Ambient Awareness? Really? Do you buy from the “Ambiently Aware?”

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Do you buy from the Ambiently Aware? Are you Ambiently challenged? Can we stuff more syllables into a smaller space?

In the September 5th New York Times, there was an article called Brave New World of Digital Intimacy exploring how relationships have changed now that we’re sharing our lives on-line via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and others. It didn’t take long for intellectuals to create fancy compartment labels for online business relationships.

According to the article, social scientists have named this ongoing, open, online contact as “ambient awareness.” They say it’s like picking up on somebody’s mood by being physically close and observing the little things they do; body language, shrugs, random thoughts.

The idea is that online relationships offer us a similar “close” relationship. People share simple, random, and “close” thoughts on Twitter that they would never call someone to share (“The sun looks warm today”, “The guy on the park bench looks angry”, I spent too much on lunch just now.”, “I’m a little bored.”)

Probably all true, but I get a kick out of the need for big business mavens to constantly create new opportunities to play buzzword bingo. “Ambient awareness”? – gag me with a spoon. Why do we feel a need to sterilize things like this?

I’m guessing it has something to do with the need to compartmentalize life and make it nice and tidy. But relationships are always more complex than this.

Online updates can:

  1. create credibility – What you say seems to make sense or resonate with the way I view the world around me. You are someone I might want to let rub off on me.
  2. attract the trust of others by serving them – meeting the needs of others by sending them to the right resources. One woman wanted an online credit card processing contact. I had five to give her w/ recommendations on how each might work for her.
  3. repel others by trying to sell them – nobody wants to be sold anything, we all want to buy. if we try to sell ourselves or our wares, people digitally run away.
  4. create an initial connection – hmmm…maybe there is more here to help both our businesses…let’s have a conversation.
  5. clarify there is no connection – people who are raging net workers – trying to contact everyone – make me run the other way. (Stop networking and build a network. Stop trying to build a list of contacts and start making meaningful connections with a few people.)

Online “talk” will do the same thing for us (or not) as any other kind of communication, depending on how we approach it. If we talk online, it should have the same objective as getting a cup of tea with someone; building a few meaningful relationships that will help each other grow their businesses.

Let’s not encourage the social scientists by adopting big business buzzwords like “ambient awareness”. People buy from people, and they buy more from people they like.

I’ve never bought anything from someone who was a master of “ambient awareness”. Talk to somebody (online or off) and build a relationship. You’ll make more money in less time that way.

Ambient Awareness? Really? Do you buy from the “Ambiently Aware?”

/in /by

Do you buy from the Ambiently Aware? Are you Ambiently challenged? Can we stuff more syllables into a smaller space?

In the September 5th New York Times, there was an article called Brave New World of Digital Intimacy exploring how relationships have changed now that we’re sharing our lives on-line via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and others. It didn’t take long for intellectuals to create fancy compartment labels for online business relationships.

According to the article, social scientists have named this ongoing, open, online contact as “ambient awareness.” They say it’s like picking up on somebody’s mood by being physically close and observing the little things they do; body language, shrugs, random thoughts.

The idea is that online relationships offer us a similar “close” relationship. People share simple, random, and “close” thoughts on Twitter that they would never call someone to share (“The sun looks warm today”, “The guy on the park bench looks angry”, I spent too much on lunch just now.”, “I’m a little bored.”)

Probably all true, but I get a kick out of the need for big business mavens to constantly create new opportunities to play buzzword bingo. “Ambient awareness”? – gag me with a spoon. Why do we feel a need to sterilize things like this?

I’m guessing it has something to do with the need to compartmentalize life and make it nice and tidy. But relationships are always more complex than this.

