Tactics are a Dime a Dozen, Strategy is Priceless

What has really got me blogging again is working with a fairly new client that has unique challenges, but one who has very big potential to be a national powerhouse in their industry. And I like blogging about real life marketing challenges. Look for my guest post on building a Facebook Community coming out soon at Waxing Unlyrical, which also is based on working with this client.

Every business is unique and has their own goals and challenges. My friend Kaarina who is really sharp (read her blog!), did a guest post about Marketing Strategy which really hit home. Most Agencies and Marketers sell you on Tactics. TV advertising is a tactic. A Facebook Page or buying Facebook Ads is a tactic. But having a coherent strategy is what makes a marketer special. It is what brands and Businesses pay big bucks for. You will not find this expertise in a book you pay $10, $20, $30 for or in a Webinar. You can get ideas and you can learn tactics, but is hard to figure out the big picture. Not a lot of people have a big picture view of the world, never mind business.

If you ask me what is a human, I will tell you it is trillions of human and non-human individual cells that combined make your body. Each living in their own world with no idea what the sun or grass or water is like. They all work together so that you can be you. And somehow the electrical currents and nerves allow us to eat, breathe, walk, learn....just like a computer chip operates but at several magnitudes more complex. 

Strategy is choosing the right marketing channels that not only fit your goals but budget. Strategy is timing, when do you execute. Strategy is research and discovery. Strategy is living entity where you try things and sometimes they don't work and you need to change tactics. Strategy is message and coherence. Are all the efforts in all the channels working together. Strategy is matching goals, with tactics, expectations, and budgets. 

Want to know why there are crickets when you ask a Marketer to show you a successful stand alone Social Media Campaign? Because only a handful exist. And you will hear the same ones from a few years back. And they aren't repeatable. Ask though for a Marketing Campaign where Social Media played a valuable supporting role? There are a lot of them.

Finding someone or an Agency that can provide that is priceless. Finding someone or an Agency that can spend your money on tactics? A dime a dozen.

Square Pegs in Round Holes

In Marketing very few agencies can offer it all (one reason clients waste their money). In fact even the mega companies that do offer it all, need to do it with many divisions. So there is a natural tendency when you have a receptive client to force their needs into your offerings. Or to make believe you have the solution internally vs say referring them elsewhere.

In my many years in direct B2B sales I have never once lost a customer that I referred to another company for help. Even when I had to send them directly to a competitor. Customers appreciate the honesty and integrity, and if what you do offer is top notch they will stay around a long time.

I was working on a project for a client that while I did what I was tasked to do, and did it very well, it was  the wrong task and wrong focus. I was not involved in discussions with the client when the work was being proposed. It is possible the wrong people were in those discussions from both my company and the clients company. I did have email exchanges with the client reinforcing the proposed work to assure them the results were going to be. But the work was put on hold and yesterday after 4+ months was in jeopardy.

So I was asked to be in an emergency call to save this work with the CEO of the client. He sent an email to my partner upset and my partner and I had a long talk about it. Then we called him. After hearing his frustrations, I explained the solution options to him. Those solutions probably mean shifting some of the billings from us to external solutions. But they will achieve his business goals and make him happy.

Happy customers mean they are successful, have strong cash flow and revenues, are growing, and thus will stay with you a long time. Too often I hear or read how a business went to an agency thinking they need their help, the Agency sensing money just rubber stamps and forces the clients needs into one of the solutions they offer (Social Media, Digital Advertising, etc) and then fail the client.

In the advertising industry there is significant turn over with agencies. If you get the trade emails you see big companies putting tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in review all the time. Why? Because the Agency that was taking their money tried forcing the Square Peg in their Round Hole. Don't be that Agency.

Asking the Right Questions

Do you have a marketing consultant or agency working with you now? If not do you get approached by any? How many pitch their services without talking about your business? How many don't ask questions about your goals? How many don't do a simple Google to look at your online and possibly your offline marketing efforts?

I get a lot of emails from agencies that offer free E-Books and Webinars to showcase what they do. I sign up because I want to see what the competition is doing. Too often the content is "We will do this for you" without asking if "This" is right for your business. Or they showcase a case study but no proof anything worked. Or have the wrong perspective. Often to make what they do look rosy and attracting.

When looking for Marketing and Advertising help and advice the biggest red flag is when your potential vendor doesn't focus on your needs and your results. They should ask you more questions than they do 'Selling you stuff'. When they say 'What is your budget' before they review your business and ask questions about goals, they really mean 'How much money of yours is for the taking'.

