Peggy Murnahan of Mad Eliza's
I am excited to share my wife’s audition video for Food Network Challenge. This was not an open casting call. A Food Network associate producer recently contacted Peggy to ask if she is interested in competing on Food Network Challenge. Of course, she was brought to tears with the excitement of competing in this prestigious cake decorating competition.
Food Network found our company, Mad Eliza’s Cakes and Confections on the Internet. As a marketing guy, it is my job to be sure opportunities like this come to my clients. This client is one which is very dear to me.
Peggy tells the story of “Rocker Girl and Buttercream Boy” and what brought her to opening Mad Eliza’s Cakes and Confections. It is not all glitz and glamor, but it is a real story of how she found herself in the cake business, and how her passion led her to master the art of cakes.
January 2nd is my birthday, and Peggy made a birthday cake which matches well with my personal brand. I have often said that “I take coffee and cigarettes and turn them into better social media marketing and SEO.” I say that, because I consider them my greatest marketing tools. The construction of my birthday cake is played out in her audition video.
I am proud of this domestic “Rocker Girl”, so I am trying to spread her word. Please add your comments here on my blog and at YouTube.com, to say hi to Peggy, and to tell Food Network why they need more “Rocker Chick and Buttercream Boy”. Yes, she actually called me her “Buttercream Boy”!
Now for The Audition Outtakes!
I spent much of my birthday helping to encourage Peggy, and capture things which make her special. She was nervous as can be, as you will see in the video outtakes. These are the goofy pieces we held back from the official audition video. Enjoy!
Tomorrow, I will share the significance of the coffee and cigarettes, and explain why the best SEO and social media marketing tools are not what you may have been led to believe. Be sure to subscribe to my blog by RSS or email and always be up to date with Murnahany things!
Car dealers are infamous for their marketing short-sightedness, so they make a great social media example. New and used car sales organizations live or die in short bursts of business, and it creates huge anxiety for them – but this is not just about car dealers. This principle applies to many industries. I’m just using our auto-peddling worst nightmare as an example so we can all relate.
In the auto dealer scenario, as with many other retail industries, the inventory is often financed using a “floor plan”, and if the inventory is not selling, the bank will make it very uncomfortable for them. This creates a challenge that is not so unlike the urgency felt in any other businesses. The sales must keep coming, or somebody is going to need some creative answers.
It causes a lot of companies to focus more closely on an eight percent increase in new business and overlook the eighty percent increase they could achieve if they look ahead and give people reasons to buy from them.
Topeka, Kansas has fourteen pages of car dealers and related automotive ads in the telephone book Yellow Pages. I had to ask my wife if we have a telephone book, and I was delighted to find that we actually do. I do not know how many car dealers still advertise in the Topeka newspaper, because I do not subscribe. The last time I saw a newspaper, it was a lot thinner than it used to be. The auto industry was hit hard by the economy in the last few years, and car dealers sought a better way to reach their market, just like everybody else.
It is not surprising that there are at least half as many results for car dealers in Topeka, Kansas returned in a Google search than there are residents of Topeka. A car dealer without a website would be like a car dealer without cars for sale.
Everybody knows that the Internet is where people buy things, right? The automotive industry caught on, and all of the sudden the job of Internet marketing shifted from the part-time receptionist to the “Internet Sales Manager”. That is often the fancy title for the guy who fiddles with a computer all day and tries to sell cars online. He emails his buddies and asks them to come and test drive a car, just so he looks busier. He is afraid for his job, and it is really important to show the boss that the Internet is a good investment.
After a few more doughnuts, he will put the latest finance rates on Facebook. After lunch, he will plan to tell Twitter users how he can save them a ton of money if they get there for the big tent sale this weekend. The successful car dealers are on Facebook. At least that is what they said at the last Car Dealer Internet Sales Manager’s Convention. Wait, maybe it was LinkedIn … I forget. In any case, getting the latest advertised specials out to the people is of the highest importance, right?
This Marketing Style is Not Limited to Car Dealers
This mentality is not only about car dealers, so make no mistake. I am just using them as a fun example. If you read carefully and think about this, you can probably relate it to many other industries.
