Categorical Confusion

The term “internet marketing” has become synonymous with a vociferous community of people trying to make a buck by selling stuff – usually digital products – online.

There’s a whole breed of gurus who will tell you how to do this. Some of them have great content and convincing methodologies. What you might miss amongst all this noise is that “internet marketing” represents a tiny part of the internet’s marketing function.

Most businesses are not selling product online, and certainly not selling information products. Most businesses are still bricks-and-mortar, flesh-and-blood operations offering physical products or delivering tangible services.

For them “internet marketing” has – or should have – a totally different meaning. The simplest formulation would be “online lead generation.” For the majority of business owners, the internet is one of several tools for attracting potential customers.

Working with clients, I always distinguish between leads (just names and contact information ) and prospects (leads who have raised their hands and expressed an interest). In any business you can think of, the internet is a powerful tool both to generate leads and to transform them into prospects. In most cases, the actual selling will happen offline — in a store, office or home.

The phrase “internet marketing” has been so successfully commandeered by the digital product gurus, we need a new term for the majority who use the internet as a business development tool.

I’m still looking for that phrase. Any ideas?

Branding Demystified

With James Burgin, I presented the concept of social branding to some 550 enthusiastic participants in T. Harv Eker’s World’s Greatest Marketing Seminar. The gist of our story: (1) social media is the huge new opportunity in growing a small business brand and (2) you need a brand strategy to make it work for you.

The positive reception was overwhelming, and it would be nice to claim all that credit for our dazzling presentation skills. A quick reality check is in order. Our audience comprised entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs, and they are hungry for a missing link. They know branding matters — that in fact it’s the key to consistent sales. What they don’t know is how to put a successful brand together.

The problem is that most online chatter about brand strategy, like most books on the subject, focuses on the behemoths: McDonalds, Target, Apple, etc. There are lessons to be learned from the giants, but not without a great effort of translation. For your 3-person software start-up, you can’t just cut and paste a repositioning exercise by Wall-Mart. Much better to construct your small-business brand from the ground up, using principles tailored for the entrepreneur. But this takes system, and where is that to be found?

For some years, I’ve used my own brand strategy process for coaching entrepreneurial clients and it hasn’t failed me yet. Now I’ve made a commitment to get that process into the hands of more business owners.

My prediction: the topic of “small business brands” will be a growing focus of interest in the coming months and years.

The Power of Pips

Back to the blog! With my good friend James Burgin I have been invited to speak this month at an event hosted by wealth guru T. Harv Eker. As of now we’ve decided to focus on what we call “social branding.” We mean branding for participants in the social media that have taken over the world in (what feels like) the past 24 hours. One idea I’ll be exploring is “pips”, which I get from bird droppings.

The thing about birds is they fly about eating stuff and then poop the seeds all over the place, making new things grow. I realize the metaphor is a bit unsavory — but it can hardly be worse than “viral marketing” (Here, catch my new disease…). And I think it’s more precise, because you can actually design the fruit — tasty information-stuff — and embed it with the tiny seedlings you wish to spread through your market.

So what is a pip? Very simply, it’s a neat idea that you come up with (or commandeer) and feed into the prevailing conversation. In other words, a pip is your Personal Intellectual Property. To me the value of thinking in pips is that it accelerates the conventional approach to messaging: you deal with messages that are more compressed, less permanent, and more easily disseminated by word of mouth. So next time you sit down to write a blog, email blast, or even old-fashioned ad, think pips.

I just realized I should offer you an example. Well how about… pip?

Propose to Close

Looking back over the past two or three years' activities, I realize I am closing around 90% of my consulting proposals. So perhaps I know something useful about writing these documents. Here in brief is what I have learned. All of these points could be summarized under the same familiar marketing axiom: "It's Not About You." When the client reads your proposal, they should be reading all about themselves, not about you.

Here are a few principles that seem to work for me:

1. Clients are more interested in their business than your business.
2. Clients are more impressed by what they have to say than what you have to say.
3. Regarding your strengths, if you can't demonstrate them, don't talk about them.
4. Regarding your strengths, if you can demonstrate them, you don't need to talk about them.

Perhaps it's because I'm British, but I have a real problem saying "Here are six reasons why I'm the best." I know that preening one's feathers is a normal part of the American business dance, but the mental response -- conscious or subconscious -- is bound to be: "Well you would say that, wouldn't you.?"

Here's a different approach. Take a moment to check your assets. Outstanding customer service? Commitment to excellence? Exceptional knowledge of your field? Prompt and courteous communications? A ready understanding of the client's business? Whatever they are, you have opportunities to demonstrate these at every step of the sales process by how you actually function. The client will get the point, and you can take your strengths as read.

So what should the proposal focus on? Two things: What the client's needs are and how you are going to meet them. Simple but very powerful! A large part of any proposal I write comes under a heading: "What we have learned so far." In this I not only set the stage for selling my solution, I also demonstrate that I am a very, very good listener. Clients love this. When it comes to the how I provide a standard map of my consulting process, embedded throughout with direct references to the client's business. This process map demonstrates that I have unusual expertise and a uniquely effective system. So I don't need to say so.

