Trish Takes On

Swimming in tech-savvy water...easy to forget about other oceans

I spent the entire day in my hotel room, in front of my computer.

• Checked, answered, and wrote emails.
• Opened Tweetdeck so I could stay updated on what the folks I'm following on Twitter were up to.
• Opened a page for Success in Sweatpants (my coaching practice) on Facebook (I invite you to become a fan!).
• Checked Triiibes.com and posted a few comments among the amazing conversations that go on there.
• Eagerly downloaded and read Seth's Godin free Tribes Casebook (I'm on page 168! Way cool!)
• Met with my BlogTalkRadio partner, the wonderful Davender Gupta, to plan the very soft launch of our 3-day-per-week radio show.
• Talked to the wonderful Teresa, 4R's Copywriting Practice Lead about what's coming down the pike and when we should get together to do 2009 planning.
• Wrote an audition piece for a big book ghostwriting project.
• Used Paypal to send a referral fee to an associate.
• Hooked up with my niece on Facebook.
• Updated my info on Squidoo.
• Checked to see where the closest Costco is and how to get there from here.
• And I'm sure I've forgotten what

else.

Pretty much a normal day. But it just hit me--this tech-savvy water in which I am swimming, staying connected to people, places, and things that span the globe without leaving my room, is something I take completely for granted.

It's so easy to forget that there are a lot of people--maybe MOST people--who don't do anything (or very little) on computer. That whole Digital Divide thing, which I've pretty much ignored.

I've been in this ocean for nearly 25 years now. My first computer was an IBM PC (I missed the Kaypro days). 64K RAM, 2 5-1/4" disk drives--it was leading edge. I taught myself Wordstar, dBase, and Lotus 123. Dabbled on dial up email and chatrooms on Compuserve. It was pretty cool.

What a long strange trip it's been.

Leveraging the Pareto Principle for Fun and Profit

Though it may not be referred to specifically by business and marketing experts, the Pareto Principle plays a significant part in the advice they impart. The Pareto Principle says that for many phenomena, 80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes. Also know as the 80-20 rule, it gets cited in all kinds of business media. Interestingly, and in spite of its trendiness, the Pareto Principle really is a useful concept for a service business.

One of the applications of the principle says that 80% of a company’s revenues come from 20% of its customers. In other words, all customers do not have the same degree of impact on your bottom line. Some small portion—20% according to the principle—are far more significant to your firm than others.

This insight can drive a large part of your marketing program. The ways in which you care for the few customers who spend the most dollars will vary based on your particular style and the type of business you own, but no matter what the business, creating a marketing program that targets the top 20% of your list will generate new revenues in all kinds of ways, from increased purchases themselves to sending more referrals your way.

But here is an interesting number: In a survey of U.S. corporate marketing managers, slightly more than half of respondents said that they do not segment according to customer value. This implies that around half of American corporations don’t recognize that their customers are not all of equal value to them. I’ll bet that if we move down into the small-to-medium business sector, that portion increases by a lot.

That’s not good. Customer value needs to figure prominently in marketing strategy, especially in smaller companies. Resources are spread wider and thinner in small to medium enterprises, and every single marketing dollar has to produce the right result. Paying more attention to that top 20% of customers will produce far more right results than treating your list as one homogeneous audience.

Some corporations have mastered the art of cultivating their top customer echelon. Airlines are a prime example; their frequent flyer programs reward the people who buy from them the most, and go one step further by motivating these buyers to continue buying by offering attractive incentives for accumulating more miles with them. They also negotiate special rates with large corporations with vast travel budgets to motivate continued patronage.

How can you leverage the minority of customers who account for the bulk of your revenue? Here are a few ideas to spark your thinking:

• Offer extra services at no additional charge only to these top customers.

• Extend exclusive offers to this segment of your client base.

• Be a matchmaker by networking your top clients and referring them to each other.

• Extend more favorable fees or payment terms to this group.

• Send hand written notes to your top customers on occasion to thank them for doing business with you.

• Send them something special on a birthday, anniversary, or other special occasion.

• Email or snail mail reports or articles that you come across that you know will interest them.

Do some brainstorming of your own on this question, then implement marketing initiatives targeted at your top 20%. And lest you think that we are talking big bucks here, rest easy. It’s amazing what results you can produce with a hand written, snail mailed note, a tin of cookies, or Starbucks gift card.

Be creative, be communicative, be human in dealing with your most valuable customers, and you will reap bigger rewards.

