I have absolutely nothing against Lisa Nichols personally, but I do dislike bullshit fluffer material that will supposedly make you rich and successful. Nichols is an amazing speaker and with her big gap teeth and large body she manages to have an amazing level of self confidence. Never judge a book by its cover. The Secret was a viral marketing phenomenom that took the USA by storm. I even had my own girlfriend jubilantly show me “The Secret” and how it can change your life. I couldn’t stop laughing when they demonstrated this amazing “secret” by having a person in a parking garage “think” of an open space - sure enough a car pulls out! Anyhow, the masses are always waiting to be entertained and “lifted up”. That’s exactly what Lisa Nichols accomplished with The Secret. As far as making money and having success in life, that is an entirely different story. Let the comments roll in; Secret devotees love to rip on people that rip on their “Secret”.

The above picture shows one of the best examples of an optimized You Tube video that is intended to generate traffic to the publishers website.  The marketer did the following:

• Used Youtube’s new feature to append a flash overlay on the video
• Increased the size of the video description to highlight his link
• Used a sexy woman with large breasts - sex sells.

I see it time and time again - the more granular a business owner operates his/her business: the more successful it is.  When touring the islands off the SE coast of Thailand you get to observe hundreds of retail stores and restaurants.  The more granular the proprietors of these businesses are; the more successful they are - at least I assume.  I dont have financial data to back up my assumptions, but I can easily observe that the more granular a business operator is the more customers they have.

Mr. K’s restaurant is on a main road on the island of Koh-Phangan and is very granular in their business operations.  The restaurant is like any other restaurant; it has tables, chairs, coolers, a cash register, a menu, etc…  However, it’s the small (granular) elements that make this the most successful restaurant on the island.  The following are the granular observations I made while eating at this restaurant:

• The employees wear matching shirts and rotate their shirts on a daily basis
• A few of the employees speak english and ask you about where you come from and your journey
• They give patrons yellow paper to discuss their dining and travel experience.  There were hundreds of these testimonials neatly plastered across the walls
• Word of mouth: the yellow paper and exceptional customer service encourages travelers to tell other travelers about their dining experience.  I told at least 5 travelers about the restaurant.
• Presentation: the restaurant takes the necessary time to ensure that their food presentation is perfect each and every time
• Matching their menu to the tastes of their patrons.  They have food for people from nearly every country in the world.  Burgers and pizza for Americans.  Thai food for Thai.  Spaghetti and ravioli for Americans.  Pancakes for the Dutch.  Additionally, their menu is simple and straight forward.  Usually I notice that more successful restaurants have a “less is more” type attitude with their menus.  However, Mr.s K’s make their huge menu straight forward and simple to read, therefore; it’s still successful.
• An exceptional product.  Mr. K’s food was exceptional.  I don’t think you could order anything from the menu and be dissapointed.

The example above is an example of a granular business that was succintly run.  Is your business granular and succinctly operated?  I would bet that if your not satisfied with your bottom line; chances are that you aren’t running your business at a granular level.  What do your business cards look like?  What level of customer service do you offer your customers?  What type of color scheme is your logo/presence?  If you want to succeed and be the best in your niche - you need to get granular.  There is a famous chinese proverb that says, “People don’t trip on mountains, they trip on stones.”  In the business world, businesses don’t succeed because they dont gather up the stones into a mountain.

The videos below discuss traditional print advertising, graphic design, call to action, and business/marketing in general. They are almost 25 minutes long in total and somewhat full of “wind”. Someone that works with media buying and media selling in traditional print advertising may find this very interesting. Even if you work in online marketing only, there is still a tremendous amount you can learn about marketing and landing page design.

Billions of dollars a year are spent on ineffective and out-right useless print advertisements. I recently dissected a Fortune magazine and discovered that 70% of the magazine were advertisements. Rather disappointing, but makes for a great study into advertisements and how corporations are trying to breach the consumers mind. When designing print advertisements: less is more, use attractive sexy photos, less text, a call to action, and contact information. Please comment if you found this helpful and I will shoot more analyses of this type.