Put random folks in at the top and loyal customers come out at the bottom…
A billboard leads people to a website, which gets some people to subscribe via email which drives some folks to respond to a promotion which leads a few to come back for the stuff that isn't onsale, which leads to someone who can't live without you.
That's the obvious path of outbound marketing. Most people you pour into the funnel hop out long before they become loyal customers.
The thing is, some funnels are more efficient than others. Expose your idea to ten of the right people and it catches on with three of them. Other ideas or offers need to be exposed to far more people (and go through more steps) before they're likely to convert someone.
The mistake we often make: thinking that the problem is that there's not enough people starting the process, not enough people being exposed to your offer. In fact, it's almost always a problem with how efficient the funnel is and how likely it is that loyal customers tell their friends. If you take care of those two elements, you have a lot more to invest in promotion, and delightfully, the promotion is more effective as well.
Google advertising puts the funnel shape under stress. If you can make your funnel more efficient, then you can afford to spend more money on each person you put into the top of the funnel via a paid ad. If your competitor can convert twice as many people as you can, she can spend twice as much per person, no? And thus the smart competitor will buy up as much of the market as possible. The only response: shape a more efficient funnel.
September 15, 2010
Two shores of the same river, either can get you into a lot of trouble.
Self-delusion is lying to yourself about how good you are. You might think you're a world class designer or actor or chef or administrator or problem solver, but you might be merely well-intentioned, hard-working and pretty good. Which is fine, but pretty good is hardly remarkable. Telling yourself the truth about what you've got to market is the first step to marketing with success.
and…
Self-loathing is lying to yourself about how bad you are. You might
think you've got nothing to add, that you're a lame designer or actor or chef or administrator or
problem solver, but you probably have the potential to be great. Awe-inspiringly great …if you're willing to do the work, make the sacrifices and stop undercutting yourself. Supporting yourself with the truth about what you could market is the second
step to marketing with success.
September 14, 2010
There are three stages of preparation. (For a speech, a product, an interview, a sporting event…)
The first I'll call the beginner stage. This is where you make huge progress as a result of incremental effort.
The second is the novice stage. This is the stage in which incremental effort leads to not so much visible increase in quality.
And the third is the expert stage. Here's where races are won, conversations are started and sales are made. A huge amount of effort, off limits to most people, earns you just a tiny bit of quality. But it's enough to get through the Dip and be seen as the obvious winner.
Here's the myth: The novice stage is useful.
If all you're going to do is go through the novice stage before you ship, don't bother. If you're not prepared to put in the grinding work of the expert stage, just do the beginner stuff and stop screwing around. Make it good enough and ship it and move on.
We diddle around in the novice stage because we're afraid. We polish (but not too much) and go to meetings (plenty of them) and look for deniability, spending hours and hours instead of shipping. And the product, in the end, is not so much better.
I'm all for expertise. Experts, people who push through and make something stunning–we need more of them. But let's be honest, if you're not in the habit of being an expert, it's unlikely your current mode of operation is going to change that any time soon.
Go, give a speech. Go, start a blog. Go, ship that thing that you've been hiding. Begin, begin, begin and then improve. Being a novice is way overrated.
Two weeks ago, I told you about a workbook I published. I was amazed and a bit delighted to discover that less than 16 hours after announcing it, the entire warehouse was sold out. (It peaked at #8 on the Amazon list).
I apologize to those of you that weren't able to get a set. And I doubly apologize to my beloved Canadian readers who were shut out for no apparent reason that I've been able to discern.
We've gone back to press for more and I'm pleased to announce that the workbooks are now available, and there's a special option for Canadians. I can't promise that these will last much longer than the last batch, but I've already ordered some more.
Shipping atoms is difficult, and crossing borders is more difficult still. I'm going to adjust as I go and hope to make the supply more reliable. It's doubly disappointing that you can't order when they run out of stock. We're working on that. If you discover an out of stock, please check back after a week…
I'm investigating new ways to make this more efficient going forward. I apologize again, and thank you for your good humor.
