marketing Archives - Page 18 of 21 by Mark Murnahan

How To Avoid Going Broke in Business

Free advice? The Internet is full of it. You cannot swing a cat without hitting somebody willing to give you free business advice, marketing advice, tips, and ideas. So what is it all worth? I will answer that later, but first, want to share a story of my Monday with you.

I got a call from a good friend who is a top-level economist. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, and has an impressive job. He is a brilliant economist. We talked about solutions for a mutual friend’s locally-focused service industry company. While we spoke, he was in the car and driving through a strip mall with a huge grocery chain. He gave his opinion of how chilling it is that the once-thriving strip of over 30 businesses has only three businesses left. We talked about the huge challenges a business faces, and how scared companies are today.

What does it all mean, and should you be scared? Allow me to share some observations. First, should you be scared? Yes! Heck, I am scared for you. The numbers are against you, and if you don’t change with the tide and swim harder and faster, you will not make it … you will drown. Even the most brilliant business minds have had to make some big changes in the past couple years. Some will succeed, while many will give up. The worst change a business makes is that of just “riding it out” or taking a “wait and see” approach. In order to make it, it will take action … uncomfortable, scary, swift, and decisive action. If you are not sure I am on the mark with this, just watch this recent video!

Taking Action to Avoid Going Broke

Let us, just for a moment, stop allowing the blindness of false positivity to get in the way of logical thinking. I know, it feels like things will be better if we think positively and maybe if we ignore the downsides, economic conditions will improve. This is not a case of ignoring it and it will go away. Quite the opposite. If you ignore your business challenges, the business will go away … not the challenges. So what can you do to come out of this better than the rest, and even better than before? After all, that is what you hope for, right? Whether you are trying to catch up, trying to keep your lead, or trying to break records with success, doing more business tomorrow than you did yesterday is going to require some changes. It does not matter if you are ready for change or not, change is ready for you.

Only Wet Babies Like Change

Here is an example of fearing change that nearly cost many millions of dollars.

A few hours after visiting with my economist friend, another friend dropped by to pick up a modem from me. I have an Internet company. I have modems of all shapes and sizes. While we visited, I told him I am looking for a new sales representative. Actually, a presentation representative is what I am seeking, because I really hate boardrooms and ridiculous business politics. I am worn completely smooth each day with lies and excuses from companies who contact me, and I want to pay somebody who is willing to filter it out for me. Tom is a lobbyist, and I know he is well-networked and knows a lot of motivated people with good business experience. I told him I that am entirely worn out by answering the same questions each day, and hearing the same sob story from companies over and over. I decided that it simply is not good for me to face ignorance and indifference, and it sucks away a little bit of my soul every day.

He related my services to a bill he helped to pass that would cost the State of Kansas millions of dollars, but then return nine times that much by its passing. He told how frustrating it was to explain it to so many people who simply said “the state can’t afford it” because it was not in the budget. He understood how exasperating it was that the concern was the money, but that there would be far more money soon after the passing of the new legislation. The math was done … it added up, but legislators would still express fear of passing the law. Tom gets it! Tom has been in my shoes, and he understood why my fingers are tired from making that reaching for the throat to choke somebody gesture when somebody leaves their brain on the nightstand the day they call me.

I hear the same thing that Tom heard from legislators in my job every single day. People want to free up the money to spend on good marketing, but they cannot see beyond the check they write. They cannot see the vision. Sure, I can, because it is my job. I know the math, and I know that for each dollar out, there are dollars in. I know risk-management, and I know how to calculate expected returns. I know how much my clients benefit from what I do, but for new clients, it is as if it is just a big blur … it is something they cannot see.

I hear you, people … I get it … you are paralyzed with fear, but there is a point when you have to push the “go” button or go home without a job. Business will not cure itself.

What Makes Business Happen?

What makes business happen for you? It should be clear that if more people know your business, and understand the benefits of doing business with you, it helps your company. You know this, right?

