It never ceases to amaze me when an organization has the audacity to send me a text message without my permission to do so. Seriously, do these people not understand the idea of “inbound” marketing?

It all started with an innocent signup for a “free” program that was geared toward people like me who enjoy learning and applying successful internet marketing, and marketing in general for that matter, strategies that others have discovered and produced. I assume (rather stupidly), that there is no reason that I shouldn’t sign up. All it’s asking for is my email address.

I think I’m smart, and I create an email address specifically for this signup (i.e. signupsitename@michaelcarwile.com) and use it to avoid my actual email address from getting spammed. This works – and I use it for almost anything I sign up for – I have almost 400 email “addresses” that I use. Call it OCD, call it nerdy, whatever, I call it smart.

But then, some wise-ass gets the bright idea to actually look at my website (so I assume, anyway, since I am 100% positive that I did not provide my phone number anywhere) and figure out what my phone number is. That’s fine, you’re doing your research – good for you.

The problem: I don’t want to receive your invasive, stupid text message during the middle of my time with my family, and yet, you seem to think that is the perfect time to push your wares.

Sure, I can reply with ‘STOP’ and according to the current laws, you are required to not send me any more messages.

But what will happen if the law changes? As more and more people have smart phones, I fear that the mega brands, with their lobbyists, will alter the landscape for users and find a way to convince lawmakers (you know, those politicians we vote into office to serve for us) that it will be “better for the economy” to allow them to send us all messages to our phones.

It is flat out ridiculous for an organization to subscribe to the philosophy of “text blasts” or “email blasts” as the best way to get people to buy their product. If I wanted to buy your product, I would have clicked on the affiliate link of the four other people that emailed me promoting it. By the way, all four of these people seem to have conveniently gotten my email address that I used to sign up through the first site – so now, stupid marketer, that email address no longer exists – take that.

Or so I thought.

After I took the time to delete the email address, I received your annoying text message. What the…? Okay, I get it, people are increasingly going to use text messages to advertise. So, before you do, maybe you should follow some of these best practices (or at least, what I consider best practices):

1. Get Permission. Make sure I want your messages. Ask me first. If what you have to offer via your text messages is of some kind of value to me, chances are pretty good that I might actually volunteer to receive them willingly.
2. Get Permission. Don’t just look up my phone number, and send me a message. It will come off as stalker-ish, and that’s the best you’ll ever get.
3. Get Permission. Let’s say someone volunteers their phone number on a signup form, maybe for a support request, or similar. Just because you have that phone number DOES NOT mean you can send them marketing messages whenever you feel like it. That is the fastest sure-fire way to lose those customers.
4. Get Permission. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, ever, under any circumstances, no matter what some colleague or competitor does, buy a list and send messages the people on it. That’s the quickest way to not make any money, and potentially worse – a lawsuit.

Text message and mobile advertising in general is definitely a growing industry, and for good reason. We are a society that is addicted to being connected (I admit, I’m guilty of always having my phone by my side – it’s my crutch). But just because the media is available, that doesn’t always mean it makes sense to use it. And it never makes sense to annoy your prospective (or existing) customers by sending them useless messages that they don’t care about and never asked to receive in the first place. Don’t do it.

Twitter has exploded past the mainstream growth curve and is finding its way into marketing programs that are run by people with little to no experience using social media as a community building tool with a marketing mindset.

When rookies join Twitter on behalf of the companies or programs they work for, veterans can sniff them out in a split-second. And when this happens, your chances of Twitter promotional success are destined for failure.

Want to make sure your prospective customers follow you instead of shaking their heads in disgust and moving on?

Be sure NOT to do any of the following:

