creative marketing Archives - Page 3 of 12 by Mark Murnahan

Hard Lessons I Learned About Marketing and Success

Some people say that you can learn a lot from successful people. I think it is largely true, too. It makes more sense to learn from somebody who has been successful than to learn from somebody who has not. At the same time, one thing that becomes very valuable is to learn from the mistakes they made, and use those things to avoid repeating their mistakes.

Some would say that I took a bit of an uncommon direction to learning about marketing. I dropped out of school about 25 years ago at age 15, regularly held 2-3 jobs as I built my first few companies, and nearly worked myself to death by the time I was 25. It sounds glamorous, doesn’t it?

My career path would certainly not be comfortable for most people, and I would never encourage it for my own children or anybody else I care about, but it worked for me. I learned my way through it the hard way. I read a lot of books, and I studied a lot of concepts from successful people. They were often people I knew first hand, and there were many instances when I should have listened more carefully. Since I was stubborn, I still had to learn some things the hard way, by making my own mistakes.

Lesson one: Don’t be stubborn! There really are people who know more than you about a given topic.

OK, I’ll admit, my path to learning was not totally awful, and there were a few benefits along the way. I earned more money by the end of those ten years between 15 and 25 than most people will in a whole lifetime. I retired for a few years, and it mostly seemed worth it. Yes, indeed … I had become one of those successful people like the ones I worked so hard to learn from.

Some of the greatest benefits I received were the marketing lessons I learned. Those tough lessons about marketing taught me how to bounce back from nearly any business calamity. That is because if you can market something, you can sell something, and if you can sell something you can earn profit, and let’s be honest … the majority of things that can go wrong in business can be improved with more money.

I want to share some of what I learned with you. I’ll offer a glimpse of my early years in business, and some valuable lessons it taught me about marketing. I hope it will save you some of the frustration of my mistakes. At the same time, it may scare you to imagine what it really takes to build success in a business. It is not for everybody … “average” is for everybody.

If The Doors Aren’t Swinging, The Cash Register is Silent

In my early days of business ownership, nearly 25 years ago, it was pretty easy to recognize that my business was much better when the doors were swinging open, or the telephone was ringing. Without enough customers, I wasn’t selling enough, and selling something was how my company generated revenue … money … profit. You know, the stuff that sets the difference between a hobby and a business.

I needed to attract customers, and I knew it would take some pretty clever marketing to keep my company moving forward. Without marketing, even the best companies fail. I had seen such failure in other companies, so I knew I needed to get that part right.

Of course, marketing comes in many forms, and it involves many aspects of a business. It includes product assessment, pricing, merchandising, public relations, and more. Focusing on just one area of marketing is short-sighted, and leads to a lot of waste. What I knew for sure was that if I didn’t do something and do it right, I would never grow the company into anything sustainable. First things first, I needed to generate some money to make the whole thing work.

Sales reps were not worth a garage sale necktie to me if I didn’t have the right product offering. So, I worked on our offerings to be sure they were better than the competition. The sales reps were also no good to me if I could not legitimately define why the offerings were the best option in the market for our given customers. That meant I needed some product research. That’s when I realized the product research and the customers had to match up just right. It would not matter how awesome the offering was, or how well we could merchandise it, if we did not understand who would benefit from it the most, and would have a greater propensity to respond to our efforts. That’s right … “everybody” is not a target market.

I researched like mad to put all the pieces together. I got the products just right, the pricing was attractive, and I ran great ads to get bodies through the door, but then I figured out that there were good customers, and then there were great customers. I needed to determine how to get the right customers through the door. When I learned how to do that, our profits grew like mad. With all that research to my advantage, advertising cost went down because it became more effective.

You see, it took a lot of little pieces to be put in their proper place in order to grow. It took a lot of very time-consuming and often high-investment efforts to create success.

Putting all those little pieces in the right order and in their rightful place is even more important now than ever, in the digital world. The competition is broader, the offerings are sharper, and getting people to a website is not at all the same as getting the right people to a website. Once you get them there, you will need very compelling reasons they will want to do business with you. My early experiences really helped me to understand this.

Here comes a lesson that came really hard for me, but it makes a huge impact once you get it right.

Who You Are is Not a Microcosm of Your Market!

You are not the same as your customers and potential customers. You may try to be like them, you may try to speak their language, and you may even be part of a very similar demographic, but the truth is that they are different. We each want to believe those warm and friendly lines like “people are not so different after all” … but they are!

