The thing is...

Why a #directmail letter is better than a #sales rep

From Siegried Vogele's "Handbook of Direct Mail"

"Paper actually does have certain advantages over a representative. It waits longer, it can be put to one side and picked up again later, it can be shown to someone else, can be read quickly or slowly, several times or simple filed away for later. But above all, it does not complain when we throw it in the waste paper basket if it annoys us or if we do not like what it says, or if it does not tell us anything we want to know. This conscious throwing away could even be seen as a sort of substitute handling of the otherwise unpleasant task of getting rid of an unwelcome representative."

The thing is...he's (often) right. But only if you know how to write the letter!

To drive change, define the problem FIRST

 

Recently a friend of mine completed a pretty good-sized renovation of his basement. 

It wasn’t a voluntary project; rather it was driven by some water issues he had down there.  For months he had various contractors visit and offer their solutions, each of which had a very expensive price tag, and none of which would have solved the water issues. 

And that’s because none of these well meaning contractors identified the source of the water.   They tried—“It’s ground water leaking in through the slab,” “It’s a leak in the heating system,” “You have an underground spring”—but they never got it.

In the end, the homeowner found the source (a minor plumbing issue) and was able to remediate the problem once and for all, more quickly and cheaply. 

The thing is… the water in the basement wasn’t the problem. 

It was a SYMPTOM of the problem.  The problem was the plumbing.  Fix the plumbing, the water goes away.

 

You see this in organizations all the time.  People identify something that presents as a problem, but it’s really just a symptom of it.  For instance, a client of mine came to me and said he a had problem with his website.  It was difficult to maintain, it didn’t reflect the company’s values and no one was using it.

Fixing a website these days is pretty easy, and I could have done it.  But the website wasn’t the problem.  It was only a symptom—albeit a very public and visual symptom.

 The problem, as it turned out, was a total lack of process and ownership over all communications channels.  

• No editorial work-flow
• Wrong people in the wrong jobs
• Lack of expertise
• No shared mission/vision/goals
• No oversight

 And the list goes on.

Guess what?  Not only were there problems with the website, there were problems with direct mail pieces, email distribution, list management and print advertising.   The staff was bickering because no one understood their role in the process.  You get the idea.

Once we exposed the problem, and got everyone to agree that we had identified it—measured by significant and persistent head-nodding—we began a process to fix it.   We will wind up addressing everything, rather than just the website.

Most problems have a solution, but you have to define the problem first.  Don’t mistake a symptom for the disease.

 

Make LinkedIn about your work, not about YOU

There is a tool for every job, and every job has a tool. 

You want to bang in a nail?  Grab a hammer.
You want to twist in a screw?   Grab the Phillips head screwdriver. 

But don’t ask the hammer to do a screwdriver’s job.  It won’t work.   It’s not good at it.  A hammer is great at hammer’s a job.  Ask it to do that, and it will deliver every time.

Same thing goes for marketing channels.  TV is good at certain jobs.  Search is good at certain jobs.  Display advertising is good at certain jobs.   Assign them the right jobs, and they will deliver every time.  Ask TV to do search’s job, however, and it will fail.

 Recently I didn’t listen to my own advice.  I asked a hammer to do a screwdriver’s job.  A very smart woman, Janice Waterman, who focuses on c-level career coaching in the areas of strategy, marketing, communications, and execution, helped me see the error of my ways.

You see, my so-called “killer app” has always been…me.  Whether it’s searching for my next consulting project, negotiating the price of a new car or helping a non-profit with organizational design, I know I can be most effective in person.  Get me in front of a group of people and I knock it out of the park (most of the time).

Knowing that, I used my LinkedIn profile to, in a sense, re-create ME.  It was written  in a conversational tone and conveyed information about my personality that I thought would help whomever viewed my profile get a feel for who I was, as though we were already in a face-to-face situation.

 

 

The thing is…that’s NOT LinkedIn’s job.  LinkedIn’s job is to display your WORK.

• The things you’ve done in your career. 
• The job’s you’ve had. 
• The companies you’ve worked for. 

