My grandmother is intelligent. She can grasp a complex concept if you communicate it nicely. If you insult her intelligence, she may turn into a vicious ninja.
My grandmother will turn 95 years old in a few weeks. In honor of my dear Grandma and other real-world people like her, I’m here to deliver a valuable reminder about effective marketing communications.
Let’s consider Grandma for a moment, and imagine how she communicates. She talks like a real person. She thinks and communicates in logical phrases. Grandma uses plain and simple language to make herself clear to others. Most people are a lot like Grandma in this respect. Most of them will also find themselves indifferent and even insulted if you try to talk over their heads.
I want to give you some yummy food for thought. That’s because “yummy food for thought” is more appetizing than “palatable incentive for continued exercitation of intellect”. Got it? Great … let’s dine!
What really got me thinking about this is my long and tedious research in the hunt for my next employer. It seems popular for companies to drone on with wordy hyperbole in their job descriptions. I suppose many people do that in their résumé, too. It is just one of those awkward formalities that has not adapted to the modern world quite yet.
Wordiness is like a dance to see who can sound smarter. Just read an average job description to understand why unemployment is so high. According to most job descriptions I’ve seen, it seems that companies can barely write a paragraph without floating in an extra 30 words of fluff to throw people off the real meaning. Here is an actual example of a job posting bullet point that I just found without looking very hard.
Organization and Efficiency – must have natural and impeccable organizational skills as well as the ability to multitask at a highly efficient level. Has proven experience working in a fast paced environment where quick and rational thinking was a daily requirement. Is nimble by nature and has proven experience systematically organizing their work and managing their time to maximize efficiency.
It seems that all they said was “We want an organized person who can keep up with a lot of things at once. They need to think fast, work fast, and prove a history of it.” Does it actually say anything more than that? If so, please explain it to me. They said it in 62 words and 399 characters, but my “less intelligent” version trimmed it down to 29 words and 136 characters.
Are you ready for the irony? This particular job listing is for a Marketing Director at a marketing company. This kind of language reminds me how often I see similar diarrhea-like communication in marketing.
Stop Abusing Grandmas!
Grandma and all those many people like her do not like it when you try to baffle them with frivolous words and phrases to try and seem smarter. If you want Grandma to like you, it is better to make her feel smart because she clearly understands and can relate to your ideas.
If you cannot make it easy and comfortable, Grandma is not going to become your biggest fan and brand advocate. It is also very unlikely that she is going to speak up and let you know what you’re doing wrong. After all, you have already done your best to show that you know it all.
I think the reason bad marketing communication makes grandma want to turn ninja is that while you may sincerely believe you are “proficiently communicating in a manner that is consistent with sound business practices and expected protocols”, you are actually talking down to her. If you keep it up, you will grate on her last nerve and the outcome is bleak.
Don't Speak to Grandma Like That!
Bridle Your Verbose Hyperbole and Expedite Your Simplicity
Let me give it to you straight. If you are “excessively verbose and embellish your communications with gratuitous hyperbole”, you will ignore and alienate the majority of any market.
It is even true in the most intelligent circles that if you make it easier to read, more people will pay attention. If you communicate with people as if they are idiots and you are a brilliant word magician, you can save your breath. It often creates quite the opposite outcome and shows that you’re not smart enough to put things into terms people care about or respond to.
If you want to show off your intellect, try taking your complex concept and making it easy for people to understand. That is a much better measure to show off how smart you are.
People want to communicate with people, and not Scrabble robots. If you want to reach grandma or those many others who live in the “real world”, you will do best to use real world language that is comfortable for them.
The Solution: Make it Readable to 8th Graders
The best advice I can offer about marketing communications is to make it easy. I understand the temptation to use big words or complex phrases to make a point. Maybe you even talk like that when you are having beers with your buddies – but I doubt it. Let me make another example. I’ll let you tell me which one you think is better.
A.) What I wish to express is that when you use big words and complex phrases, you not only alienate people, but also stand to lose their attention.
B.) If you make it harder to read, you’ll lose people.
You can criticize me for my lengthy writing. I’m guilty of this “crime against Grandma” at times. There is a time and a place for it, though. Knowing when and where to use your wordiness is worth consideration.
If you are not already familiar, I encourage you to take a close look at popular readability formulas such as The Flesch formulas, Fry Readability Graph, or The Dale–Chall formula. It should not be shocking to find that they were each designed to be very easy to read and understand.