It is very challenging to try and understand your perfect market segment, and how to reach them with the right message. It is a bit unnatural, because it requires thinking in a way that is not your usual way of thinking. They are the customer, and they will always have their own perspective, their own experiences, their own mindset … and you will have yours.

During my earliest days in business, I remember a constant nagging question of “Who are these people?” I’ve got to say that as much as I tried, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I understood them in concept and in statistics, but I still could not relate to their ways of thinking. Fortunately, I didn’t need to nor want to become more like them. It is true but misunderstood that you do not have to “become your customer” to provide their best option … but you will need to know a lot about them. I was selling very expensive things to very egotistical people. I knew exactly why they would buy, and I knew that it was all about stroking their ego.

What I couldn’t grasp was why they were so willing to endure all of that opportunity cost just to splurge on luxury items. They were buying things that I felt I could never afford. The crazy part was that I would constantly find that my customers were actually earning only a fraction of what I was.

The big separation for me was that I was in a different stage of my life, and in a different mind capsule of my own. I believed in taking every dollar I earned to further build my businesses, and buying showy things just didn’t fit into my model (until much later).

There are many things which can separate us from the mindset of our customers, and it is usually not a simple task to figure it out. In my case, it became my most monumental career objective to understand the gaps between customer and seller perspectives … and to bridge those gaps.

One of the best and hardest lessons I learned was that it usually takes a fresh set of eyes looking from outside. That means outside of the buyer’s perspective, and outside of the seller’s perspective. Analysis from a complete outsider is one of the best ways to understand the gaps between sellers and customers. I am lucky I learned this early, and I will always value the outsider. This can be a friend, an associate, or a trade organization, but it is even better when it is their job to serve your company needs and expectations. You can be afraid of the truth, but it will not change the truth. The best outsider is often in the form of a trained and experienced marketing consultant.

The funny thing is this: I am a marketing consultant, and in fact, I am a very accomplished marketing consultant … but knowing what I know, I will never stop using them. Yes, it probably sounds totally nuts to you, but I rely on outsiders to provide the same services that others pay me to provide.

The reason I use outside marketing consultants is that for as much as I can do the research, bring you to discover me, know your hot buttons, and even address them fairly well, I will never completely understand you, or why you are not buying my services. If I tried to understand you all on my own, without influences from the outside, I would destroy many of my greatest opportunities. I would also likely go even crazier than I already am.

You really must have a plan if you want to get ahead in business. I started with a plan, but I found a lot of changes to make along the way. I also found a lot of roadblocks, and often by being hard-headed and not taking good advice. I cannot share all my best advice in one blog article, but I have a pretty lengthy blog archive full of good information.

Delegating Saved Me More Than Once

I learned that one of the most profound commonalities of successful people is knowing when and how to delegate things outside of their expertise. They realize their limitations, and the value of concentrating their efforts on the things they are best suited for. They recognize what they don’t know, and they become good at finding the right people to handle those things.

I learned to delegate. It was terrifying to me, and I never got really comfortable with handing the controls over to somebody else. I hated that my accountants and attorneys often knew more about me than my own mother. I also hated the thought that my marketing consultants have often known enough about my businesses to try and mirror my company and become my competition.

I thank my lucky stars that I got over it and realized that I cannot be the very best at everything. I am absolutely terrible at accounting! All I want to know is that there is enough money in the accounts to carry out my purchases. I generally grasp the whole legal thing, but I hate writing my own contracts, and I understand why they say that “the lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client.” A similar principle holds true in marketing. If you rely on your own brilliance, without outside influence, you will make mistakes … and often very costly mistakes.

Whether it is a friend, a colleague, a trade association, or a trained marketing professional, you will need to trust and learn from an outsider at some point. Tell them your goals, tell them your business pains, listen to them, take their guidance, and grow your business. Otherwise, don’t be surprised that if you keep making the same mistakes, you will get the same results.

If Building Success Was Easy, Wouldn’t Your Market Share Be Higher?

Building a successful business is not easy, and it requires a lot of uncomfortable decisions. If it was easy, it would be easy for your competition, too. A key factor lies in your will to achieve more.

There will always be people to dislike you for doing the things they are unwilling or unable to do. There will always be people to try and roadblock your success. You may often create your own biggest roadblocks based on other people’s frustrations. I know this, and I can almost bet that it is like fingernails on a chalkboard to many people when I say I’ve spent much of my adult life in the top fraction of a percent of money-earners in the USA and in the world. Yeah, that’s annoying to the people who have not joined me there, and have no hopes of achieving the same or similar results.

