Many people say that email marketing is a dead medium. Try telling that to my clients for whom I design more emails than you probably get in your inbox. Not only is it still alive, it’s thriving. Recently my favorite email marketing provider, Mailchimp, had their one millionth user.

Whether you believe email marketing is dead or alive I think there are some things we as designers, marketers and entrepreneurs can learn from email. Below are just five of the things I love about email marketing that can translate to other areas of marketing.

Keep it Short and Sweet

In email marketing you only have a brief moment to get someone’s attention and convince them to take action. You are one of many emails in their inbox and they already have their finger on the delete button. You can’t spend your time on long introductions. You’ve got to get them now.

We tend to just add another web page or go from 8.5×11 to 11×17 for our printing and it is killing our marketing efforts. People think that the “elevator pitch” is just something you keep in your bag for when you’re forced to talk quickly. I use an elevator pitch EVERY TIME. If you’re not interested in those 30 seconds then I won’t waste your time or mine by going further. Keeping everything in your life short and sweet will go a long way.

Single Purpose

The most effective email campaigns have only one job to do. This is very similar to direct mail. You need to identify your primary goal in each piece and direct all of your design efforts toward reaching that goal. Now days we want people to call us, email us, stop by our website, download our white paper…oh…and also give us their money. If you can’t focus neither will your prospect and that means you’re wasting your efforts (and money).

I once put together a direct mail campaign and money was tight so we needed to get the most out of the piece as possible. Do you think we wanted them to do 50 things? Nope, I needed a clear cut objective so that I could figure out if we were going to get the right response. A clear cut goal allows you to keep the reader/prospect focused and also allows you to test your effectiveness which leads me to the next point.

Culture of Testing

Email marketing isn’t just a call to action and a pretty picture. Effective email marketers are scientists. There’s the old sales mantra, “Always be closing” but I would say email marketers would say it should be “always be testing.” We want to know if changing the call to action to orange instead of blue will create a better response or if changing one word in the subject line matters. It’s like going to the eye doctor “better, or worse.”

This is probably one of the most important things you can do for your business and in your life. “If I do this will things be better or worse?”

I’ve always said that if you’re an entrepreneur, no matter what industry you’re in, you are in the marketing business. To be successful in the marketing business you must always be testing. Test different fliers, web pages, colors and copy. Always be testing.

Limitation Sensitive

This is actually what I hate about email marketing. With all of the advances in technology over the last ten years email seems to be the slowest to evolve because everyone uses a different email provider and reads their emails in different browsers. As an email designer you have to design for the person with the crappiest email browser….I’m talking to you Microsoft Outlook.

This sucks for designers because we are limited in what we can do but it does teach us an important lesson. You have to make sure you can reach the lowest and slowest in your demographic. Don’t spend money on a killer Facebook page if the majority of your demographic still looks for you in the yellow pages. Learn who your customers are and how to find them. It doesn’t matter if I’m running sexy ads in GQ. If your customers aren’t there then quit trying to be like me. Go find where your fish are and park your boat there.

Above the Fold Still Matters

Blogging teamed up with varying screen sizes and killed the whole idea of “above the fold.” In email, it still matters. Remember, we’re keeping things short and sweet so we need to take that single goal, make it into a call to action and place that thing as close to the top as possible.

In a world where we’re too wordy and think communication volume maters more than communication quality we need to trim our words down and put the most important ones at the top.

Bonus: You’re Punished for Irrelevance

In direct mail, if you send something that’s irrelevant to someone they just toss it in the trash. In email marketing they click the “junk mail” button. While the reader may think they are just pushing a glorified delete button they are actually notifying their ISP who then notifies the sender’s provider (read as tattling) and it can then shut down the marketer’s ability to continue doing their job.

To combat this marketers must always ensure that their readers actually want to hear from them and are finding value in what they are saying. In a world where “if you don’t like it you can turn the channel” nobody cares if what they are saying really matters. This wastes your time and can also bruise the perception of your brand. Even more, you often pay more for how large your list is. That means that you’re paying to keep people on your list who may not click “junk” but they aren’t reading it either.

We should tailor everything to our audience and care about being relevant to them. Sure the ones who don’t want what you’ve got can move along but it doesn’t take much for a reader of 13 months to start clicking “junk” the moment you stop being relevant to them.

