commodity marketing Archives by Mark Murnahan

What 40 Years Have Taught Me About Marketing

I turned forty today. I’m happy about it, too. It doesn’t really feel like forty quite yet, but I’ve done it! I have lived long enough to have some well-earned gray hair, and a good amount of wisdom that comes with it. For such a young guy, of course.

My forty years have come with a lot of lessons. Having spent well over half of those years as a marketing professional and business owner, I’ve learned a lot about marketing. I’ve shared large volumes of my experiences here on the Internet, and I feel great to say that I’ve helped a lot of people with that experience.

One of the things I learned about marketing is the value of brevity. Keep it short. Keep it easy. Don’t get too confusing with all of your wordiness. I learned it, and then I threw it out the window for the purpose of this blog. Brevity matters when you are selling something, but I am not. If you can embrace some blatant verbosity today, I’ll reward you with some valuable real life marketing lessons.

Did you get that? It’s my birthday, but I’m trying to give you a gift. I guess that’s lesson one. When you give more, you receive more, and it’s an important principle of marketing. It’s a principle that is far beyond most people’s patience threshold, but to the ones who get it, it is invaluable.

I’ve shared a lot of helpful principles and practices of marketing on this blog. Much of it comes directly from things I learned through decades in the marketing profession. I feel good about that, and I know I’ve made an impact. I’ve helped a lot of people reach their goals, both business and personal. I plan to continue that work, but in a different way.

The Announcement That Changed My Life: Sayonara Mediocrity

At forty years old, I decided it is time to change things up. I intended to be fully retired by now, and a few years ago, I was actually well-prepared for it. I had plans to race cars full time, and my work was going to focus only on things I love. My bank is not as big as it used to be after somebody screwed up the world’s economy, so I’m still working. That should not keep me from pursuing the work I love, so I’m doing it … I’m making one of those scary changes I’ve encouraged so many others to make.

As I announced a few weeks ago, I stopped taking new clients (of course, that is unless somebody with really big goals and a ginormous budget comes calling). It’s very liberating. Now I feel even more free than ever if I need to call somebody out for being an apathetic bonehead. I’m also inspired to believe that if I tell you something, you’ll feel confident there is not an underhanded agenda just to sucker you out of your hard-earned money.

A challenging fact of marketing is that the best marketing consultants will never receive as much benefit as the client. It’s why many independent marketing consultants have their own products or services to market, outside of the marketing industry. The best marketers know that marketing is an investment rather than wasted money, and that if they build their own business, they will always be paid far more than by boosting a client’s return on investment.

Sometimes clients will find themselves skeptical about who receives the greatest benefits, but it is the client and not the marketing consultant. I explained this in an article titled “Find Good SEO: Why Good SEO Don’t Seek Your Business“. Being regularly at odds with that inherent negativity and skepticism in the market is why I’m changing things up and creating some significant career moves. No, it’s not because I’m not good at it … I’m just ready to move on to something more positive and inspiring.

Today, more than ever, I hope you will listen up and take some good direction. Give this gritty old marketing guy a chance to help shape your perceptions and understanding of marketing. I serve some pretty good food for thought about marketing, and many easily actionable tasks that you can put to use in minutes. In fact, here are six ways to improve search engine ranking in under one hour. There’s one caveat: they are only useful if you use them.

I have no reason nor desire to lie to you or mislead you, and I cannot recall a time when I intentionally misled anybody about marketing. So slow down and stop worrying about the next thing to click.

Velocity is Great in a Market, But Sometimes You Must Slow Down

Rushing around the Internet looking for the next bit of marketing enlightenment is not where you really want to find yourself in another 15 minutes or half hour … or three months … or next year. That’s what everybody else is doing, and if you think searching the web and looking for the next bottle to rub and hoping a genie will pop out is a better option, you’re likely to get pretty average results.

Settle down and look for the greater benefits. A mathematical fact of the online marketing space is that an average result is abysmal. It’s true! Most companies really stink at reaching an online market, and never get much out of it. I find that it is very often because they don’t slow down – breathe – get some oxygen in their brains and pay attention. They don’t pay attention to their market, and they don’t pay attention to things that can help them to reach their market more effectively. They are often all mouth and no ears, and rushing too hard to get things right that they get it all wrong. That’s them, and I hope you will make the choice to not be one of them.

Honesty in Marketing: It’s Not All Evil!

Marketing is often viewed with a sizable dose of skepticism. If somebody will gain from it, there is a frequent perception that somebody also loses. It’s not true, but this skeptical belief often hurts people in their own marketing, based on how they view marketing as a whole. If I am introduced to something as a result of marketing, and I trade my money because I wanted it, did somebody automatically lose? I got the thing I wanted, and the company marketing to me got what they wanted.

Yes, there are a lot of dirty scoundrels who will lie to you about marketing, but in the big picture, dishonest companies just don’t make it very long. It reminds me of a principle I implemented to create one of my most successful business endeavors, and it was a single word. It came to me when I asked my wife and business partner to summarize what made us stand out from the crowd, and what made us better than the competition. She said “It’s easy, Mark. It all comes down to a single word … Integrity.” That moment will never leave me, and it has provided me a great amount of success.

Marketing Wisdom: It Only Appears Simple

Even today it feels strange and almost surreal to say that I’ve been in marketing for 25 years … but I have. I was raised into marketing, and I was sitting in boardrooms offering my opinions from the time I was a teenager. I started my first company when I was so young that my mother had to sign the legal papers … for years.

It took a long time to make good sense of it all, in business. In fact, I still utterly stink at some points in business, but the part I do understand is marketing. I know from many years of running successful (and some not so successful) businesses that marketing will make or break a company. They don’t make it easy to understand, either. Even in the best universities, they often talk about a lot of theories and concepts, but where the fork meets the food, it takes some stomach-churning hard work to see real success. I know, because I’ve done that, and if you ask me, or any of my peers who have earned anything more than six-digits per year, you will find very few of them who came by it with simplicity.

