Marketing Pops and Flops

Marketing is more like publicity.

Selling is more like getting a signed contract.

How Do the Great Whales Become So Huge?

You won't see the email in the resulting link page, but Dr. Mercola, one of the most successful Internetpreneurs today sent out an email this morning with the subject line you see above: How Do the Great Whales Become So Huge?

If it's by eating potato chips or ice cream, I probably need to know that. Or maybe they drink too much beer and wine.

It's certainly not appealing that Dr. Mercola wants me to buy from his website a bottled version of the nutrients whales eat. Why would I want to eat krill if that's what makes whales so big? I'm sure he remembers sitting in the same row with me at an Internet conference 30 pounds ago! Not what I need.

Had he recited whales' intelligence, sensitivity, familial devotion...I might have started snarfing the shrimp-like invertebrates. But no. He cites only size.

Must be a guy thing.

Cyberspace--One half bagel sold this week on eBay for $100. Well, it was more than half a bagel. Scrambled eggs and bacon were stuffed into the bagel, and there was a side of skillet fries. But it also sold for more than $100. One hundred dollars and ninety-nine cents, to be exact.

There's a misconception that some sickness accompanies eBaying to allow anyone to buy or sell absolutely anything. Sickness it’s not. “Allows” is true. Capitalism at its finest. If there's no market, there's no sale. Almost as incontrovertible as that is the truism if there is no marketing there is no sale.

eBay is a testament to the creativity of promotion geniuses from all walks of life! The same kind of "there is no box" thinking makes sales on street corners and byways of most of the countries in the world. "You have something I want; I have something you want"--It's the original "Let's make a deal."

Resistance? What? You don't want to buy a 10-day old, half-eaten, salmonella-ridden breakfast? You will when someone's finished creatively marketing it!

Real estate mogul and cashflow tycoon Robert Kiyosaki has taught me a few things about marketing.

The first was with his premier book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He got help writing it, of course; otherwise, he might not have over 100 products listed on www.Amazon.com. As I remember the story, with the prejudices memory imposes, the first writer he interviewed wanted to help him write a fantastic book, the best of all possible books. He told her that instead he wanted to write a best seller, not a best book, and that he did. (Big clue: big difference!)

My next lesson was in branding. All his books had the same purple-to-black gradient, the same typeface on the cover--logotype, color, and typesetting specifications that would make the Royal Bank proud! A transfer from the corporate world. Good going! Besides a Time-Life series, or middle-school readers, I can't think of a hard- or paper-back series with more continuity, especially from a single author (which those others aren't).

Of course the content in his books and games is remarkable, and continues to be controversial. The world is still divided over whether a home is an asset or a liability. I've made my decision, but this blog is about marketing, not the product itself.

The Rich Dad Empire taught me how not to run an affiliate program. I tried to market that $200 game when it was closer to $100. But there were constant problems. I wanted to teach Robert what I knew about marketing online, but his people didn't pass on my offer. (At least that's what I choose to think.)

And recently, I learned another "what not to do" in online marketing. Rich Dad isn't the only one, just the most-recent. (Another I can think of is Royal Body Care.) Here's the lesson: When people shop online, they need all the details about a product or service. Some will not read all the ingredients, size, ingestion recommendations, etc., in a promised health-supporting product. But others want to know and to some the details are a life or death matter.

Not life or death with the Cashflow people (Kiyosaki's corporate group). But they still don't know much about online marketing. Possibly like direct-marketer to the stars Steve Weisenburger said, "Some people are making so much money, they don't care about doing things right."

I ordered replacement Balance Sheets for Kiyosaki's Cashflow 101 game. The website didn't say how many came in "one pad." The "pad" was $4.00. The shipping was $6.08. A savvy consumer usually desires the shipping to be less than the merchandise. Should I order more pads, perhaps two or four? I looked again for a quantity. In exasperation, I ordered only the one pad. We both lost out--I on shipping; Kiyosaki on volume.

Put specific descriptions on your website, more like those on eBay where you can get canned if you deliver something different from what you advertise, in any particular whatsoever.

Then offer a ringer -- a pop -- for quantity buys. These days people will be happy just to save on shipping. However, a quantity discount for multiples of the same item is sure to increase your sales.

(Oh, by the way, there are 50 Balance Sheets in a pack for $4.00!)

"I don't care, but you should," was the message I received not five minutes ago from an ILX (timeshare) telemarketer.

Politely he...

• inquired why they haven't heard from me
  
• said they'd been emailing me for six months
• said they had a fabulous gift for me if I would respond
• promised to re-send the errant email I have yet to receive.

Then he asked for a date.

Wanted to know when I would pick up my certificate (cert, for short).

Since he already promised to email me the fine print, I figured I'd read it and let him call me back in a few days for an answer. Evidently, that was over his head!

"You can call me back Friday, if you like," I offered, today being Monday.

"Why would I do that?" he asked. Idiot I am, I'm thinking, "Why wouldn't he, since I just told him I'd be happy to be sold after reading his detailed email then taking his call on Friday?"

I'm sure he's been buggered off many times, but why did he take it out on me?

I wanted that three-night/four day stay at his resort!

__________________
Should I explain why his "marketing tactic" didn't work, or is it obvious? I told him I wrote the book on telemarketing. My words, anchored to responding to what the prospect actually said, not the angst created by the previous 30 calls, fell on deaf ears. Am I the only person who likes to be sold the stuff we're interested in and left alone on things we're not interested in?

Marketing is setting forth in the best-possible light. It's like dating. Marketing avoids acting like it "can't be bothered." And yet, that is the opposite of what many retail employees do. Many front-liners carry on as they were without seeming to notice the presence of a customer with a voting wallet.