What drives me absolutely crazy is that I watch far too many companies treat their business like my example of the Internet Sales Manager urgently trying to get the boss off his back. They do all that they know to make their advertising visible and be sure that everybody knows their name when they are looking for a car.
Companies frantically try to shorten their sales funnel while the importance of brand recognition and brand loyalty lose ground to immediate needs.
You could blame the Internet Sales Manager, but much of his focus is imposed by managers above him, the general manager, or dealership owner. Dealers are car guys, not marketing guys, and not Web Guys. Under the pressure of a competitive market, they completely lose sight of what motivates people to buy things.
Following the car dealer theme, many companies will look at the Internet the way they look at the big inflatable gorilla and colorful balloons dealerships put out on Saturdays to make passing traffic do a double-take (and if they are lucky, crash their car right out front). These are all fine and dandy, but they lack the sustainable value of social media.
These companies usually have about 90 friends on Facebook and perhaps 14 Twitter friends to tweet stuff to. They are so wrapped up with search engine optimization (SEO) that they never understood how SEO and social media are inextricably paired with the more challenging factors of understanding what their customers want, need, expect, deserve, and demand.
They neglect that social media makes SEO a whole lot easier and more effective. They do it the hard way and just know that with enough SEO, the Internet will deliver more hot leads and they will sell more cars – and it will, but it lacks forethought.
They try to learn from their peers who are making the same mistakes, and then wonder why it did not work – while overlooking what their customers are already trying to teach them.
Is Your “Car Dealership” Being Creative?
Thinking is often underrated and undervalued. Marketing takes a lot of effort, and the numbers matter. What you do with the numbers also matters. Instead of just looking forward to the next email blast or rewriting your h1 tags, it may be useful to think about a social media strategy.
Everybody is using tactics, but strategy takes real marketing talent, creativity, and looking beyond the next 30 days. It takes guts, and regardless what others tell you is an easy fix, guts are where success grows.
Consider your own examples in place of the car dealership. Have you thought about why people love their cars? Have you considered holding a poker run with your Facebook fans and friends? Have you thought how cool it would be to integrate Foursquare when you do a scavenger hunt with potential buyers? Have you ever thought of holding a ride-along with a race car driver at your local race track? Did you ever consider that you could build more incoming links if you were the first to craft a story about something important to your industry … important to the people who care about your industry? Did you ever think to monitor social media to see if somebody is talking about your dealership, your products, or your industry?
I started thinking about this after two different instances of friends in the automotive industry who told me of two different car dealerships in the Topeka area in need of a better marketing plan. I looked at their online efforts and found lack of strategy. It appeared that they approach their online efforts and offline efforts as two completely divergent markets, rather than integrating them. Although there were some pretty websites, they were hard to navigate and lacking a call to action. Worse yet, they display their companies about as interesting as a car salesman in a leisure suit rushing across the lot to shake my hand.
Maybe it is time for me to perform a social media and SEO case study on a Topeka, Kansas car dealer. I think it could be really interesting to share what would happen when one of them led the way. On the other hand, in Topeka, we have what I see as the worst stereotype of car dealers. I would probably do better to poke my eyes out with a Chevy bumper than try and explain something car dealers refuse to hear.
Save your dealership – stop acting like a car dealer!
To Car Dealers: Car dealers always express urgency to buy today, so let’s spin the table and see how urgent you are about increasing your car dealership’s profit using effective social media and SEO. Subscribe to my blog today and I’ll let you read it for $0 down and $0 per month.
UPDATE: I have a funny update to this blog post. Shortly after publishing this, I received a call from a Topeka area car dealer who was referred to my services. The man on the other end of the line wanted to hire me to actually work for and work at the dealership … selling cars. It seems that somebody bumped their head … really hard.
I told him what I do (marketing consulting), and he kind of had that “duh, I don’t understand” glazed over effect. Many people just don’t understand that they will not improve their dealership’s new and used car sales volume until they stop trying to sell cars the way their father, and his father sold cars.
The world has changed, and car dealers seem to think they can hold back the change. This is why so many of them are going out of business. They do not want good advice. They just want another person to explain how “right” they are. It is a sad loss for them.
This was just such an absurdity that I had to share it with you. It is a particularly disturbing instance of ignoring good business principles of using the right tool for the job. It is also a perfect instance of gross underestimation of the value and cost of proper Website development and secure Web hosting, especially where it relates to the medical profession.
