Business in General Archives - Page 2 of 25 by Mark Murnahan

Vision: If You Don’t Have it, You Can’t See It!

If it ever seems you’ve tried “everything” and it is not working out the way you planned, there is probably a good reason. A very common cause for a plan to fail is lack of planning.

Consider something as complex as a space ship for a moment. Space ships don’t always launch as planned, but they have an overall good record, considering their challenges. That’s because of careful planning. It has to begin somewhere, and it begins with a vision.

It is more than a coincidence that most successful companies have a vision statement. Those visions can change, but there should always be a vision. Vision is what guides people and keeps them on the right path to achievements.

You have undoubtedly heard somebody express the importance of setting goals and envisioning the outcome you want. It can sometimes sound far-fetched, and even a bit hokey. If you reverse-engineer this notion of having vision, the reality may not be as you expected.

I want to explain why those people who talk about having vision are not just promoting a dream world filled with unicorns and cute kittens. It is not just about dreaming up a hallucination, either.

The reason it is important to have vision, whether as a huge corporation or as an individual, is that it becomes a basis for your goals and expectations. With vision, you will begin to do the things that bring you closer to the desired outcome. Your vision is what helps you to develop a subconscious reflex to do things to affect the results you want.

Vision Doesn’t Work for Skeptics

There are a lot of skeptics who may consider the value of vision as hogwash. We are each skeptical at some point, and to varying degrees. Being a bit apprehensive about a positive vision and creating goals is what preserves us from failure. If you don’t hope for much, you are less likely to be let down. That kind of apprehension also preserves us from success.

I believe that lack of vision is one of the greatest causes for failure in business and personal pursuits alike. The fear of creating a vision and doing what it takes to follow that vision is simply more than some people can overcome. I have witnessed this for decades as a marketing consultant.

To a skeptic, the people who talk about vision are often the ones who somehow “got lucky”. They hype the whole idea that everybody should have a dream for their life. It must sound totally crazy to a skeptic. For the skeptical type, the very notion of “vision” as it applies to getting what you want probably sounds like some kind of mystical new age idea complete with smoking the wrong stuff, waving a magic wand, and other hokus pokus that makes people want to go chase unicorns.

I’m talking about the real world. This is not about some fancy notion that if you can dream it that the obstacles will magically fade away and you’ll get everything you ask for. That’s usually not going to happen, but you can definitely get a lot closer.

I realize that many people do not want to be inspired, but instead, they want to find their own inspiration. I will not pretend to inspire you, but I do believe I can show you a couple points on the map to help you find your own inspiration. Here’s a nutshell story of why I know and strongly believe in the value of having long-term vision. I hope you’ll find ways to relate and think about instances that worked for you.

A True Story of Vision

There was a time when I was not expected to make it very far in life. I was frustrated with school, and my grades showed it clearly. I was bored to tears, and I hated sitting in a classroom to be drilled with the same information, over and over again. I had previously been a top student, but my teenage vision obviously did not include my grade point average.

This was hard for my mother. Despite her previously high hopes and continued business mentoring, my future was falling apart. I was becoming an outcast, and a disappointment. She was giving up on me. All of the sudden, I was not just letting myself down, it was tearing my mother apart. I did not feel good about that.

When I was 15 years old, I left school to start a company. Throughout my earliest career years, I was a bit fixated on somehow making my mother proud. It became a very clear vision for me. I imagined how it would be for her to not look at me as her biggest failure. Of course, at 15 years old, I only really knew one way, and that was to prove my lack of formal education would not hold me back and I could be successful in business.

My vision took me far beyond expectations. I did very well in business by fixing under-marketed companies in exchange for ownership equity. Ten years after leaving school, I was comfortably retired and enjoying Mother’s pride … and a bit of my own. My vision was complete.

Caution: Completed Visions Are Like Poison

Once my earlier vision was completed, I became a 25 year old retired bachelor with no vision of my future. I dated the wrong ladies, I made the wrong investments, and I connected with the wrong business partners. Things pretty much fell apart, and I needed a new vision to get back on a good track.

I discovered that without a continued plan – without a vision – life simply would not take me where I intended. It became obvious that it would be impossible to get what I wanted if I couldn’t define it.

I eventually became inspired again. My new vision came in the form of another lady. Call me a ladies man. She wanted to quit her mid-level job in the banking industry to grow her sideline Internet services company. We merged companies and I went back to work with a vision. There was nothing easy about it. It took a lot of time and effort, but the vision came to life.

This vision worked, because there was a goal. We expanded the goal as needed, and our vision was flexible. It turned out that we took a website development company and spun it into one of the largest wholesale providers of Internet access and web hosting in the world. Yes, a high school dropout can have a successful vision, too!

Visions Should Be Flexible and Failure is Always an Option

Years later, I had a vision of sports car racing. I bought some brand new Corvettes, spent a quarter million dollars per year, and invested countless hours of hard work and training in that vision. It was very important to me. I got quite good at it, too.

When I consider all of the things in my life that require vision, auto racing has got to be on the extreme side. It would be nearly impossible to make it around a two and a half mile race course with 14 turns in under a minute and forty seconds without a vision.

