Category Archives for General Archives
The Squares Are Coming! The Squares Are Coming!
Every once in a while, I try to take my own advice.
And lately, I’ve become a little jaded about online marketing… and isolated from the rest of the world.
You see, my closest buddies and favorite phone pals are all very hip to the online world… and most are thriving. We’re all old-hands at discussing the latest and greatest Web technological burps and breakthroughs, like SEO, Adwords, affiliate programs, RSS feeds, whatever.
Ancient news, all of it.
After a few months of hanging around this very successful echo chamber, though, I’m no longer fit company for anyone outside the group.
I forget that most people in the world — including most people in America — are absolutely clueless aboutRead more…
The Guru Glut
My good friend Perry Marshall (the Google Adwords wizard) has been embroiled in an online ruckus with some bloggers and letter-writers about the current overload of “experts” now clogging the Internet and selling their “magic” systems.
Never one to back down, Perry is examining the charges and evidence head-on, and that’s a good thing.
Any self-annointed guru who can’t handle a little rough treatment — and a vigorous dissection of his offered materials — needs to leave the stage. Just put your hype down, and back away slowly.
Teaching is, and should be, hard. At the public level, I think it’s a friggin’ crime both that our teachers earn shitty wages… and that the job doesn’t command the respect necessary to lure truly bright and motivated people with an aptitude for sharing knowledge and skills.
I slogged my way through 16 years of school, and I met exactly one teacher whoRead more…
How Do You Like The New Digs?
Howdy…
We’ve just finished sprucing up The Big Damn Blog, and added a bunch of cool new accessories. After several years, it was time for a face-lift and upgrade.
Lots of new features — photos (in the bio section), archives, tons of free stuff… plus a blog-only secret bargain that will be available for a limited time, and changed frequently. (I’ll be adding more rare, jaw-dropping photos soon…)
Thousands of people read this blog each day, and I encourage you to leave comments. I read them all. Sometimes I Read more…
Just Tell The Friggin’ Truth
It seems to be human nature to not want to admit error or cop to mistakes.
And that probably makes sense, in an evolutionary way. Those ancestors who leaped up to take the blame too eagerly were likely punished in severely unpleasant ways… and could have also been seen as too wimpy for mating with.
Those folks who clammed up tight and denied everything stood a better chance of surviving the wrath of the community. It’s certainly the way politics still works.
And, as I recall from my bachelor days, truth was a scarce resource in the dating world.
But this is no reason to adopt denial and lies as “standard operating procedure” in your business. In fact, it’s probably hurting your bottom line much more than you think.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. We’re doing business with a joint that is very good at talking the talk of “quality control”… and the way they tout their customer service, you’d think they had discovered super-human powers.
But it’s all talk. In our short business relationship, we now have experienced dozens of situations with these guys where quality control was a delusion, and customer service failed utterly and completely.
And they will not accept this as reality. It doesn’t jive with their internal world-view… and thus must be wrong. There are no problems. Everything’s fine. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…
It’s irritating, far beyond the inconvenience of not getting what you paid for. Denial is stubborness that gives the finger to reality. When people dig in behind a lie, reason is the first casualty.
In life, and in business, you can avoid compounding many problems simply by copping to the truth of the situation. If you screwed up, you screwed up. Lying about it, or trying to cover it up, may work some of the time… but when you get caught doing that, well, pretty soon the fan can’t handle the volume of shit that hits it.
In politics, it’s a well-worn (and well-ignored) cliche that it’s not the crime that does you in… it’s the cover-up. People will tolerate exaggeration and bloviation, but get very, very nasty when lied to.
Couple of examples: We just logged a much-needed five-day vacation over on the Northern California coast. We’ve gone to this one gorgeous old town, on a bluff overlooking the ocean, for years. Mostly, we resign ourselves to not having good cell phone service, and zero high-speed Internet connections.
But this time, we were intrigued by a bed-n-breakfast that advertised both excellent cell phone reception AND DSL as part of the package. Killer views, privacy, pets allowed… it seemed like a great deal. Both Michele and I had small bits of work we had to do, and we wouldn’t have gone to the coast this time if we couldn’t connect to the Web.
I was suspicious, because in multiple previous trips, the town seemed to exist in a high-tech-free bubble.
But the ad featured these new services. We called, and they insisted it was all true.
So we booked the joint.
And while you could use your cell phone in certain parts of the house — standing in specific positions — the DSL hook-up could not be coaxed into working at all.
We complained, they sent out a “technician” who insisted it was all fine, and we were told (in irritating superior tones) that different computers had different requirements for accessing DSL, and we were probably just doing something wrong.
In other words, it was our fault. Not their problem.
Obvious bullshit. We easily discovered a message board on their Website that was filled with complaints from other folks who’d been flummoxed trying to use the DSL. It wasn’t just us — their Internet connection was certifiably screwed up, and had been for some time. (Michele had to hang out at the local coffee shop to get online, using their free wireless.)
