Two Hat Marketing -- Would YOU Do Business With YOU?

This Video Almost Makes Me Want To Stop Using My Electric Razor

If you haven't watched this video from the Dollar Shave Club, watch it right now! I'm serious. Click the video Play immediately. It's only 1:34. And don't tell me you don't have time to watch a 1:34 video. Watch it NOW.

 

Sorry, Gary Vaynerchuk. This Time You're Wrong.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a really smart dude. He calls himself a "self-trained wine and social media expert," and he might be. Gary built a name for himself as the energetic host of Wine Library TV, a massively successful online video blog. He finally shut down production in March 2011 after the 1000th episode! Many of you, I'm sure, have also read his bestselling book, Crush It! If you haven't, I do recommend it.

I say all this to stress that I like Gary and I have respect for his opinions. However, even really smart people are wrong sometimes, and this time Gary's wrong.

I refer to a blogpost yesterday on Smartblog On Social Media. Brooke Howell reported on Gary's recent speech to small business owners attending America's Small Business Summit in Washington DC. Unfortunately, if Ms. Howell's reporting is accurate, Gary gave some harsh, in-your-face advice that is simply off base. 

Gary's main point was (no surprise here) that small businesses should be actively involved in social media. He rightly pointed out that it isn’t helpful to disparage social media when you haven’t even tried it out. Howell quotes: “I love it when people have a whole lot to say about Facebook and Twitter and they don’t even have an account. Shut your mouth!”

But he then goes into bad advice territory. First, Gary claims all business owners are just in one business: the attention business. Well, no, they're not, Gary. Businesses are in the business of creating customers (I didn't say that, BTW, Peter Drucker did). I can get all kinds of attention through all kinds of media, including social media, and be out of business very quickly. Attention is a tool, not a purpose, nor a strategy. Anybody who's taken a Marketing 101 course knows this from the age-old acronym A.I.D.A. - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

Vaynerchuk also said companies had it easy when they could take a broad-sweeping approach with billboards, newspaper ads and television commercials. (Say what? Since when have small businesses relied on billboards and TV? What audience did he think he was talking to?) He went on to say word-of-mouth is on steroids, but it's not being done face-to-face so much now as it is on social media. (I mostly agree with this.)

Here's the danger with Gary's perspective. It's really narrow. He puts down traditional media and touts social media as the be-all, end-all answer, which is simply not true. There are many positives for using traditional media these days. And apparently big guns, like Google and Facebook, agree since they're now using direct mail to reach prospects.

Gary's most egregious error comes in his "four simple tips for using social media:"

• Don’t worry about what you’re going to say; just get started and build from there.
• Don’t focus on trying to win new customers, but instead on treating your existing customers well so you can keep them and inspire them to endorse your business.
• Don’t obsess about ROI. There’s a certain amount of serendipity in word-of-mouth marketing, and the numbers don’t always tell the full story.
• Don’t ignore what people are saying on Twitter. It’s a great source of information about what consumers like, think and do.

With the exception of the last one, these aren't simple, they're both cavalier and, pardon my bluntness, dumb. 

Don't focus on winning new customers? Don't obsess with ROI? What kind of business advice is that? If I gave that advice to my clients and in my speeches, I would have been out of business a long time ago. And I would have deserved it. Listening to this type of advice and perspective is a lot like watching Fox News. Fair and balanced? Uh, that would be NO.

For those of you still reading, I am not drinking the social media kool-ade and I don't think you should, either. I started taking the "I'm not 100% sold on social media" stance in a recent post titled, If You Aren't Aggressively Using Social Media, You're An Idiot. Or Not. Quite unexpectedly, this was my highest-read blog post ever. At recent speeches, I've voiced my own concerns and have had a lot of people agree with me and even thank me for speaking out.

Here's the thing. These people aren't naive, nor are they uneducated regarding social media. Most people I've spoken with have tried really hard to understand it and use it. It's just not as simple as so many social media "experts" would have you think. Social media takes a tremendous amount of time and cannot be ignored for any stretch of days. It's a crying baby screaming for attention.

