THINKing

Show Up For Success

Your minister of the church of marketing has some words for you to ponder today: if you want to succeed you must show up. Woody Allen has often been quoted - incorrectly - on this subject. What he really said was, “80 percent of success is showing up.”

He was not talking about making a cameo appearance or a movie walk-on. He was suggesting that being there fully focused, giving your best effort and doing it on a consistent basis is the formula for success. Allen knows that most people just try to phone it in. And even then they don’t follow through every time, nor give it their all.

Friend Brent Dees says it another way during his Focus Four business coaching sessions. “Do what you say you’re going to do and do it on time. This applies to everything you do in life, from being an employee, a father, a business owner or a friend.”

Let’s consider it from a marketing perspective. I have written and distributed my e-newsletter monthly since April 2002. That’s 95 issues and counting.

Every month, rain or shine, I worry about what to say that will most help my readers in their businesses. Researching the subject and the links follows. Then, writing, editing and newsletter layout come next. Finally, I distribute it and then respond to any reader questions or requests. It takes roughly eight to 10 hours of my time each month and that is really cutting into my naps.

Do I ever want to take a break? Silly question. But the newsletter has long been my primary awareness vehicle. Every piece of business I landed for my first 6 years in business can be traced back to the newsletter in some way. Consistently getting it out at the same time each month has paid off for me.I think about what the president of window blind giant Levolor once said to me, “we can’t afford to do everything from a marketing perspective. But what we do, we can execute violently.”

The bottom line here is this: pick a few things and execute them to the best of your ability on a consistent basis. That’s showing up. Do that and 80 percent of success is yours. We’ll discuss the other 20 percent later. But right now, I need a nap.

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Clarion Call: Disintermediation

In 2006, I was introduced to the concept of disintermediation.The short definition is the removal of the middle man.  Since that time I have seen many examples of the Internet acting as a disintermediator in the producer and consumer relationship.

Futurist Gerd Leonhard, a consultant to the music industry, put it this way: “Had the Internet existed at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, marketing and distribution as we know it today would have never evolved.”  In essence, the producer and the consumer could have maintained a close and meaningful relationship.

One early example of disintermediation was the personal computer. Dell, Gateway and others used the Internet and quickly developed direct one-on-one relationships with their consumers versus using the traditional retail chain channels.Today, we see this as almost normal as Apple, the manufacturer who once distributed via local retailers, has taken full responsibility for their consumers and even gone so far as to create company-owned retail centers.

A current events example is a recent announcement from Bill Warren, founder of Monster.com, of his new online job search that will allow his membership organization of over 500 companies to post all of their jobs directly to their websites using a .jobs moniker. His program will continue to reduce the intermediation between the job seeker and the job provider.

Understanding this concept and identifying the intermediation components of business should cause any service provider from CPAs to web developers to take a long, hard look at their role and the client base they serve.

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Creativity 2010 - Week #7

The Walking Advert - Here’s another idea designed to harness businesses’ lust for exposure: make yourself into a walking advert. Is this something you could customize to work in your business?

Information is beautiful: 30 examples of creative infography - The perfect infography must synthetize complex information in a simple visual representation, which is not easy. The following examples take information architecture to another level by making it beautiful.

Increasing Creativity and Memory in 30 Seconds? -  There is a folk tradition that someone with shifty eyes is considered untrustworthy – as being devious or sneaky. The truth is,  purposely shifting one’s eyes back and forth for 30 second intervals was found to increase creative output as well as memory recall.

The Many Forms Of Creativity -  I am not a creative snob, I don’t think it is reserved to one area of life. I love it in almost every form, the only thing I ask in creativity is that it is easily accessible to the masses.

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How To Be A Great Radio Guest

Radio - despite changes in media habits - still is a great way to get in front of a lot of people. As a radio talk show guest on a national program, millions could hear your message. Talk radio listeners tune in about 20 percent more than the average radio listener.

Being a great guest takes some work on your part. Let’s review what you must do in order to attain great guest status.

Be Available. Journalists of all stripes complain about not being able to reach sources when they need them. With radio, it is not just a 9 - 5 job. The great radio guest will show up whenever he or she is needed.

Be Conversational. This goes beyond your ability to carry on a good conversation. You must speak clearly, concisely and in terms the average listener understands. Start throwing around business-speak like “that’s not in my wheelhouse” and get booted off the show before it starts. In fact, don’t talk like that when you are not on radio!

Be Ubiquitous. It was true when I was in radio and it is still true today, radio people follow their print brethren. If you have been quoted by a news magazine or newspaper, radio producers are more likely to have you on. And, help producers locate you. Make sure you have an online presence and that you have your media clips accessible so producers can determine if you are the right source for them.

Be In The Moment. If you are out pitching yourself, take advantage of the news cycle. If there is nothing happening currently that ties your expertise into the topic of the day, then wait. Your day will come.

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Squirrel!

Like Dug The Dog from Pixar’s movie, Up!, marketers too often are distracted by the latest shiny thing. In my view, strategy should dictate tactics. But tactics are fun and strategy is hard, marketers say.  And that’s the way it is with social media. More than half of all marketers are currently engaged in some form of social media, according to eMarketer, but do they really have a grasp of how it fits into overall business objectives?