When we pointed out that their own Website had proof they were lying to us, they offered a partial refund. Reluctantly. Exasperated at our childish insistence that their version of reality might be wrong.
And we had to put our work plans on hold. We’ll recover, but we feel cheated.
This was just insane. They lied, and pissed us off, and it was all completely avoidable.
Compare this experience to another: Yesterday, I had to book a room in another hotel, in another city. I called one cool place I’d stayed in before, and asked about their high-speed services (because, again, I’ll have to work on the trip). The lady on the phone admitted they really wanted to get their DSL working, but it wasn’t. There was a single, cramped hot spot in the hotel lobby where you could get wireless, but it wasn’t all that reliable.
She was being totally honest with me.
And I didn’t book a room with them. But neither did I cross them off my list of future hotels I might stay at… cuz when they do get DSL in their rooms, I feel fairly confident they won’t lie about the quality of the service. And I still like the hotel — I’ll probably go out of my way to visit their cool house cafe (which overlooks a gorgeous lake) while I’m in town.
So, yeah, they “lost” a sale. But if they had lied or weasel-worded the situation, they would have had a very pissed-off customer on their hands, demanding a refund and telling everyone I know about the fiasco. (Just as I’m doing about the bed-n-breakfast on the coast.)
Way too many businesses believe their own hype. They get caught up in the enthusiasm of an aggressive “mission statement”, gulp their own Kool-Aid, and insist that all evidence to the contrary is either not really a problem, or just a temporary glitch.
I’ve had several experiences lately where — after phoning in to complain — I was hit up with a sales pitch for more services or products from the very company I was mad at. They have a severe myopia about their shortcomings… and, since I’ve worked on the other side of this situation (fielding complaints, back when I worked for The Man), I know that customers who gripe are actually considered the “real” problem.
It’s the CUSTOMER’S fault the gizmo’s screwed up. Somehow. Some way. Sure, it LOOKS like it’s our fault, but who are you gonna believe — our hype, or your own lying eyes?
Just tell the friggin’ truth.
In life, and in biz. Lying about snafu’s just pushes the problem a short way into the future, at best. It will gain size and power as it thrives in the shadows of denial, and can bite you on the butt in ways that far exceed the damages you would have experienced had you just copped to the screw-up in the first place.
The really sad thing is, this isn’t something new that just popped up in business or human nature. It’s always been the case, and always will be the case.
However, this makes it an opportunity to stand out from the pack. Both as an individual, and as a business, being honest with people puts you in a rare category.
You don’t even need to go overboard, and become a Tourette-style truth-teller who can’t shut up, and hurts people’s feelings and reveals company secrets. Respecting truth doesn’t mean it’s suddenly your job to point out everyone else’s faults, or to share inappropriately.
It’s okay to be circumspect, thoughtful, and to keep your secrets.
It is NOT okay to blatantly lie about something in order to get what you want.
It is, in fact, dumb.
So let your competition be dumb. Take the higher road when you have a choice… even if it means losing a sale. Business cycles are relentless, and very cruel to charlatans and crooks. There will be multiple chances to win that sale back later.
Trust me on this. You’ll sleep better when your waking hours aren’t built on a web of lies and deceit.
Stay frosty…
John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com
Learning To Enjoy The Long, Strange Trip…
I just flew in from Chicago, and boy, are my arms tired.
I’ve also been drowning my immune system with every kind of natural booster I can legally find… because, like a window shopper passively watching a store display mannequin fall over and break into pieces, I’ve been watching my health take hit after hit during the past few weeks of heavy stress and unpleasant surprises.
I’m running as fast as I can, just a few steps ahead of an immune system red-alert crisis.
Good to be home for a break in the action. Where I can sleep in, hide from the world, and regroup. I think I’m gonna be fine.
I just wanted to share an interesting thing that’s been happening — whenever I’m around marketing people (as I was at the Chicago seminar) I get asked about what I “got” from hanging out with Gary Halbert all those years.
Of course, the real answer will be book-length.
But in the interim, I find that each time I answer that question… I answer it differently.
This is a small tribute, all in itself, to the quality of the man. He shared so much with me, and I took away so many good lessons… that I can just rattle on about the first thing that pops into my head, and it’s always a worthwhile topic.
And one I can go on and on about for an hour, if no one shuts me up.
That book I write is gonna be a barn-burner.
Right now, for example, recovering from one trip and getting ready to fly down to LA for Gary’s memorial service, I find all kinds of things in the current news that Gary and I would have spent hours talking about on the phone. We both embraced the essential silliness of trying to life with any kind of real dignity… given the fact that nothing EVER went according to plan.
And we both loved to explore the weird basic nature of people in general. As salesmen, we jumped on every shred of consumer psychology we could find… but we augmented that knowledge with tidbits other marketers usually ignored. (My Google home page on Explorer even includes a “Weird News of the World” add-on, so I’m always hip to the latest whackiness.)
