I’m at the Online Marketing Summit this week in San Diego.

Every show I go to always seems to have a theme:

• Mobile
• Social
• Landing Pages

This show seems to be all about the customer… about understanding, deeply understanding the person that comes to your Web presences (your site, Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.)

The message I’m hearing over and over again by large brand managers and consultants is resoundingly clear: Know your customer and give them what they want, absolutely.

I’ve heard someone who did an entire presentation on “love.” That’s not a normal theme at a business conference. But what was funny was she said, “I know this is common sense, but…” I don’t think “loving” your customer is common sense. I have never heard that come up at a corporate meeting once.

But make no mistake, we are in the era of the individual. The customer is in control and can make your brand explode (think Apple) or implode (think Susan G. Komen).

The influence of the customer is undeniably potent. And I don’t see it doing anything but getting stronger.

Genuinely care about your customer or face the consequences. It’s sounds like blackmail when I write that. But it’s not. We have a quid pro quo with our customers. They give us money and we give them something in return. If they don’t like what we are giving them they just won’t give us any money. That’s all. It’s actually quite fair. Fairer than it has ever been before.

The difference now is that individuals are able to unite instantly and are given a loud megaphone to have their say.

So how do you give your customers what they want?

You can do studies of your ideal customer. You can look at your ideal customers that have bought in the past and build out a target market.

But none of that is going to tell you what they truly want.

You only can get that information one way: Listening.

Social media works both ways. Your customers have a very public platform to discuss your products and services. But that gives you an amazing opportunity. You can actually listen to what they have to say.

Not only can you listen, you have to listen.

We are moving away from a content-centric web to a social-centric web. Again, dictated by the end-user.

We are getting to a point that if people aren’t talking about your company online it is likely because you aren’t worth talking about. And that’s a fate worse than being talked poorly about. You are inconsequential.

The era of the customer – Truly a new concept because now the customer has power.

Post from: SageRock Digital Marketing

The new thing: Your customer

You will see a CEO come into a company, do great things, move on and then be terrible. It happens because they are great in a certain scenario but aren’t able to adapt to a new scenario.

I’m a guy who can brand by personality. It’s what I did for my company and it’s what I recommend to others.

I’m not the first (or best, by far) person who has done this:

Donald Trump
Richard Branson
Every major sports star
Steve Jobs
Bill Gates

They do this because it adds dimension and life to an inanimate entity. It’s much easier and cheaper to brand by putting a person in front of a company than trying to turn the company into something that has a real feeling of life.

There are many pitfalls with this approach.

The one that comes to mind recently is that I think people often believe I’m the person who is expert at everything. I’ve had several people want to only work with me. They don’t want to talk with my team.

There couldn’t be a worse person to solely run your online campaigns.

While I have been a detail person in the past. I used to easily practice my cello working on a single measure 6-8 hours a day for days on end. But today I am a big picture person. In fact, I continually try to get bigger in my perspective. I do everything in my power to move away from details.

I’m the vision of my company. I am not the product.

I was reminded of this last week when I presented an SEO and paid search review to a client.

I had done the paid search portion of the review.

He specifically mentioned that the paid search portion seemed high level and not specific. He was worried we wouldn’t bring anything new to his paid search. He didn’t see specifically what we would do for his paid search.

He caught me.

I’m the guy with a sledge hammer or axe. I come in to bust things up brutally. I’m not the guy who you want to make things pretty.

But that’s where the team comes in. Everyone else I work with at SageRock is a detail person. I’m surrounded with detail people.

SageRock would be nothing without these people. I believe a little Sage goes a long way. I’m not the turkey. You just sprinkle a little of me on the turkey to give it a little zest.

That interaction during the site review had a big impact on me. It made me realize that my value is not in implementing things. It’s setting up the vision for where things need to go. It’s for inspiring and motivating to move everything forward. I am the person who develops things. I’m simply not the person you want hashing out the details of your account.

With that I’ve made a very conscious decision to stay in the world of helping people with things like the Friday Internet Marketing Show, Digital Akron, writing this blog, speaking.

