Rory Sutherland asks how a prospect or customer gets to that place in this 16 minute TED video. Sort of.

How does perceived value impact your business and your clientele’s thinking?

How could it?

It’s not about lying or confusing prospective (and existing) customers.

It’s about making it easier to see the value in what you make or do. You have no more important job and that’s what marketing (and positioning) are all about.

If you sell the best *whatever* in the world but know one seems to know about it, does it really matter how good that *whatever* is?

Making it obvious to the customer why they can’t get to sleep that night without getting their hands on a package of that thing (or service) that you sell. Holy cow, I gotta have that.

Think about it over a bowl of Diamond Shreddies. I suggest the combo pack…

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photo credit: *Zara

I love surprises (good ones at least).

This week a vendor surprised me with a tshirt in the mail, something that happens on a regular basis.

Oddly enough, they almost never ask what size to send, assuming that an adult medium is the best choice. It isn’t. Doesn’t fit my son either, he’s a swimmer. My wife doesn’t wear t-shirts.

The net result of that decision is that the shirts go to one of two places: to my wife’s 6th grade class to live their life as a paint shirt, or directly to the local used clothing exchange.

Not a big deal, but if you think about how much these businesses spend to purchase, print on and mail these shirts out, you’d think they would want the recipient to wear them.

Why? In most cases, these companies are courting early adopters – what Malcolm Gladwell would call influencers.

They hope that (among other things) influencers and/or product champions will wear them and generate conversation about the product/company mentioned on the shirt. Word of mouth marketing is at least part of what they’re looking for.

If the shirt discussion goes viral, all the better.

On the other hand, if the shirt isn’t the right size, you just poured money down the drain, rather than accomplishing the desired effect.

Or is it a big deal?

One vendor, SocialMedian.com, actually emailed to ask what size shirt to send. That shirt got worn. I couldn’t tell you if it had any impact on their business, but I can tell you that it didn’t end up as a paint shirt for my wife’s 6th grade class.

This week’s shirt came with a card to explain the cryptic writing on the front. The symbols are very small, in fact from 50-100 ft away, some might think it is a plain black shirt. Without the card, I would have had no idea what the shirt was about.

Let me repeat that – you want to garner attention and you send a shirt that looks plain from a distance. Even if you are close, the shirt requires a *card* to help you remember what the hieroglyphics on the front actually mean.

Before you spend $15000 to send 1000 shirts out into your community, think about the minimum goals of this investment.

Goal #1: you want them to wear the shirt.

Goal #2: you want others to have some sort of clue what the shirt is about.

Kinda simple.

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photo credit: Amir K.

Shane over at AskShane.org mentioned to me a while back about an interaction he had with Comcast.

Yes, I’ve seen the litany of “Comcast sucks” threads, and I’m aware that they have a support team on Twitter.

First, mosey over to AskShane and read about his experience with Comcast. Then come back so we can discuss how this applies to your business.

Mark hums the Jeopardy theme song as you read Shane’s story

Ok, welcome back.

Think about the obvious stuff your website should be telling people.

Think about the message it sends about your company when everyday information that your customers and prospects need is hidden from them.

Worse case, does the site lose them by assuming what they know?

Yeah, it’s worse when they can’t get it by website or phone (as in Shane’s case), but more and more folks depend on the net to start the relationship.

In more and more cases, it’s the bellwether that signals whether they will do business with you at all.

Maybe you don’t do business via your site, but if your site doesn’t introduce you, your company and what you do properly, many will leave right then and there and choose someone whose site does get the message across.

Fairness is irrelevant

Is that fair? Doesn’t matter.

If a prospect uses that as their “sorting hat” to decide whether your company has its game on, you made the decision for them.

Can we depend on your site to start the relationship properly?

To get the right message – and the right info – across to someone new to you?

Paper is so 1900’s…or is it?

This isn’t just about your website. What about your other “new prospect-facing materials”?

Yeah, those business cards, paper brochures and so on.

Are they doing the job of introducing your business to others? Or are they just something with your phone #, website and email address on them?

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photo credit: Alex Campos ♂

Yeah, I said tampons.

Today’s guest post comes from Forrester social marketing expert and author of Groundswell, Josh Bernoff.