 

It’s great at those jobs.  It’s not great at other jobs. So, I changed the profile.  Lesson (re) learned.  Thanks Janice.

 

If your client doesn't "get it" look in the mirror

In a recent interview on Techcrunch, Buddy Media co-founder Mike Lazerow (@lazerow) spoke about how insular the world of digital marketing and media is.  He's right, and that insularity is expressed everyday in the phrase:  They don't "get it."   The world of digital is divided into the "us" who get it and the "them" who don't.  Usually the agency is the "us" and the client is the "them" as in "Sigh, my client doesn't get it!"  Say the previous sentence with dramatic frustration.  It also applies to your boss who doesn't get it.

The thing is...If your client or your boss doesn't get it, look in the mirror.  It means you have failed.  Most likely you client doesn't get it for one of three reasons:

• You have not asked the right questions
• You have failed to explain it clearly
• You have not demonstrated it

So next time, instead of complaining to your colleagues, ask better questions, and then answer them clearly.  And then show them how to do it, whatever the "it" is.

Tackle the medium sized projects to be productive

Here's something I've come to realize.  There are three kinds of projects: small, medium and large.  The small ones are the ones that clearly you can do by yourself.  Such a project might be organizing the piles of paper on your desk.  The large projects are the ones that clearly you need a large team to complete.  Such a project might be launching a new product for your company.

The thing is...it's the medium projects...those are the hard ones to figure out.  You're not sure if you should tackle them yourself, or get others involved.  

• Sometimes you take on a project yourself and find out that, "Uh oh!  This project is bigger than I thought."  That wastes a ton of your time.
• Other times you get a team of folks involved and find out that, "Uh oh!  Too many chefs in the kitchen." That wastes a ton of everyone's time.

But when you take on that medium sized project that is just-a-little-too-big-for-you and get it done, you will have been truly productive.  And you will feel great about yourself.  

Likewise, when you get a small team of folks together to tackle that medium sized project that is just-a-little-too-small-to-get-the-whole-company-involved and get it done, you will have shown leadership. And others will feel great about you.

 

 

 

Bridges = Life

The other day I met my friend Mike LeBeau at his new company Weld Media.  

 

Weld is a new breed of digital agency that is focusing on driving consumers into bricks-and-mortar retail stores (see the “store back” concept from P&G).  I won’t reveal Weld’s secret sauce but their insights are driving them to a new concept called “path through purchase.”  Any CPG brand that wants a fresh look at how to leverage digital channels to drive in-store sales should contact Mike.

In his presentation, Mike positions his agency as a "bridge" between the virtual and physical worlds, as well as between two parts of a traditional CPG organization.  Since then, I've been thinking about bridges, both actual bridges and conceptual bridges.

The thing is…It seems to me that often we are focused the destination, and not how we get there. 

 A bridge not only helps us get from point A to point B, it can transform us in the process.  Anyone who has driven across the Golden Gate Bridge on a foggy summer day and gone through the Rainbow Tunnel into the glorious Marin sunshine knows what I mean.

 

Our world is full of bridges.  Here are a few. 

• Process is the bridge between creativity and art
• Strategy is the bridge between an idea and reality
• A plan is the bridge between the short term and the long term
• Getting engaged is the bridge between being single and being married
• Pregnancy is the bridge between an empty house and parenthood
• Life is the bridge between birth and death

 Don’t forget about the bridges.  They are important.  They are life.

 

The big secret: Marketing is still difficult, or what no one wants to admit about technology

So you are a company and you have 100 people in your audience.  By audience I mean all the people who are active customers, past customers, potential customers and those who are interested in your products and services.  Not everyone buys your stuff, at least not all the time.  Some people just really like your company and follow it in one way or another.  Other people are just browsing.

You'll find over time that the Pareto principle (sometimes described as the "80.20" rule) takes shape.  Only a small portion of your audience drives that vast majority of your revenue.   Let's say your version of the 80/20 rule is more like 75/25, meaning 25% of your audience generates 75% of your revenue.  In this case, those 25 people drive $75 in revenue.  

