Today is Halloween. Do I have to?

But why?

Have you ever asked yourself, why am I celebrating Halloween? I am 44 and I have never stopped and asked myself, “why am I celebrating this holiday this year?”  I can recollect about 39 times in my life that I participated in this holiday and truth be told, I can justify participation once.

1. I don’t like processed sugar anymore and the holiday seems to be a retail driven.
2. Even though I am a salesman and a marketing guy, I don’t like the concept of panhandling for sugar.
3. I live in Colorado and it never fails that Halloween is always cold and bad weather.
4. I don’t mark a religious celebration with the holiday.
5. I like dressing up, but costumes that stand out are usually expensive, time consuming and almost always uncomfortable.
6. The holiday marks no significance in history or the work of a great human being.

Come to think about it, I cant think of any good reasons why I should support the silly Halloween habit other than it gives my children something to do.

There are many things we do in life that are like that, participate just becuase we have always done it or that is what the masses do.

Thinking about not participating in Holloween this year to see if it changes my life.

Maybe our marketing is that way, we do things because it’s what we have always done or it’s what we are expected to do. The herbal company that sells their product in cottage retail vitamin shop. The software company that attends trade shows. The newspaper that drops there content in your driveway. The liquor store that advetizes in the newspaper that is dropped on your driveway.

Innovation is rarely found in the stream of the masses.

Take a step back and look at your present marketing and sales tactics and ask “what happens if we don’t do it this year?”

I think I am going to go to the gym this year while everyone is out drinking or parading around in uncomfortable costumes. I am sure there wont be a crowd at the gym and that just might be a good thing.

Over the past few months our firm has created new client relationships with many organic, nutricutical and natural food and supplement companies. It’s always exciting to start new relationships.

My business plan did not call for us to focus in the “healthy living space” but here we are working with some of the top players in this vertical market.Fun stuff.

I come out of the computer software and hardware industry and the one thing that industry does well is sell solutions.  I can site example after example where we created software and hardware combinations to complete a solution.

Back in the day, (people always use that term…) I was involved in vertical marketing proof of delivery systems  in the early 1990’s. While the systems  were indeed document imaging and document management systems, we were not successful until we spun a story around the solution and not the product. We solved a problem and did not sell a software. I solved the problem of a trucking or shipping company getting paid faster because we could prove the load had been delivered and signed off in the same day. It was nearly revolutionary at the time.

Fast forward to today and I find myself in the middle of a market where very few companies sell solutuons, but rather they sell products.

Stop it.

Consumers want an outcome, not a product. Nobody cares about the product it’s self, they care about the outcome.

Dont sell me a meal replacement shake… solve my problem; help me loose weight!

Dont sell me organic cocoa nut sweetened with cocoa nut sugar, sell me the satisfaction and delight of a hot cup of cocoa on a cold winter day that is delicious and warms me up from being out in the cold sledding or shoveling snow.

Dont sell me a organic antacid, teach me how to buy an antacid that gets rid of my discomfort and wont make toxic.

Stop pushing ingredirents and teach me why it makes me feel better, look better, have more enery, helps me have better sex, or some other solution to the problems I face in my day to day life.

Get over your ingreidents, forget about the 30% off, free shipping, and great packaging, teach me how to solve a problem and I am yours.

Want to get attention, pay attention to the needs of the buyer.

Until next time, stay connected!

I would like to welcome to our family of clients, Cheryl Opperman Photography.

If you are not familiar with Cheryl’s work, you really ought to check out her website, her photos are stunning. The pictures are so well done that some of them almost look fake. ( Cheryl, I don’t mean any thing but a compliment..)

Our firm is helping Cheryl bring to the market her stunning work as we plan on getting her prints, screen savers and down loadable wallpaper for your digital device spread world wide.

Thanks to John Hay for the referral.

I am excited to see what kind of pictures Cheryl brings back from her next trip to Africa in a couple weeks.

What drives people to tweet? Self promotion? Because it’s the thing to do? Because everyone else is? Bored? Unemployed? Day dreaming of self importance?

The smart ones are doing it for Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Let’s look at the numbers.

According to the “Consumer Internet Barometer” from TNS and The Conference Board, 41.6% percent of Internet users who used Twitter did so to keep in touch with their friends. Yet how many of you have 2,000 friends who have time or care when you get a cup of coffee or watch a movie?

In addition, 29.1% used it to update their status, 25.8% to find news and stay updated, 21.7% for work purposes and 9.4% for research.

Women and men both used Twitter primarily to keep in touch with friends. Secondarily, men were interested in finding news and women in updating their status.

Users under age 35 were more interested in broadcasting their status than their senior counterparts. Older users were more likely to use the service for work-related purposes.

The average Twitter user interacted primarily with friends and family.

Next-most-popular were celebrities, bloggers, TV shows, co-workers, brands and journalists.

More women interacted with friends, family and celebrities than men, but men were more likely to follow bloggers.

Older users trailed younger ones in interaction with every Twitter user type except journalists and brands.

