How your LinkedIn connections can lose you business…

01 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Digital marketing, Marketing, social selling, Thought Leadership

Tags

B2B Marketing, endorsements, linkedin, linkfluencer, marketing, social selling, Thought Leadership

Prior to the invention of social media, your business card holder, Rolodex, or contact list was private property. Only you used the file and nobody else had access to it. Certainly, nobody could see who you were ‘connected’ to in your business life. It was your personal property and quite a valuable asset.

But then along came social media – and in the business world, LinkedIn.

Now, everyone you are connected to on LinkedIn is public property. You’re encouraged to make your contacts public knowledge, even praise them with ‘endorsements’ and promotion of their ‘skills’. The LinkedIn computers use algorithms to prompt you to connect with people, based on the profiles of your current connections.

Even worse, these machines suggest you wish your ‘connections’ happy birthday or happy anniversary – something most executives would never do if they didn’t have the online connection.

Almost everything you do on LinkedIn is public. Nothing is private any more. And that’s why you can lose business.

In my early days of creating a LinkedIn network, I decided to try a few of the ‘tools’. A client of mine (let’s call her Josie) with whom I’d worked a number of times in different roles in her career, asked me to recommend her on LinkedIn, as she was looking for a new role. I was a reference on her resume and had spoken with recruiters when she applied for previous roles. I thought “why not” – though I was a tad concerned about the public nature of my endorsement. But that’s just me.

So I wrote a glowing endorsement of her skills and expertise, and thought nothing more about it.

Once Josie started in a new role, she decided to review her agencies and invited my agency, along with others with whom she’d worked over the years, to present our credentials based on a real brief.

Obviously the incumbent agency wasn’t happy at the possibility of losing this piece of business. The principal of the agency, who I know well, checked Josie’s LinkedIn profile and noticed my recommendation.

He immediately contacted Josie’s boss and argued that the ‘pitch process’ was not a level playing field given the obvious relationship between Josie and myself. The boss agreed and Josie called me to say my agency was not allowed to pitch – despite the fact she has the upmost integrity and was reviewing more than one agency she had worked with previously. There was no guarantee my agency would get any business from her.

If I had simply remained a reference on her resume, this would never have happened. But because of the public nature of content on LinkedIn profiles, my endorsement had cost me a valuable business opportunity.

I’ve discussed this with others and they have had similar problems, where naive executives make decisions based on a few words in a LinkedIn profile. It’s why many of my C-Level contacts aren’t even on LinkedIn – they don’t need to be. And they don’t want others to know who is in their business network.

It’s why I no longer give public recommendations or endorsements to anyone on LinkedIn, though I do offer to be a reference as needed. For me, it’s not worth the loss of business or potential damage to my reputation.

This is certainly something none of the Linkfluencers and other fake LinkedIn ‘thought leaders‘ will share with you – as it’s not in their interest to do so. You may have a different experience dear reader, I suspect it’s horses for courses.

I have to go now and contact a bloke about a pitch – where’s my business card holder???

Oh, I nearly forgot – if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

Your Marketing 101 Guide by the Numbers…

20 Tuesday Aug 2019

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Mobile marketing, Remarketing, Sales, Sales Promotion, Social Media, social selling, Telemarketing, Viral marketing

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

advertising, B2B Marketing, branding, catalogue marketing, contact strategy, content marketing, data-driven marketing, digital marketing, marketing, selling, social selling

Hello again. I’m currently writing a book on B2B marketing – adapted from my training courses. The B2B category has a lot of executives in marketing roles who have no prior marketing qualifications. They have sales, product or technical backgrounds. Some even call themselves social sellers.

So, I’ve put together a little “Marketing 101 Guide by the Numbers”. Keep these in mind when planning your marketing executions, as they’ll keep you focused.

The three goals of your marketing communications – and there are only three…

Acquire new customers
Get customers to spend more money with you more often
Get customers to keep spending with you for as long as possible.

If your marketing communications are not helping you achieve one or more of these goals, you’re probably wasting your money, regardless of the media channels or vanity metrics you use.