There are plenty more lessons we can learn from email marketing but I clearly have a hard time listening to my own advice to keep things short and sweet. We’ll just have to wait for next time.

I hope you’ve found a few ways you can improve your marketing through these lessons.

Kristen, Adam, and "Great"

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting my family in Indiana. It was a big deal as I had not seen most of them for close to ten years and nobody on that side of my family had even met my wife.

The greatest part of the trip was spending time with my 96 year old Great Grandmother. “Great,” as we call her, has always been a part of my life and I have fond memories of staying at her house as a child.

What made this recent visit so amazing is that I got the opportunity to get to know Great through my wife. We were blessed with story after story about her life; stories I either forgot or had no idea about. When you’re a child you’re very much in the present and the Great in front of me was the only Great I needed to know.

Now, as an adult, I was surprised at the history that was unfolding before me as I was able to be “re-introduced” to such a wonderful woman. I could make this a post about the importance of family history and my new-found respect for it but that’s for a different day. Instead I would like to share a different lesson.

I always knew that I came from a typical mid-western, blue collar family. But Great taught me so much more. I learned that I come from generation after generation of hard workers most of whom held two jobs well in to old age. My grandfathers would find themselves working jobs after retirement just out of a need to stay productive. There was even an instance where a doughnut shop was purchased and everyone went to work there too! That’s a long story itself. Great was no different. She held multiple jobs around town in addition to raising a family. As a woman of that era she was pretty ground breaking.

On the other side of my family, it’s pretty much the same story. My wonderful Grandfather was a minister in a time where you would preach on Sunday and then go to work with a hammer and nails, assembling the actual church building on Monday. My uncle once referred to it as an era where “building a church” actually meant building a church. After retirement he would then go to work as a handyman helping widows around the neighborhood. (He actually built the house they lived in with his own hands.)

I’ve always wondered why I don’t know how to quit or why I don’t know how NOT to give 100%. I’ve often thought about why, in a world where people want the easiest route, I’m cool working hard if it’s something worth working hard for. I’ve thought about retirement and the idea of sitting on a couch doing nothing doesn’t seem realistic to me.

I once had a friend say that he was inspired by the fact that I seem to “work hard at everything I do.” Now I have a better understanding of why that is. It’s in my blood. I come from a long line of people who don’t know how to only give 50%, who don’t know how NOT to go the extra mile and who value working hard for something that matters. It’s who I am, it’s what I do.

Understanding this gave me a new found sense of pride in my family and in myself. It’s inspiring and it’s very motivating.

Your family history often dictates who you are. What are the traits you can value both in your history and in yourself?

Find them, take pride in them and use them to motivate you.

When this happens, you start looking at the situation in terms of risk vs. reward. You try to figure out if hitting your goal today will hurt you so much that next time you’ll be sitting on the couch instead of running. Consistency is everything and it’s better to do less and be able to do it again in a couple days than go all out and be immobile for the next few weeks.

Experience taught me that this injury, worst case, would knock me out for a week. I knew my training and travel schedule and thought that I could handle a week off so I went for it. But man was it going to hurt.

My running partner is the best I could ask for. It’s a huge blessing that I get to run every mile with my amazing wife. But, even more, she knows me. She knows how I run, my posture, my attitude and my “hurt myself to get it done” determination. Knowing all that, she can monitor me.

Around mile eight she looked over to me and said “your posture looks really bad.” I hadn’t even realized it.

“It’s bad?” I asked.

“It’s absolutely ugly. Are you doing okay?”

At the time it didn’t matter. I was going to finish one legged and bleeding if I had to. I’m fine with ugly if ugly means finishing.

Later that day, as the ice pack burned my injured foot, I was reflecting over my accomplishment. Something hit me:

In the middle of my run things were sloppy, painful and ugly but there was never a time when I wasn’t still moving forward.

How does that apply to your life? Are there areas that may be ugly but you’re still moving forward?

Lesson One: Slow down but never stop

I refused to stop. I set out to run eleven miles and stopping wasn’t an option. But I did slow my pace to make things more manageable knowing that continuing, not speed, was the only way to get to the finish line. Slowing down is not failing. Stopping is. Keep chasing your goal.

