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Marketing’s Easy Once You Do the Math

Connecting with your audience isn’t complicated. The movie American Beauty, which won an academy award, earned a decent amount for its investors and gained the adulation of movie goers, was a calculated attempt at capturing the audiences’ and critics’ imagination. The writers, producers and creatives behind the production used a set scheme of symbols to invoke the reaction the movie received.

By playing on themes of vulnerability, overcoming vulnerability and the frailty of human existence American Beauty captured the imaginations of movie goers, satisfied its investors and convinced the Academy of its effectiveness in motivating culture.

Your Self Perception

So if it’s that mathematical why all the confusion?

The problem isn’t what you’re putting out, the problem is what you see when you look in. We like to see ourselves as independent, rational creatures; unfortunately this is simply not true. Divesting yourself of this illusion is one of the first steps towards becoming effective in business.

1 + 1 = x

If you trust that you are unmoved by the mathematics of marketing then you’ll flounder about trying to find some magic key, but admit you’re deeply affected and you’ll find ample market analysis in your own reactions.

If you solidly apply yourself to learning the very basic ideas behind projecting motivation through common cultural cues you’ll find success isn’t so hard to achieve after all. Production cost was an excuse prior to the availability of digital tools. Now the only thing holding you back is your vision of what is possible and your honesty about where you stand.

How Many Employees Does It Take To Stitch a Blanket?

From 2003 – 2005 Google only had one electrical engineer designing its servers . If you’ve heard of the massive data center operation Google runs this might come as a surprise. It also might be surprising that this single engineer helped design one of the most energy efficient and stable data center operations in existence.

Small and medium size businesses often find themselves in situations where it seems there’s just too much to do and too few hands, heads and hammers to do it. There always seems to be something getting in the way or slowing down crucial projects.

If this sounds like where you’re at there might be something in those last two sentences you read over too quickly… the word “seems”.

Tear Out the “Seems”

It doesn’t take an army to run a business even if it “seems” that way. As we’re fond of pointing out, with today’s technologies all it takes is a clear head and a solid plan to operate an internationally relevant SMB.

The illustrator/consultant Hugh McCleod is developing the idea of “global micro-brands”  to provide a model for this way of thinking and he’s just one of many discovering what Google discovered in 2003…even if it “seems” impossible, sometimes all it takes is one person.

Don’t mozy through the “seemingly” impossible day to day tasks of running a business, tear the “seems” out of your thinking and put your effort into the real task of stitching up a successful business.

Ask yourself, what’s makes the task seem impossible?

1. Are you focusing on something other than completing your current task? Prioritize what you are doing. It’s ok to be distracted, but be honest about being distracted and organize yourself accordingly.
2. Are you really working towards another goal? Don’t waste effort moving in one direction when you really want to be going somewhere else. Be honest about what you want and what you are willing to do to get it. Don’t try to eat the whole cow when you only want a burger.
3. Are you confident in your plans? Things move forward quickly when they’re motivated by confidence. Even if doubts linger it’s better to move forward confident in your actions than to stumble half hearted into failure.
4. Are you a dreamer or a doer? Some people like to read books about foreign countries, others like to travel them. The French poet Gerard de Nerval, upon visiting Egypt, remarked to an artist he knew “It is better that you stayed in Paris, there is nothing here of the Egypt we know, only the modern world…” Point being, it may be that you’d rather talk about success than work towards achieving it.
5. Have you applied what you’ve learned? We read up on best practices, go to seminars, networking events, webinars, the whole gamut of preparatory actions, but rarely do we put into practice the core lessons. Make sure you’re getting some ROI out of all that training and not just overlaying new words on old habits.

The Wrong Idea About Friends

If you’re trying to use new media to bolster an archaic business plan you’re in for a few surprises. The old idea that you can’t sell without lying isn’t worth much when your customer can Google your name or your company and find out more than you might even know yourself.

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review quotes Theodore Levitt from the 1960’s as saying that the average salesperson often thinks “the customer is somebody ‘out there’ who, with proper cunning, can be separated from his or her loose change.”

A Two Way Street

When those customers “out there” can get “in” through simple web searches, the salesperson quickly becomes the victim of their own cunning. Communications technology is, not surprisingly, all about communications, and this is a two way street.

How is your sales force using new media? Do they have the wrong idea about friends?

Here are a few points for SMB’s to keep in mind when trying to execute an effective new media campaign:

1. Keep in touch with your community – Yes, it is possible to reach out globally with the technologies available today, but it’s also possible to connect with your community and deepen the partnerships that are already formed by close proximity.