Online updates can:

  1. create credibility – What you say seems to make sense or resonate with the way I view the world around me. You are someone I might want to let rub off on me.
  2. attract the trust of others by serving them – meeting the needs of others by sending them to the right resources. One woman wanted an online credit card processing contact. I had five to give her w/ recommendations on how each might work for her.
  3. repel others by trying to sell them – nobody wants to be sold anything, we all want to buy. if we try to sell ourselves or our wares, people digitally run away.
  4. create an initial connection – hmmm…maybe there is more here to help both our businesses…let’s have a conversation.
  5. clarify there is no connection – people who are raging net workers – trying to contact everyone – make me run the other way. (Stop networking and build a network. Stop trying to build a list of contacts and start making meaningful connections with a few people.)

Online “talk” will do the same thing for us (or not) as any other kind of communication, depending on how we approach it. If we talk online, it should have the same objective as getting a cup of tea with someone; building a few meaningful relationships that will help each other grow their businesses.

Let’s not encourage the social scientists by adopting big business buzzwords like “ambient awareness”. People buy from people, and they buy more from people they like.

I’ve never bought anything from someone who was a master of “ambient awareness”. Talk to somebody (online or off) and build a relationship. You’ll make more money in less time that way.

Fixing Your Marketing: Go deep, not Broad

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One of the biggest marketing challenges is accepting the difference between finding customers who WILL buy over those MOSTLIKELY to buy. This is one of the toughest marketing concepts to get a business to embrace, and possibly the most important.

Most owners and sales professionals see narrowing down their customer targets as leaving money on the table. What they do not realize is that it is money they do not have anyway! We spend more energy trying to protect potential customers than we do finding real ones!

A friend of mine owns a company that installs nothing but stair rails in existing houses (not even new ones), and makes few million dollars a year doing it. They don’t even do finish work; just unfinished stair rails. They could have all the other interior woodwork they want, but have learned that they make more money focusing on a very narrow market than they would by being all things to all customers. I know a number of guys struggling to make a living by taking on any kind of woodwork available. They should take a lesson from the stair rail guy and narrow their market considerably so they can make more money.

Take a serious look at your business through the eyes of those MOST LIKELY to buy from you, not from whom you hope will find you. You can then focus your marketing in a way that will generate the most return. Who catches the most fish? The one who baits the hook, has the best rod, or who knows where the fish are? Who are your fish?

A friend of mine tells of a mortgage broker living on the east coast who decided to narrow his market to “waterfront mortgages”. By doing so he increased his revenue significantly in a few months. It’s counter-intuitive, but people like experts, not generalists. And they will pay more for the expert. Not only will you get more business, you will get it at higher margins.

I can hear you now, “But what about those other markets I COULD do business in?” It’s true there are thousands of places you can set up your tent. What I am saying is pick one. You don’t have enough money to go broad – go deep. It is a proven fact that using a shotgun approach to your marketing will net you shotgun results. Shooting a gun in the woods is not bear hunting.

Focusing on a narrow market doesn’t just reduce your marketing costs, it reduces your operating costs. There is less running around, and more knowledge of your market, which creates lower operating costs. And, people in a narrow market talk. In a former company, we landed Microsoft and others lined up behind them as they spread the word about our narrow focus on hi-techs.

Coca-cola can afford to leaflet bomb broad markets. Play by their rules and you will lose. Pick a narrow market and go deep for a lot less money. Stop thinking about WHO could buy and start focusing on who is MOST LIKELY to buy. It is so much easier! By taking the time to figure out who your most likely clients are, it becomes obvious how to reach them. Your purpose becomes clearer, and your efforts are more likely to build on each other.

Dare to go deep instead of broad. You’ll spend less marketing money, increase your operational effectiveness, create more buzz in the narrow market you’ve chosen, and end up getting more business. Yes, everyone COULD buy. Start with those MOST LIKELY to buy. Once you’ve got a bucket load of them, feel free to go after other markets.

Fixing Your Marketing: Go deep, not Broad

/in /by

One of the biggest marketing challenges is accepting the difference between finding customers who WILL buy over those MOST LIKELY to buy. This is one of the toughest marketing concepts to get a business to embrace, and possibly the most important.

