Helping you think about marketing in a practical way

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Getting your message out online has never been easier and that is generally considered to be a good thing. Click on a button and you’ve posted your message to hundreds of contacts, dozens of groups and multiple platforms simultaneously. What could be better?

People seem to possess an endless appetite for receiving whatever passes for information nowadays– or do they? I am not so sure any more.

I have spent a lot of time and effort on building up a professional presence on LinkedIn. I created and manage several groups; I post interesting articles on a regular basis and try to reach out to my contacts. Recently, I discovered automation and I thought to myself, “Holy Crap, this is the best idea ever.” Now I can post more articles to more groups faster than ever before. Heck, I can post several articles a day, without ever breaking a sweat. And so I became a serial article poster, the more the better. Some people started to notice and began commenting on my posts. What could be better?

This morning, I received several notices from LinkedIn regarding comments received about my articles. As it turns out, a local cleaning lady has begun posting detailed (86 words) advertisements about her services, in response to some of the articles that I posted. My initial response was outrage at the abuse of the system. This is clearly not the way LinkedIn is supposed to work. What right does this person have to tarnish my social media activity and image with her SPAM?

But then I calmed down and thought about it some more. I ended up asking myself whether my behavior is really any better than what this woman has started doing. Have I begun abusing the system and the goodwill of my contacts just as much as the cleaning lady? At least she is more upfront and honest about what she is hoping to get out of all this.
I think that there is a lesson here: Do I really want to be viewed as just another random person spewing out random noise at a random audience? At some point, our collective tolerance for this type of clutter has got to drop off. What I started doing is contrary to everything that I have come to believe about marketing and effective communications.

It is just too easy to get sucked in to taking the lazy route. No one benefits from this.

So, back to basics.

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The Acme Marketing Manifesto:
A work-in-progress.

I have been pondering what are the key factors that differentiate successful marketing efforts from the rest of the pack.
So far, I have managed to distill these thoughts into the following list of necessary elements of any good marketing campaigns.

Some of these items may appear to be self-evident “motherhood” statements; that may well be the case – except for the fact that many of these seemingly obvious concepts seem to be totally absent from what passes as “marketing” nowadays.

Why would this be the case?
Probably a multitude of reasons, also known as “the usual suspects”:

Lack of resources: Time, People and $$$
Lack of focus.
Unclear objectives.
Too many decision-makers.
Wrong decision-makers.
Indifference to the marketing function.

So, here is my own personal list of what should go into any marketing activities:
I will expand upon each of these themes upcoming blog posts.

Marketing should be:

Targeted
Relevant
Strategic
Timely
Based on realistic expectations
Providing value
Engaging
Sustained
Consistent
Integrated with other aspects of your business
Dynamic
Multi-faceted
Part of an on-going learning process
Results-oriented
Measurable
Cost-effective
? Realistic for your organization
? Effective!!

What do you think is missing from this list?
I would be very interested in hearing your own thoughts.

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Anyone responsible for business development is always on the lookout  for creative and affordable way to set themselves apart with their customers…to surprise and delight them.

So here’s an idea that costs very little or nothing and is easy to carry out:

I suggest going through your list of contacts on LinkedIn, with an eye to selecting the ones that you would like to build a stronger relationship with; As you go down the list, click on the profile of the first person you have selected. – If you scroll down to the bottom of the profile, you will notice that there is a field for “Birthday” in the Personal Information section.

Many of your contacts will have filled out this information. – I have set up a simple database in Excel, where I have listed these contacts in the order of their birthday. Some of these contacts will receive a “Happy Birthday” email on the morning of their special day, while others will actually receive a birthday card in the mail. How many of their business contacts have actually done that for them?

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