I get this stuff representing a client all the time. Whether daily deals, advertising opportunities, promotional events, they never ask me what my client's goals are. They never ask me what I am looking for. They want to know the budget for something not budgeted. They want something beyond my clients current resources (did they not use the Google?). I know they mean well. But really what I see is they are pushing the sales pitch so they can sell, close the deal, make themselves money.

This is a service business. My service is helping you make money. My service is helping you maximize that based on your available resources. 

It could be training your staff how to use social media more effectively. It could me figuring out the best types and outlets for paid media. It could be improving your customer service or brand image. 

My service to you...is not me making money. 

I am supposed to make money only by helping you grow, sell, improve. If I am not doing that I should be fired. And you should look at all marketing agencies and media vendors that way.

Did your agency or consultant ask you the right questions?

The Big Picture Matters

Our little girl had her one year old check up Tuesday. She got her first shot which was for tetanus. After he wanted to review the next three shots that we might want to have her get. All were optional.

When discussing the Chicken Pox Vaccine he said Adults are 4x more likely to have a serious bout of the Pox than children. But then he said 'What they don't tell you is that in children 0.02% have serious bouts and in Adults it is 0.08%'. In the big picture really we shouldn't worry about this.

I said my industry is just like that. They massage the facts to sound impressive. Especially social media. My friend Danny Brown posted an infographic Sunday about Facebook. The focus was on addiction but when I did the math 53 billion minutes a month in the US wound up showing active users spend only 11.7 mins a day on the site. The most of any website/network. In the big picture that is a small number. If you add the 50 million non-Facebook using interest users we are around 7.9 minutes a day. Do we even use the internet these days?

My last post slammed a study about Like's. While the case study on Skittles was a poor one to use they did show by using paid and earned media on Facebook you can boost your marketing results. It basically proved you can amplify activity when combined, but the base is almost zero percent of Skittle's daily customers amplified by 2.5x. In the big picture this was not driving Skittles sales. 

Twitter considers an active user someone who sends 1 tweet per month. But is that active? can you reach that person on Twitter? Of course not. Facebook calls an active user someone who logs in one time per month for one second. Is that active? of course not. But this makes the gross account numbers look nice.

But what is the big picture? It is taking a step back from the hype, the sales pitch, and the spin. Look at all options for your marketing plan. How can you reach people best? Just because they spend more time on Facebook doesn't mean you can reach them there. You might have more success with print or TV or a clown with a bell wearing a sandwich board.

My peers will shoot me for saying this. But it is the truth. Almost always your best form of marketing is great product or service, right price point, great customer service, your location and your street sign if you have a physical business. 

Remember that it is the big picture that matters.

The Size Phallacy

Yes. Phallic. It is the perfect intro to this post. There is this hypnotic haze that clouds people's minds and you can lift that haze with pure logic. 

We have this view that huge, mega, market leader, invincible in one niche or market as a guarantee of success in other markets or niches. Why do we assume Google or Apple should be able to succeed with Social? Or Microsoft with so many Windows machines and war chest own the mobile screen too? Or Facebook will succeed with Deals or Location Based Services or Commerce?

Take a company and peel back their skin what is their core product/niche they own. Very few own more than one. Almost none own more than 2. In fact it would be an incredibly rare success for a company to pull off more than 2 massive successes. So the chances of what everyone assumes, such as with 700mil accounts Facebook has to succeed in monetizing this group, even in the face of all their failures. Look at Google's failures. Wave. G Phone.etc. Or the fact Microsoft got into mobile years and years ago seeing the future and yet failed to achieve their goals. Apple tried social.

Get that Phallic Mindset out of your head!

It is rare a Company actually can say 'I am so big I can crush you' see Microsoft IE vs Netscape case study. Notice Microsoft can't do that with Mobile. Get out of that mindset. Look for what is BEST IN CLASS and not what is BIGGEST IN CLASS. It is more likely Facebook will never succeed with Deals, Places, better Digital Ad Targeting, Monetization etc. They excel at growing their user base that likes to share some photos and stay in touch with little snippets of worthless information. They rock at that! But what else do they rock at? Not much.

And we all know that it is rare to have a massive dominator (Google Search v Bing)  vs many competitors. But even with search Google sees cracks in their dominance. Microsoft's browser dominance is over. And Facebook is experiencing this too now. Life Cycle is short in Social.

And that is good and ok. If you put all your eggs in Facebook you need to move some out. Look at the big picture. Continuously seek better ways to market, platforms that work, technologies that look promising that will help you achieve your goals.