I made a follow-up call to a man about his marketing needs. He previously asked me to follow up, and so I did just that. Within about a minute of my call, he said “Well, this is a really busy time of year for us” and started with more excuse-crafting. I interrupted him to say “Hey Bill, I am not calling to waste your time” and quickly ended the call. What I really meant was that I was not calling to waste my time, and I think he got the point.
Bill is a man who knows very well why his company is bleeding money. He knows that he needs better marketing. That is why we have been talking. He expresses good intentions, but he always has an excuse. Is being busy a good reason to put off better marketing? Is money a good reason to put off better marketing? Is there really ever a good reason to put off something that will improve your business?
Let us consider where money comes from in most businesses. It comes from doing more business, and that means more customers. More customers comes from marketing. Is this really such a mystery?
“Procrastination Tax” is the Extra Cost of Waiting
People have been frustrated by taxes for centuries. They vote, they write their government leaders, and they even overthrow their government, but mostly they complain. They complain a lot! I hear people every day complain about the economy, and how everything is swirling down a big toilet bowl. I am not completely excluding myself. I don’t like it any more than the rest of you. The difference I make is that I realize one of the biggest “taxes” I pay is “procrastination tax”.
Putting things off until it is too late, or until the cost of waiting makes problems much worse is common. It is one of the easiest mistakes to make, and also one of the most damaging. The good news is that you have a choice.
For somebody like Bill who makes excuses, the additional cost caused by procrastination is high. He said that this is a busy time of year. It is the time when his business seems to be getting better. It only lasts for a short time, and then things will be slow again. Bill knows this, because he has been in his business and waiting for the next busy season for decades. Wouldn’t it make sense to maximize that seasonal opportunity, since it only comes once in a while? By procrastinating, Bill has effectively put off his best chance to turn his business around and stop losing more money until another year. Yes, another whole year before he will have another opportunity like he faces right now. Another year with mediocre results … and that is if all goes well. Another year to worry about whether he socked away enough to make it through the next slow period. Another year that he could have done more business and grown his company and had an even better year, next year.
I wonder how many years Bill can waste procrastinating before he realizes that action today is worth a lot more than action tomorrow. For some industries there is a year between each big rush, and for others it is a much shorter time. In any case, the tendency to wait for just the right time can have damning results to a company. I wonder how Bill will feel when he looks back a year from now and wishes he had set a better plan in motion. Oh yes, and next year will come … faster than ever.
Bill will always be waiting for something. While he waits for the perfect time, his procrastination tax is growing each day.
This reminds me of something my mother told me many years ago. She said “If you wait until you are ready to have children, you will never be a father.” I have three kids now.
A question came up today while I was talking with my wife as she created a masterpiece before my eyes. I asked her “do you ever impress yourself?” The natural answer that most people will give is “No, that sounds too arrogant.” She was not too off the mark from the popular answer, but based on her level of mastery, it puzzled me. It made me think deeper about a conversation that has taken place between myself and many clients in their boardrooms.
I want to explain that my wife is indeed a master at the work she does. She has many years of experience as an artist, and she deserves all of the kudos she receives for her work. In the instance of my question to her today, it involved her work in our cakes and confections business. She was creating flowers from scratch. She took sugar and turned it into flowers. I do not mean flowers like the average iron worker or Internet geek would make from sugar. She was creating lifelike flowers with petals, pistols, stamen, sepal, and other parts that many of us do not even realize flowers have. They are really delicate … like a flower.
I had to ponder why she would ever feel like she was not doing something spectacular. I mean, how many people do you know who can make a flower petal from sugar? Can they put it together with a whole bunch of other sugar petals and all of those other hard to pronounce flower parts and make them look like a real flower, and then sell them to people for the cake served on their wedding day?
This got me to thinking about the many times I have witnessed clients from my standpoint in my field of marketing who just don’t have a good handle on their value proposition. Their fear is often not so unlike Peggy’s concerns that she would seem arrogant, cocky, conceited, too confident, or whatever strangely negative twist you can put on doing something amazing that other people can see so clearly.
I think a lot of people have felt a bit kneecapped by the fine line between confidence and the point where it is distasteful to others. In the case of Peggy, just like so many others, they draw back so far from that line that modesty comes to take away their hopes and dreams. Modesty, when taken too far, can be devastating in a marketing campaign. I see it all the time that out of some deep-seated sense of modesty, a company culture will make it seem nearly impossible to reflect the true quality of their product.