Why care about the strangeness of people? Because — as P.T. Barnum once said — you can never go broke underestimating the greed and foolishness of your fellow humans.
So, in honor of Gary, here is just one recent tidbit that would have had both of us shaking our heads in amused shock: According to the AP wire service (April 30), villagers in Guyana, South America, lynched an old woman they accused of being a vampire.
As a modern guy, you can look back on the stories about witches from Europe (more or less documented in tales by the Brothers Grimm) and the Salem executions of same in America as a quaint example of how ignorant people “used” to be.
However, anyone who studies human nature — and all advertisers and marketers should be doing this, in depth — knows that no evil or stupid tendency EVER goes away in our species.
To truly understand people, you must look at their dark sides. Many “civilized” folks suffer from an insulated existence, where all their friends and colleagues exhibit mostly rational behavior. And so it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing “that can’t happen here”.
Thus, when tragedies like the Virginia Tech shootings occur, the nation recoils in horror and engages in group therapy to find the “cause”. Someone, or some thing, needs to be held accountable.
You know… so we can “stop” it from ever happening again.
Savvy people-watchers know better. It has ever been thus — in spite of all the whiz-bang technology, in spite of science and medical advances and space travel… we are still not that far from the jungle.
Scratch a high-functioning, rich, good-looking and respected CEO… and you’ll find, just under the veneer, a 3rd grader at recess. With all the immaturity, selfishness and social cluelessness that implies.
People operate on mostly-unconscious, emotional, hormone-fueled motivations. We like to pretend we’re rational, super-effective and centered beings… but an honest reality check shows that isn’t the case.
Gary and I never despaired over the constant reminders that our fellow citizens were unpredictable, semi-crazed, half-asleep zombies capable of acting with outrageous greed and ugly aggression.
Instead, we just continued to look at life and other people as realistically as possible… and to incorporate our observations into as rational a world-view as we could manage.
It’s always going to be a long, strange trip. You cannot avoid the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune… but you can learn to enjoy the ride anyway.
It’s easy to say you love people, when you’re in deep denial about how grotesque things can turn out.
It’s a challenge to actually continue to love people as much as you can, when the dark side keeps elbowing out the nice stuff for center stage.
Nevertheless, we both truly loved the human race, and thoroughly enjoyed the often-painful discovery process of facing up to reality every day.
And that’s just one small thing I owe to Gary — because he shared my views on this, and we got to indulge in the horror-filled astonishment of examining the follies of the world. We always tried to find some useful lesson. We always tried to better understand what it was like to walk in the other guy’s shoes.
I will dearly miss those grisly, laugh-at-death discussions for the rest of my days.
And, to the best of my ability, I will carry on, and enjoy the trip anyway.
Stay frosty.
John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com
Travelin’ Blues
I’m gonna blog on the run here. It’s been a very hectic couple of weeks, full of gut checks and forced reflection and the never-ending flow of “Details That Will Not Be Denied” that come with being in business.
And now I’m trying to prep for 3 straight weeks of intermittent travel. Chicago for a seminar, back to Los Angeles for a memorial, then off to the Northern California coast to see what the ocean’s got to say for itself.
Still, I don’t want to neglect my blogging duties.
And I have a fairly cool observation I want to share that is pretty important for all marketers.
First, though: There is a memorial service planned for Gary Halbert, down in Los Angeles, for May 5th. To get the details, go to Gary’s site, www.thegaryhalbertletter.com, and sign in for the RSVP link. I will be there for sure, to help Gary’s sons with whatever they need help on.
If you knew Gary, and you want to pay your respects, this is the place to do it. Most of us who were close to him have finally slipped into the “acceptance” stage of grief, and this memorial is a way to be proactive about giving Gary his due.
Second: Back to more mundane marketing notions.
There is a great article in the April 16 New Yorker magazine on commuters. The writer put in a few facts — which got my salesman’s mind reeling — and a lot of Studs Terkel-style “man in the street” profiles… which offer a psychological portrait of an increasingly average Americann consumer.
As a marketer, you should always jump on info like this. It’s priceless demographic knowledge, explained in a way that keeps the humans involved at the center of the story.
Here’s the gist: According to the Census Bureau, one of every six Americans now commutes more than 45 minutes each way to work. Over 3.5 million travel 90 minutes or more… each way. (That’s double what it was in 1990, when the last census was taken.)
That’s a LOT of time in the car, sitting on your ass.
My take: They can’t read, can’t watch DVDs, can’t watch TV, and have limited patience for learning while crawling through jams.
Still, a good percentage are going to be YOUR customers. A literally captive audience, potentially.
This used to get radio advertisers all excited… but radio ad revenue is plummeting, after years of cramming so many obnoxious ads into each hour that people just stopped listening to commercial radio. (Radio does this slow-suicide dance every decade or so — recently, the average talk radio station had more ads than talk each hour. They just push it until they lose listeners, and then scramble to become “relevant” again. Dumb. But it’s the way the biz is run.)