I want to dedicate my time to being as helpful to the business community as I can. But me running and implementing accounts is definitely not my best use. In fact, it probably is a detriment to my clients.

One of the great values of working with an agency, versus doing everything internally is that you get access to a team. While you don’t get everyone’s time all the time, you get the value of a collective group that together has decades of experience. That’s almost impossible to recreate in a non-agency setting.

SageRock has always been about being honest, straight-forward and the best Web marketing company on the market. The SageRock team, as a whole, achieves those objectives. I, alone, come nowhere close to that.

Post from: SageRock Digital Marketing

An Agency Is Not One Person

The overarching message was that he killed everyone who disagreed with him.

He became incredibly paranoid and convinced everyone was out to get him.

Granted, there were a lot of people out to get him. But he couldn’t tell the difference between those who were trying to help him and those who were trying to get him.

If you didn’t agree with him he killed you. That’s a terrible management strategy. You need good, honest advisers around you.

Ultimately, he ended up in a hole in the ground looking like this:

Saddam was like many small business owners.

He was exhausted, paranoid, beat up and attacked at every angle.

If there is a psyche of a person I’ve gotten to know over the years it’s small business owners.

I work with them a lot and I am one. That dual role (living with them and being them) gives me a deep sense of understanding and empathy. I get, to the core, why they are the way they are.

Here are some adjectives that come to mind when I think of small business owners. It isn’t every small business owner because they are a varied group. But I would say I see these character traits more often than not:

Pros:

• Warriors
• Persistent
• Knowledgeable in core small business philosophy
• Self-assured

Cons:

• Tired
• Suspicious
• Arrogant
• Myopic

I think it’s important to say that while the “cons” sound bad, it’s important to know that small business owners have only become that way because they are a product of their experiences.

They are tired because they have been beat down by vendors, customers and the government for years and years.

They are suspicious because many people have tried to take advantage of them. Everybody is testing to see if they’ve just encountered a sucker.

They are arrogant because they are the only people in their lives that have been willing to take risks and make big moves.

They are myopic because they don’t have enough money to hire enough people to get all the work done. So they end up vacuuming the floor before clients come to the office.

Yes they are bad traits but it’s not because they are bad people. They are just products of their environment. 

This is how Saddam ended up in a hole looking like  a homeless man. This can happen to you. (Well maybe not literally in a hole. But you get the analogy.)

While these Cons are nothing to feel guilty about or to feel that they represent you as a human, make no mistake. They are cons and they are limiting your growth potential.

Here’s how to get over them.

I strongly recommend reading the “Daily Practice” by James Altucher here:

How to be THE LUCKIEST GUY ON THE PLANET in 4 Easy Steps Altucher Confidential

I’ve seen versions of this from other people but this is a very good process.

If you can implement that practice into your daily life I promise you those cons will melt away.

That said, time is never on the side of the small business owner. Because of that, I’ve become a fan of drugs.

I do 20 mg a day of Citalopram. It’s used to treat depression.

I would not say that I’m deeply depressed. But my doctor definitely thinks I’m depressed. If you look at the con list they align pretty closely to the signs of depression.

I know taking drugs to deal with emotions is a taboo topic. But I don’t really care.

The cons in that list for me have significantly lessened.

If you are in the anti-drug crowd then I highly recommend strenuous exercise. Like running.

Running is actually a stronger drug, in my opinion. I will often reach levels of euphoria. The big difference is that the Citalopram is more even.

Running is more spikey. I feel omnipotent for a couple hours but then fall pretty quickly back into my negative thought pattern.

But whatever you are comfortable doing: just do it!

You can’t will your way out of those Con characteristics. You have to work your way out of them.

But I’m here to tell you, if you don’t manage them they will just get bigger and bigger. They will end up consuming you to the point of implosion. Trust me. I’ve seen it.

Post from: SageRock Digital Marketing

Don’t End Up Like Saddam Hussein

I’m doing a 3 hour workshop on how to avoid social media stall out.

This is for the B2B social media crowd.

Keeping business to business marketers inspired to keep on keepin’ on with their social media is probably one of the bigger challenges.

B2C companies get it all a little more easily than the B2B crowd.