I will say it again. Social media is a tool. That's it. No more, no less. It can and does work great for some companies. It sucks for others. Billboards work great for some companies. Newspaper ads work great for some companies. And, yes, even TV commercials work great for some companies. There are many roads to the top of the mountain.

As I said, Gary Vaynerchuk is a very smart dude. But there are still a myriad of other marketing tools that work really well and social media doesn't work for everybody.

What do you think? Why don't we get a real conversation started about how social media works or doesn't work for you. How have you tried to use it? How have you created new business? And don't give me some generic pablum like, "You should first have a clear strategy." Talk to me in meaningful specifics, not vague generalities.

Creative Cross Promotion

'Nuff said.

The Avengers Deliver The Unexpected WOW

My smoking hot wife, Kay, and I saw The Avengers this past weekend. It was one of those fun movies -- lots of action, awesome special effects, and a great example of what I call the Unexpected WOW.

(Note: I know it was Mother's Day yesterday and maybe Kay would have preferred seeing Dark Shadows or some other chick-flick titled something like, When Harry Met Pretty Woman In The Twilight Of Four Weddings & A Funeral. But as she says, she's not my mother and her other child, Kelly, did surprise her Thursday night coming home and spending Friday shopping downtown and seeing Titanic 3D.)

But I digress. Back to The Avengers and how it relates to an embarrassing incident in my life many years ago. 

I was scheduled to speak in Orlando for the Mobile Modular Office Association, which doesn't exist anymore. The night before I headed over to Paradise Island's Adventurer's Club, which also no longer exists. The Adventurer's Club was great fun. Designed to look like an old English hunt and adventure club, the public co-mingled with Disney cast members acting as both club members and staff.

That night I had an entertaining one-on-one with the "club's" butler. We bantered straight-faced for several minutes seeing who could make the other one laugh first. Finally, still in character, he said, "You seem to be a funny fellow. How would you like to compete in tonight's amateur comedian contest?" I, naturally, said no, but then he said, "Each contestant gets a free drink," to which I quickly accepted.

How hard could it be? It was only five minutes and I AM a professional speaker, after all. I have dozens of hysterical stories. All I had to was pick one, hit the stage, kill them with my natural wit and story-telling ability, get my free drink, and bathe in the adulation of new found fans.

Five competitors. Five minutes each.

I was third. Yes, I was a little nervous, but nothing I couldn't handle from years of speaking from the stage. The crowd was good and liquored up and eager to laugh. I grabbed the mike and launched into one of my signature stories guaranteed to bring the house down.

Crickets. I swear, 90-seconds into the longest five minutes of my life, I heard crickets. For some reason my can't-miss story actually missed them! How was that possible? I'd told that story hundreds of times and hit it out of the park every single time! Three young women in the front obviously felt bad for me and tried to laugh. It was that "We feel pity for you" heh-heh, that actually made things worse. I probably sweated more in that five minutes than the photographer for this week's Time magazine cover.

I came in fourth...out of five competitors. The guy who came in fifth didn't even bother to come back for the voting. I was emotionally rocked.

Trying to figure out what went wrong, I inserted that exact same story into my MMOA speech the next day. I set it up the same and delivered it the same.

It killed. People were wiping tears from their eyes. They were laughing so hard that a table of monks in the back who all swore a vow of silence were on their chairs screaming for more. Women threw their mobile modular undergarments at me.

So the lesson I learned at the Adventurer's Club is also one of the reasons The Avengers is doing so well in the box office. I call it the Unexpected WOW.

After my debacle in Orlando, Kay pointed out that I am not presented to my audiences as a comedian. I am a marketing, innovation, and branding guy. My audiences' expectations are to hear solid content for growing their businesses. They don't expect me to be funny, so when I am, that's an unexpected bonus. I catch them off guard. Comedians are expected to be funny, so it's much harder to make people laugh. 

