Web 2.0 can be a REALLY scary proposition for some businesses
October 29, 2007
They say that most urban legends and scary tales are created to act as "parables" of sorts. These stories almost ALWAYS have a moral to teach. For example, the story of Little Red Riding Hood was told to teach children not to talk to strangers. This isn’t your typical "scary" Halloween story. Instead, this one is real.
The tale I’m about to tell is true. It is one of Comcast, the media GIANT that treats it’s customers with EXTREME disrespect. (I call it disrespect when a company creates an invoice for a client addressed to "Bitch Dog".) Mike Masnick in his Techdirt post "Comcast Still Dancing Around Its Content Jamming Operations; What’s Wrong With Admitting It?" brings us up to speed quickly on the latest in the continuing saga of how Comcast continues to disrespect the very life blood of their business, their customers.
As someone who is a creator of "Marketing Messages"…. it is my worst nightmare that customers would begin to utter a catch phrase I’ve developed for a client as a profanity. Just as a rash of shootings by postal employees has created the permanent phrase "Going Postal", it appear "Comcastic" is well on it’s way to meaning "Relentlessly screwing your customers."
The tale should serve as a warning for business owners EVERYWHERE what happens when you forget WHY you’re in business! In Comcast’s case, their latest sin (throttling the bandwidth of high bandwidth consumers while advertising unlimited bandwidth) is just another chapter in an ongoing feud with customers.
The moral to the Comcast story: when you give disrespect, expect a backlash. Some tech savvy customers are providing ways to work AROUND the throttling. Others… lots of others, are blogging about it.
-
Comcast Must Die: Seeking Ideas for a Consumer Jihad
- Consumers use web to vent cable rage
-
Chris Pirillo: My FAX to the Comcast Business Unit
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. The thing is, the nature of Web 2.0 actually works extremely well at keeping these "urban legends" alive.
However, as a business owner you shouldn’t discount the ire of less tech savvy customers, who may choose to retaliate with swift and blinding violence. Read about the little old lady who took a hammer to her local Comcast office…because if she couldn’t have phone and internet, then they shouldn’t have it either!
As the Wired blog network notes, tales of such rage can ignite a firestorm of (bad) media publicity. The thing is, the internet could be Comcast’s best friend. But it’s not.
Web 2.0 is all about increasing the interaction between customers and business. Many companies actually PREFER a one way conversation.
Perhaps Comcast should take the advice offered by the Washington Post: Spend less on advertising and more on customer service.
The moral to this story: Make sure your business principles are SOUND before you spend a penny on advertising.
Put the focus on the customer and the marketing message will take care of itself
October 24, 2007
Jay Lipe’s Smart Marketing blog uses a phrase that should be etched on the inside of every business owner’s eyelids:
Remember, a buyer almost always comes to your company wondering how can you help me? not what do you do?
In my book, I talk about how people have problems: big problems, little problems, pressing problems and the "if I don’t think about it, it will go away" problems. It doesn’t matter WHAT you are selling, if you have a product or service, it is in some way solving people’s problems. The goal of your advertising (a.k.a. marketing) campaign is letting the right people know about your business and the solutions your business offers.
By tightly targeting your audience, you can focus on their problems. Once you’ve focused in on a specific audience, you’ll find it much easier to define what it is they are seeking! With that information in hand, the rest is just composing the song and then choosing how you’ll deliver your sweet, sweet music to your adoring fans.
Web Hosting Review and Overview
October 21, 2007
I was on a blog with a Blog Rush box and saw the simple, provocative headline Hostican Review. I clicked and followed the link to read the post. Why? Because I am a HUGE Hostican fan!
In my "real" business, I spend a LOT of time working with various web hosting companies. The range of experience on hosting ranges from the good (Hostican) to the AWFUL experience I had about a year ago when I signed up for hosting with a company that I won’t dignify with a link here.
I’m always "testing" hosting providers in case the one I use turns on me. See, web hosting is all about SERVICE! Give me unreliable equipment but a staff dedicated to providing GREAT support over great equipment and a staff that doesn’t know or care what they’re doing any day. Each year, open DOZENS of hosting accounts just to "test" their services.