I really enjoyed and related to an article my friend John Falchetto recently wrote titled “5 reasons jerks are successful“. I hate to give away the ending, but the fact is that they are not jerks at all. They just work very hard and have very strong commitments. I encourage you to read it and also read the comments on the article. I had a lot to say about it.

I know that there is a huge deluge of information telling you that you can do it all yourself, and that you can reach a huge audience of all the right people with the perfect message about your company and make your product or service offering so popular the phones will ring all night and day.

If you really believed it was so simple, I think you must ask yourself “Why isn’t my market share higher?” or “why am I still reading this blog?” You want more business … that’s why.

Let this roll around in your head for a while: If you were given all the right resources to market your company, would it become as successful as you hoped it would be? Either way you answer, this should require you to consider what mistakes you are making and which required resources you are missing. It very likely has a whole lot to do with your marketing.

Photo Credit:
Separation Anxiety by j bizzie via Flickr

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Social Media Marketing is More Than Social Networking

Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of people trying hard to have a big social media audience? I’m sure you’ve seen things like television shows promoting their Twitter and Facebook. You’ve probably seen companies running contests and offering free goods if you will just follow them. You’ve undoubtedly seen the links all over the Internet screaming “Follow Me”. On the more absurd side, you’ve likely had complete strangers with nothing in common, and no real interest in you, follow you or send you a friend request, just to add to their perceived worth.

A couple years ago, I described it as the “Twitter Follower Frenzy“, and it still persists.

Seeking an audience is not all bad, but it is one of the more misunderstood components to social media marketing. It has been widely promoted that if you can gather a big audience, it will provide some unrealistic value to your business.

Once the audience is assembled, many people talk about “engagement”, but then don’t even know what that really means. They will say how important it is to “engage” your audience, so a lot of companies take that as just trying to make friends and be chatty with everybody they can.

Friends are fine, but that is not marketing. That is networking, and social networking can do amazing things for your marketing, and building social media equity is important. However, by using tactics without a strategy, social networking alone will lead most companies to huge disappointments.

Who Are Those People in Your Network?

It baffles me how many people and companies are so desperate to have “Followers” and “Friends” that they will completely give up on understanding who they are, why they came, and what they want. A lot of them are so desperate that they engage in the absurdity of implied reciprocity. You may know it as the “I’ll follow you if you’ll follow me” tactic, and I hope you don’t waste your time with that.

Without knowing who they are, why they came, and what they want, and by just having a bunch of random communications with random people, the value is greatly diminished. After all, just try to “engage” me about knitting needles … it will not help you sell more knitting needles … not even one. Even if I like you, I’m also pretty unlikely to tell all of my friends about how awesome your knitting needles are. It’s just not my thing.

Let’s be clear on this! If you are just trying to reach people, it will not provide the same benefit as reaching the right people. This is the biggest single missing link I find with most social media campaigns, and it is because of an utter lack of strategy. Struggling along this way will cost a lot more time, effort, money, and the worst of all … the huge cost of missed opportunities. So, why don’t people get this?

Without knowing about the audience, it is futile to create the right message they care about and will respond to favorably. It causes many brands to become very boring, and even annoying. A brand without a meaningful brand voice that resonates among their audience is really missing the point.

I realize that things like “knowing the audience” seems mythical to a lot of people. It must seem almost impossible to know who they are as a group, and then to figure out what they want, or what moves them. This is something that you will hear people talk about in theory, but putting it into practice is a much more refined skill.

On a side note to emphasize knowing who they are, and what they want, just look at the recent insults Chris Brogan received when he mass-unfollowed tens of thousands of people on Twitter. You can bet the ones who were upset didn’t care what he had to say as much as they just wanted him to follow them … as if that was really going to grant them three wishes.

See The Great Twitter Unfollow Experiment of 2011

You’ve Got the Audience, But Now What?

Aside from the job of defining the right market for your offering, successful social media marketing requires being creative enough to determine what they want, and also deliver it. Marketing creativity is not a native asset for most people. Optimal creativity comes when a person is utterly immersed in the creative world as their career. Like any career, people who do something day in and day out get better at it. You can have a degree in dentistry, but if you work full-time as an accountant, you are probably not the best dentist.

I have described the best SEO and social media marketing tools in a previous article titled “The Best SEO and Social Media Tools Are Not As Expected!” As a preview for that article, I offer this video.