September 12, 2010
Bowling is all about one number: the final score. And great bowlers come whisker-close to hitting the perfect score regularly. Not enough dimensions for me to be fascinated by, and few people pay money to attend bowling matches.
Jazz is practiced over a thousand or perhaps a million dimensions. It's non-linear and non-predictable, and most of all, it's never perfect.
And yet…
when we get to work, most of us choose to bowl.
Marketers have long tried to turn happy events into shopping opportunities. Macy's and Gimbels and others pushed us to see Christmas as a chance to buy gifts. Shopping is right next to happiness on the spectrum of emotions, I guess, just as green is next to blue in the rainbow. They did it to Valentine's day and now, of course, Halloween.
Lately, some marketers would like to push us to move from fear to hatred. It makes it easier for them. We honor and remember the heroes who gave everything, the innocent who were lost, the neighbors who narrowly escaped. A day to hate? I hope we can do better than that.
September 11, 2010
Heartfelt criticism of your idea or your art is usually right (except when it isn't…)
Check out this letter from the publisher of a magazine you've never heard of to the founder of a little magazine called Readers Digest:
But, personally, I don't see how you will be able to get enough subscribers to support it. It is expensive for its size. It isn't illustrated… I have my doubts about the undertaking as a publishing venture.
Of course, he was right–given his assumptions. And that's the except part.
Criticism of your idea is usually based on assumptions about the world as it is. Jackson Pollock could never have made it as an painter in the world as it was. And Harry Potter was rejected by just about everyone because for it to succeed the way kids read would have to change.
The useful element of this sort of criticism isn't that the fact that people embracing the status quo don't like your idea. Of course they don't. The interesting question is: what about the world as it is would have to change for your idea to be important?
In the case of Readers Digest, the key thing that changed was the makeup of who was reading magazines. Most of the people (and it was a lot of people) who subscribed to the Digest didn't read other magazines. And so comparing to other magazines made no sense, except to say, "this is so different from other magazines, the only way you're going to succeed is by selling it to millions of people who don't read those magazines." And Starbucks had no chance if they were going to focus on the sort of person who bought coffee at Dunkin Donuts or a diner, and the iPad couldn't possibly succeed if people were content to use computers the way they were already using them.
Keep that in mind the next time a gatekeeper or successful tastemaker explains why you're going to fail.
September 10, 2010
Loyalty is what we call it when someone refuses a momentarily better option.
If your offering is always better, you don't have loyal customers, you have smart ones. Don't brag about how loyal your customers are when you're the cheapest or you have clearly dominated some key element of what the market demands. That's not loyalty. That's something else.
Loyal customers understand that there's almost always something better out there, but they're not so interested in looking.
Loyalty can be rewarded, but loyalty usually comes from within, from a story we like to tell ourselves. We're loyal to sports teams and products (and yes, to people) because being loyal makes us happy. Why else be a fan of the Cubs? Some customers like being loyal. Those are good customers to have.
Loyalty isn't forever. Sometimes, the world changes significantly and even though the loyal partner/customer likes that label, it gets so difficult to stick that he switches.
I think there's no doubt that some brands and teams and politicians and yes, people, attract a greater percentage of loyal fans than others. Not because they're bigger or better, but because they reinforce the good feeling some people get when they're being loyal. Hint: low price or supermodel good looks are not the tools of choice for attracting people who enjoy being loyal.
Rewarding loyalty for loyalty's sake–not by paying people for sticking it out so the offering ends up being more attractive–is not an obvious path, but it's a worthwhile one. Tell a story that appeals to loyalists. Treat different customers differently, and reserve your highest level of respect for those that stand by you.
September 9, 2010
Charlie Huston used one of his books (no longer free) to get me hooked on the rest of the series. Get one free, buy three. Backwards but effective.
Another: To spread an idea you believe in (where money is not the object).
And: To create hoopla for a new book launch. Josh Bernoff is doing a freebie with his new book, just this week. (Sorry, US only–publishing rights are largely a pre-digital artifact).
When the marginal cost of the interaction is zero, the marketing opportunities of spreading an idea increase dramatically.
September 8, 2010
