Now that 2011 is behind us, I can reveal some insight into performance results for tactics offered this past year by so called (and usually self proclaimed) online marketing gurus. Several marketers I’ve met this past year consider themselves to be entrepreneurs and with this role in mind, they paid for and followed the advice of a few amiable marketing gurus. I put a simple spreadsheet together last week to tally up the results and see if any guru advice added to their bottom line. To make this a measurable and manageable exercise, I focused on one single piece of advice and used the cost to acquire this advice in my calculations. The learning was interesting; here is my short summary:

If you are a bear, you are a bear. If you are a dog, you are a dog. If you are a marketer, you are NOT an entrepreneur.

OK… now the longer version.

Marketing is about numbers and can be highly opportunistic in that, if something doesn’t work after a reasonable amount of testing, try something else. The numbers dictate the next action and thus, marketing (especially online marketing) is a very tactically oriented approach to success. Also, wrt online marketing, a marketer can jump from one product to the next quickly and easily by creating new lists of Customers and even by cross pollinating these lists.

The entrepreneur, on the other hand, is out to change the world with his or her vision. The best definition I’ve ever read on what an entrepreneur is, was written in 1975 by a professor at Harvard named Howard Stevenson.

“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.”

This is categorically different from what marketers are tasked with. Marketers need resources that they can control or at least manipulate in order to achieve their objective. Entrepreneurs are strategic thinkers whereas marketers are tactical opportunists. This may sound a bit harsh but, please bear with me because my marketing oriented colleagues who see themselves as entrepreneurs have just gone belly up.

I’d like to help you avoid making a similar mistake by drawing your attention to one of the not so obvious yet, really poor recommendation made by these guru screwballs in the hopes that you heed my words of caution and can improve your business results at the same time.

The gurus stated as recently as December 2011 that entrepreneurs should put Customers to work to help improve the product and thus increase sales. They pitched ‘Ask Customers what they want, build it, deliver it and become fantastically wealthy in the process’. Fellow entrepreneurs and dear friends, this sounds easy enough and basic enough but it is a sure way to entrepreneurial failure. It is however a wonderful marketing tactic when used properly.

After a few years of sitting on the wall watching people act on such advice, we have come to the conclusion that this is a recipe for entrepreneurial business failure. There is one exception and that is the case where you wash, lather, rinse and repeat this cycle in as many different niches as possible. By our definition, this is not an entrepreneurial business model but rather an opportunistic approach to making money with slick marketing tactics. As a marketer, you can change direction as many times each month as you desire and you can continue to use process to drive your opportunistic fishing expeditions. If you catch a few thousand fish, you win and if your bucket is empty, you move on to the next hole. THe thing is that you do not build a sustainable business with this approach. You do however, have the possibility of earning a boatload of cash for yourself and your buddies until that niche dries up and you need to start all over again.

If an entrepreneur were to follow the guru’s advice, that business would very likely fail. The reasons are simple – part of every entrepreneur’s job is to invent the future. If you have a vision of improving a business model through the introduction of a new product or service, it is likely based upon your unique experiences in that industry. Your Customers have a tough enough time doing their own jobs. They don’t spend time trying to reinvent industries or improving how jobs are performed. Sure, every now and then you come across an exception. But you can’t bet the company on finding such a person within your Customer base.

Even more important to remember is that Customers typically don’t see the value in or need for a new product or service until they can either compare it with something that they use and know (perhaps a competitive product) or until they see a new product in action.

That means that if your firm is dependent on Customer feedback for innovation, you will always be behind the curve because Customers are only aware of a small sampling of what exists today. Resources and brainpower that could be applied to “inventing the future” at your firm will instead be used to catch up with features that lock the company into the past.

Your Customers can tell you about things that are broken and how they want to be made happy. Listen to them. Make them happy. But don’t rely on them to create the future road map for your product or service. That’s the takeaway here.

Since entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled, get out there and do your homework, create that vision and then build a business that adds value to a specific niche of Customers that are willing to pay for that value.

Every time you want to make any important decision, there are two possible courses of action. You can look at the array of choices that present themselves, pick the best available option and try to make it fit. Or, you can do what the true entrepreneur does: Figure out the best conceivable option and then make it available. Don’t ever ask your Customers where you should be headed. Just get up and lead instead.

If you are into marketing and still using the standard (and boring) business card that contains all your phone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses and mailing addresses and you hand them out willy nilly to anyone with fingers… you may want to do something a bit different next year.

For example, when we meet people that want to learn more about transforming a printed publication into an immersive mobile App, then it is really likely that they are marketers who know something about QR codes. If they don’t know what a QR code is or how to read one, then they probably shouldn’t be on our radar.

Hey, while you’ve got time, why not try on a QR code for size? Getting one is very easy, just go to this site or even this one and enter the requisite information and voila, you will be presented with a fully functional QR code that points smartphones to content that you would like them to view (or process).

I like to send my contacts to a page that is all about me since, IMHO.. that is the reason they requested the business card in the first place. I also enjoy making it more of a challenge for people to get in touch with me directly, since, let’s face it, not many of us can process more than 400 emails each day without having some sort of negative impact on our social lives (or sleep patterns).

One more thing, since QR codes can be URLs, text, phone numbers, google map location, an event announcement, a paypal buy now link or even SMS text messages… you might consider using multiple QR codes depending on your objective. Here are what a few of mine look like.