Warning! The following includes a high concentration of truth, which some people may find unsettling or offensive. Please be warned that this is not suitable for all audiences!

Successful Social Media Marketing Requires More

I am not out to discourage or offend anybody who is trying earnestly to learn effective social media marketing. Quite the opposite, I make many sincere efforts to help them. At the same time, I am convinced that there is a huge lack of critical thinking when it comes to online marketing. When I say critical thinking, I mean being willing to question what you’re told, enough to discern the truth from the lies.

There are enough people promoting that “you can be an expert, too” and “easy money” mentality that even things which have no basis in reality or common sense are accepted as truth. When people desperately want to believe something, they make it more believable in their own minds. The one thing I find many people struggle to believe is the truth. That is because the truth is far more complex than what you find in an ebook, a blog article, or a conference.

I am going to share a bit of harsh truth. Some people will respect the honesty, and some will hate it. That never stopped me before, because I write to my audience … the people who care about my industry, people who care about the things I do to help my industry, and people with a propensity to become my clients. That is the voice of my brand, and that is my audience. All of the others certainly matter, but they are not a part of my strategy, and do not affect my business results.

So here we go … this is a small snippet (edited to include relevant links) from a recent 11 page, $200,000, four month marketing proposal that I submitted. No, it was definitely not presented as a $599 pathway to success. We told the truth, and it is up to them to accept it or not. Tear it apart if you like, but the truth is what the truth is, and you cannot change that.

Most people get social media completely wrong. After all, they are often listening to others who are only slightly less confused than they are. They come to think that it means just socializing with a bunch of friends, and that with enough friends, their business will become a smash hit. It doesn’t work like that!

Social media is not identified as easily as Facebook for sharing college party photos, Twitter for telling people what you are having for lunch, LinkedIn for finding a job, and YouTube for showing off funny videos. It is also not so basic as having a large audience, which is a common fallacy.

A lot of people will try to point to facts and figures about social media, but something very few of them will tell you about are the downsides. They overlook how very quickly The Pareto Principle comes into play when you send in a novice to do your bidding. The Pareto Principle is the rule that tells us 80 percent of success comes from 20 percent of the people, and 80 percent of the people will fail miserably, while the other 20 will take 80 percent of the rewards.

When applied to online marketing, there is a very long tail. The percentage of success is much smaller than 20, while the percentage of failure is much larger than 80. In fact, only a very minuscule percentage of social media marketing efforts will become truly successful, but we can explain why.

Most companies fail to realize the critical importance of audience modeling and knowing who they actually need to reach. Most will not make proper use of the invaluable discovery tools to help them reach their ideal audience. Most will not understand the psychographic research enough to know what their audience will respond to favorably. Most will lack the creativity to inspire action. Most do not have the time or patience to invest in knowledge, nor the confidence to invest the money needed to gain that knowledge.

The responsibilities of social media marketing professionals are a lot more than making friends and socializing. It is far more detailed than a person can learn in a month or two, and it is usually not intuitive. Many of the people who do this job the best have been doing it for many years, and put thousands of hours into learning. They are also the ones who are happy to help others learn what really works, and stop believing the myths. That is because when the industry is less confused, eventually each of our clients become less confused.

I know it is a very challenging and sensitive topic for a lot of people. I try to help others to improve their knowledge. I’ve got to say that it also really brings back my earlier question that has been asked around the world many times. That question is “Why Do You Want to Become an SEO and Social Media Expert?”

For those who are just certain they want to be in the business of social media marketing, be sure to subscribe and keep reading. There are very few secrets of effective online marketing. Volumes of good information are available right here on the Internet, and there is a good amount right here in my blog archive. If you take the time to study reliable information, work smart, and exercise due diligence, your marketing will improve regularly.

On the other hand, for those who are certain they need help, call me anytime.

Of course, I can only help a limited few at a time, so whomever you choose to help with your marketing efforts, be sure they understand the importance of what I have expressed here.

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Marketing Clients vs. Crybaby Sissy Bed-Wetters

When people lack confidence in proper marketing, they lose! They lose time, they lose opportunities, and they lose money … lots of it! I don’t even feel a need to prove this, because for people who don’t get it, we have a phrase for that. The phrase is “survival of the fittest”, and if you have some guts, you are far more fit than a lot of your competition.