As the post title hints, Josh has been known to open a speaking engagement with “Let’s talk about tampons” (which he explains in his post).

Once again, Robert Collier’s “Enter the conversation already going on in the customer’s mind” is front and center.

Read Josh’s angle on talking about the problems you solve for clients rather than your boring products (boring is OK, really).

The Ad Age clip of his talk is here.

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photo credit: Picklepud

Anyone in the beauty / spa / cosmetics / girls / women’s products or similar businesses has a nice opportunity to feed off of the likely sizable public relations push surrounding the reveal of the 50th anniversary Barbie’s new face by Mattel.

Yep – she’s getting a facelift (or something like that) for her 50th birthday

Even if you aren’t in one of these businesses, with a little thought there are ways you could siphon off a little free PR from it.

“Take Barbie (and your parents) out to a birthday dinner tonight and get a free dessert” (that was the easy one)

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As with yesterday’s “I rescued a human” story, today I have another good example of role reversal to get into the conversation going on in your prospect’s head.

If you watch “traditional man television”, you may already have seen this commercial. You won’t likely find it playing during the soaps, or Oprah. It’s targeted at men and shown during shows and on networks that men are known to frequent.

Immerse yourself in your client or prospect’s situation. Once you’ve done that, the ad, letter, product or service will come to you far more easily.

Have a great Thanksgiving, and thank YOU for reading my blog.

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photo credit: Sugar Pond

Several times – including in the recent direct mail posts – we’ve talked about having the right conversation with your client or prospect.

About Robert Collier’s comment “Enter the conversation already taking place in the prospect’s mind”.

About looking at your business from the other side of the counter, thinking of the issues that your prospects and customers are concerned with.

I found a great example of doing that very thing today. Amazingly, it was in one of those forwarded sometimes funny, sometimes sappy, sometimes heartwarming emails that all of us get from our friends and colleagues.

I’m not sure if the author realizes the power of her writing, but I urge you to take this in and think about the role reversal and the thought process that was necessary to write something this well done.

Her eyes met mine as she walked down the corridor peering apprehensively into the kennels. I felt her need instantly and knew I had to help her.

I wagged my tail, not too exuberantly, so she wouldn’t be afraid. As she stopped at my kennel I blocked her view from a little accident I had in the back of my cage. I didn’t want her to know that I hadn’t been walked today. Sometimes the overworked shelter keepers get too busy and I didn’t want her to think poorly of them.

As she read my kennel card I hoped that she wouldn’t feel sad about my past. I only have the future to look forward to and want to make a difference in someone’s life.

She got down on her knees and made little kissy sounds at me. I shoved my shoulder and side of my head up against the bars to comfort her. Gentle fingertips caressed my neck; she was desperate for companionship. A tear fell down her cheek and I raised my paw to assure her that all would be well.

Soon my kennel door opened and her smile was so bright that I instantly jumped into her arms.

I would promise to keep her safe.
I would promise to always be by her side.
I would promise to do everything I could to see that radiant smile and sparkle in her eyes.

I was so fortunate that she came down my corridor. So many more are out there who haven’t walked the corridors. So many more to be saved. At least I could save one.

I rescued a human today.

Can you create the same level of empathy with your clients and prospects?

I have another example of this for tomorrow;s post: Thanksgiving in the U.S. Enjoy the turkey, but watch out for those crooked pies.

Download audio file (IRescuedAHumanToday.mp3)

“I rescued a human today” Used with permission.
http://rescuemedog.org/dog-blog/i-rescued-a-human-today-by-janine-allen/

Written by Janine Allen CPDT, Rescue Me Dog’s professional dog trainer. Janine’s passion is working with people and their dogs. She provides demonstrations for those who have adopted shelter dogs, lends email support to adopted dog owners that need information beyond our Training Support Pages, and aids shelter staff and volunteers in understanding dog behavior to increase their adoptability.
Copyright 2008 Rescue Me Dog; www.rescuemedog.org

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Our discussion from a couple of days ago (yes, the last 2 days were insane!) about direct mail mistakes was far from complete. We could discuss tools, techniques, strategies and such about direct mail for days, maybe longer.

None of us have time to do that, but I do feel obligated to elaborate on the five direct mail mistakes and discuss some additional issues on these topics.