While everybody is out there vying for your customers, you must market your company better than ever. That does not mean having a blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account. It means understanding how to use the tools. It means having a better plan and understanding that execution of the plan must be done better than the competition. It means that marketing is not a commodity, and that Pepsi beat out those other cola companies because they had better execution of a better plan. Luck only spreads so far, and after the luck is gone, it is going to take marketing talent and marketing creativity.

Marketing Made Cheap

There are a lot of cheap marketing offerings out there. I was curious about some of them, so I decided to dip my hook in the water and see what fish would bite on a small worm. I wanted to see how people really think. I took a call from one of those squillions I normally weed out who asks for prices instead of wanting to know what he is buying. I asked all the important questions. I took a little time for discovery, and found that I could take his competition to the wood shed and bare-assed whip them like an angry stepfather.

I took it on the chin and wrote up an eight page plan for his stated budget of $2,500 (yeah, I laughed, too). It was a full-featured proposal including much research, custom blog creation, search engine optimization, social media marketing, five Murnahan-written and circulated blog posts, and web hosting for a year. The expected return was many tens of times the investment. I mean, this guy would have been set on a path paved with Murnahan-engraved gold bricks, and just because I wanted to make an example of somebody.

I received an email from this company owner a couple days later and it read as follows:

I hate to admit this, but I can’t afford your services. At least not in the immediate future. I really like your ideas and respect your abundant knowledge.

I’m respectfully declining your services.

Sharing My Findings About Cheap Marketing

I could write for days about things I have learned about people hoping to get something for nothing. It is not new, and a lot of people really think of marketing as all the same … that it is a commodity. It is easy to overlook or ignore the research details, planning, execution, talent, experience, reach, and other assets in a good marketer’s toolbox. In this case, I decided to share my example of delving into the cheap marketing arena with some people. I asked a small sample of people who know my work fairly well how much they thought my absolute floor is for taking on a new project. The answers averaged around $80,000, with none answering below $25,000 as what they thought the absolute lowest project that I would or should take on as a marketing consultant. Well, what I should do and actually do are two different things. I will take on small jobs if I like the people and I like the product. I liked the guy with a $2,500 budget that I wrote an extensive plan for. Do you think he made a good business decision? I don’t benefit by lying to you, so here is the truth. In this case, a measurably better decision would have been to pay the marketing guy before the light bill or the mortgage.

Good marketing is really hard to find, and sometimes hard to produce the upfront cost, but the bottom line is that if the marketing is performed well, it will make you more money. Good marketing is an investment, and not a cost. If you find a good marketer, you must never forget that fact.

About that earlier question of what all that free business and marketing advice is worth, the answer is as different as the people offering the advice. My advice and the next guy’s advice are not equal, and marketing is not a commodity.

Imitation Marketing Means Imitating Marketing Failure

Trend, fad, popular, meme, hot, new, fashionable … word it however you like. Everybody wants that piece of whatever it is that works in marketing today. Companies and individuals frantically try to be on the leading edge of a wave that promises to be the “next big thing” that will bring them success. They hear how well it worked for this company or that company, and then make carefully calculated efforts to imitate that success. Perhaps they always heard it is best to imitate success, but on the flip-side of that coin is the far more likely outcome of imitating failure. I call it “imitation marketing” when people strive to imitate success, and it comes with a good side and a bad side.

Anybody who has used popular social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and the rest, has surely watched the imitation that happens every day. Somebody tweets, facebooks, or blogs about something “hot” and all of the sudden every other blogger scurries to their keyboard to blog about the same thing. If you catch on with things that are “hot” in a market, you have a greater chance of catching your 15 minutes of fame that was promised. Let’s face it, a lot of what we see each day on the internet is just the same thing, regurgitated with an alternate slant, and worded slightly different. If you look at any industry, you can see all the competitors mocking each other while only a few really stand out. Is that imitation really going to produce the results they are seeking? The odds are against it. There is a near infinitely greater chance of wasting time, energy, and money!