Stop buying into people’s notions that it is simple. If it was really so simple, it probably wouldn’t be very profitable.

TAM, SAM, SOM, ROI, SEO, SMM, and PECKERs

There are enough acronyms and industry buzz phrases to bring my lunch back to the top of my throat. Some of those acronyms really matter, such as TAM (Total Available Market), SAM (Served Available Market), SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market), ROI (Return On Investment), and many others. These matter in huge ways, but they are very frequently misunderstood or overlooked because of shortsightedness, which often comes from a frightened accountant who knows little about marketing or how the company actually gets the money to pay their salary.

In small businesses, it is often because, although the person in charge was good enough in their field to start a company, they were not good enough at business to understand that being good at a trade does not mean being good in business. Being good in business means knowing where your weaknesses are, and knowing how to fill those gaps with people who are as good or better at their field of knowledge than you. That’s right, the best business leaders learn to effectively delegate what is out of their league. It’s why I don’t handle my own bookkeeping, and why people in other trades are usually let down when they try their hand at marketing.

Other marketing acronyms are beaten to death, like SEO (search engine optimization) and SMM (social media marketing). These buzz phrases are so popular these days that dishonest people use them to fool companies. In online marketing, they talk about building more website links, but they throw out good ideas of why somebody would actually want to link to their website … and they often hold the absurd notion that more links is always a good thing. The really misinformed marketers will lead you to believe that social media marketing is all about networking and socializing.

This kind of shortsighted and misinformed thinking is why I created my very own acronym for 2012, and I welcome you to read why I’m very proud to call myself a “PECKER” (Profit Engineer and Competition Killer with Extraordinary Resources).

Advertising is Only a Very Small Part of Marketing

I find that a lot of people imagine marketing to mean advertising what they offer for sale. This is only a small part of what makes up marketing. Marketing addresses many other things, including a whole lot of math, creativity, strategy, and so much more. An easy example is to look at anything you have for sale, and answer the question of why you priced it at the level you have. Is it because of its cost to produce? Did you leave it up to the competition to decide your price? Did you ever actually do the research to know what it’s worth – and not just that – to the right audience? Did you get that research just right, or is it really so impossible that you made some costly mistakes by using guesswork instead of basing it on the right factors?

The ways that marketing influences a business are far too numerous to list in a single blog. I hope you’ll think about some of those things you may have overlooked. I welcome you to my blog archive to help get the wheels turning. There are hundreds of articles there, and I think you’ll find them very useful if you slow down.

Throw Out Your Sandwich and Make a New One

I hear a lot of people regurgitating the last thing they heard or read about marketing, and how fresh the latest idea is. I guess maybe it was fresh sometime before it hit a squillion blogs, but now it’s like a day-old tuna sandwich sitting out in the sun.

Great marketing is seldom a matter of seeking the latest and greatest thing. Following trends is important, but following them too closely that you follow the mistakes is often a train wreck in the making. The things that work are not just following what everybody else fervently exclaims will work. Great marketing requires research, testing, and discovering what works – really works – for your company, and being the one all of those trend-talkers are talking about. It is not about tweeting, Facebooking, Flabunctuating … or whatever the next big trend is.

I’ve written volumes about social media, including hundreds of thousands of words, and even a book. I marvel at how many people think it is something new. Did you think social media is new? It’s how I met my wife, well over a decade ago … and many close friends years before that. Social media helped me to grow several of my companies quite abundantly, too, but social media is not a unicorn net or a leprechaun trap.

One of its greatest uses is to listen and learn about what makes your market tick … and then use that information. Many people are too short-sighted to take things to a new level of analysis, and understand what to do with a good analysis. Most are unwilling or unable to dig deep into their creativity and find ways to make their brand stick out like a sexy model passing out free bacon sandwiches and all expense paid trips to “Available-Sexy-Model-and-Free-Bacon-Sandwichville”.

I witness many scared companies making scared decisions, but I’ve watched a lot more scared companies fail than I care to count … and that’s because they don’t count. The ones that count are the ones willing and fearless enough to do what it takes to be more like you want your company to be. Not like the bottle-rubbing, instant-enlightenment-seeking, one shot wonder at the competitor down the street – like you – or at least your vision of you. So stop being scared! Go out on a limb. That’s how people succeed in the real world of business.

Fear of Failure Destroys Marketing Efforts

I know the extreme power of fear. I have witnessed it throughout my career, and I’ve even allowed myself to be a casualty of fear at times. There is nothing easy about making the kind of commitment it requires to be successful. This goes for anything you really want in your life, whether it’s a spouse, a family, a new home, a new car, or an improved bottom line in your business. It takes a leap, but it doesn’t have to be simply on faith.

If you think about your marketing as a foundation of your company, which it really is, you will find yourself on a much stronger path. I know, it’s easy to try and argue the point. The accountants think accounting is the foundation, the attorneys think the legal structure makes the foundation, and the people who created the company think it’s all about the product or service … but that’s really not true.

Businesses simply do not work without being marketed. Even in the most obscure and complex examples you can throw out there, the biggest factor between success and failure of two equal companies really does come down to how well they are marketed.

I Believe You Could Do Better With Your Marketing

How could I put this any more clearly? You can do better! Failure to control your fear impulses and continuing to worry about what will not work is a fast track to failure. Try thinking more along the lines of what you stand to gain, instead of cowering to the fear of what you stand to lose. Then consider what you continue to lose effortlessly because you’re waiting. There is a steep cost of missed business opportunities. In fact, it is often the worst scenario of all. Getting out of your easy chair to face your fears is a huge factor in success, and I know it from experience.