Since the vision of our Internet company was as developed as we thought it would ever be, we created a new vision of selling the company and opening an upscale bed and breakfast and racing school. It was a mutual vision to pursue our culinary talents and my racing passion. Indeed, my business vision had led me to a full-time career in automotive racing. But there was a curve in the road!

I want to note that failure is always an option! Failure can teach many valuable lessons. A person who has not failed, is missing those lessons.

Anybody who believes that failure is not an option is leaving a lot of their potential to waste. Having a substantial vision requires being willing to step outside your comfort zone, and until you do it, you’re missing out.

Consider it like this: Failure is a side-effect of success.

The crash of the economy was not good to us, and it changed our vision. Change can be a good thing, when you have vision. Following my wife, Peggy’s culinary passion, we opened a wildly successful bakery, Mad Eliza’s Cakes and Confections.

Racing ran off the track for a while, but guess what? The vision is still there!

The Best Visions Bend, But Don’t Break

With a well-conceived and longer term vision comes flexibility. By its very nature, vision should be flexible and open to changes. It is not a formula for instant success, but rather a guideline. The best vision will create an overall look at what is to come, but it is not a predefined paint-by-numbers view of the future.

What got me thinking about the importance of vision today is because I’ve noticed my long-term vision coming clearer, almost without even consciously recognizing it. My earlier vision began to drive me to focus on what I really want.

In December, I announced that I would stop accepting new marketing consulting clients in January. That was because I decided to stop trying to be great at everything, as a CEO, in order to focus on my best talents and the things I am most passionate about.

I realized that my refined vision is to work for a company I will love. I started imagining how it would feel to settle into a new job with great coworkers and a new home in a new city. Then I imagined how amazing it would be if that company was one that fits into my larger vision. That means a company that is involved in racing, has a race team, or would have a good case to sponsor a race team if their marketing success – based on my hard work – could justify it.

The vision involves racing, and it involves marketing. I’m not shopping for my next race car just yet, but with vision on my side, it’s definitely in the works.

Almost without even realizing it, my efforts began to focus on companies that I could believe in and where I could improve their vision and feel proud to bring them success. I found myself researching companies based on their vision, and how it would fit with mine.

I’ve developed my vision, and I’ve noticed that I am making many renewed efforts, both consciously and subconsciously, to make that vision come true. It may sound pretty lofty to some people to find a job they love with a company where they can feel devoted. What I know for certain is that without a vision, I would fall short of my best outcome.

My vision may not come out exactly as planned. It is flexible – and negotiable. Then again, I was somehow able to make my mother proud. So I’m going with it.

Great Visions Are Shared

When you have a vision that others can share, it builds synergy. The vision becomes larger than its individual parts. Sometimes the hardest part is to share your vision with others, for fear of being shot down.

You should feel proud of your vision. Some people simply don’t have any. You may be amazed by the outcome of sharing your vision with others. If you don’t feel good enough about it to share it with others, it probably just needs more development. Even if this is the case, vision is always best when it is shared.

So now I ask you, what is your vision? Please share it.

Pssst! Here are links to my résumé and a little more about me.

Photo Credits:
Through the Glass by GoRun26 via Flickr
Seeing Truly by Joel Penner via Flickr

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Marketing and Brand Consistency: Check Your Gargoyles

Check Your Branding Gargoyles

Your gargoyles say more about your brand than you may think. They are your front line. If your marketing doesn’t match, you’re asking for trouble.

I recently responded to a blog article written by Kay Ross, who wrote about the faces we put forward in a marketing message. Kay’s article is titled “In Your Marketing, To Thine Own Self Be True“, and it reminded me of many observations I have made about the overall feel of companies during my career, and personal encounters.

That “feel” of a company is what makes up a brand, and when it’s done well it involves every aspect of the company, and extends far beyond the marketing department. I want to share some thoughts about your brand, and I believe you will be able to relate to this from both a consumer and business viewpoint.

The topic which was addressed in Kay’s blog came from one of her subscribers who asked the question as follows: “Which is more important when communicating with your audience: say things you really want to say, or say things that people want to hear?”

Should there really be such a disparity between the two? If the marketing is reaching the appropriate audience, it should not have to be one or the other. The way I interpreted this question, it led me to imagine the question as whether it is acceptable to fake it in your marketing. If you know my brand at all, you can place your bets now about where I stand.

Let Them Love You, But Realize You Cannot Force Them

As I read that question, I immediately thought of something I once wrote titled “Polarize Your Audience and Stop Making Everybody Happy“. In that piece, I used examples of companies like Apple and Google, who understand their brand enough to stand behind it.

You will never make everybody love you – so don’t even try. Trying to be everything to everybody will only serve to dilute your brand integrity and create a “wishy-washy” brand message. People don’t like that in politics, and they don’t like it elsewhere, either. That doesn’t mean ignoring anyone or treating them badly … but you should realize there is always a good, better, and best customer for any company.

Instead of creating a false brand loyalty, I suggest looking closer for the ones who will find a connection with your brand, before you assume you should re-brand. You’ve got one brand to work with, so you should understand it well, and embrace it. Kay and I agree that it is important to know what you are about, and stick with it. I think most people would agree with that point, once they give it a little consideration.

