Jon Ward's Blog

Categorical Confusion

2007-12-05T08:58:00.000-08:00

The term “internet marketing” has become synonymous with a vociferous community of people trying to make a buck by selling stuff – usually digital products – online.

There’s a whole breed of gurus who will tell you how to do this. Some of them have great content and convincing methodologies. What you might miss amongst all this noise is that “internet marketing” represents a tiny part of the internet’s marketing function.

Most businesses are not selling product online, and certainly not selling information products. Most businesses are still bricks-and-mortar, flesh-and-blood operations offering physical products or delivering tangible services.

For them “internet marketing” has – or should have – a totally different meaning. The simplest formulation would be “online lead generation.” For the majority of business owners, the internet is one of several tools for attracting potential customers.

Working with clients, I always distinguish between leads (just names and contact information ) and prospects (leads who have raised their hands and expressed an interest). In any business you can think of, the internet is a powerful tool both to generate leads and to transform them into prospects. In most cases, the actual selling will happen offline — in a store, office or home.

The phrase “internet marketing” has been so successfully commandeered by the digital product gurus, we need a new term for the majority who use the internet as a business development tool.

I’m still looking for that phrase. Any ideas?

Branding Demystified

2007-11-01T09:35:00.000-07:00

With James Burgin, I presented the concept of social branding to some 550 enthusiastic participants in T. Harv Eker’s World’s Greatest Marketing Seminar. The gist of our story: (1) social media is the huge new opportunity in growing a small business brand and (2) you need a brand strategy to make it work for you.

The positive reception was overwhelming, and it would be nice to claim all that credit for our dazzling presentation skills. A quick reality check is in order. Our audience comprised entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs, and they are hungry for a missing link. They know branding matters — that in fact it’s the key to consistent sales. What they don’t know is how to put a successful brand together.

The problem is that most online chatter about brand strategy, like most books on the subject, focuses on the behemoths: McDonalds, Target, Apple, etc. There are lessons to be learned from the giants, but not without a great effort of translation. For your 3-person software start-up, you can’t just cut and paste a repositioning exercise by Wall-Mart. Much better to construct your small-business brand from the ground up, using principles tailored for the entrepreneur. But this takes system, and where is that to be found?

For some years, I’ve used my own brand strategy process for coaching entrepreneurial clients and it hasn’t failed me yet. Now I’ve made a commitment to get that process into the hands of more business owners.

My prediction: the topic of “small business brands” will be a growing focus of interest in the coming months and years.

The Power of Pips

2007-10-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

Back to the blog! With my good friend James Burgin I have been invited to speak this month at an event hosted by wealth guru T. Harv Eker. As of now we’ve decided to focus on what we call “social branding.” We mean branding for participants in the social media that have taken over the world in (what feels like) the past 24 hours. One idea I’ll be exploring is “pips”, which I get from bird droppings.

The thing about birds is they fly about eating stuff and then poop the seeds all over the place, making new things grow. I realize the metaphor is a bit unsavory — but it can hardly be worse than “viral marketing” (Here, catch my new disease…). And I think it’s more precise, because you can actually design the fruit — tasty information-stuff — and embed it with the tiny seedlings you wish to spread through your market.

So what is a pip? Very simply, it’s a neat idea that you come up with (or commandeer) and feed into the prevailing conversation. In other words, a pip is your Personal Intellectual Property. To me the value of thinking in pips is that it accelerates the conventional approach to messaging: you deal with messages that are more compressed, less permanent, and more easily disseminated by word of mouth. So next time you sit down to write a blog, email blast, or even old-fashioned ad, think pips.

I just realized I should offer you an example. Well how about… pip?

Propose to Close

2007-03-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

Looking back over the past two or three years' activities, I realize I am closing around 90% of my consulting proposals. So perhaps I know something useful about writing these documents. Here in brief is what I have learned. All of these points could be summarized under the same familiar marketing axiom: "It's Not About You." When the client reads your proposal, they should be reading all about themselves, not about you.

Here are a few principles that seem to work for me:

Clients are more interested in their business than your business.
Clients are more impressed by what they have to say than what you have to say.
Regarding your strengths, if you can't demonstrate them, don't talk about them.
Regarding your strengths, if you can demonstrate them, you don't need to talk about them.

Perhaps it's because I'm British, but I have a real problem saying "Here are six reasons why I'm the best." I know that preening one's feathers is a normal part of the American business dance, but the mental response -- conscious or subconscious -- is bound to be: "Well you would say that, wouldn't you.?"