Believe me when I say that most of your competitors are total wimps! If we took them back to elementary school, you could see most of your competition walking to the office to call Mommy and ask her to bring a dry pair of pants to school. They are scared, and to say they are “pants-wetting scared” is not such a big stretch.

I mean, look at yourself … aren’t you just a tiny bit creeped out? Doesn’t it give you the willies just a little to do what it really takes to grow your company?

Seriously, if you never knew this, you deserve to know. Most people making decisions about marketing for their company are scared to death of marketing. I am going to share a real-life story with you in a moment to emphasize the point, but for a moment, just take it on faith.

This common fear of marketing is especially the case with the good kind of marketing that comes with proper research, solid strategy, efficient forecasting, and net profit … yes, positive return on investment. The reason the good profit-generating marketing is scariest of all is because it is the kind that requires decisive action … and money!

Drat! It’s another one of those long reads. Don’t worry, though, because I recorded it for you. Just click play and listen if you like. It is sure to give you some food for thought and a laugh … I’m sure of it!

The Way Many Companies View Marketing

A lot of companies seek the lowest possible effort and the highest possible return. That is smart business, but they often focus more on that low effort and completely lose sight of the highest return.

You see, now that every reception desk has a computer, marketing is pretty much free. Just look around and you may discover that this is how your competition sees it. Anybody can prepare and execute a brilliant marketing campaign. All they have to do is sign up for one of those Facebook thingies, Twitterize 25-26 hours per day, and put some smiley-happy employees and customers on YouTube.

Voila! The marketing is fixed, and the money train will be chugging down the tracks in no time!

It may sound crazy to you, and I hope it does, but this is really how a lot of companies approach their online marketing. It is so simple that all it will take is a tweet or a Facebook mention. They see companies like the ones mentioned in an article I read in Telegraph.uk. Here is a quote:

Ticketmaster estimates that every time one of their customers posts on Facebook that they’ve bought a ticket, their friends spend an additional $5.30 with the site. When last year’s Google conference was taking place, they tweeted the morning of the conference: “100 tickets left, 550 bucks a piece, use this promotion code”. 11 minutes later they tweeted, “Sold them, thank you.” That’s $55,000 in sales with one tweet in 11 minutes.

Rub a lamp and wish for a genie! You don’t have Ticketmaster demand or Google reach. Something is stopping you, though, and it is not the tools … it is the planning and strategy. If you keep doing what you are doing, you will likely keep getting what you get. If it is time to step it up, then step it up and do something brilliant. Do something with a strategy! On the other hand, if it is time to lie down and die … do that, and go peacefully. Just don’t keep waiting for that magic genie to arrive. He’s not coming!

Break for a Wise Marketing Tip:

Some people actually screw this all up and think that what they are paying for with proper marketing is just a task. Any moron can do a task, so it should be cheap, right? I provided some examples of this train wreck mentality in the articles as follows:

Social Media Marketing Pricing Like Cab Rides by the Pothole“

… and the profoundly absurd

“Hourly Rate for Setting Up Social Media Profiles?!“

Damn the luck, it seems that somebody tried to shove the whole population of marketing professionals into the same cage as if we are all the same critter. The good and bad are all mixed into one, and along with my high-end marketing buddies, I guess people surely think that we get paid for what we do.

The larger truth is that we get paid for what we know, how we know how to know what we know, how we think and analyze, who we know, and the other really unimaginable stuff that comes with experience, marketing talent, and brute creativity.

Pete and The Amazing Pee-Pants Pizza Parlor

I have a story about a guy named Pete. Seriously, this is a true story. Pete is very excited about selling his wildly amazing and awesomely marketable pizza franchise across the USA. He will possibly succeed, once he gets out of his own way, but he is still walking around in wet pants and trying to keep from vomiting at the thought of finally bringing it to market.

Sure, Pete logically knows that marketing is his most important asset. He realizes that Starbucks was a little coffee company and Subway was a little sandwich shop, and still would be without great marketing.

Actually, his name is not Pete, and his business is not pizza, but I’ll use that. His name is close enough to Pete, and his retail food franchise business is close enough to pizza to make the same point. The story is about a series of calamities that just drive me nuts. Nuts enough to share my opinion, and to welcome yours.

Here is the “hot sheet” version of how things have gone so far. Pete contacted me a year ago about his business. He was referred to me by a friend whom he trusts. Our mutual friend told Pete that the project was way out of her league. She explained that based on his hopes for massive adoption of his new franchise opportunity, he needs Murnahan (that’s me). Not a guy like me … me!