Lesson Two: Know your finish line

Our “finish lines” may be too far away. My real finish line is actually the 26.2 mile marker in Central Park but on this particular day it was mile 11. Had I set out to run 26.2 miles I would have quit when my foot went out but 11 miles was doable to me.

Break your big picture in to manageable finishing lines that challenge you but don’t leave you too hopeless. Consider quarterly or monthly mile markers that you can focus on. Knowing when the pain will stop or when you can rest will keep you motivated through that rough patch.

Lesson Three: Ugly progress can still mean pretty success

I looked flat out ugly in the middle of my run but when I hit mile eleven my back was straight and I was smiling. You know why? I achieved my goal and crossed the finish line. Just because you’re in an ugly spot doesn’t mean you won’t cross your finish line in style.

I once heard Steven Furtick say “don’t compare your behind the scenes footage to others’ highlight reels.” The finish line always looks better than the work that got you there. Just because it’s hard in the middle doesn’t mean the end won’t be as sweet. Often, you’ll find, it’s even sweeter.

On our journey from start to success, in whatever we do, there is a period where we’re hurt, alone, frustrated and in pain. It may even look like we won’t finish. But please keep putting one foot in front of the other. Your posture may look like crap and your pace may slow a bit but keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The finish line is coming and it’s going to be awesome when you get there.

Photo by U.S. Army and Lululemon Athletica (Flikr Creative Commons)

I first discovered this little phenomenon in myself about 6 years ago when I realized that I never panicked in traffic as long as the traffic was moving. If we were bumper to bumper but we were in motion, I was fine. It was only if every lane was completely stopped and we could not move that I would start to become anxious.

There are many examples in my life where this is true. Why? I need to be in motion. I need progress. I need action.

As a society we love action. A lot of people choose football, hockey or basketball over watching golf simply because they say golf’s “too slow” and thus boring. We dig car chases on television and we flock to theaters to see a movie genre known as, well, “action.”

The irony is that for a people group so interested in action we rarely value it in ourselves. We procrastinate, deflect and often times choose dream over “do.” Why is that? Is it laziness?

I think, for a lot of people, it is fear – fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of being wrong. For me personally there have been times where I have dragged my feet because I was afraid of wasting my time. I didn’t want to devote a year to working hard on something only to find out that it was not right. Nobody wants to run in the wrong direction and that’s what I was afraid of.

I think, whatever our reason is, we need to get over it. We need to do whatever we can to bury that tendency deep. The fear of in-action should be what scares us most.

I recently attended a leadership conference where, for two days, I was given the opportunity to sit and absorb the words of some of the most amazing leaders on the planet. I witnessed some incredible things and am still digesting it all.

One thing that stuck with me was the phrase, “The difference between visionaries and daydreamers is that visionaries do something.”

Your dreams are just dreams unless you get off your butt and start working on them. Your bucket list is just a list unless you start checking things off. That idea for a business, a charity an invention has no value unless you make it happen.

At the same conference I had the pleasure of hearing from Michelle Rhee, former Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Waiting for Superman,” you are quite familiar with her work. She’s a very polarizing person. The corrupt teachers unions swear that she is the Devil while Education Reformists feel that she’s in line for sainthood.

Michelle is one of my heroes. I believe that we desperately need education reform in this country but that’s not why I love her so much. Michelle Rhee is my hero because she did what every politician has failed to do. She went to work. She didn’t stand on a platform and proclaim that we needed a change, no, she made the change happen.

I value anybody who is willing to get to work; anybody who acknowledges their dreams but then focuses on the steps to achieve them.

I remember this story about a dad. His son came up to him and said that he wanted to be a professional basketball player like Michael Jordan when he grew up. The dad looked back and said, “Son, I really believe that you can play in the NBA one day. But you should know that Michael Jordan spent every waking hour practicing and training long before he became a pro. Son, you spend all your free time playing video games.”

I’m very tired of this “you can be anything you want” attitude we have. “Just dream it and be it, Timmy.” We’re literally dreaming ourselves out of success. Our country wasn’t built by dreamers. It was built by visionaries. Even Martin Luther King Jr., who famously said “I have a dream,” wasn’t a dreamer because he took action.