I turned ideas into millions of dollars within only a short time after completing my 8th grade education. It didn’t take an MBA, or however you spell those fancy degrees hanging on the “smart guy’s” wall. It took research, creativity, and a good supplier of balls. I said balls, and you can call me a bad marketer for that … but if you want to know about selling balls – or selling anything else – read this article to get your thinking up and bouncing: “SEO, Social Media, and Marketing Balls”

Stop worrying about the cost of marketing done right, and start focusing on the positive outcome if you do. There are plenty of chickens out there, and I hope you aren’t one of them … and if you are, I hope you’ll make a commitment to change it.

Some Personal Lessons I Learned About Marketing

When I consider why I advocate for people to take their marketing more seriously and stop waiting for “something” to change, I look inward at how it has changed my life. I imagine the things that would never have happened without marketing, and I’ll give you a glimpse.

I dropped out of school at age 15 to start my first company. That could have gone quite miserably without good marketing.
I retired (the first time) at age 25. Without good marketing and having guts, that would have sucked for the average 15 year old dropout.
I met my wife in 2000 by using good marketing skills … online … with social media. Without that, I would not have the three wonderful kids I enjoy so much today.
I learned to competitively control automobiles at over 170 miles per hour (270+ KPH). It took a lot of marketing to own a race team. It is what I wanted, and because of good marketing, I made it happen.
I learned that making everybody happy is not required. Making the right ones happy is a whole lot more productive.
I learned that without climbing out on a limb and having the courage to embrace the immense value of marketing, I would have very few of the things that bring me joy and sustenance today.
I learned that sharing what I know feels very good, but even better when people will use it to improve their own lives.
I learned a whole lot more, but that’s why I have an archive, and that’s why this blog is not finished yet. Please subscribe if you want to keep learning with me.

I have no intention of explaining all that I have learned about marketing in a single blog article. That would be impossible. I hope that you will be willing to take a good look and accept some useful tips from a guy who has been around the block. I hope you will bookmark my blog archive and keep coming back to feed your brain with some useful marketing advice. I also hope you will subscribe for more to come soon. Don’t miss the point that it will make a lot more difference to your business than it will mine.

I also welcome you to get to know me. I’m a very approachable guy who loves the field of marketing, and I’m always delighted to be helpful.

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Face it Marketing Professional, You’re a Commodity!

If you’re in the field of marketing, get over yourself. You’re a commodity. At least that is the way a lot of people will see it, even if you actually are as awesome as you say you are.

Looking at marketing as a commodity is something people can understand. That’s because if they see it as all the same, it just comes down to the dollar amount, and that is what feels the safest for most people.

As it applies to the majority of people buying marketing services, the dollars which are easiest to concentrate on are the dollars going out, but without adequate forethought or examination of the incoming dollars the marketing produces.

It seems that a lot of people think of it like throwing those dollars to the wind and hoping some of them will float back.

That’s not the way it works when marketing is done well, but it is the easier way to digest. In the real world of business, marketing should be based on qualified mathematics, demographics, psychographics, and other principles of qualified market research and forecasting, but that is enough to make most people’s head explode. That kind of marketing comes with an investment and a commitment beyond commodity-style thinking about marketing. Many people confuse that as a risk, while the real risk is when marketing is based on guesswork and crossing fingers.

Here is perhaps the biggest problem about marketing: The number of dollars spent becomes the easiest measure. It is counterproductive when people look at it this way, but it is a true depiction of the current market of marketing … especially online.

I’ll describe how the trend of “commoditized marketing” goes completely wrong. I hope you’ll take some qualified advice from somebody who has been around the block, and no longer wants to accept your money. In fact, this is my formal announcement that I Quit.

I have made my 2012 New Year’s resolution, and that is to stop offering marketing services for hire. I’ll give you some good advice and try to help you, though. The only things I would like to ask from you are your friendly wishes on my new career path away from providing marketing services for hire, and maybe a little discussion.

What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?

I believe that everybody should periodically ask themselves the question: “What do you want to do with your life?” That’s a tricky one, isn’t it? At least it is for me.

I’ve been asking myself this question a lot recently, and I’m seeing some things with much greater clarity. It’s still a bit blurry to me, but one thing is clear … I absolutely do not want to sell marketing services.

I finally reached the conclusion that selling marketing services for hire is a twisted soul-sucking racket filled with liars, and it has led me to ask this very important question of what I want to do with my life … and why I keep letting people suck me back into building their success while neglecting my own.

Knowing the answer to what you want to do with your life is vital to professional and personal growth, and it’s why my career is about to take a sharp turn, which I’ll announce one day soon.

The big life question I’ve addressed here was perhaps most famously asked in the 1984 music video “I Wanna Rock” by Twisted Sister. For your amusement, I’ll share that piece with you as you contemplate your answer.

I guess you could call it my mid-life crisis that brought me to this point. After all, I am about to turn 40 years old, my beard is going gray, my belly is getting bigger, and my job is sucking the life out of me. I’ve done most of the things I ever wanted to do. I’ve raced cars, authored books, been a CEO, earned squillions, retired, un-retired, and even created a family complete with three kids and a wife, but now I largely hate this job. As much as I love the work I do, dealing with a public who really want to believe that marketing is a commodity sucks a little more soul out of me every day.

I’m simply not willing to participate in the “marketing as a commodity” mentality, and I honestly hate to even watch it from a distance. I’ve got better things to do than demean myself by taking peanuts for my skills and dealing with clients who don’t have a clue how much I am worth to them if they get out of their own way. Nosiree, Bob, that’s not my bailiwick … not in the least!

I previously promised myself to quit the addiction of accepting marketing clients by mid-2011, but as the end of 2011 draws near, I plan to stick to my guns. I’m not going to play along with the absurdity of “commoditized marketing” any longer, but I’ll tell you some good reasons for my decision, and leave you with some keys to help make more people flock to you like a free bacon sandwich covered in sex appeal.