Most owners and sales professionals see narrowing down their customer targets as leaving money on the table. What they do not realize is that it is money they do not have anyway! We spend more energy trying to protect potential customers than we do finding real ones!

A friend of mine owns a company that installs nothing but stair rails in existing houses (not even new ones), and makes few million dollars a year doing it. They don’t even do finish work; just unfinished stair rails. They could have all the other interior woodwork they want, but have learned that they make more money focusing on a very narrow market than they would by being all things to all customers. I know a number of guys struggling to make a living by taking on any kind of woodwork available. They should take a lesson from the stair rail guy and narrow their market considerably so they can make more money.

Take a serious look at your business through the eyes of those MOST LIKELY to buy from you, not from whom you hope will find you. You can then focus your marketing in a way that will generate the most return. Who catches the most fish? The one who baits the hook, has the best rod, or who knows where the fish are? Who are your fish?

A friend of mine tells of a mortgage broker living on the east coast who decided to narrow his market to “waterfront mortgages”. By doing so he increased his revenue significantly in a few months. It’s counter-intuitive, but people like experts, not generalists. And they will pay more for the expert. Not only will you get more business, you will get it at higher margins.

I can hear you now, “But what about those other markets I COULD do business in?” It’s true there are thousands of places you can set up your tent. What I am saying is pick one. You don’t have enough money to go broad – go deep. It is a proven fact that using a shotgun approach to your marketing will net you shotgun results. Shooting a gun in the woods is not bear hunting.

Focusing on a narrow market doesn’t just reduce your marketing costs, it reduces your operating costs. There is less running around, and more knowledge of your market, which creates lower operating costs. And, people in a narrow market talk. In a former company, we landed Microsoft and others lined up behind them as they spread the word about our narrow focus on hi-techs.

Coca-cola can afford to leaflet bomb broad markets. Play by their rules and you will lose. Pick a narrow market and go deep for a lot less money. Stop thinking about WHO could buy and start focusing on who is MOST LIKELY to buy. It is so much easier! By taking the time to figure out who your most likely clients are, it becomes obvious how to reach them. Your purpose becomes clearer, and your efforts are more likely to build on each other.

Dare to go deep instead of broad. You’ll spend less marketing money, increase your operational effectiveness, create more buzz in the narrow market you’ve chosen, and end up getting more business. Yes, everyone COULD buy. Start with those MOST LIKELY to buy. Once you’ve got a bucket load of them, feel free to go after other markets.

Fixing Your Marketing; Random Hope is not a Marketing Strategy

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Why doesn’t our marketing work? We are measuring the wrong thing.

It is difficult to track whether the money we spend on passive promotional techniques such as advertising and direct marketing actually results in revenue, let alone profit. So advertisers and direct marketers focus on tracking “activity”, which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with profit.

A few weeks ago I had an SEO company try to sell me on spending $400 per month by showing me higher click-through activity after clients had begun using their services. The problem is that activity doesn’t equate with profit.

A real estate broker had developed a software system that generated lots of leads from the internet – activity. The broker found though, that they spent most of their time chasing these leads with almost no effect. He ended up making a business out of selling all these leads to other real estate agents so they could waste their time chasing them. Activity may make us feel good, but it does not equate with results or profit.

I met a plumber who was spending $40,000 per year on the Yellow Pages and was very proud that he could track $400,000 in annual revenue directly back to that advertising. But when we analyzed it closely, we found that his profit on $400k was $32K. He was losing $8k a year for the privilege of doing $400k worth of work.

We are also told that we should spend money to “brand” ourselves, which lets advertisers off the hook for any kind of measurable result at all. It takes an enormous amount of money to make any kind of dent for branding or recognition advertising. Most small companies would be wasting their money trying.

What should we measure?