Leaving The Avengers, Kay said she especially enjoyed the movie because it was unexpectedly funny. When the Hulk sucker punches Thor after they teamed up to beat up the bad guys, the audience (including me) exploded with laughter.

In my speeches and, I hope, my messages to you, I stress that your brand must be DIFFERENT in the eyes of your customers. What Unexpected WOWs are you delivering to your customers? Unexpected WOWs come out of left field. They make you DIFFERENT than the competition, not just better. If you simply work to be better, that's not really unexpected, is it?

 

Would You Dare Argue With Peter Drucker?

You know who Peter Drucker is, right? He was (and probably still is) the godfather of management theory and practice.

And if Peter Drucker gave you some great advice, would you dare argue with him?

Don't be crazy, of course you wouldn't. Even if he is dead, I'd still be afraid of finding a horse's head in my bed tomorrow.

Which leads me to a rather disturbing discussion currently on our Two Hat Marketing Network* group on LinkedIn.

Actually, it's a non-discussion, evidenced by the glaring LACK of active participation. And this disturbs me. Let me explain.

I'm keenly interested in helping my clients, audiences, and readers grow their businesses. I truly want them (and you) to succeed. As a Gunslinger, I strive to be that outside force that causes massive and positive change. I don't hew to the masses and spew out common pablum and marketing speak. I don't kiss my clients' or anybody else's butts. I think people and companies need to be whacked on the side of the head...shaken out of the mental, day-to-day doldrums that grasp so many of us.

Why do I feel this is needed? Because the real shame of business today is its blind acceptance of low productivity and efforts in those areas of business that actually make a difference.

Marketing and Innovation.

If you've followed me for any time now, you know I'm a Marketing and Innovation evangelist. Put those two together with Branding and you've found my happy place. I love working on and talking about Marketing, Innovation, and Branding. I think those three legs of my own Gunslinger's bar stool are the most important factors in any institution's success.

Let me emphasize that again:

MARKETING, INNOVATION, AND BRANDING ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT
FACTORS IN ANY INSTITUTION'S SUCCESS.

Most people agree these are extremely important, but the befuddling fact is that most, repeat most, organizations do not put these very high on their action list. But we should, shouldn't we? Marketing is that daily function that fills the funnel. Innovation is that daily function that separates us from the competition. These aren't "nice-to-do-today-if-I-have-time" things. They are essential to our future success.

Back to my LinkedIn group non-discussion. I asked the question, "What do you do every single day to generate new business and/or new customers?" 

How many responses have I received? Three. Just three. Two of them gave me specific, excellent answers to my question. Seven days went by with no further comments, so I added,"I find this very interesting. Either the rest of you don't have a daily routine for drumming up new business or you don't want to share it."

The third was a brave, honest response, "Silence sometimes means shame. It is in my case. Shamefully I don't have a conscious daily routine. I'm also interested in hearing from the people who are faithful to their daily prospecting efforts, but in how they do it during their busy times to avoid the peaks and valleys of sales." There have been no further responses. 

I suspect my third respondee is not alone. I suspect most people run into the peaks and valleys of sales on a regular basis. But then I ran into the Big Guns -- Peter Drucker and Nido Qubein.

In his riveting, 576-page 1974 classic, Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Drucker wrote:

There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.

(And) because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two - and only these two - basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are "costs."

(Note: this key section was also included in Drucker's more recent The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management (Collins Business Essentials)) 

Gold! This is gold, I tell you! Marketing and Innovation aren't just important, they are THE ONLY TWO BASIC FUNCTIONS of any business!

Then I heard Nido Qubein speak back in 1986. He was talking about the typical swinging pendulum of feast or famine so many professional speakers go through. You market like crazy for three months. Then your calendar is full for three months, so you stop marketing because you're so busy. Because you stop marketing your calendar is empty the next three months, so you market like crazy. The pendulum swings back and forth, back and forth.

Nido (we are now BFFs, so I can call him Nido) said, "The most important time to market yourself is when you are at your busiest. You MUST make time to market when you are busy and when you aren't. You must market all the time...every day."