You see, we didn’t dream our way West. We didn’t dream our way to the moon. Sure, some of these goals seemed far off at the time but somebody quit dreaming, turned on the lights and got to work. That’s the difference. Mountains are too big to climb and planes are too scary to jump out of yet both can be done time and time again. But you have to take a step, you have to take action in order to do it.

I don’t know what my legacy as a man will be but I hope it’s said that I was a man of action; that I had big dreams but I knew when it was time to get to work.

What are you not doing? Let’s start taking action. We may not achieve our dreams today but let’s get to work. I promise that you’ll be amazed by what you accomplish.

Photo by DVIDSHUB (Flikr Creative Commons)

I haven`t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.

I think this is very true and it is a positive way to look at the ups and downs of our businesses.

I try to take this a bit further and apply it to my ‘internal self.’ By that I mean what about ME doesn’t work and what is needed to make ME work better? As the leader in your organization your internal health, feelings, intelligence (pretty much everything) effects the growth and culture of the entire place. Having a well-trained sense of self-awareness can go a long way toward making your organization run the way you want it to.

I’m constantly monitoring what makes me happy and productive. What kind of environment do I thrive in? Over the course of my professional career both as an entrepreneur and as a manager I have found those 10,000 things that don’t work for my ‘internal self’ and I am still finding new things to add to the list. I’ve thought hard about the times when I felt the most inspired and I’ve made note of them. In the same way I’ve made note of the times that I felt horrible and was unable to grow my business. What factors effected me, not the business, but me in that moment and how did that contribute to the overall outcome?

Kobe Bryant did an interview in GQ magazine awhile back where he mentioned that he always takes a helicopter from his home in Newport Beach to the Staples Center in LA on game days. Those of us who live in Southern California have most likely made that drive and will say “oh heck yeah, I wish I could do that!”

To the casual outsider his helicopter budget may seem like an extravagance but he looks at it as a tool of his trade. You see hours in traffic, even if driven by someone else, can effect you mentally as well as physically. He needs to be strong in both areas in order to lead his team and compete. Additionally, he knows that time saved on his commute results in more time in the training room preparing for game time. He is self-aware enough to know exactly what he needs in order to perform at the level he desires.

This isn’t unique to Kobe. Athletes all over, from amateurs to pros, know exactly what they need to do their best. Train yourself to be self-aware. What conditions do you need in order to be your very best? What are the 10,000 things that didn’t work before? It could be as simple as a certain type of music or the addition of a certain type of employee who can challenge you and collaborate with you.

No matter what it is, your organization needs you to be self-aware.

I thought I would take a little time to tell you more about our exciting news and give you a bit of insight as to why I’m embarking on this new adventure.

To start, Givebag.org is a non-profit organization that provides small, pre-packaged meals to homeless men, women and children throughout the US.

Each bag is biodegradable and contains various food items donated by our generous supply partners. These bagged meals are available at no cost to the person giving them out, as our goal is to make it easy for you to help someone in need.

Yes, you read that correctly. It is free to receive these bags but it is also free to give them out. It costs you nothing. Nada. No sacrifice on your part whatsoever.

Why is it free?

I’m glad you asked. The two most common excuses people have for not helping someone in need are: “I don’t have any extra money to give to charity” and “I’m too busy to volunteer.”

If you’ve said either one of these sentences in the past please know that we are, in no way, arguing the validity of these excuses but it is our goal to move past these excuses and empower you to help someone.

Our “free to give” model tears down both excuses in that you can be completely broke and still give one of our bags to someone in need. Don’t have time? No problem. We’re not asking you to volunteer at a soup kitchen or take time away from your family in order to help someone. Of course, that would be great but we don’t have unrealistic expectations here.

We just ask that you pick up one of our bags, stick it under the seat of your car or in your glove compartment and go about your day. Some afternoon when you least expect it you’ll be presented with an opportunity to give it to someone in need. Think you’ll never come across someone in need? Just try me. On any given night in this country anywhere from 700,000 to 2 million people are homeless and hungry. I’ll bet good money you’ll come across someone at some point.

Additionally, GiveBag.org addresses the third excuse that people have for not helping the homeless directly. “If I give them money they’ll probably spend it on drugs and alcohol.” I won’t try to debate whether or not that statement is true. I myself have leaned more toward giving food over money throughout my adult life. With GiveBag.org, even if you’ve used that excuse before – it’s no longer a reason not to help.

Why start a charity now?