While all of this is interesting data, no one really should be using Twitter except for SEM purposes. I am mean come on, anyone with a real job and a normal self esteem with a balanced self perception really has time to play around in Twitter.

I don’t use Twitter for research as some would argue. If you want to do real research, set up a Google Alert and review the content of the things you are interested in once every few days.

Social media can be the biggest time waster for those who don’t perceive themselves as a micro celebrity or are living in small fantasy worlds.   I meet many people who use Twitter  who are living in a small parallel universe having a conversation with a small set of groupies. It’s almost like watching adults who attended the ComicCon in San Diego this past week, all dressed up like a comic book hero, living in a parallel fantasy universe.  Get a life, get a job, get kids, or start a business and you wont have time to be a celebrity figure in your own private Idaho.

I coach my clients to use Twitter and the other social media tools out there as free  web pages to help their business gain SEM rankings in the search engines, be found by users of the social media world and to stay in touch with a small set of peers.( You may want a profile for each of those purposes). Google and Yahoo search engines are scanning Twitter, Facebook, Google Profiles  and Linked in and your firm should have strong keyword based presences in all the social media streams.

If you spend more than 15 minutes a day on Twitter, you may be one of the following:

1. Unemployed
2. Soon to be unemployed ounce your boss figures out how much time you are wasting
3. Living in your own Harry Potter parallel universe
4. Dying to be a micro celebrity
5. All of the above

Micro blogging at 140 characters at a time is just not space to convey a real message. For that, it’s probably better to blog.

Stay connected.

This past week I got a birthday card in the mail from Southwest Airlines. I did not get all sentimental about the card because I know it’s not like the CEO of Southwest was taking time out of his schedule to send birthday greetings but it demonstrated to me that Southwest invests in me as a customer.

Last year I flew on four airlines, all of which I am a registered frequent flyer. Southwest was the only carrier to send me a communication for my birthday. Guess who will be getting my business more often than the other three?

I bark about the reciprocal nature of attention. To get attention, one must pay attention.  It’s a death spiral to think that our current customers and clients will automatically come back and do more business us.

Paying attention to little things is often the difference between being in business and thriving. It’s easier than ever for any size business to pay attention with automated CRM tools like Infusionsoft.  From the start up to the largest business on the planet, everyone competes for attention.

Don’t have the tools to pay attention? Just ask, we can help.

Stay connected.

I am not sure who coined the term “content is king” but who ever said it nailed it when it comes to online marketing.

My firm focuses on the small and medium business market (SMB) and there is no bigger hurdle for any of my clients and their online marketing presence than content.

I am sad to report, more SMBs fail online or struggle because of poor content.

Marketing online is more difficult than traditional face to face sales unless your content can; interrupt the buyer, strike up a conversation, walk the website visitor through the sales process, answer all the questions, overcome the objections, educate the buyer and ask for the order.

Sounds easy enough but it isn’t.

The inexperience SMB business owner or online marketer often falls into the trap of seeing successful online businesses and think overnight instant success is awaiting them if they just get their website up and people find it.

Traffic to websites is easy. Targeted traffic of the right buyers is getting easier each day. You can find SEO people lining the streets like vultures to a carcass in the desert. Traffic that converts is more dependent on content and your ability to continually serve up content that educates the buyer to the point of the sale.

I meet business owner after business owner who will spend thousands of dollars attending conferences, peer groups, executive coaching, executive consulting and all kinds of self improvement but wont spend 3 hours with a team of content and copy writers who design effective content. Yet in comparison to effectiveness, the content could out perform all the other executive junkets combined on a ROI basis.

One needs to have converting content for the following:

1.       Prospect outbound communications to include; email, text, direct mail, audio, video and social media communications.

2.       Landing pages/Website

3.       Customer retention communications to include; email, text, direct mail, audio, video and social media communications.

I see too many executives gloss over the importance of content and it’s delivery. They listen to the marketing experts and get wrapped around their brand and a message. For the SMB, brand can be the pet python that strangles them because they spend their money on brand development and not effective communication of the business proposition to the buyer. I have said this before and I will say it again, no one loves your logo more than you!

Poor content and poor delivery of content means your communications will just be noise or the proverbial hay and not the needle.

Invest in great content for your online communications and your business will grow. Invest in tools that will automate the delivery of your content without adding people.

Stay connected and invest in your content.

Another sigh of disbelief. Why do so many companies fall for these bad marketing spends and programs?  This week’s Marketing Darwin Award goes to Belle Pelle Laser.

Shopping cart advertising is right up there with bus bench advertising as a horrible investment. This is ego marketing at it’s best.

Lets take a look.

Points of Failure

1.       Not targeted – Some ad sales person will argue this is low cost advertising but this is just another form of “pay, spray and pray” broadcast. It’s not targeted to home buyers or sellers

2.       False interrupt – The sexy couple on the beach have nothing to do with smooth skin. This is using sex to sell another product.