That amuses me, however, because it suggests that when people go to work buying and selling products and services for business they somehow leave their human parts at the door. It’s like they morph into analytical robots that only buy things based on quantitative analysis.

If that was the case every law office in America would not look like this:

If there is anything in the world that people probably buy more on instinct and emotion it is B2B products and services.

• How much money will your business accountant really save you this year?
• How perfect are those annual meeting notes your attorney drafted?
• How much money will that new plastic conveyor belt save you over 5 years?

You have no real idea what the answers are to those questions.

You just believe the sales guy that stopped by your office and told you things.

You are telling yourself you are buying intellectually. But really you are buying for unconscious reasons:

• You like the sales guy.
• The company you are buying from is the industry leader and you want to be associated with the best
• They take you out to lunch.
• If you are a really great potential customer they fly you on their private jet to sit in their NASCAR box seats.

You can’t possibly analyze a business product thoroughly enough to estimate how much money it is going to make you or save you. Eventually you have to take a leap of faith.

And with that, the B2B company selling their products have an advantage if they know how to use it. They will make the sale on the relationship building more than the features and benefits of the product.

For sure you have to have awesome features and benefits. But everybody has those – or at least they say they do. What will set you apart is the relationship.

This is where social media comes in.

If you had started a social media plan you believed this at some point.

But as time goes on you very likely lost sight of why you started in the first place.

That’s where I come in with this session.

I have 3 main goals I want to get across at the session:

Goal #1: Why doing social media is a good idea.

I want to discuss metrics that hopefully will inspire the group to remember (or learn for the first time) why social media is so important.

Like this, for example:

Social media is like this whether you blog, tweet, LinkedIn or Facebook. You get more leads if you actively engage in social media. I’ve got several of these types of slides.

Goal #2: Stop torturing your followers.

So often I see B2B companies sending out the WORST messages in the social media world. They are not interesting and are entirely self-serving.

There is no better way to alienate you and your company by just being a boring marketing message in the social media world.

This segment will include a series of examples of how people continually torture their followers. And then we’re going to have a workshop where we, as a group, come up with a super awesome viral marketing plan for one the people in the group. I’m especially looking forward to that. The group strategy sessions almost always come up with amazing ideas.

Goal #3: Tracking your way to success.

We are then going to finish up with different tools and techniques to monitor and track success. There are so many great, cool tools for helping you measure social media. We’ll look at as many as I can fit in.

One of my personal favorites is: http://www.socialbro.com/

That should be more than enough for a 3 hour workshop.

I’m really looking forward to it all. Rocky and Indy (my amazing wife and awesome kid) are coming with me. So I’m especially looking forward to LEGOLAND on Sunday.

Post from: SageRock Digital Marketing

3 Points I Want To Make At My OMS Workshop #OMS12

But it has a lot to do with marketing (and other things) so… what the hell.

This is a question I’ve actually been asking myself about my own company.

Is it possible to double the size of your company in a year, and if it is possible, how do you do it?

First, I would say that doubling the size of your company is definitely possible in one year. It happens quite a bit.

Here is the list of Inc’s top fastest growing companies.

Growing 1000% in a year (not just 100%) is very possible.

So if it is possible then how do you do it?

If you are a new company this article isn’t for you. It’s quite possible you will double your size in one year simply because you are starting from near zero.

My audience is companies like mine. Companies that have been doing OK for multiple years. But have not had a huge jump in growth.

Quite honestly I’m ready to grow.

I’ve spent the last decade learning how to run an agency, how to provide the most effective service for my clients, how to be a business person. Now I’m ready to move.  

It has become very clear in my mind what I want out of my business. I want to be a $3 million company.

I don’t plan on getting there this year. But I see no reason what-so-ever that I can’t be there in 2013 or 2014.

But if doubling your company hasn’t happened in 5 – 10 years what will make this year different?

There’s only one way to do it. Do something you haven’t done so far.

The other thing to remember is to not stop doing what is working up to this point.

I know what has worked up until now for me:

• Blogging
• Videos
• Speaking
• Tweating

I definitely will not stop those things. But I definitely will add to the list.