What a concept! Keep everything the same except for what needs to stand out...

A blog post by Seth Godin lit a compact fluorescent light bulb over my head. Here is a key excerpt (at least key to my light bulb):

Marketing storytelling is not about doing everything differently. You do many things the same, intentionally, because those 'same things' aren't part of your story. It's the different stuff where you will be noticed, and the different stuff where you tell your story.

How great is this? I'll tell you.

We have been conditioned to think "differentiate, differentiate, differentiate..." Unique selling proposition (not a concept I'm a fan of by the way, but that's a different blog post), creating mindshare in our markets, standing out from the competition--these concepts tend to make us strive for novelty in as many areas of our marketing activities as possible.

As Seth sagely points out (and it's so obvious now that he's said it--DOH!), the only areas that need to stand out in our marketing are those that are part of our story. It's the story that sets us apart from the rest and captures the attention of the market, not the individual pieces of our marketing program.

Let's hear from Seth again:

If you're not telling a story with some aspect of your marketing choices, then make sure that aspect is exactly what people expect. To do otherwise is to create random noise, not to further your marketing.

Do you see the key point here? I'll try to paraphrase:

It's not that you don't need to deviate from the norm in the areas
that aren't part of your story, it's that you must not deviate.

This reminds me of the principles of online ad testing. You test only one thing at a time, so that you know what tactics are contributing to what results. If you make multiple changes at one time, you won't know what did what to the outcome.

Trying to be different in too many areas--especially in areas that aren't core to your marketing message--will distract and confuse your prospects. Conform or be bland in all areas except those that are specific to your story. That way your market can focus clearly on the message you want so badly to convey to them.

What does this mean for service businesses in practical terms? Here are some thoughts:

• Unless you absolutely need it, forget the fancy logo and color palette. Make your business card, brochure, web site, and other non-story-related materials simple simple simple.
• Discover the voice of your story and make that the voice of all the content connected with your company (I'll talk about voice more in a future posts.)
• Find metaphors that represent key elements of your story and emphasize those in your marketing--but not too many. One great metaphor is way better than a bunch of good ones.
• Use images as well as words--or better yet one "uniquely you" image used in different ways (e.g.,Seth's chrome dome, cropped from his very recognizable head shot, is the "logo" of his blog).

Selective and focused creativity in our marketing doesn't just work in terms of market perceptions. It has the potential of saving big bucks on marketing costs. We spend more on the parts of the program that are story related (but we don't necessarily have to spend more)--the areas where we conform or "bland out" will be low cost because they are commoditized.

I need to think about all this in relation to my own companies. I haven't looked at my marketing from this angle before, but I am convinced of its merit. I'll keep you posted on my status!

Is social media changing marketing?

Call it Web 2.0, call it social media, just don't call it late for dinner...sorry about that. Late in a busy day, and I'm a little punchy.

Whatever you call the explosion of interactive tools/sites/communities on the Internet these days (and here is a list of the top 100), it is making things more interesting than ever.

It has blurred the line between personal and professional lives, which in my book is a good thing--brings out individuality and personality instead of the bland sameness the business world has been choking on for years.

It is creating a chorus of opinion, information, insight, and sometimes on-purpose silliness that can be just so much noise if listened to in one direction, but can be horizon-expanding if ears are shifted to a different location.

And I assert that it is changing marketing by requiring...no, DEMANDING...authenticity.

Social whatever-you-want-to-call-it has very little space for spin doctors and hype artists who hide themselves (and/or their companies) behind carefully crafted facades. The participants on all these networks are consumers and influencers with networks of their own, and it doesn't take long to unmask and then ignore people and entities that want to play things the old way.

The winners across the business board, no matter what industry (though some will see this happen earlier than others), will be those who don't hide behind false fronts, who can engage in real conversations rather than "correct-speak," and who are truly interested in their markets (beyond their potential dollar value).

It will take some time to clearly see this change, but it will happen all the same. Whether or not you participate on any social media sites, the best thing you can do as a marketer is run, don't walk, to shed the masks and facades, and start geting down to real, honest communication. You will put yourself way ahead of the competition...promise.

Good Case Studies Mean Business

I was interviewed today for a podcast focused on case studies and how they fit into a marketing program (when the podcast is available, I’ll post the link here so you can hear my lovely voice). This type of collateral has become very popular in all business sectors over the past few years, and, like other collateral types, there are a lot of really badly written pieces floating around out there.