Stamps vs. Indicia

While I don’t recommend the use of indicia, if you carefully plan your use of indicia, you can get away with it.

For example, if you’ve already established a relationship with a client and you’re sending a monthly newsletter, using bulk mail indicia makes financial sense IF you’ve cleaned your list using CASS software (or a service) or if you’ve mailed to that list in the last 2-3 months using a stamp.

I recommend to clients that if they want to use bulk mail indicia, they should do so on a quarterly rotation for a monthly newsletter. IE: first month, use a stamp. In months 2 and 3, indicia will be OK as long as they are updating their list with the return/change info that comes back on returned mail from month 1.

A different type of mailing might require a different plan, so don’t assume that my newsletter mailing postage rotation schedule is perfect for every kind of mailing. It isn’t.

Deliverability is still a concern, so again, make sure that this mailing isn’t something that’s going to assure your ability to make payroll this week:)

Sending the same mail to everyone

The only exceptions to this that I can come up with are things like “Hey, I’ve sold the company and I’m moving to Costa Rica” letters. I’ll be testing this in the future:)

Measuring Response

I really can’t imagine a day when I wouldn’t mention this. Except for the Costa Rica letter. That’s one that I wouldn’t care about measuring. But…the buyer should.

Follow-up

One of the things I didn’t have room/time to mention in the 5 mistakes post that it is CRITICAL to make sure that you don’t look like a putz by sending the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th mail pieces in your mailing sequence to a person who responded to the FIRST mailing.

It sends such a message that you aren’t paying attention and that the mail isnt…personal. Put things in place so that you can avoid doing this – it’ll pay for itself in postage and printing saved, much less in aggravated clients and your reputation among them.

Response percentage vs ROI

Russ took me to task – a little bit – about my assertion that response percentages are meaningless, noting that “response rates indicate how well your campaign is working“.

It depends. If you get a 20% response, but you lose money on the campaign, did it work?

On the other hand, he noted that “All responses count, even the “take me off your mailing list” requests (data that shows how to increase the quality of your mailing list!).” which I completely agree with.

All in all, we agree but from perhaps different perspectives.

First, you have to keep in mind that a mailing’s goal might not be directly financial – ie: it might not be a sales piece. In that case, your ROI is measured by asking yourself: “For this customer, did the mailing piece accomplish its goal?”

And in that case, the response percentage might prove to be of the same usefulness as the ROI.

In fact, I made that comment about response rates being meaningless in hopes that someone would challenge me on it (thanks Russ).

ROI *is* still most important, but response percentages are one of the things that you simply have to sweat. You have to test (that goes back to the measuring issue) carefully so that you can determine what improves response.

For example, you might test to see what the difference in response is between a letter with a printed, barcoded label and one with a hand-written address, for example. Assumptions are cheap. Testing is accurate.

And then there’s conversion – but that’s another whole set of discussions on its own:)

Download audio file (FiveDirectMailMistakesPart2.mp3)

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It’s easy to burn through a lot of money mailing the wrong way. Here are five common mistakes that businesses make when sending sales materials through the mail. Don’t make them:)

You don’t use real stamps

Your direct mail pieces – of any kind – should be using regular first class stamps most of the time.

While I will admit that I use CASS bulk mail postage for some newsletter mailings (at client request to save postage), this happens ONLY after having sent at least one mailing using a real first class stamp.

Why? 3 reasons: Deliverability, address service and speed

If this excerpt from “Privatizing will improve mail service posthaste” doesn’t help, I’ll clear it up in a minute.

As journalist Jonathan Franzen recounted in a detailed portrait of Chicago’s postal crisis in the New Yorker last year, a letter carrier helping a coworker start his truck in a post office parking lot stumbled onto 100 sacks of undelivered mail in the rear cargo area. Chicago police in 1994 found 200 pounds of relatively recent mail burning beneath a viaduct and 20,000 pieces of vintage mail (some pieces dating to 1979) in garbage cans behind the house of a retired mail carrier. Last May, Chicago firefighters found 5,670 pieces of flat mail and 364 pounds of bulk mail in the attic of postal carrier Robert K. Beverly. And in October, Washington firefighters discovered four truckloads of mail in the apartment of postal carrier Robert W. Boggs

Other than because of postal workers like this guy and because of post offices like the Chicago one described above, a first class stamp in conjunction with a valid return address (sort of) guarantees you a returned mail piece with a corrected current address, or an indication that you should remove that name from your mailing list.