I’m back to my job search now. I’m hopeful there’s somebody out there who wants a real-world marketing executive that grandmas everywhere will understand – and love.
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 GargoyleI 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Oil is a Commodity, Marketing Is Not
If you’re in the field of marketing, get over yourself. You’re a commodity. At least that is the way a lot of people will see it, even if you actually are as awesome as you say you are.
Looking at marketing as a commodity is something people can understand. That’s because if they see it as all the same, it just comes down to the dollar amount, and that is what feels the safest for most people.
As it applies to the majority of people buying marketing services, the dollars which are easiest to concentrate on are the dollars going out, but without adequate forethought or examination of the incoming dollars the marketing produces.
It seems that a lot of people think of it like throwing those dollars to the wind and hoping some of them will float back.
That’s not the way it works when marketing is done well, but it is the easier way to digest. In the real world of business, marketing should be based on qualified mathematics, demographics, psychographics, and other principles of qualified market research and forecasting, but that is enough to make most people’s head explode. That kind of marketing comes with an investment and a commitment beyond commodity-style thinking about marketing. Many people confuse that as a risk, while the real risk is when marketing is based on guesswork and crossing fingers.
Here is perhaps the biggest problem about marketing: The number of dollars spent becomes the easiest measure. It is counterproductive when people look at it this way, but it is a true depiction of the current market of marketing … especially online.
I’ll describe how the trend of “commoditized marketing” goes completely wrong. I hope you’ll take some qualified advice from somebody who has been around the block, and no longer wants to accept your money. In fact, this is my formal announcement that I Quit.
I have made my 2012 New Year’s resolution, and that is to stop offering marketing services for hire. I’ll give you some good advice and try to help you, though. The only things I would like to ask from you are your friendly wishes on my new career path away from providing marketing services for hire, and maybe a little discussion.
What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?
What Do You Want?
I believe that everybody should periodically ask themselves the question: “What do you want to do with your life?” That’s a tricky one, isn’t it? At least it is for me.
I’ve been asking myself this question a lot recently, and I’m seeing some things with much greater clarity. It’s still a bit blurry to me, but one thing is clear … I absolutely do not want to sell marketing services.
I finally reached the conclusion that selling marketing services for hire is a twisted soul-sucking racket filled with liars, and it has led me to ask this very important question of what I want to do with my life … and why I keep letting people suck me back into building their success while neglecting my own.
Knowing the answer to what you want to do with your life is vital to professional and personal growth, and it’s why my career is about to take a sharp turn, which I’ll announce one day soon.
The big life question I’ve addressed here was perhaps most famously asked in the 1984 music video “I Wanna Rock” by Twisted Sister. For your amusement, I’ll share that piece with you as you contemplate your answer.
I guess you could call it my mid-life crisis that brought me to this point. After all, I am about to turn 40 years old, my beard is going gray, my belly is getting bigger, and my job is sucking the life out of me. I’ve done most of the things I ever wanted to do. I’ve raced cars, authored books, been a CEO, earned squillions, retired, un-retired, and even created a family complete with three kids and a wife, but now I largely hate this job. As much as I love the work I do, dealing with a public who really want to believe that marketing is a commodity sucks a little more soul out of me every day.
I’m simply not willing to participate in the “marketing as a commodity” mentality, and I honestly hate to even watch it from a distance. I’ve got better things to do than demean myself by taking peanuts for my skills and dealing with clients who don’t have a clue how much I am worth to them if they get out of their own way. Nosiree, Bob, that’s not my bailiwick … not in the least!
I previously promised myself to quit the addiction of accepting marketing clients by mid-2011, but as the end of 2011 draws near, I plan to stick to my guns. I’m not going to play along with the absurdity of “commoditized marketing” any longer, but I’ll tell you some good reasons for my decision, and leave you with some keys to help make more people flock to you like a free bacon sandwich covered in sex appeal.
While I take this turn away from selling the services of marketing, I’ll give you some indications of where this mentality is taking companies.
“Flat Broke” is Popular in Business!
Average Marketing is Failure
Many companies are flat broke these days. Being broke is very a popular trend in business, but in most cases, they have a competitor that is raking in the profits. Decades ago, I made it a career objective to help people understand some of the reasons this is the case.