• Use a default avatar. This is by far one of the fastest ways to be ignored on Twitter, even by not-so-veteran users. It shows that you’re lazy, uncreative, and probably not in the right mindset for the Twitter community. It’s obvious all you care about is spamming people with your promotion.
• Use a default background. Okay, this one is not quite as bad as using a default avatar, but not by much. It still shows that you’re lazy and uncreative.
• Use the wrong background. Perhaps worse than using a default background is using one that associates your program with the wrong message. For example, don’t make the same mistake of one local branch’s Twitter account for a coupon program of using a picture of a local Mormon church as their background. Especially don’t use a picture of something when you don’t even know what it is a picture of (which is what this group did). A coupon program and a Mormon church don’t go together, unless the program is going to be funding the church in some way through proceeds.
• Follow 5x to 20x more people than are following you. When you follow a ton of people, and they don’t follow you back, even more people are not going to follow you back. It’s obvious to veterans and non-veterans alike that you don’t know what you’re doing, and you’re on Twitter for the wrong reasons. If your following count is 653 and your followers count is 54, you’ve got it wrong.
• Retweet people and promote yourself in the same tweet. Retweeting is commonly considered a large compliment in the Twitterverse. But when used incorrectly, it’s annoying to veterans and non-veterans alike. People care about retweets when they useful messages, not you taking an opportunity to promote yourself because someone happened to mention something related to your program.
• Not engage in actual conversation with other people on Twitter. Twitter is a social community, not a place for you to blast your marketing messages at people. Just because you happen to retweet someone, also, does not mean you are having conversation with them. Using an @ reply to send someone a marketing message also does not qualify as a conversation either.
• Only post a few posts to Twitter. This is almost always followed by spam-following 500 people, furthering the frustration on the part of those being followed. People enjoy being followed, but not amateurs, they want to be followed by people that they can connect with.

Don’t be an amateur

Before you jump on Twitter and make it painfully obvious that you don’t know what you’re doing, read some of these great articles on how to use Twitter for marketing effectively. They are written by people that have proven track records in the social network, and should be listened to.

Chris Brogan

• How to Manage Twitter
• Get More Twitter Followers TODAY
• How I Tweet – A FAQ

MarketingProfs

• Making Twitter Success Measurable
• The Dark Side of Twitter: What Businesses Need to Know
• Social Media 101: Use Twitter To Attract Prospects and Engage Customers

Mashable.com

• The Twitter Guide Book
• FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter
• Twitter Marketing: Free Downloads for Your Tweets
• 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them
• Twitter Promotion Done Right: #moonfruit

I like Wikipedia’s definition of a plan: A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with timing and resources, used to achieve an objective.[1] As far as definitions go, this is pretty spot-on. What so many business owners and marketers forget or fail at, though, is the actually the most important step: action. Without action, a plan is utterly useless.

The trouble, it seems, for most people is that a marketing plan can be very overwhelming. Just like a business plan, there is a lot to put together. At least, there is if you are trying to put together a marketing plan that gives the vibe of being produced by an MBA. But let’s face it, these are normally not what your business really needs. Sometimes, just a bullet-point list broken down by month is enough. Granted, you’ll probably want to be a little more specific than that, but the point remains.

Marketing Plan Books Are No Good

I’ve got numerous books on the subject of marketing plans, one is x pages, the other is y pages, and another is z pages long. As a business owner or marketer on a deadline, having to go through all of those steps is daunting at best, a Freddie Kruger nightmare at worst. No one has the time, it seems, to do all of those things in preparation for the upcoming year’s marketing.

So, how do we create a marketing plan that is built for action and therefore success. It can be as simple as the language used within it. Shifting the focus away from the what you want to achieve to the how you’re going to achieve it can make a huge difference to the successful implementation of your plan. That’s not to say that the what isn’t important, rather it is given a lower priority in the scheme of completing the marketing plan task.

For example, let’s assume you determine that one of the things that you want to accomplish in the upcoming year is a 15% increase in top line revenue while maintaining a 5% reduction in expenses. On the surface, this is a great goal, but it needs more. Saying you want a 15% increase in revenues and 5% reduction in expenses, and leaving it there, is like saying you want to travel to some remote part of the world and for cheap. It’s a great goal, but by itself, it doesn’t really have much of a leg to stand on.

Keep the revenue/expense goal written down, then move on to the meat of your plan: the action steps that will equal accomplishment. Usually this can be developed through a combination of multiple things, such as:

• Actions taken in previous year. Write out a list of actual activities that took place in the previous year. Put the ones that generated a positive result in one column, and the ones that were flat or negative results in another column. We’ll focus on the action steps that provided positive results.
• Actions to try in the upcoming year. Now, put your positive actions from last year away for a moment, and start a new list. This list will contain the actions that you think, based on intuition, statistics, customer feedback, or similar, that you’d like to try.

Tech savvy and born into the post-50′s advertising world, people born between 1980 and 2000 (Millennials) believe they’ve got businesses pegged. They know when a company is abusing advertising and they know when things are too good to be true. I think I know a bit about this, as I was born in the early 80′s myself.