The Imitation Marketing Monster Eats Its Young

In this Internet age of vast information and lightening fast social media reach, we have collectively created a monster of sorts. What many people do not understand is that it is a monster that eats its young and as the cycle goes on, it eats itself.

Along with economic insecurity over the past couple years, it has become easy for people to believe they can save money by handling their own marketing. The Internet is the obvious place for this to happen, because it is easy. Anybody can put their name out there on the Internet and cross their fingers. The craze for do-it-yourself marketing on the Internet has created “marketers” out of about every living being that has a pulse, and a mouse to click with. Standing out from the crowd will take something unique, and not just “imitation marketing”. If you are up to the task, I am here to try and help you with my experience.

Whether you like this or not, you are right there in the thick of it. There is no other reason for you to read my blog than to try and know a better way to market what you offer and to become more profitable. Face it, you are here because you want more money, and you think you may pick up a tip to make that happen faster and cheaper than your competition. It is either that, or you have it in the back of your mind that you may pick up the phone and hire me to produce and implement a plan for your marketing … but that is only a tiny fraction of the people reading this. I am here to try and help you in either case, because it is what I do. I want to see you be successful.

Pay attention as I give you a surfing analogy: The waves of popular methods of Internet marketing exposure come a lot faster than ever before. By the time you see the wave, your window of opportunity to surf it to the beach has already closed. The riders of that wave were on it way out at sea, and it is moving far too fast to jump on now. If you want to surf in today’s marketing ocean, you are better off making some waves of your own.

I do not want to discourage you, and if I do, I will make it up to you with some encouragement. I am going to tell you what you are up against in your marketing, in order that you can prepare for the challenge.

Meeting the Creative Marketing Challenge

I just have to share a piece of reality in order to emphasize my point. Most of my readers are still swimming along in the vast open water and trying to stay afloat by imitating success. What they seldom realize is that by doing so they carry a higher risk of failure than hiring it out to experienced people like myself who do this all day long … for decades. They will soak up every bit of useful knowledge the vast Internet has to offer, and then try to create something more inspired and genius than all of the trained marketers who have facts, figures, creativity, and experience on their side.

Just as a simple example, consider how creative you are feeling today. Do you have it in you to write three, four, or five blog articles and marketing copy to promote your brand … or even one article? Do you have it in you to be sure what you produce is in front of hundreds of thousands of people … or even a thousand people? The right people? Can you write three books in three months (and actually have them sell) … or even one book? Can you write something and be assured that it will be listed within the top five results for the keywords you targeted less than ten minutes after you publish it … top 2,000 results? Do you have these things on your side? Well, I do, and there are others out there like me. That is what you are up against. When you get busy with your marketing, be aware that a lot of us make it a full time job, and some of us are damn good at what we do. To get ahead, you will have to be damn better.

The rampant drive for do-it-yourself marketing is one of those crazes that, like all other fads, has seen its time and is a wave that already crashed on the beach. It was a great idea, but when you are one of millions of people attempting to be the loudest, smartest, and overall best at what you do, your voice is squelched by the static. So, is there a fix? Yes! This is where I make it up to you if I discouraged you.

Stop Seeking Marketing Waves and Start Making your Own

Stop doing what they are doing. Stop trying to play follow the leader. Do something genius. If you spend your time making more waves and less time trying to catch one that is over your head, you have a lot better chance of surfing all the way to the beach. It may be easy to look at successful marketing and say “I can do that, too” but the odds are overwhelmingly against you. We trained and experienced marketers stacked the cards a long time ago as we earned our battle scars. We have been there, and we have done that. There are a lot of guys like me who spent 100 hours per week for years of our lives studying, practicing, learning, and tapping into every resource available to crush the competition of our clients. There is simply no way to beat us at our own game, so instead, you must create your own rules. Make your own waves. If you want to do it yourself, do not even try to do what everybody else is doing. You do not have the same resources as the competition, so don’t try to market as if you do. Take a serious inventory of your strategy and what resources you have at your disposal to implement that strategy. Stop trying to figure out how to do what the others are doing and get serious about what makes you different and better.