Don’t Make it “Us Versus Them” … Make it “Us With Them”

Many companies struggle to strike a perfect balance between what others want from them, and what they are willing and capable of delivering. This means there is a gap between the two parties – the company and the consumer. In most cases, there is a huge gap, and it’s why you would be wasting your time to try and sell me knitting needles. This is exactly why it is extremely important for any company offering anything to anybody to realize the message I shared in an article titled ““Everybody” is Not Your Target Market!” Please feel free to read that thought provoking piece. This one will still be here when you get back.

Gaps Between Companies and Consumers

Shrinking that gap between the company and consumers is extremely important, but try to imagine it like another kind of relationship for a moment. When I was a single guy, I tried to make myself more attractive to ladies – but not just any ladies. I wanted a certain type who would want what I offered and understand my vision. I could have let it change me completely, but wouldn’t that eventually fail?

Try a Friendlier Gargoyle

I wanted the type who fit my offer just right. If I faked who I was, it would have potentially led me down a really ugly path of disillusioned ladies – ladies who would warn the other ladies – and it could have left me single even longer.

I fixed my hair just right, I shaved extra close, and I adapted to things like closing the bathroom door. That’s right – when I met my wife, Peggy, I would close the bathroom door if I needed to stink the place up. That doesn’t mean I’d go out of my way to hide the fact that I stink the place up sometimes … I just kept it a bit more courteous. I didn’t fart at the dinner table, either … I waited until we made it out the restaurant door.

Now imagine if I just held it until she left. Can you imagine how much gas and poo I would have held back? Then imagine if she had married me for all my amazing (but fake) charm. I mean, can you imagine finding a non-pooing, non-gaseous guy? She would have surely loved me even more, but what if I had sealed the deal based on that fakeness?

Wouldn’t she be disappointed later, when she found out that I can curl the bathroom paint? Wouldn’t she have really hated it once she realized that each of our three babies poo, too?

Now put that in terms of a company brand message. Even pooing companies with gas are charming and “perfect” to somebody. In the case of marketing, that usually means a lot of people. By reaching that perfect segment, you can encounter something I’ve said many times, and that is as follows:

I don’t try to please everybody, and that pleases some people very much.

Perception Shaping Versus Waiting to Poo

Shaping the perception of consumers is important, but letting your integrity slip just to tell them what they want to hear is not the right answer. I believe that each and every company can do a better job of closing the gap between the company and their ideal consumer. It requires research and paying close attention, and when companies can get out of their own way, that market research and paying attention serves them very well. What I refuse to advocate in is glazing over the things that make the company what it is, and creating a false perception that can later be discovered as such.

In the article by Kay Ross, she cited something I said in a piece titled “Great Marketing is Not About You … Hogwash!” In that article, I explained ways that is really is about you, and that the people of an organization are what makes it special.

About Those Gargoyles …

I want to share what I wrote in my response to Kay’s article. I’ll paraphrase, but I invite you to see her original article and the comments there, as well.

Is This Your Gargoyle?

My take-off, based on the article, was to address how company cultures spread throughout the company, and how valuable or destructive that can be. I based it on things I have seen over a long period of time, as a marketing consultant, a corporate officer, and a consumer. I suspect you can find instances where something similar has created an impression with you, about a company.

In my experience, if a company has a mean gargoyle as their gatekeeper, it is easy to expect it throughout the company. On the other hand, if that gargoyle is helpful and friendly, it is often a sign of the company’s culture – their brand. If it is faked in the marketing, it becomes obvious very quickly.

You can experience this right now, by simply considering how you feel about any given restaurant, retail store, doctor’s office, cellular provider, or any other brand experience you’ve had. Somebody set the brand feel in motion from the very start. Whether that came directly from the marketing department or elsewhere, it begins to forge your view of the company. If that brand message is inconsistent with your experience, it is easy to become very critical of the company. It can also become very enticing to share that feeling with others. Thus, it is wise to know your brand and not waiver from it.

Here is my longer answer, based on Kay’s blog:

I believe that the personality of a company shows through very clearly, and in many ways. If you try to cover it with a veil, it only serves a wasteful agenda, and I’ll get to that, but I’ll give an example first.

I very recently reached out to the senior vice president and CMO of a large and extraordinarily visible corporation. When I called for a follow-up and reached his assistant, I was met with a very friendly and helpful demeanor from his personal “gargoyle”.

In decades of dealing with everything from large corporations to small “mom and pop” companies, I have always found a strong similarity in the attitudes of people across a whole company … from top to bottom, and side to side. People adapt to their companies, and you can tell a lot about the company by how those people treat you.

Sure, it’s easy to discount the fact that the first impression sets an expected tone, which it does, but I find it to be true that the culture of a company spreads to all edges of the organization, and can seldom be faked very well.

Since I’m not citing broad statistics (although I could), you may imagine that I’m just imagining this, but consider your own experiences for a clearer picture.

