Standout brands are distinct, memorable and own their turf. Think about Target (hip, cool and great design), Alfec (the duck icon), and Lady GaGa (outrageous style, no borders behavior).

They didn’t copy the pack, they lead it with a set of unique attributes. If you want to break through a clutter of the same old boring stuff that 95% of your competition are doing, then be original, odd and offbeat. And avoid these 5 costly mistakes.

1) Don’t use other people’s quotes in your marketing content and social media. Create your own original quotes, ideas, opinions and and insight.

2) Don’t use the same colors and graphic styles that are everywhere in your industry. Break the rules. And then rule your category.

3) Don’t use the same tired copy points and words that your competition uses. Tell memorable stories and create your own words that are unique and belong to you.

4) Don’t use, over used stock images and photos that everyone and their uncle has used since 1982. Find compelling pics, try adding treatments to them with cropping, borders, colors and filters. Or take your own.

5) Don’t expect everyone to love your distinction. Change or an unusual approached often get resisted early in the game. How may people loved Google when it first launched?

When you find your solid path of brand distinction and stick to it, your marketing dollars will have more power to help build a strong and sustainable brand.

Also check out: The 3 A’s of an awesome brand name.

I hate ugly feet. They really bug me. I do my part with mine aiming to have them look their best. I keep the pedicurers in business, along with the nail polish companies. Always step forward in style with nice toes – is my belief.

Footers on web sites are something I’ve not given much thought to until I read a twitter retweet post today from @TimothyWhalin.  Here is one of the featured master pieces from Mecannical.

OMG, my footers were uglier than some dreadful bad feet. I’m totally ashamed and I am re committed to coiffing them up. That’s right, the last thought on my blogs and websites need to be strategic and thoughtful soon. All my sites are going to get revamps within days. This touch point deserves some brain and should not be a skipped step.

How do your footers look? Seen any really hot toes at the end of blog or website, Do share.

Check these out.

For more on feet, view: Hitting the streets in NYC, flavors, history and tired feet.

Want return visitors, got to provide fresh stuff. I’m guilty. Been busy working on content and other things and failed to see the mold growing on my site that hadn’t changed much since the relaunch in early 2010. Wow how time flies when you are having so much fun!

This week I’ve been in the learning cave. I joined Marketing Profs, bought the PRO membership, which offers a heck of deal for $300. You get tons of awesome learning from webinars to premium content. I tuned in this week to the seven deadly sins of landing pages. Presented by Tim Ash, a guru in website conversion. It was well worth the entire annual fee. I learned so much about what matters if you are looking for action on your website. In addition to the seven sins which you don’t want to commit, I learned about a very cool free tool that Tim’s company offers. It’s called Attentionwizard.com. It’s basically a heatmap of your site and it’s FREE. This is way worth checking out. Just send them a jpeg of your landing page and they show you where the eyeballs are going. And what I learned about our site was the focus was not directed to our desired call to action.

That’s going to change. I just sent a bunch of tweaks to my web designer, so you you get some fresh stuff and no stale website from Oddpodz. Infact, after the webinar, I’ve decided to freshen our homepage look monthly, like a hot fashion boutique that moves around merchandise often.

The big take-aways from the MarketingProfs webinar by Tim Ash were:

1) Make  sure your call to action is clear and pops out!

2) Don’t have too many choices for your readers, it wears them down

3) Don’t ask them for too much info, it’s not needed and you will loose em fast.

4) Watch the amount of text you dish out, too much will give you a headache.

5) Don’t make a promise you can’t keep

6) Watch the visual distractions that blur your message

7) Always include evidence of credibility, media coverage, partners other kudos

It didn’t stop there. I’ve also enrolled in the Clay Collins Pre-launch Formula mentor program, which also totally rocks. It’s a three month class that focuses on how to build and launch digital products. It covers product development, list building, video marketing, conversion, SEO and so much more. The content is great, but the bonus is how he delivers and organizes it with video modules, downloadable PDFs and a weekly call in session with other students for an incredibly low price of $1500 and change that you can pay out in three months. I can’t share everything in this blog, cause that just would not be right. But here’s two of top take-aways and I’ve not even finished the class.

• Did you know that blogs generally only convert 5% to opt-ins.
• And landing pages can deliver up to 50% in opt-ins. This is where your focus should be.
• Asking for too much info in your opt-in form will loose your sign ups faster than the hotels and guest with bedbugs.
• And while SEO is great, however, it’s not the life raft unless you are already sailing in some pretty big winds.
• Joint venture partners are sweeter than honey. In the program you learn how to find them and attract them.
• If you use WordPress you can set up many pings in the backend that will help spread your content while you are sleeping.

With in the next couple weeks, you’ll see some changes to our site and I will report back on how they impacted our list building, product sales and traffic.

Stay tuned.

Note: While Jerrilyn focuses on marketing to women, this insight could apply to men also.

Ladies, as the chief of our households, we decide which brands to buy at the grocery stores. We search online (newspapers too) for coupons to save on them to stretch our budget.  We don’t stop buying milk, eggs, bread, butter, etc., for our families just because our budgets are tight.  They are the staples in our households.