My "test" account with Hostican is EZMarketing Tool. I set it up to test:
- how well their hosting supported Word Press
- how well their hosting supported the Semilogic Theme.
Hostican gets a gold star on both tests! Both have been running quite nicely ever since.
Prior to hosting with Hostican, I had set up an account at Midphase and while they supported Word Press quite nicely, when the semilogic theme was applied, things went to heck in a hand basket. Sending email to their support left me with "we don’t support Word Press" type of a reply.
The problem? I was succesfully running a Word Press blog on HostGator with the Semilogic theme with no problems. Same set up on Midphase… problems. Some people swear by Midphase. I have noticed that the people who love Midphase don’t use Semilogic though.
Again, I was out testing because, while Hostgator has been very, very good to me over the past three years, I have SERIOUS trust issues when it comes to hosting.
One thing about doing business in a post Y2K world, if you provide exceptional value, you’ll soon develop a fanatical following. People will tell their friends who in turn tell their friends. That’s how Hostican has grown their business…. and it’s a great model for your business as well!
Sure, affiliate programs help reward your followers… but there are LOTS of hosting companies out there and that I have signed up as an affiliate and then NEVER promoted. One such hosting company crashed, burned and is trying a "phoenix from the ashes" kind of rebirth. They send me affiliate notices which began with promises that "this time we’re going to do things right!"
My mental reply: "Of COURSE you are!!!" However, I doubt I’ll ever be able to trust something as important as my hosting with them again. I had canceled my test account and removed my affiliate links with them LONG before they did their final swan dive into the empty pool.
Let’s blame the advertising….
October 17, 2007
Anyone who thinks advertising is going to "fix" their business, LISTEN UP! It just doesn’t work that way. Your advertising doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It can bring new customers to your business and it can remind old customers that you’re still there… but if your business model is "broken" then advertising is not going to fix it.
For example, this morning I brought in my newspaper and my mail. In the mail, there was a direct mail piece from Allstate Insurance, trying to get me to switch my insurance coverage to them. Meanwhile, in the newspaper, there was a big story on how the Florida State Legislature is going to launch an investigation of the insurer. Seems many Floridians are complaining that Allstate lured them in with ultra low rates and then rapidly escalated those rates to two or three times the original premium.
Guess how likely I am to respond to the direct mail piece from Allstate? PLEASE! The gig is up for Allstate with anyone who reads the paper. As far as I’m concerned, the media blitz of television and direct mail is a waste of time and effort. Never the less, I’m sure someone’s head will roll when that piece (which was nicely constructed and composed) fails to deliver the anticipated response rate.
Remember, your advertising and marketing messages are not delivered in a vacuum. If dissatisfied customers are whispering in one ear, you can be assured your message will be rejected or filtered by the other ear! Unfortunately, in the age of the internet, those dissatisfied customers aren’t whispering, they’re yelling though a bull horn.
Keywords and copy…. essential elements of niche marketing
October 16, 2007
In his post, "Advanced Keyword Research — The power of understanding your visitors”, Hamlet Batista takes the reader step by step through the process of researching keywords for your target audience. It’s a great article with some great tools. Be sure to check out (and bookmark) the full article. In his post, the first step is, of course, to identify your target audience or visitors.
Over and over again, marketing experts EVERYWHERE beg and plead with business owners to begin with their target audience in mind. A much touted key to success is to write copy with the end user in mind instead of writing copy for the search engines. After all, heavy traffic without conversions to sales is not the key to a profitable online experience. But writing with the end user in mind eventually leads us back to targeting a niche market.
An interesting thing happens when you start thinking of your target audience… you begin to include elements in your copy that reduce customer anxiety.
Gee, go figure. People need to establish a relationship (aka TRUST) with you before they hand over their credit card information!