Helping companies to create success has always been very inspiring to me, but it also comes with a lot of challenges. Now, more than ever, I see a lot of companies making bad decisions about their marketing, and I see a lot of fear.
Why did it get this way? I have my ideas on the matter, and I’ll start with this: Marketers got lazy, and while they did, people’s confusion of marketing being a commodity was booming right along with the Internet. Fueled by that confusion, the barrier of entry to a marketing career was lowered to the level that any intern can pretend to be the equivalent to a Chief Marketing Officer or Marketing Director without being called out as an obvious fraud by the general public.
That’s for the fakes and liars, but as the frauds became more believable, the true marketing professionals with an ounce of integrity still faced the same old challenges.
The Challenges of Marketing Professionals
It has always been a challenge of marketing professionals to help people understand marketing concepts like customer modeling, targeting a market, and many other components to effective marketing.
Most people really don’t need or want to fully understand these things, and trying to explain it can often bore them to tears. So it is fitting that the client often just assumes these are things the marketer is using to confuse more money out of them.
A much tougher concept to explain is that marketing is not a cost, but rather an investment. This one stumps many good marketers, because companies either “get it” or they don’t. In my experience, most companies only understand their market very fractionally, and doing what it takes to achieve their potential scares them.
Other companies are complacent, and they are certainly beyond help. You can give some people case study after case study of successful marketing campaigns, and you can explain that it is the difference between growing a company or shrinking it, but if they refuse to help themselves, you cannot force it on them.
These things have never changed, but one thing that has become clearer is that marketing is increasingly viewed as a commodity.
Commodity:“used to describe a class of goods for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. A commodity has full or partial fungibility; that is, the market treats it as equivalent or nearly so no matter who produces it.”
I’ve provided marketing services to clients for a very long time. I’ve watched marketing change dramatically since my start in the 1980’s. I watched it change from small companies trying to chase unicorns with $1,000,000 catalog mailers and newspaper ads, to chasing unicorns with $300 ecommerce websites and marginal blogging efforts. More recently, I watched it change into the popular notion that hiring an intern to send tweets and update the company Facebook status is what marketing is all about.
I often find that marketers lean in one of two different directions: There are marketers who are great at selling marketing services but stink at actually performing them, and then there are marketers who are just great at performing marketing services, but stink at selling it. I am the latter of the two.
Something you should know is that good marketers don’t need to lie, and don’t like to sell.
An analogy I think is kind of funny is that I rank quite nicely if you search for “how to sell SEO” (search engine optimization), but I am absolutely terrible at selling SEO. In fact, if you google “SEO hell“, that’s where you’ll find me.
If They Can't Prove it, Move On!A point I want to drive home for people is that if you’re talking to the right marketers about marketing services, there is not a sneaky agenda up their sleeve. The good ones are hard to find, and most of the best ones are not seeking your business. There are good reasons, too. They can earn far more money building their own company than by building yours.
From my experience, I’d suggest seeking the the ones with the highest prices and finding out why their rates are so high. That’s what I do when I’m looking for marketing help, because I understand that this is not a commodity … I accept it, and I embrace it.
I look for the ones who are doing it for the right reasons, and who made success for themselves and others. Then I make them prove it, and if they can, they’re in!
There are more than enough “Johnny Come Lately” marketers out there, so you have to be diligent. Watch this video to see my take on them, or read “Bashing SEO and Social Media Experts: Humor or Hazard?” to see real life examples of it. Without their proof, you’re just guessing, and good marketing is not about guesswork!
$300 Unicorn Ride to Planet Success
I can show you a metric squillion instances of people seeking unrealistic profit from minimal commitment. It has become so convincing that some people will try almost anything, as long as it’s cheap.
What went completely wrong for me is that I am one of those marketing marketers, and not one of the selling ones I mentioned. I’ve had sales reps to handle sales for me, but most of them have been just as confused and in the dark about the value of good marketing as the general public. Besides, you just can’t train somebody to overcome apathy … people either want more, or they don’t.
I am entirely unwilling to let people pay me to deliver them mediocre results. That is my curse, and my Achilles heel. I just cannot see letting people believe something is going to help them unless it is actually going to help them.
I’m not willing to start offering $300 unicorn rides to planet success, and as long as people see marketing as a commodity, somebody else always will. I thought about stooping to the cheap side of marketing, but my integrity always gets in the way.