 

Badly written case studies do absolutely nothing for a company—no, that’s wrong. Badly written case studies can create a negative return on investment, and I don’t need to point out how undesirable that is.

 

Well written case studies, on the other hand, can make a measurable difference in marketing and sales results. Used in different formats at multiple points in a marketing program, case studies are positive influencers that help bring awareness of a company’s products, services, and capabilities to its markets and help shorten the distance to a closed deal.

 

I covered several aspects of a case study initiative in today’s interview. Here are some highlights:

• Case study preparation can be resource-intensive, so find as many uses for the information as possible. Create several versions of the study—for example, long version, short version, abstract, bullet points—so that it can be used on the web sites, in proposals, in presentations, for press releases and media kits, and any other place that it makes sense.
• Ideally, have a trusted third party research and prepare the case study. This provider needs to be a skilled interviewer and a really good copy writer with business savvy. Have the appropriate subject matter experts and business development staff interviewed so that their knowledge serves as the “clay” from which to mold the study, but avoid having these people do the actual writing—they are too close to the knitting (so to speak) to write a study that speaks effectively to the prospect/reader.
• Likewise, be careful about having marketing staff do the writing. Unless they can distance themselves enough from their jobs, the studies they write are likely to end up too much about the company itself and now about the client that it provided solutions to.
• Very often, the subject matter that a case study covers can be dry, dry, dry—or it can be so similar to competitors’ studies that it’s hardly worth doing. The best case studies tell a story using the “technology of fiction” to weave a tale that is interesting to the reader. This kind of case study will stand out from the crowd, and therefore is worth the time and energy spent to craft it effectively.
• The hardest part of case study preparation is gathering the resource information upon which to base the piece. This is where that interview skill comes in to play—interview the business development people to understand the audience for the study and what their issues/challenges are, and interview the delivery people to get all the details about the client and the solution that the study will showcase. The better this front end task gets executed, the better the case study will be.

There was a little bit more to the interview, but I want to leave something new for you to listen to!

Surviving the tsunami of marketing choices

If you have had anything to do with marketing in your business, you likely realized early on that there is a mind numbing number of choices available to you. Between traditional marketing and the channels that exist on the Internet, the range of potential marketing tactics (all with "experts" saying "THIS is the right one! Pay me and I'lll tell you how to do it!) is intimidating as hell.

Take this list, posted on a "virtual assistance" site, which includes a bunch of marketing type items:

• Customer Service/Relations (follow up calls, Email Inquiries, etc.)
• Internet Research
• Document Creation/Formatting
• Product/Service Reports
• Thank You Notes
• Newsletter/eZine Creation/Management
• Email Marketing
• Bulk Mailings
• Article/Press Release/Blog Submission
• Invitations
• PowerPoint Presentations
• Mail merges for letters and labels
• Direct Mail project creation and management
• Collections (calls, letters and demands)
• Follow-up with clients to obtain testimonials.
• Reports and Research (research, writing and compiling)
• Ebook Design and Formatting
• Event, meeting, and seminar planning and advertising
• Desktop Publishing
• Graphic Creation/Manipulation
• Business card Design
• Flyer Design
• Blog Creation/Maintenance
• Simple Website Changes/Updates/Maintenance
• Market Research
• Marketing Assistance
• Google AdWords Campaign Creation/Management
• Search engine optimization
• Submitting your website(s) to search engines and directories
• Brochures Design/Creation

And this is a virtual assistance firm, not a marketing services provider! Step up a notch and you will quadruple this list--webinar production, online advertising, seminar/workshop production, trade shows, conferences, podcasts, radio shows and on and on.

Surviving the tsunami of marketing choices requires clarity, understanding, and patience. Clarity around what results you want to achieve. Understanding of what a candidate marketing initiative requires in terms of resources and tasks. Patience in terms of the time it will take to see a return and also in terms of measuring and making adjustments to improve results.

Integration is also important...whichever marketing tactics you elect to pursue, be sure to dovetail them so that they complement one another.

And if the list you come up with is still long, exercise more patience--select no more than 3 tactics to implement and get going. Master them, get them running like well-oiled machines (which includes having them help increase revenues), then added another one, two or three tactics. If one of them isn't producing the right results, change it or drop it. The point is to do it in chunks and make sure it's working!

Skewering the USP

Today I am going to respectfully take on one of the sacred cows of marketing...the Unique Selling Proposition.