When Pete first contacted me, he was in an urgent rush to get his marketing in order. He was very concerned that he had already waited too long. He was afraid that based on his time frame for other business plans, he needed me on the project “yesterday”.

Pete was more than just a little blown away by things I shared with him about the possibilities for his business. I guess it was stupid of me to start dolling out free brain-juice, but heck, he was a referral, after all. Based on his own wildly flattering statements toward me, I was assured that he wanted to be my client, so I let fly with a few pan drippings from my brain in the roasting pan.

Dumb dumb Murnahan … I knew better, because giving too much freebie talk is a big open door to truckloads of non-paying brain work. I do it though, and it almost always bites me in the ass, because people really hate that transition to actually paying for the knowledge they need.

Skipping forward a damn long year and a whole bunch of phone calls that he has never paid for, Pete is calling me with wet pants again. He needs some serious help, and he talks like he is actually ready now.

The huge pause in his business was a funding snafu. Wouldn’t you know it that somehow those banking folks actually like qualified market projections in the business plan before they fund a deal. It is too bad Pete never thought of getting some better facts to work with. Maybe a year wouldn’t have spun by so rough for him.

Well, I guess we’ll kill the hooker tonight and worry about it tomorrow. Now we can just wing it on a half-assed budget and hope to make the bank happy. Yep, that’s how we roll, right Pete and Pete-like thinkers?

By the way, when I tease Pete about his wet pants or describe him as a shaky handed sweaty little fella who pulls the blankets over his head so the monsters don’t get him, I want to note that I like Pete. I like him plenty fine, even if he is a crybaby sissy bed-wetter and horrific planner.

Pete is a fine fella, and he will likely do very well in his business. His first and scariest step will be to listen to the consultant / strategist as much as he talks. Actually, before he can meet that scary challenge, he will have to get up off his steamy little pee-soaked wallet and pay for the scary monster he needs advice from.

The craziest thing I ever heard was when he finally rubbed his wet panties into my telephone ear yesterday and started asking for references. What the hell? We covered that last year! He has been putting his short-n-chubby in my ear all this time, reading my blog, sending me Facebook messages, email, and asking me for more brain-drippings, and now he’s asking if I’m qualified?! This is the same guy who has referred others to me when they needed serious help!

His biggest expressed concern is that I am a few hour flight away from his cozy little blankie. He wants to be able to manage my work close-up. Well if that isn’t silly … all it takes is money. If he is doing it right … I mean, right enough to sell 150 pizza franchises in the next two years, the least of his worry should be the cost of an airline ticket!

Somebody just effin’ give me a tequila, a hooker, and quarter to call home and I’ll sell more damn pizza stores than this guy can handle.

Pete has hopes, but they are only hopes so far. They are not goals, because he doesn’t have the market data to set goals yet. He is pretty reluctant to gather it, too.

Why do people try to kill me like this? Is it because they don’t have confidence in their market offering? Is it because they are so scared they would rather go broke than invest wisely in their own futures? Is it because they have no balls? What the hell?

I swear, if I put Pete in a room with the guy I recently wrote about hoping to put “100 percent” into his health and beauty industry marketing, but yet keep the budget under $10,000, I could slow down time enough that my trip to the looney bin will feel like a whole lifetime! Maybe my conniption will be worth it.

OK … that got a little teensy bit rant-ish, but sure was fun! Go ahead and level me out. Be my friend and help me to calm down and breath slower.

😉

I sincerely believe that marketing in itself is the hardest field of all to market to clients. It is because in damn near every other product or service I have ever marketed, there is always some sense that the potential customer has two brain cells to rub together. This is often simply not the case when people are in the market for marketing services. Not since the invention of the Internet money-train.

One more thing … Can somebody tell me who I need to whack over the head to get a decent client with dry pants?

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Internet is a Body and Your Website is an Organ Transplant

I have an uncommon analogy for you to consider today. I sometimes feel a bit like a mad scientist slinking into my secret laboratory, just a little bit like Dr. Frankenstein. It seems especially real on days when I sit at this computer for sixteen hours, nap for three hours, and then return with my crazy mad scientist hairdo and coffee breath. Creepy? Perhaps, but it is always fun to exclaim “It’s Alive!” after it all comes together just right.

I realize that some people are squeamish about biology, but don’t worry, we are just imagining this for a few minutes. Think of it like a science fiction movie scene.