The two ways of marketing – and there are only two…

Mass marketing
Direct marketing

Mass Marketing – you communicate with as many consumers* as possible for the lowest media cost, to position your brand in the mind of the consumer, so they consider it when they are in the market to buy – online or offline. Generally used in broadcast, print, outdoor and some online channels.

Direct Marketing – any marketing communication delivered directly to individual consumers* or to which they respond directly to you. All responses are measured and there is always an exchange of either data or dollars – online or offline. Generally used in broadcast, mail, email, telephone, print, events, social, search, mobile and online channels.

*Consumers is generic for both prospects and customers

The two reasons people use the internet – and there are only two…

To save time
To waste time

That’s it. You need to design your website, landing page, email, social channels, apps etc to make it easy for your customers and prospects to either save time, or to waste time, depending upon their reason for visiting.

Saving or wasting time?

There’s no such thing as a customer journey – just two contact strategies…

People don’t go on customer journeys. This is a marketing buzzword designed to make the user sound sophisticated – it’s complete bollocks. There are only two contact strategies to use, and they’re linked to the most relevant touchpoints. After all, a prospect isn’t a customer until they buy something:

Prospect contact strategy – to generate new customers
Customer contact strategy – to keep profitable customers and generate referrals

Marketers determine the most appropriate touchpoints to reach prospects and customers, then communicate as necessary in the most effective channels for those touchpoints. These touchpoints can be mapped for easier visual interpretation.

For example, a prospect may identify themselves by responding to an advertisement by telephone, downloading a white paper from a website, or at a trade show. This is the beginning of the prospect contact strategy designed to get them to either request a presentation (if required), to trial the product/service, or to buy. This can involve lots of channels, some of which can be automated.

Once the prospect becomes a customer, they join the customer contact strategy. This involves communicating with personal messages designed to create a positive customer experience, encourage loyalty, obtain referrals and generate further sales.

The customer contact strategy can also be divided into two separate executions. One execution is linked to the date the product or service is bought and includes messaging around warranty, service, renewal, upgrade and the like.

The other execution is linked to time of year and includes messaging such as monthly newsletter, seasonal offers, event invitations and more.

Obviously, the customer contact strategy uses more personal media channels including; face-to-face meetings, mail, telephone, email and social channels. And all the while, there is the 24/7 continual flow of marketing content on blogs, websites and social channels, as well as advertising.

People DON’T go on customer journeys…

The numbers that matter when budgeting…

There are a few key numbers to understand when budgeting your marketing activity:

Lifetime value – how much revenue you customer is worth over their lifetime of buying from you
Cost per lead – how much you can afford to spend to generate a qualified lead
Cost per sale – how much you can afford to spend to generate a sale
The advertising allowable – what you can afford to spend to generate a sale at either break-even or a pre-determined profit percentage

When you know how much a customer is worth, you can determine how much to spend to generate a qualified lead and therefore how much you can afford to spend to get a sale – based on conversion rates. This helps you determine the most appropriate media channels to use, as they are defined by your advertising allowable.

Remember:

Marketing creates the need, while sales fulfils the need…

Your marketing activity helps to create the need for your brand by building desire for it and reinforcing your decision after you’ve bought. Your sales people use selling techniques to fulfil the need and complete the sale.

Your direct marketing activity can both create and fulfil your prospect’s needs in a single execution. It also integrates your marketing and sales teams to ensure they both work together successfully.

So now you know, what you need to know, about you know, that thing that everyone thinks they know – marketing…

Online sales can reduce your revenue…

22 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Branding, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales, social selling

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

B2B Marketing, catalogue marketing, online selling, social selling, testing

A couple of years ago my agency created catalogues for an office supplies company – different catalogues for different areas of their business and different types of customers.

They had a catalogue for typical office stationery, another for bulk purchases of products delivered on pallets, and other specialty catalogues. They did some sophisticated testing, with the objective of moving clients to order via their website to reduce the dependence upon the call centre, as it took the majority of the orders. They also believed they’d make more money with online ordering.

The test results revealed some interesting insights. When the company migrated customers to online orders, they lost revenue. The average order size via the website was much less than the average order via the call centre. The reason is simple and one which any salesperson can explain.