I’ve written an entire book (Beyond the Niche) to help business owners to walk a mile in their customers’ shoes before they write a word of marketing copy. If you’re making a Minor Sale… then trust isn’t as big of an issue for you to overcome with your potential customers. However, if you’re making a MAJOR SALE... then the rules of the game change dramatically.
Advertising as an Invitation to your business
October 12, 2007
While the two terms are often used interchangeably , here is a difference between marketing and advertising.
Marketing is the bigger picture. It is the whole set of the activities involved in transferring goods or services from you to the consumer.
Advertising, on the other hand, is just one facet of marketing. It is the act of paying someone to deliver your message to the masses. Your advertising is just one small part of your marketing; it’s the part that issues the invitation to visit or call the business.
When you think about it, effective advertising is merely a persuasive conversation between you and your prospective customers. Just as you can’t force your political or religious views down people’s throats, your advertising will never convince them to buy a product or service they don’t need or don’t want, no matter how many times you shove your message at your target audience.
When your goal is to persuade someone, you must get to know them first. This is true whether your goal is to persuade someone to change their political stance or their religious views, not to mention trying to persuade them to change what they buy and from whom!
You’ve probably heard the advice of “Just get your message in front of more eyeballs and you’ll be successful.” If you’ve been unfortunate enough to try to follow that advice, you’ve probably already learned that the wrong message, even when it’s delivered the right people, still delivers mediocre results. It’s essential to create engaging and compelling copy to act as an INVITATION to your business.
If the web has changed advertising, it’s only because it provides irrefutable evidence to the advertiser that the poorly crafted message is quickly ignored. In traditional media, the advertiser can sooth his troubled mind with the assurance that he/she is seeing his/her ad, so naturally his/her customers are seeing the ad as well.
The web takes those soothing thoughts and breaks them into a million pieces. Poorly crafted messages leave a trail of log files which show in black and white the disinterested visitors leaving the site in droves or worse yet, the visitors that never came.
Ah… accountability and advertising. David Olgivy never had to deal with that ugly state of affairs.
Slick design + sucky content = failure no matter what the medium
October 5, 2007
David Armano over at the Logic+ Emotion blog answers the question "Why Execs Are Stumbling in a New Media World" very well. He uses the recent admission of guilt by executives at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia as a perfect example of a large and very successful corporation losing sight of their customers’ wants and needs. Globe and Mail reports, that according to Wenda Harris Millard, the company’s president of media, "We put beauty before utility."
Ah, beauty before utility. Unfortunately, seeking beauty before utility has always been the advertising profession’s greatest downfall. Beautiful ads win awards. Utilitarian ads wins nothing more than disdain amongst your colleagues for your unrefined sense of style and taste.
Somehow, today’s advertising professionals got the idea that creating irrelevant but beautiful ads has only RECENTLY lead to advertising failure!
Again at the Globe and Mail they report:
One reason is that consumers today can afford to be more demanding. They can choose among television, radio and magazines, or skip those altogether in favor of video games, music downloads and text messaging.
Today’s audience also depends less on media companies for the entertainment itself, executives pointed out. User-generated content like a friend’s video or a stranger’s blog may suit a consumer’s taste more than a film, TV show or song offered by a major corporation.
REALITY WAKE UP CALL!
People have ALWAYS had something better to do with their time than pay attention to irrelevant ads.
The only difference was back in the "good old days" advertisers and their agencies weren’t able to watch via log files as consumers yawned and went on with their lives.
There’s a REASON you need to keep your audience in mind as you create your marketing message. You HAVE to be able to at least imagine walking a mile in your audience’s shoes so you can create content that CONNECTS with them.
Estaban Glas said it best…. CONTENT IS INDEED THE NEXT KILLER APP! Design isn’t useless….by far it’s not. An appealing design is one aspect of creating compelling content. It’s important to note that design is at best second to the actual content.
Why the best marketing tactics may fail to produce results.
October 4, 2007
Lately, in my work with individual clients, the issue of marketing TACTICS keeps coming up.
