Marketing behind their backs.

Seth Godin is a genius. 

I was in a restaurant recently. It's a national chain and you'd recognize the name if I mentioned it.

My wife and I were dressed up, celebrating a successful meeting, ready to enjoy a nice evening together.

We waited for almost half an hour to be seated, on an evening that was not very busy for this establishment. We waited ten minutes for our drinks - water with lime. We ordered and our appetizer came out fairly timely. MY wife waited for her salad for 35 minutes. Our entree's took almost an hour, and mine, a seafood pasta dish, was inedible. The manager was sincerely sorry, after I complained, and comped our meal, but the damage had been done.

I hear and see advertising for this restaurant every day on the television and on radio. They market themselves well, even have a really neat Facebook App. They're well connected and they have, I'm sure, a strong customer base. However, the marketing performed by that crew on that evening completely undermined every single marketing dollar that had been poured into getting me through those doors. And it ended up costing them another $40 for my dinner.

How are your people marketing behind your back? 

"I do with blog resolve..."

New Year.

2010.

I always felt like New Year's Day had its own special smell. Kind of the way a new car smells for the first couple of weeks. It's a fresh, optimistic quality that pervades the thinking of people across the globe. It's the concept on "new" that invigorates the soul and spurs action and self-motivation.

Even if it does only last until the second week of February.

We all make them. Those venerable and tradition-dictated self-promises that are so often poorly thought out and seldom achieved. It's an honorable tradition, this writing of resolutions. We ought to do it, we really should. It's so important to challenge ourselves to better achievements, greater accomplishments, and the attainment of our goals.

But where to begin? We often fall into the traps of poor goal-setting because of a lack of direction. And when we fail at what we have promised ourselves to do, we lose the motivation to strive toward that mark. It's a vicious cycle.

So I've thought of a few things that you can do in 2010 that will help you improve your business, better yourself, and build up those around you. Happy New Year!

1.) Make a list of things you want to accomplish in the next ten months.

Goals are the most important element of success. All the hard work and ingenuity and problem-solving in the world is useless if they are not being applied in the pursuit of a specific, measurable goal. So much time is wasted pursuing nothing because the object of the pursuit is never clearly and accurately defined.
Make a point of sitting down and writing a clear and concise list of the things you would like to accomplish or achieve in 2010. Use this time-honored acronym:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-Oriented

2.) Market yourself.

Economic times like those we face often scare people into omitting their most valuable tool for growth. Marketing. It is of utmost importance to be actively marketing your brand and product when the economy is down to maintain a stream of new income, however small. When the economy cycle comes around, you will have built-in income that will allow you to realize true, substantial growth, instead of rebuilding your base.
Do whatever your budget demands, but do something. Goto networking meetings. Build a social media profile. Buy a cheap website. Pass out flyers. Advertise on Craigslist. But do something consistently in 2010 to market your business.

3.) Track your work.

Often, people are unsure of where they are going because they do not know where they have been. Tracking your progress in any given area is essential to being able to move forward down the road. Whether it be your networking efforts, your web presence, or your outside sales initiatives, track your progress. Write down what you're doing and whether or not it works, and use real numbers. Don't just give a blanket "That didn't work out how I thought it would!" Give it real value, however small, so that you can compare it to something else later on.

4.) Help someone else.

People do business with those whom they know, like, and trust. They also happen to send business to the same people. If you do business by referral like we do, then you understand the importance of cultivating vibrant and active referral relationships. The very best way to do this is to find out what the people around you need. After you've done that, find a way to get it for them. You don't need to get paid for this, you shouldn't expect to. You're building a relationship of trust and mutual benefit that will pay huge dividends in the future.

Have a great New Year, and a prosperous 2010!

Set the Example

Ever watch a street performer? I lived just outside of Chicago for a year, and I spent a lot of time in the city. Uptown, on the north side of the city, just of Lakeshore Blvd., there were always a few street magicians, musicians, and assorted other performers, trying to peddle a few bucks from the passers-by. On a couple of occasions, I found myself on those streets early in the morning, as the would-be stars were setting up for the day. I noticed that they all had an interesting habit. They would set out there collection apparatus, whether it be a hat, an instrument case, a plastic bucket, and they would pull a few dollars out of their own pocket and toss it in. As I watched, people would come up to listen or watch, and, before throwing a little change or a few bucks in, they would look to see if there was any there already.

It's interesting how this phenomenon transfers to the world around us, and, particularly, to the world of social media and the virtual market. People are terrified of making poor choices. Often, that fear alone is not enough to deter bad decision-making, but the fear exists nonetheless. Perception is everything to most people, and the thought of contributing a few dollars to a performance that no one else enjoyed is anathema.  So they check.