Online sales reduced average sales value and revenue…

Once the customer was on the phone, the customer service person could upsell via questions and sell even more products than the customer might have bought if they simply went to the website. The customers who did use the website for orders, usually only bought a small number of items.

Another insight they discovered was that most customers had the catalogue with them when they called to order by phone. This gives the customer service person another way to engage with the customer, by referring to the catalogue pages and discussing them together.

customers have the catalogue with them when they call…

The grim discovery was that the move to online ordering had the potential to damage the business and reduce sales. While website sales can possibly cost less to process, the average sale value was less than telephone sales.

The company had to work a delicate balance of telephone and website sales and eventually hit on a strategy of telephone follow-up to online sales. As online orders were received, the outbound telemarketers would call the customer and upsell based on the products in the online order.

This became a productive use of the call centre staff, giving them options for inbound and outbound selling. Customers appreciated the ‘service calls’ and nearly always increased their order value.

let me help you spend more money…

So don’t believe everything you hear about the marvels of digital disruption – it can damage your business rather than improve it.

The old adage continues to apply – just because you can doesn’t mean you should…

How digital marketers destroyed one of the most profitable media channels…

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales, Social Media, social selling

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

B2B Marketing, content marketing, digital marketing, email marketing, influencer, social selling, Thought Leadership

As many of you will know, one of the major weaknesses of digital marketers is their lack of knowledge of marketing history.

They naively assumed that just because a technology was new, all previous technology was useless, all existing media channels no longer worked, proven techniques suddenly failed, and human DNA changed forever. So they ignored everything that had worked pre-internet.

The nature of technology is to constantly evolve. Experienced marketers have lived through a constant stream of technical innovations – in television, radio, outdoor, mail, print, sponsorship and of course online. So for most, the digital channels just offered additional media options for marketing purposes.

One of the most profitable channels – for both the media owner and marketers – was the humble mailing list. Mailing lists existed for every consumer and B2B category. You could rent them or create your own and reach every person on the list. Many list owners rented their lists both for profit and to keep the list current.

But then the marketing toddlers in their digital nappies arrived. When they realised the power of direct marketing via email, they really went to town – spamming, abusing privacy, ignoring unsubscribe requests and generally operating without any ethics. They were so appallingly bad at the use of email lists, governments around the world were forced to take action to stop them.

In countries across the globe new laws banning spam, banning the sending of unsolicited emails, and protecting the privacy of consumers, were legislated. These were the direct result of digital marketers abusing their privilege – to communicate directly with consumers.

The backwash from these bans was devastating. Here’s why:

The new privacy and opt-in laws, spilled into the databases of mailing list owners, not just email list owners. These new laws meant once-compliant mailing list owners had to comply with laws designed for email list owners.

So, if you owned a list and it contained contacts from more than one country, you now had to comply with multiple privacy and spam laws. The cost of this compliance became prohibitive. When coupled with the reduction in subscribers to printed magazines, the cost versus revenue for list ownership and maintenance became unsustainable. The penalties for non-compliance were too high and not worth the risk of human error.

For the uninitiated, prior to these new laws, any marketer could rent a mailing list and send direct mail for business purposes. Let’s say for example, you wanted to reach IT professionals. You didn’t have to advertise and hope you reached them. You could rent a list and mail them anything from a letter to a white paper, even include an involvement device. Then you managed responses and followed-up the non-responses by phone.

Here’s one of the world’s most successful B2B campaigns from a pre-internet age. It paid for itself within 4 hours of delivery.

But that simple way of doing business has been severely damaged. Thanks to the spam and privacy laws, there are way fewer lists available to rent – particularly in niche markets.

Now B2B marketing for example, has become much more complicated and open to abuse. It is reflected in the growth of the fake influencers and fake thought leaders. Instead of renting a list or building one, marketers are being told they have to do social selling. As against anti-social selling? What sales process isn’t social?

Here, according to the digital marketing experts, is what you have to do today to reach a B2B prospect.