The big secret marketing is still difficult

View more presentations from David Levy.

 So, how do you grow?  There are really only two ways to do it (yes, I'm oversimplifying, but go with it). 

If you want to double that revenue, you can find another 100 similar people and it's pretty likely that, over time, you see that 25% will be your buyers.  For each new "set" of 100 people, you'll get another $75.  The key is to find a whole bunch of new "sets" of people.

Sometimes, this method of growth is called "scale."  That's the first way to grow.

The second way to grow is through "efficiency."  Efficiency means doing a better job of turning your current audience into buyers:  After all, the vast majority (75%) doesn’t buy your stuff.  That's a lot of waste.  To be more efficient you need to leverage data, insights, offers, promotions and other cross-sell and up-sell techniques to turn some of those non-buyers into buyers.  To double your revenue, you need to convert 25 of those slackers into buyers.  Now half the audience buys.  Ultimately, you have changed your own 75/25 rule into a 50/50 rule!  

Generally, scale is easier yet more expensive and wasteful.  Efficiency is more difficult yet more enduring and profitable.  Companies often have to choose between the two as a primary business strategy.  

Now into the conference room strides a group of white suited concepts designed to make you a better marketer, particularly if you are using digital channels such as search and display advertising to find those new audiences.  Each has a business card with a three letter acronym, including real time bidding (RTB), demand side platform (DSP), data management platform (DMP) and supply side platform (SSP). There are a lot of them, and they all come from this very scary place.

They have a great story to tell you.  They tell you that you no longer need to make the trade off between scale and efficiency.  You can get both quality and quantity.  All you need to do is let manage your digital media spend, or at least tag all your digital media and email, and maybe drive your off line media to a landing page and the technology will take care of the rest.

First, they'll help you better understand the buyers in your audience.  The technologies will look at what your buyers do on the web, add a whole bunch of third party data and ask some smart analysts, who will use still more technologies, to create a more accurate portrait of your buyers.  Once you understand your buyers better, you can use those insights to convert more of the NON-buyers to buyers (there are lots of ways to do this, such as email, re-targeting, etc.).  You will be more efficient!  You will change the 75/25 rule into 50/50.

Now, armed with that information, you can then go out and seek...people who look just like those buyers!!  You no longer need to spend your resources acquiring the mass of un-differentiated non-buying slackers. Instead, feed the technology machine with all that data, and allow it to bring in only those people who are more likely to purchase your stuff.  

But wait!  There's more. You can buy those "audiences" over and over and over and over and over again. Now, you are not only finding customers more efficiently, but you are finding them at scale.  VOILA!  No more trade offs necessary!! 

The thing is...it's not that simple.  Turns out, not all of those little niche audiences of buyers can achieve any meaningful scale.  At some point, and a lot sooner than we all thought, the ability to scale any individual audience tops out.  In other words, the technologies will help you better understand who your buyers are likely to be, but there are just not as many out there as we thought.

No technology will solve everything.  That's the big secret that no one will talk about, or at least we willfully forget when the conference room door opens.  We so desperately want our jobs to be easier that we hope, HOPE, that something will come along and be the magic potion.  But it doesn't exist.

Make sure you, and your agencies understand this.  And be very skeptical of any technology vendor that oversells its value.

By the way, one company, [x +1], is owning up to the limits of these technologies.  At a recent conference, they went through a case study of how they have helped a client address the situation.  

So now what?

Well that's where it gets interesting, meaning you just are going to have to think a bit harder. 

• You are going to have to incorporate these technologies into your marketing mix, but you can't rely on them totally.  
• You are going to need to investigate other technologies that will help you better manage your upfront awareness (i.e. CPM/scale media) so you can keep finding new people, whether or not they are exactly the "buyers" you are looking for.
• You may have to live with your 75/25 rule for a while
• You need to beef up your CRM efforts and your creative to make sure you are talking to your customers, and listening to your customers in a way that best meets their needs
• You need to incorporate other buying tactics into your media plans (such as cost-per-engagement, cost-per-action) to help generate ROI throughout the purchase process
• You are going to have to get social
• You are going to have to experiment with mobile
• You are going to have to test advertising on the iPad, and other tablets

Wherever your consumers are, and however they interact with your company, you will need to be there.