People behave the same way in today's social market. They check to see how others have reacted before they dive in with open wallets and checkbooks. If the sentiment is popular, they feel better about their investment. If it's not, they run scared. The street performers understood this, and they were proactive, investing a little of their own, to initiate a return from others.

We ought to be doing the same. If we are afraid to invest our own resources in what we are trying to sell, why would other people want to get on board. Talking about the virtue of charitable giving, and refusing to join the ranks of givers, come off more than a little disingenuous. Making claims about the incredible value of a particular investment, but not investing yourself, is outright hypocrisy.

People, for the most part are followers. Sales, in any market, is leadership. You can't "boss" people into buying and expect to be successful. That is the reason so many car salesmen have such terrible reputations. You have to lead them to a decision. Leadership is example. Showing them the way, the ups and downs, the benefits and detractors, and showing them through actual performance, gives them the peace of mind that those street spectators look for when peering into a plastic bucket or guitar case.

How do you sell by example?

Me Marketing

I'm a pretty big fan of myself. I mean, I ought to be. I've been with myself for a good while now, and I don't foresee a parting of company with myself in the very near future. So appreciating myself makes the relationship a little easier.

There is a secret to marketing yourself, and it may not be what you think.

Think carefully about why you make the decisions you make. The basis for our foundation always boils down to the Like-Want-Need model. You buy, eat, consume, purchase, watch, enjoy, etc. the things you do because you either like, want, or need them. But, further, for the deliberate consumer, you make those choices based on a value proposition. You make the choices you make based on the inherent value that you perceive in your selection.

When marketing yourself, this really is the key to making yourself likable, desirable, and necessary. You have to make yourself valuable. Now, it is human nature to perceive ourselves as inherently valuable at the outset. None of us wants to be worthless. But, the value which we perceive in ourselves may not be perceived by our consumers. So we often have to create it.

I sincerely believe that the key to this is making it more than worthwhile to do business with you. Your consumer ought to get more than what they expected to get. People expect to get what they pay for, but if you exceed that expectation, you will have made yourself more valuable than the others who simply deliver what is expected.

Many are afraid serve their customers in this way because they feel like they aren't being profitable if they do. It is up to you to decide what you deliver to your customers that will exceed expectations. Often, good customer service and friendly interactions will suffice to surprise and delight your customers. That doesn't cost you anything.

As you market yourself, the best thing you can do is to deliver on your promise of over-delivery. Build a culture of exceeding expectations within yourself and your organization, and let the product, the value speak for itself.

Pick your sandbox.

Remember junior high school? The first week was full of stress and anxiety, not because of classes or homework, but because of lunch. The table to which you would find yourself relegated had the potential of changing the face of your entire socio-academic career. It was never a decision you could make for yourself, at least, that was the case for most of us. Our peers, those who had come before us, they chose our table. It was all a matter of waiting, wondering what would happen, what would THEY think of us?

The social media phenomenon feels a lot like a junior high school lunch room, especially for those who are getting on board at this relatively late stage in the game. There is so much to learn, to process, to formulate and make a decision on, it seems just a little simpler to let someone else decide for us at which table we should sit. After all, we don't have time to spend worrying about all of this do we? There is too much else going on. Isn't there?

The question you ought to be asking yourself is whether or not you truly understand what is happening. If you don't, you have to be up front and honest about that. And then you have to educate yourself. The difference between this new media landscape and those smelly lunchrooms is that nobody here wants to be your friend. They want the money that your consumers would otherwise spend with you. And they will pick your table for you. They will relegate you to that table in the corner where people who don't meet the acceptable standard sit.

You have an opportunity, much like you had when you were much younger, to pick, not which table you sit at, but which sandbox you play in. As a child, you simply brought what tools you had to the sandbox and built your own castle. Social politics aside, he who could build the biggest castle was king. So bring your tools to the sandbox and start building. Learn, educate, discover, and adapt. Make yourself organic, growing with your surroundings, and changing as is necessary.

Social media provides the single greatest opportunity to date for effective communication with your consumer audience. They crave interaction from you, and will gladly spend their money with you when you meet that social need. The old rule to live by was "Pay to Play." You're not effective anymore unless you are willing to actually play. No more arm chair quarterbacks with fat marketing budgets. Now you've got to put on the pads and make it happen.
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The wonderful thing about this shift socio-economic dynamics is that it puts you in control of your own destiny. You finally get to pick your own table. And guess what? You get to bring your sand castle.

Improvement

Personal. Organizational. Social.

How do you define it?

The smartest people in the world focus on improving themselves, then make a genuine effort to tell other people about how it worked.