Connect to as many executives as possible on LinkedIn or other social channels.
Pay a third party, usually in a third-world country, to create a white paper, or ‘content’ for you to send to every contact you have, via the social channels.
Don’t use proven sales techniques in your messaging, as selling is evil.
Just hope the contact has nothing better to do but read your content and love it so much they contact you.
To convince your connection your ‘content’ is worth consuming, call it “thought leadership” and call yourself “an influencer” – for no reason other than to big yourself up in your own eyes and hopefully fool some poor sucker that you know what you’re talking about.
When your social selling fails to work, use the KPI of “thought leadership” and “content marketing” to fool your boss that things are OK. One way to do this is to send your boss all your content when you send it to your connections.

This process takes way longer and costs much more than simply mailing your prospects and customers with relevant information and reasons to respond (known as selling). But hey, it has digital buzzwords attached to it so it must be worth destroying a profitable media channel.

I’m not saying that contacting people on LinkedIn and gradually converting them to a customer doesn’t work. Though most social sellers don’t practice what they preach. Instead, they connect and start flogging their wares immediately, without any credibility, using puff-words like “awesome”, “killer”, “secrets”, and “mind-blowing” in their message.

Here’s an example of one I received this week from a person who asked to join my network, I didn’t invite him. It arrived courtesy of marketing automation: “…5 killer LinkedIn tactics we used to generate 50 appointments and 13 closed deals in 2 months” I have no idea why he thinks I’m a prospect, these killer tactics are the last thing I need to grow a business. The message has zero credibility.

Interestingly, many of the thought leaders on social selling have never used direct mail, so they have no credibility when claiming social selling is the solution. You can prove it too – do a split run test. You might be surprised at the results.

In my experience, using mail supported by the digital channels will get the best result – but I’m only speaking from experience. Given current marketers don’t care about marketing history aka “experience” the message will probably fall on deaf ears.

Blatant Plug…

If you live in Brisbane and want to know how to make your mail work in a digital world, here’s a blatant plug. Join Steve Harrison, the man Campaign magazine described as “The greatest Direct Mail creative of his generation“. He’s won more Cannes Lion awards for direct mail than anyone else. You’ll learn how to do award-winning, effective direct mail at this event on 11th March 2019:

www.creativemail.com.au

How to get executives to dine at upmarket restaurants for lunch…

22 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Sales, social selling

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

B2B Marketing, branding, copywriting, database, direct mail, direct marketing, marketing, social selling

Today’s Throwback Thursday features two campaigns promoting fine dining restaurants in the Sydney CBD. These campaigns would still work today, 21+ years after they originally ran…

Fine dining restaurants located in 5 star hotels, are quite different to your everyday cafes and restaurants located on the high street or in food lanes. They have their own peculiarities, one of which is their location inside a hotel without street-front exposure.

They’re also expensive. Most are frequented for one of four reasons:

the chef’s (food/wine) reputation
celebrating a special occasion
the company/employer is picking up the tab
money is no object for the customer

Here are two case studies promoting fine dining restaurants to business executives:

The Astral Restaurant located at The Star Casino in Darling Harbour
The Galileo Restaurant located in the Observatory Hotel in Kent Street near The Rocks

The Astral Resturant was located in a separate top floor of the casino as part of The Endevour Room, the casino’s private gaming room. The casino is just too far to walk from the CBD for lunch – but it had free parking. The agency drew a map of streets west of George street down to Darling Harbour, with boundaries north and south in the CBD.

A list of senior executive contact details within the map boundaries was then rented and the names/job titles were qualified by phone. The mailpack is the size of a typical dinner plate and used the plate imagery within.

The mailpack had three incentives to visit and dine at The Astral:

$75 dining voucher for The Astral
$50 gaming voucher for The Endeavour Room
1 month free membership to The Endeavour Room

So recipients could go for lunch or dinner, then get to gamble in the private VIP high roller room. Of course they probably weren’t aware that an entree cost about $75 and the minimum bet was $50, but the incentive worked its head off.