2. You’re helping neighbors, not pillaging the village – The social aspect of communication technology allows SMB’s to effectively leverage the person to person service that they are already good at, don’t waste this by turning technology into another means of mass exploitation.

3. Give back – Another useful aspect of communication technology is the immediate feedback loop it creates; instead of using it solely to find out if you’re marketing is effective why not use it to see what your community needs?

4. Help others prosper – You may be successful at getting the word out about your products and services, but if you’re not helping other local businesses get the word out about their offerings you’re missing an opportunity to develop valuable relationships and strengthen your community.

5. Nobody cares – Nobody cares about advertising or marketing, they care about people, they care about passionate ideas, nowhere does this become more apparent than in social media. Rather than pushing an agenda make sure you are reaching out to connect and reciprocate relationships that create value for everyone involved.

Forget the Naysayers

There are a lot of naysayers out there when it comes to emergent communication technologies. They talk about how useless services like Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn are, but the proof of concept for these tools is obvious once you start honestly using them.

Ramsey Mohsen pointed out a very poignant truth in an article on his blog:

“Facebook sucks if your friends suck”

There’s an old saying, “If you look for the Devil, you’ll find him”, look for people posting garbage and you’ll get garbage, but that belies the whole point of communication technology. Connect to professionals and your network will be professional, connect to creatives and you’ll have a creative network, it’s a simple concept that so many seem to be overlooking.

Feedback Loops

Feedback is important in understanding the way social media works. If you feed bad data into the system (or ask something like “What are the most useless things posted on Twitter?”) you’re going to get a response based on the nature of the input.

Those critics don’t realize that due to the input/output nature of the net they are going to get exactly what they are looking for. They cheat themselves of a valuable experience by asking questions with answers that have no worth.

Why waste time feeding bad input into the system when you could be providing positive value?

Imagine what would happen if they started asking the right questions. With the amount of horrible content they’re able to dig up, how much good content is out there waiting to be found?

Or more importantly, waiting to be created?

The Media Convergence

Social media and what MIT’s Henry Jenkins describes as the “Media Convergence” are playing a decisive role in today’s entrepreneurial arsenal.  For SMB’s the tools to connect with their communities and other local businesses are becoming easier and more accessible every day.

One of the biggest questions with all of these new technologies is how to fit them into a solid and actionable strategic plan. Thankfully it seems as the dust gets shaken from the system this question is finding an answer on its own.

The answer? It seems that the best strategy is to get out, participate, add value and realize that the results are reciprocal.

Moving With the Current

Jenkins’ work has shown that effective grass roots efforts quickly catch the attention of more established media outlets through the natural life cycle of social media. The various channels of mediated (public, private, corporate and governmental) reciprocity are being merged together, through 3rd party applications as well as the simple fact that the users themselves provide centralized nodes in the communications network.

This give and take goes for B2B communications as well. If there is a drawback to this convergence, as Jenkins points out, it’s only that each participant is now expected to act responsibly and effectively to bring value to the system. It’s up to entrepreneurs and business owners to be proactive with their own campaigns in order to reach the potential audience of collaborators that exist in the mediated web.

While Others Worry

While industry journalists worry us with tales of lost revenue, proactive SMB’s across the country are experiencing positive growth through their new media marketing efforts and the simple realization that honest and direct relationships really do matter.

The ability for small and medium sized businesses to remain maneuverable, and quickly scale their operations, works perfectly with the immediate feedback loop that these technologies provide. For whatever failings exist within the social media sphere, as soon as more effective means are found SMB’s can change course and correct themselves immediately.

Caution is a sensible reaction to change, but what are you doing as a business owner to turn your caution into a proactive plan?

Are you saving yourself from a fast fading trend or missing the bend in the road?

Lost your ticket on the Twitter train?

Here’s a helpful set of articles from CIO Magazine outlining ideas for how businesses can better utilize Twitter to help increase brand awareness, customer communication and marketing: CIO Magazine’s Twitter Bible.

Armstrong’s Missing ‘A’

It’s hard to imagine with all those tweets, FaceBook posts, LinkedIn status updates, emails and blog posts that the little mistakes really make a difference. What’s a few grammar errors, factual flubs or poorly worded paragraphs amidst the noise, right?

If you find yourself thinking this, it might be time to step back and reconsider your marketing plan. What exactly are you going for if the small details don’t matter?