Here's a different approach. Take a moment to check your assets. Outstanding customer service? Commitment to excellence? Exceptional knowledge of your field? Prompt and courteous communications? A ready understanding of the client's business? Whatever they are, you have opportunities to demonstrate these at every step of the sales process by how you actually function. The client will get the point, and you can take your strengths as read.

So what should the proposal focus on? Two things: What the client's needs are and how you are going to meet them. Simple but very powerful! A large part of any proposal I write comes under a heading: "What we have learned so far." In this I not only set the stage for selling my solution, I also demonstrate that I am a very, very good listener. Clients love this. When it comes to the how I provide a standard map of my consulting process, embedded throughout with direct references to the client's business. This process map demonstrates that I have unusual expertise and a uniquely effective system. So I don't need to say so.

My proposals are consulting documents with a price attached. They begin the job before the client has said yes. In other words, the way to propose is an assumptive close.

You Mean We Have To DO Something?

2006-08-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

I’m a strategist. I make plans for other people’s businesses. Plans for their brands, their marketing, their web sites, their information products… And I’ve discovered a simple truth, which should have been obvious to me a long time ago. Everyone loves a good strategy, and no one wants to implement it. The strategy is a story about a glorious new future -- full of promise, supported by powerful logic and clear ideas. Implementation is a chore. Worse than that, implementation demands decision, risk and change: the three demons everyone resists. I can’t think of a single business person I know who doesn’t resist getting into action, and to avoid any confusion here, I’d put myself top of the list.

It’s a fascinating study in one of the fundamentals of human chemistry. I have clients of every shape, size, age, gender, history and scale of business. They all balk at the doing part, ex-Marine Corps officers included. I don't mean people are lazy. On the contrary, business people are the busiest people in the world. But busy with what? Short answer: doing what they've done before. The trouble with a good strategy is that it demands taking action into the unknown, which we all like to dream about but rarely want to experience. What’s the solution? If I really knew, I wouldn’t be worrying about clients. I’d be a multi-trillionaire.

Meanwhile, here are two resources that have helped me: Steven Pressfield’s wonderful book, The War of Art, doesn’t really give you any tools to work with (unless you count a daily prayer to your muse), but his intimate description of the wiles and snares of resistance is so chillingly accurate, you feel like he is perched on your desk watching you work (or pretend to). More practical are the processes and trainings created by Dr. Stephanie Burns, who has researched the problem as thoroughly as anyone I know, and leaves most “motivators” standing in the dust. Check her out at stephanieburns.com

The Myth of Competition

2006-08-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

Returning to this blog after a long hiatus, here are some brief musings on competition.

I was on the phone today with the founder of a fabulous new publishing house (and new concept in publishing). When I asked him about competition, he said he used Jay Levinson's principle: instead of beating the competition, get them to join you. He has created a fascinating affiliate system that enrolls small publishers who might otherwise be competitors. His instinct pulls him away from the classic warrior stance on competition. And he is becoming hugely successful.

Let's take this further. Here is a rather bizarre thought about your competition: You don't have any.

Let me explain by citing an old saw from the real estate market: "Every house has a buyer." Extending this little piece of wisdom suggests that somewhere in the universe are exactly the right customers for your product. Those customers belong to you. The ones who buy the other product just aren't your customers — they belong to someone else. Your task is not to fight off the competition. It's to put out a clear signal and call in your rightful customers.

Another example. Dating sites like eHarmony could be viewed as a ferocious auction, where potential partners duke it out with competing wooers of the same sex. You place yourself in the shop window and wag your tail, hoping that it's you who'll be taken home — and not that prissy little puppy in the next pen. Of course, everyone knows that romance doesn't work like that. We don't get picked out like a salad in a deli. We fetch up with the one we're with, against all odds, because that's how it is meant to be. Some invisible law of connection brings us together. The only requirement is to show up.

So here's a (to me) new way of framing marketing: It's not about beating the competition. It's about making yourself known to the people who are anyway destined for your product. Just show up.

Story Time

2006-06-09T17:21:00.000-07:00

Nice to see Seth Godin — one of the great marketing originals — writing in a recent edition of the progressive magazine Ode. His theme: how marketing can save (or destroy) the world. His premise: stories are powerful, and modern marketing amplifies this ancient power beyond measure.

Seth appeals to us marketers to exercise a little conscience about what we say, and how. He points out that bad stories have killed more people than nuclear weapons, and he bemoans the cynicism of those who hide behind a "free market" ethos to justify lying to the public.