Front of mailpack

Rear of mailpack

Mailpack opened…

Letter

Letter, brochure, vouchers

Vouchers and membership card

The mailing generated a response of more than 25% and all respondents were put on a database for future mail/email communication. (email was just starting in the business world)

The Galileo Restaurant is also located on the fringe of the CBD. The agency hired people to walk ten minutes from the restaurant towards the city centre and create a map of the catchment area. Staff walked the floors of each building and built a list of senior executives for each company in the catchment area. A list of senior executives in North Sydney was also rented to so a split-run test could be conducted.

The mailing is an A3 piece of parchment card stock, folded into thirds and sealed with a black tape. It unfolds into a food art poster. There is an invitation with an excellent incentive:

Free lunch for two people – three courses plus coffee
The recipient can bring a guest along and enjoy lunch together

There is a reservation card to hand in when the respondent arrives at the restaurant. It captures the recipient’s name and their guest’s details. This doubled the size of the database and gave the restaurant a reference point for a ofllow-up mailing. This also generated more than 24% response rate. Local executives responded more than North Sydney executives, which was expected.

Front of envelope

Rear of envelope

Envelope folds open into an A3 poster

Reservation form, letter and menu

More importantly the staff offered the lunch guests a backroom tour of the hotel. While showing the guests around the inner sanctum, the hotel staff asked for the contact details of the person who books accommodation and events at the guest’s company. So the hotel built three databases – restaurant, accommodation and events.

Both these mailings would work today – the only difference is the reply device would most likely be a personalised landing page (PURL) supported by a confirmation email and/or SMS.

All this talk of fine dining is making me hungry. Where are last night’s leftovers?

The definitive reason why definitive guides aren’t really definitive…

15 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, social selling, Thought Leadership

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

B2B Marketing, content marketing, copywriting, definitive guides, digital marketing, direct marketing, social selling, Thought Leadership

Let me share a personal secret with you dear reader. I’ll whisper it to you:

“I collect definitive guides”

It’s true. I download each one that arrives in my inbox and save them into a folder. And that’s where they stay, because I rarely read them. They’re usually so subjective and full of fluff, it takes too long to find any worthwhile stuff.

I use a false name and an email address I reserve just for subscriptions. It helps to redirect the inevitable automated follow-up by a computer, and in very few cases, by a human.

Nobody ever calls though. Last year, after using the “Premium” LinkedIn service without getting any benefit, I didn’t renew my subscription. Nobody called to ask why, or to re-sell it to me. Seems LinkedIn believes people don’t need to deal with people in B2B marketing.

Strangely, while I had the subscription, each time I opened my account, I was made an offer to subscribe to the Premium service to which I was already subscribed. One has to question LinkedIn’s marketing automation.

But back to definitive guides.

The following is typical of the opening paragraphs in many of these guides.

“With new marketing channels and technologies popping up every day, marketers must adapt and evolve their analytics strategies, skills, and solutions to survive. As big data becomes increasingly critical for informed decision-making, marketers and their organizations will find themselves along a spectrum of analytical maturity.”

That’s a concern. Nobody I know wants to find themselves on a spectrum of analytical maturity. Most, like me, have no idea what it even means.

But, given that everyone in the industry agrees we live in constantly changing times, with new marketing channels and technologies popping up every day, how can any guide be definitive? By definition, it’s out of date the day it’s published.

If you claim the reason for publishing a definitive guide is constant change, then the guide is only as current as the most recent change? By the publisher’s own reasoning, the guide cannot be definitive, except at a very small moment in time, or to justify the publisher’s self-serving purpose.

Maybe the name of these guides should be changed to reflect the truth? Here’s a suggestion:

Title: An Indefinitive Guide To <insert marketing topic>

Subhead: A self-serving opinion about <insert marketing topic> designed to convince you to buy our marketing stuff. Best before <insert date>

This is an honest description and puts a timeframe to indicate the guide’s currency, given it will be out of date pretty quickly and by definition, no longer definitive.

Hmmm. There could be an opportunity here. Maybe I could publish the definitive guide to publishing indefinitive guides?