Over the years I have had the opportunity to work with many different kinds of companies. There is one common trait I have noticed:

Companies are primarily either sales-based or marketing-based. They rarely, if ever, are good at both.

That’s the case with my company. We are marketing-based. We (I) are terrible sales people.

This is a fundamental problem for companies. For my company.

If you get all your new customers strictly from sales or strictly from marketing you are expending too much energy.

You have to work much too hard by not becoming at least adequate at the other discipline.

Sales and marketing are like the ying and yang, ebony and ivory. You need one with the other.

I strongly believe that if you look at your company and can see that you are significantly either a sales-based or marketing-based company, with little capability on the other side you are likely nowhere near as optimal a company as you could be.

Show me a company that is good at both and I’ll show you a company that is successful.

Show me a company that is good at one or the other and I’ll show you a company struggling.

Show me a company that is not really good at either and I’ll show you a company that is in business by mere luck.

Post from: SageRock Digital Marketing

How to double the size of your company in one year

I wanted to talk to him about the Google Panda Update. It’s something we have spent a lot of time thinking about here at SageRock. Greg, in particular, has a ton of experience analyzing how the Google Panda Update has effected sites.

So, sit back and enjoy all the discomfort and love as I accost Greg on what he knows about the Google Panda Update in this video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pQhbNGlex4

Post from: SageRock Digital Marketing

A Surprise Attack Interview with Greg

1. I’ve been working on my ability to do events simultaneously in person and online. I did a full day class that way yesterday. It worked great!

So we are going to run this week’s Digital Akron event the same way. The event is totally free and always geared around a particular topic. You can learn more here: http://digitalakron.eventbrite.com

2. It’s possible that I’ve never been busier at SageRock than I am right now. It is so tempting to put off writing this blog. But I attribute all my busy-ness to this blog. 3 posts a week. There is nothing more important to growing my business than making sure this blog gets written. This post comes to you from my phone in bed (in the dark) last night.

I tell you this for a couple reasons. First, I am living proof of the value of blogging. My marketing consists of three thing: Twitter, speaking and blogging. That’s it. Those are the only ways I promote my company. Second, you have time to blog. If I have time you have time.

You don’t have to write the great American novel as your blog post. No one expects you to. Just try to write something helpful.
 
 

Post from: SageRock Digital Marketing

Digital Akron now in person & online

First, if you don’t know, we bought our building going on two years ago. (We’ll be at 15 Broad St. for two years in March)

For most of that time we have shared the space with two other companies.

SKYTECH TRAINING – Public, Private and Virtual IT Training

Archer Retail Construction

The guys at Archer have recently renovated the back building of the property and have moved out of the main building.

This is the floor plan of the entire property:

So, we now have a few areas in the main building that are open.

This is what I’m thinking:

I’d like to setup a Digital Center in Akron.

I’m thinking it would be really cool if we could get several companies in the building that are related but non-competing.

Ideas include:

• Design
• Writers
• General marketers
• Social media experts
• Videography
• Photography (I have a room that has the potential for being a sweet studio for both video and photography.)
• Public Relations
• PHP coder
• ASP.NET coder
• Email
• Print specialist

Those are the ones off the top of my head. But I’m open to others. I would love to have a place where like-minded people could come to work and collaborate.

Every time we have a person like one of the above people come in to our building magic starts happening. People start talking to each other about jobs they are working on. Then someone else says something like, “Wow. That’s really cool. Have you thought about doing this…”

There is something so powerful about getting a group of people together.

Here are my initial thoughts on logistics:

• You could rent month-to-month desk space.
• The rent would be by the desk ($125/month).
• If you need full rooms we have that too.
• Everything is included with that. 
• Free Internet
• Free heat
• Free air conditioning
• Free water and trash
• Everything is included with that rate.
• The only thing it doesn’t include is a phone line. But cell phones and Skype solve that problem these days. And if you are really in need of a wired phone line I’m sure we can figure something out.

We also have a large conference room and kitchen that is included too.

I have more pictures here.

I think this could be a really powerful collaboration center that would help us all make more money.