In the course of this lengthy inner conversation, I had to confront myself. I am a race car driver, and in racing, I have always felt a bit shy with the flattering things people say when I come off the track. I know that other drivers are trying very hard to drive fast, and I want them to feel great about themselves. I don’t want to be the jerk to take away their glory, so I kind of hunker away and forget how well I drive.
YourNew.com Racing Corvette Z06: Driver Mark Aaron Murnahan
Confidence Perceived and Confidence Worth Stealing
I am a wickedly badass search engine optimizer and marketer … I can let that fly freely here on my marketing blog. I can whip the best of them, and I can quantify it in real numbers. Yes, I can back it up! What is profound to me is how the things where we seek the greatest gain in life is where we feel the most doubt. I love my work as a search engine optimizer and marketing consultant, so don’t get me wrong. I have done it for many years, and earned a handsome living following that passion. However, in my inner thoughts, I still feel that my big accomplishment will come from racing cars. I feel a confidence by driving fast, just as much as I do in the business which makes me money. In fact, before I lost millions of dollars in contracts during 2009 (and most of my ass with them), I was planning to retire next year and create a racing school to follow my passion.
How Money Changes Perception
It seems confusing and downright wrong how business endeavors make people more self-conscious than something perceived as a hobby. Noting that I am considering driving as my ultimate business endeavor, it really only makes sense when you examine how our modern society will criticize you more by things they perceive will matter to you or benefit you. What I mean is that I can tell you I am a badass race car driver and you do not feel threatened, because I am not trying to sell you a ticket to my next race or recruit you to my racing school. Racing does not pay me at this point. It actually has a cost to me of about $250,000 per race season, and a scheduled squillion-bazillion dollars to open a race school if I am done with this wicked-badass marketing gig before I am 300 years old.
You have no perception of loss just because I am fast, and I can even tell you I am fast. I am not a bad guy for being fast. Now if I told you that I am a badass at something which pays me money and feeds my family, you will be far more likely to take me to the ropes and beat me until I beg for mercy. How screwy does that sound, really?
Passion + Profit = Critics
This has all forced me to question how the things we feel the most passionate about are the easiest things to become modest about, and it is magnified if we actually receive a perceived benefit. I love racing. If I had to put this in terms for the average race fan without showing my modesty, I am one of the fastest men around a track you will ever meet in your lifetime. I have driven at speeds you will never comprehend and pulled off split-second saves, just inches from disaster that would have killed 99.9999 percent of people behind that wheel when the brakes got weak at 170 miles per hour. Now, if I tell you I have done the same thing and it helped me to buy a bag of groceries to feed my kids, it is strangely easier to criticize. OK, leaving the groceries and the kids out, if I said it makes me money, I am just a bit more of a bad guy. Don’t deny it … you see what a bastard I am if I charge money for my talents compared to doing something equally as passionate, but doing it for free.
Now then, why should Peggy feel awkward to express confidence about work done exceptionally well? Why is it easier for you to accept confidence about her work when the message comes from me rather than from her? Why is it even more exciting and acceptable to enjoy her mastery if you are far outside of her market area and you know she cannot sell you a cake? By the way, cakes are very hard to ship!
Why should I be so modest about the fact that I can own, manage, and drive for a race team that can take a track record on the first visit to a track? Why should I be so modest about the fact that I wrote three really good books in just three months during 2009? One of them (“Living in the Storm“) was written as my ass was falling off in business, but I completed it because I sincerely believed it would benefit others. Why should I be modest about the fact that more people read my work each month than reside in the city of Topeka, Kansas, where I live? Why should I be modest about the fact that I can rank my clients at the top of search engines for things which 99.9999 percent of the world’s competitors cannot achieve?
Well, I suppose that our reasons are not so unlike yours. Sometimes we just have to accept the talents we have developed and stop downgrading ourselves with the fear of the few jealous antagonists who will call us wrong for it while our fans are still waving our checkered flag and reveling in our winning the race.
I asked a few questions here, but what I really want to know is what you propose to do to stop acting like a Mark or Peggy? Maybe I can help. If this is the case, I will admire you for being uncommonly able to see beyond the perception of somebody having to lose just because somebody else gains.
If you like what I have to say here, please share it with others, regardless of whether I gain or do not gain. Your sharing of this line of thought with others may make a difference in not only the bag of groceries I bring home for my kids, but perhaps it could really help somebody else to gain a better view of their marketplace as well. Besides, if it helps you feel better, the vast majority of people it can help cannot afford to hire my services … marketing, racing, or shipping a four tier wedding cake. Oh, and I did not even mention the cost to have me write a book, but if I mentioned buying one for ten bucks, it would be even easier to see me as a bad guy. You see, that sounds kind of silly to not recognize your own contributions, right?