Where’s my definitive guide on how to write…

Looks like content is no longer king…

26 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Content Marketing, Digital marketing, Marketing, Social Media, social selling

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

content marketing, digital marketing, King Content, marketing, social media, social selling

Republished at the request of nervous marketers…

One of the most common conversations in marketing circles over the last couple of years, has been how to replicate the King Content hustle and flog a fledgling content marketing agency for an outrageous amount of money, making oneself filthy rich.

Hardly a marketer I’ve spoken with could believe Isentia paid $48 million for this unproven content marketing business. “Where is the value” everyone asked? Well it looks like there wasn’t much – value that is.

Recently, as most of you are probably aware, Isentia announced it was shutting down the King Content brand after a $4.4 million loss in the previous financial year. Mumbrella reported Isentia wrote down $37.8 million and close offices around the world.

And as reported in Mumbrella today, Isenta has now written off the purchase price as part of a profit downgrade, which it advised in a statement to the ASX. It has also decided to get out of content marketing. It certainly didn’t get anything out of content marketing, so to speak.

It reminds me of the first dot.con when big ad agencies rushed around like headless chooks overpaying for website production studios that had fancy names. I sat in one meeting where a young kid with a very small company, but building websites for some well known brands, turned down a $1,000,000 cheque. He wanted more, despite the cheque being more than twice his annual revenue.

Suffice to say, after the dot.con collapsed, nobody knocked on his door and his business is still about the size if was 17 years ago and he’s still just making websites and apps.

But content marketing is an industry in itself, though Gartner’s Hype Cycle already has the alleged industry on the slide into the trough of disillusionment.

Which brings me to a speech I delivered last month at the NZ Direct Marketing Conference. As I’m curious by nature I asked the audience (about 200 marketers and agency types) the following questions:

Who wants every brand they come in contact with to deliver more advertising and an increasing volume of content to them at every opportunity possible?
Who wants more email in their inbox?
Who wants more notifications on their mobile?
Who woke this morning craving relationships with consumer brands? Can’t wait to read the thought leadership on toilet roll brands?
Who has walked out of a retail store or café because you didn’t get served?

The answers were fascinating.

Not one marketer in the room wanted more content delivered to them by marketers.
Not one marketer in the room wanted more email.
Not one marketer in the room wanted more notifications.
Not one marketer in the room woke up thinking about brands, let alone wanting relationships with them.
Every marketer in the room had walked out of a store because a salesperson hadn’t tried to sell them something.

This is fascinating stuff folks. After all, if marketers and advertisers don’t want what the content marketers and the cyber-hustlers are flogging, why do they believe their customers want it?

Taking their answers once step further, the whole audience believed the premise of content marketing – that brands should deliver content at every opportunity possible to anybody who remotely comes in to contact with the brand, but should not try to sell anything – is complete and utter bullshit.

Not one executive in that audience believed, by show of hand, that marketers should be doing content marketing. As consumers, marketers hate content marketing.

So if the industry doesn’t believe in content marketing, why are marketers wasting shareholder’s precious investment on it??? It appears that content marketing has rapidly become a punch-line to marketing jokes.

But one has to wonder, why didn’t the management at Isentia ask these questions to protect their shareholder’s funds???

And why do I have images of the emperor’s new clothes, and lemmings jumping off cliffs???

Gotta go. I have an idea for an anti-content marketing, content marketing business. You can check it out here: www.thecontentbrewery.com

The 3 essential questions you must ask for content marketing success…

17 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Remarketing, Social Media, social selling, Thought Leadership

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

content marketing, social media, social selling, Thought Leadership

“Any fool can create lousy content… sadly many do”

Like many of you, I am extremely suspicious of the claims of the content marketing zealots. I cannot count the number of times marketers have asked me what they should do when it comes to content marketing. They don’t understand its purpose or why they should bother – and they suspect they are being sold digital snake oil. The “emperor’s new clothes” is quoted regularly.

wanna buy some content marketing?

So to help marketers and business owners with their content marketing, I have created the 3 essential questions you must ask before embarking on your content marketing journey. Do you like how I was able to get the word “journey” into my sentence, to make me sound more digi-credible?

So here they are – answer these honestly and you’ll be able to solve your content marketing conundrum.