While I take this turn away from selling the services of marketing, I’ll give you some indications of where this mentality is taking companies.

“Flat Broke” is Popular in Business!

Many companies are flat broke these days. Being broke is very a popular trend in business, but in most cases, they have a competitor that is raking in the profits. Decades ago, I made it a career objective to help people understand some of the reasons this is the case.

Helping companies to create success has always been very inspiring to me, but it also comes with a lot of challenges. Now, more than ever, I see a lot of companies making bad decisions about their marketing, and I see a lot of fear.

Why did it get this way? I have my ideas on the matter, and I’ll start with this: Marketers got lazy, and while they did, people’s confusion of marketing being a commodity was booming right along with the Internet. Fueled by that confusion, the barrier of entry to a marketing career was lowered to the level that any intern can pretend to be the equivalent to a Chief Marketing Officer or Marketing Director without being called out as an obvious fraud by the general public.

That’s for the fakes and liars, but as the frauds became more believable, the true marketing professionals with an ounce of integrity still faced the same old challenges.

The Challenges of Marketing Professionals

It has always been a challenge of marketing professionals to help people understand marketing concepts like customer modeling, targeting a market, and many other components to effective marketing.

Most people really don’t need or want to fully understand these things, and trying to explain it can often bore them to tears. So it is fitting that the client often just assumes these are things the marketer is using to confuse more money out of them.

A much tougher concept to explain is that marketing is not a cost, but rather an investment. This one stumps many good marketers, because companies either “get it” or they don’t. In my experience, most companies only understand their market very fractionally, and doing what it takes to achieve their potential scares them.

Other companies are complacent, and they are certainly beyond help. You can give some people case study after case study of successful marketing campaigns, and you can explain that it is the difference between growing a company or shrinking it, but if they refuse to help themselves, you cannot force it on them.

These things have never changed, but one thing that has become clearer is that marketing is increasingly viewed as a commodity.

Commodity: “used to describe a class of goods for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. A commodity has full or partial fungibility; that is, the market treats it as equivalent or nearly so no matter who produces it.”

Source: Wikipedia

I’ve provided marketing services to clients for a very long time. I’ve watched marketing change dramatically since my start in the 1980’s. I watched it change from small companies trying to chase unicorns with $1,000,000 catalog mailers and newspaper ads, to chasing unicorns with $300 ecommerce websites and marginal blogging efforts. More recently, I watched it change into the popular notion that hiring an intern to send tweets and update the company Facebook status is what marketing is all about.

It seems that an astonishing number of companies have been falsely convinced that social media marketing is just about socializing, and that search engine rankings are a function of technology. They’ve also been convinced that it is easy to be successful online and that if they keep doing what they’re doing, success will just magically come to them one lucky day.

Great Marketing Professionals Don’t Need to Lie!

I often find that marketers lean in one of two different directions: There are marketers who are great at selling marketing services but stink at actually performing them, and then there are marketers who are just great at performing marketing services, but stink at selling it. I am the latter of the two.

Something you should know is that good marketers don’t need to lie, and don’t like to sell.

An analogy I think is kind of funny is that I rank quite nicely if you search for “how to sell SEO” (search engine optimization), but I am absolutely terrible at selling SEO. In fact, if you google “SEO hell“, that’s where you’ll find me.

A point I want to drive home for people is that if you’re talking to the right marketers about marketing services, there is not a sneaky agenda up their sleeve. The good ones are hard to find, and most of the best ones are not seeking your business. There are good reasons, too. They can earn far more money building their own company than by building yours.

From my experience, I’d suggest seeking the the ones with the highest prices and finding out why their rates are so high. That’s what I do when I’m looking for marketing help, because I understand that this is not a commodity … I accept it, and I embrace it.

I look for the ones who are doing it for the right reasons, and who made success for themselves and others. Then I make them prove it, and if they can, they’re in!

There are more than enough “Johnny Come Lately” marketers out there, so you have to be diligent. Watch this video to see my take on them, or read “Bashing SEO and Social Media Experts: Humor or Hazard?” to see real life examples of it. Without their proof, you’re just guessing, and good marketing is not about guesswork!

$300 Unicorn Ride to Planet Success

I can show you a metric squillion instances of people seeking unrealistic profit from minimal commitment. It has become so convincing that some people will try almost anything, as long as it’s cheap.

What went completely wrong for me is that I am one of those marketing marketers, and not one of the selling ones I mentioned. I’ve had sales reps to handle sales for me, but most of them have been just as confused and in the dark about the value of good marketing as the general public. Besides, you just can’t train somebody to overcome apathy … people either want more, or they don’t.

I am entirely unwilling to let people pay me to deliver them mediocre results. That is my curse, and my Achilles heel. I just cannot see letting people believe something is going to help them unless it is actually going to help them.

I’m not willing to start offering $300 unicorn rides to planet success, and as long as people see marketing as a commodity, somebody else always will. I thought about stooping to the cheap side of marketing, but my integrity always gets in the way.

I hope that you can believe my words more than ever by knowing that I’m out of the consulting business, and I’ll turn you down when you come waving a wad of money in my face. Well … I guess it depends on the wad, but it let’s just say that it would take a signed letter of commitment and a lot of money before we sit down for lunch to talk about changing my mind. Plus, I’d have to really like your brand.

Farewell to the Mediocrity of Commoditized Marketing

If you are one of my many readers who makes it to the very end of my articles, I hope you will at least give me a good send-off with a “hello” or something to let me know you’ve been reading. I hope you will know that I really feel the words I write, and that this is not an easy step. I also hope that you will look forward to hearing more from me, because I have many working drafts for articles to come.