Advertising and marketing are the staples for our businesses.  Just because money is tight, we can’t stop doing them.  We just have to find a more affordable way to do them.  Burger King, McDonalds, Nike, LA Fitness, Sears, and more can teach us a lesson when it comes to marketing in a slow economy.

They changed their pricing, created less expensive products and services without bells and whistles, quadrupled their marketing and advertising, combined physical space to reduce their overhead, and much more to ensure they keep their market share.  You are probably saying to yourself that you can’t afford to spend any more money than you already are on your marketing and advertising.

Guess what?  Yes, you can and it won’t hurt.  :-)  You can even find a way to actually reduce your costs by 20% or more.  If you’ve been reading any of my posts, you know that I’m referring to cross marketing and promotion.

Let’s start with your business cards.  Team up with two or more complementary companies to create joint business cards.  It will make you look bigger and smarter by offering your clients and prospects access to products and services that complement yours.  This is perfect for PR, marketing, and advertising specialties consultants who are networking mavericks.  They can promote each other at all of the numerous monthly events they attend.

Next, let’s give your blog a cross marketing makeover.  If you are currently paying to have someone maintain your blog, host it and or in the process of having one designed, you can team up with 5 or more complementary companies to develop an industry specific blog that makes you look like a genius.  You will save money every month while boosting your credibility.  I recommend Promembershipservices.com if you need a blog designer.

Now, let’s give your products and services a makeover.  Come up with a product or service that can be provided in a group setting.  Coaches have perfected group coaching sessions and membership web sites.  Come up with your own unique concept for a business club or membership site.  It will benefit your current clients who’ve slowed down spending money with your company.  Get them excited about your company again.  You will also attract new clients.

Finally, make your Facebook page bring in sales.  Team up with 5 or more of your business associates to create a joint Facebook page that sends traffic and sales to your individual sites as well as your Facebook pages too.  Big companies give away items on a daily basis to engage with their followers.  You and your associates can take a page from their marketing book.  Purchase Facebook advertising together to get premium traffic.  You can take it one step further and purchase LinkedIn advertising to drive traffic to the page.

These are only a few ways you can utilize cross marketing and promotion this summer. Whatever the time or cost investment required to market and advertise your company, you can reduce it to make it more feasible in this rocky economy.  Make a list of what it takes to successfully market and advertise your company to boost its sales.  Then plug in your business associates.

Georgia businesswoman Jerrilynn B. Thomas is the founder of Marketing 2 Women International.  Jerrilynn’s specialty is facilitating cross marketing partnerships between complementary business and professional women to help them increase their female client base while saving time and money on their marketing.  Her services are very exclusive.  She works with women in select business 2 business fields and limits the number per state and international areas.  Visit Womenpartner.com to see if your business is a fit for her expertise.You can follow her on Twitter @WomenPartner, Linkedin.com, and on Facebook.

…to us!

We launched the first version of our Oddpodz site and our blog in 2006. We will have to put together a retrospective. That will be a hoot!

We are thisclose to being able to rattle off another list of accomplishments (and the aforementioned retrospective), so we’ll save that for another time in a week, or so.

In the meantime, and for a trip down memory lane, here’s last year’s “birthday card” to ourselves.

We launched the very first version of our Oddpodz site, our Odditeaz line and our blog on July 1, 2006. We can’t believe another year has gone by. We also can’t believe how much we’ve achieved. We’re not bragging or nothin’ (yes, we know, nice grammar), but our team of THREE has done A LOT in a year. Just one example, we pulled this giant rabbit out of a tiny hat.

Some other brief highlights:

*Introduced Zo to the world

*Designed and produced 65 styles of shirts for man, woman, child and canine.

*Created and sent out 40, plus installments of our ezine, Openeyez

*Brainstormed and built our online community, the Muzeum

*Met some cool new people and made new friends

*Got the word out – now more than a few people know who we are

*Chronicled our growth (and growing pains) in Fast Company

*Welcomed new enrolled citizens

*Learned some really cool things and heard great ideas from our very talented citizens (THANK YOU)

*Hosted a slogan and design contest from 1,000 plus submissions.

*Relocated the corporate HQ from Tampa, FL to Savannah, GA (aka the “Creative Coast”)

*Revamped our front page and fine tuned our Oddpodz vision

*Experienced many a sleepless night

*Stayed flexible

*Learned from our mistakes (picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off and started all over again)

*Started each day with more enthusiasm than we had the day before

On that note, we’d like to take a moment to pat ourselves on the back. OK, moment’s over. More importantly, we want to thank you for your support and belief in Oddpodz. While we know we’ve accomplished a great deal, we’re not resting on any laurels. We are still working hard to achieve our grand vision for our global nation of creatives. We’re excited to have you along on this exhilarating ride. Oddpodz is a work in progress, and we appreciate your input.

As we blow out the candle on our cake, we won’t tell you our wish, but we will say we’re looking forward to many more birthdays and hope you’ll join us in celebrating.