People learn to zone out, or jockey around the dial, or escape to commerical-free satellite radio and CDs. (Or NPR, which is hit-and-miss on being interesting.)
Think about it: Frazzled, frustrated people hating thier lives, forced to stay awake during a routine drive that is too unpredictable to lose focus while you’re suffering through it.
These are people with a problem — essentially, wasted hours that cannot be replaced. It’s purgatory. Quiet desperation.
For savvy marketers, this could represent an opportunity to be the most exciting part of your prospect’s day.
Back when I worked for The Man, I had opportunities to sit in “parking lot” traffic jams in Silicon Valley (on the 101 between Palo Alto and Santa Clara), and the 405 nightmare between the SoCal beach cities and the Sunset Blvd offramp (which includes LAX). Two of the most notorious and horrific commutes in the country.
If you have NOT experienced true traffic psychosis, you probably should go sample it.
Just to understand what it is many of your customers are going through.
Why? Because, for most information products (and even many services), you can and should be providing audio options. (There is also a place for audio with retail products… if you do it right. Most physical products — especially high-ticket items — are only purchased after information is digested.)
But there’s a caveat: You need to understand your prospect’s state of mind, in order to create a CD or mp3 that doesn’t create a disconnect in his head.
And this goes for both audio products, and for audio pitches.
Most smart direct marketers know that providing audio versions of their products can increase sales dramatically. Many people simply prefer audio over visual (whether it’s reading or watching video).
Very few entrepreneurs, however, have yet realized the opportunities for putting your pitch into audio format. That is changing, as test results come in.
But I know of few marketers who tailor their audio for commuters. And thinking about how commuters digest audio input will help you in EVERY effort to communicate clearly and effectively, regardless of the format.
Here’s the key: Your presentation must be in short, identifiable chunks — because your listener’s concentration will be constantly interrupted by sudden braking, the need for snap decisions, and occasional outbursts of road rage.
Keeping things in chunks means any rewinding is brief, and there are no long, delicate trains of thought to be shattered.
Most of the audio I’ve heard — both in products, and in the few audio pitches I’ve seen marketers produce (mostly via podcasts, but sometimes through downloaded mp3 or snail-mailed CDs) — make the outrageous assumption that your listener has the luxury to “sit back, relax, take the phone off the hook, and listen to a tale…”
I’ve actually critiqued a LOT of ads over the years that use pretty much that identical language.
So get straight on this: Online and offline, your prospect is never in a place where he can — or wants to — sit back and listen to you ramble.
Both pitches and products should be as long as necessary to deliver what is needed for your prospect or customer to get the desired result. So, yes, I still write very long emails, Web site copy, and print ads… but they never RAMBLE.
And I present very long workshop seminars, teleconferences and Web conferences. And this “never ramble” tactic is the key to making them all work.
It may require some time to make your point… but in all cases, you still need to GET to your point immediately. And stay there, without wandering off on tangents.
Even long-copy ads — when done right — deliver bite-sized chunks of info… tied together in fascinating ways that ensure your reader stays with you. (The “Bucket Brigade” technique of holding interest.)
But you do not want to overwhelm him with stuff. Give him a little bit of info, help him digest it… and smoothly segue to the next bit of info. Navigating your reader through a pitch (or the info in your product) is very much like running along uneven terrain.
Consider how you would run along a mountain trail next to a river. Lots of rocks, gopher holes, tree stumps, puddles… you can’t rush mindlessly headlong toward your destination, or you’ll quickly stumble.
You can still move quickly… but you’ve got to pay attention to each step.
In copy, each chunk of new info is a step. Present your point, make your point, tamp it down in your reader’s brain… and then smoothly transition to the next point.
That’s the key to making long copy work.
So when you create audio — which is just “spoken” copy — that you suspect (or know) is going to be consumed in the car… don’t construct elaborate arguments or points that require long-term memory. (The all-too-common “I’ll get back to that in a minute… but first, I want to tell you about…” tactic is a sure sign you’re dealing with a rookie copywriter.)
When you deliver your material in short, digestible chunks, you can go on for hours and never “lose” your listener. This is how master communicators command attention fro long periods.
The commuting culture — which ain’t going away anytime soon — is a target audience that hasn’t been fully tapped. These are people who are ripe for certain products and services… if only the info can be delivered in a way that doesn’t make their brains bleed.
Commuters listen to books, and sometimes attempt to learn foreign languages. There’s no reason why they can’t consume your info product, too… or listen to your pitch.
Here’s a nice exercise to do in your spare time: Consider all the products that could be put on audio for consumption in the car (or on an iPod during a train ride).
Audio is different than reading… but the tactics for delivering content are the same.
Okay, I gotta go pack.
Stay frosty.
John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com
How To Reach Gary’s Family Directly
First, I want to thank everyone who posted a comment here about Gary Halbert. The outpouring of admiration and respect is a wonderful thing to behold. I read every single post, recognized many of you, and deeply appreciate everyone taking the time to write something.