Make no mistake.  It's not going to be easy, but it will be fun.

 

If you're not listening, you won't hear

This was sent to me today.  While it's ostensibly a social experiment, this story also gets to a key aspect of storytelling, namely that it doesn't matter how great you are, if no one is prepared to listen, no one will hear. 

The thing is...To put it into a marketing context, a great story, any great content, any advertisement, when delivered through the wrong channel and to the wrong audience just DOES NOT work. 

The summary appears below.  But click through to the story to see the video feed.

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

 

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to  walk.

 

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work. The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time.

 

This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on. In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished  playing and silence took over, no one noticed it.

 

No one applauded, nor was there any recognition. No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, tickets for Joshua  Bell's performance at a theater in Boston were sold out and the seats averaged $100.

 

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we  perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context? One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing???

Business maxim: To get someone’s attention, ask for money in the budget

I learned this lesson while I was at Reader’s Digest many years ago.  We were building the Reader’s Digest web business called “Reader’s Digest World,” which included content from the book division, the magazine and the search engine LookSmart (remember that!). The site looks a lot different now.  

I was the lead editor responsible for bringing the US edition of the magazine online.  Jack Smith, now the CMO at Medco Health, was in charge of the newly created TV and New Media Department and had ultimate oversight over RDWorld.  

There were a lot of moving parts in this venture and most of us were just figuring it out as we went along.  But I was having a tough time getting Jack’s approval on some original content for the magazine, specifically a monthly column by the movie critic Michael Medved.  Days, weeks went by and I just couldn’t get on Jack’s calendar. 

So I went ahead and negotiated a rate with Medved, with the total proposal coming in at upwards of $75,000 per year.  I had a feeling that Jack wouldn’t go for it.

Nonetheless, I shot the details to him in an email.  Mere minutes later—and I mean maybe 5 minutes—Jack walked down to my office and asked, “David, do you have a few minutes?”  

The thing is...Asking for that money was my way of communicating that I was a serious person and I had serious ideas.  I meant business. 

During that meeting, Jack and I went over the content strategy for the magazine and how I planned to keep the site fresh over the course of the next year.  Medved was out, but a lot of other stuff was in.

Jack listened and treated me with respect.  He took my ideas and me seriously.

You can work in a place for a very long time before anyone notices.  Try to spend someone’s money, though, and your phone will ring.

Thanks for the lesson Jack.

Don't SPAM me just because I'm looking for work

One of the downsides of conducting an intensive job search through social media and online job resources such as The Ladders and Monster is you have to expose a lot of personal information to attract employers and recruiters.  There's an explicit and implicit value exchange I am making.  I give you some information about me, you let me know who you are and if you have a job for me.  I get it.  Such are the risks of living on grid. 

The things is...there are those who abuse the access they have been given to my email address, namely employers and recruiters who generate trigger emails based on certain keywords in my profile.  Whether it's my location, my education or some aspect of my experience, keyword search engine algorithms are filling up my inbox with very obviously impersonal messages to me asking me to take on careers that are not even close to a fit.

So to save everyone some time, let me articulate some things that I don't want to do (kind of like that questionnaire at the end of the Actor's Studio).  I do NOT want to be: 

• A Life Coach - No offense to the profession (my sister is a coach) but I want to do a spot more living before I coach others
• An insurance salesman - Plenty of people do it for a living.  Just not me.
• A "lazy Google" millionaire -  I have no real problems with this job description.  I'm a little skeptical to say the least
• A stay at home copywriter for a womens' website -  Is that it?  You've asked all the people out there who are actually qualified to do this job and they've all turned you down?  Really?

And, finally, any job that is clearly irrelevant to who I am. 

A brief profile of who I really am is here.

Here is my original job search post.