Tips for Overcoming Imitation Marketing

Try sitting in a quiet and dark room for an hour and think about what makes you different. Bring a voice recorder to take notes. Repeat this as often as you can. Read more books, blogs, and do everything you can to exercise your brain. The more you use it the more creative you will become. Read my blog. It really has a lot of great brain food to boost up your creativity. Start blogging! Read these really good reasons to blog and also read about how blogging improves intelligence. Seriously … go do it and stop trying to make excuses. This is for your benefit, after all. This is intended to help you increase your marketing talent.

Get really serious about what you are doing and stop letting yourself become comfortable. If you are going up against professional marketers, you are going to have to get serious with your marketing creativity, and it just doesn’t come naturally … it takes a lot of hard work. I get paid to make my clients successful, and if you want a piece of any market I am in, you had better brew another pot of coffee and plan to stay up all night.

Go sit in that quiet place and think really hard about how you are going to do something that nobody else is doing, and start figuring out how to make some waves. If you are not up to it, you should start getting settled with the lackluster results of “imitation marketing”, and be ready to take some heavy risks of failure. My hope for you is that you will try harder than ever, and take some of my tips. Otherwise, hire me to do the work for you and go get some rest … this marketing stuff is exhausting!

The Lazy Internet Culture: A Culture of Internet Marketing

Do You Understand Global? — Do You Understand Globalization?

The Internet has created a lot of change in culture around the world. It is not true for everybody, but on a large scale, globalization and greater awareness of the world is a reality. People learned more about the other side of this planet in the past decade than in all those thousands of years prior to the Internet. We have embraced other cultures that we were not previously aware of, and we have blended into a larger culture … the Internet culture. The Internet truly has been instrumental in creating the more global society we know today.

I am an American. I live within about an hour drive from the geographical center of the continental United States. I am about as far away from another country as you can be while within the USA boundaries. At the same time, I would estimate that I have more experience in dealings outside of the USA than 99.9 percent of United States citizens. Much of that is due to the Internet, but not entirely. I have traveled extensively, and I have spent time in many other countries. I have done business in countries all around the world, and learned a lot of interesting things about many cultures. I guess you may call me “worldly” based on my experiences, but I have learned more about people and cultures by using the Internet than in my travels. I should perhaps also add that it has provided me with a unique view on Americans and American Work Ethic vs. Globalization.

The Lazy Internet Culture and Internet Marketing

It seems that the Internet has a downside. Actually, the Internet has a few downsides, but I want to address a particular one. I want to address the culture of laziness that the Internet has made widely available. It is a lazy culture of believing that the Internet will fix everything, and that it is a simple place to earn a living. After all, who wouldn’t love to sit back and watch money flow in all night and day for doing nothing, and risking nothing? That is how the Internet is viewed by a frighteningly large number of people.

This really is a problem, and it really does have an affect on your business future! It has an affect on how people view their jobs, and it creates a laziness with a backlash that we cannot even quantify as of yet.

A Story of Our Internet Culture

I received a call a couple days ago that sincerely troubled me. I actually get a lot of calls like this, but I will share this particular one with you. The woman on the other end of the line asked me “how much does a website cost?” I have been answering this question for over a decade, but the absurdity is getting worse. The woman wanted to know what it would cost her to get what she wants. I needed more information, because after all, websites are not created equally … not even close. An ecommerce website with seven digits of monthly traffic will not cost the same as a novice site invisible to Google by the kid who just took his first high school computing class. If you really want to know how much a successful website will cost, without any clue about how it will succeed, my easy answer is “fifty-two squillion dollars and thirty four cents” (plus a fresh pot of coffee and a carton of cigarettes). Read “How Much does a Website Cost?” if you want a more defined look at the variables involved.