I’ve been an entrepreneur and a marketing/design professional since college. My dream has always been to grow a business, make a ton of money and then start a charity to help the homeless. It’s always been on my heart and I knew that someday I would be able to make my dream come true and impact a group of people who I care for deeply.

I had the idea for GiveBag.org about a year ago. I had been thinking and praying for months about how I could help the homeless on a large scale. Every time I would pass by a homeless person I would ask myself, and God, how I could help them.

One morning while driving past someone on my way home from the gym it hit me. I was reminded that for years I would buy a box of granola bars and put them under the seat of my car in case I came across someone who could use them. I never had a lot of money and, as a student who owned a business on the side; I never had any time to help. This was always my way of making a difference while keeping it convenient. What if I could enable, no, motivate others to do the same thing?

I kicked around the idea with my father, and business partner, for a couple weeks. Sadly we decided to put the project on hold for fear that lack of focus would hurt our existing business. Lack of focus is probably the biggest problem facing entrepreneurs. We have tons of “great ideas” and, if we pursue them all at once, we’ll sink the whole ship.

Now, over the years I’ve found myself caring less and less about starting “the next great business empire.” No, I’ll never give up my “traditional” business plans and New Harbor is not going anywhere but I have been feeling uninspired lately.

Maybe I’m just annoyed by all the extra crap involved in running a small business. Maybe I’m tired of having to sell myself every day and justify my prices. Maybe I’m just over this economy in general. Who knows the reason but I’ve just been growing tired of things. With every passing day, every uphill battle and every statement that says “payment due” I’ve found myself getting further and further away from my dream of changing the world and helping someone else.

A month ago I watched an interview with one of my many heroes, Blake Mycoskie, who founded Toms Shoes. In this interview he said that he didn’t want to wait until he was old and rich to start giving to people in need. Why wait to do the thing that you know can bring you so much joy? Additionally I had been re-reading some of Tim Ferris’ work (another big hero of mine). Tim has always been about finding a way to let your business fund your dreams now – not later.

It all started to collide in my warped little brain. My dream is to help people. Why would I want to delay that? I’m going to have to work hard anyway. Why not just start it now? Why choke down the meal when all I’m here for is desert?

So that’s when it was decided. “Someday” is not a day of the week so I might as well get going. It’s about time I start chasing after my passion.

At New Harbor Design, we were already in talks to hire a new Online Media Director and we knew it was going to be Randy Perkins, my best friend from High School who had wanted to join the team for a year or more. One day while discussing the projects we needed to complete for NHD I dropped a hint that I was thinking about starting a charity earlier than I ever planned. He perked up and I could tell this was something he would be passionate about.

I then spoke to my business partner and expressed my desire to do the “wrong thing” and pursue this charity in addition to trying to grow New Harbor. After hearing me out he was on board.

One thing I feel very blessed about is having partners that have a bar fight mentality. By that I mean, for better or worse, they have your back at all times and at some point will say “screw it, let’s roll.” Randy and Dave are like that with me. They share my passion; they know the challenges and they still manage to say, “let’s do this.” I’m sure that will get us all in to trouble some day J but for now I can say it’s a great blessing in my life.

So there you have it, that’s why. Who knows where this will take us and history will show whether or not this was a good idea. Regardless, it’s an adventure. Doing the “smart” thing or the “easy” thing is boring and I’m no longer going to do “boring.” The slogan of this site is “the pursuit of a life worth writing about” so that’s what I’m doing. Forget smart and boring. Let’s roll.

I think businesses focus too much on their competition. Sure, a little competitive keyword research never harmed anyone – not too much anyway. But where do we draw the line between learning from our competition in order to benefit our business  and distracting ourselves from what is most important? When does it go from self-help to self-destruction?

The 5th grade field day

I’ll never forget the lesson I learned way back in the 5th grade. Our school participated in a “field day” with a few other schools. (For those of you who are unaware, “Field Day” was basically an annual track and field event.) Among my events was the 100 yard dash. I lined up with everyone else and we waited for the start of the race. The gun shot and we were off. I ran as fast as I could and held my hands in that straight up Olympic sprinter pose (as if that would make me faster). With every step I would look over at the other runners to see how well I was doing.

