The Big PictureThe Big Picture
Reaching More PeopleReaching More People
by Kim Walsh-Phillips
One of my favorite quotes is “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear,” Nelson Mandela
I recently heard a story that personifies so many entrepreneurs’ journeys:
A young man’s mother told him something he didn’t want to hear, “You are going to have to go back to being a waiter at Red Lobster.” This was not the answer he was looking for. He hated being a waiter there. The restaurant had just released its free cheddar biscuits. The tips were decreasing, but work was increasing.
His small company had already tasted success. LL Cool J had promoted him and others were asking to wear his clothes. Orders were pouring in, and now he was going to go back to being a waiter?
The reality was that they had already mortgaged his mom’s house, sold everything they owned, and had nothing left. Yet the company couldn’t fund the supplies and production of the orders it received. Not knowing better, it let the retailers order with terms only favorable to the retailers, including 120 days to pay for the clothing they were receiving.
So, reluctantly he went back to being a waiter. He promised his mother he would earn the $2,000 she asked for. He trusted her. After all, she had mortgaged her house for him. But he was still uneasy about spending $2,000 on one last-ditch effort.
With enough biscuits served and $2,000 earned, he gave his mom the money, and she finally revealed what she was going to do. She was going to take out a direct-response advertisement seeking funding.
He fought her at first. He thought that was the craziest idea he ever heard. Did she know how hard it was to earn that money?
But as smart moms do, she proceeded with faith and courage and placed that ad in the The New York Times.
It read:
“Need partner to help fund 1 million dollars in orders. Serious inquiries only.”
Most of the respondents were not legitimate businesspeople (folks with names like Rocco, Tony Two Times, and Small Guy Stan), but a few were. Ultimately, they struck a deal with Samsung Textiles, which would underwrite the manufacturing of their orders.
This entrepreneur of course is Daymond John with a current net worth of $250 million who founded clothing line FUBU. Today he is on the hit show Shark Tank, risking his own money in deals presented on the show, and started Shark Branding as a marketing company.
Daymond John is incredibly successful. Now. But he had a long journey filled with an incredible amount of hard work to get there.
I have yet to meet a successful person for which this wasn’t the case. Generally before the success came long hours, fear, doubt, sacrifices, struggles, and failures.
The journey of the entrepreneur is not easy.
I struggled for years before my company started to thrive. A long time of very little social life, lots of debt, and exhaustion. I almost gave up many times and at least once per year for the first ten years in business. I would apply for a job just dreaming about things getting better. Thankfully I never got called in for an interview. Not once.
I am just not meant to work for anyone else.
I am guessing the same might be true for you. If you have made it this far in the book, you are one of the few.
According to The Atlantic, The Pew Research Center found nearly a quarter of American adults had not read a single book in 2014. As in, they hadn’t cracked a paperback, fired up a Kindle, or even hit play on an audiobook while in the car. The number of nonbook readers has nearly tripled since 1978.
And most that bought a book, didn’t finish it.
It’s not just business books, though. Even Fifty Shades of Grey went unfinished by 75% of those who read it.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the book’s completion is calculated by the passages highlighted in the book.
Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James was only finished 25.9% of the way.
So if you read this book through, you are seeking better things for your business and your life. You want a change.
There are a lot of strategies contained in these pages. It can seem overwhelming and daunting, but the road to success often is.
How do you eat an elephant?
Start small. Get to know your best customers better. Seek more of them. Create great content and distribute it for free. Dabble your dollars in the paid platforms and keep an eye on your return.
Most of our clients start with a small testing marketing budget and only scale beyond a few thousand dollars a month after several months of testing—even the very big companies and firms.
I encourage you to take the first step toward your next chapter today. I’m excited to see what happens because of it. Please visit www.NoBSsmBook.com for free resources and strategies to get you started and report back on how your journey is going.
You have value that should be shared with the world.
It’s time for you to find those people who need you.
The Trouble with TrendingThe Trouble with Trending
by Dan Kennedy
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you should never try to be everything to everyone with your marketing.
This is how companies get themselves into trouble when they use social media. It goes something like this: Company sees trending topic, company contributes to trending topic without understanding its context in an effort to appear “relevant” or “hip.” Then, there’s backlash similar to what DiGiorno Pizza encountered in September 2014.
To provide some backstory, the backlash occurred when #WhyIStayed started trending on Twitter to bring to light the issue of domestic violence. This was (and still is) a serious topic of public discussion after the NFL released the video of the Baltimore Ravens player, Ray Rice, assaulting his then-fiancée in a hotel. DiGiorno Pizza tweeted, “#WhyIStayed You had pizza.”
So what was DiGiorno’s reasoning behind this tweet? Did it think it was funny? Did it think Ray Rice should have gotten treatment that was more lenient? No. Its answer was so STUPID it makes me nauseous.
DiGiorno said that it “didn’t know what the hashtag was about.”