The big question has been out there for a while but now the German firm Axel Springer AG presented some interesting proof that a shift is taking place in Europe.

Check this out to read more about how their Online revenues now exceed Print revenues for this European publishing house.

Here’s a simple recipe for QR code success.

If you are going to implement a campaign using QR codes, be sure that the codes
- are displayed in locations that have reasonable cell phone reception
- are clear and easy to read using a variety of devices including low resolution cameras

Instead of linking directly to a youtube video, consider creating a mobile friendly site or web page with the video embedded and a backup option with text instructions and images in case the video refuses to load.

Be sure to track those clicks and put analytics on your landing page to gauge the effectiveness of the campaign and the browser / device breakdown of people pinging the QR code.

Remember to include a couple of simple social media sharing options and you have the makings of a great mobile & social media campaign without too much effort.

Sometimes one of our new staffers come up to me full of concern and emotion. The topic is often first mover advantage versus competitive threats. I have a simply philosophy that usually puts them at ease and allows us to focus on what is important once again. I’d like to share it with you and it goes like this:

where there is competition… there is money to be made
where there is no competition, one has to wonder why…

I love competition!
If they have been around in this niche for at least a few years and they are surviving then, this is music to my ears. It means that the market needs this product or service and that there are people out there willing to open their wallets.

As a service provider, we want a share of that wallet in exchange for services delivered that help our Client achieve their objective(s). If there were no competition, business would be a lot more like solitaire than something like golf or the high-jump. We just love placing the bar a bit higher, don’t you?

If you are curious, we just raised the bar again in the tablet publishing space. Now our Clients get far more flexibility, dozens of extra value adding features and a solid, customizable Reader App that Apple just loves all for one low price. See for yourself, never before has tablet publishing been so easy.

Personally, I’ve had my fill of the social media scene and part of my reasoning includes the following examples of usage of these popular online services:

Twitter: I need to pee!

Facebook: I peed!  Share your thoughts on that.

Foursquare: I’m peeing here! You’re peeing there!

Quora: Why am I peeing?

Youtube: Watch this amazing death defying pee y’all!

LinkedIn: My former colleagues agree; I pee quite well.

myspace: let’s dance while peeing!

Google+: Let’s all pee in a circle

Formspring: Are you peeing?

Myth of Me: I remember when we used to pee at your place

Awesomize me: HOW AWESOME DO I PEE on Twitter, FB, Foursquare, Quora, youtube, LinkedIn, myspace and Google+

Sheesh…  what has the world come to? I suddenly crave minimal intrusive technologies and a few moments of silence.

OK, seriously… what are these services really good for and how can we use them in a positive way that doesn’t drive us (or our followers) mad?

and just when you thought you knew all the players…

Frazzled yet?
Well, if this post is familiar territory for you, please get in touch with us… we’re always looking for people who can handle the new world order of simultaneous transparency and relentless promotion disguised as casual and open communication. Now, if you;ll excuse me, I really could use some peace and quiet.

Social profile data can also be used to predict Customer lifecycles. Imagine knowing not only if a Customer has children, but the ages of those children. In addition, key purchases, such as buying diapers for the first time, suggest that a Customer is entering a new lifecycle. Other key indicators, like shipping address changes, first purchases of furniture, or first purchases of substantially higher-value goods can all indicate the start of a new Customer behavior pattern.

These patterns are predictable, so you could easily learn the future behavior of high school teenagers by looking at the current behavior of first year college students. By using demographics alone, all high school graduates would be marketed to identically. Using psychographics, we have a much better idea of who is more likely to be interested in specific product or content recommendations at a specific time — such as when students start their first University semester.

This vision is starting to gain traction among serious marketers. At the 2009 Internet Strategy Forum, Duane Schulz, Xerox’s VP of Interactive Marketing, said that a 1% CTR was a huge failure — even though it is 10 times the industry average. He claims that a successful campaign would never waste 99% of its impressions and using psychographic data, you wouldn’t waste any impressions.

We have seen a similar upheaval in marketing before. In the 1960s, marketers who embraced the power of television, broad-based insights into psychology and demographic data created world-class brands and billions of dollars in value. At that time, if you didn’t advertise on TV, you lost. Today’s new tools offer a similar choice: Build a deep understanding of your customer, or risk irrelevance.

The same can be said for Websites and Apps…
10 years ago if you did not have a website, you lost.
Today, the race is on to build Apps and show your Customers that you are there for them, providing value on multiple platforms in multiple channels and via multiple devices. Content may be king but the consumer is revealing what we need to know to increase sales. Are you ready to step up to the plate and meet this challenge? If not, please get in touch with one of our consultants for a free needs analysis and we’ll do our best to get you back on track.

If horses were your prospects then Pull Marketing could be viewed as a combination of the following analogies:
SEO:

• putting a watering hole in your pasture
• planting grass and harvesting hay where you want the horses to go
• allowing the horses to graze ensures that when they socialize with others, they spread the word

Keywords basically lead the horse to water.

Content Strategy and Conversion Optimization get the horse to drink.

Social Media is how horses tell other horses about the quality of the water, the location of the water hole and which other horses drank this water.

We are often asked about the definition of Marketing vs Sales.

I don’t know how the confusion started and you can look up the definitions in any dictionary if you are so inclined…  our preferred definition goes like this:

Good Marketing Is Like
Getting The Needle To Jump Out Of The Haystack
Sales Is The Fine Art Of Sewing