Marketing: The Love Story

Would you choose your mate based on looks alone? So why make a major decision about marketing your company based on superficial external appearances?

Here’s an actual quote from a direct marketing agency: “Postcards take your business or services and products to a new level.” That’s like saying you should marry a redhead if you want to be happy.

I’ll make a bold generalization here: Any marketing that starts from the externals, is destined to be short lived and ineffective.

Here’s how to spot great (and conversely) poor marketing: The best marketing starts with a memorable message, conveyed and understood in a memorable way. It’s a conversation and a connection. It’s organic in conception, and with patience it naturally blossoms into an elegant, well designed form.

The average marketing project is designed exactly backwards. It’s starts with looks, and then squeezes in the message as an afterthought. That’s superficial. So when someone tells you to “fill up your your pipeline with qualified leads” using a canned program or a preformatted template, you might want to put your hand firmly over your wallet.

Talk to anyone who is in a successful long term relationship. It’s work, at times hard work. This is not something you want to rush into. It requires thought, devotion and dedication over time. It’s an act of love. Just like great marketing.

The Perfect Website

Well of course, it doesn’t exist.

Still, too many sites seem to miss the mark; they’re stuck in old world thinking about marketing and advertising. They focus their engergy on promoting a brand, or product benefits. Yes, people still do buy the brand, but using a website to promote a brand misses the point.

The brand message rings a little hollow in the wake of Enron and AIG. People want to know who they’re really dealing with. Is your website a window into the soul of your organization? Or is it a billboard designed to fit into a 19 inch montor?

If you’re in a small business or professional practice, your website is a huge opportunity, done right. You can spend your energy trying to look like a mega corporation. Or then again, you can let your website (and the rest of your marketing) give your customers a taste of what it’s really like to do business with you. You can freely share your expertise in the perfect medium. After all, the web was designed from the ground up for the exchange of information.

Big or small, there’s really no downside to being generous, even with “proprietary” information. Doing so establishes credibility and maximizes exposure. It generates good will in a way that an advertising message cannot. Anyway, people expect free information, freely given, on the web. Bucking that trend will be an uphill battle.

The perfect website doesn’t have to be pretty, though that doesn’t hurt. Instead, it should be fresh and vibrant, dymamic to the needs of the moment. It should be easy to maintain and practical. No need to hire a programmer on a daily basis, please. A great site is clear and consise in style, avoiding the burden of clutter.

A perfect site is one that you will continually perfect. You’ll be adding content, checking traffic, and search results on a regular basis. In short, if your site is gathering dust, it’s destined to be a dud in your marketing mix.

Finally, the perfect site compliments the rest of your marketing, in print, and in the real world. It requires your energy and creativity on an ongoing basis.

The perfect website: the moment it’s done it’s time to start over.

Organic Marketing Part 2: What’s Your Story?

It must have been the 1960s. Still, I can still remember the agony of my junior high history class. It was a mind numbing succession of dates, names and places. The teacher, who may have been old enough to have been present at the signing of the Mayflower Compact, spoke in a monotone drawl that could induce a state of stupor within seconds. I slept.

Where was the torment of the wrenching decision by handful of patriots that declared indendence from Britain? Where was the gripping oratory of John Adams?  Where was the story of sacrifice and hardship of Abigail Adams, and the eloquence of Thomas Jefferson’s pen? Why did my classmates have to endure a year that was filled with so little, when America’s history is teeming with gripping stories just waiting to be told.

If you’d like to learn how to write copy for your next newsletter or direct mail letter, just watch HBO. Rent a DVD of John Adams and enter the world of our early patriots. Fear, passion, anger, suffering, laughter and joy; the full scope of human emotion. Tell a real story, and capture the minds of your listeners. It’s genetically coded in the human race.

So much of what arrives in a mailbox these days is devoid of anything a living breathing human being can relate to. Postcards and brochures are often no more interesting than a supermarket shopping list. Newsletters: thinly disguised billboards. Web pages: just add liquid and you’ve got your own website in 30 minutes or less. Nice to look at, but no substance.

Is it any wonder that high and low, folks are clamoring: “stop the spam?”

Our lives are filed with stories. Turn your senses in their direction. Be it lawn service or Attorney at Law, you’ve got a story to tell. People will listen.

Something Spectacular

My son is pretty dialed in to the Hollywood scene. So when the TV commercial featuring Steve Wynn sitting on the roof of his new Las Vegas Encore resort appeared, I asked him about it. “Brandon, is it real? Is he really on the roof?”

“Of course not Dad, it’s CGI,” came the immediate response. But I wasn’t so sure. Wynn’s a man who knows something about marketing, namely the vital need to be spectacular in the marketplace. And spectacular he was, precariously perched on a tiny corner, almost 700 feet above the pavement. He put everything the line. Not just money, his life.

The business world is full of boring, look alike players scrambling toward dead ends and dwindling market share. Only the few have the courage and resources to create something that’s best in class, and really carry it through. Like Steve Wynn.

What is it about your company that’s best in class? What separates you from the biggest threat of all: a marketplace that snores out loud in the face of your offering(s)?

The shakeout of ‘09 will certainly be a test for all of us. What’s the best way out of the woods? Charge a path through the thickest and darkest patch at full speed ahead! Like Steve Wynn.

Yelling Louder

How can you find new customers?

For more than the last 100 years its been about yelling the loudest to the largest number of people. Making them notice you. Pushing a business card in their face. Building a restaurant on a street that they pass frequently. Bombarding them with “me-too” direct mail. Making “cheaper” your big selling point. Buying a giant billboard or airtime on a radio station to do any of the above. Guess what: these approaches don’t work nearly as well as they did 20 years ago. Unless you’ve got deep pockets, try something different.

Where to start?

I’ve heard so many folks talk about becoming a complete “solution,” a “relationship” seller and such. All of your real competition claims the the same. It pretty much falls on deaf ears any more. A waste of time and money.

“We’ll do anything to earn your business” doesn’t count. Does top quality mean anything to anyone any more? Great service? Low prices?

To all of the above I say: Big deal! (expletive deleted). Even a recession won’t make low prices the salvation of your brand. So what then?

The answer is uniquely yours, it can’t be something you’ve repackaged. It’s got to come from the inside out.

Get to work. Figure it out. Nobody else can do it for you!