Second… while the shock of Gary’s passing hasn’t faded much, there are pressing matters to attend to.
Gary’s son Kevin asked me to write a short post for Gary’s newsletter site, explaining a few things. I won’t go over the same material here — just go to this URL and see what’s up:
I urge anyone who wanted to personally say something to Gary’s family to use the email contact provided there. And, if you think you might want to attend the upcoming memorial service, use the “RSVP” sign-in list to get more information.
Thanks again.
John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com
The Sweet Spot of Success
Hope you’re having a swell weekend.
It’s a working weekend for me… but I will “owe” myself the time back later, doing something fun and not work-related.
Because success sucks if you can’t enjoy it.
I’ve experienced burn-out a couple of times in my long career… and eventually learned both how to spot the oncoming symptoms, and take corrective measures to get back in the groove (where I work hard and play hard and get maximum bliss from the entire process).
There’s a sweet spot you can find where you can’t wait to get back into the office each workday, and also can’t wait for the fun days to arrive. You are totally absorbed in everything you do (and not thinking about work when you play, or wishing you were playing when you’re at your desk).
Not very many entrepreneurs or small biz owners attain this Zen state of functional bliss. They get sucked into working (and thinking about work) 24/7, and fry their cerebral cortex to a cinder. (Hint: If drinking yourself into oblivion is your primary way of relaxing, you’re toasting yourself.)
On the other hand, the vast crowd of wannabe’s who just can’t seem to get started tend to give playtime higher priority than work, and get stuck in the shadowy world of unfulfilled ambition and wasted dreams.
Most of the “mega-successful” marketers I know are workaholics. Some of these guys hit the office before dawn and don’t leave until Jay Leno’s on. It’s hell going up against these beasts, if you’re competing, because they will crush you with the sheer volume of hours they put in.
Until they crisp-out, that is. Every single workaholic I’ve known has, sooner or later, hit a wall and crashed. They’ll earn millions, lose millions, pile up the divorces, and plow through health kicks in futile attempts to recharge their damaged batteries.
No thanks.
If you’re competing against workaholics, there are plenty of sneaky tricks to beat them without matching their self-destructive ways. One is to just give ’em enough rope to hang themselves — simply by maintaining yourself in a healthy groove that is productive enough to stay even remotely competitive, while enjoying life to the max, you can outlast them over the long haul.
I don’t have scientific studies to back this up, but my experience has been that workaholics have at most a two-year cycle — two years of kicking ass, followed by two years of grief and collapse. That cycle can be as short as six months, too.
None of them escape the Reaper.
Another tactic is to just never go up against them. Go around them, instead. No matter how hard they work, they can’t keep a too-broad USP (unique selling position) covered completely. There will always be vulnerable areas… and that’s where relaxed and focused marketers can smoothly walk in and exploit exhausted competitors.
That sweet spot is really sort of a controlled obsession. While you’re working, you’re riveted on work, just like the workaholic.
The difference is… you set up your business so it won’t collapse when you take time off. And then you take full advantage of that, and take time off.
And stay riveted on having fun.
It’s not a place you get to accidentally — you must decide it’s where you want to be, and then create a plan to get there.
And stay there. Easy to fall out of the sweet spot.
Most marketers bounce back and forth — too much work for a while, followed by a depressed reluctance to work, interspersed by attempts to take time off without good planning.
I just want to remind you that the sweet spot exists, and it’s available to anyone who wants it. You must learn to channel your passions, so they don’t contaminate each other. When you’re working, you work hard — set and meet deadlines, and schedule everything as realistically as possible. (This takes practice.) When you play, you do the same thing.
I knew a professional coach who specialized in the medical field, where burn-out starts immediately in a career. Every client he had was frazzled, stuck on a treadmill, and working too hard to make any real money.
And one of the first things this coach forced each client to do… was to set up one short vacation every month. Could be just a weekend, but it had to be a real vacation — go somewhere and do something. Laying on a beach drinking Mai-Tai’s didn’t count. Educational jaunts were the best — get your mind working, hard, in another direction.
Nearly all his clients, at first, were appalled. They hadn’t taken any vacation at all in years… and the concept of one a month was terrifying.
This tactic works like a magic elixir, though. It’s a good mix of work and play, and the definitiveness of the monthly get-away not only restores your mental energy… it also allows you to work as hard as you need to, knowing there’s a wonderful break just ahead to recharge the batteries.
Success has never been about piling up cash. Right now, I know half a dozen people who are in serious health situations… and they would gladly give away every penny they have to be back in their prime.
It’s not just a cliche. You only get one go-around in life, with no reset button. And from personal experience, I can tell you the best groove to be in involves lots of productive work, coupled with excruciatingly-fun breaks.
Settle for half the money, if it means twice the enjoyment of life. Even the grandest of goals shouldn’t require the sacrifice of your will to live.
Now, go outside and play.