To those knuckleheads who were just lurking around, waiting and thinking about contacting me to help them grow their business: You waited too long. I would have worked a lot harder and could have achieved a lot more for your business than you gave me credit. On a positive note, there’s probably a 15 year old kid in Pakistan who will do the same thing for fourteen bucks. Yeah, it’s probably the same. 😉

I hope that my work (including my books) has, and will continue to help you move forward in your business and personal desires. I sincerely believe that my integrity is fully intact and I have never been misleading in this blog. I know there is a lot of benefit for those who continue to read my archives … and my tales of what’s to come.

Now I’d really appreciate hearing from you. Please take a moment to add your comments and help me create a discussion of what you’ve just read. It means a lot to me.

Photo Credit:
I’m A Human Being NOT A Commodity by Kenny Sun via Flickr

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Marketing Clients vs. Crybaby Sissy Bed-Wetters

When people lack confidence in proper marketing, they lose! They lose time, they lose opportunities, and they lose money … lots of it! I don’t even feel a need to prove this, because for people who don’t get it, we have a phrase for that. The phrase is “survival of the fittest”, and if you have some guts, you are far more fit than a lot of your competition.

Believe me when I say that most of your competitors are total wimps! If we took them back to elementary school, you could see most of your competition walking to the office to call Mommy and ask her to bring a dry pair of pants to school. They are scared, and to say they are “pants-wetting scared” is not such a big stretch.

I mean, look at yourself … aren’t you just a tiny bit creeped out? Doesn’t it give you the willies just a little to do what it really takes to grow your company?

Seriously, if you never knew this, you deserve to know. Most people making decisions about marketing for their company are scared to death of marketing. I am going to share a real-life story with you in a moment to emphasize the point, but for a moment, just take it on faith.

This common fear of marketing is especially the case with the good kind of marketing that comes with proper research, solid strategy, efficient forecasting, and net profit … yes, positive return on investment. The reason the good profit-generating marketing is scariest of all is because it is the kind that requires decisive action … and money!

Drat! It’s another one of those long reads. Don’t worry, though, because I recorded it for you. Just click play and listen if you like. It is sure to give you some food for thought and a laugh … I’m sure of it!

The Way Many Companies View Marketing

A lot of companies seek the lowest possible effort and the highest possible return. That is smart business, but they often focus more on that low effort and completely lose sight of the highest return.

You see, now that every reception desk has a computer, marketing is pretty much free. Just look around and you may discover that this is how your competition sees it. Anybody can prepare and execute a brilliant marketing campaign. All they have to do is sign up for one of those Facebook thingies, Twitterize 25-26 hours per day, and put some smiley-happy employees and customers on YouTube.

Voila! The marketing is fixed, and the money train will be chugging down the tracks in no time!

It may sound crazy to you, and I hope it does, but this is really how a lot of companies approach their online marketing. It is so simple that all it will take is a tweet or a Facebook mention. They see companies like the ones mentioned in an article I read in Telegraph.uk. Here is a quote:

Ticketmaster estimates that every time one of their customers posts on Facebook that they’ve bought a ticket, their friends spend an additional $5.30 with the site. When last year’s Google conference was taking place, they tweeted the morning of the conference: “100 tickets left, 550 bucks a piece, use this promotion code”. 11 minutes later they tweeted, “Sold them, thank you.” That’s $55,000 in sales with one tweet in 11 minutes.

Rub a lamp and wish for a genie! You don’t have Ticketmaster demand or Google reach. Something is stopping you, though, and it is not the tools … it is the planning and strategy. If you keep doing what you are doing, you will likely keep getting what you get. If it is time to step it up, then step it up and do something brilliant. Do something with a strategy! On the other hand, if it is time to lie down and die … do that, and go peacefully. Just don’t keep waiting for that magic genie to arrive. He’s not coming!

Break for a Wise Marketing Tip:

Some people actually screw this all up and think that what they are paying for with proper marketing is just a task. Any moron can do a task, so it should be cheap, right? I provided some examples of this train wreck mentality in the articles as follows:

Social Media Marketing Pricing Like Cab Rides by the Pothole“

… and the profoundly absurd

“Hourly Rate for Setting Up Social Media Profiles?!“

Damn the luck, it seems that somebody tried to shove the whole population of marketing professionals into the same cage as if we are all the same critter. The good and bad are all mixed into one, and along with my high-end marketing buddies, I guess people surely think that we get paid for what we do.

The larger truth is that we get paid for what we know, how we know how to know what we know, how we think and analyze, who we know, and the other really unimaginable stuff that comes with experience, marketing talent, and brute creativity.

Pete and The Amazing Pee-Pants Pizza Parlor

I have a story about a guy named Pete. Seriously, this is a true story. Pete is very excited about selling his wildly amazing and awesomely marketable pizza franchise across the USA. He will possibly succeed, once he gets out of his own way, but he is still walking around in wet pants and trying to keep from vomiting at the thought of finally bringing it to market.

Sure, Pete logically knows that marketing is his most important asset. He realizes that Starbucks was a little coffee company and Subway was a little sandwich shop, and still would be without great marketing.

Actually, his name is not Pete, and his business is not pizza, but I’ll use that. His name is close enough to Pete, and his retail food franchise business is close enough to pizza to make the same point. The story is about a series of calamities that just drive me nuts. Nuts enough to share my opinion, and to welcome yours.

Here is the “hot sheet” version of how things have gone so far. Pete contacted me a year ago about his business. He was referred to me by a friend whom he trusts. Our mutual friend told Pete that the project was way out of her league. She explained that based on his hopes for massive adoption of his new franchise opportunity, he needs Murnahan (that’s me). Not a guy like me … me!

