10 Ways to Sabotage Your Online Marketing May 27, 2009

Long-time Tweeple, Linked Inners & Facebookers are quietly grumbling about the newbies who have turned these community sites into a spam farm. Some, unfortunately are professional hackers and phishers.  Others are just ignorant masses trying to make that elusive ‘quick-buck’.  For my readers who genuinely want to build their businesses online without becoming one of ‘those people’, here is my current list of 10 Ways to Sabotage Your Online Marketing.*

1. Using Facebook as your eNews delivery:  Just because someone agrees to friend you doesn’t mean they have opted in to your business pitches or causes. After receiving weekly junk mail your ‘friends’ will be saying, “Just more junk from Spam-girl.” DELETE
2. Mistaking LinkedIn for real business connections:  They like to call themselves open networkers or LIONs – people who seem to be having some race to have the most contacts.  It’s a safe bet that within a few weeks, this person will solicit me.
3. Tweeting untitled links: ‘Hey, this is a really cool blog. Check it out!’ P.T.Barnum is alive and well online because suckers are clicking this junk.  Spammers and phishers love this technique.
4. Inviting Facebook friends to something every week: Remember the guy in high school that would ask every girl in the class to go to prom in hopes that someone might say yes?  This is the same thing and it reeks like that boy’s tennis shoes.
5. Picking fights with a LinkedIn Discussion author: If it’s something that bugs you, pass.  When you get in the face of any contributor no matter how right you might be, you look like a pompous fool or a bully.
6. Posting mainly solicitations: This one is so obvious that I can’t believe people do it. 
7. Using your Twitter autoresponders to get people to click junk: Blatant claims to ’show you how to get 10,000 followers a day’ makes me want to unfollow you immediately.
8. Hijacking a post when commenting: It usually begins with a compliment, then it quickly rolls into an article they wrote or a product pitch.
9. Faking interest in someones business with the covert plan to sell them something: ‘I am really interested in learning more.  Can we schedule time to talk?’ This is like that person that visits your networking group, gets everyone’s business card and puts you all on their email list.
10. Using your group manager status as your soapbox:  If you have a group on LinkedIn or Facebook, people joined to either support you or learn something more about that topic.  Making your posts priority so they sit on top all the time or sending ‘Wow – look at this great thing I’m doing’ loses them. 

Okay – I’m getting down off my soapbox now.  I’ve gotten that off my chest and hope you don’t do any of these.  But, in case you do and need further intervention I will post Part 2 next week with remedies and suggestions that will elevate your status.  It’s never too late to right an online wrong.

*There are probably a lot more than 10, but these are the repeat offenders.

Paula Pollock is Director of the Pollock Marketing Group.  She operates on the principal that all businesses deserve affordable marketing assistance to convert leads into sales. To receive her quick-read, weekly marketing tips and her Special Report, “7 Client Attraction Secrets That Will Double Your Income,” sign up at www.paulapollock.com

Are You Fluent in Your Prospect’s Marketing Language? May 20, 2009

Does your industry have jargon and acronyms that only you and your peers understand?  Every so often I’ll bet one of these words just pops out of your mouth when talking to a prospect.  Or worse, you purposely sprinkle them into conversation to make yourself appear to know what you’re talking about. FYI, that deer-in-the-headlights stare and mind-numbing silence is your prospect trying to remember the phone number of your competitor.

No One Likes to Feel Left Out – All of us have walked into a conversation in progress and tried to get up-to-speed on the topic only to feel completely out of the loop.  Often, you end up being the only one not laughing at the end or nervously smiling and asking what they were laughing about.  On a rare occasion, someone in the group will offer a quick summary to get you caught up.  Which situation do you prefer?  If you make the unfortunate jargon blunder, at least have the courtesy to explain what it means to your prospect.

That’s Still Not An Excuse – Just because you’ve explained the jargon, don’t consider it carte-blanche to use it in the future.  Techies and consultants are the worst offenders of this. They think they can talk over everyone’s head and still maintain a positive relationship.  Even if you are the foremost authority in your field people are going to hire the person that is easy to work with that helps them understand the process.  We all want to know what to expect.  Jargon makes us feel out of control of the experience.  It might take longer to explain something without jargon, but it will go a long way in making someone feel at ease with you.

Self-Proclaimed Experts – Lastly, if you are using the term expert, authority, guru, diva or an0ther self-absorbed adjective to describe yourself you are announcing to the world you are difficult to work with before they’ve even hired you!  Better to let testimonials and references sell how great you are.

You need to prove your worth not brag about it.