Neil Armstrong’s famous words weren’t just an off the cuff remark, they were a well planned strategy to set the media stage for U.S. dominance of space during the cold war. When the public (and the international media) heard him announce “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” some were puzzled by what seems to be a redundant statement.

There was something missing, a little ‘A’ which would have helped the message make sense.

Radio Glitches

All it took was a radio glitch to turn a well placed media mark into a 40 year grammatical gaff. Everyone still remembers the line, but four decades of snarky grammar comments could have been averted with just a little more care.

This is a great lesson for businesses that use social media, if you’re spending time pushing content into the social media sphere why not keep an eye on the quality of what you’re putting out there.

A Few Helpful Reminders to Keep in Mind

•    Matsuo Basho, 17th century poet and Haiku master, said that every letter should be written as if it were meant to last through the ages. This may be a high mark to set for your Tweets, but it’s better to keep it in mind than to forget it and end up regretting one of your 140 character outbursts.

•    Editing is easy before you send something out, dealing with mistakes after the fact isn’t. This is something that’s been repeated so often it’s surprising there’s still a problem (I admit I’m not perfect in this regard either).

•    Make sure your links work. I received an email invitation from a PR firm for a webinar on pitching that contained broken links and obvious editorial mistakes (half sentences that were probably meant to be cut). How likely am I to pay to attend this seminar?

•    Remember relevance. It’s one thing to lighten your content from time to time; it’s another to float off into space. Keep things moored on solid ground and you’ll give people a place to go rather than an opportunity to miss you while they look at the stars.

•    Context is more important than ever. When there is so much information streaming across the internet it’s easy to lose site of the past, don’t add to this problem by missing an opportunity to add valuable historical context to your social media efforts.

How Not to Call Email Marketing Prospects

Earlier today I received a phone call from a local company with whom I’m quite familiar. The salesperson opened by saying, “I saw you opened our email today, what interested you in the email?” The message I had read was advertising a seminar series the company has been aggressively pushing.

Admittedly, I was taken aback. I felt like I was being watched. I also felt that if I had been interested in the email, I would have signed up for the seminar or responded with questions myself. All in all, my feelings were equal parts 1) creeped out, 2) mildly annoyed and 3) strangely intrigued that this is how they were still marketing after all of these years.

It didn’t stop there, however. My limp response to his dead-on-arrival opener behind us, he kept firing:

“Can I interest you in a free ebook?”

“What’s the e-book about?”

“Secrets of Success”

“Sure.”

“Can I also interest you in a free coaching session?”

Waaaait-a-minute!

Here’s where I should have asked, kindly, “What’s the catch?” instead of “no, thank you.” Given how the call had already gone, in retrospect I’d have loved to hear him describe the coaching session.

Their entire dialogue and approach to initiating and nurturing a relationship was broken from the very beginning. He was all about features, saying nothing about how I would benefit from reading his email, his e-book, or attending his coaching session.

Email marketing is an excellent, cost-effective way to nurture relationships that turn into leads. The analytics that come with most all email marketing platforms give you very useful information about who is reading what you write and sharing it with their friends. You can use this information to grow your business, however, it’s best not to creep out your prospect in the process.

So, what can you learn from today’s awkward call?

Here are three better ways you can handle calls to your targeted email lists:

1. Give a legitimate and non-creepy reason for your call. After first asking your prospect if you’ve caught them at a good time, mention something your company is doing that’s of immediate value, and communicate that value immediately. “Next week we’re hosting a seminar on helping sell more widgets. People who went to last year’s seminar tell us they’ve more than doubled their widget sales after putting into practice our techniques.” Now you have my attention, and you’re leading with value, not a hook.
2. If you’re calling a web lead, only offer one premium. This salesperson’s two eager offers; the vaguely-titled e-book and the equally mysterious “free coaching session,” screamed desperation. Though they were determined to hook me with something, they didn’t believe in it (or me) enough to tell me how I would benefit from any of it.
3. Instead of tiptoeing around your point, tell the prospect what’s in it for you while communicating value to them. This can be easily accomplished by filling them in some context. Something like this:

“Of the 200 professionals we coached last year, those who stuck with the program the entire year doubled their businesses in 12 months while building systems that allowed them to work on average 25% fewer hours. Could I interest you in a complimentary session with one of our executive coaches to discuss your objectives and how coaching can help you reach them?”

Do you have an example of an exceptional sales call you’ve received? An exceptionally poor one? If so, please leave a comment below, we’d love to hear it!