Speed. Bulk mail is not guaranteed to reach your destination anytime soon, if ever. In fact, isn’t guaranteed at all.

One last aspect of this: Choose your stamps wisely. Mailing to women? Use stamps most women would like.

Mailing to NASCAR viewers? Use stamps that fit their profile. Patriotic? Cars? Think about it.

Not making sure that mail only goes to the right people

Sending the same letter to the entire population of the United States: Bad idea.

Sending the same letter to your entire client list: Bad idea.

Are all doctors the same? You know… chiropractors (yes, that was intentional), heart surgeons, thoracic surgeons, dermatologists, general practitioners, podiatrists, sexologists, psychiatrists, ophthalmologists, and so on. They all need malpractice insurance, medical office software, furniture, etc.

Are all mechanics the same? Is a diesel mechanic the same as a HVAC mechanic? Ditto for single engine airplane mechanics, heavy equipment hydraulics mechanics, boat mechanics, jet engine mechanics, or …

Are all painters the same? Home painters vs automobile painters, detailed “pimp my ride” paint artists, industrial painters, high rise building/tower painters, and so on.

If you were trying to sell each member of these groups accounting services, a website, tools, furniture or rubber bands, would you have the same conversation with them?

Not likely.

Is it more work to create different sales materials for different groups of people? Sure.

Is it more profitable? Almost always.

“Almost?” – What kind of comment is that? The kind that leads to our next mistake…

Leaving out a way to measure response

If you can’t measure it, you’d better not mail it. Otherwise, how will you recognize what works and what doesn’t?

Failing to send another mailing to the same person for the same thing

Yes, I mean follow up.

But how many times should I mail stuff to my mailing list? When do I know to stop?

WHEN A NEWLY ADDED STEP LOSES MONEY.

Getting a 1% response to a mailing is your goal

You’ve undoubtedly heard that 1% is an average response for direct mail.

Or maybe you heard 2% is what it takes to make a profit (h*mm, like $0.01?).

Or you’ve heard some other number.

Forget them all. Percentages mean nothing. Return on investment is what you care about.

If you spend $100,000 a month to mail 100,000 pieces of mail (yes, per month) and you get 1 sale, that’s a response rate of 0.00000000001% for each mailing.

If you’re selling $2500 custom trailer hitches for big expensive RVs, you have a big problem. You’re spending $100,000 a month. Even if you sell every lead, you’re spending $100,000 to get $2500. Unless there’s a pretty successful upsell process, or very large lifetime customer value, this just isn’t wise.

On the other hand, using the same numbers, if you sell boats – especially boats like these – then selling 1 of the 56′ boats per month is a ROI of somewhere in the neighborhood 13 times your investment. In other words, if you average 1 boat sale a month from your mailing, you’re spending $100k to get $1.3MM. Seems like a good idea.

In both examples, 1 response was the result of your mailing that month. The response RATE in both was the same. A terrible 0.00000000001% per month. Yet the ROI for the boat example was 13 times the investment.

A loss of $100,000 or a gain of $1.2MM cost $100,000, despite one response.

This happened despite both mailings having the same response rate. Don’t fall for the 1% trap. Or even the 2% trap.

Those are the common direct mail mistakes that come to mind for me… What other direct mail mistakes always jump out at you?

Download audio file (FiveDirectMailMistakes.mp3)

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Google is starting to offer the ability to advertise inside YouTube. Rather than repeat the YouTube / AdWords connection story here, I suggest you take a look at Website Magazine’s coverage of the YouTube advertising story.

If you are already using pay-per-click advertising in your business, the time to get your strategy figured out for this new search/ad opportunity is now, not a year from now. The lead dog has a better view.

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From the Oct 28, 2008 issue of the New York Times, an excerpt from the column “The Media Equation”:

Stop and think about where you are reading this column. If you are one of the million or so people who are reading it in a newspaper that landed on your doorstop or that you picked up at the corner, you are in the minority. This same information is available to many more millions on this paper’s Web site, in RSS feeds, on hand-held devices, linked and summarized all over the Web.

Things change. In every business.