The 3 Essential Questions…

Question 1:
Do you as a consumer want every brand you buy or consider buying, to deliver an ever-increasing amount of content to you at every touchpoint you have with those brands?

Like 100% of consumers, your answer is probably a resounding “no” – so why do you want to do it to your customers and prospects?

Question 2:
What facts, research or data do you have, to prove your customers and prospects are demanding you increase the amount of content you disseminate to them?

Where is your evidence? Where are the facts? Or are you just following marketing fashion and the FOMO created by cyber-hustlers?

Question 3:
What will your time-poor, infobesity-ridden customers and prospects give up in their daily lives, so they can consume your increased volume of content?

They already have extremely busy, content-filled lives – why should they consume yours?

Now, if you can answer these questions in such a way as to demand you immediately start mass production of content for marketing purposes, please contact an alleged content marketing expert. They’ll know how to make money out of you, rather than for you.

But if you are not sure what to do, but are serious about producing content that persuades, really sells your brand and grows your bottom line, go to the website I’ve created to help you – www.thecontentbrewery.com

It’s an anti-content marketing, content marketing website – if you get my drift…

(To learn how to create content that persuades and sells, get a ticket to www.draytonslasthurrah.com)

Looks like content is no longer king…

17 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Content Marketing, Digital marketing, Marketing, Social Media, social selling

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

content marketing, digital marketing, King Content, marketing, social media, social selling

Recently, as most of you are probably aware, Isentia announced it was shutting down the King Content brand after a $4.4 million loss in the previous financial year.

And as reported in Mumbrella today Isenta has now written off the purchase price as part of a profit downgrade, which it advised in a statement to the ASX. It has also decided to get out of content marketing. It certainly didn’t get anything out of content marketing in the first place, so to speak.

Suffice to say, after the dot.con collapsed, nobody knocked on his door and his business is still about the size if was 17 years ago and he’s still just making websites and apps.

But content marketing is an industry in itself, though Gartner’s Hype Cycle already has the alleged industry on the slide into the trough of disillusionment.

Who wants every brand they come in contact with to deliver more advertising and an increasing volume of content to them at every opportunity possible?
Who wants more email in their inbox?
Who wants more notifications on their mobile?
Who woke this morning craving relationships with consumer brands? Can’t wait to read the thought leadership on toilet roll brands?
Who has walked out of a retail store or café because you didn’t get served?

The answers were fascinating.

Not one marketer in the room wanted more content delivered to them by marketers.
Not one marketer in the room wanted more email.
Not one marketer in the room wanted more notifications.
Not one marketer in the room woke up thinking about brands, let alone wanting relationships with them.
Every marketer in the room had walked out of a store because a salesperson hadn’t tried to sell them something.

This is fascinating stuff folks. After all, if marketers and advertisers don’t want what the content marketers and the cyber-hustlers are flogging, why do they believe their customers want it?

Not one executive in that audience believed, by show of hand, that marketers should be doing content marketing. As consumers, marketers hate content marketing.

So if the industry doesn’t believe in content marketing, why are marketers wasting shareholder’s precious investment on it???

It appears that content marketing has rapidly become a punch-line to marketing jokes.

But one has to wonder, why didn’t the management at Isentia ask these questions to protect their shareholder’s funds???

And why do I have images of the emperor’s new clothes, and lemmings jumping off cliffs???

Gotta go. I have an idea for an anti-content marketing, content marketing business and I need to write some content about it…

More than ever before, customers want to be sold too…

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Remarketing, Sales, Social Media, social selling, Thought Leadership

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B2B Marketing, content marketing, customer service, digital, digital marketing, email marketing, marketing, remarketing, Sales, social media, social selling, Thought Leadership

There is some serious B.S. being peddled claiming human DNA has miraculously changed in the last few years. The peddlers (known as content marketers) claim people don’t want to be sold anything anymore. They claim businesses that try to sell things to their customers and prospects will fail.

I’m not kidding, such absurd claims are being made at marketing seminars – if it wasn’t so sad it would be hilarious.