1. Go back and look at every client over the last year and ask where they came from. If you don’t track this kind of information, start. It is the most valuable marketing information you will get, and it’s free.

One local retailer found that the majority of customers came from shoppers already in the area. The problem was the store couldn’t be seen from the road and all these were simply from the parking lot. They got someone to stand out by the road with a swivel sign and increased their traffic even more. Passive advertising wouldn’t have been nearly so cost-effective.

If you’re not a drive-by retailer, you’ll find the majority of your clients come from referrals given to you by other clients or people you know. That should radically change they way you do marketing (spend Time, not Money, and get to know your clients and friends better.)

2. If you still feel advertising and direct marketing is a good spend, always have anROI (return-on-investment) vehicle as part of the ad – 10% off with this coupon, or buy 3, get one free with this coupon, etc. – to help you with tracking. If you can’t always include such a response vehicle, fall back on #1 above to make sure you’re spending your money wisely. One service provider client of ours knows to the dollar how much business they get from the four different advertising mediums they use, and they adjust their spend accordingly every quarter.

In short, stop measuring ACTIVITY as if that justifies your advertising or marketing expenditure. If you can’t measure PROFIT related to EXPENSE, why would you make the expense?

It’s amazing how business owners, who would never spend $5,000 at the black jack tables, are more than willing to dump $5,000 into the black hole of advertising on the basis of the “Random Hope” strategy – “I sure hope this works.”

Stop marketing expense risks, know your numbers, and tie your expenditures toPROFIT, not to ACTIVITY. You’ll go home with more money.

Fixing Your Marketing; Random Hope is not a Marketing Strategy

/in /by

Why doesn’t our marketing work? We are measuring the wrong thing.

It is difficult to track whether the money we spend on passive promotional techniques such as advertising and direct marketing actually results in revenue, let alone profit. So advertisers and direct marketers focus on tracking “activity”, which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with profit.

A few weeks ago I had an SEO company try to sell me on spending $400 per month by showing me higher click-through activity after clients had begun using their services. The problem is that activity doesn’t equate with profit.

A real estate broker had developed a software system that generated lots of leads from the internet – activity. The broker found though, that they spent most of their time chasing these leads with almost no effect. He ended up making a business out of selling all these leads to other real estate agents so they could waste their time chasing them. Activity may make us feel good, but it does not equate with results or profit.

I met a plumber who was spending $40,000 per year on the Yellow Pages and was very proud that he could track $400,000 in annual revenue directly back to that advertising. But when we analyzed it closely, we found that his profit on $400k was $32K. He was losing $8k a year for the privilege of doing $400k worth of work.

We are also told that we should spend money to “brand” ourselves, which lets advertisers off the hook for any kind of measurable result at all. It takes an enormous amount of money to make any kind of dent for branding or recognition advertising. Most small companies would be wasting their money trying.

What should we measure?

1. Go back and look at every client over the last year and ask where they came from. If you don’t track this kind of information, start. It is the most valuable marketing information you will get, and it’s free.

One local retailer found that the majority of customers came from shoppers already in the area. The problem was the store couldn’t be seen from the road and all these were simply from the parking lot. They got someone to stand out by the road with a swivel sign and increased their traffic even more. Passive advertising wouldn’t have been nearly so cost-effective.

If you’re not a drive-by retailer, you’ll find the majority of your clients come from referrals given to you by other clients or people you know. That should radically change they way you do marketing (spend Time, not Money, and get to know your clients and friends better.)

2. If you still feel advertising and direct marketing is a good spend, always have an ROI (return-on-investment) vehicle as part of the ad – 10% off with this coupon, or buy 3, get one free with this coupon, etc. – to help you with tracking. If you can’t always include such a response vehicle, fall back on #1 above to make sure you’re spending your money wisely. One service provider client of ours knows to the dollar how much business they get from the four different advertising mediums they use, and they adjust their spend accordingly every quarter.