Paula Pollock is Director of the Pollock Marketing Group.  She operates on the principal that all businesses deserve affordable marketing assistance to generate more quality leads. To receive her quick-read, weekly marketing tips and her Special Report, “7 Client Attraction Secrets That Will Double Your Income,” sign up at www.paulapollock.com

5 Deadly Sins of Website Copy May 13, 2009

Anyone following my status of late knows I’ve been fully immersed in a complete retool of my website. Now, most might think it’s easy for a marketing professional to bang out copy or just drag over the old stuff. Unfortunately, knowledge can make it even harder because I know what converts – for the most part. This brought me to think how extraordinarily different writing web optimized copy is from informational copy. Actually – it’s night and day. As one of my clients said just last week, “Paula, you have a knack for getting inside my client’s head and then telling them just what they want to hear.” That’s the crux of web optimized copy: no fluff, no long explanations. Just tell me what I’m going to get from you so I stay on your site or click to know more. After last week, I’ve come up with the

5 Deadly Sins of Website Copy strategy that most writers commit.

1. Too long: We have become a blog reading species. Anything over 500 words (about one page) makes us run away. While it’s a lot easier to write a long passage since you can ramble on it’s much harder to tighten your copy down to the bare bone facts that your user wants to know.

2. Poor Targeting: Most sites are either too niche targeted or so general their users have no clue what the service is. Having highly targeted copy and direction is very important – particularly on the home page.

3. No calls-to-action or Closing Vehicles: After reading a section do your users know where to go next? If you’re just babbling on about what you do they are gone in 3 seconds flat. Seduce and entice, then ask them to do something. And, ask them over and over throughout the site.

4. No Plan to Process Luke-Warm Prospects: There are always prospects that aren’t ready to buy right now. You need something of value that gets them to give you their contact information (usually a free report on a hot industry topic or a CD with the same). Continuous contact will help them get to know you and want to buy.

5. Ignoring Potential Objections: When a prospect leaves your site, it’s because you didn’t give them the answers to their burning questions. If you have some icky parts to your business, product or processes handle them up front. Better to scare away the weak and focus on the strong prospects.

So, does your copywriter or web developer think like this when working on your site? If not, you need to find someone who understands website optimization. Although it integrates with technology, my work on my site and others is based entirely on prospect psychology.

If you’re a DIY Marketer – get back to those Freudian basics: id, ego & superego and start writing!

Paula Pollock is Director of the Pollock Marketing Group: elevating business owners to marketing entrepreneurs, training them to know their client inherently and see market opportunities that were invisible before. To receive her quick-read, weekly marketing tips and her Special Report, “7 Client Attraction Secrets That Will Double Your Income,” CLICK HERE and sign up. www.paulapollock.com

Tigger, Pooh, Piglet, Owl or Eeyore – Which Marketer Are You? May 6, 2009

The Hundred-Acre-Wood analogy has been done before, but I wanted to emphasize which the types of marketers the key characters would be.  I started down the path thinking of my own prospects who often tell me (openly or subconciously) that they are too frightened to break their marketing model.  Needless to say, we do not work together!  Think about who best represents your current business marketing model.

T-I-double G-ER: You bound wildly into every new trend that comes along. You are completely fearless in your zeal for change and loathe being bored. Each and every campaign is a new departure for your company and looks freah and exciting.  Brand continuity?  Who needs that when you can get yourself out there, noticed.  

Pooh-Bear: Happily you laze through your day enjoying the sun or blustery weather.  Cares are few as things always fall into your lap and only on rare occassion do you get yourself stuck in a beehive.  Honey just appears.  Your campaigns are planned and on auto-pilot and you count on them to deliver bottomline results as they always have.  It’s a charmed life, but does it scale? Oh bother.

Oh D-d-d-ear:  When opportunity knocks, you find yourself cowaring under the bed, Piglet.  There could be something big you haven’t planned for out there.  How would you handle it?  Your campaign could bring all sorts of people to your business and then you wouldn’t have time for your dear friend Pooh or painting lovely pictures.  It’s better not to answer the door.  They’ll go away.

Wise Owl?  You have read and researched to every possible target demographic and are quite certain you are a superior marketer.  You’ve created campaigns that you’ve found brilliant.  The last word is always yours, but the eventual sale goes elsewhere.  Odd. You wisely enlist the help of professionals who are at the top of their field only to adjust the final product.  After all, you are the wise one.

Eeyore:  Why fix what isn’t broke?  Everything works fine the way it is. You’ve always done it this way. Campaigns are fine.  Business is fine. You never try to make things a little better.  As long as you have a roof over your head and clouds to watch it’s all just fine.

Not one of these “marketers” will thrive.  Tigger will burn through tons of money; Pooh thinks hope is a strategy; Piglet will stagnate; Owl will piss everyone off and Eeyore is a cash cow that will eventually move out to pasture.  

The Calming Voice of Kanga –  She listens to them all and getseveryone back on track.  She accepts their current mindset blocks, assesses the errors of their past campaigns and corrects and directs with calm, firm precision.  

…And a plate of chocolate chip cookies.  Kanga signing out.

 

Paula Pollock is Director of the Pollock Marketing Group, servicing private clients as their virtual marketing director along with a team of top vendor professionals.  Paula also offers self-motivated businesses products to create functional marketing strategies and plans producing tangible results that convert into sales.  With over twenty years of corporate sales and marketing experience, Paula offers knowledge and value that few can match. To receive her quick-read, weekly marketing tips and her Special Report, “7 Client Attraction Secrets That Will Double Your Income,” CLICK HERE and sign up.www.paulapollock.com