A tenet comes to mind that relates (if you’ve ever given an excuse when pulled over by a cop, you’ve heard this one): Ignorance of the law excuses no one.
The alarming revelation here is that this isn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last example of a company that misstepped in the wild, wild world of social media. As of writing this book, there are over 1.36 billion registered Facebook users, and more than 42 million Facebook pages. There is a lot to learn from companies that are getting social media right and those that, quite frankly, are failing miserably.
So, how do we separate the winners from the losers? Dollar-measured results, that’s how. Everything else is just a waste of time.
Provided that you are getting a return on your investment, social media can be a valuable asset to add to your marketing plan. That being said, using social media solely is a dangerous (and NOT recommended) path to follow. All of Kim’s clients have a multilayered approach to their marketing, so if Facebook bit the dust tomorrow, they would still soldier on. The value in social media is how it can complement, NOT replace, your traditional marketing activities like direct mail, email marketing, so on and so forth.
This is especially important considering that new social media networks are developed almost daily. If you are going to chase every social media network down the “Yellow Brick Road,” you might as well give your paycheck to the flying monkeys. Seriously. How much sense does it make to deliver a watered-down marketing strategy to multiple audiences, instead of hitting a home run with one social media network? I’ll save you the five seconds of contemplation. None.
There were multiple social media strategies, case studies, and solutions for the everyday marketer presented in this book. Use these examples as a guide for your own journey to social media success. While you may think, “My business is different. These steps can’t be applied in my situation,” I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. You must, however, follow the foundational rules for a high social media ROI.
You’ve read many stellar examples in this book that demonstrated a high ROI from social media. Don’t be fooled. These examples are the exception. And they only occur because of a strict adherence to direct response marketing with a hawk’s eye on measurement.
If you decide to proceed with your social media marketing strategies, keep in mind these foundational rules at all times:
You can (and should) make yourself a celebrity through social media. Utilize social media to create your celebrity status to your target market. This is a platform you can control, and it should be leveraged for celebrity positioning. Think of the Kardashians. They practically built an empire off of what most thought would be Kim Kardashian’s 15 seconds of fame. The “video-seen-round-the-world” spawned a reality show that’s currently on its tenth season, multiple clothing stores, and an app that earned $43 million in the third quarter of 2014 (Glu Mobile).
However, as a business owner, you might take a less extreme approach than a sex tape. But to each their own.
Niches bring riches. There are niches all over the world, some that you may not even be aware of, that come in the form of associations, groups, interests. You name it, and someone will be willing to lay a pretty penny to work with someone they believe speaks directly to them.
Whether or not you choose to advertise on the platform, Facebook has powerful tools to help you research your list without giving Facebook a dime. At least for now. It’s worth checking out before it starts charging. If you do use the platform to advertise, make sure you are not only targeting your ad but also your audience, too. Too many businesses get a segmented list to market but use the same ad for each audience.
Don’t copy someone’s social media ad, just because it “looks cool.” I can’t tell you how DUMB this strategy is, especially on social media, when you have no idea whether or not the ad is even breaking even on the investment.
Kmart had a “viral” video called “Ship My Pants” that was the talk of the web. Did it increase sales of online purchases? Kmart’s store sales were down 2.2% again last year, so my guess? Once again, it forgot who its target market is.
Do not copy what others are doing just because they are doing it.
If someone tries to convince you otherwise, slap yourself in the head. Preferably with this book, so through some act of freakish osmosis, it will remind you of the rules.
Get to know your best customers better, find out their wants and needs, and fill them. Surveying your target audience is a serious exercise that you should use so you can better deliver your product or service. This can be as simple as drafting a survey with only a few questions. It’s what comes back in these surveys that is really exciting.
With this data, you can identify potential improvements, referrals, and other business opportunities. These questions can also help you to develop a lead magnet offer (free report, ebook) that will answer a question that is burning in the back of your ideal prospect’s mind. Base your marketing strategies on fact, not guessing.
Well, this is where I leave you. If you decide to continue on in your social media marketing efforts or begin them, do so armed.
Kim has laid out a thorough, sensible plan for you to establish your presence on social media and, more importantly to my mind, get measurable return on your investment. This is what works. Personally, I continue to be fed financially through businesses I have interests in, by the social media strategies Kim has described. I’d be the last guy on earth to suggest not using it for all it’s worth. A lot is done on social media in my name, as if it were me. The work I do for many of my clients incorporates and integrates social media.
But, if you ever find me personally tweeting, you’ll know the world has ended.
#NoBSsm Tweetable Takeaways#NoBSsm Tweetable Takeaways
Create great content and distribute it for free. And dabble your dollars in the paid platforms and keep an eye on your return. #NoBSsm
You have value that should be shared with the world. It’s time for you to find those people who need you. #NoBSsm
Never try to be everything to everyone with your marketing. #NoBSsm
If you ever see Dan Kennedy tweeting, know that the world has ended. #NoBSsm