When you look at it in this way, doesn’t it make good sense to show off the true culture of the company, rather than faking it? Although it can often influence products or services, that culture does not exist within the products or the services themselves. It exists in the people, and it becomes integrated across the company. It strongly influences their brand, regardless of what their marketing portrays.

When I say that trying to cover it up only serves a wasteful agenda, I look at it like this: If your company is not likable, and people don’t feel good about it, the company will probably never be able to buy enough faceless and nameless advertisements to make up for the cost of lost opportunities.

Without the people, a company is just a hollow shell. That goes for all shapes and sizes of companies. They may last a long time, but they seldom realize extraordinary growth and the full potential of their market.

In summary, please consider this: If you stray from the things which make up your brand just to make your marketing appealing, it is best to revisit those gargoyles and get them in shape, first.

The value of “human collateral” should not be neglected. The people within your organization make up a huge portion of the brand, and it is nearly impossible to convincingly change it without changing the people, themselves.

If you project a brand message that is not consistent with the consumer’s experience, they will see through it. When they do, the outcome is not favorable, it is best to get it right from the beginning.

Photo Credit:
Gargoyle by Jeff Egnaczyk via Flickr
Friendly Gargoyle by Michael Napoleon via Flickr
Scary Gargoyle by Andrew Barden via Flickr

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What 40 Years Have Taught Me About Marketing

I turned forty today. I’m happy about it, too. It doesn’t really feel like forty quite yet, but I’ve done it! I have lived long enough to have some well-earned gray hair, and a good amount of wisdom that comes with it. For such a young guy, of course.

My forty years have come with a lot of lessons. Having spent well over half of those years as a marketing professional and business owner, I’ve learned a lot about marketing. I’ve shared large volumes of my experiences here on the Internet, and I feel great to say that I’ve helped a lot of people with that experience.

One of the things I learned about marketing is the value of brevity. Keep it short. Keep it easy. Don’t get too confusing with all of your wordiness. I learned it, and then I threw it out the window for the purpose of this blog. Brevity matters when you are selling something, but I am not. If you can embrace some blatant verbosity today, I’ll reward you with some valuable real life marketing lessons.

Did you get that? It’s my birthday, but I’m trying to give you a gift. I guess that’s lesson one. When you give more, you receive more, and it’s an important principle of marketing. It’s a principle that is far beyond most people’s patience threshold, but to the ones who get it, it is invaluable.

I’ve shared a lot of helpful principles and practices of marketing on this blog. Much of it comes directly from things I learned through decades in the marketing profession. I feel good about that, and I know I’ve made an impact. I’ve helped a lot of people reach their goals, both business and personal. I plan to continue that work, but in a different way.

The Announcement That Changed My Life: Sayonara Mediocrity

At forty years old, I decided it is time to change things up. I intended to be fully retired by now, and a few years ago, I was actually well-prepared for it. I had plans to race cars full time, and my work was going to focus only on things I love. My bank is not as big as it used to be after somebody screwed up the world’s economy, so I’m still working. That should not keep me from pursuing the work I love, so I’m doing it … I’m making one of those scary changes I’ve encouraged so many others to make.

As I announced a few weeks ago, I stopped taking new clients (of course, that is unless somebody with really big goals and a ginormous budget comes calling). It’s very liberating. Now I feel even more free than ever if I need to call somebody out for being an apathetic bonehead. I’m also inspired to believe that if I tell you something, you’ll feel confident there is not an underhanded agenda just to sucker you out of your hard-earned money.

A challenging fact of marketing is that the best marketing consultants will never receive as much benefit as the client. It’s why many independent marketing consultants have their own products or services to market, outside of the marketing industry. The best marketers know that marketing is an investment rather than wasted money, and that if they build their own business, they will always be paid far more than by boosting a client’s return on investment.

Sometimes clients will find themselves skeptical about who receives the greatest benefits, but it is the client and not the marketing consultant. I explained this in an article titled “Find Good SEO: Why Good SEO Don’t Seek Your Business“. Being regularly at odds with that inherent negativity and skepticism in the market is why I’m changing things up and creating some significant career moves. No, it’s not because I’m not good at it … I’m just ready to move on to something more positive and inspiring.

Today, more than ever, I hope you will listen up and take some good direction. Give this gritty old marketing guy a chance to help shape your perceptions and understanding of marketing. I serve some pretty good food for thought about marketing, and many easily actionable tasks that you can put to use in minutes. In fact, here are six ways to improve search engine ranking in under one hour. There’s one caveat: they are only useful if you use them.

I have no reason nor desire to lie to you or mislead you, and I cannot recall a time when I intentionally misled anybody about marketing. So slow down and stop worrying about the next thing to click.

Velocity is Great in a Market, But Sometimes You Must Slow Down

Rushing around the Internet looking for the next bit of marketing enlightenment is not where you really want to find yourself in another 15 minutes or half hour … or three months … or next year. That’s what everybody else is doing, and if you think searching the web and looking for the next bottle to rub and hoping a genie will pop out is a better option, you’re likely to get pretty average results.