I asked her what kind of website she needs, what she will be offering, and what her goals are. She told me that she wanted to sell travel, and she wanted to earn between $1,000-$2,000 per month. Please note that I don’t market for hobbies … I market for businesses. This was clearly not a client that I would accept, but I wanted to help her with some guidance anyway. She seemed really earnest in wanting to do something, but she was extremely confused. So, we talked for a bit. I did not charge her a penny.

I came to discover that she did not yet have a service to offer. She was looking into an opportunity to sell a travel service. The company she had been considering offered a package for $399 with a website and everything she would require to make the money she needed and wanted. She was actually coming to me for comparison shopping. She thought maybe I could offer something for less than $399 that would earn her $1,000-$2000 per month. (Note: I do not deal in hundreds.) She really felt interested in the opportunity the company offered. I did not want to hurt her hopes, but I was just dying to know how she thought she would stand out beyond 672 million other results in a Google search for travel, with a budget under $400. I wanted to know her angle. I also really had to know whether she had heard of Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, Hotels.com, or the others. I wanted to hear how she planned to get her piece of that market without any sense of a marketing budget, and without any travel industry experience. Don’t judge me just yet. I was nice about each of my questions … I was sincerely nice.

All of the sudden, the topic changed. When I asked about how she would target her audience for selling travel, she was at a loss. I guess she got a bit scared when she realized it would be kind of hard to earn a living selling travel to her friends and family. Then she wanted to know about marketing her line of perfume. No, not just perfume, but wedding perfume. Wow, this was a big shift from travel. She wants to market a very targeted perfume, specifically for a Christian woman on her wedding day. Really, she had a good case for it, too. The story was complete with things a nun had taught her as a young lady. She is ready for targeted marketing. Well, except for the fact that the target is like shooting a pea with a spitball at 100 kilometers.

Please see my point here. I hear a lot of stories about the next fantastic idea every day. Sometimes it is a new idea, and sometimes it is a person who just wants a piece of an existing market. Many times, it is just somebody looking for a way to get out of a job or to increase their lot in life, without any focus whatsoever. In nearly every instance, it is a person or corporation who thinks they have what it takes to be a success. They think this right up to the point of going broke trying to prove it. Sometimes they get lucky and find somebody who will tell them the truth before they waste a bunch of time and money. It is the lucky ones who find somebody to be honest and let them know it will not be as easy as the advertisement they just read about the Internet being their new savior.

I am usually pretty abrupt about things like this by giving an Internet marketing reality check. I felt really kind toward this woman. I guess I just needed to know more about her hopes, and I wanted to try my best to understand the mentality of people and what they respond to. I wanted to have a feel for people again … real people … like the ones struggling with hopes that they secretly believe are foolish but really want to hold onto. I wanted to feel somebody’s hopes, without just immediately crushing them with the truth. I wanted to let her down softly and not just be the everyday brutally honest Murnahan.

Three Lazy Internet Marketing Categories

I want to offer my views of three very sad categories of people I find in my career in Internet marketing. These three lazy categories of people that the Internet culture has created are as follows:

Type One: They heard the Internet is a great place to earn more money. This is a common message delivered by people trying to rip somebody off. It is so common that I would categorize it as the most destructive factor of the Internet. The majority of Internet users falling into this trap do not understand business, marketing, or even conceptualize earning a lot of money. They just know that they hear a whole lot of talk about making a ton of money, and websites … and there was something else. All they really heard was “money” and “website”. The rest was just filed off as something they did not need to know. They deeply believe that there actually is a quick and easy road to riches, and they just have to keep looking under every rock until they find it. There is a big belief that “somebody is getting rich the easy way, and it may as well be me.” What these sad folks will never grasp is that if anybody is getting rich easy, it is the one who sold you that delusion. The truth is that they are usually not worth the paper they are printed on.
Type Two: They already tried to use the Internet for a business, and it failed. This usually happens when somebody fails to implement due diligence. They did everything they heard would work, and they still failed miserably. Their business did not grow, and they lost every penny they spent. This is a sad category to me, because it is the kind I may have actually been able to help if they came to me earlier. There really is a huge marketplace on the Internet. Success is attainable if you have a business with a really good Internet marketing plan. If you are in this category, I wish you the best. If you ever want to try to do it better than before, I will be delighted to visit with you about a solid marketing plan with real numbers.
Type Three: They keep hearing about the Internet and are curious, but they are paralyzed by fears. They do not want to make the wrong decisions, so they make no decisions at all. They do what is comfortable, and they are afraid to push the marketing go button.