For a marketer, the issue is not so much the story as the client. If you pick cynical clients, you will get paid to lie. In this respect, I consider myself blessed. For a long time I have attracted clients with decent values at the worst, and at the best, extraordinary vision.

The very idea of marketing gets associated with dishonesty. We tend to assume marketers make things look better than they are. Isn't that their job? Funnily enough, I often find that my clients' truth is actually better than appearances. "If only they knew..." these frustrated entrepreneurs lament about their non-buying prospects.

For example, I've been advising a little school that provides child-centered education for toddlers and up. The local parents tend to see it as a high-class baby minding service, when in reality the school is giving its miniature students extraordinary tools for social, emotional and cognitive development.

In that situation, you have to know what every therapist knows: the difference between want and need. In principle, the trick is to meet people in what they want, and lead them to what they need. No bait and switch here — we don't have to risk Seth Godin's ire! It's about framing the story in terms that resonate, creating an emotional environment where new ideas can take root and flourish.

Great storytellers not only speak to their audience, they listen, too. And it's the listening that makes the story sing.

Here meanwhile are Seth's nine principles (abbreviated) for succesful story telling . Great stories, he says:

1. Are true
2. Make a promise
3. Are trusted
4. Are subtle
5. Happen fast
6. Appeal to our senses
7. Are rarely aimed at everyone
8. Don't contradict themselves
9. Agree with our world view

Uncountable Values

2006-06-04T18:36:00.000-07:00

Caught a few moments of futurist Alvin Toffler talking to Newt Gingrich on my favorite TV channel, C-SPAN (which I love for its goofy and unhurried production style).

Alvin was discussing his concept of the "prosumer" — the consumer who also produces. He was saying that the productive activities of the "prosumer" don't get registered in the monetary economy, yet still add tangible value. For example if you go to Home Depot and buy a can of paint, that purchase gets counted towards the GDP. But your activity painting your own wall doesn't, though it would have done, had you hired a painter.

So there's a mass of real economic acitivity that never shows up in the numbers. Alvin estimates it at about equal to the currently recorded GDP. (Isn't this what feminists have been saying about housework since Simone de Beauvoir?)

We might expand on the "prosumer" to embrace the "marsumer". People do stuff today that a little while back was the exclusive purivew of professional marketers. That's an impact of technology, of course. As someone who remembers the nose-pinching smell of the school duplicator — the Kitty Hawk of desktop publishing — I can still be startled by how easy it's become to whip up a four-color brochure, launch a web site or even self-publish a full-length book.

From podcasts to teleconferences, from pre-printed postcards to mailable DVDs, if you have something to sell, promote or just pester people with, there is an ever-growing arsenal of gizmos at your disposal, at ever-declining costs.

For the entrepreneur this is good news and bad. The good news is that the global playing field keeps getting flatter, and the entry ticket keeps getting cheaper. The bad news is that technology can make a fool of anyone. Owning a Stradivarius doesn't make you a great violinist. And having a fistful of high-gloss tools doesn't make you a great marketer.

What does is what always did — an exceptional understanding of human nature.

The more you know about how people tick, the more effective your marketing will be. Of course there is real value in good communication media, just as there is in honing your strategic and tactical skills. Nevertheless, old-fashioned psychology — the streetwise variety — will always be the single most decisive factor in anyone's marketing success.

EGF: External Growth Factor

2006-05-23T09:03:00.000-07:00

Working for some months with a client whose genius is Mergers & Acquisitions (or is that Murders and Apparations?) I have been thrown headfirst into a world hitherto unknown to me. Lots of learning, very fast — some of it achingly technical, some of it inspiringly strategic.

What is the takeaway, from a marketing perspective?

Any business, no matter how large or small, can hit a ceiling in what my client & his friends would call "organic". This doesn't refer to an absence of pesticides. Organic growth is simply increasing revenues selling only your products to your markets. What comes after organic growth is "external growth" and here we enter the world of M&A.

The interesting thing about external growth is (1) how many possibilities there are and (2) how adaptable they are to the entrepreneurial enterprise. If you read "M&A" and think this story is only for the megacorporations, think again.

Let's list a few external growth strategies:

Acquisition: buy a company that has a technology you don't own, or a market share you covet.

Minorty interest: purchase a share in a company for the same reasons (and spare yourself all the nightmares of integration, plus a ton of cash)
License: acquire the license to sell someone else's widget
Franchise: get a franchise in a related market that can help you leverage your existing strengths
Joint venture or marketing alliance: do a deal with a non-competing player to pool your product and/or marketing strengths while both remaining captains of your ships

None of these are world-shatteringly new ideas. What is new to me is ask the question in such a big-picture way: "How could this company grow quickly and profitably by jumping outside its own box?" As for finance, it's a bit like real estate. If the deal is good enough, you can find the money. There is a huge amount of capital running around just now, looking for something useful to do. That's why (back to the world of M&A) private equity groups have become such a huge influence in the market for big-time acquisitions.