Another critical finding that businesses, especially those in the B2C sector, can leverage to attract Millennials is family habits, with 75 percent of the generation living within 30 miles of their parents.^[1]

With that many people living  that close to their parents, marketers that want to build relationships with Millennials should understand the importance of family to those in this generation. Millennials have grown up with a daily bombardment of advertising. My mom loves sharing a story about how I used to love watching commercials on TV, especially the ones where I could say “ooh la la” to the bikini-clad product pushers.

I grew up enjoying watching commercials. They were short enough to keep my attention. This probably led to my pursuit of a career in marketing; I digress. Millennials are familiar with advertising, we are definitely no stranger to it. And with $200 billion in purchasing power, as a marketer, you need to be aware of that fact. No longer is a catchy ad enough. You have to find ways to engage Millennials. You have to find ways to stand out to them.

Millennials Still Love Getting Mail

We haven’t quite gotten so jaded by receiving junk mail that we don’t still get a twinge of excitement when we receive a letter in the mail. It’s still fun going to the mailbox and seeing if any fun surprises have been delivered. I don’t get excited about e-mail.

Despite reports of Millennials having a distrust of marketing, [they] will respond to direct mail via multichannel efforts when receiving a properly executed, relevant and valued marketing message. They want the opportunity to respond by following a personalized link, using a QR code or sending a quick text message. Many are more than willing to try new methods with the hope of an advanced user experience.^[2]

Using mail, especially with Millennials, when done correctly, can still drive sales and form relationships. The key to doing it right: be real. The more you own up to the fact that Millennials are not blind to all the “tricks” of advertising, the better response you will get. As much as possible, your message should be targeted, focused, personalized, and easy to respond to.

Modern technology makes this easy with things like PURLs (Personalized URLs) and digital printing services that allow personalization that feels incorporated directly into the piece. Send me a letter with “Dear Sir,” as the salutation, I’m probably not going to read it. Send me a letter with “Michael,” as the opener and you’ve got much better odds.

Millennial Marketing Key Takeaways

• Be authentic. Perhaps the single-most important factor in successful marketing to Millennials is authenticity. Another way to look at this is through the lens of transparency. Be as open as you can be, and we’ll learn to trust you, even if we don’t like you on a personal level.
• Connect with us. Businesses have a tendency to forget that they are actually comprised of a group of individual people and they are marketing to a group of individual people. Remember that and use it to your advantage. Put information about your actual people on your about page of your website. Don’t just say, XYZ Company was founded in 1970 by Tom and Steve. Instead tell the story, and if you can include the downs as well as the ups, even better. Make it easy for us to get to know you and for us to talk with you through social media and feedback forms.
• Stand out. Don’t just force your way into our mind through shotgun approach advertising. Instead, find ways to make us intrigued by your company and by you personally. We want to have the ability to have our hands on the next cool thing.
• Personalize. With today’s technology, personal connections are easier than ever. Through social media, you get to know exactly who your customer is, by connecting with them and forming a relationship. You have the ability to use personalized marketing messages that speak directly to our core wants, needs, and desires. Blanketed approaches are dying.

References

1. http://www.brafton.com/news/report-profitable-marketing-campaigns-must-evolve-as-tech-savvy-millennials-come-of-age
2. http://www.delivermagazine.com/2012/01/making-sense-of-the-millennials/

Advertising is commonplace. People remember TV commercials, they are motivated by radio ads, and they take a genuine interest in advertising that catches there eye. People talk about that last beer commercial or body wash commercial.

Online advertising, though it may not be as openly discussed at a party, has proven itself effective time and time again. If it didn’t, companies wouldn’t continue to pay for it (well, you’d hope so, anyway). The thing that irritates me, and I’m sure others, is when a company creates an enticing ad, then sends me to a landing page that has absolutely nothing to do with the original ad copy. This happens much more often than it should, and it is an irresponsible use of marketing budgets.

Here’s an example of GE doing this very thing:

I noticed this ad while browsing my Google Reader:

Interesting, they are talking about the possibility of switching from using AC to DC or vice-versa… That sounds very intriguing… CLICK. Then, I am taken to a page with this:

Um, that’s not what I was expecting…

GE, you spend BILLIONS on advertising. Some of it is really exceptional. There really is no excuse for this kind of amateurishness. If this was an ad for a small company, that was working with 1-2 people in the marketing department, there would be much more room for understanding.