Settle down and look for the greater benefits. A mathematical fact of the online marketing space is that an average result is abysmal. It’s true! Most companies really stink at reaching an online market, and never get much out of it. I find that it is very often because they don’t slow down – breathe – get some oxygen in their brains and pay attention. They don’t pay attention to their market, and they don’t pay attention to things that can help them to reach their market more effectively. They are often all mouth and no ears, and rushing too hard to get things right that they get it all wrong. That’s them, and I hope you will make the choice to not be one of them.

Honesty in Marketing: It’s Not All Evil!

Marketing is often viewed with a sizable dose of skepticism. If somebody will gain from it, there is a frequent perception that somebody also loses. It’s not true, but this skeptical belief often hurts people in their own marketing, based on how they view marketing as a whole. If I am introduced to something as a result of marketing, and I trade my money because I wanted it, did somebody automatically lose? I got the thing I wanted, and the company marketing to me got what they wanted.

Yes, there are a lot of dirty scoundrels who will lie to you about marketing, but in the big picture, dishonest companies just don’t make it very long. It reminds me of a principle I implemented to create one of my most successful business endeavors, and it was a single word. It came to me when I asked my wife and business partner to summarize what made us stand out from the crowd, and what made us better than the competition. She said “It’s easy, Mark. It all comes down to a single word … Integrity.” That moment will never leave me, and it has provided me a great amount of success.

Marketing Wisdom: It Only Appears Simple

Even today it feels strange and almost surreal to say that I’ve been in marketing for 25 years … but I have. I was raised into marketing, and I was sitting in boardrooms offering my opinions from the time I was a teenager. I started my first company when I was so young that my mother had to sign the legal papers … for years.

It took a long time to make good sense of it all, in business. In fact, I still utterly stink at some points in business, but the part I do understand is marketing. I know from many years of running successful (and some not so successful) businesses that marketing will make or break a company. They don’t make it easy to understand, either. Even in the best universities, they often talk about a lot of theories and concepts, but where the fork meets the food, it takes some stomach-churning hard work to see real success. I know, because I’ve done that, and if you ask me, or any of my peers who have earned anything more than six-digits per year, you will find very few of them who came by it with simplicity.

Stop buying into people’s notions that it is simple. If it was really so simple, it probably wouldn’t be very profitable.

TAM, SAM, SOM, ROI, SEO, SMM, and PECKERs

There are enough acronyms and industry buzz phrases to bring my lunch back to the top of my throat. Some of those acronyms really matter, such as TAM (Total Available Market), SAM (Served Available Market), SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market), ROI (Return On Investment), and many others. These matter in huge ways, but they are very frequently misunderstood or overlooked because of shortsightedness, which often comes from a frightened accountant who knows little about marketing or how the company actually gets the money to pay their salary.

In small businesses, it is often because, although the person in charge was good enough in their field to start a company, they were not good enough at business to understand that being good at a trade does not mean being good in business. Being good in business means knowing where your weaknesses are, and knowing how to fill those gaps with people who are as good or better at their field of knowledge than you. That’s right, the best business leaders learn to effectively delegate what is out of their league. It’s why I don’t handle my own bookkeeping, and why people in other trades are usually let down when they try their hand at marketing.

Other marketing acronyms are beaten to death, like SEO (search engine optimization) and SMM (social media marketing). These buzz phrases are so popular these days that dishonest people use them to fool companies. In online marketing, they talk about building more website links, but they throw out good ideas of why somebody would actually want to link to their website … and they often hold the absurd notion that more links is always a good thing. The really misinformed marketers will lead you to believe that social media marketing is all about networking and socializing.

This kind of shortsighted and misinformed thinking is why I created my very own acronym for 2012, and I welcome you to read why I’m very proud to call myself a “PECKER” (Profit Engineer and Competition Killer with Extraordinary Resources).

Advertising is Only a Very Small Part of Marketing

I find that a lot of people imagine marketing to mean advertising what they offer for sale. This is only a small part of what makes up marketing. Marketing addresses many other things, including a whole lot of math, creativity, strategy, and so much more. An easy example is to look at anything you have for sale, and answer the question of why you priced it at the level you have. Is it because of its cost to produce? Did you leave it up to the competition to decide your price? Did you ever actually do the research to know what it’s worth – and not just that – to the right audience? Did you get that research just right, or is it really so impossible that you made some costly mistakes by using guesswork instead of basing it on the right factors?

The ways that marketing influences a business are far too numerous to list in a single blog. I hope you’ll think about some of those things you may have overlooked. I welcome you to my blog archive to help get the wheels turning. There are hundreds of articles there, and I think you’ll find them very useful if you slow down.

Throw Out Your Sandwich and Make a New One

I hear a lot of people regurgitating the last thing they heard or read about marketing, and how fresh the latest idea is. I guess maybe it was fresh sometime before it hit a squillion blogs, but now it’s like a day-old tuna sandwich sitting out in the sun.

Great marketing is seldom a matter of seeking the latest and greatest thing. Following trends is important, but following them too closely that you follow the mistakes is often a train wreck in the making. The things that work are not just following what everybody else fervently exclaims will work. Great marketing requires research, testing, and discovering what works – really works – for your company, and being the one all of those trend-talkers are talking about. It is not about tweeting, Facebooking, Flabunctuating … or whatever the next big trend is.