Stay frosty…
John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com
Why Clueless Marketers Are Terrified Of The Web
If you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner… and you’ve been earning a few bucks online using any of the tactics you’ve learned from me (or any of the other veteran marketers online)… then pat yourself on the back.
You’re doing something that many “mainstream” businesses haven’t yet figured out how to pull off.
And… if they continue to ignore the basics of direct selling (which you’re taking for granted as necessary for profits)… they won’t be “mainstream” much longer.
They’ll be extinct.
Bye bye.
Here’s what I’m talking about: The Web has “officially” become the Number One source for advertising for many of the culture’s biggest advertisers — a year earlier than predicted. Gazillions of bucks that used to be channeled through “traditional” media (newspapers, magazines, direct mail, television, radio, etc) have now been measurably diverted online.
For the people who keep track of this sort of info, this news is astonishing and troubling (if not unexpected).
The entire foundation of our capitalistic economy is shifting, and most of the former movers and shakers simply are not prepared for the change.
The obvious signs of upheaval are the disappearance of entire market segments. Like most of the music-selling stores (Tower, Wherehouse, your favorite former local hipster CD haunt).
Less obvious is the way the Web has changed profit margins in markets like new cars — buyers are walking onto lots armed with reams of research on price… and they’re totally hip to ALL the old fall-back upsell tactics. (The last time we bought a new car, we had the salesman literally in tears as every one of his price-raising schemes was shot down… and none of the “invisible” tack-ons made it through the sale. Because of their stubborn reliance on scamster-style price boosts, we figuratively stole that car from them.)
Currently in the news — ironically — is the plight of the daily newspaper.
And there’s a lesson here for all of us. A basic lesson in fundamentals.
Harken: Nearly every newspaper in America now has an online presence. They’re working out the kinks of suddenly having the ability to cover stories in real time (which changes the very nature of reporting and writing stories)… with varying degrees of success.
The local paper here in Reno actually has a great site. Many of the national papers — like the New York Times — could pick up a few good tips from www.rgj.com, in fact.
Yet, nearly all newspapers (both locally owned and chain-owned) have the same complaint: They still aren’t able to turn a profit providing an online product.
And, if you have any entrepreneurial chops at all, you gotta be shaking your head in wonder.
The NY Times, for example, gets millions of hits each week. Millions. And then more millions. They are connected to thousands of other sites who link to them — blogs, other news channels, e-zines… it’s a network of feeds to die for.
And they COMPLAIN about not being able to make a profit?
Anyone with a drop of salesman’s blood in their veins has got ot ask: “What’s the friggin’ PROBLEM?”
I work with entrepreneurs and small business who earn fortunes with a flow of traffic that wouldn’t even be a ripple in the NY Times readership. Not even a tiny little splash.
What would YOU do, if you suddenly had access to millions of hits… all spending oodles of time on your site, reading and paying attention?
You’d… um… sell something.
No brainer, right?
Not to the brain-clogged morons running the show at those big sites.
Go take a look at the ads running on any of the big newspaper sites. Pathetic.
I chose one banner ad, at random. Lots of real estate taken up, nestled next to a riveting front page crammed with content… and the advertiser has a nice photo of a shoe, with some tiny, tiny, tiny printing saying “Introducing the Spring 2007 Collection”.
That’s it, my friend. Shoe, five words. No obvious link.
I ran my cursor over the space until I discovered a link… the designer did a great job hiding it… and I was whisked to a site with a bigger photo of some nice wingtips… the words “distinction being noticed without standing out” (sic), a link “View the spring collection”, and the logo: Allen Edmonds.
Pretty much it. Oh, wait. Six-point type links (all delicately lower-case) that look like border designs: “about allen-edmonds”… “”store locator”… “contact us”… and a Search box.
I spent ten minutes navigating this site, seeking out the secret entrances to something even remotely like a page SELLING something.
And hey — if you’re stubborn about it, you can actually find a way to buy a pair of shoes.
But you better have some time on your hands. And really, really, really want those shoes… cuz buying them isn’t easy.
The insanity of all this is clear: The advertisers shelling out for banner space at the newspapers don’t know how to sell online… and the newspapers aren’t clued-in enough to help them.
The blind leading the blind.
Were I running the advertising department of the Times (I shudder at the thought), I would first get hip to what entrepreneurs are doing to actually SELL stuff online… and then I would help educate my advertisers to the same tactics.
Because, if they learn to sell stuff… and keep track, and see the results of putting their ads in front of millions of eyes riveted to the content of the newspaper… they will see the very great advantages of buying up banner ad space there. And become repeat clients, willing to pay lots of money for that banner.
Clueless, they get to continue to ignore the Web. “We tried advertising online. It does’t work.”
Well, yeah. Because your online ads SUCK.
This is horrible news for big-name advertisers. To really succeed, they’ll have to killl everyone in their marketing department, and somehow replace them with new people who are hip to selling online… and good luck to ’em on that quest.
Because they’ll continue to rely on Madison Avenue ad agencies for their ads… not realizing that few folks at Mad Ave have a clue what to do.