Businesses faced with such situations typically have two choices: Adjust or lose the opportunity to do so.

Oh, I guess there might be a third: denial.

The NY Times figured this out a while back. Even the denial part.

To their credit, they’re still changing and adjusting how they provide content – a process of change they’d better get used to.

One example: They created the NY Times Reader, a nice Windows-based program that was created to display the Times in its original format on your screen, complete with high quality font display, 7 days of issues available to read with no requirement to be connected to the net once the news is initially downloaded.

But not all things are bright and shiny in the Land of Change: Another quote from the same column illustrates a collision of new and old thinking, and a teaspoon of Dont-Quite-Get-It-Yet:

More than 90 percent of the newspaper industry’s revenue still derives from the print product, a legacy technology that attracts fewer consumers and advertisers every single day. A single newspaper ad might cost many thousands of dollars while an online ad might only bring in $20 for each 1,000 customers who see it.

Is that just the slightest hint that they are still in a bit of denial about the price of newspaper print advertising out of whack with the value provided?

It’s NOT about how many people see the ad

It’s about who sees it, and further, who responds to it. That’s what advertisers should be paying for. One price to display to just the right audience. Another price if they respond.

Why another price if they respond? A great ad in front of the right audience at the right time will elicit a good response and generate more than enough revenue to make the ad worthwhile.

If this isn’t clear, consider this: If I see a feminine hygiene commercial 42 times (or 42,000 times), is it likely that I will ever respond? Ladies, you could easily find a parallel from the male world that you’d never respond to.

So why bother displaying the ad?

Why doesn’t the NY Times offer the option to never see ads, in exchange for paying more to read it? Or maybe I just don’t have time for ads on weekdays, so the Sunday Times still shows ads to me. Different fee.

It’s 2008. My paper should react to me and my needs. I might not mind ads if they were targeted at my needs, based on demographics and psychographics, among other things.

These ideas are troublesome for a print publication. Revolutionary to the newspaper business perhaps, but easy for a digital publication to deliver.

With all that in mind…

What kind of information should you be looking at for improved delivery? Sales info. Customer support info. How to info. Company news. Info for employees. Info for business partners. Training.

How are you and your business prepared – and continuing to prepare – for the speed that information delivery is changing?

Two choices. Adjust, or become the next $1 magazine like TV Guide. Not a $1 for one issue – $1 for the entire magazine.

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Over the years, I’ve advised a number of businesses to use what’s currently going on in the news, sports (Super Bowl, World Series, Olympics) and politics as creative fuel for campaigns of this nature: http://www.7-election.com

But few have the nerve to actually do so, particularly as well as this campaign (no pun intended) by 7-11 convenience stores.

The public relations boost from local media alone is worth it. Many times these kinds of things are picked up nationally. This was the case with the introduction of a Palin sandwich in a Anchorage Alaska restaurant called “Lion’s Den”.

In case you want clear evidence, click here to find 1,250,000 search results for “Palin sandwich”.

Could your business use some national publicity for the price of a couple of cases of custom cups, plates, pizza boxes, etc?

If you’re on a tight budget, mosey over to the local election headquarters and tell them you’d like a pile of free stickers to put on your pizza boxes, coffee cups, or whatever.

Let your customers choose which sticker they want. Keep track, make a big deal of it when you announce the results of your very scientific poll just before the election.

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In 2007, Americans spent $5 billion on a holiday that most businesses ignore in their marketing plan.

Yep, I said IGNORE. I guess maybe they feel like the holiday is too childish to participate, or that it doesn’t seem right to use the theme of this holiday for a serious business like theirs. 5 billion dollars of adult spending is hardly childish.

Only 1 secular holiday – Valentine’s Day – generates more consumer spending than the holiday that gets ignored.

You might have guessed by now that the mysterious holiday is Halloween. You still have 3 weeks, so what would do you do?

Ask yourself a few questions to get yourself thinking about a promotion or ad campaign:

• Does your business involve reduction of fear?
• Is there anything scary about buying a new house?
• Getting surgery? Having a tooth drilled? Scary.
• Getting a will or other legal paperwork done?
• Scared of spending money on <any service> and not getting your money’s worth?

I think you could do a lot better than these, but they should get your thought process rolling.

You have 5 billion reasons to think about it and take some action.