The sad part is that GE isn’t the only large company that does this kind of thing. It begs the question, how many millions of dollars are these companies wasting every day by allowing screw-ups like this in their marketing? Because, not only will this sort of activity cause a user to leave the site instantly, they will also be less likely to trust (and therefore click) the next ad they see by that particular company. I know I won’t be so quick to click the next time I see a GE ad that grabs my attention…

I’ve heard a lot of people around me complaining about the “ridiculous” luxury car commercials that are currently being flooded into the market. Most of the complaints I’ve heard have been in reference to the fact that they are simply unbelievable. Like this one:

It seems a bit far-fetched that such a young couple, in this economy, can afford such an elaborate Christmas present. Sure, there are the outliers that would disprove this consensus. But the fact remains, most people don’t “buy” it.

The other comments I often hear are similar to, “If I could afford to buy such an expensive car for a Christmas present, I’d spend the money on something else.” Or, “Who buys a $50,000 car as a Christmas present?” Admittedly, I tend to agree with both sentiments. But I also am not currently in a position to make such a decision, eliminating my ability to speak for the target demographic.

That said, though, I find myself defending the ads. Christmas is a perfect time for the people that can afford to buy a luxury car to do so. This is for a couple of reasons: 1) it’s the end of the year, those that are trying to include as many expenses as possible for tax deduction purposes have much to gain from such a large purchase (regardless of the political, moral, or ethical implication of doing so), and 2) most affluent people have learned the ever-important skill of saving their money, and many do so through the course of the year, and use the end-of-the-year aspect of Christmas to spend some of that money.

So are the ads a bit cheesy? Sure, to many of us. To those in the target market, though, I’d venture a guess that this is not the sentiment. Besides, I’m looking forward to the day that I’ll be able to buy my wife a $50k car as a Christmas present, it’s gonna be awesome to see the look on her face.

So, I can see both sides. Which side are you on? Do you like the ads? Do they make you want to buy a luxury car as a Christmas present? Or do you think they are cheesy/silly and out-of-touch?

Email marketing is without a doubt an important aspect of ANY business. Regardless of whether you are consumer-based, or business-to-business focused, email marketing is one of the most useful marketing tools available to you. For easy reference, here is a list of email marketing vendors that I’ve come across in my research.

I’ve listed them in the order I would recommend looking at them. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the first ones listed are my top picks, however, it means they are the best ones to START with. As your email marketing campaigns grow more robust, some of the vendors won’t be the best pick any more. Only you can determine this based on your specific needs and wants.

Am I missing an email marketing software vendor from the list? Let me know in the comments below.

List of Email Marketing Software Vendors

For those people and businesses that are looking for a way to harness the potential power that lies in social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc), take 5 minutes and watch this presentation. There’s a really cool video at the end. The people that creatively use social media to actually connect with people make themselves more attractive and therefore generate customers organically, without having to spend heavy dollars in advertising.

Enjoy:

I found this presentation over on Jesse Desjardins’ website. If you ever give presentations, and want to learn some creative ways to make them more inspiring, be sure to take some time to look at his presentations, too.

All salespeople, especially successful ones, know that follow-up with a prospective client is one of the most important steps in the sales cycle. By the way, if you’re one of those people who runs a business and you’re still not convinced you’re main function is salesperson, you need a reality check, but I don’t want to get into that right now.

Right now, I’m curious about the art of follow-up. I have been following up with a few prospective clients this morning, and I was reminded of how I’ve always found the art of follow-up intriguing.

Some people have mastered this seemingly simple, yet dauntingly difficult task. When I think about it, I am always reminded of what it was like to achieve the goal of getting a girl’s phone number in college, then trying to tackle the debate I always had with my friends: when do you call her, what do you say when you call, etc.

In the business world, salespeople experience this same debate on a regular occasion. They might meet a prospect at a local chamber of commerce event and want to follow-up with them to discuss how they feel they can help the client. They might have only spoken with them on the phone once prior. They may have a proposal in the client’s hands and are following up to try and close the deal.

The power of focus

Each of these circumstances presents different challenges to a successful follow-up process. I think, though, the process can be made easier by a clear focus. By focusing on what the real objective is with the follow-up the process is immediately clearer. So many salespeople are stuck on “just following up” they forget to be politely persistent about what the primary objective is. They are fearful of being too forthcoming about what they want to get from the contact.

Clients appreciate the honesty of a salesperson telling them exactly what they want to get the client to buy. It is liberating in a way, the expectations have been put clearly on the table, and both sides can get down to handling whatever obstacle or objection is preventing progress.