After losing the race, like I had a chance, a friend of mine came up to me and said, “You know, you probably would have gone much faster if you stopped looking at all the other runners.” Get the point? We’ll come back to that in a minute.

Does it make you any better?

I worked for a company who spent the entire day staring at its competition. At the very minimum we’d gossip heavily, dig up dirt – try to crush them. Sure it was entertaining from time to time. Some days it was downright enjoyable. But, and you should never forget this, it never made our products better. It never changed how we marketed our business. It never made us more money. Now, maybe we just sucked at it. I’m sure there are people who can capitalize beautifully but we never did. In fact, I think that negativity made us worse. Plus, our competitors were doing the exact same thing so how could we differentiate ourselves if were acting the same way? It was exhausting playing down in the mud with them. In fact, my old co-workers still do it. That’s one of the reasons I don’t have lunch with them anymore. Two seconds into the conversation and they’re gossiping and going negative just like old times. I can’t take it anymore.

Friends are more fun than enemies

In the middle of my “career” at the old company I went up North to visit my father-in-law. He has run his own, very successful, business for years. He’s a great man and I look up to him in countless ways. One night we were having one of our talks where I try to absorb everything he says and somehow apply it to my life. He mentioned an industry trip he recently went on. He spoke highly of these people he drank and danced with. My wife spoke up from time to time asking about “so and so” and how they were doing. She grew up in his business and went on these annual trips regularly.

About twenty minutes went buy and I began to realize that these “people” they kept referring to were not co-workers or vendors. They were my father-in-law’s competitors! He would call them friends. That was so weird to me. He’s in a very congested industry in the middle of the type of economy that turns us all on each other and he’s having dinner…no drinks…no, he’s dancing with them?!?

At the time, the only dinner I would consider having with my competitors would have resembled the restaurant scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone takes a hidden revolver from the bathroom and starts a war. That’s how much we hated everyone.

It was so foreign to me to befriend my competitors and here was a man I looked up to who has made more money than any of my employers and business partners and speaking highly about his “friends.” I thought about that for days, months – I haven’t stopped. I remembered my 5th grade field day and I realized that there is something to that. We stalked our competitors and we weren’t doing much better than before. We were beating our competitors but we were all unhappy with ourselves. We weren’t getting any better. My father-in-law was running a wonderful business and was successful but he was having fun doing it!

When we launched New Harbor Design I decided that I would not ever give a crap about my competition. The fact is that we are a marketing company. I can throw a stone and hit any one of my so-called competitors. And that’s just the local ones. Who cares. I’m not out to crush anybody. There’s enough business for everyone. There are people who do things better than us and there are companies we blow away. Who cares.

Why it really doesn’t matter

First, you’re not that good. If I had been a world class sprinter it wouldn’t have mattered who I was running against; I would have won. In the same sense, watching them didn’t make me any faster. Instead, I should have practiced and worked harder on “me.” Time spent worrying about the other guy is time wasted on making your business better.

Second, there is a lot of business out there. If you’re big enough to worry about market share then we can talk but if you’re a small business you’re not going to have to worry about that right now. Besides, in this global economy, my biggest competitor is not the business down the street and yours probably isn’t either. There are too many competitors to watch.

Third, competition doesn’t matter. Innovation does. Do it better and it doesn’t matter what your competitors do. I aspire to be companies like FourSquare, Google, Mailchimp and Virgin. Those are the guys I look up to and admire. Sure, they all have competitors – they have BIG ones. Google has Bing, FourSquare has Gowalla, Mailchimp has too many to count and Virgin was in a fight against British Airways that nearly sank the company. I think their competitors are scarier than yours. I’m sure they pay attention to the competition but they don’t let it dominate their thinking. These guys are innovators. The handle their own business and, as a result, we all watch them.

If you want to be like these companies start focusing on refining your business. Make your service better, make your product better, market better. When you’re as good as you can be then look over at the other guys. At that point, I doubt you’ll care.

I always say that “we’re not in the marketing business, we’re in the customer service business.” That’s why I focus on providing the very best service to clients and prospects regardless of my competition. One of the things we’ve decided to do is launch an informational blog to try and help small businesses market better. In my eyes, education is a part of service.