I’ve written volumes about social media, including hundreds of thousands of words, and even a book. I marvel at how many people think it is something new. Did you think social media is new? It’s how I met my wife, well over a decade ago … and many close friends years before that. Social media helped me to grow several of my companies quite abundantly, too, but social media is not a unicorn net or a leprechaun trap.

One of its greatest uses is to listen and learn about what makes your market tick … and then use that information. Many people are too short-sighted to take things to a new level of analysis, and understand what to do with a good analysis. Most are unwilling or unable to dig deep into their creativity and find ways to make their brand stick out like a sexy model passing out free bacon sandwiches and all expense paid trips to “Available-Sexy-Model-and-Free-Bacon-Sandwichville”.

I witness many scared companies making scared decisions, but I’ve watched a lot more scared companies fail than I care to count … and that’s because they don’t count. The ones that count are the ones willing and fearless enough to do what it takes to be more like you want your company to be. Not like the bottle-rubbing, instant-enlightenment-seeking, one shot wonder at the competitor down the street – like you – or at least your vision of you. So stop being scared! Go out on a limb. That’s how people succeed in the real world of business.

Fear of Failure Destroys Marketing Efforts

I know the extreme power of fear. I have witnessed it throughout my career, and I’ve even allowed myself to be a casualty of fear at times. There is nothing easy about making the kind of commitment it requires to be successful. This goes for anything you really want in your life, whether it’s a spouse, a family, a new home, a new car, or an improved bottom line in your business. It takes a leap, but it doesn’t have to be simply on faith.

If you think about your marketing as a foundation of your company, which it really is, you will find yourself on a much stronger path. I know, it’s easy to try and argue the point. The accountants think accounting is the foundation, the attorneys think the legal structure makes the foundation, and the people who created the company think it’s all about the product or service … but that’s really not true.

Businesses simply do not work without being marketed. Even in the most obscure and complex examples you can throw out there, the biggest factor between success and failure of two equal companies really does come down to how well they are marketed.

I Believe You Could Do Better With Your Marketing

How could I put this any more clearly? You can do better! Failure to control your fear impulses and continuing to worry about what will not work is a fast track to failure. Try thinking more along the lines of what you stand to gain, instead of cowering to the fear of what you stand to lose. Then consider what you continue to lose effortlessly because you’re waiting. There is a steep cost of missed business opportunities. In fact, it is often the worst scenario of all. Getting out of your easy chair to face your fears is a huge factor in success, and I know it from experience.

I turned ideas into millions of dollars within only a short time after completing my 8th grade education. It didn’t take an MBA, or however you spell those fancy degrees hanging on the “smart guy’s” wall. It took research, creativity, and a good supplier of balls. I said balls, and you can call me a bad marketer for that … but if you want to know about selling balls – or selling anything else – read this article to get your thinking up and bouncing: “SEO, Social Media, and Marketing Balls”

Stop worrying about the cost of marketing done right, and start focusing on the positive outcome if you do. There are plenty of chickens out there, and I hope you aren’t one of them … and if you are, I hope you’ll make a commitment to change it.

Some Personal Lessons I Learned About Marketing

When I consider why I advocate for people to take their marketing more seriously and stop waiting for “something” to change, I look inward at how it has changed my life. I imagine the things that would never have happened without marketing, and I’ll give you a glimpse.

I dropped out of school at age 15 to start my first company. That could have gone quite miserably without good marketing.
I retired (the first time) at age 25. Without good marketing and having guts, that would have sucked for the average 15 year old dropout.
I met my wife in 2000 by using good marketing skills … online … with social media. Without that, I would not have the three wonderful kids I enjoy so much today.
I learned to competitively control automobiles at over 170 miles per hour (270+ KPH). It took a lot of marketing to own a race team. It is what I wanted, and because of good marketing, I made it happen.
I learned that making everybody happy is not required. Making the right ones happy is a whole lot more productive.
I learned that without climbing out on a limb and having the courage to embrace the immense value of marketing, I would have very few of the things that bring me joy and sustenance today.
I learned that sharing what I know feels very good, but even better when people will use it to improve their own lives.
I learned a whole lot more, but that’s why I have an archive, and that’s why this blog is not finished yet. Please subscribe if you want to keep learning with me.

I have no intention of explaining all that I have learned about marketing in a single blog article. That would be impossible. I hope that you will be willing to take a good look and accept some useful tips from a guy who has been around the block. I hope you will bookmark my blog archive and keep coming back to feed your brain with some useful marketing advice. I also hope you will subscribe for more to come soon. Don’t miss the point that it will make a lot more difference to your business than it will mine.

I also welcome you to get to know me. I’m a very approachable guy who loves the field of marketing, and I’m always delighted to be helpful.

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Content Curator Wanted: Salary Commensurate With Zero

I’ll give you the bottom line, right up front. In business, if you are doing something that you would never pay somebody else to do, stop it!

I think this should be obvious, but then, obvious is not so obvious, and common sense is not so common. That is the main emphasis of this article, so if you decide to stop here without further consideration, you’ve got the bulk of the benefit.