When Pete first contacted me, he was in an urgent rush to get his marketing in order. He was very concerned that he had already waited too long. He was afraid that based on his time frame for other business plans, he needed me on the project “yesterday”.

Pete was more than just a little blown away by things I shared with him about the possibilities for his business. I guess it was stupid of me to start dolling out free brain-juice, but heck, he was a referral, after all. Based on his own wildly flattering statements toward me, I was assured that he wanted to be my client, so I let fly with a few pan drippings from my brain in the roasting pan.

Dumb dumb Murnahan … I knew better, because giving too much freebie talk is a big open door to truckloads of non-paying brain work. I do it though, and it almost always bites me in the ass, because people really hate that transition to actually paying for the knowledge they need.

Skipping forward a damn long year and a whole bunch of phone calls that he has never paid for, Pete is calling me with wet pants again. He needs some serious help, and he talks like he is actually ready now.

The huge pause in his business was a funding snafu. Wouldn’t you know it that somehow those banking folks actually like qualified market projections in the business plan before they fund a deal. It is too bad Pete never thought of getting some better facts to work with. Maybe a year wouldn’t have spun by so rough for him.

Well, I guess we’ll kill the hooker tonight and worry about it tomorrow. Now we can just wing it on a half-assed budget and hope to make the bank happy. Yep, that’s how we roll, right Pete and Pete-like thinkers?

By the way, when I tease Pete about his wet pants or describe him as a shaky handed sweaty little fella who pulls the blankets over his head so the monsters don’t get him, I want to note that I like Pete. I like him plenty fine, even if he is a crybaby sissy bed-wetter and horrific planner.

Pete is a fine fella, and he will likely do very well in his business. His first and scariest step will be to listen to the consultant / strategist as much as he talks. Actually, before he can meet that scary challenge, he will have to get up off his steamy little pee-soaked wallet and pay for the scary monster he needs advice from.

The craziest thing I ever heard was when he finally rubbed his wet panties into my telephone ear yesterday and started asking for references. What the hell? We covered that last year! He has been putting his short-n-chubby in my ear all this time, reading my blog, sending me Facebook messages, email, and asking me for more brain-drippings, and now he’s asking if I’m qualified?! This is the same guy who has referred others to me when they needed serious help!

His biggest expressed concern is that I am a few hour flight away from his cozy little blankie. He wants to be able to manage my work close-up. Well if that isn’t silly … all it takes is money. If he is doing it right … I mean, right enough to sell 150 pizza franchises in the next two years, the least of his worry should be the cost of an airline ticket!

Somebody just effin’ give me a tequila, a hooker, and quarter to call home and I’ll sell more damn pizza stores than this guy can handle.

Pete has hopes, but they are only hopes so far. They are not goals, because he doesn’t have the market data to set goals yet. He is pretty reluctant to gather it, too.

Why do people try to kill me like this? Is it because they don’t have confidence in their market offering? Is it because they are so scared they would rather go broke than invest wisely in their own futures? Is it because they have no balls? What the hell?

I swear, if I put Pete in a room with the guy I recently wrote about hoping to put “100 percent” into his health and beauty industry marketing, but yet keep the budget under $10,000, I could slow down time enough that my trip to the looney bin will feel like a whole lifetime! Maybe my conniption will be worth it.

OK … that got a little teensy bit rant-ish, but sure was fun! Go ahead and level me out. Be my friend and help me to calm down and breath slower.

😉

I sincerely believe that marketing in itself is the hardest field of all to market to clients. It is because in damn near every other product or service I have ever marketed, there is always some sense that the potential customer has two brain cells to rub together. This is often simply not the case when people are in the market for marketing services. Not since the invention of the Internet money-train.

One more thing … Can somebody tell me who I need to whack over the head to get a decent client with dry pants?

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“How Much Does SEO Cost?” is The Wrong Question

If you are in a customer-facing job role, you have surely heard the common question of “how much does it cost?” Many of us hear it long before questions of value even come into consideration, and it seems especially common in SEO (search engine optimization).

I consider the “how much does it cost” shopping approach a very worthwhile reason to scream at somebody and demean them. I usually try to hold back that urge, but it is definitely scream-worthy. I have very often answered it by hanging up the phone. That is because I take it as an indication that the person asking will only see a dollar amount and not what it represents.

When it comes to SEO (search engine optimization), “how much does it cost” is absolutely the wrong question to open discussions. I will explain why the cost of SEO is far down the list of things which will matter, and whether you are on the buying side or selling side of SEO, this should be useful to you. I will also explain why the question of how much the SEO will cost is not only a moving target, but also ways to determine an appropriate cost.

First, consider this: The topic struck me when I see how often my wife, Chef and Owner of Mad Eliza’s Cakes and Confections, answers burning questions about the cost of wedding cake. It happens very often that a bride-to-be will ask how much her wedding cake will cost, before even having a good idea of the design or even how many guests it needs to feed. I find a lot of people shop for SEO the same way. From now on, you will know better!

The SEO Cost Should Be Based on the Need

There is no practical way of answering questions of the cost of SEO until the variable of need is addressed. Assessing the need for SEO should be based on client goals and accurate marketing projections. To get to the right number, you must have a good fix on the overall market potential, and how much market share can be reasonably expected at a given level of action.

This is not rocket surgery, but it does require more than just guesswork. A good projection will be based on multiple variables, but a good start is to know how many people are looking for what you offer.

If you are not clear on how many people are looking for you, and what they are looking for, close estimates can be made using tools such as SpyFu, WordTracker, and Google’s keyword tool. These tools can help you find out how many people are searching for what you offer, and provide a glimpse of the overall market potential.

More useful information on this topic is available in the article titled “Improve SEO Return on Investment (ROI) With Simple Math“.