“You must have a USP!” has become a universal chant of marketing consultants the world over, and though their intentions are good, I think that we need to stop and really think about the concept and how it relates to business in a practical way.

As a way of standing out from the competition, the unique selling proposition is a useful concept. Any way you can differentiate your product or service in the buyer’s mind is good. To come up with a USP, you have to stop and think about what you are offering, why customers would buy from you instead of someone else, and how you can best convey those reasons to your market. That kind of strategic thinking is always useful because it is not something we often make time for. So pondering a USP as an exercise to hone our marketing messages is a good thing.

The place where I think many companies get hung up is on the word “unique.” If you believe that you must always have a USP, you are going to have to revise it frequently.

Why?

Because no matter how unique your selling proposition is, if it works, it won’t be unique for long.

Here are some examples of what I’m talking about: Many years ago, a man named Montgomery Ward came up with something completely new--offering an unconditional money back guarantee. More recently, a gentleman by the name of Joe Sugarman—who, by the way will be my guest here in a few weeks—also came up with something completely new—the idea of offering a toll free phone number to order products from his catalogs or infomercials. And a guy by the name of Joe Karbo was the very first person to write a “how to get rich” book based on his own personal experiences, and from his own viewpoint.

All three of those examples were unique—in fact, they all caused quite a stir in their respective markets when they were introduced. And they all worked brilliantly to capture sales. As a result, instead of being unique today, all three of those USPs have become common practice.

While that’s not surprising, it does point out that any USP is going to have a finite shelf life. Still, a USP does have a place in the product development process. And for either products or services it can work really well to gain a temporary market lead—until your competition catches up. But creating a USP simply because that’s how it’s done—as many marketers and business owners do—can waste time and resources.

A USP is a revenue-generating tool among many other revenue-generating tools. Use it for a specific product or marketing campaign when you are confident that having one is really going to pay off. Otherwise, invest your resources on other tactics.

Having said all that, I assert that there is one feature that remains unique no matter what—your personality, or, if you want to say it fancy, your company’s culture. The customer’s experience of working with your company will always be different from their experience of working with someone else. There’s no way to replicate that part of the purchase process.

So, though you will gain by applying the USP as a tool for specific marketing campaigns, in the long run your ability to get and keep more customers resides in how you interact with them day after day, month after month, and year after year. Investing time and resources in understanding your personality as a business, aligning it with your market, and expressing it in all your interactions is what will give you the best return in the long run.

"Sez Who?" marketing...do it!!

Subvert the Dominant Paradigm. 

That has been one of my guiding mottoes since I first saw it on a bumper sticker at a street fair stall years ago.

Subvert the Dominant Paradigm. This intentionally fancy pants statement is a way of reminding me to rock the boat, challenge the status quo, and, in my work with clients, to practice what I call “sez who” marketing.

People are rule makers and rule followers by nature. We tend to like our environments organized and reliable, and if things around us are messy and confusing, we get very uncomfortable and will go looking for ways to put things in order.

Marketing is an area that can get messy and confusing real fast. A mixture of art and science, marketing is often attended by a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty. It is also a high-profile expense bucket that may or may not produce the right results. With all the unknowns, it’s no wonder that we look for rules to follow when planning our marketing programs.

And there are rules aplenty out there. There are piles and piles of web sites, newsletters, ebooks, printed books, training courses, and other resources that will tell you how to market in as much detail as your heart desires. And there are loads of companies and consultants offering systems and methodologies that you can follow like cook books to whip up marketing results.

There is nothing wrong with all this—it’s great to have such an extensive resource to draw from when considering your best way forward. But beware! If you adopt marketing practices and methods without first thinking them through for yourself, you may end up with the wrong results at the end of the day.

I suggest practicing “sez who?” marketing. For example...

Everyone knows that a company needs a brochure....sez who?  There might be other materials that will give you a better return on investment than a brochure.

To gain recognition in your market, you need to exhibit at industry trade shows...sez who? You might be way more productive for a lot less money by walking the show aisles, rubbing elbows with your prospects and leveraging your network to gain introductions and arrange meetings.

To succeed today, you need to blog or podcast...sez who? Both of these communication vehicles are specialized and require a steady commitment of time and money to work well. Sure, there might be uses for one or both of these in your business, but you might also be able to succeed mightily without ever starting a blog or recording a podcast.

Here’s one that might sound odd. If you have a business, you must have a web site...sez who? Okay, I admit that I think that there are very few businesses that won’t get big benefits from having an online presence. It’s the word “must” that rings alarm bells for me...why MUST you have a web site? Maybe just having a blog would work just as well or better...