Here's a quick guage: Of the last 10 times you were at the supermarket, how many times did both the checker and the bagger talk to you rather than to each other? (Including you fully in their conversation with one another, though rare, counts.) If 10 occasions is too many to remember, consider just the last handful. Or did they converse with each other as though you were at your best if perfectly invisible?

Most of us like to do business with an organization in which it seems everyone gets along--that the co-workers like each other and can actually stand being there (preferably enjoy being there, but how can we ask for so much?). Courteous camaraderie will take a break with a customer approaches, and resume only after the customer is out of sight.

Of course, it's not the employees' fault, at least not at first. Were they trained as ambassadors or only as 10-key operators (nowadays "scanners") and sackers?

From the print shop to the post office, from the lumberyard to the library, every employee (and volunteer; though, volunteers seem to inherently know this) is a representative of the entire company, an ambassador, a marketer, a person on behalf of the organization "dating" the customer's business.

Perhaps as consumers we should apologize for interrupting!

I can't name names.

I had lunch with half a dozen people I respect immensely, one I don't and one I don't know. I called for a vote about this new blog. "Should I name names?"

A couple of people got excited and started saying Yes, yes! Mavericks like me, evidently. The officiator of the group (every gathering has an officiator, whether or not official) said, "Not unless you want to get your @#$%^ sued." (To repeat his exact words would be to name a part of my body I'd rather not draw attention to. So, if I shan't name names, I shan't name anything I prefer to leave unnamed. Fair enough?)

It seems the issue is litigation, specifically a litigious society. My friend, one of the people I respect, but probably less than I should considering the breadth of his knowledge, said if I should err just a sliver, just a hair, I could be hauled before the magistrate for slander.

Soon tales of being jailed for alleged, but unproven, postal fraud ziz-zagged across the table.

Not to be left behind, someone who knew of a jailing based on irritating the revenuers (tax people) tossed in a story. Chaos ensued. It was a soccer match of story-besting with the revenuers as aggressors and all us “good people” trying to clear the stadium. In other words, it was posited, if you say something about them they don't like, they can bring your business (income, reputation) to the dungeon, or worse.

After a few heated moments, I called for another vote, and to a person colleagues agreed I should not name names. My example of being accosted by an anxious salesperson as I part-way entered a store, still blinded by the change in light-dark from outside to in, reported as flatly as if I'd said "I took the dog for a walk this morning," still drew the "No, you might get some detail wrong. You cannot name names," vote.

Someone suggested you would all be more eager readers if I kept the blog positive.

I disagree.

People want the dirt. It makes us laugh, smile, or at least feel superior. “What a dork!” Satisfaction of a fleeting, stress-alleviating sort.

Pollyanna is still marketing watershed. Children eight and under are ushered, not always of their own freewill, toward media that is all positive. (When they're at their friends' homes, they go to the dark side and play games and watch video full of exploding body parts.) Adults abhor Pollyanna tactics. "There must be something good here”? Puh-leaze!

Adults have all had one too many broken legs and are wasting away from internal bleeding or whatever caused the sunshiny Hayley Mills to nearly die from falling to the ground from her second story window. So there you have it: either way, Pollyanna is bad. As a marketing tactic, it is hated by all upon whom it is foisted (while admired by the foisters).

But since my purpose for this blog is to reveal what people do that promotes or demotes their businesses, so we can all learn to be better marketers, it isn't germane that I call businesses by name.

Admittedly, it would bring me a half-pence of satisfaction to blast the buggers! I still believe the bloody public would be far more interested in who failed and who succeeded...like the food inpection reports in the local paper. "Oh, you mean at ____________ restaurant, employees were found with dirty hands and arms?" (How do the inspectors measure arm dirt?)

So, I shan't name names. And if perchance I provide enough detail that you think you’ve figured out which stores or businesses I'm complaining about, I must assure you that all details supplied are entirely fabricated...if not by me then by the purveyor of the antics. Any resemblance to persons living or dead could be imaginary.

So sue me if you can't take a joke, or the truth as the case may be.

In my mind, people who sue because their comeuppance has come up are losers. You just proved my point!

The goofs and gaffs retailers make have always amazed me. But then there are occasional gems that deserve recognition as well. It is just one such pop that has me starting this blog. After all, few in my home town have hired me for advice and fewer still listen to me. Perhaps it is because, well, I sound so darn sure of myself!

It's true I ran a successful writing/editing/graphic design business in Los Angeles for 12 years--mostly corporate collateral...you know, things like brochures, magazine ads, booklets, manuals and even business cards and letterhead. Oh, and fliers. I was a flier queen once upon a time. Even wrote a booklet about it.

I've always claimed my expertise was gained through observation: excellence by paying attention I call it. So in our collective comatose cooperative, it should come as no surprise that few pay attention. Maybe that has to do with inflation—the price of paying attention to a glut of information so vast one gags at a glance.

But that should not be so, should never be so, in one's field of supposed expertise. So if you're hired to market, then you must not only market, but also pay attention to what works and what doesn't. On the Internet, that's called metrics. In retail, it's a simple foot traffic to sales dollars conversion rate--still a metric. Bodies to dollars, eyeballs to dollars, clicks to dollars, purchases to dollars, returns to dollars--it's all part of the same cloth. How well is what you're doing working, and if it isn't, WHEN do you plan to fix it? My advice: Make that plan right now, this very moment. Pick a date and do it when you say you will.


It's possible I should have called this column a rant rather than a blog.


What makes one company's efforts POP while another company's flop?

Here's a popper for you. I was in Las Vegas the last few days, attending the Internet Marketing Super Conference (year 8 for the IMSC). I arrived by dinner time Wednesday in order to prepare for an early start and intense schedule Thursday, following on through Sunday. A nice dinner and good rest have become part of my transition between concentrated work and demanding conference schedules.