Try to picture the Internet as a sci-fi creature with living tissue, nerves, and blood vessels growing every day. It is alive and growing, and it has defense mechanisms just like most organic life forms. If you introduce a foreign object, it will either accept it, or it will reject it.

Now try to picture a surgical introduction of an organ transplant of a man-made synthetic tissue. Your website, along with the rest of your online branding assets, make up that donor organ. In the beginning, it is laid on the surface of the huge Internet organism, and surgically connected by way of new social networking efforts and a micro-web of hyperlinks to and from other websites. This is the toughest time for the transplant, and requires a lot of nurturing.

The donor organ is nourished with the textual content of the website, but it cannot live on its own for very long. It will need to connect with and become a part of the larger organism. The surgical team (web developers, SEO, owners, management, and etcetera) will need to work diligently if the donor organ is to be accepted to live and grow as a healthy addition to that larger organism.

Like any organ transplant, if the organ is not well-matched, it will not grow, and it will be rejected. To improve its odds of acceptance, the website medical staff needs to introduce antibodies to the larger Internet organism, and connect the nerves (the people) carefully. Think of the antibodies as the useful things the website has to offer, and the nerves as the people. The delivery method is social media and appropriate business networking with existing parts of the larger organism. You know, instead of hypodermic needles and pills.

The useful “antibodies” help to keep the nerves (the people), and other defenses of the large creature soothed, and even bring it to embrace the new donor organ (website). It is critically important that the surgical team connects the right nerves in the right places in order to make it a healthy transplant.

Why the Organ Transplant Analogy?

This concept came to mind as a prospective client asked me to help her launch a new surgical center website and social media campaign. She did not seem to grasp all that really goes into developing a successful online presence, just as I don’t fully understand how to perform surgery. She mostly just wanted to believe that a good website with a little search engine optimization fairy dust and social media chattiness was all it took. That is kind of like if I assumed surgery just takes some sharp knives and clean towels.

Things such as targeted marketing using customer modeling based on demographics, psychographics, and propensity analysis held no importance to her. She didn’t understand or want to accept those concepts in the beginning, just as I don’t understand why they can’t easily replace my blackened smoky lungs with a new pair.

While visiting with her, I decided that I needed an analogy, so I used the example of the online marketing work I do for myself. That is easy, because I never have to worry about treading on a client’s non-disclosure agreement (and most of my clients require them). It also shows that I have faith in what I was telling her … after all, I performed the same surgery on myself.

So, I explained that there are over 157,000 links pointing to my blog articles, according to Google Webmaster Tools, and that indicates a healthy transplant.

They each add up to connect my blog to the rest of the Internet organism. They are like the nerves and the blood vessels that have adopted my blog as a part of the larger organ which is the Internet. Now my blog helps to nourish the larger organ, and the Internet nourishes my blog as an accepted donor organ.

Then she was concerned about how much it would cost to do it the right way, but without any apparent concern about the cost of doing it the wrong way. Of course, everybody wants to know the cost, but as I’ve explained before, simply asking “How Much Does SEO Cost?” is the wrong question … for many reasons.

The cost of good marketing is kind of like paying taxes. If somebody asks me about taxes, I will tell them I’d prefer to pay a billion per year in taxes, because that means I earned a lot more than that! Similarly, if you spend a lot of money on marketing … the right marketing … it pays you many times whatever you pay for it.

She eventually steered away from her cost concerns, and she began to recognize that she was doing this to increase profit … and not to waste profit. Then she was concerned about how long it would take. Of course, we all want things fast … especially when it comes to money. The more important and seemingly obvious consideration is not only in how long it takes, but whether you implement the skill, the time, and the effort to make it possible at all. If you are doing it well, the time frame is shortened accordingly.

The conversation was very familiar. She was terrified of making good business decisions. I don’t blame her for that. It is a challenging process, and the world of online marketing has tried to overlook good business principles of “pay now, play later“.

Do Surgeons Have All the Answers?

I told her that I could create the tissue in my lab, surgically implant the tissue into the Internet body, help her with the antibodies, and nourish its growth. Then, in her wisdom, she decided that she just wanted me to create the tissue, but that she would handle the surgery and the after-surgery care.

This was because she thought it would save her some money. Yes, the surgeon decided to be a marketer … or to assign it to somebody she could pay the least possible amount of money to. The truth that she does not want to face is that she would be wiser to create a novice website but hire a great surgeon. The even more astonishing truth is that she would be a lot better to count on professionals to carry out the surgery from beginning to end, just the way her patients do.