In short, stop measuring ACTIVITY as if that justifies your advertising or marketing expenditure. If you can’t measure PROFIT related to EXPENSE, why would you make the expense?

It’s amazing how business owners, who would never spend $5,000 at the black jack tables, are more than willing to dump $5,000 into the black hole of advertising on the basis of the “Random Hope” strategy – “I sure hope this works.”

Stop marketing expense risks, know your numbers, and tie your expenditures to PROFIT, not to ACTIVITY. You’ll go home with more money.

Fixing Your Marketing; Build it and they will come – not

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One of at least seven reasons why you’re marketing doesn’t work.

You’re playing by the wrong rules and relying on Passive Marketing.It doesn’t work.

I host a No-nonsense Business Leader’s Insight lunch workshop every Tuesday. About once a quarter I’ll ask the following question regarding the four ways we market ourselves, and have every one of the 40+ attendees answer – “Where do you get the overwhelming majority of your new clients – 1) Advertising, 2) Direct Marketing (including cold calls), 3) Public Relations, or 4) Existing Relationships? I asked it again last week – there were 44 votes for “Existing Relationships” and one “Public Relations”.

And yet where is the focus of our marketing budgets? We have a fetish with advertising and direct marketing that is out of proportion to the reality of the results. Why? Because we have been taught by big business to do our marketing their way, by their rules – a way we can’t support or compete with – spend wads of cash on advertising and direct marketing, sit back, and watch the customers roll in. And frankly, it’s more appealing to my lazy side to spend money than to spend my time. The problem is it doesn’t work until you’re big (see Reason #1 of 7 – the Problem of Penguins.), or unless you’re fortunate enough to find that very small, unique niche magazine that has all your clients reading it (like Natural Awakenings for someone selling “green” products). And Passive marketing never works alone.

What do you have more of – time or money? If you’re Starbucks, it’s money. But if you’re Joe’s Java Shop – it’s little of either, but definitely more time than money.

There are basically two kinds of advertising – Passive and Active. Passive Marketing is focused on spending money to get new clients. Active Marketing is focused on spending time to get new clients. Big businesses like Starbucks can (and have to) focus on Passive Marketing because in comparison to Joe’s Java Shop, they’re rolling in dough. Joe should stop playing by Starbuck’s Passive Marketing rules, and start spending time, not money, to get new clients.

Big business rules of marketing work really well for big business, but they are the fastest way to ineffective, expensive, and wasteful marketing for small businesses. Who are your advocates, your raving fans, your relationships? People buy from people (not companies), and they buy more from people they like. Get ACTIVE in these relationships, and get these people opening gates for you.

Over a year ago a restaurant opened without spending a dime on advertising or direct marketing. I’d give you the name but it doesn’t even have one of those either. The first week the owner of this ‘no name” restaurant invited everyone they knew to eat for free – Monday through Thursday; best friends on Monday on down to acquaintances on Thursday. They all went out and recruited other relationships and the restaurant has had great business every since. Active Marketing!

Go get ‘em. But don’t expect Passive Marketing to be successful unless you’ve got a big wad of cash to burn. Relationships will get you much farther, much faster, much cheaper.

Build it and they will come? Only in the movies (and in big business).

Fixing Your Marketing; Build it and they will come – not.

/in /by

One of at least seven reasons why you’re marketing doesn’t work.

You’re playing by the wrong rules and relying on Passive Marketing. It doesn’t work.

I host a No-nonsense Business Leader’s Insight lunch workshop every Tuesday. About once a quarter I’ll ask the following question regarding the four ways we market ourselves, and have every one of the 40+ attendees answer – “Where do you get the overwhelming majority of your new clients – 1) Advertising, 2) Direct Marketing (including cold calls), 3) Public Relations, or 4) Existing Relationships? I asked it again last week – there were 44 votes for “Existing Relationships” and one “Public Relations”.