Have you ever wondered how there came to be so many Internet marketing experts and search engine optimizers in the world? My guess is because it is so darn easy a caveman could do it. At least it seems that is what they were told back at marketing school.
I love marketing. It is the only reason I watch the Super Bowl. I love to see great marketing, and to watch companies take off like an eagle. The unfortunate reality is that unskilled marketing flies with all the grace of the dodo bird.
I want to share two extreme examples of marketing failure I have recently been assaulted by. I received each of these in just the last few hours, and they come in great abundance each and every day. I think these examples explain a lot about why I encounter so many people skeptical about their marketing efforts. It is this kind of marketing that damages my whole industry.
Marketing Fail One: “Mould Providing”?
I will start with an email message I received only a few hours ago offering to sell me molds. Molds? Yes, molds! Why somebody would try to sell me molds is way over my head. This marketing failure was not only way off the target audience, but they even spelled the product name differently (language variance) in the subject line and body of the email. Then they went on to write the email as if they were the SEO just out of search engine optimization school trying to make the most of their keywords. I guess they needed to search engine optimize their email for some reason. Needless to say, I will not be purchasing any molds (or moulds either), so don’t even go there!
This goes well beyond just a language or cultural barrier, so before you give this “Marketing Engineer” a break, consider how he and millions of other spammers like him damage the marketplace for others. They collectively hinder the attention span and trust of each of us and make us more stubborn about our marketing expectations.
Subject: Mould Providing
Dear Sir/Madam,
Our company, King Mold Limited is located in Shenzhen City Guangdong province of China. We are middle size of mold maker company and about 100 machines in house. We made about 500 molds last year and 90% molds were exported to Europe, North American and other oversea areas.We are able to make small and simple molds, big and complex molds, we have made some insert molds, overmolds, two shot molds, gas assistant molds, unscrewing molds, hot runner molds and complex molds with many sliders drived by hydraulic cylinder.
Thank you for your time in advance. Your prompt attention will be highly appreciated!
Sincerely yours,
Tony /Marketing Engineer
You may be curious how Tony the Marketing Engineer targeted me for this brilliant marketing campaign. Yes, I was curious, too. You know, I love tracking things, because I am a marketer. This particular marketing failure came by way of email addressed to “thebigcheese@veryimportantguy.com” which is an address that I used in only one place … ever. That was in a blog article I wrote at “Mobile – Local – Social” titled “Cc: How Social Media Killed Email“, and I knew at the time some email spiders would come and scoop up the email address.
Marketing Fail Two: First Page Google Listing
First, I want to explain that this email came from my contact page here at aWebGuy.com and the sender had to pass a Captcha form to send it. What makes me want to reach out and ring the collective neck of this form of marketing “expert” is that it has lead a lot of people to really think of search engine optimization (SEO) as a joke. Here is the email I received:
Want more clients and customers? We will help them find you by putting you on the 1st page of Google. Email us back to get a full proposal
I wonder what, exactly they would like to get me ranked on the first page of Google with. Maybe the term “how to sell SEO“? Oh yeah, but I am already ranked in the top two for that search, and it has nothing to do with spamming people. I am already there for about a squillion competitive industry terms. I mean, it is what I do professionally. Maybe they can get me on the Google home page just under the logo … how much does that cost?
What really drives me nuts about this is that although it separates the good SEO and bad SEO, it still gives a lot of companies a real reason to hate people in my industry. It makes it even harder to overcome that disgusting image of some fat un-bathed guy in a pair of filthy nylon boxers sending out email and tweeting some crap about his new “earn money fast online” scheme and how he is the real deal and he can make your company successful overnight.
Screw it … I think I’ll go back to bed. My head hurts from thinking about it. If you leave me a comment, that is fine, but I am not buying any damn SEO or molds, so put it out of your mind right now!
Turning away business from a customer with a fist full of money and a desire to buy what you sell may seem like a bad business tactic. For many people, turning away a customer is viewed as a tragedy, but in some cases it can produce great benefit. In fact, there are many instances where this tactic can be extremely profitable. I know, it sounds crazy, but let me explain. First, I want to be clear that this is a tactic versus strategy, so don’t start trying to make a bunch of money turning people away just yet.
Examine, for a moment, a couple of reasons it can be important to turn away business, and how it may benefit your business to do so. Face it, not all customers are great customers. There are bad customers in every business … yes, I said every business. Even if you own a coin operated vending machine company and never have to face the customer, there is such a thing as a bad one. There are ways to turn away business that are tactful and useful, and sometimes we just have to learn when it is right to say “no” to the customer.