One client in particular is fond of taking free teleclasses with various marketing experts. She listens, she takes notes and then she sets out to implement these marketing tactics in promoting her business. The problem is, most of the marketing tactics she’s using are to promote MINOR SALES instead of the MAJOR SALE she is making.
Let me explain…. Neil Rackham’s book SPIN Selling, he breaks the sales that businesses make into TWO separate categories: Major Sales and Minor Sales. (I outline the basics of these two types of sales in my book, Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results
Basically, a Minor Sale is just that. It’s a low cost, low emotional investment type of a purchase. If you’re selling e-books then you are making a MINOR SALE. If however, you’re wanting to be hired as a consultant, well then that places you smack dab in the middle of the MAJOR SALE. A major sale is a high cost (emotional and/or financial) type of transaction. One of the characteristics of a Major Sale as defined by Rackham includes the possibility of continued interaction AFTER the sale is made.
My client, a consultant, is taking notes at these free seminars and wanting to implement these MINOR SALE marketing tactics to promote her MAJOR SALE consulting practice.
Which is what brought her to MY practice in the first place. She couldn’t understand why she was doing all the "right" things when it came to marketing her practice, yet wasn’t seeing results.
Remember, TRUST is a key factor in making the major sale. Your goal, if you’re making a Major Sale, must be to build trust with your potential clients.
Which is precisely the reason I ADORE self hosted blogs for independent professionals engaged in making Major Sales. Define your audience (your potential clients), establish what they need to know and then communicate it to them via your blog.
Niche Marketing Tactics: Articles as an essential Niche Marketing Tool
October 1, 2007
It’s time for another discussion of the Major Sale vs the Minor Sale and why you MUST know which your business is making BEFORE you begin putting niche marketing tactics into place.
As a refresher, niche marketing (as the term is used here) is merely narrowing your marketing focus in order to broaden your sales.
Articles are a GREAT niche marketing tactic if you are making the Major Sale. The Major Sale is defined by Neil Rackham in SPIN Selling
- There is more than one decision-maker
- The buyer’s financial and/or emotional investment is significant
- The purchase warrants significant time and research into alternatives.
- There is the potential for a long-term relationship between you/the business and the customer.
- The consequences of making a purchasing mistake are high.
So, if you’re a consultant, attorney, realtor, etc who is selling your knowledge, then you are making a Major Sale and writing articles is indeed a GREAT marketing tactic. After all, an essential element in making the Major Sale is to develop TRUST, and articles are a great way to demonstrate your expertise and build trust.
In a recent post, Nitro Marketing featured the following Gary Halbert story:
The late Gary Halbert used to tell a story about opening a hamburger stand. At his seminars he would ask the crowd this question:
“If you and I were both going to open a hamburger stand and you could pick any one thing to give you an advantage over me, what would you pick?”
The people from the crowd would shout back:
“A great location”
“The best-tasting hamburger”
“A clean, attractive stand”
“Excellent employees”
After a while of this Gary would pause and say: “Go right ahead and take all those, but I can guarantee my stand will outsell yours, because the one advantage I’m going to pick is… A STARVING CROWD!"
SELLING HAMBURGERS IS AN EXAMPLE OF A MINOR SALE!!!
If you’re making a Major Sale… then all of the other factors mentioned by Gary’s audiences would come into play because, by definition, the Major Sale warrants the investment of time and energy into alternatives.
In the Minor Sale, you’re hungry so you buy a hamburger. If there are no hamburger stands around, then you’ll buy a hot dog or whatever is available. Your roaring stomach will drive you to make a decision and move on.
However, in the Major Sale, it’s different. There is no GNAWING hunger driving you forward, compelling you to take action. As a result, the realtor (who lives squarely in the middle of Major Sale territory) may spend months or even years showing homes to prospective clients.
If you’re making a MAJOR SALE…. one way to create a sensation of "starvation" is through compelling articles!
For an excellent example of this tactic in practice, visit the Harper Team’s blog and read the post "Don’t Get Stuck with Two Houses." It’s a great example of someone engaged in making a Major Sale using an article as fuel to move prospective customers to positive action!