I hope that you can believe my words more than ever by knowing that I’m out of the consulting business, and I’ll turn you down when you come waving a wad of money in my face. Well … I guess it depends on the wad, but it let’s just say that it would take a signed letter of commitment and a lot of money before we sit down for lunch to talk about changing my mind. Plus, I’d have to really like your brand.
Farewell to the Mediocrity of Commoditized Marketing
If you are one of my many readers who makes it to the very end of my articles, I hope you will at least give me a good send-off with a “hello” or something to let me know you’ve been reading. I hope you will know that I really feel the words I write, and that this is not an easy step. I also hope that you will look forward to hearing more from me, because I have many working drafts for articles to come.
To those knuckleheads who were just lurking around, waiting and thinking about contacting me to help them grow their business: You waited too long. I would have worked a lot harder and could have achieved a lot more for your business than you gave me credit. On a positive note, there’s probably a 15 year old kid in Pakistan who will do the same thing for fourteen bucks. Yeah, it’s probably the same. 😉
I hope that my work (including my books) has, and will continue to help you move forward in your business and personal desires. I sincerely believe that my integrity is fully intact and I have never been misleading in this blog. I know there is a lot of benefit for those who continue to read my archives … and my tales of what’s to come.
Now I’d really appreciate hearing from you. Please take a moment to add your comments and help me create a discussion of what you’ve just read. It means a lot to me.
I'm Writing to You ... No Sharks, Please!
Every blogger and every user of any other social media platform has a goal. There is always something … an outcome that they hope for and work toward. Whether that outcome is making a friend, or making a sale, there is a goal.
Those goals are each different, and they are often not entirely clear to the individual, but one common thread is that we all want people to read what we have to say.
With any luck, they will subscribe, come back, read more, add their replies, and click “Like”, “Tweet”, and all those other buttons to share it with their friends.
Luck isn’t enough! They will need reasons, and everybody has their own … reasons. It is your task to find those reasons, and I have some ideas that I truly believe can help you.
Define Your Social Media Objectives
If you don’t know what you want, it will be pretty hard to achieve it, and even harder to match it with what others want. Why are you doing this? If you don’t know, how will anybody else know, and how will you measure it when it happens? I don’t think I have to remind you that it is not a perfect world, but let’s imagine for a moment.
In a perfect world, everybody will follow our website links to all the right things we really want them to read, and maybe even get to know us. Even if it doesn’t make us money, it makes us feel good to be useful, entertaining, or whatever kind of validation which makes up those goals I mentioned. Sometimes the most useful of all is that it lets us know if we’re on the right track … or not.
If it is a business endeavor, we generally hold hopes they will become a customer.
That’s a perfect world, but in the real world, it’s going to take more than just hope. It will often require some pretty extensive effort, and maybe even a little magic … such as building trust, fostering ongoing communication, and a good dose of creativity.
First of all, you must define your objectives if you ever hope to match them with their objectives. You know … them … those people whose objectives you hope to trigger.
Here … let me give you tiny bit of creativity in this video. We can work on the trust and ongoing communication after you subscribe.
Define Their Objectives … That’s What Really Matters
This could go into a huge topic of audience modeling, but that’s another article … and it’s in my archive with the rest of them. What I want to suggest here is that being likable, human, and considerate is like Shark Repellent.
One of the strongest most profound objectives most people have is to avoid people they don’t like or trust. Heck, I’ll avoid whole cities because there are people there I don’t like or trust. I’m certainly not going to read their marketing material or do business with them. I’d rather throw a hungry shark at them!
A flaw that I often see in business use of social media is the tone people use, and whether that tone is really just about them, or about the person reading. If you ever want to sell something … anything … the message should be about the ways it will benefit them … and not just you. Focusing on why you want them to buy something rather than why they want to buy it is not likable. It turns people off like a light switch. If you want their attention, you need to address their objectives.
The best way to solve your tone issues is often with proper intentions. That is usually something people either have, or they don’t … but it can be developed and improved.
The tone we set with our words can tell a lot about us, but those words are often based on our intentions. Your words can help somebody feel like they would enjoy having beers with you, or your words can make them want to throw a hungry shark at you. Your intent will nearly always show through with your words, and so it holds true that your intent is often what makes you either likable or shark bait.