“With so much intense interest and activity, the big question is, Are marketers doing it right?” said Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer CEO and author of “10 Best Practices for Success with Social Media,” one of the Insight Briefs in the series. “Since social media marketing has the potential to affect so many areas of an organization,” he said, “the enormity of this opportunity leads many marketers to chase after every technique, tactic and metric that passes them by.”

Social media is not about marketing, and that is why I believe an organization’s PR group should take the leadership. Good public relations has always been about dialogue, listening to your publics before you respond.

Do you agree? Tell us who you think should be responsible for social media.

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Creativity 2010 - Week #6

30 Seconds To Creativity - People who watched a target moving side-to-side for 30 seconds have been tested as producing significantly more ideas when immediately given a creative task. This technique is, “thought to increase the cross-talk between the hemispheres.”

Switch Off Your Social Self.  Switch On Your Creativity -  The paradox is that, when you’re being yourself, rather than trying to imitate success, you’ll be your most original and creative.

Were The SuperBowl Ads Any Good?  Let’s Ask Twitter! - Even in an age of social media there’s still something about Superbowl advertising that appeals to us all.

Need A Business Idea? Look For Pain - If you really want to innovate your business and improve your revenue look for the pain that customers face daily.

Why Design Matters -  All of the energy fed into the debate about the value of good design to the world of commerce would be better spent building ways to make holistic design a routine activity in business—and society.

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Put Away The Diamond Ring

It seems to me that many marketers are like the guy overeager to get married. That guy walks up to the first pretty girl he sees and immediately whips out the diamond ring, asking for the order, so to speak.

Marketers who ask for too much information from prospects the first time they meet is guilty of this, too.

I am always cautioning my clients about asking for too much information too soon.

If someone wants to sign up for your enewsletter, it’s OK if you initially just get an email address and a first name. That’s what I recommend. You can give the prospect the option to provide more but I only require those two elements.

As the prospect gets to know you and appreciates the content you are providing, then you can ask for a little more information.Or, if you want to provide them with some increasingly valuable content, then its appropriate to require a little deeper contact information.

FutureNow addressed this topic recently and I loved this line for their post,

Remember, it’s not about you or your sales process. Your visitors are volunteers in the process and are coming to your site with motivations and intent.

That’s dead-on. Those visitors are volunteers, there of their own accord. If you don’t provide them the information they need without asking them to marry you right away, your competition will. So, let’s put away the diamond ring until we are really sure about this whole marriage thing, OK?

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5 Best Posts - January 2010

We had some very popular posts in January - some old and some new. I thought I’d share them with you.

1. 8 Ways To Use Twitter Lists
2. Twittering Journalists
3. Be Relevant
4. When Billboards Go Bad
5. 7 Ways To Kickstart Your 2010 Marketing 

What’s your favorite?

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My New Business Secret Formula

We’ve talked here often about the fact that there is no marketing magic bullet. But there is a new business magic bullet, and I’m going to tell you the secret formula. Only a handful of those who read this will successfully implement within their business because it is not shiny and new.

Like most businesses, you are probably spending up to 80% of your marketing budget on bringing in new business because that’s exciting. It’s not as much fun implementing my new business secret: do great work for current customers.

But Harry, you are saying, I’d rather go out and bring home the new business buffalo than focus on my current customers. Where’s the benefit?

Let me disabuse you of the notion that there is no benefit in this hyperfocus on current customers.  Doing great work for current clients spawns so many good things for your business.

Even if you have the best salesforce in the world and they can sell anyone anything once, if your company doesn’t wow them with your service they aren’t going to buy from those superb sales folk again. Some estimates show that if you cut customer churn by just 5%, you can increase profits by at least 25%.

If that’s not reason enough, then consider these stats relating to customer retention:

• 91% of dissatisfied customers won’t return
• 96% of dissatisfied customers won’t tell you the real reason why they won’t be back
• it costs 10 times more to replace a customer than it does to keep him
• repeat customers spend 33% more than new customers

But how is doing great work for current customers the secret to my new business program, Harry?

I’m glad you asked. Here’s the key statistic that you need to internalize: referrals from repeat customers are 107% higher than from non-customers. Loyal customers talk you up to others who are like themselves. In other words, they are targeting the right customers for you and you don’t have to spend a dime.

Are you doing great work for your customers? Maybe it is time to reevaluate.

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#1 With A Bullet

Old radio guys like me remember the phrase “#1 With A Bullet.” This was what you said about a hit record (wow, does anyone else remember records?) that was #1 on the chart and continuing to sell well.

Well, I want to know what marketing tactic is #1 with a bullet on your 2010 list.  eMarketer seems to think that email may be at the top of many marketers’ lists, followed by social media, search and advertising.

The real news out of eMarketer is this,

Combining social media and e-mail marketing is a growing trend. More than four in 10 business executives said integrating the two tactics was one of their most important e-mail marketing initiatives for 2010, just after improving performance and targeting and growing opt-in lists.

Now, integrating email and social media is not just including links in your emails to your social media profiles. It could include cross-promoting newsletter content on your blog or even polling your followers on Twitter and using the results in your blog and enewsletter.

Are you integrating your email and social media programs? What else tops your list? Tell us about it, won’t you?

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