More gold! Pete (we aren't BFFs, but he's dead, so he can't get mad at me) and Nido sent the message and I saw the light. I became a born-again Marketing and Innovation Evangelist! (I later added Branding, because I painfully learned there was no such thing as a two-legged bar stool.)

I know we all get caught up in a To-Do list that is crammed with Urgent matters. Like my honest respondent said, "...I'm also interested in hearing from the people who are faithful to their daily prospecting efforts, but in how they do it during their busy times to avoid the peaks and valleys of sales..."

As Nido pointed out, you simply cannot allow the peaks to interfere with what are the most important factors in your success. We all get done those things we decide to get done...those things we deem as priorities. But for some unknown reason, most of us don't put Marketing and Innovation at the top of those daily lists. I want to change that. 

I've decided I'm going to fight the good fight. I'm doing more webinars - some free, some not. I'll be holding a very way cool conference in Seattle this Summer, I am creating new products (books, ebooks, CDs, online, etc.), and maybe even some coaching or mastermind groups for my new M.I.B.E.'s (Marketing, Innovation, & Branding Evangelists).

Want to join me in my crusade? If you do, send an email to me at mibe@theadventure.com with the message, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

No, wait, that doesn't make sense, don't write that. Just tell me you want to get better at Marketing, Innovation, and Branding. It'll be fun and we'll all make more money. And BTW, if you do send me an email, I'll send you a password to watch my recent webinar, "From Improvement to Innovation." It was awesome! Eric Sullwold said, "I watched almost all of it." And if you already saw it, well...watch it again.

* Please join us in our small, but mighty group on LinkedIn. Click this link: Two Hat Marketing Network.

If You Aren't Aggressively Using Social Media, You're An Idiot. Or Not.

Yes, my mind is officially boggled. The statistics that continue to to be pumped out by the social media community (or should they be called the social media media?) are increasingly staggering:

Facebook has over 800 million active users. (Social Media Examiner)

Twitter now has 100 million active users. (CNN/Fortune)

Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube. (Google)

LinkedIn claims to have the largest professional network on the Internet with 150 million members in over 200 countries. (LinkedIn)

Instagram has now reached beyond 500 million photos and that about 4.5 million new photos are uploaded per day. (Media Culpa)

Pinterest is now averaging over 14 million visitors a day.

And now we get this infographic from Social Jumpstart showing what's happening in 60 SECONDS:

 

 

 

OMG, if you aren't taking advantage of this incredibly massive online activity to promote your business, you must be a complete idiot!

Or maybe not.

As I told a recent audience at The Work Truck Show, this reminds me a of that old joke about the little girl who saw a giant pile of horse manure, jumped in the middle and starting digging. When asked what she was doing, she replied, "There MUST be a pony in here somewhere!"

Look, I understand it's easy to get fascinated by these huge numbers, but this social-media-is-awesome-for-businesses is getting out of hand. Don't fall into the new shiny object vortex without taking a deep breath and analyzing it from a reasonable, intelligent perspective.

So I'm going to take a bit of an Anti-Christ perspective about social media here and share what I think are important points you must consider.

First, recognize that huge numbers don't mean squat.

In fact, for most businesses, huge numbers make it harder for you to find your best prospects. Like the little girl, you've got to spend time digging through it all to uncover the exact right people you want to see.

Most people are online, yes, but not in the way you want.

I asked my Work Truck Show audience how many were using Pinterest. Four enthusiastic people raised their hands and I asked how they were using it. "For cooking ideas!" "I love the design pictures for the home!" I asked if any were using it for business. They all shook their heads no.

Yes, our prospects and customers are using social media, but they often don't identify themselves as our prospects and they don't hang out in groups as our prospects. They participate in tribes of personal interest, not business. Just because your target hangs out on social media doesn't mean they're there to talk with you.

Social media is not a mini-press release mechanism.