So what did I do when we came up with the idea to launch this blog? I contacted some of my competitors who have become friends of mine on Twitter and asked them if they wanted to contribute and blog with us. Sure, someone will click a link and go to my competitor’s site. Who cares. I want the very best information for my clients and prospects. I’m devoted to service, not sales. If my friends can help me achieve that then it doesn’t matter if they are competitors.

Good companies make money regardless of the competition. We’ll make money. I don’t need to fight people all day to pay my bills. I’d rather drink and dine with new friends.

Make your service better, make your product better, market better, be better. Forget about everyone else.

Over the course of this series we’ve found a way to narrow down that massive to-do list into some actionable items that just might help you to get things done for a change. We’ve identified the key characteristics of both short and long-term marketing tasks and we should now have an understanding of the 2-1 marketing strategy and why it can be effective.

Below is a list of common marketing tasks that may be on your list. Please note that this is not, in any way, a comprehensive list. However these examples combined with your understanding of the short and long-term should lead you down the right path. If I’ve missed some very important tasks in my examples please feel free to leave them in the comments. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Common Examples of Short-Term Marketing Tasks

• Cold Calling
• Trade Show Events
• PPC Advertising
• Traditional Print Advertising
• Direct Mail
• Mobile Advertising
• Direct Response Advertising
• Flyer Distribution

Common Examples of Long-Term Marketing Tasks

• Traditional Public Relations
• Blogging
• Guest Blogging
• Social Networking
• Email Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Article Marketing
• In-Person Networking
• Event/Charity Sponsorship
• Webinar Series

Like I said, this list is hardly complete. In addition, I feel that there are a few things we need to keep in mind. First, please know that one’s idea of “short-term” changes with each business model. This is primarily due to how long your sales cycle is. A real estate agent’s idea of short-term is not the same as someone in retail.

Second, some tasks can be considered for both short and long-term goals. Something like attending a trade show event could generate quick sales (short-term), especially if your product is sold on site but it could also be strategic in overall brand awareness and market control (long term). In one of my businesses I consider short-term sales to be less than 30 days. A trade show can give me that, no problem. But, if I want to saturate that area with my brand then it plays a much bigger role because it aligns me with that community. In that case my idea of ROI shifts. I just want to generate enough short-term sales to fund my larger ambition  (i.e. keep paying to attend the trade show).

Email marketing is a another one that can play both sides. If you have a mailing list that is active and is filled with subscriber purchase anything you send their way then email marketing will be more of a short-term goal. But keep in mind that you must spend months cultivating the relationship with your subscribers in order to achieve that so this will then become a long-term task. Again, which column you place some of these tasks in depends on your focus.

Another thing you should understand is that you are not married to whatever three tasks you choose. Some will work, some won’t, so what. You’re always going to be making changes. The whole point of this exercise is just to get you moving. Remember, your marketing sucks because you aren’t marketing. It’s time to start doing a couple things here and there that will make a huge impact on your future. If you aren’t moving, you aren’t growing and three small tasks are just what you need to get moving again.

In conclusion, please understand that this is not theory. Some marketing tasks yield bigger results than others but it really doesn’t matter what you choose. A wonderful byproduct of the 2-1 marketing strategy is the “oomph” you feel as a business owner. Someone once said that picking up women is not about looks it’s about confidence. Well I’m telling you that in this situation it isn’t about the marketing task, it’s about the energy – the “oomph.” Believe me when I tell you that you will find opportunities in places you never thought and you will be inspired in many ways simply by committing to just “get this stuff done.”

I put this in to practice and within weeks I had a new found energy in my business. Long-term (and some short-term) had yet to pay off but I was playing the game and I was becoming an active participant in my company’s growth again. To me, that is more valuable than sales. If my heart has checked out the bottom line will do nothing to keep this business moving.

As a business owner you are the heart of your organization. If the heart isn’t pumping then your company is as good as dead. Follow the exercise in this series and you’ll get the blood flowing again. Good luck!

In this series we’ve been discussing why marketing sucks for small business owners and we’ve been working on a way to get you out of that rut. We’ve gone over the idea of combining three small, manageable tasks that can be completed on a daily or weekly basis in a 2-1 ratio of long-term to short-term tasks.

Today I’d like to discuss the common traits of both task categories in order to help you classify your tasks and narrow things down into an actionable list.

Marketing will always either cost you time or cost you money and these categories reflect that. Our goal here is to maximize our efforts so we get the most while spending the least of both of these resources. It’s called efficiency.

