November Fast Five – Marketing Ideas You Might Have Missed

Here is the November Fast Five, as published in the Association for Accounting Marketing's "AAMMinute." It includes articles on "mocial" and "favicons" as well as a collection of marketing tributes to Steve Jobs.

Enjoy.

It Now Takes 30 Minutes to Become a Marketing Expert

Maybe less.

"This guy, at a conference, spoke on Social Media and he said all you need in today's world is a YouTube channel and a Twitter account and you'll be beating back the customers from your front door. You post a video, twitter the link, and then thousands of people twitter and retwitter it. Many of them show up to your store, are impressed by your service." This part in a whisper: "And here he explained that you had to give the first few people incredible service. Maybe offer them a free gift." Back to the regular voice level: "Then these people, right there in the store, twitter to their friends or post on Facebook or ... something elser it ... makes no difference what social media they use ... and, voila, you have more customers than you can handle." And then the new-found expertise: "So all we need to do is get a Twitter account and make a video. Let me know if you need help, I'm good with the internet. I buy things on Amazon.com all the time, and I have teenage kids who are really good at making videos."

Raise your hands if you've been on the other side of this "discussion." Everyone have their hands up? As expected.

Makes no difference where you work, your client base, whether or not you have access to followers, or even have a good video idea. This is how it works nowadays, apparently. You no longer need marketing experience or training, or even business developers. All you need is a Twitter account. And a Flip. Unsure why you, the veteran marketer, couldn't think of that? Maybe you don't go to conferences where Social Media experts give talks? Maybe you are simply trying to do things the hard way. Or maybe you didn't hear about Twitter yet.

Too bad that our entire field has been replaced by a free online tool.

I wonder if Denny's is hiring.

Sorry, Virginia, There's No Such Thing as a Social Media Strategy

|> Point One: Asking your marketing director to create a Social Media (SM) strategy is like asking your architect to develop a fastener strategy. No doubt the chosen building contractor will need to use nails, screws, and staples to build your house, but it's a misguided question. <|

Agreed you can ask the architect if she plans to specify stainless nails for the deck (so they don't rust), but that is very different than asking her for a fastener strategy.

First, let's take a high level look at planning and for the purposes of this discussion, we'll keep it to Strategy, Tactics, and Tools.*

Marketing Strategy – aligning marketing to business goals. In other words: What, specifically, can marketing do to help reach the business goals?

Marketing Tactics – creating the steps/processes we need to take/create to execute these strategies. In other words: How are we going to meet our strategic marketing goals?

Marketing Tools – developing the materials and physical requirements for tactic execution. In other words: What assets do we or the business development and sales folks need?

Using the above, we see that Social Media is a collection of tools, sort of like the hardware store or a toolbox would be to our analagous architect. She would not even be the one using the tools, let alone consider developing a "tool-upwards" process to strategy development.

|> The answer to the question: "Do you have a Social Media strategy?" is "That's impossible."<|

You should have a Social Media policy, of course. If you don't, then stop reading and get one.

But whenever I am asked if we have a Social Media strategy (or suggested that we should have one, or have an iPhone app, get on Twitter, create a Facebook page, do some crowd sourcing, etc.), I feel like a architect being asked to get a power drill and go do some architecting. Or like when I happen to have a screwdriver (the tool kind) in my hand and I am looking around my house for screws that have come loose. Sure, it's efficient to see what else I can tighten while I have the screwdriver in my hand and I'm on my way to the tool room, but it's not a strategy. And it's not efficient to grab a random tool from my toolroom and then wander around for things to hammer, route, drill, sand, etc.

|> Point Two: Creating a Social Media (SM) budget is like asking your architect to develop a fastener budget. Again, she will need to spend a percentage of your budget on fasteners, but picking a number to spend on fasteners before you even have a blueprint is a ridiculous exercise. <|

And yet, we are often asked – and advised by so-called Social Media experts – to portion off a certain amount of our marketing budget for social media.

If you got this far and don't agree that this is a pointless "tool-upwards" approach, then there is really no reason to read farther, since I am not going to try to convince you any more that this is laughable.

So the question is: Why are social media experts telling you to do this?

Answer: For the same reason the sales person from the storm door manufacturing company would ask you to budget a certain amount of money for the aluminum frame, insulated versions of his products. (Hint: So you can buy them.)

An associate of recently mine said, "There is no such thing as a social media expert."

I believe this is untrue. I know a number of social media experts and believe any one of them would be very helpful in showing you how to best select and use specific social media tools to execute your tactics and, in result, fulfill your overall strategies.