Here's an example of the wrong use of Twitter:

If this is how you're using social media, just stop it. Stop it right now before you get hurt.

Most social media "experts" only carry a hammer

And so everything looks like a nail. Ever notice how direct mail specialists think direct marketing is the best tool? That's because that's all they see. And way too many social media "experts" have drunk the koolaid of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. BTW, how many social media "experts" are you aware of who can show proven, measurable, cash-in-the-bank results from their consultations, books, speeches, and webinars? 

Most social media "experts" think the media is the beginning

The first question any good strategic, or marketing, or branding consultant should ask is "Who is the target?" Social media "experts" see the media as the first part. The formula goes like this:

Market + Message + Media

1. Who is your target market? Define them as clearly as possible. (BTW, if your answer is "everyone," don't quit your day job.)

2. What message do you want to share with them that will get them to raise their hands and want to talk with you?

3. What media should you use to most effectively communicate with your target market? Your quiver is filled with a myriad of different types of tools. Social media is just one category or group that is in that quiver. Find the best one and use it first.

Market is first. Not media.

Social media, done right, takes a sh--load of time

Don't kid yourself, social media is a HUGE time sucker and most companies don't have the luxury of a full-time social media staffer. If you're in that boat and you want to play in this space, then you must carve out of agiant chunk of time to do it right. You want to play on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn? Figure one-two hours per day MINIMUM. And don't think you can post something and walk away. Social media thrives on current and new information. 

BTW, if you happen to be that full-time social media person and you want to keep your job? Figure out a way to prove ROI. If you can't do that, then just assume your job is temporary.

---

Look, I'm not saying stay away from social media. It's a tool, pure and simple. For some of you it might work today. For most of us, we need to do a better job of figuring it all out before diving in. Just make sure you go through the proper due diligence first. Keep your eyes wide open and don't get caught up in the Shiny Object Syndrome that's struck so many companies these days.

Remember, trade shows work great for a lot of companies, but maybe not for you. The Yellow Pages work great for a lot of companies, but maybe not for you. Even Valpak works great for a lot of companies, but maybe not for you. 

Personally, I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make money off social media. I'm an early adopter, because I need to know what works now and what's going to work for my clients. I built up a Twitter "following" of over 10,000. So what? I'm still chasing this social media thing, but I believe most businesses, especially those of you in the B2B world, are a long ways away from figuring it out. And when we do, don't worry, I'll be right on top of it!

If anybody tells you social media is working for them, don't ask to see how many friends, fans, or followers they have. Ask them to show you the money.

Damn Those Customers & Their Expectations

If you're old, like me, you probably remember vacationing with the family way back when...driving down brand new interstates...and staying at some motel, like Holiday Inn or Howard Johnson's (HoJo's!).

Back then we didn't expect much from our motel room. A bed, chair, bathroom, towels, a TV. However, one of my Mom's expectations for our motel of choice was a clean bathroom. The great thing about her expectation was you knew instantly when you walked into your room whether the bathroom was truly clean or not. The clean ones always had a sanitary paper wrap around the toilet seat!

Then one day, some hotel chain put an iron and ironing board in our room. WOW, that was awesome! We didn't have to call housekeeping and beg them to bring an iron to our room. That hotel did something no other hotel did and, as a result, became our choice hotel.

Of course, that advantage didn't last long when every other hotel/motel chain in the US put an iron and ironing board in their rooms. It wasn't a wow anymore. It became an expectation.

Then some bright hotel executive figured out they could add shampoo and conditioner as an advantage. We were thrilled until all the chains did it. Another expectation from customers added to the list.

Air conditioning? Expectation. Alarm clock? Expectation. Remote control TV? Expectation. Coffee makers? Expectation. Blow dryers? Expectation. USA Today? Expectation. Heavenly bed? Expectation. WiFi? Expectation.

What was once an advantage for some hotel chain quickly became copied in some form by everybody else. And once something was copied by all, it became an expectation to the customer. Think about it. Have you had any recent experience where something was missing? You probably noticed it immediately. I actually stayed at an upscale property in Alexandria, VA a while back that did NOT have irons and ironing boards in their rooms. I was astonished and more than a little peeved when I had to wait for them to deliver one.