How Can I Call Internet Marketing Culture Lazy?

People who have followed my blog or my career for a while realize that I have been very successful in my line of work. Many also realize that I took it on the chin for the small guys about two years ago. I took some big losses in 2009 by standing up for people like this. It caused a loss to my annual income of more than an average twenty Americans earn per year, and postponed a planned 2012 retirement. That happened when huge corporate suppliers and clients alike started laying people off and ceasing services that I sold to my clients. I was a stand-up guy when they needed a stand-up guy. I feel mostly good about my decisions, and never regret holding integrity above profits.

I have always had a bit larger view of the Internet than average, because I provide the services that a lot of Internet service providers sell to their customers. I was not a bastard when I perhaps should have been a bastard the most. When I talked to the woman in the conversation above, I wanted to get back to understanding these people who have hopes without common sense getting in the way. After all, I created a massively successful Internet business back in 2000 with that same positive spirit. Fortunately, I also owned a 13 year old marketing company at the time.

There has been a lot of change in the world since I started my wholesale Internet services company. It was not easy then, and it is even harder to get a good foothold now. The opportunity is greater than ever, but it is incredibly irresponsible to start a new business with no budget, no marketing plan, and nothing but a huge set of blinders on to keep you from seeing anything but a carrot of hope in the distance. Success does not work that way.

What will make you different? I have an idea! Try some marketing talent. If you don’t have marketing talent, you better have money to hire it out.

A Positive Note About Internet Marketing Laziness

I want to leave you with a positive thought about the laziness and easy-money attitudes about Internet marketing. I have been in this industry long enough to see a lot, and I have had a lot of success at it. I have also worked very hard for it. If it helps you to feel any better at all, I will show you three little kids who will never in my lifetime be allowed to think the Internet is an easy place to earn money. These are my children, and I love them too much to destroy them with such nonsense.

Marketing Cost vs. Marketing Value

If you make your price the first priority in a cost to value comparison, you may want to reconsider. Cost is a fast way to get a lot of public attention, but it can also provide a negative net return. Showing a low cost has a solid place in some markets, but consider evaluating the cost and value propositions you present to your market. If you are building upon only an audience of “glancing prospects”, you may miss your best customers in the process. What I call glancing prospects are the ones who are out for cost, and that is the primary factor in their decision making. They glance in your direction and give little consideration to anything but how much it will cost. You may like these customers if you are content to offer the lowest cost, but they are also often not return customers or loyal to your brand. It is not just because you didn’t provide value, but because value is not what they were seeking. Thus, they never realized your value.

There are different kinds of buyers in any market, and there are still many who consider value over price. Even while shopping for identical products, many people will consider the value of buying it from somebody they trust or find other benefits from. It takes more effort to find value-shoppers than to find price-shoppers, but they are worth every bit of it. They will be back, and they will tell their friends.

I will use my industry as an example, but it is important to consider this in any industry. I sell marketing. In my case, value is all that really matters. Return on investment (ROI) is what makes sense to my clients. What they spend is not what matters but rather what they will receive for their money … which is more money. Profit is what my clients want, and they will do what it takes to get it. At the same time, I also attract a lot of “glancing prospects” and “lookers” without any intention of seeking value. Do you want to guess which one I consider important? That’s right … I want the ones who want the ROI and look closer to understand the value of my services.