Get on Their Beer Side
The best way I’ve found to be on the beer side of their decisions rather than the shark side is to keep my intentions in check. When I know that is in check, the next thing is be a real person, and write to people just as I would speak to them in person, or how I would write if I was sending them a letter.
You may be writing to a lot of people at once, but as they each read what you have to say, they identify with it individually. Yes, I’m writing to you. Will you write me back?
I’m not going to claim that I have this just perfect. If you’ve read my blog for any time at all, you may consider me just a bit “crusty”. I tell things how I see them, even when it is not comfortable to everybody. That’s because I’m not trying to reach “everybody”, but hopefully the ones I do reach will keep their sharks for somebody else.
If you are likable and you avoid the flying sharks, all of those hopes and goals are a lot easier. For example, I am not ashamed or afraid to tell people the outcome I hope for. Of course, there must be a good balance between being useful to others and sustaining usefulness to yourself. I try my best to strike that balance, and from my experience, that balance is a lot easier when we’re feeling like having beers together, and nobody is throwing sharks.
Be Genuinely Human … Always!
I’m not out to make everybody happy … plain and simple. I have claimed it many times that “I am not out to please everybody, and that pleases some people very much.” What I do have on my side, and something I think matters a lot is that I am here to talk to you, directly, and to tell you just the way I see it. Even if you don’t like it, you will at least know where I stand. Being a genuine human makes that more palatable.
Yes, I’m human. I have my good moods, and I have my bad moods. I have my good ideas, and I have some that are flawed. Well, not actually flawed, but I just threw that in because some people like it better when I seem more humble. 😉
I am pretty sure that if you have a blog, use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or any other communications tool, you can probably relate to this in some way. You’ve seen the fake people. So, my thought today is to reflect on just how human you are, and how human those people reading what you say are, too.
Are you being conversational in the things you say? Are you writing for people, or are you writing at them? Are you inviting them for a beer, or are you making them want to whip out a shark and wing it at you?
I consider this often, and I hope you know that I am not just writing to write … I am writing to communicate. So, here it is … my letter to you. I didn’t write it in calligraphy and seal it in a sweet smelling envelope, but I did write it for you. Keep your sharks handy, if you must.
Dear Reader:
I appreciate your interest in improving your market share with better social media marketing. I hope you find my work useful.
I am pretty sure you didn’t wake up this morning jazzed to read about marketing, but I’ve got some reading material for you. I can’t make you read it, but I sincerely believe you will find real value in the information I am sharing with you.
One of the first things to note about social media is that much of what you will encounter sounds too good to be true. That’s because it is. The world has largely been enamored by the “new” trend of social media, and so there are a lot of people still in awe by the packaging, and still playing with the bubble wrap.
I think you will find that I tend to direct people back to some common sense and rationality. I believe in things which are objective and measurable, and I like to dispel the popular hyperbole. It is my job to make companies more visible and more profitable, not to waste clients’ money.
Social media is not new to me. I met my wife and mother of our three children by way of social media, a dozen years ago. We merged our respective companies and created one of the top wholesalers of Internet access and wholesale website hosting services in USA. Our growth was largely due to the same type of marketing services I provide for hire.
I would like to share some of the things I believe every company should know before jumping into social media marketing. The link I am about to share is to a series of articles that can provide a lot of understanding about what works and does not work, and how to make good decisions for your business (even if you don’t hire me to help you).
I hope that you will read it and put it to good use. If you don’t have the time right now, I hope that you will bookmark it and come back. If you subscribe for my updates, I’ll help to remind you.
There is also a link to my bio, on that page, as well as my blog archive with hundreds of articles dealing with online marketing, including a lot of useful information about search engine optimization. It will certainly not all interest you, but it can help you with good direction for your marketing.
If you will take the time to read some of this material, I am confident that it will benefit you. If you know somebody else who can benefit from it, please share it with them, and note that I pay quite generously for referrals.
Feel welcome to contact me any time. If you decide that you want to have a beer with me, let’s put that in our calendars!
Best Regards,
Mark Aaron Murnahan
P.S.
I just want to add one more thing. Thursday is Thanksgiving in USA. Since I am writing and publishing this in between Thanksgiving-related cooking tasks, I thought I’d share this with you. Yes, it is three pounds of bacon shaped like a turkey with a Thanksgiving wish from The Murnahan Family. Cheers!