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Maybe a better question is “*Do* you react to a competitor’s mistake?”

I haven’t seen much reaction – other than from consumers – to what is collectively a milk-clouded failure of government (the Food and Drug Administration), but more importantly (yeah, go figure<g>) one of the dumbest things a corporation – in fact, several - could do.

America’s corporate chocolate candy makers thought it was a good idea to (effectively) take the chocolate out of milk chocolate and replace it with vegetable oil. And the FDA went along with it after an acceptable amount of lobbying.

It is CRITICAL to note that the FDA didn’t say that milk chocolate CAN’T contain cacao fat (from cocoa butter), but more or less that “Oh, it just doesn’t *have* to include cocoa butter”. AND that is exactly what the big corporate chocolatiers wanted.

Kinda like “high fructose corn syrup tastes the same as cane sugar”. Pass the vegetable oil and corn syrup, yummy!

As the big corporates say, most people probably don’t care. They also say consumers prefer the new oil-based candy. Of course, these are likely the same consumers who don’t pay attention to the news, don’t read labels, etc. 

Are those the typical customers of gourmet stores? Not likely. Are those the same clients you want? The kind who can’t tell (or don’t care about) the difference between great from tolerable?

This situation seems like an obvious easy target for all the makers of gourmet – or even mid-level – chocolates. Seems like an substantial opportunity for every local chocolate maker, every gourmet store, every user of chocolate of any kind (not just milk chocolate) to differentiate themselves from low-rent, average, oil and high-fructose corn syrup based chocolate.

Yet none of the gourmet stores in my area, none of the ones that I watch via Google Alerts, none of the ones that already sell stuff to me, and none of the ones who have me on their mailing list (or email list) have said a single word about this issue.

This despite the fact that the FDA rule change was made over a year ago.

Imagine Ruth’s Chris Steak House’s reaction if Morton’s or Charley’s said they were taking the beef out of their Filet Mignon and replacing it with texturized vegetable protein (or sheep, or chicken lips, whatever).

Maybe I’m putting words in their mouth, but I suspect Ruth’s would be all over that. It would be a mistake that their competition would pay dearly for. Even if Ruth’s competition reversed themselves, it would be easy to position them as anything other than a real steak house because they tried to slide that juicy soy-based filet mignon onto your plate.

Gourmet chocolate stores don’t have to be rude about it. They simply need to position themselves as the only real source of chocolate for those who can tell the difference between high quality, great tasting chocolate and oil.

What mistakes are your competition making and not paying for? You might be thinking “This doesn’t apply to me”. It doesn’t matter if you sell pizza, coffee, tennis rackets, scooters, roofing materials, or legal services – this applies to your business. 

Let me ask the question a different way… Why are you content to let the public assume that you offer the same quality of products that your competitors do?

That’s what everyone thinks until you give them a reason to think differently about your business.

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Last week, you might have seen a news piece on CNN or another national television network showing a high security team from Kentucky Fried Chicken moving their secret recipe to a new location.

You might have thought “What a puff piece” when you saw the news.

What I hope you saw was a large corporate that was wise enough to make a big deal out of (relatively) nothing: moving their secret recipe to a more secure location.

If it was that big of a deal, they would have moved it in the dark of night and would have done so very quietly. You wouldn’t have seen the press, a big fanfare, news helicopters, etc.

Instead, they made a big deal out of it and for the price of a little imagination and a press release, they got a TON of free publicity out of the move.

If you look closely at the Google search below, you’ll see 54, 200 search engine results for KFC secret recipe move.

All from a little clever public relations.

There’s no reason at all why you can’t make a similarly big deal out of your little news items. A restaurant in Anchorage got similar press coverage today because they added a Sarah Palin recipe item to their menu.

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This morning, someone emailed me to confirm an appointment to meet me at a local coffee shop. One of the comments they made when we were making arrangements to meet was “I know what you look like.”

The great thing about that is that we’ll avoid the clumsy “stumbling about looking like you’re lost” thing that happens when you arrive at a public place to meet someone and don’t have a clue what they look like.

It’s one of many reasons why my photo is on this blog, on my printed newsletter, on my personal site, and on my newspaper column.

“Familiarity breeds contempt” only when relatives stay too long:)

In business, familiarity is essential.