Let us say that you have a medical consulting business and you need a Website. You provide your medical consulting services with an emphasis on electronic delivery and hosting of the doctors’ Policy and Procedure Manuals. This is a highly important and legally required facet of a medical practice, so common logic would dictate that you want to do things the right way when it comes to your Website. After all, the Internet will be an integral asset to your business model.
Although your Website is highly important to your consultancy, you want to keep as much profit as possible. One way to do this is cut cost. This is fine so far, but here is where the plan shatters to pieces. You assume that Web developers and Web hosts are basically all the same. Your logic and experience has told you that the main difference is in their cost. After all, a Website can be saved from a MS Word document.
Fine, I will continue the humor, for now, that Website developers are the same thing wherever you go, but medical consultant services are different, for certain. I can prove that to you in the next few paragraphs. Let us test this medical consultant agency in Topeka, Kansas.
One may imagine that the medical practice would not think it very responsible for their consultant to cut corners with their data, but some people find saving a dime more important than serving their clients’ needs. In this case, it was so extreme that while sitting at the table with me, he pulled out a Blackberry and took several minutes to try and find the email that another company sent because he thought their Web hosting was a couple dollars cheaper. I tried to explain that the time he spent doing that was more costly than he stood to save. Just my time alone was ringing up at hundreds of dollars per hour, and from the way he talked, his must have been worth thousands, because he towered over me in business savvy.
Now, I gave him the benefit of my doubts while he tried to be frugal. Normally, that is a perfect oil and water mix in the medical community, but we are not talking about medicine. We are talking Websites, so pretty much any unskilled labor can handle this … right? Well, that is just how I heard it from the man himself. I will probably be called a bully and put down for this, but it is just exactly how it happened, so I am just the messenger. I am the unskilled labor who wasted a few hundred dollars worth of my consulting time with a guy who had criticized others in my field for misspellings in one breath, but yet wanted to be cheap in the next. Notice his comment about using an “unskilled laborer to continue doing this manually using word” . Below is the verbatim content of the email I received after our meeting. Be sure to read my reply to understand how the cow really eats the cabbage. You are welcome to contact me with your replies before contracting with a medical consulting service in Topeka, Kansas for hosted Policy and Procedures manuals.By the way, the cost two of his brilliant manuals would cover the cost I quoted him for the Website. He expects to sell 6,000 of them!
Mark,
I am quite confident that Phase 1 of this project will consume more than 50MB of space. There is nothing in the contract that says what the price will be if it exceeds that amount. As I stated during our meeting I have no need for search engine optimitization. This is a form bid and in my opinion does not reflect the conversation that we discussed today. Second, if this is cost of the first phase I am quite wary of the second phase you will present. For phase one as a straight informational site I have bids much lower than this from reputatable companies in town. The second phase of this is the only part that I am having difficulty managing virtually and at this expense I am assuming that I will be able to hire a unskilled laborer to continue doing this manually using word. I understand that you are not the loss leader but this is far overpriced for what my needs are.
At this point it is up to you to decide whether or not you are willing to try to gain my business. If not, Thank you for your time.
I am not the vision of the perfect salesman, and I never hope to be. I am, however, at the top of my field in Internet marketing, search engine optimization, and many related technologies. I really wanted to take this on the chin, but I realized that others could benefit from the understanding I share here. My verbatim reply to his email is as follows:
Douglas,
An average disc space estimate for a well produced marketing Website without ecommerce would not be expected to exceed 10Mb, and 50Mb is quite an oversubscription. Otherwise, I would have written it as more space, because space is not a matter of a lot of cost. As a wholesale Web hosting company, we have a quite broad view of this. If you needed 300Mb, I would not flinch to offer it at the same price, so to this, we have an answer. We will host gigs for less than most people will host megs, if that is what is needed.
You are correct in that this is a form bid. That is because it represents an advertised price leader of nearly half of our standard minimum job for custom development. This is also a price dramatically lower than the industry average for the same thing. Perhaps you have found lower offers, but that also comes with its own hazards. I have only encountered one other reputable professional in this field in Topeka, and that is Spinnaker’s Mike Burgess (http://www.spinnakerweb.com) whom I would also recommend visiting with before you make a decision.