And alliances, which for many companies are the best place to start external growth, don't have to cost more than a phone call, at least to start with.

If the right question is sometimes our most powerful asset, here's a question for today: "How could I double my business in a year, through external growth?"

The Mystique of the Book

2006-05-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

I noticed today I currently have FIVE clients (one pro bono) in the throes of producing books. Something of my own writing karma in that, no doubt. (jonwardwrites.com)

What strikes me is the irrational power of the book as a source of authority and charisma. At the foot of an article (in Nexus magazine) I saw the journalist cited as "author of an e-book..." and realized how lame that sounds. Using print-on-demand, she could produce a hundred print copies, put it on Amazon and become "the one who wrote the book..."

Why the difference?

The physicality of the book is important. It exudes a magic our forebears must have felt when they first beheld an inscribed clay tablet. In a printed book, thought — our most powerful but ephemeral attribute — becomes solid. Something you can hold in your hands.

I have never got used to the miracle of flying in airplanes. And I've never quite gotten past the miracle of writing. No matter what your field of expertise, consider how writing a book would contribute to your market and invest you with a touch of mystique. (Yes, I'm working on mine.)

Yes, Things Really Are Speeding Up

2006-05-13T15:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a tidbit from an extraordinary new book on learning that I am helping to launch — about which more later, when the wraps come off.

The very first tool our ancestors invented was for cutting, and it was created by chipping at one stone with another. Now the more chips, the more effective the instrument (sounds familiar?). Our progenitors started with an average of 15 chips on the tool's cutting edge, and eventually this advanced to the high-precision version made with an average of 111 chips. "Eventually" here is a bit of an understatement. This techological advance took all of 2.4 million years — or one new chip every 25,000 years. So if you're feeling a bit rushed by the latest combination iPod-videophone-toaster-defibrillator, you may have a reason...

There Be Dragons... (Or Why We Love Craig)

2006-05-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

Why is Craig's List such a rip-roaring success? Because it's free, because it's easy, because everyone's doing it... Here's another clue, a warning to users from the site itself: "DEAL ONLY WITH LOCALS! Most non-local inquiries on craigslist are scams." Objectively that may be true. Subjectively, it's even more true.

Forget globalism, cyberspace and the world-wide-this-or-that. At heart, we are still tribal villagers. We trust what is nearest. The people in the next state have funny accents. As for foreigners, the less said, the better. There is a power in locality that many marketers miss, especially when web-merized.

Here's a thought experiment for today. Find six ways to localize your brand. Just sticking a town-name in front is a start, but not too imaginative. Your localization needs to be authentic. Get in there, identify the city character as the denizens see it, not the tourists. Look for ways to relate that character to your brand. Then ask yourself how far you could localize your operations, create an outpost office, or at least a local champion... This exercise is about spending imagination, not cash.

Start with your home town and then "franchise" the concept city by city.

Just suppose: instead of the dead hand of Starbucks falling onto every street corner on the planet, pictue a true devolution — same product, systems and quality of service, but a coffee shop with look & feel true to the neighborhood. And yes, perhaps a local twist on the name...

(Almost) Everything You Need To Know About Branding

2006-05-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

My wife Andrea quotes something she heard singer Kenny Rogers say on American Idol. "You are three people: the person other people think you, the person you think you are, and the person you really are. The more closely aligned these are, the more successful you will be." Apply that thought to your brand — rigorously, in depth and in detail. Now you have 99% of your success recipe.

Crumbs of Marketing Wisdom

2006-05-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog. Day 1.Here's a curiosity to start us off. I found in my fridge a new loaf of bread. It was called Men's Bread. Think about it. What can be manly about a loaf of bread? Someone obviously thought I needed it. Should I be worried? Here's the interesting point. Normally when people try to expand a business they either look for new products to sell the existing market or new markets to sell the existing products. There's another route suggested by Men's Bread. It's what I would call fractionalizing. You split the existing market into niches and split the existing product to match. It's the same stuff (basically) - bread. And the same market - grocery shoppers. If you're lucky, your zealous consumer will go home with two loaves, one for him and one for her. What's next? I can't wait to get to the fridge. I'll be on the lookout for Yogurt For Brits, or Arizona Poets' Marmalade.