Repeatedly, I’ve noticed the looks that business owners get when I step up to the register, counter, etc. They may not know exactly who I am, but I look familiar – which puts me one step ahead of the face they don’t know from Adam.

This is true regardless of whether I want their business, or I simply want to be treated a little better in their store or restaurant.

To my clients and prospects, it’s super critical for keeping me at the “top of their consciousness” when they are thinking about the needs they have that are related to services and products I offer.

You should be doing the same thing. If you have an “about us” on your business cards, brochures, literature, on the wall of your store/restaurant, or website, you should include a picture of yourself, staff, family – whatever seems appropriate.

If you use social media tools like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, having your picture there is equally important for the same reasons.

People don’t care if you look like a movie star, but they do care about seeing a friendly, familiar face.

You want people to associate you with your product. Humans are very visual people. How many times have you heard (or said) “I remember the face but can’t recall their name”?

You can’t even count the number of times, even if you use every remember-the-lady’s-name scheme ever invented.

Familiarity… top of consciousness is what helps put you a little farther in front of those other folks.

Isn’t that where you want to be?

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As we’ve discussed here before, unmeasurable advertising is useless. But don’t feel like you have to believe me. In today’s guest post, read why Denny Hatch also doesn’t think much of traditional entertaining TV ads.

As we’ve discussed here before, awards and cuteness aren’t the goal of your marketing.

Results is the only real measure of successful marketing.

Sales. New clients. New leads.

Not warm fuzzies.

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People don’t want to buy from people who place sales calls to them during dinner (duh). It isn’t because they don’t want to buy your item. They just don’t want to buy it from someone they don’t know. Someone they don’t know hasn’t got “permission” to sell to them, because there isn’t yet a relationship with someone who knows better than to call during dinner.

People can get violent – electronically, at least – when people they don’t know send them an email asking them to buy something. Usually it’s a poorly written email, so it wouldn’t sell anything to most people in the first place.

Of course, because email costs so little to send, when you send out 62 million emails, the .0001% that buy (and yes, they actually do) make it worthwhile to the slimy character who sends them. That is, until their internet provider cuts them off. More on that shortly.

It isn’t as bad with U.S. Mail because you don’t have to pay to receive it, but so-called junk email still gets some people pretty steamed up.

The message itself determines a lot of what happens when it gets delivered.

If you send email, you can be a total putz and not think about your message at all. Send it to everyone with a heartbeat. Who cares if you try to sell a comb to a bald guy? Maybe he collects them.

Direct mail has a way of sorting out the lazy. They go broke rather quickly if they mail poorly.

Not many people have my cell number. I only get text messages only from my kids, my wife, kids in the Scout troop, and from my kids’ friends.

Parents of teenagers know what happens when text messages go big: Big cell bills. Imagine if you got even 10% as many spam text messages as you do spam emails. Suddenly, we’re talking real money unless you’re paying for unlimited texting.

For the most part, you have two choices: Get all text messages or get none. Some cell carriers have filtering tools, but they are mostly all or none choices. As in “filter all text messages that arrive by email” or “allow all text messages that arrive by email”. Not much of a choice, particularly if you’re the parent of a young adult, or if your business automation uses emailed text messages to alert you to various situations.

But today’s column isn’t about Verizon, most days I actually like them – especially the nice folks in the office in C-Falls.

It’s about not making the mistakes that lazy marketers make, and they make them in every media there is.

For example, I recently received a poorly targeted pitch via text message. It says “Four Phones sharing UNLIMITED minutes only $xxx.xx/month. Quality, Service, Value. Cellular ONE in Polson. 885-xxxx.”

Misguided.

First of all, if you emailed this text message to every other 406-249-xxxx number in the Valley, you probably got a lot of nasty phone calls and emails. That probably wasted your time. Wasting time is not typically the goal of your marketing:)

Second, I don’t live in Polson. Why in the world would everyone in the North Valley want a cell number that’s local to Polson – over an hour south of us?

The really unfortunate part was using a Bresnan email account to send your message. See, Bresnan’s terms of service for internet service include a clause that says you can’t spam people. So when Bresnan gets all of the complaints about your message, they’ll probably terminate your account. And of course, since you don’t use a CellularOnePolson.com email like you should, any legitimate email to your Bresnan account will just disappear when they cancel your account for being a spammer.