Common Traits of Short-Term Tasks

First, short-term tasks usually cost money. Trade shows, paid advertising or a sales team all cost cash up front.

Second, and most important to me, short-term tasks should be easily measured. I tend to follow what Rick Perreault, CEO of Unbounce, once said regarding marketing ROI. He said that for every dollar he spent on marketing he wanted to make three. Now, depending on our business model, we can do better than that. However, this ratio works.

Bottom line here, you need to be able to achieve your goal right away and have a solid metric to justify the expense. If you hire a sales person for $3,000 a month, he better make you more than you’re spending or else you need to get rid of him. In the same sense, if you’re advertising online and you aren’t making your money back then pick something else.

Whatever you do for your short-term task you better be able to measure your results. That means leads, that means calls coming in, that means sales. And it better happen quick.

Finally, short-term tasks usually don’t take a ton of time to execute at first. Yes, managing an AdWords account can get tedious. But you can run a banner ad campaign or throw some ads on Facebook in a couple minutes. It’s all about quantity with a short-term task so you want to be able to knock as much out in as little time as possible. Remember, if a task is too big, break it down into smaller pieces so it won’t take as long.

For example, if I was new to Search Marketing and wanted to start advertising on Google AdWords, I could break this task down into smaller tasks and do them over the course of a week.

It could look like this:

• Monday: Research how to start using AdWords
• Tuesday: Still research how to start using AdWords (it’s freaking complicated)
• Wednesday: Research keywords to use (just a couple at first)
• Thursday: Designate/Build a landing page (could take a couple nights)
• Friday: Setup AdWords Account and create a couple ads

Note that I split everything down into a smaller task so that it would still be only one part of the 2-1 ratio. Once that was out of the way, I can now create recurring tasks for my 2-1 ratio.

So it could look like this:

• Monday: Review ad performance and analytics, decide what I could change on the ads and the landing pages
• Tuesday: Change ads and landing pages (you should only be changing small variations anyway so this won’t take long)
• Wednesday: Look for new keywords to use
• Thursdays: Designate/Build a landing page (can be based on the previous ones)
• Friday: Launch new ads
• Monday: Rinse and Repeat

Now this is a pretty general idea but you should get the point. This is actually very similar to what I’ve done for my own businesses in the past. If I’ve been VERY motivated or had time on a weekend I’ve accomplished the big “ramp up” task in order to get to the reoccurring/repeatable tasks quicker though that isn’t necessary.

Common Traits of Long-Term Tasks

First, long-term tasks usually don’t cost much if any money at all. However, they are time consuming. That is why I hate them. This blog series has probably taken years off of my life and it will be even longer before I can tell if I increased my bottom-line because of it which leads me to my next point.

These tasks are not instantly measurable. You will eventually be able to track monetary success through a metric but you need to take time implementing the long-term task in order to gather the data. Again, I can’t tell you right now if this blog post will lead to another customer for me. But, over time, I will have data to support that.

Thirdly, long-term tasks aren’t always chasing after a financial goal. You may want brand recognition. Yes, that should boil down to revenue but Budweiser doesn’t fill our T.V.’s up with commercials on game day in order to sell a couple more bottles of beer. They do it so that we recognize their brand when we walk into a store and see the display. That’s when we buy. In fact, that’s a great example of combining long-term (commercials) with short-term (in-store displays and placement). You’re welcome. With this blog there is a long-term goal at play here and that is branding my overall expertise on marketing. That will eventually make closing a sale far easier when a prospect can see that I know what I’m talking about or is aware of my reputation. But it will be awhile before we can see if a customer will call simply because of this blog. That’s why long-term goals aren’t immediately all about the money

If you’re in your business for the long haul then a 2-1 ratio of long to short-term tasks does the trick. Think of it this way: “Short-term pays the bills in order to allow us to keep doing long-term.”

In the next post we’ll lay out some good examples of both short and long-term task and even find some that can fulfill both categories.

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.This is the first episode in an ongoing video series we’re trying out.

In each episode of “The Q&A” I’ll address a common question related to business, marketing and design.

Let me know what you think in the comment section and, if you have a question you’d like me to answer, be sure to hit me up on Twitter.

Thanks for watching!