You’re either remarkable or invisible.
—Seth Godin

Master marketer and best-selling author Seth Godin says that companies that resist innovation are like brown cows—after a while, they all look the same. If you’ve seen one brown cow, you’ve seen every brown cow there is to see. You don’t notice them even when they’re standing on the side of the highway. They might as well be invisible.

But when a purple cow comes on the scene, it stands out at once. You can’t take a brown cow and paint it purple, Godin explains. Purple cows are purple from the inside out—or they might be blue from the inside out, as in the case of JetBlue Airlines, a company that meets Godin’s criteria for excellence.

What is Seth Godin trying to teach us about marketing this time? If I’ve learned anything from Godin since his 1999 Permission Marketing, it is that he doesn’t waste his readers’ valuable time. So I’ve learned to listen to what he has to say. What does he have to say in Purple Cow? It all comes down to two words: Be remarkable.

I hope you’re listening, too. “You’re either a Purple Cow or you’re not,” says Godin. “You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.”

Forget the advertising—innovate
It would be easy to notice a purple cow if we suddenly encountered one, of course. But how do you spot purple cows in the business world? To be a purple cow in the business world, Godin explains, “Stop advertising and start innovating.”

Consumers are immune to most of the advertising that reaches them, but they are hungrier than ever for real solutions to real problems. The secret of successful Internet marketing is to create and drive word of mouth.

When fifty-two JetBlue planes were frozen on runways in an ice storm last February, passengers were stuck inside the grounded planes for hours. Other airlines cancelled flights in anticipation of the winter storm, but JetBlue vowed to get customers to their destinations.

When it didn’t work out as planned, the company had a customer service nightmare to deal with. Police were called in as irate passengers argued with JetBlue employees at airport check-in counters.

At the height of this public relations disaster, David Neeleman, founder and CEO of JetBlue Airlines, posted a video message on YouTube to apologize to customers. As far as I know, this was the first time the CEO of a major corporation posted a video message on YouTube directed at customers.

Check it out right here:

As you’ve heard his YouTube message, Neeleman explained that steps were being taken to prevent the same thing from happening again. And he outlined a new customer protection plan with enough substance behind it to show customers that he wasn’t just blowing hot air.

Customers may not have forgotten what happened, but they seem to have forgiven JetBlue. When the situation got out of control, Neeleman didn’t do what other corporate leaders have frequently done. He didn’t call in his staff to manage the crisis. He didn’t hire a public relations expert. He did what Purple Cows do—he innovated. He created an innovative information product. And it worked!

I hope you found this post useful, please feel free to share your comment / feedback / opinion / personal experience…

There are both free and paid web hosting services on the Internet, so why should you pay for a web hosting when you can get one for free? There are several advantages and disadvantages to consider when choosing between free and fee hosting companies for your web site:

• With free web sites, domain names are nearly always structured this way: www.hostcompany.com/yoursitename. This makes your URL difficult to remember, and you may lose sales as a result.

• Free sites have bandwidth restrictions. This means that after a certain amount of people in a given day visit your site, the page will no longer load and potential customers will receive a message such as “This web site has exceeded its bandwidth limit. Please try again tomorrow.” Some free sites provide sufficient bandwidth, especially if your site is light on graphics…but many do not.

• Some servers are better than others. With a free site, you run the risk of downed servers showing visitors the dreaded “Error 404: Page Not Found” message when they click over to your site. Most paid sites have precautions to deal with server failure.

• Most free sites use outside advertising on all their pages—this is how they make money. Banner ads are usually acceptable, but if you have a page with three or four popups that spring out at unsuspecting visitors, they’ll be quick to leave and never come back. Find out what type of advertising the hosting company uses before signing up for a free program.

This is not to say you absolutely should not go with a free site. Particularly when you’re first starting out, a free site may be just what you need, and you can always upgrade to a paid site. For that reason, you should look into a web hosting company that offers either free or paid sites (or just start out with a paid site).

Also, Before signing up for any web site service, find out whether they have templates and easy-to-use site building tools—or whether you have to create your pages in HTML code. If you plan to use a program like Dreamweaver or FrontPage to create your site, this won’t matter. But if you’re not, and you don’t know HTML, you need to make sure you will be able to put things on your web pages with relative ease.

Ensure to shop around and research further until you have found the right one or join the one which is recommended by others.

I would personally recommend HostGator, as I have been with these guys for quite a while and they haven’t gone wrong. They are both affordable and reliable, unlimited for Disk Storage and Bandwidth with all of their shared plans, 24/7 support, and the uptime I have had on this web hosting is simply amazing! The most important thing of all is that, they guarantee 99.9% uptime. Their “Baby” web hosting plan is $9.95 per month but with our coupon code HGC25 or MUSICA , all the coupons codes have the same value. You get a $9.94 discount regardless of which coupon you use.

Follow this link for HostGator.com. Click on  ‘order now’ under the desired hosting plan. If you are hosting a new site, register your new domain. If you already have a domain name,  click “I will use My Existing Domain”. Input the domain name in the next field and press ‘continue’.  Choose a “billing cycle”. Type in the coupon code (I’ve used ‘musica’ when I registered so I know it works.) Press ‘calculate totals’. The total price with the discount should be shown.

Thanks for reading this blog post and feel free to leave your comment / feedback in the comments field.

The Definition of List Building is very simple: “The Process of adding contacts to your Personal Mailing List, Autoresponder or Newsletter/Ezine”.

Imagine having a large group of ready customers you knew would buy what you had to offer. Well…, not everyone on every list buys everything offered, but a good targeted list will be very responsive to offers. And that translates to good profits.

A list is a much more reliable source of sales than relying on people just happening to find your website and buying your products or services. Since they are already interested in your products, they are more likely to buy from you than someone who is just browsing the web.

So… you want to build a list?

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