This is great news for entrepreneurs and small business owners online, of course. Because you are on equal footing with everyone else online, more or less. You may not have the big fancy store in downtown Manhattan, and you may not have any staff at all (let alone a marketing department)… but online, your ad can outsell the Big Guys by vast margins.
Because you know how to sell.
The Web is getting crowded. But classic salesmanship still rules the roost (as it forever will).
While traditional businesses — used to being bullies and dominating their market by sheer size and access to advertising media — stumble and flail impotently online… you can enjoy all the low-hanging fruit still out there.
The way people buy things is changing, fast.
But people still buy things.
It’s just a great time to be selling online. I do hope the NY Times gets its act together, and doesn’t fold for lack of understanding the nature of commerce on the Web.
But I’m not holding my breath, either.
Keep paying attention to the basics of classic salesmanship. All the noise about “new” ways to sell online is coming (mostly) from marketers engaging in fantasy play. The large ad agencies still can’t sell their way out of a wet paper bag. Don’t listen to ’em.
“Introducing the Spring Collection”, indeed. Those kinds of all-attitude/sales-phobic tactics — beloved by clueless marketers with zero salesmanship chops — will murder a whole bunch of businesses trying to make it online before the traditionalists give it up and start paying more attention to the way entrepreneurs do it right.
But the food chain is pretty thick with cluelessness right now.
We live in interesting times.
Stay frosty…
John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com
P.S. I got on this kick today because I was just interviewed by Garrett Sutton (one of the Rich Dad/ Poor Dad authors) for his e-radio show on www.wsradio.com… and we were talking about classic salesmanship tactics.
I can go off for hours on every part of a good sales pitch — the hook, the close, the take-away, urgency, credentials, whatever. It’s just second-nature to me, after all these years of crafting killer pitches.
And yet, it’s still amazing news to “sales rookies”. Even the fundamental drop-dead basics are a revelation.
Something to remember, as you keep testing and improving your sites. Don’t be afraid of going after large market niches seemingly dominated by traditional bullies. Check out their sales tactics… and if they suck, maybe you’re the guy to teach them a lesson.
The End Of Civilization As We Know It
When my father was drafted during World War II and dumped in Belgium just in time for the Battle of the Bulge, my mother and his first two kids (I wasn’t a glimmer in his eye yet) waited days for even a hint of news about the war… and waited months for letters from Pop himself.
The news came in painfully slow trickles. First rumors, then snatches of broadcast bulletins on the radio, then a newspaper story that may or not have been accurate… and in none of this was even a prayer for specific news from or about Pop.
That kind of no-news existence is just hard to imagine now. Online, I can watch stories develop just by refreshing my Google homepage — really hot news is updated constantly, within minutes of dramatic fresh input.
Heck, I can see minutes-old footage of events on YouTube, and read real-time blogs from every corner of the English-speaking world.
The delivery, consumption, and digesting of news has done changed in radical ways.
We all knew the Web was gonna morph our reality into something new… but even a year or so ago, most prognosticators believed we had some inkling of what the brave new world might look like.
Forget about it, now. All bets are off, all predictions inoperable.
No one knows what’s in store.
Least of all the news organizations we call “mainstream media”.
The fate of newspapers is interesting to me… both because I grew up loving my daily dose of whatever local rag served the town I was living in… and because the culture of the news junkie was well-defined. (And I have been a news junkie since I was old enough to read.)
We knew what was going on in the world, and we read enough varied takes on events to form an independent opinion.
It’s one thing to embrace the world and enjoy adventures… but it’s another thing to seek to also “know” the world while you plow through the decades.
Like the guys selling horse-drawn buggies 100 years ago, refusing to realize the exploding market share the automobile was gobbling up… mainstream newspapers have been slow to give the Internet credibility for news disperal.
I think local papers will survive in some form (probably mostly online, though)… because communities need a central clearing house for local news.
But it’s gonna be a painful transition. Because newspapers are owned by techno-phobes who regard online existence as some unknowable alien universe… and they just cannot, for the life of them, figure out how to make it profitable.
Please. The shake-out will produce a good alternative to the daily tree-killing newspaper… but not until the old diehard newsmen wander away, and news-dispensing organizations learn how to incorporate what entrepreneurs already know about making money online. (Right now, most newspapers see their online versions as “newspapers without paper”… but the old model of selling classifieds and department store inserts for profit don’t work online. The guy selling his 1998 Honda Accord is now on eBay and Craigslist, and the department stores that are surviving have gotten hip to email blasts and list building. Oops.)
The local paper here in Reno actually has a pretty damn good Website — and I now go there first when I need accurate weather news (important when you live in the bosom of the Sierras in winter), and also whenever I see a fresh plume of smoke wafting up from the valley floor, or hear sirens close by. (Every once in a while, I’ll sip my nightly beer while watching traffic cams around the city — real-time views of mostly routine intersections, with the occasion reward of getting to watch a three-car pile-up as it happens. Voyeur heaven.)