This creates quite the dilemma for businesses. Because of competition and technology, we keep adding benefits to our products and services. We enjoy a clear, but too often brief advantage. Unfortunately, like in my hotel example, if something can be copied, it will be copied. Once copied, we have to look for another advantage we can develop.

Of course, we also watch our competition. When they develop a new benefit, we copy it in some way (usually it's an exact duplicate, in fact). We take away their advantage and pat ourselves on the back.

Meanwhile, the customer gets educated. He or she gets educated to EXPECT the new perks. Even worse, they often get these new perks for no extra cost. Whether I stay in a Hyatt or a Holiday Inn Express, I expect to find pretty much everything I wrote about above. All these benefits are now part of the expected package when I check in.

A dilemma. Adding all these benefits add cost. They often add labor. But to the customer, they are FREE. Damn those customers and their expectations.

But, as Pogo so famously said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." We are our own worst enemy because we continue to add incremental, easily copied improvements to our product offerings and then get upset when somebody does copy.

We are also the enemy because outside the walls of our own businesses we are somebody's customer. At the end of the day, we take our marketing hat off and WE expect more value for our hard-earned dollar. We are no different from our own customers who make us tear our hair out.

The answer? Stop practicing continuous, incremental improvement. Start practicing continuous innovation. These are fundamentally different propositions. Improvement can almost always be copied. True innovation is much more difficult.

If Coca-Cola Can Use Content Marketing, So Can you

Joe Pulizzi has a cool post about Coca-Cola's new efforts to be a content marketer:

Coca-Cola Bets the Farm on Content Marketing: Content 2020

I am big on content marketing, especially for B2B companies. And if a consumer products company, like Coca-Cola sees the value in using it, then maybe you should, too. Read Joe's post and watch the videos to see how a beverage company embraces content marketing. What ideas can you steal from them? 

Are Your Customers More Successful Because Of You?

I'm currently in Cincinnati speaking at a workshop for exhibitors in the huge International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS). This is our fourth stop on a six-city tour educating companies how they can get the most out of exhibiting at the show this September.

IMTS is produced by the Association for Manufacturing Technology out of McLean, VA. I've been consulting with them for over 16 years now and count myself fortunate to have them as a client.

One of AMT's objectives is to help all their stakeholders be successful when using any tool provided by AMT, including when exhibiting at IMTS. This is a huge lesson for all of us.

AMT earns money selling exhibit space at IMTS. But they take their relationship with the exhibiting customer a step farther by providing tools and education to help those customers make the most of that significant investment. AMT produces monthly webinars all year. They send weekly email tips. They subscribe to my online Exhibitor Telesummit and they put on this six-city road show providing a full-day workshop teaching exhibiting success. In other words, AMT accepts a certain level of responsibility in their customers' success at IMTS.

Because of this more and more exhibitors ARE successful. And because they're more successful, they come back next time and they tell their friends.

You sell a product or service that helps your customers, right? What else can you do to help them use your product more printable?

Are your customers more successful because of you?

Does "FREE" Work?

I received an email from my good buddy, Richard Schenkar, with a link to Tyler Nichols recent blog post, I am done with the Freemium Business Model. Richard asked my take on Tyler's conclusion. Is freemium marketing dead? Was it ever a viable marketing tool?

Tyler is a self-described "computer repair guy." He's, obviously, a bright guy. One of his blog posts is titled, Dynamic Cross-Domain Canonical URL’s with PHP, which in plain English means, "I have no fricking clue what he's talking about."

Tyler writes:

I am done with “free”. I have come to the realization that most people who want something for free will never, ever think of paying you, no matter how valuable they find your service. I found this cold hard fact out over this Christmas holiday with my free Letter From Santa site. The site uses a freemium model allowing people to create personalized printable santa letters for their children for free. In addition to the free version, I also offered a paid version that includes a higher resolution letter, a personalized envelope and door hanger for a nominal cost.

