Sharing Effective Marketing Strategies and Systems

My daughter just turned 2 years old and I’m reminded of that fact by two things.

First, she’s VERY good at holding up exactly the number of fingers that represent her age, prompted by everyone in the grocery line asking her the question.

Second, every time I have to change her diaper, I catch myself longing for the days when she was a newborn and I could clean her up quickly and easily with not so much as a peep coming from her.

Now, it’s like a World Wrestling Federation Pay-Per-View cage match.

Between dodging her kicks, pulling her back to the changing pad, and juggling baby wipes and diapers, it’s pretty much my biggest workout of the day.

But in the end, somehow, Phil “The Diaper Dragon” Lomboy always claims the title belt.

There’s a rule in psychology that “the one that is most flexible within a given system wins.”

Regardless of what kind of craziness my daughter throws at me during her diaper change, I have to adapt and respond appropriately.

I have to be more flexible in my approach to putting a clean diaper on her than her approach for keeping it off.

It’s a lot like you have to be with your prospects…

You have to be infinitely more flexible in your approach for getting them to say “YES” than their approach for telling you “NO” or ignoring your message completely!

It’s time to stretch.

You may have to do things differently. Heck, you may have to scrap everything you’ve known up to this point.

That’s okay…

There was a time when I never thought I’d be wrestling another human being to have them put on clean underwear.

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This is an interview I did with local marketing expert Cary Duke where he shares his techniques for helping his customers get on the first page of Google.

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After listening to the interview you’ll want to also download his Google Places Fast Start Guide.

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Everywhere I go, I hear that sound.

Click, click, click, click…

Do you hear it? You can too, if you listen carefully – if you’re WILLING to listen.

Click, click, click, click, click, click…

That’s the sound of the world we live in today.

It’s not the second hand on the clock. It’s definitely not high-heels on the tile. It’s not even a nervous thumb on a retractable Bic ball-point pen.

It’s the sound of your customers… in their offices, homes, Starbucks, park benches, everywhere.

They’re clicking through Google, through your competitors, through you, through review sites, through a movie previews, “Oh that’s pretty cool!”, back to your competitors, through Youtube, “I wonder what Bill’s status is”, through Facebook…

Even before you have a chance to say, “Hello! How’s it–” they’re gone.

Click, click, click…

You have mere seconds to grab their attention.

What will you say? What can you offer to make the clicking STOP to buy you just a few more seconds?

Sorry, too late… Click, click click…

Is this an exaggeration? Do you think this doesn’t apply to your business??

If you think so, I’d guess you’re reading this from a sailboat floating in that big river in Egypt.

And this ain’t just for your online stuff, either. Whether it’s direct mail, your storefront, your billboard on the freeway…

Customers have WAY more choices that they have ever had before, and MUCH MUCH more than they can even handle.

I have no solutions for you. No magic bullets.

This is only a reminder. For some, it’s a wake-up call.

If you want to make it to San Diego by 6:23pm Pacific Time, you have to first recognize, understand, and accept where you are so that you can make the right moves.

And right now, you’re smack-dab in the middle of East Clicksville on the corner of Decision Road and Action Avenue.

Get a move on.

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I’m on the mailing list of a member-based business organization that is chartered to help their members to grow their businesses.

Among the different methods they use to this end is 1) sending paid advertisements to their database and 2) sponsoring networking events.

The other day I got an email from them saying that they were going to delete the names and emails of non-members and former members from their email marketing system.

The reason they said that they were doing this was two-fold.  First, they were getting complaints that non-members were getting the same information that members were getting (which they saw as unfair).  Second, they wanted to purge their list of people that were thinking of joining the organization but had taken too long to decide (no indication as to what that time threshold was supposed to be).

Now, when I read this email, my jaw just about hit the floor.  Quite simply…

This is THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING I’ve ever heard!

Especially from an organization that’s supposed to be helping businesses!  If this is the type of thing they’re doing for themselves, I can only imagine what sort of guidance they’re giving to their members.  (Clue: it probably ain’t any good.)

This is like shooting yourself in the foot, cutting off your nose to spite your face, AND throwing the baby out with the bathwater ALL AT ONCE!

By deleting those names they are crippling their circulation for promoting their members and shrinking the reach of their advertising.