However, no one knows exactly what the newspaper will look like in the very near future.
This matters to marketers, very much. As the affiliate world grows ever more incestuous, and competition for pay-per-click gets nasty (not to mention the gruesome, unpredictable and never-ending rule-changes by the Google Gods), the “old” ways of reaching prospects (by finding out where the eyeballs gather) will start to look attractive again.
Soon, too.
I know of several top marketers who aren’t using PPC at all anymore. They use banner ads on sites that attract the kind of prospect they desire, as well as Hartunian-style PR releases and the cultivation of “go to guy” status in online communities that thrive on — yes — breaking news.
So it’s probably time for savvy entrepreneurs to start paying closer attention to where people-with-money are going for decent-length visits and multiple page-views. (Not ADD surfers bouncing off sites like a pinball.) (You young-uns know what a pinball game is, right? They still have those, down at the arcade? Jeez, I haven’t played a game that wasn’t virtual in years…)
Anyway…
One of the strongest players in the “new” news game was also one of the first on the scene. I don’t think much of Drudge, the man (his radio show is incoherent, and his obsession with Walter Winchell is creepy)… but his newsy “bulletin board” site, www.drudgereport.com, has ruled the roost for years.
With the same college-dorm quickie design format he pioneered in the late 90s. It looks awful. But it gets the hits.
As a news junkie, I visit Drudge everyday… mostly to get the right-wing spin on developing stories. I’m an independent who likes to watch the wingnut fights… I get my left-wing spin from www.huffingtonpost.com, and then check the somewhat middle-of-the-road Wall Street Journal subscription site (one publication that seems to have discovered how to be profitable online), the MSN daily e-mag Slate.com, and then a bunch of newspapers across the world.
But Drudge is always the first stop.
He doesn’t write ANYTHING for the site… except to rehash the headlines of certain stories he’s pitching. He has a staff who combs the world’s media centers for print and broadcast news, and offers up simple links to those sites.
That’s it. He’s a bulletin board.
And yet he has earned frontpage stories in the Washington Post and New York Times, and been called “the future of journalism”. Why? Because, as simple as his site is, he gets something like 15million visits a day. While the Post sells 5 million tree-killing newspapers a day, and pretty much has no clue how many people really read its Website.
So it’s more likely that mainstream media will begin to look more like Drudge, than the other way around.
Never visited the site?
This is why I’m writing about it: I don’t care if you visit it, or if you like it or hate it.
As a marketer, you’ve GOT to pay attention to the way it’s morphing the Zeitgeist of our culture.
You can get links to the top stories there… and when, for example, Hurricane Katrina hit, you could read what local Louisiana media outlets (both print and broadcast) were saying. And compare that with linked stories from the Los Angeles Times and the International Herald-Tribune.
If you went to the Washingtom Post site, all you’d get was their reporter’s version, and maybe another view from the AP wire service.
But Drudge covers “newsy” stories almost reluctantly. Like most of the talking-head cable TV shows, he really got a boost from the OJ Simpson trial, the Monica-all-the-time-Lewinski scandal, and the never-ending trials and tribulations of the current political fiascos.
The site is like 3 completely different people sitting across from you at the family dinner table –your serious-minded friend, earnestly talking about famine, war and economic theory… trying to outtalk the gossipy aunt who has never heard a secret she isn’t eager to share and elaborate on… both vying against the weird cousin who follows all UFO conspiracies as steadfastly as he does the latest box office battles of Hollywood studios.
It’s the New York Times meets the Hollywood Reporter meets the National Enquirer.
And you know what? It’s friggin’ fascinating.
Here’s a sample of the headlines for stories Drudge had up a couple of days ago (while the Washington Post was thick with more serious news on more serious subjects):
“Probation For Man Who Had Sex With Dead Deer.”
“Private Rocket Lost Shortly After Launch.”
“Dating Site Courts Only The Good Looking.”
“McCain Warns Of Spreading Socialism.’
“Judge Pulls Gun In Florida Courtroom.”
“Dog Performs Heimlich Maneuver On Owner.”
“Wolfgang Puck Bans Foie Gras.”
“Mystery Rash Closes Ohio School.”
And yeah, I read ’em all.
Me, a busy, busy, busy professional (and hot prospect for many online marketers) with not much spare time to surf the Net.
And I will wait two minutes for the podunk Florida news site to download the video of the probation hearing of the guy who did the nasty with a dead deer.
We’ve all got to start exploring new ways to find our target audiences online, in situations where they aren’t zipping by in a panic.
Drudge doesn’t take much advertising (not sure why), and I’m not convinced his banner ads are efficient (because they change so frequently).
Still… the ancient desire of humans to want to hear more than rumors on breaking news (and gossip) will never fade.
Just tuck this fact away somewhere as you ponder future marketing moves (and while your email delivery rates continue to slide)…
Dead deer, indeed.
Stay frosty…
John Carlton
www.carltoncoaching.com