This is not just about content curation, or any one specific tactic that somebody told you may be a good practice for your marketing goals … this is about all of them. If there is something you are doing in your business pursuits, but you would never in a million years see the value in hiring somebody to do it for you, stop doing it, and get back to doing things that actually build your business.

Did you know this?: After being decapitated, a chicken’s body is still animated enough to run around and look alive. Yes, that’s fine for chickens, but not so great for marketing.

I may sound like I just picked on “Content Curators”, meaning those people who expend their energy to bring you the latest and greatest news and information, but that is just an easy example to make this point. It is also a very common way to avoid the realities of business, and the limitations of time.

Who doesn’t love that person who generously takes time from their day to find interesting things to share with us? We all love that, and I, for one, am grateful for them. As a group, they have cumulatively helped to make my words, my industry knowledge, and my unique mind-spin very popular. I am sincerely very grateful and humbled by that. At the same time, I think it is important to note that many of those people who do it exceptionally well, and provide that extended filter of what is worthwhile, interesting, or useful, are generally doing it out of generosity. They are not getting paid for it. In most cases, not even a little bit. In fact, it can cost them (or you) a whole lot of time.

If you are curating content with the idea of it being a useful business tactic, I want to share reasons to reconsider your strategy about social media sharing and why you do it. Where it applies to your own marketing strategy, it is at least worth a momentary “think-over”.

I understand the thought that if you tweet, facebook, and share enough great ideas and information, it will make your name more prominent in people’s social media information backlog, but is it useful to you or not? Have you considered whether it may cause people to tune you out for the excessive noise it produces? Would you hire somebody else to do that for you, and would you consider it a valuable asset to your business? Would somebody ever, in a squillion years, pay you to receive the updates you curate? Unless you are a major news agency, the answer is “probably not” … and even if you are, the answer is “probably not”. How much would you be willing to pay to receive the content curation you provide?

Look, I really do have a good understanding of the mindset that if you share something, others will be more likely to share what you have to say. I wrote about it, and if you really want to curate something popular, have a look at what I said about “Social Media and The Absurdity of Implied Reciprocity“. To put it mildly, I’d suggest you don’t hang your hat on that strategy.

I also offer some really good insights about “Social Media Popularity Addiction and Why I Quit“. The truth is that although many people find it very alluring to share a whole bunch of industry information with the notion that if they are sharing enough outside information, it will be easier to sneak their call-to-action in there so they don’t feel too “self-promoting”. I get this. If all you are doing is promoting your own thoughts or ideas, people may see you as “The D Word“, but there is an even worse option … being a headless chicken without a strategy.

Another popular notion is that by sharing good information and ideas, it may help somebody else to view you as more informed or knowledgeable about a given topic. That’s fine, and it can be very useful to share ideas to express your approval (or disapproval) but what about content creation? Wouldn’t creating an idea provide an even better yardstick of what you know, or what you think?

What I want to caution here is the downside of performing tasks without using forethought and common sense. If you think it will be a huge business asset to keep doing things which you would never pay somebody else to do, take a deep breath, sit down, think clearly, and question whether you are really spending your time productively.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t share what others have to say. Not at all, and there are some great ideas out there which should be shared. I am just suggesting to think it over before you do, and consider how much time you expend with such things. I’m also not saying you shouldn’t be doing each and every thing you are doing in your marketing, public relations, or networking. I am mostly just suggesting that you rethink it to better define where your assets and liabilities each lie. You may be right, or you may be wrong, but in either case, you should be cognizant.

Here is are two acid tests to consider:

A.) Would you pay somebody else to do the things you are doing to promote your business?
B.) Would somebody else pay you to do the things you are doing to promote your business?

If you are unsure, or these questions hit a nerve, it is probably time to readjust things.

Photo Credit:
Chicken by Leif K-Brooks via Flickr

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Remember Who Your Friends Are … And What They Do, Too!

Everybody Needs Friends: Treat Them Right!

Do you remember who your friends are? If you care about them and respect them, why not consider how they earn a living? Times are hard for a lot of businesses, and it may mean more to them than you think. More than that, you may eventually regret going elsewhere … where they will appreciate you less.

I am reminded of a story of two friends, John and Mike. I introduced them many years ago. John was the number one real estate agent in town, and Mike was seeking to sell his house, and buy another. One day, Mike called John and asked him to evaluate his house for market, and make suggestions for improvements to increase the sale price.

John was glad for the call, and he offered his professional time and efforts to help Mike. A few days passed, and John discovered that Mike had listed the home for sale … but chose a different listing agent. As the top agent in town during a good time in real estate, John certainly did not need the commission, but was disappointed because he had wanted to assist our friend Mike in the sale, and subsequent purchase. Plus, he had been somewhat crudely taken advantage of professionally, by his friend.

John was a bit confused as to why his friend chose a different agent. He feared he had somehow offended Mike with the suggested listing price. No, Mike took his advice on the price. Was it the suggested improvements, the commission, the way he combed his hair? No, no, and no … the agent Mike listed with was a young sexy lady. Mike hoped he may have a chance with her, so he took all of John’s suggestions and listed the house elsewhere.