All other things being equal, if you had a choice between placing your advertisement in a media optin A with a circulation of 1000 or with media option B with a circulation of 500, which would you choose?

They’re also tossing out any goodwill that may have been built up with prospective members and former members.

Do you buy something on YOUR timeline or the VENDOR’S timeline?  (This does not even address the bigger question of the quality of the vendor’s marketing message.)

This is indicative of a challenge in MANAGEMENT for which marketing is suffering.

In these days that we’re bombarded with tens of thousands of unwanted marketing messages every day, we’re VERY careful about which messages we choose to accept into our consciousness.

Even if the email just sits in our inbox for a week, the fact that we don’t click the “Report as SPAM” button  or choose to unsubscribe from the mailing list is equivalent to holding up a bright neon sign saying, “Yes, please keep in touch with me!”

That certainly does not come easily, and it definitely should not be treated lightly.

In fact, you should treat that permission (or “opt-in”) as GOLD!

As much as it’s a cliche, there’s a good amount of truth to the used car salesman line, “If they didn’t want to buy, they wouldn’t be on the lot.”

When they’re on your marketing list, they’re on your virtual “lot.”  And they’ll continue to stay until THEY decide, for one reason or another, to step off.  And unlike a physical car lot, you’ll NEVER run out of standing room.

While they’re on your lot you have FULL PERMISSION to keep selling them, keep providing value, keep enticing, keep making offers!

As one of my mentors says, unless they choose to step off the lot, keep talking to them “until they buy or they die.”

I sent a reply to the email I received telling them that deleting those names was a HUGE MISTAKE, and that instead they should put the names of those prospects and former members into a separate list (or segment of their list) and send them different messages.  This would allow them to continue their marketing while solving their previous concerns.

Will they do it?  I don’t know, since I haven’t received an email from the organization since.

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A good friend just sent me to an insightful blog post from Perry Marshall.

In it, Perry talks about the tendency for non-profit organizations (NPOs) to have really crappy marketing.

And because of that crappy marketing, they don’t get as much money as they could get.  Hence, they can’t give help where it’s needed.  Hence, the people that they are trying to help are actually suffering needlessly.

The reason, he says, that companies (whether for-profit or NPO) don’t bother to master their marketing is because they rely so much on the “merit” of their product or service to sell itself.

Unfortunately, this is the same for many businesses.

The fact of your product/service being the best, cheapest, fastest, oldest, etc., NO MATTER HOW TRUE IT MAY BE, just isn’t enough.

There is just way too much clutter these days.  Customers are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages every single day, much of them bad and saying the same thing as the other guy.

Because it’s too difficult to wade through so much data, customers are forced to either do nothing at all, or they make uninformed decisions, at times to their detriment.

So what’s a business to do?

First, you have to DECIDE that what’ you’re offering is TOO IMPORTANT to be lumped in the same category with everyone else.

Second, you need to get good at marketing yourself so that you leave the fog of obscurity and bring a clear  message to your customers that compels them to do business with YOU.

Third, you have to recognize that taking those steps will lead not only to your business growing and thriving.  It also saves your customers from suffering the effects of sub-par deliverables from your competitors.

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I recently spoke with a business owner about some ideas he was tossing around for his business.  While he’s a very creative person, he didn’t have any experience in marketing so he wanted to get my feedback.

He had created some newly designed cards to hand out to customers when their job was complete as a replacement for his previous materials.  The piece itself was very nicely designed and even gave some good information to the customer.

But I had to ask the question, “What happened to the old materials?” which had been working very well for him in the past.

To which he replied, “I was kinda bored with them.  I get like that with a lot of our marketing stuff and just want to do something new and different.”

That’s when my ears perked up.

Your level of boredom is NOT the indicator that you should use to determine when to change your marketing.

Your primary indicator should be RESULTS!

Let me ask you a question…

Are you getting the results you would like from your current method?

If not, then by all means use your creative energy to come up with an alternate strategy that can be measured to determine whether the change worked.

If you ARE getting the results you’d like, keep on doing it!

At the end of the day, your customers don’t care how bored YOU are, and you shouldn’t either.  Focus instead on generating the maximum amount of return for your efforts and expense.

Profitability is determined through a simple equation:

[Dollars brought in] – [Dollars given out]

You’ll notice that boredom and creativity aren’t part of it.

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