Can you believe that even somebody so intelligent as a skilled surgeon does not understand the much higher value in allowing the professionals to do the work they are trained to do? Seriously, when people are so absurd to believe that they should add another profession to their resume to save a few bucks, just imagine the dollars they leave behind with their even more expensive and time consuming trial and error learning.

I have written my ideas on this topic, but it still leaves me to wonder why everybody wants to become an SEO and social media expert.

In summary: The next time you, or a loved one goes into surgery, be sure to ask the doctor if she does her own marketing. If so, she is probably not the smartest surgeon.

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Social Media Marketing Pricing Like Cab Rides by the Pothole

I find that a lot of people are curious about breaking down marketing services like social media and search engine optimization to an hourly rate. I know this, because a lot of people search the Internet for pricing information and find me.

Silly me, I don’t have a standard rate sheet, but I will tell you why. I don’t know how much it will cost to perform SEO or social media marketing until I know what a company wants and needs from the services.

I understand the concern of marketing cost. After all, the reason for a company to spend money on marketing is to achieve a higher profit. This means the cost of marketing will be a factor. However, it is too common that the only set of numbers a client will clearly understand is the outgoing money, while they ignore the more important numbers such as accurate projections, goals, and increased profit.

The cost of marketing is not the same for any two projects, because the associated tasks are as different as the company itself. More importantly, marketing is something which spans the life of a company, and not just a set of tasks that are finished in a set number of hours. If you shop for marketing by seeking to buy a set of tasks, then you are essentially dictating a job, rather than letting the professional do the work they are trained to perform.

Reasons Marketing Cost Varies, and Menu Pricing Fails

Menu style pricing works great for some marketers, but it can create a huge disaster for the client. I don’t have time to list all the reasons the cost of marketing can vary widely, and you don’t have the time to read that list. I’ll give you a few points to consider.

Some companies will have well-formed projections of their market potential, and some will have already done the research to know how many people they must reach to achieve their goals. Some will have a targeted marketing strategy already prepared, and most will need help improving it. Some will have already performed A/B testing to determine their optimal conversion rate. Some will have creative ideas for their marketing, and even have talented people to help implement it.

Some companies have all of these things in place, but this is often not the case. Instead, I find that they come to me asking me to do whatever it is I do, without really even knowing what needs to be done. Then, without understanding the tasks, or reasons for them, they want a shortcut answer to “How much does it cost?“

The question of how much it will cost, without a clear idea of what is needed, or what will actually improve your return on investment is an easy way to waste money and time doing the wrong things. It is like shopping for a dentist by seeking the cheapest price for a filling while what you really need is a root canal. Worse yet, it is like telling the dentist how to perform the filling, and asking for a discount because you used less Novocaine. With that kind of thinking, should there really be any wonder why most marketing fails?

Dictating Social Media Tasks is Like Telling Your Cab Driver to Swerve for Giraffes

Would You Buy a Cab Ride Priced by the Pothole?

It makes me wonder how many companies pay their building lease by the hour. What if they booked flights by the mile? Would you pay extra to fly around a storm? Would you tell the pilot which way to fly, or would you rely on the professional?

Some things just don’t sensibly calculate in the terms we think they should, or wish they would. It is not always because somebody is trying to hide an obscene profit. Many times, it is because the cost would be outrageously high to account for each item granularly. Imagine trying to account for a cab ride that includes a charge for every time the cab hits a pothole and gets a little closer to needing a new set of tires or shocks. Should stopping for traffic signals cost more to account for the brake wear, or should we burn more gas and take the longer route to avoid them?

The challenge for a lot of people to realize is that the cost of any product or service will be built into the price. The cab driver will need to receive more money for his job than what it cost him, so he sets his pricing and maintains his car to optimize his earnings. If you asked him to itemize each thing, you would have to pay him for that extra time he is doing accounting instead of driving his cab. If your driver lets you blindfold him and direct him how to drive, you are both foolish.

My point here is to express how easy it is to make mistakes when shopping for and comparing services in an unfamiliar industry. In the industry of online marketing, if you pay for somebody to account for every hour, you will likely pay a lot more for the extra accounting.

Then again, I guess I shouldn’t complain if somebody wants to pay me for the hours I lie in bed at night staring at the ceiling as I ponder how I can make them more successful tomorrow than yesterday.

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Photo Credits:
Costa Rican Pot Hole! by Arturo Sotillo via Flickr
Cone & Pot hole by oknidius via Flickr

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