What brought me to write about this today was that I recently expressed selectiveness to a friend who is in need of marketing services. It is not a matter of arrogance at all, but in my line of work, there are very good reasons I absolutely must turn away business. I only have a limited amount of time to render my services, and if I am spending time working with people who do not pay well, have a bad product offering, or are difficult to work with, I may as well stay in bed. Working with a client for the money alone would be miserable to me, and likely to them as well. Mine is an extreme case, but in every service industry role where time, creativity, and knowledge are the product, it is very important to seek the right customers and stop wasting time with the ones who hold us back. Turning away business can be a painful transition for those unfamiliar with the concept, but it can save a lot of grief.
Opportunity Cost
(economics) The cost of an opportunity forgone (and the loss of the benefits that could be received from that opportunity); the most valuable forgone alternative.
When you are striving to be profitable, you must consider opportunity cost. That is the cost of opportunities that you will miss by taking on each customer. Any time you take on a new customer, there is a loss of potential opportunities elsewhere that could slip by because you are too busy.
In good and proper business transactions we can see that the customer is just as fortunate to make a purchase as the seller is to sell their product or service. If you focus on a better value proposition, competition really does not affect you as much. I have created many instances where a client raises their prices because their offering is worth more than they realized, and they were able to qualify it in their marketing message and quantify it in their business volume. This is the way it is supposed to be, after all. If somebody is willing to trade their hard-earned dollars, the seller clearly has something they want or need. If it is something with a limited supply and a sufficient demand, turning away business is sometimes not just the best option, but rather the only option. That is basic supply and demand, but there are still other reasons to turn away business.
The Arrogance of Purchasers
As purchasers, we often do not see things clearly and we become arrogant with our spending. There is always somebody else out there willing to sell things as if they are a commodity even when they are not. These sellers will offer something that is inferior, and price it low enough to capture the business of those who cannot understand the value difference. What this seller often misses out on is longevity and sustainable profitability. They do not understand the notion of turning away business for any reason, and the value it represents. This sort of selling as a commodity affects most businesses at some point (either internally or externally), and it is important to address it in your marketplace. In service industries, especially, it is a tragic end for many companies to fall into the trap of selling as if they are a commodity just to keep doing business … profitable or not.
Commodity
A commodity is a good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is fungible, i.e. the same no matter who produces it.
A valuable lesson for both buyers and sellers is to recognize when something is not a commodity. Seeking qualitative differences is important to good purchasing, and conveying these differences is an essential of good marketing.
Overcoming Commodity Selling
I write what I know, so I am using examples from experience in my own companies to illustrate my point. Perhaps if you see that I live by my own advice, you can at least view it as sincere. When I consider people selling something as a commodity that is indeed not a commodity, it is easy to find examples. Let’s take web hosting as an example (the service that keeps websites up and running). I have been in the web hosting business as a wholesale web host selling to hosting resellers for a decade. Is it the same thing anywhere you go? Well, without a long drawn out explanation, I can say that it clearly is not a commodity. My company’s web hosting prices reflect the millions of dollars invested in higher quality equipment and network architecture that sets us apart. We turn away a lot of business, and thank goodness, because it allows us to keep the quality standards extremely high for the customers who want something better.
Is SEO a Commodity?
Another absolute case of a non-commodity that is often sold as such is marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) services. I see people every day who sell dreadfully ineffective but cheap marketing and SEO services. Tragically, I find many people in the marketing and SEO field who will drop their prices to try and compete as if they offer a commodity. In my line of work as a marketing consultant and enterprise SEO, it is pretty clear to me that my clients receive more quantitative benefit from the transaction than I do. Maybe you have a similar case of providing great value as well, and if so, it is best to recognize it. Sure, I get to earn a good living, but the dollars the client gets in return far exceed what I am paid. It kind of makes me like a money duplicating machine to clients. Would it make sense for me to take on every project that comes my way? Of course not, and especially considering that much of my profit is derived from performance-based contingency SEO. So I refuse to sell it as a commodity, which is why I turn down the vast majority of potential clients who approach me. It is stupid? Some may say “yes”, but my clients are fortunate for it, and my reputation has become valuable because of this.
Do You Want Cake or Do You Want Cake?
I also see the benefit to turning away business very clearly in another of the companies my wife and I own and operate, in the cake and confectionery business. It is a very busy time of year for cakes. There are a lot of weddings, anniversaries, and graduations this time of year, in addition to the constant baby showers, birthdays, company parties, and etcetera. Designer wedding cakes and custom gourmet cupcakes require a lot of time, creativity, and skill. If we tried to take on every customer, it would degrade the product for all customers. So we turn away business to keep quality standards high. This makes it better for business on both sides, the customer and the company.
