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Marketing Is NOT About Relationships

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A Couple Walking Across the LawnDevelop a relationship. Don’t propose on the first date. Relationships take time.

You talk about relationships as a marketer. You use the same words and clichés. However, you don’t really mean a relationship.

You won’t take a walk in the park with me because we enjoy spending time together and share what we did today just because we want each other to know.

What do businesses really mean when they talk about relationships and what is marketing’s place in those relationships with clients, prospects and the marketplace at large? [Read more…]

Not Just Automation, Marketing Needs REAL Conversation

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Create a personalized dialogue with each prospect at every point in the sales process!

This sounds like a pitch for marketing automation. While the result is valuable, it is not a dialogue. Here are some of the characteristics of this “dialogue” marketing has created with automation:

  • Most of the audience response is a click and inferred consumption. In mass it is a valuable indicator but it isn’t a valuable individual response (Scott Brinker discussed this at Insights from the explosion of marketing touchpoints)
  • It is based on well educated guesses about what information someone needs next, not answering a specific question or need.
  • It is designed to replace the conversation that once happened directly between sales and a potential new prospect.

Real conversations need to come back into marketing communications. [Read more…]

Is Free Costing You Your Social Media Reputation?

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Advertised Price: Free. Real Price: Your Reputation and Influence.

How much will you pay for a service that saves you time in social media? Judging by the $1 to $10 per month price tags for a number of tools, outside of business accounts, it isn’t very much. However, increasingly companies are asking us to pay by promoting their products and services to our connections.

A number of tools and services are available for the cost of social promotion. I can imagine the mindset of those creating these tools:

  • Create word of mouth support for our offering.
  • Drive traffic and increase our advertising revenue.
  • Expand our user base and increase opportunity for a big cash out.

The challenge is, required sharing does not create credible word of mouth. Paper.li and TrueTwit are both illustrations of the problems that arise when companies require promotion to your connections. [Read more…]

Social Media Is Not Like Selling Used Cars

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What makes you think you have a solution?

MustacheLast week I overheard a conversation about a technical roadblock between colleagues. I immediately jumped in with a solution. Big #FAIL. They did not want a solution from me, and as it turned out, I didn’t actually have a solution. The problem was way over my head.

Luckily, we are friends, or at least colleagues. This wasn’t my first conversation with them. But if we didn’t already know each other, this would be one of the worst ways to introduce myself. Yet this is exactly what social media marketers do every day.

[Read more…]