Once the house was sold and Mike was ready to buy his next house, he still overlooked John. He went with a different agent, again.

I really don’t think John ever felt the same about Mike after that. Whether it is right or wrong, I can understand how John could feel insulted. After all, he would have done the sale transaction and the purchase transaction for his friend, without a commission at all. Ironically, Mike had done a similar thing to me, years earlier, and he was on his way to building a reputation for it.

I am certainly not a fan of implied reciprocity (as you can see if you read that link), but you can probably imagine (or remember) how it feels when a friend overlooks you and buys from your competitor, right? It actually kind of stinks, and it is easy to take it as an insult. It also feels even worse when the friend is hurt by a competitor, when you know you could have saved them the trouble. No, it does not feel satisfying … is stinks!

Have you ever witnessed a friend go somewhere else when they needed something? I have heard speculation about the mindset, but I refuse to understand it or adopt it for my own use. I know that some people think you shouldn’t do business with friends, but I think that is largely a horrible attitude.

I will always try my best to give my business to a friend or acquaintance above a stranger. They may really appreciate that you thought of them, and they may really appreciate the business.

Now I’ll tell you what got me to thinking about this.

What Reminded Me of This?

I recently had a friend ask me if I knew a good option for web hosting. Now, when I say “friend”, I don’t mean just a random acquaintance on Twitter. She has sat at my bar for drinks, she co-chaired a school fundraiser with me, and we have celebrated kids birthdays together. She has sat in my office, and she has even seen and touched the corporate YourNew.com, Inc. Race Team Corvettes. She has also been my friend on Facebook for years. So, I know she knows I do something “Internetty”, and she knows I do it very well. She knows I know a lot about this Internet, so she asked me about web hosting.

The sad thing is that she didn’t really know much about what I actually do, or just how much I am able to help her. It bothered me, but mostly because of how I could benefit her, rather than that her business would pay me a dollar or two per month. That’s why I decided that I am going to start letting more people know.

I know that a lot of people who know me don’t really know or understand my work. I do more than a couple things here on this Internet, but I don’t really promote them very much. It’s mostly kind of an “obvious secret”, in a way, because the majority of my work is operating as “the geek behind the geeks”. I generally don’t promote my services to a retail market, or to friends.

You see, aside from my work as a marketing guy, I founded a company sometime over a decade ago, as a merger of two other companies. That company sells Internet services to wholesale clients … who often sell those same services to resellers, who sell them to the public. We’ve been very successful at that market segment, and retail sales are a minimal part of what we do.

We sell web hosting to web hosting companies. You knew it had to come from somewhere, right? In fact, if you have used the Internet very long, there is a very high probability that you have used services I have created or brokered. The company is still my full-time employer after all these years, and I work there as the CEO.

So, why don’t I promote that to my blog readers? It is mostly because I have enough search engine traffic and recognition in that specific area of the industry that it is just a distraction to what I do here at aWebGuy.com. In any case, if you are in need of any of the many Internet-related services we provide, I’m always happy to help … I am just not out to push those on you. In fact, you may even see Google ads for my competitors right here on my blog. It’s ironic, right? 😉

Let Me Show You Why I Have a Reputation

I want to show you why I have a good reputation in my industry. I’m going to start with this: If you have been a reader for a while, you probably have some sense of who I am. You may even know a good amount about my principles and my ethics. You can probably tell that this is not some big scam waiting to suck you in.

Today, I have decided to offer web hosting to my readers and friends at a rate of $10 per month, or $5 per month for ten or more websites. I was going to say free, but come on … having a guy to call who really knows his stuff has got to be worth something, right? I’m not just offering basic web hosting, either. I will include the same web hosting system that is used here at aWebGuy.com … which clearly exceeds an average demand when it comes to web hosting. I’ll even include all the bells and whistles like website builders, ecommerce tools, plenty of email, and support for about any technology you can dream up … just ask me.

Better yet, I will provide your web hosting technical support, myself. Sure, I will have my tech support folks waiting in the wings in case you encounter something really pressing and I am in the shower or otherwise cannot take your call … but I will be the live voice at the other end of the line if you need web hosting help. How many CEOs do you know who will do that? I’ll bet that “Daddy” guy won’t take your call on his way to pick the kids up at school.

In fact, to take me up on this offer, I want you to contact me directly, and I will personally help you to set up your account and walk you through the basics. Now that doesn’t sound like such a scary offer, does it?

The one caveat is that you subscribe to my blog and keep reading to learn more about how to use that web hosting to build your business. If you are a subscriber, just ring me up and introduce yourself. I’ll be delighted to help you.

If you need web hosting, or you need better web hosting, contact me. I’ve provided web hosting for over a decade, including many websites you know and trust. Maybe even your bank, your city, your hospital, or your university. It’s better to trust somebody you are familiar with than trusting a total stranger.

I also want to add that if you know somebody else in the industry … by all means, call them! I really do believe it is valuable to do business with people you know and trust. I think it is always important to know who your friends are, know what they do, and remember them when they can help.

Oh, and one more thing … this is just for new web hosting accounts. I can’t just give away the whole farm. If you are already paying me more, I’m confident there’s a good reason for it. 😀

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