If you are not selling a commodity, it is unwise to try and compete as if you do. There will always be somebody willing to cut their own business throat to beat you out of a sale just to drive revenue. Discovering and conveying your value proposition is essential. Sometimes that means that you will need to start turning away business.
Sometimes Mother Knows BestI work with marketing numbers every day in my business, but sometimes I like to break it down to an individual level and gather more specific opinions. I can’t be brilliant every day so some days I rely on my dear Mother. I did that today, and I asked her about marketing. Ironic, isn’t it?
Since my mother remembers the days before television, and when telephone lines were shared across multiple households, I figured she could provide a good representation of “old school” thinking about marketing. I asked her a very specific question as follows: “If you were going to market a business, where would you focus your efforts?” She did not even ask me what kind of business before she replied “On the Internet.” I asked her, “Why do you think that some businesses still don’t think that way?” She said “I think they do, don’t they?” I told her that overall market spending spend says yes, but that I still find some companies marketing as “usual” … as if it is 2007. I wanted her opinion of why this could be the case. She said something that I have thought many times, and her reply was “It is foreign to them, and they probably just don’t understand how it can work for them.”
Thanks Mom!
The Monsters Disappear When You Turn on the Lights
Now do you agree with my Baby Boomer age mother? Nod yes. Most people agree that the Internet is the way to go for marketing. It is the most measurable venue for marketing of all, but I sometimes wonder if people realize that fact. The Internet provides enough data that marketing efforts can be accounted for down to every “click” and every dollar. You simply must look at enough data to create statistical significance. Anybody who does not grasp the value of measurements in marketing probably just does not understand it, and may be just a little bit scared. It seems that Internet marketing comes with a fear that many people have a hard time overcoming. The fear can be proven irrational using facts, but some people are just too stubborn to pay attention long enough to learn. They hear it, and they think it, but until they take the time to know the facts, they don’t fully believe it. I think of it like a kid with a bad dream when you turn on the lights, all the monsters disappear.
Many people want to achieve huge success before they actually make a reasonable and well calculated effort toward online marketing. They can read case studies of how others have done it, even in their industry, but as soon as the lights go out, they see monsters again.
Marketing Like a Goldfish in a Shark Tank
Fear and disbelief are big reasons that most companies using the Internet for marketing are doing it terribly unsuccessfully. They want to dip their toe in the water and test it out with a goldfish sized budget. What nobody tells them is that there are sharks in that water. If you don’t swim like a shark, you are likely to be “bitten” and fail miserably. The sad result for many business people is that once they are bitten, they will blame the water or the sharks, but they seldom ever blame the real culprit … themselves!
The alternative to having a shark budget is to shrink the tank using a more focused and creative marketing approach. It requires significant marketing talent to create success, even with a shark budget, but talent is even more important with a goldfish budget. In every case, it still requires more than a toe in the water to avoid the shark bite of an unsuccessful marketing attempt.
If you want your marketing to be successful, you can be one of the sharks or you can shrink the tank with focused marketing enough to take away the sharks’ advantage. Either way, you will have to address the sharks!
Bolstering the fears associated with Internet marketing is the fact that most Internet marketers (SEO, SEM, SMM, Guru, Expert, Maven, Evangelist, et. Al.) really stink at their job. It should also be noted that even the good ones will suffer if they have a client who bucks them at every turn, already knows it all, or asks them to jump through flaming hoops with a goldfish budget in a shark tank. Of course, successful marketers will usually not put themselves in this position. We understand the numbers, and we know that the chance of failure due to under-marketing is statistically significant.
We have surely all seen the overwhelming data, or at least heard a huge frenzy about newspapers, television, radio, and telephone book advertising sales each dropping like lead balloons. There is a reason for this, and the reason is that the Internet is far more effective. Still, I find it shocking to witness companies that have not shifted their efforts and their budget where it can make an impact.
I went on talking with my mother and we discussed business marketing budgets. I was curious why a company spending “x” dollars on ineffective marketing will often try to take a small fraction of that same amount of money to market on the Internet. I asked whether, as they shift their efforts, if it made sense for them to plan to spend less money and effort in the place it could really work. I asked her “If you were going to budget efforts between television, newspapers, phone books, and Internet, which one would get the biggest portion?” Without regard for industry, she said “the Internet, because you can reach anybody there”, and she was right. Of course, she did not have the fear that I was going to sell her something. She could be honest with me about what most people already know, but are afraid to address.