Cheap Marketing and Low Value

Business people are cost-conscious, and more now than ever. Ironically, this often leads them to mistakes that sabotage their business efforts. As a reaction to their fears, companies will often drop their prices and subsequently drop their value. Marketing is the easiest cost to cut, but also the fastest way to reduce profit and go out of business. I watch companies all the time that neglect the value of their marketing, and try to use a cost proposition in place of a value proposition. It is a short-term cashflow bandage that becomes their undoing.

You can call me crazy, but I am smart enough to get dressed before going to the grocery store. In fact, I can be pretty downright bright, on a good day. I guess I am not smart enough to see the “wisdom” in some people’s reasoning of comparing cost above value. Some will try to weigh the cost with value, but often use completely flawed metrics for comparison. I see people all the time who do not understand how dangerous bargain hunting can be when it comes to their marketing, or with other purchases.

How Valuable is Marketing?

Marketing is what makes companies money. Marketing is how customers find companies and companies find customers. Marketing, in some manner or another, is the only way a company will earn a profit. Marketing should not have a net cost, but rather a profit gain. Marketing should be viewed as an investment, and not an expense. Seeking the lowest cost for something so value-driven seems like the absolute absence of logic. Looking for value, on the other hand, is brilliant.

Do People Really Seek Cheap Marketing?

Yes, a lot of people ask questions about the cost of marketing and rates for marketing-related services. At least that is what my website visitor logs show me. Perhaps you see the same in your industry. I am including a list of cost-related things people searched for and found my blog. Some of them are pretty amusing. People even found my blog searching to find how much it costs to join Facebook.

One of the first things a person in my field often hears is “how much will it cost?” I weed these out fast, because when cost is the question and value is secondary, usually the person asking fits into one of two categories as follows:

They do not have enough money to afford quality marketing. If they do not have the money to do things right, they will never be pleased … ever. It is the same kind of client who tries to tell the consultant what to do rather than accept the consultation they pay to receive.
They ask about cost because it is the question they know best. They assume that a lower investment comes with a lower risk, but this is really not the case. This assumption places the value equation completely backward. Without value, the cost of marketing does not matter. It is not worth it at any cost, and can often have disastrous results.

Similarly, in your line of work, you will likely find that if your prospective customers recognize the value of what you offer, they will often find a way to deal with the cost.

Marketing Value and Cost Consideration: Do You Buy Price Tags?

I have never bought a price tag, but I have purchased a lot of things with price tags on them. Sure, some people buy price tags … literal price tags. What I mean is whether you look at an item and decide that you want it and then look at the price tag, or do you look at the price tag to decide whether you want it. Think about your customers and how they may address this same question. Value-seeking customers will decide whether they want or need something, acknowledge that they want or need it, and then look at the price tag. Cost-seeking customers will look at the price tag and if the price is “right” decide whether it was something they were even interested in buying. They love to look, but they hate to part with money more than they enjoy what they receive in return. NOTE: For this customer, the “right” price is highly subjective to poor interpretation.

Cost, Rates, and Value: Lookers Are Everywhere!

Glancing prospects are very easy to lure. I can drag them in by the truckload. Just have a look at these recent searches people performed to land here at my blog, and then consider how many of these I will likely do business with. Don’t get me wrong, because I like when people ask about cost. It is a buying sign and tells me they are in the market. The fact remains that when somebody asks me about cost before understanding value, I normally tell them kindly that they are simply not ready for what I offer. What I offer is profit!

There are enough people asking about cost, but it is funny to find that a comparatively few people ask questions of value. Those are the people I want, and I hope you can see the value in this, too!

Note that my list of “What Cheap People Search For” is based on actual terms people typed into a search engine and clicked on my blog. I couldn’t make this up if I tried. You may not be as amused as I am, but somebody actually wanted to know “how much does a sheep cost” … really, a sheep. Darn, I don’t sell sheep. You can bet that if I did sell sheep, they wouldn’t be cheap sheep.

Marketing as Usual: More Money and Less Exposure

I 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.