My proposals are consulting documents with a price attached. They begin the job before the client has said yes. In other words, the way to propose is an assumptive close.

You Mean We Have To DO Something?

I’m a strategist. I make plans for other people’s businesses. Plans for their brands, their marketing, their web sites, their information products… And I’ve discovered a simple truth, which should have been obvious to me a long time ago. Everyone loves a good strategy, and no one wants to implement it. The strategy is a story about a glorious new future -- full of promise, supported by powerful logic and clear ideas. Implementation is a chore. Worse than that, implementation demands decision, risk and change: the three demons everyone resists. I can’t think of a single business person I know who doesn’t resist getting into action, and to avoid any confusion here, I’d put myself top of the list.

It’s a fascinating study in one of the fundamentals of human chemistry. I have clients of every shape, size, age, gender, history and scale of business. They all balk at the doing part, ex-Marine Corps officers included. I don't mean people are lazy. On the contrary, business people are the busiest people in the world. But busy with what? Short answer: doing what they've done before. The trouble with a good strategy is that it demands taking action into the unknown, which we all like to dream about but rarely want to experience. What’s the solution? If I really knew, I wouldn’t be worrying about clients. I’d be a multi-trillionaire.

Meanwhile, here are two resources that have helped me: Steven Pressfield’s wonderful book, The War of Art, doesn’t really give you any tools to work with (unless you count a daily prayer to your muse), but his intimate description of the wiles and snares of resistance is so chillingly accurate, you feel like he is perched on your desk watching you work (or pretend to). More practical are the processes and trainings created by Dr. Stephanie Burns, who has researched the problem as thoroughly as anyone I know, and leaves most “motivators” standing in the dust. Check her out at stephanieburns.com

The Myth of Competition

Returning to this blog after a long hiatus, here are some brief musings on competition.

I was on the phone today with the founder of a fabulous new publishing house (and new concept in publishing). When I asked him about competition, he said he used Jay Levinson's principle: instead of beating the competition, get them to join you. He has created a fascinating affiliate system that enrolls small publishers who might otherwise be competitors. His instinct pulls him away from the classic warrior stance on competition. And he is becoming hugely successful.

Let's take this further. Here is a rather bizarre thought about your competition: You don't have any.

Let me explain by citing an old saw from the real estate market: "Every house has a buyer." Extending this little piece of wisdom suggests that somewhere in the universe are exactly the right customers for your product. Those customers belong to you. The ones who buy the other product just aren't your customers — they belong to someone else. Your task is not to fight off the competition. It's to put out a clear signal and call in your rightful customers.

Another example. Dating sites like eHarmony could be viewed as a ferocious auction, where potential partners duke it out with competing wooers of the same sex. You place yourself in the shop window and wag your tail, hoping that it's you who'll be taken home — and not that prissy little puppy in the next pen. Of course, everyone knows that romance doesn't work like that. We don't get picked out like a salad in a deli. We fetch up with the one we're with, against all odds, because that's how it is meant to be. Some invisible law of connection brings us together. The only requirement is to show up.

So here's a (to me) new way of framing marketing: It's not about beating the competition. It's about making yourself known to the people who are anyway destined for your product. Just show up.

Story Time

Nice to see Seth Godin — one of the great marketing originals — writing in a recent edition of the progressive magazine Ode. His theme: how marketing can save (or destroy) the world. His premise: stories are powerful, and modern marketing amplifies this ancient power beyond measure.

Seth appeals to us marketers to exercise a little conscience about what we say, and how. He points out that bad stories have killed more people than nuclear weapons, and he bemoans the cynicism of those who hide behind a "free market" ethos to justify lying to the public.

For a marketer, the issue is not so much the story as the client. If you pick cynical clients, you will get paid to lie. In this respect, I consider myself blessed. For a long time I have attracted clients with decent values at the worst, and at the best, extraordinary vision.

The very idea of marketing gets associated with dishonesty. We tend to assume marketers make things look better than they are. Isn't that their job? Funnily enough, I often find that my clients' truth is actually better than appearances. "If only they knew..." these frustrated entrepreneurs lament about their non-buying prospects.

For example, I've been advising a little school that provides child-centered education for toddlers and up. The local parents tend to see it as a high-class baby minding service, when in reality the school is giving its miniature students extraordinary tools for social, emotional and cognitive development.

In that situation, you have to know what every therapist knows: the difference between want and need. In principle, the trick is to meet people in what they want, and lead them to what they need. No bait and switch here — we don't have to risk Seth Godin's ire! It's about framing the story in terms that resonate, creating an emotional environment where new ideas can take root and flourish.

Great storytellers not only speak to their audience, they listen, too. And it's the listening that makes the story sing.

Here meanwhile are Seth's nine principles (abbreviated) for succesful story telling . Great stories, he says:

1. Are true
2. Make a promise
3. Are trusted
4. Are subtle
5. Happen fast
6. Appeal to our senses
7. Are rarely aimed at everyone
8. Don't contradict themselves
9. Agree with our world view