The claim of course, is complete rubbish and without supporting evidence.

content marketers shoveling content

The plain fact is this – people love to be sold to by good salespeople. And when they have a great sales experience they rave about it and call it “excellent customer service”. They tell friends at social functions and on social media. Some marketers even label them advocates.

Great sales technique doesn’t make the customer uncomfortable. It doesn’t sound “salesy” – to use an emerging piece of jargon. A good sales person is highly regarded by customers. And we all have our favourites, whether they be at our local cafe, clothing store, pub, hairdresser, mechanic, IT supplier, butcher, baker or grocer.

But when it comes to lousy salespeople or poor sales messages, people share a universal dislike. Since the beginning of time, people have disliked them – it is not a new sentiment just because of the internet or claims by content marketers.

How many times have you threatened to take your business elsewhere because a salesperson wasn’t available to serve you? We all love salespeople.

So to push a self-interest content marketing barrow and state all a marketer has to do is publish more and more non-sales information and the world will flock to your door, is pure fantasy. The content marketers may be smoking the wacky tobacky, but the punters aren’t having a bar of it.

Are content marketers smoking the wacky tobacky?

The common thread among modern consumers is they are time-poor and suffer from severe infobesity – much of this caused by useless content marketing messages that don’t give people a reason to act, or consider a brand. Content for content’s sake. Yet the last thing people want in their busy lives is more content.

Human beings are the laziest species on the planet – we always seek the path of least resistance. One of the key reasons apps are so popular for example, is their ease of use. So marketers have to make it as easy as possible for people to buy – which is why giving punters incentives, offers, propositions and reasons to “buy now” are key to getting sales.

To quote my old boss, David Ogilvy, “you cannot bore people into buying“. Yet content marketers are adamant you can. Waste more of people’s valuable time and you’re guaranteed to sell them more, they preach to the gullible.

Let’s examine some facts shall we:

The single biggest innovation in online shopping was an in-your-face sales tool. It was invented by Amazon – and customers love it! They call it customer service, because that’s what great selling is all about – serving customers and prospects well. The technique is now used on all major transaction websites.

Here’s an example with which you are all familiar – you visit Amazon and click on a book you are considering buying. The site then tells you “customers who bought this item also bought…”

Look out, Amazon is daring to “sell things”…

Even “Facebook with a necktie” (known as LinkedIn) uses this technique. When you view a person’s profile, you are prompted with a message “People also viewed” and there is a list of people’s mug shots linking to their profiles. This is a sales technique as old as retail selling – suggesting alternatives to get customers to buy at least one option. It’s a sales tool, not a non-sales tool.

Companies have always published non-sales information, it is not a new invention. And they made the information available at every point possible along the “customer journey”. Sorry, I had to drop the journey buzzword at least once. Some of you ancient marketers will remember such non-sales content as brochures, websites, booklets, newsletters, educational videos, signage, on-pack instructions, seminars, user manuals – the list goes on.

This is all designed to assist customers and prospects to make buying decisions, or as after sales service. Why would the punters want more ‘information’?

Yet the content marketers are claiming the whole world has changed just because people can do some online research before buying. This is stretching credibility beyond truth. Just because a marketer can reach a prospective customer in more places than ever before, does not automatically translate into “don’t sell to consumers, just post information as much as possible“.

wanna read content rather than buy a product?

By all means, help build your brand by publishing relevant content that cost-effectively drives people to a sale, or keeps them coming back after they’ve bought. But make it easy for the punters to buy – they are already inundated with infobesity and can’t be bothered doing all the work themselves.

So please, you self-interested content marketers, stop the lying about content marketing and making fake claims all a brand has to do to succeed, is publish non-sales content. It’s dishonest. Brands have always published non-sales content, as well as sales content – and it’s the sales content that has the biggest impact on the business and always will.

I’m going on a customer journey to get a drink of water from the kitchen. Better check some influencers to see what non-sales content they have, so I can make my buying decision – do I get cold water from the fridge, just run water from the tap, or maybe drink sparkling water from a bottle? After all, I want to ensure my water-drinking customer experience journey is the best it can be…

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