Know-How Exchange : MProfs PRO Seminar Q&A

Dear Jim,

I'm sure the webinar was great. I'm not a premium member
so I have no idea what was discussed.

That said, for me, your statement above "... successful marketing optimization in terms of daily life inside a company - its about politics, budgets and understanding marketing optimization well enough to convince others around you to join in and take advantage." triggered a few alarm bells.

My experience is that many (not all, but many) corporate types simply don't give care about marketing for one of two reasons:

1. Because they have no clue to enable them to understand it (which is bad at the best of times),

or

2. Because they're educated up the wazzoo, thereby endowing them with what they believe to be super-human capabilities that entitle them, by dint of their MBA, to squash every idea that they encounter that wasn't theirs-EVEN THOUGH their ideas were the lamest, most moth-eaten nag ever to limp out of the starting gate, only to drop down dead before the gate's even slammed shut behind it.

Perhaps you could put all this down to it just being my bitter
and twisted perspective, and indeed, you could say that.

But you'd be wrong and you'd be wrong for the following reasons.

Without exception, every "corporate marketing" person I've worked with one-on-one has had ... how this transpired I've no bloody idea, but there you go ... has had, wait for it ... no background whatsoever in the creation or execution of advertising: no experience in direct selling, in customer fulfillment, in art direction, in copywriting, or in direct response marketing.

None.

Would you hire a book keeper that can't count?

Would you hire a cleaning company that has no mops, brooms,
or vacuum cleaners?

Would you board an aircraft flown by a blind pilot who had a deaf
and mute navigator? I don't think you would.

True enough, and to their credit (somewhere), these souls HAVE had backgrounds in history, biology, journalism, and something else (I forget what and now that the damage is done, it hardly matters), but my point is this: those things are NOT marketing.

Yet ...

Yet, the buffoons that took on these people believed them to be the PERFECT candidate for the job and based, in many cases (alas), on the FLIMSIEST of physical evidence and shored up by the greatest of human folly: proof of advanced education and (for shame!) expectation.

"Ah!" might say many "But an ADVANCED education at MBA level automatically confers superior intelligence upon its recipients!"

No.

To my knowledge, not one of these souls ever read a book about marketing (heaven forbid!), and with the exception of one of them, not one of these people ever demonstrated the SLIGHTEST interest in creating marketing or advertising that offered a solid benefit, that including social proof, that including an offer, that made use of current events or testimonials, or that employed any other device designed to maximize return on every dollar or pound spent on getting a message out and in front of a ready and willing to buy customer.

I lent one person two books on marketing ... books that sat on their desk UNOPENED for TEN MONTHS! Yet this person had an MBA.

The results of all of this? Increased costs, lower sales, and
declines in customer satisfaction. I even overheard one of these people say, on an open PA system, at a public event for which people had paid a handsome sum to get through the door, that if the line for one activity within the event was too long that people would " ... just have to come back tomorrow!"

All right, I'll outline Three Steps to Optimizing Online Marketing.

1. Tell people what you've got and how it came about.
2. Tell people what it'll do for them and offer solid, benefits.
3. Tell them what to do next.

And I'll add a 4th step: hire marketers that can market, employ people that know what they're doing and who actually CARE about the sale and about the customer's needs. Hire people that know their audience, that know their offers, and that know the compelling effects of a solid set of reasons why now is the best time ... in fact the ONLY time ... to buy.

Gary Bloomer
The Direct Response Marketing Guy™
Wilmington, DE, USA