And yet where is the focus of our marketing budgets? We have a fetish with advertising and direct marketing that is out of proportion to the reality of the results. Why? Because we have been taught by big business to do our marketing their way, by their rules – a way we can’t support or compete with – spend wads of cash on advertising and direct marketing, sit back, and watch the customers roll in. And frankly, it’s more appealing to my lazy side to spend money than to spend my time. The problem is it doesn’t work until you’re big (see Reason #1 of 7 – the Problem of Penguins.), or unless you’re fortunate enough to find that very small, unique niche magazine that has all your clients reading it (like Natural Awakenings for someone selling “green” products). And Passive marketing never works alone.

What do you have more of – time or money? If you’re Starbucks, it’s money. But if you’re Joe’s Java Shop – it’s little of either, but definitely more time than money.

There are basically two kinds of advertising – Passive and Active. Passive Marketing is focused on spending money to get new clients. Active Marketing is focused on spending time to get new clients. Big businesses like Starbucks can (and have to) focus on Passive Marketing because in comparison to Joe’s Java Shop, they’re rolling in dough. Joe should stop playing by Starbuck’s Passive Marketing rules, and start spending time, not money, to get new clients.

Big business rules of marketing work really well for big business, but they are the fastest way to ineffective, expensive, and wasteful marketing for small businesses. Who are your advocates, your raving fans, your relationships? People buy from people (not companies), and they buy more from people they like. Get ACTIVE in these relationships, and get these people opening gates for you.

Over a year ago a restaurant opened without spending a dime on advertising or direct marketing. I’d give you the name but it doesn’t even have one of those either. The first week the owner of this ‘no name” restaurant invited everyone they knew to eat for free – Monday through Thursday; best friends on Monday on down to acquaintances on Thursday. They all went out and recruited other relationships and the restaurant has had great business every since. Active Marketing!

Go get ‘em. But don’t expect Passive Marketing to be successful unless you’ve got a big wad of cash to burn. Relationships will get you much farther, much faster, much cheaper.

Build it and they will come? Only in the movies (and in big business).

The Financial Sector Rescue Plan is Answering the Wrong Question

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Asking the right question is the biggest part of getting the right answer. The question the government is asking is “How do we keep the financial sector failures from creating an economic catastrophe?” Answering this question does nothing to keep it from happening again. It is curative and reactive when we need something preventative and proactive.

The right question – “How do we keep from getting into this mess in the future?” (How could we have avoided it in the first place?).

Over the last 30 years, I’ve been involved in managing companies with revenues from $100,000 per year to $100 million per year. And in every case we took great care to avoid putting the security and stability of the company at risk. One of the easiest ways to put a company at risk is to allow one or a small group of clients to become too big a percentage of the company’s revenue. If you lose one or two, the company is put at great risk of collapsing.

This is a fundamental business principle that our government has ignored. We should never have encouraged or allowed a small group of mega-companies to control so much of our economy that going away jeopardizes the security and stability of our nation.

Monopoly laws protect individuals from a few companies taking control of choice, driving up prices, and driving down customer service. If we need any regulations at all, we need one that would ensure no small group of giant corporations could take control of our economy and jeopardize the security and stability of our nation again. It’s just bad business. One possible solution – If a company is big enough that the government has to bail it out for the security and stability of the nation, it’s too big. Revise the monopoly laws to break it up, and we won’t have this problem in the future.

One of the functions of government is to provide security. It has failed us miserably in this case. Instead of preventing economic cancer by following basic business principles, they encouraged economically bloated lifestyles in mega-corporations that were a recipe for disaster. So now we’re spending our time, money, and energy trying to cure something that a good business would have never let happen in the first place.

This band-aid will do nothing to prevent it happening again. Will the government ask the right question? How do we keep a few companies from ever threatening the future security and stability of our nation again? It is the business of government to answer this question. Otherwise the present band-aid will only cover up a wound that will not heal.