Yes, I know that specifying storm doors you cannot afford is a bad way to execute your tactics or meet your strategy. And that a qualified architect needs to know about storm door functionality and costs (or consult with someone who knows) before finalizing a blueprint. But the point is that the strategy comes first. You do not start by planning to spend 5% of your budget on storm doors, though you might end up there.

In shorter words, listen to any relevant and credible expert who can show you social media tools, tips and techniques, but do not listen to them when they start pre-allocating your budget.

|> The answer to the question: "How much should we budget for Social Media?" is "Nothing." <|

You should budget for tactics. If that means you will need to spend money on social media tools (and you very likely will), then you will need to allocate budget towards those tools … as you have budget and as it makes sense to realize your goals.

To end, let's say it all together: There is no such thing as a Social Media strategy.

If you don't agree, then I'd like to show you a few aluminum frame, insulated storm doors.

*Yes, this is a very simplistic approach and no doubt many people have a more sophisticated planning regimen. The question, however, is: Does your approach and terminology allow you to call Social Media a "strategy"? If so, comment below. I'd love to be proven wrong here.

10 ways to make sure you do NOT monetize your network.

A popular saying: Your network is your net worth.

This is why so many marketing advisors counsel on how to build a network. Some even teach you how to monetize it, which is the hard part (and why so many advisors focus only on the first, easier half.)

But I have yet to see anyone explain how to make sure you do NOT monetize your network. And yet so many people are accidental experts at this.

After studying some of the best (whose names will never be mentioned), I figured it'd be a good time to list out their top ten "skills."

1) Ignore other people's knowledge of the person you are meeting. Just because they know a lot about this person and why they might be valuable to you, they're not worth the 5-10 minutes to learn any of this.
2) Make sure not to thank referrers. Or even let them know you met their referral. Why should they need to know you actually met? Best to leave them guessing. And why should they care if it went well or was a near miss? So they can better tailor their next referral? Pah! Who needs that type of precision?
3) Broken funnel? Keep pouring them in! Your network is like a meat grinder. The more meat you jam into it the better. Never look at what comes out the other side. Ick. Right?
4) The latest networking tools are always the best. Networking is a technology race. Linked In? Maxed that one at 500. Twitter? That's so 2009. Foursquare? Been there, mayored that. Groupon? Time to move on. Whoever gets there first wins, right? If your network can't keep up, that's their problem.
5) Everything you do is noteworthy. Had lunch at a nice place? Tweet it! Tired of the heat? Post it on LinkedIn. Saw some funny shoes? Send out a link to the pic. They voted Jose off SYTYCD and he was your fave? Everyone needs to know. They hang on your every word.
6) LOL typos. OMG. poeple r to anal about typoos. Its 2010 and proofngg is 4 people with to much time. They kno u r busy and cant stop to proof your posts. They know if you they refer you business, youll b moar carful
7) The busier the better. Make sure you let people know how busy you are and how impossible it is to reach you. Busy = success. Simple fact.
8) Measure by number.* The more people in your network the better. The more retweets and pageviews, the higher your score. Breakfast, lunch and dinner meetings? You still have time for a couple coffees. Pipelines and relationship maps are for people with small networks, not for networking pros like you. And make sure you let everyone know, at every chance, how many others have fallen into your net.
9) Networking is a one-way street. ...and you are the princess in the castle at the end of the cul-de-sac. In fact, you take this to the next level. You make sure they know that you do not actually read anything they post. "If you want to reach me, send me an e-mail. I do not have time to read tweets." (Actual tweet.) Networking is not a conversation; it's a lecture. From you (the expert) to them (the fawning pupil who basks in the glory of being connected to you.)
10) Networking is synonymous to selling. You are the master of turning every coffee into a proposal meeting. Every breakfast into a presentation. They've finished their food and you haven't yet taken a bite. That's proof you are putting the time to better use. Now, mouth full, time to go for the close. You rock.

OK, I stopped at 10. I'm sure you can add more.



*I have to be serious for a minute. There are so many tools that measure the reach of your networking efforts, but so few that measure the impact in terms of revenue. If you provide professional services or work at a small company, you can (and should) do this by hand. If you work at a large company, take a random sampling. List out the networking platforms used by your clients (those that pay you actual money) and successful referral sources (those that connected you to people who pay you actual money). Then put a check mark if you can prove that they used this to become clients (or learn about additional product/service offerings) or successfully refer you to someone who became a client. More simply put: Make a list of networking efforts that your current targets are also using. When I did this for myself and for a couple other people, the results were decisive. In short: Keep panning where you are finding gold.