The list of rules and good advice goes on from there, but hopefully you get the picture.

Always ask why? Are there other ways we can do it? Who says we need to do this? And continue to ask questions, even for programs and initiatives that have been around for a while. Test alternatives, consider new approaches, color outside the lines.

Remember—there aren’t really any rules in marketing. Just made up stuff that gets disguised as rules.

By all means, subscribe to the newsletters, read the books, and invite the consultants to pitch to you. While you do this, though, keep an open mind, don’t assume that what worked for someone else will necessarily work for you, and practice sez who marketing any time you find yourself thinking automatically about how things should look.

Just talk plain, please!

I was just on the LinkedIn Question/Answer page, and read responses to this question: Who are the successful marketers of the future? You can view it here.

I was gobsmacked (one of my favorite British terms, sort of meaning "amazed" but much more accurate in nuance) at the responses. I confess, I did not read each one all the way through, but I did scan enough to see a trend that made me want to tear my hair out. Most if not all of the marketing experts who responded sounded like buzzword robots, academicians, or both at the same time.

Paradigm, tipping point, collaborative innovation, viral marketing--ARRRGGHH! People, can we please express ourselves WITHOUT using buzz words?

And the stiltedness of the response made me weep. Most of the responses sounded like something being delivered in a Master's thesis or to a dissertation panel. Very ivory tower, very detached, very impersonal.

Marketing is communicating. Effective marketing is communicating to achieve the desired response. Buzz words and academic gobbledy gook is not the way of the future of marketing. Companies and marketers who insist on clinging to these relationship-disablers will pay a price.

Clients and prospects are looking for conversations with people--even if the conversations are through written materials or online venues. Conversations, even with corporate executives, are natural, sometimes ungrammatical, and personal.

If you have a tendency to use buzz words or get technical and academic in your marketing copy, take steps to fix this. Have someone else review your copy, and be open to their tinkering with it to make it more approachable and less automaton-like.

Why? Because having copy that speaks naturally will stand out from the crowd, will express your brand better, and will connect with your readers more often.  This means that you will have a far better rapport with your market, and your market will be more inclined to take the actions you ask for.

Can the buzz words!!!! Demolish the pedagogery!!!

In the end, it's an imperative for the good of your bottom line.

Darren and Samantha Stevens were never like this!

I'm catching up on the series Mad Men, the AMC original series that has gotten so much attention lately. I was tardy to the party, so have had to rent Season 1 DVDs from Netflix before watching the current episodes accumulating on my DVR.

It's a really interesting series, mainly because of the "social archeaology" of 1960 and into that decade. The subtle contrasts between how things were then versus how they are now are as compelling (maybe more so) than the story lines themselves.

Part of that fascination surely is because of my age. I'm a Boomer, and I was a child in the time frame of the series. I find interests in the series that leave the Gens X/Y and the Millenials bored.

When Betty, the suburban housewife of the high achieving protagonist, sees her little girl with a dry cleaner bag over her head, she scolds the little girl--not because what she's doing is dangerous, but because of what she may have done with the clothes that were originally in the bag. And when Betty has a "spell" that ends with her driving up onto the lawn, her two kids are thrown onto the floor of the back seat--no injuries, but a reminder that seat belts and safety seats are of recent vintage.

Betty's pregnant neighbor girlfriend drinks and smokes along with everyone else. The newly divorced woman down the street (who wears slacks instead of dresses--gasp!) is looked upon with speculation by the men and jealous protectiveness by the women, who are as catty as any human females of any decade.

In the office, Don (our hero) is a chauvinist, though not a pig. He storms out of a client meeting (with a female client), saying, "I won't take this from a woman," or something like that. Secretaries are fair game to the horny guys roaming the aisleways.

Everyone smokes...everyone. The offices of the big guys are fitted out with full bars, and everyone drinks up at regular intervals.

Most of the women--the "respectable" ones--are sexually naive. Betty discovers the joys of an out of balance dryer when she leans up against it to push it back into place. Peggy, Don's secretary, is fascinated by the forbidden fruit offered by a vibrating weight loss belt that may not shed pounds but certainly stimulates in other ways.   

I could go on and on.

It is good to be reminded of how things were not so long ago. It allows me to appreciate the world today, where I have more freedom than my mother ever did--freedom in attitude, social convention--and a lot more choices than she or her mother or grandmother could ever imagine.