That’s probably not the desired effect.

Fine tune your message. Send it to the right people. Send it at the right time (which is likely “more than once”).

And for heaven’s sake, don’t call during dinner.

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Several of my clients use direct mail for the obvious reasons – it works. Like a chainsaw in the hands of the skilled artisan, the results can be amazing.

Or they can be downright awful.

Common mistakes people make when using direct mail:

• Talking about the wrong thing
• Not knowing your numbers
• Making assumptions
• Not segmenting your mailing

Let’s look at each of these direct mail mistakes (yes, they could also be made in other media).

Talking about the wrong thing

You might remember a project from several months ago where we talked about political candidate websites and what you can learn from them and their signup processes.

I’m still on all those lists, mostly so I can see what techniques they’re using.

One of the candidates keeps emailing me at the end of each month, asking for a contribution and reminding me that the campaign contribution reporting period ends the next day.

As if I care.

I’m a voter, or in small business terms, a prospect.

I don’t give a flip about campaign reporting periods. I care about issues and what a candidate is going to do about them – something rarely (if ever) mentioned in detail in their contacts.

You wouldn’t offer to talk about AARP to a teenager. Why would you contact your prospects and talk about something they don’t care about? Don’t do it.

Not knowing your numbers

Before you stick that thing in the mail, you better have way to track who responds and of those who respond, who orders.

Yes, I mean keep track of and take action based on: How many you mailed, how many the mailing caused to respond, or how many of those who responded actually bought.

Making assumptions

In particular, making assumptions about the relationship you have with the person you mailed to.

I received a piece of mail not long ago that was personalized and made reference to things I had done in the past with this entity, yet made a slew of inaccurate assumptions about our relationship.

The result? The mailer hit the trash before I finished reading it.

You wouldn’t steal a kiss at the front door as you picked up someone on a blind date. Don’t make assumptions about the relationship you have with those you are mailing to.

Not segmenting your mailing

If you were doing the mailing for Ford Motor Company, would you send the same brochure to everyone in the country?

Of course not. But you probably do it with your mailings.

• The same people who buy a Mustang Cobra are not likely to be buying an Escape Hybrid.
• The same people who buy a F350 Diesel are not likely to be buying a Probe.

And yes, it is possible a family might have both, but your mailing’s goal shouldn’t be to sell BOTH, or you’ll end up sending 300 million identical mailers out and getting 0.0000001% response from them.

• You send the camper and boat owners, construction business owners, farmers and similar businesses info about the heavy-duty diesel trucks.
• You send the Mustang Cobra mailing to successful people in the right income brackets and age groups (if you are Ford, you know exactly what those brackets / groups are).
• You send the Escape Hybrid mailing to people who subscribe to Mother Earth News or Money, as well as kayak owners in the Pacific Northwest. But only those in certain income brackets.

You segment your mailing rather than rain huge piles of random paper down on their heads that do little more than empty your bank account.

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It brings joy to my heart every time I hear a competitor of mine or a competitor of one of my clients complaining about postal rates, or how much they spend on marketing.

“Keep on whining”, I think to myself.

Every time someone else stops mailing newsletters because postage went up – that’s more room for me and my clients. In fact, sometimes I bring it up just to start the conversation topic rolling. Maybe I’m a little mean that way:)

Every time someone looks totally at the cost of their marketing and not the ROI and stops running an ad that is working (assuming they even know), that’s more room for me and my clients.

What they miss is that if you can logically justify spending more because you know your numbers, then you are going to kick their butts while they are digging in the couch for change.

If you are doing the right things, you can spend more on marketing and still make more profit.

In marketing dollars, if you know what a lead costs you and what a new client costs you, you can make better decisions about spending those dollars.

If you know how many leads come from this source vs that source, then you can make better decisions about where to spend those dollars.

If you could put a dollar into a marketing slot machine and get back $1.19 every single time (on average), how much money would you put in that marketing slot machine?

Every dollar you could find, right?

That’s the power of knowing your numbers and using that information to spend your competition into a coma.

Of course, if you have no idea which ads work, and how well, and what they cost to run per lead and what they cost to run per client, well, then you might have reason to complain about the cost of stamps, or whatever media you use.

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