Tyler doesn't fully explain why he did this project; he doesn't have anything I can see that's similar. I'm guessing he thought it would be a good way to earn some extra Christmas money and I can't fault him for his efforts.

Letter from Santa didn't go exactly how Tyler thought it would go, as the Law of Unintended Consequences reared it's ugly head. Despite making the process as simple as possibe, as well as including a clear set of FAQs, Tyler was inundated by hundreds of questions from free customers. Even worse, after the holiday he sent a thank-you message to everybody and was reported as a spammer by a number of the freebie "customers." 

Tyler is understandably upset and concludes that "...most people who want something for free will never, ever think of paying you, no matter how valuable they find your service." No more free stuff from Tyler.

I sympathize with Tyler. Kay and I learned a long time ago that it's almost always a mistake to give a speech for free. Our greatest headaches have been when we did a favor for someone and I either spoke for free or gave a deep discount. Those "customers" are usually the most demanding, hardest to communicate with, and treat the value I'm bringing as basically zero. We don't do those anymore.

I also understand his frustration with people who double opt-in to his list and then report him as a spammer. That's happened to me so many times, I've often considered paid subscriptions only, as well. I've also had too many people to count who get free advice and tips and then complain that I shouldn't be writing blog posts about my daughter's golfing career. I always delete those people from my lists.

So between Tyler's and my own experience with "freemiums," does this mean they don't work?

Of course not. They work great when used correctly and with the proper perspective. In fact, every marketing tool works great for someone who knows how to use them right. If you think direct mail doesn't work, you are flat out wrong. If you think trade shows don't work, you are flat out wrong. If a marketing isn't working for you, then either you haven't learned how to use it, or your specific target market doesn't respond to it. But that doesn't mean you can make a blanket statement that something doesn't work.

Freemium marketing (I prefer the label content marketing) is actually a very powerful and under-used tool. I've recommended such a strategy to many clients in all different industries. And if you're not using it, you should consider it, too. 

We are all trying to separate ourselves and our companies from the competition. We all want to be the de facto go-to choice. But, in order to do that, we must establish ourselves in our prospects' and customers' eyes as the best choice. I've labeled this as developing Uncopyable Superiority.

The hard reality is that technology today commoditizes everything. If it can be copied, it will be copied, so simply being superior to the competition isn't good enough. Superiority is short-lived.

We must BE DIFFERENT from the competition. And we must be different in a way that is meaningful, relevant, and hard to copy. This is where I've found content marketing to be a great strategy.

What are your customers' biggest headaches? What keeps them awake at night? Do you know this? If so, look for ways to communicate solutions to them. You can create a blog, start podcasting, produce videos, webinars, and teleseminars -- all with free content designed to address their biggest issues.

The idea of this is to establish yourself in their mind as a trusted authority and friend. Once you've done that, there's nothing wrong with telling them about your products and services. You've earned that. You are the person and/or company who enthusiastically and honestly wants to help them succeed, because you both know that if you help them succeed, they will help you succeed. The objective of maintaining a long-term relationship is to grow with your customers. 

Should Tyler give up on his free Santa letter in 2012? My advice would be not to. He learned some very valuable lessons with his 2011 site he could apply this year. I would suggest he spend more time studying content marketing, learning how to better manage the free subscriptions, better set their expectations, and make them jump through a few more hoops to get their letter. 50,000 people downloaded the letter this past holiday. If only half of those jumped through all his new hoops, that's still a great list!

And speaking of content marketing. I'm planning to provide more content in 2012 via my blog, YouTube, ebooks, and a new podcast. So watch for those emails. In addition, I plan to offer more products and services this year, including webinars, online academies, Boot Camps, and even a small coaching club. If you DO NOT want to hear about these products and services, please unsubscribe from my list now. I want to help you succeed and grow. I hope you agree it's only fair that I am allowed to succeed and grow as well.