The Point of Diminishing SEO Returns

It is possible to overestimate your efforts and do more SEO than you need. I have never seen it happen in real life, but the theory makes sense. If you are spending more money on SEO than the potential for your entire market, there is a point where it would be wasteful. However, the ugly monkey which stares many people in the face is that in the beginning, most SEO efforts will cost more than they return. So, this brings up the point of how far you can see into your future.

Short-Term SEO Cost vs. Increased SEO ROI Later

Let’s look at this with a bit of logic. There is no return on investment (ROI) at the point when you write the first check for SEO. Having short term (30, 60, and 90 day) goals is important for most companies. When more effort is focused on short term SEO goals than long term goals, the expected overall ROI is lowered. There is a balancing point which is important to reach.

If you need to meet short term objectives in order to produce cashflow to achieve longer term goals, the end cost will generally be higher. This is because you are overemphasizing the short term objectives just to pay for the higher return long term goals.

Where SEO Cost Goes Off The Rails

While I was writing this article, I was distracted by the ding of a message coming from the live chat on my contact page. It was from a really nice guy named Eric, and here is how the chat went:

[11:04] Eric: Hi Mark I’m interested in asking you about some of your services if you have a few minutes

[11:04] murnahan: Sure.

[11:05] murnahan: You are welcome to ring me if you prefer. My direct line is *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE* or my Skype username is “murnahan”.

[11:05] Eric: I came across your site researching SEO tips and first off, great information. I’m trying to gain an understanding of SEO, and it’s obviously very in-depth. I’m a vey tech savvy person but not really on the “up and up” for SEO. Anyway, I manage a national moving company, and we’re looking to increase our search traffic. What type of services do you offer that you think could help us out?

[11:07] murnahan: There are a lot of answers to that question, but perhaps the best one is this: I can make your company more attractive, somewhere along the lines of sex and bacon.

[11:08] Eric: Hm. I do like both of those things

[11:08] murnahan: When you make your company more attractive, the word spreads, and you get bigger pay checks.

[11:08] murnahan: See what I mean … most people do! LOL

[11:08] Eric: I would actually like to speak with you. can I call now?

[11:09] murnahan: sure … my ears are on.

Well, Eric called me and we spoke for a while. It was a good talk, and I listened to what his company does, and where they hope to go with it. As we talked, I was thinking … I do that a lot. One of my first thoughts was how important it is for a moving company to gain people’s confidence. I have heard a lot of nightmares about how moving companies break stuff, steal stuff, and scam people out of extra money once they have your stuff in their trucks. In fact, I have a friend who is in a lawsuit against his mover right now.

Eric asked me if I had any ideas on how I could help his company. Although this is the exact stuff I am paid to do, I thought I’d at least let him know I was listening and thinking. I discussed a few ideas with Eric about how we could make his moving company a little more sex and bacon-like.

Since his company has complete access to people’s stuff, I suggested that overcoming the potential customers’ fears about movers would be an important step to increasing their business. Of course, this is only one piece of a larger strategy, but a critical one.

I told Eric I thought it would be really neat for them to walk into each job and hang a half dozen IP cameras on the walls and provide customers a website login in case they want to look in on the progress. Then I pointed out that the cost of an 8 gigabyte SD card is under 30 bucks, and it may be cool to hand people a complete video record of their move when he hands them their bill. Not only could this set them apart as a more trustworthy company, it could also be a nice benefit for people to document all of their belongings for insurance purposes. It would provide customers with greater confidence, and give them something valuable, all at once.

OK, so it may cost a few bucks. It could easily have a one-time cost a thousand bucks or more per truck for wireless cameras and a laptop with a built-in Internet connection. That is not bad, considering it is a tiny fraction of the cost of a tractor trailer and other moving equipment. It would take them an extra 10-20 minutes (of a 4-6 hour job) to hang some stick-on hooks to place the cameras, and $30 for an SD card. The technology part would be a breeze, for me. Heck, I did a 6,000 mile live mobile webcast from a race car. This one would be a no-brainer, and the moving guys would only have to know how to turn on a laptop and click a “start” button.

Can you imagine how much that relatively small extra effort could pay them with customer confidence? Can you imagine what would happen if major tech blogs picked up the story of their success in using technology to overcome real-world trust barriers? It could make a nice press release for tech bloggers, television, and more. Can you imagine how that could affect their SEO?

How Much Does SEO Cost Now?

I never worked with a moving company, and this idea sprouted up fresh from a short conversation during a free consultation. It gets even better if Eric pays me for my ideas. Eric didn’t call to ask me about the cost of SEO. He asked the right questions, centered around value and calculated return on investment.

When he asked me about how much SEO would cost, it was more about how much he needs to beg, borrow, and steal to get the results that he wants for his company. He understands that good marketing is what makes companies bigger, and that bad SEO can cost a lot more than good SEO. That is a whole lot different than simply fearing the cost of SEO.

Get the SEO Questions Right

If you know the right questions to ask about SEO, you will have a lot better results. It will help you to avoid being taken advantage of by SEO lies, and to realize why SEO is a lot more than just technical geeky work.

I have always said that coffee and cigarettes are the best SEO and social media marketing tools. If that sounds crazy, please be sure to see this video explaining why I know it is true.

My Answers About “How Much Does SEO Cost”

Every search engine optimizer will have a different answer about the cost of SEO services. Some of them will be right, and some of them will be woefully wrong. We each work differently, and each have different skill sets and levels of marketing talent. In my case, I require a sizable investment, and I am not a good match for most companies. I prefer to only work with two to four clients at a time, and my projects come with a three to twelve month commitment. That should pretty well explain why I don’t do SEO for dog walkers.

Something important to consider is that until the other important questions are answered, the matter of cost will always be incorrect. This is simply not a commodity business, and everybody will have different needs and expectations. Throwing around dollar amounts is a waste of time if the purchaser and the provider do not fully understand each other, and the job at hand.

