspirational Lounges:

• My Inspiration Lounge: Best of the Web Inspirational Messages and Sites
• Misty’s Inspirational Blog
• Inspirational Lounge TV for Inspirational Videos and Awesome Conversations
• Misty’s Zazzle Store for Inspiring Gifts

Need marketing advice? Ask Lorrie Thomas, The Marketing Therapist® and the Wild Web Women®. Learn ways to get your marketing healthy so you can get wealthy. Lorrie Thomas, M.A., is a marketing educator, writer, strategist, web marketing expert and speaker. She is the founder of Web Marketing Therapy®, a smart, fun, full-service marketing agency and a recession-friendly self-help online marketing educational resource.

Remember……marketing begins with inspiration!

This blog post was inspired by two inspire-savvy professionals that touched me last weekend:
1. Misty Gibbs of www.myinspirationlounge.com
My Inspiration Lounge is a reflection of everything that Misty loves and and wants to do in life.  She created an inspirational resource to inspire, inform and help us make the impossible — possible.  Her website began with an inspiration…she took the critical step and made her inspiration a reality, now serving thousands of women and securing her a Wild Web Woman stamp of approval as a WMT Positive Web Marketing Role Model.

Inspiration - Life meets Art

2. Lori Lipsman – Inspiring and Inspired Artist.
I stumbled upon her artwork at LA Artcore, Union Center.  The photo to the left was a photograph of a plant married with a stunning paper ribbon running through it.  Inspiration was in action.

I continued to walk the gallery and view Lori Lipsman’s amazing artwork.  We always hear the saying, “life imitates art” but I was picking up was  “life inspires art”

Successful marketers find inspiration to perfect their personal marketing art.

Get Marketing Inspiration!

Lori’s inspiration manifested into amazing paintings, some large, some small, some a melange of paper ribbons married together to produce brilliant works of art that would have never happened without that bit of inspiration!

Beginning is 50% of a creative process (ok, maybe more)  INSPIRATION is what gives us that fire in our bellies to begin.

Listen to your heart before your mind and allow yourself to be creative – perfect your personal marketing art…we all have it, TAP IT!

Treatments for F.O.G. may include chocolate, new web tools to help streamline processes and/or healthy doses of tough love like reminding folks that instead of living in a land of “can’t do’s”, those of us who believe in can-do’s are thriving.  I see a common pattern with savvy business people …they believe that:

SUCCESS COMES IN CANS, FAILURE COMES IN CAN’TS

We are fortunate to work with really smart entrepreneurs that live in a land of CANS.  This week’s featured Postive Role Model is the queen of can-do who created a wonderful, inspirational website and a cool, creative web solution to help boost our mundane Mondays. 

Misty Gibbs, Wild Web Woman

Meet Misty Gibbs, wild web woman and founder of www.myinspirationlounge.com.  Thanks to her InspireMail For Inspiration Mondays, I have a new lease on Monday email life.  

Every Monday to serve her audience and her purpose of instilling inspiration, her Monday inspireMail  has a theme of “Music to get us fire-y and inspire-y!”
 
As Misty says, “Mondays come way too quick so I thought some fun, inspiring music would help us ladies remember how much we rock and kick our week off right!”  In the name of savvy marketing, she emails and blogs her fire-y and inspire-y music, so I went to her Inspirational Blog and listened to Peace Train by Cat Stevens (ok, like ten times)

Misty is a Postive Web Marketing role model because she is passionate, caring, offers a great web solution, knows her audience, solves problems and adds VALUE.  Then she uses multiple web tools like email, blog, site and she even archives her inspireMail so people like me who want to share with a friend can way after the email gets lost in my inbox.

Misty's inspirEMAIL gets us fire-y and inspire-y!

Savvy entrepreneurs who identify pain points, create solutions, and go the extra creative mile with new ideas (all in the name of great client service) are brilliant marketers.

Misty – thanks for inspiring me to blog about your positive-ness and THANK YOU for the BEST MONDAY EMAILS EVER!

Check out My Inspiration Lounge and learn from our fellow webanistas!