3.       Ad is very small – The copy on the ad is hard to read.

4.       No links to social media. One needs to be in multiple streams and let the customer know you are there.

5.       No differentiation – No where in this horrible outdoor display does it teach me how to buy, separate them from their competion?

6.       No connecting with the reticular activator - Most people have been trained to ignore this type of advertising. This ad does nothing to pull me out of my “block out the noise comma” and make me pay attention. Just visual noise.

7.       The ad gets blocked when people put items in the cart. One loaf of bread from being blocked.

8.       Poor location. – When I am in the store shopping for groceries, I am not looking for laser hair removal, a Realtor or Insurance.

10.    Not trackable – Why on earth would you do any kind of marketing these days that does not have a way to measure effectiveness

11.    This is ego marketing. These ads are sold to puff the ego of the name of the business on the sign.

12. Ad selling ad space- This is a huge red flag. If this form of media is working well, there would be a line at the door on a wait list. The simple fact that they are running an ad for buyers should be a giant red flag. Run Forest, run!

Display advertising is a huge waste for the small business. It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars for branding and a shopping cart ad is a complete waste of small business marketing dollars. Belle Pelle laser  should be asking for a refund or looking for someone to help her with marketing in the digital, wireless world.

Be smart. Stay connected.

In the United States we  celebrate Independence day this weekend. Happy Independence day to all!  Make this weekend a wonderful time of celebration of the freedom of not only thought but of action too!  Even with all the challenges our country faces today, freedom is the catalyst for greatness and I wish every human on the planet had freedom.

As I prepare to celebrate independence day with softball,  water fights,  BBQ, root beer floats and fireworks, I think about tapping the spirit of independence in marketing, taking hold of your destiny.

My message today is about independence in your marketing and sales. The world of internet marketing has changed and no longer can you build a website, execute  some nice Search Engine Marketing /Key word  (SEM) work and all the sudden the world comes to you, throwing their money at you.  I don’t know if many readers remember the old IBM commercial that ran in the early days of the internet where a team of co-workers is huddled around a PC monitor to look at a website and they kick it off live and the order counter just starts spinning?  The workers are excited at first as the numbers trickle in and then begin to fret at the order counter starts spinning out of control.  Great commercial, but not reality, not then, and certainly not now.

The reality of today is that your business must still build a great internet presence, must still have strong SEM but you better also be list building, targeting and then hunting down your prospects through automated drip marketing and sophisticated Customer Relationship Marketing. There are over  3 billion people using the internet . Truth be told, there is a customer for everyone and every product. Just doing some SEM is a passive aggressive approach and is not enough.  You better be hunting in the social media streams to find your prospects.

Take control of your destiny and create independence like the patriots did in America 233 years ago by seeking out change, finding your audience, connecting  with them and inviting them into a dialog about becoming your customer for life.  Build an Attention Connection. The founding fathers of the nation would not have broken free if they had taken a passive approach.

Don’t be a pacifist waiting for customers to find you with a bit of SEM, take action and hunt them down.

To get attention, you must pay attention. Happy Marketing Independence day!

Staying connected to your customers is a critical factor in being successful for business. The same holds true for the “not for profit” sector too.

Recently I met with leaders and thought leaders in the local political arena through the invitation to a reception thrown by The Colorado Freedom Coalition.  A topic of conversation at the reception was the challenges of staying connected to voters, policy makers and influencers in the political process. It was pointed out in the discussions how well the Democratic party did in the last election by staying connected to the voters and especially the voters on the bubble or independent voters. The result was remarkable and the democrats won the vote of indepent voters because they were better connected to the voters they needed most.

Non profit organizations face the same challenge commercial business organizations do, staying connected to your customer base through the education cycle of “buying in” (becoming a customer) and then retention of them for life.

If you are not paying attention to your supporters, someone else will. It’s that simple.

Non profit organizations must take the same steps that commercial businesses do today by actively building networks and communicating with them by:

1. Effective list building – identifying who your target customers are and how to communicate with them
2. Granular segmentation of your lists – being able to segment your lists into micro groups for one to one marketing based on their needs, interests and behaviors
3. Deployment of CRM – Customer Relationship Management is vital in being able to organize, track and execute all communications in a single database
4. Content that hits the reticular activator-your communications must stand out and grab the attention of your customers. This is a science and can make your communications be needles and not hay
5. Executing effective communication channels – customers now have many vehicles for communication. Email, text, social media, blogs, etc. You must be able to communicate across all channels
6. Automated follow up systems – customers only buy or buy in when they are ready, not when you are. You must deploy drip systems like Infusionsoft to work for you when you dont have cycles to follow up.

If you run a non profit, you wont be able to stay top of mind without taking on a customer for life, attention connection strategy. Success will be found by those organizations who make attention connection a priority and act upon it.

To get attention, you must pay attention.

Stay connected my friends.

Happy Father’s day to all.

As a father of five wonderful children who teach me lessons each day, I pray that being a good father is one of my life’s greatest accomplishments.

May the day be filled with rest and joy.