When to follow-up

Knowing when to follow-up is a non-scientific art. Though there are undoubtedly numerous studies that have been conducted that provide guidelines on when to follow-up, we have to remember that every prospect is also a person, and every person on the planet is different in some regard than every other person on the planet. This means that, though we can follow the general guidelines, each situation is different, and we have to think about how we might need to change our approach based on the individual circumstances.

Knowing what to say when following up

Just like knowing when, knowing what to say is also an art. In my experience, there are two main schools of thought, here:

1. Get right to the point. Don’t waste your breath asking personal questions or trying to make small talk. This is best used for clients that are busy, and actually appreciate the bluntness. You will actually (though it seems wrong) improve your rapport with this client because they appreciate the fact that you respect their time.
2. Be more personal. Other clients like to know that you care about them as a person. They want you to ask about their kids and about their weekend plans. Assuming you have a genuine interest in this information, make the small-talk and enjoy the conversation. The objective of the call must always be remembered and focused on, though. Make sure you get to the point in a timely fashion. Rambling about everything else under the sun is not productive.

Go do a search on Google for the term “social media expert” without the quotes and you’ll find that Google has indexed 83 million pages that it believes could be relevant to your search. Put the quotes back in and you’ll find that Google believes it has about 1.2 million pages that could be relevant. That means that there are approximately 1.2 million pages on the web that contain the exact phrase “social media expert” somewhere within their content.

Think about that for a minute, 1.2 million.

That is a whole lot of “expertise.” Especially in a field that is only, at best, a couple of decades old (10 years is really even a stretch). To really make you go, “hmm” search for either “marketing expert” or “advertising expert.” Before you actually do, though, take a guess at the results you’ll have returned to you. Do you think they will be more or less than the social media variant?

Go do the searches (in a new tab/window of course). I’ll wait here.

What did you find out? You most likely were shocked at the extreme variance between so-called “social media experts” and “marketing/advertising experts.” I know I was a little surprised.

With so many people claiming to be the expert when it comes to social media, it begs the question: how do I know who to trust to help me learn how to apply all of this social media stuff to my business, my life, or whatever. The truthful answer is this: you don’t. The reality is, no one really, truly knows how this whole “social media thing” really is going to work in the future. No one really knows how it will actually exist (if at all) in 10, 5, heck, 1 year down the road.

Remember MySpace? That dinosaur of a social network? It’s hanging on for dear life, and it gained peak popularity no more than a few years ago. Twitter has already exploded and leveled off – no one in the media really seems to care anymore. It’s reached the same level of recognition as Facebook, but only a few people actually use it.

So, back to the point:

Who do you trust to help you learn more about social media and how it applies to you?

Well, think about this. If no one really knows what the right answer is, then logically, no one really knows what the wrong answer is either. Take comfort in that.

Granted, there are plenty of things that have been done by people that are considered “wrong,” just like there are plenty of things that people have done that are considered “right” when it comes to social media. The answer to knowing who to trust is to observe and learn from the people that seem to never do those “wrong” things. Or, if they do, they have the humanity to own them, learn from them, teach/share with the world (since sharing really is what social media is all about), and move on.

Use common sense; use good judgment; ask yourself if you think some of the stuff these so-called experts are trying to sell/teach you makes sense. And if you are thinking about paying one of these people to help you with your own social media efforts, ask for and actually check their references.

If you’d like a head start on people that I think know what they are talking about and are doing it as right as possible when it comes to social media, check out some of these people:

• Chris Brogan (Twitter, Site)
• Ed Shahzade (Twitter, Site)
• Calvin Lee (Twitter, Site)
• Ann Handley (Twitter, Site)
• Scott Stratten (Twitter, Site)
• Lauren Fernandez (Twitter, Site)
• David Spinks (Twitter, Site)
• DJ Waldow (Twitter, Site)

There are plenty of others that I’m sure I have noticed are doing it “mostly right,” but I can’t remember them right now. For some really good questions and some amusing reactions to the wrong answers for interviewing and potentially working with social media experts, take a look at this “10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media ‘Expert‘” post by Ian Lurie.

The moral of the story?

Be careful who you trust to teach you about social media. There are literally millions of people that claim the title, but only a select few that have earned the title (oh, and here’s a hint: most of the people that have earned the title and deserve the respect to be called social media experts, don’t call themselves social media experts).