I do not believe in delivering a product that is sub-par. I simply will not bastardize my industry or harm my client’s interests with bad results. I gain a lot of business from former clients of developers who do things the wrong way. In an instance of this, I recently had a call from a man with a lawsuit from a rights management company because he could not produce proof of his right to use the images he had on his Website. They were suing him for many times what he paid for his Website. This is the site owner’s responsibility, so be aware of this and other potential liabilities by hiring unskilled labor. If you Google the term “image copyright infringement” you will find my article right about the top of the page … it is a worthwhile read. Unskilled labor produces unskilled results, and you cannot expect professional results by hiring the first kid who raises his hand. That is good for hammers and shovels, but not so good where your business interests are at stake and legalities matter.
My reputation for producing quality results is far more important than my reputation for generosity, or even for being the most likable guy with a great sales pitch. You work with professionals every day, so I hope that you can appreciate my emphasis on quality and professional results. Just as there are people willing to produce Websites for the salary of a store clerk, there are also those of us who do so for a specialized surgeon’s salary. When business results are expected from a hobbyist developer, the aftershock is often similar to hiring the store clerk to perform your surgery. I am a skilled professional, and if or when you ever find yourself in need of such, I will be delighted to assist you. Alternately, we provide do-it-yourself Website templates at no additional charge with any hosting package. I simply had the impression that we were discussing a custom Website solution.
Best regards,
Mark Aaron Murnahan
YourNew.com, Inc.
Direct: *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE* http://www.yournew.com
Let’s call it a lesson learned, Douglas. if you want to sell a hosted policy and procedures manual to the medical field, you may want to take the Website and Web hosting more seriously before you take it to your clients.
For my readers, be very concerned when you go to the doctor. Ask questions! Although there are many laws to protect you, the truth is that medical privacy is limited by the doctor’s office understanding of technology, which too often comes from people like the guy I met today.
Author Mark Murnahan is the Chairman and CEO of YourNew.com, Inc. and provides SEO consulting services to companies and non-profit organizations. Mark Murnahan may be reached toll free at 866-A-Web-Guy (*REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*) for consultation.
Perhaps you have seen ads with headlines like “Increase Business Online in 60 Seconds” and you know in an instant that it is another scam (at least I do). That sounds silly, right? They are usually pushing some miracle cure for your business, but those of us participating in the real world know that nothing comes from nothing.
I belong to a face-to-face business networking group in my hometown of Topeka, Kansas. I will attend our weekly meeting in about three hours, and visit with 25 area business people and their guests. The group is a chapter of BNI, and it is based on sharing a mutual business ideology that what comes around goes around. It is a good place to build business relationships and receive qualified referral business from fellow members.
Within this group, there is only allowed one person from each profession, and I am the Internet guy. Each week, we have a 90 minute meeting, and as a portion of the meeting, each member is given the floor for a 60 second brief on their business and any target audience they are seeking. Each week, I am tasked with creating 60 seconds worth of valuable information to market my business to the group and their potential referral base.
When you are forced to condense your business to just 60 seconds, it can really help you to be creative. However, a marketing fact that many people never grasp or act upon is that brief moment in time where you actually have a person’s full attention. it only lasts a moment, and average Internet users will offer you less time if you do not grab their attention quickly.
I am still not sure what I will say in my 60 seconds this morning, but I am pretty certain that it will make the points as follows:
We are all aware of the Internet, and its broad reach.
Most of us know that the Internet is the best marketing method available.
I will wing it. I am a man of words, and I have been a member (and the current Vice President) of the group long enough that I can always recycle some good material from the past.
The point I want to make here is that you only have a short time to deliver your message. Internet users will not give you much time to make a quick point. Be sure that you deliver it to them right, and right now. This actually makes it possible to Increase business online in 60 seconds. If there was fine print, it would have to mention that, although you are actually increasing your business online in 60 seconds, it will take you some time to prepare for that minute. It should also say that this is best implemented with the help of an Internet marketing professional, like me. 🙂
Author Mark Murnahan is the Chairman and CEO of YourNew.com, Inc. and provides SEO consulting services to companies and non-profit organizations. Mark Murnahan may be reached toll free at 866-A-Web-Guy (*REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*) for consultation.