I want to leave you with these thoughts regarding the cost of SEO from my perspective:

Yes, I have a family of five, and each of them like to eat every day.
Yes, I do own a motorcycle that cost more than my first two houses, combined.
Yes, that is a real Picasso hanging in my living room (pictured above).
Yes, it will cost you a lot more than the money in my hand to get my attention.
Yes, my clients always earn more profit from my work than I do!
Yes, I will probably scream at you and hang up the phone if you call me to ask “how much does SEO cost?”

Some search engine optimizers will promise 1,000 links to your website and first page ranking in Google for $300. Isn’t that search engine optimizer a great deal?

Now, please answer me … do you really think that it is the same thing wherever you go?

Here are some related articles I have written regarding the cost of SEO and placing cost above value. I hope you will enjoy them.

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Are You Ready to Market Like Einstein?

Marketing is what makes things sell, and it is what makes businesses profitable. Without marketing, whether word of mouth, television, radio, print, Internet, or some other medium, even the best companies with the best products will fail. Somebody has to make buyers aware of an offering, and do so in a desirable way, before it will sell. That is marketing in a nutshell.

Great marketing takes us by the nose and leads us to a brand. The best marketing makes us think. Sometimes it makes us laugh, and sometimes it makes us cry, but it always makes us think. When it makes us think enough, it makes us talk about it. It enters our conversations around the water cooler, at little league games, sitting at a bar among friends, and in boardrooms. When marketing is done at optimum levels, it permeates our conscious and our subconscious. That is the kind of marketing that makes the difference between Fortune 500 companies and all the others who came and left. It is also the kind of marketing that makes the difference between your little company and the little bigger company you want it to be. It only makes sense for you to want to know how to market better.

Marketing is not just about putting your words out to a bunch of people. Marketing also means bridging the divide between the way a producer thinks and the way their consumers think. It is not something that everybody is built for, but it is something they can practice and become better at. A lot of people can perform the more menial tasks associated with marketing, and millions of them can clearly send a tweet, update their Facebook, spam LinkedIn, or write a blog. Only a relatively few will make the necessary sacrifices of planning, learning, and stepping outside of themselves enough to do something truly brilliant that attracts people to them. It is precisely why marketing is not, and will never be a commodity.

Today’s Murnahanism: Good marketers must answer why their marketing is more expensive than others. Great marketers refuse to answer, because they don’t want the client who doesn’t already know.

Brilliant marketing comes with a cost. The cost can vary greatly, and I don’t just mean money, either. It often comes with the cost of a marketer who studies people and understands what drives them to take action. It takes somebody with a uniquely analytical mind who thinks differently than those around them. It comes with a whole lot of what I call “brain sweat”. If you are unprepared to afford these traditional costs associated with brilliant marketing, you had better be ready to sweat a lot, with your brain.

Are You Ready for Einstein-Style Brain Sweat?

If you are dedicated to your marketing, you must exercise your thinking. Einstein was a great marketer. Although it was not his vocation, in many ways he was one of the best marketers ever. After all, we have all heard of him, and he was quite effective at selling his ideas to the world. If you think it was easy, just try marketing theoretical physics and see if you can make a household name for yourself. Some of Einstein’s greatest struggles were in bridging the gap between his thinking and the conventional wisdom around him. He had to look at things from other peoples’ perspective in order to understand how to best explain his thoughts to them, and thus “sell” his ideas. The cost to Einstein was that he was criticized by many and became a bit “crazy” by some standards. Brain sweat does that to a person. It is a huge challenge to carry such divergent thoughts of both the producer and the consumer and know how to package them and sell them. In my estimation, this is the greatest challenge of marketing.

The best marketers I have ever met are all just a bit “crazy”. I think most marketers prefer the term “eccentric” over “crazy”. Trying to think like other people is tough. It was tough for Einstein to try and think like others around him enough to get his ideas through to them, and it is similarly challenging for many people trying to market their product or service. It tends to stretch a person’s imagination. It is like a rigorous brain exercise, and like any exercise, it makes you stronger with repetition.

I have often been called “eccentric”, but if you ask me, I am crazier than a shithouse squirrel (I wanted to say “shithouse rat” but my editor asked me to change it). I push myself just a little closer to insanity every time I try to understand people and how to most effectively market something to them. It is my job, and I quite enjoy it. They say there is a fine line between higher thinking and insanity. Personally, I try my best to straddle that line with one foot on either side. It beats being bored. It does not mean that I am calling myself smarter than others, it just means that I use what brain I have, and I push it to an uncomfortable limit where the competition is not willing or able to go. That is often what it takes to create the best marketing.

Einstein kept pushing forward even when other scientists were not on his side. He knew his product, and he persevered against the odds. Einstein was fortunate to have much assistance to see him through his research, but most businesses (and most other theoretical physicists) are not so fortunate. Albert Einstein’s marketing was often just good enough to receive his next round of funding and to continue his work. Most businesses only have one shot to get it right, and to achieve enough market penetration to sustain them through to the next higher level.

Are You Feeling Brilliant Yet?

The process of learning how to produce great marketing is long and hard. It would be great if I could just hand you a “brilliant switch” that you could turn on and instantly start thinking like your customers. I don’t have a learning course to sell, and although I say that I am for hire, I say “no” to the vast majority of the people who try to hire my services (largely because I am not cheap). What I can offer is a pretty sizable blog archive of marketing articles that may help jump start your thinking about your customers and how to address the challenges of marketing what you offer. I hope that it will help you.

If you are not ready to think more like your customers and dedicate more of your mind to your marketing, it is best to leave it to the people who do it for a living. Otherwise, you risk regurgitating the same old junk that has become so commonplace on the Internet. It does not work the way many people may lead you to believe, and it comes at a much higher risk of failure.