So, if you are working at home or would like a more flexible office space filled with similar companies that get what you are all about, please let me know. I’d love to talk with you and show you the space.

You can click here to fill out a form that will come to me.

Or call me at: 330-379-9000 ex 5010

I truly believe this could be a  great opportunity for everybody.

Post from: SageRock Digital Marketing

A Vision for 15 Broad St. – An Akron Digital Center

This video aims to inspire you into trying search marketing. It also could be good to give to an executive that is on the fence about trying search marketing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5YVCsVUCI0

Here are the links to the resources I referred to in the video:

http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2012/01/online-ad-spending-to-top-print-in-2012.html

http://searchengineland.com/infographic-the-top-three-us-search-engines-99036

Post from: SageRock Digital Marketing

Why Search Engine Marketing Matters

I would say that Martin Luther King Jr. is probably my greatest American hero. We are so fortunate that he lead the civil rights movement instead of a person like Malcolm X. We would likely be living in a much more angry and violent country today if that had been the case.

MLK Jr.’s message of love and non-violent resistance had incredibly powerful and long-lasting positive consequences.

But the fact of the matter is: the movement would have never been as successful had it not been for the marketing.

Here’s what I mean:

Rosa Parks was the crucial opening the civil rights movement needed.

She, of course, was the incredibly brave woman who refused to sit in the back of the bus on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama.

This was so incredibly fortunate because she didn’t yell, fight, curse. She just sat there.

This wasn’t the first time someone tried to stand up for herself. But it was the first time that people decided to use the moment as a jumping off point for what became the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The power of this all was the speed and precision at which everything happened:

• Thursday, December 1 – Rosa Parks refuses to move out of her seat.
• Friday evening, December 2 – she is bailed out of jail.
• Friday night, December 2 - Alabama State College professor Jo Ann Robinson stayed up all night mimeographing over 35,000 handbills announcing a bus boycott.
• Sunday, December 4 – plans for the Montgomery Bus Boycott were announced at black churches in the area, and a front-page article in The Montgomery Advertiser helped spread the word.
• Monday, December 5 – the WPC distributed the 35,000 leaflets. The handbill read, “We are…asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial … You can afford to stay out of school for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don’t ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off the buses Monday.”

I would like you to notice that this happened over the weekend. If they had said, “We’ll get to this Monday,” the initiative would have been lost. They pounced so aggressively on this and worked more intensely over the weekend than most people ever work all week long.

This was all carefully prepared and ready to go. It was a marketing plan that was locked and loaded. Rosa Parks wasn’t the first person to be arrested for sitting in a white person’s seat. But she was the best.

From here: Montgomery Bus Boycott – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested early in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to a white man, E.D. Nixon thought he had found the perfect person, but the teenager turned out to be pregnant. Nixon later explained, “I had to be sure that I had somebody I could win with.” Parks, however, was a good candidate because of her employment and marital status, along with her good standing in the community.

This was a marketing campaign carefully crafted.

I could do this article through the entire civil rights movement. It was not ad hoc. It was orchestrated, carefully and precisely. It was meant to win the hearts and minds of people (which, incidentally, is a phrase I stole from the U.S. government – some of the best marketers on the planet).

Marketing. Brilliant psychologically-based marketing is at the core of every great movement in the history of humanity. If we had enough written documentation I’m quite sure I could do this article on Jesus and the rise of Christianity.

So what’s the point of this?

You must ask yourself what you are doing to win the hearts and minds of your customers and clients.

I can hear the bull crap excuses that are going off in your head:

• “I sell commodities – no one needs or wants to love what I sell.”
  Got Milk?
  
• “I sell industrial equipment – these people just want facts and figures.”
  So does Caterpillar:
  
•  ”I just sell a small part of a much larger product.”
  Tell that to DTS, the company specializing in digital surround sound formats:
  

If you want to stay small and irrelevant please… just keep telling people the features and benefits of why they should buy your product. The civil rights movement could have done that all day too. But it would have never taken off like it did the moment Rosa Parks (perfect Rosa Parks) sat down in that seat.

Post from: SageRock Digital Marketing

Martin Luther King Jr. and Marketing