[Build Backlinks Online] The Best Way to Suck at Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The Best Way to Suck at Marketing
- Whiteboard Friday'

Posted by randfish
When we take a data- and profit-driven approach to marketing, we can get so
caught up in maximizing returns that we forget we're dealing with people,
treating our customers as simple transactions. If we're looking for loyalty, we
need to change that approach.


In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand details the virtues of marketing for
long-term success and moving away from that transactional model.







The Best Way to Suck at Marketing - Whiteboard Friday












For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!



Video Transcription


Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This
week I wanted to talk about something I see from a lot of marketers where we
just kill ourselves, people. We're dying. We're really sucking at our jobs, and
the reason seems to be very consistent. It seems like this is almost the best
way, the most popular way to suck at marketing. I'll show you what I'm talking
about.


So here's our marketer, and he or she has good intentions in mind, but he
goes out and looks at every opportunity with the same lens on. So goes out and
looks at partnerships and sees only the possibility of business development.
Goes out and looks at other blogs and other places in the industry where they
might contribute and sees only a guest post opportunity, a chance to earn a
link. Goes and looks at their landing pages and sees customers, potential
customers coming to their site and thinks only: "How many? What's the highest
percent of those people that I can possibly convert to put in their credit card
right now and buy something or make a transaction happen?"


They look at conferences and events and see only, "All right, how do I speak
there?" Or "Should I sponsor it?" And "How do I get the most customers I
possibly can out of that event? How do I get coverage from press, media, and
bloggers? How do I turn this advertising placement into ROI? How do I turn these
people on social media, who are interested in my topic, into people who follow
me, become my customers, and amplify my content?"


This transactional model of thinking is actually really similar to how we do
a lot of discussion in the marketing field. I'm guilty of this myself. I talk
about: "Oh, well, if you're looking for folks on social media, how do you turn
them into followers of yours? How do you turn them into amplifiers?"


These are important topics. They're good tactics, but this view, this idea
that all these people are just a chance to make money, just an opportunity, it's
almost like the prostitution of marketing. If you think about the difference
between dating and paying for a physical relationship, they're thought of in
such different ways. One has all sorts of positive and romantic and long-term
associations in the world, and the other has incredibly negative connotations. I
won't get into the morality of our different views on these things, but this
same thinking applies in the marketing world. We've all been on the receiving
end of it. We've all been these people who are reached out to by this
transactional marketer.


Transactional marketing results in only one thing -- transactional
relationships. Those transactional relationships are representative because
every interaction is viewed exclusively through this "how are you going to
become money for me," which is an ugly, ugly way to think and an ugly way to be
thought of. We all can feel it when it's coming from someone else. It means
treating people merely as conduits. They're conduits for either attracting or
becoming customers. When you think in this model, you prioritize something
that's actually dangerous to your long-term success -- your short-term success.


It's funny how the inverse correlation works. But if you're constantly
focused on the short-term return over the long-term relationship or relationship
potential, the transactional model means that people and customers are going to
abandon your brand as soon as it's no longer the best transaction for them
because they have no preexisting relationship. They have no loyalty. They have
no love for you or your company or your product. It's merely, "What are you
doing for me right now because I'm giving you dollars?"


No one is cheering for your success. That's so frustrating. How do you build
a community? How do you build a social following? How do you attract an audience
if no one's cheering for your success? These folks are somewhere between
ambivalent and sometimes antagonistic.


I'm sure you can think of brands. A lot of times people complain about this
when it comes to utilities. Think of your relationship with your cable
television provider or with an airline with whom you've been very disappointed.
These kinds of classic transactional models apply. There's no brand loyalty.
Occasionally, when there is, it's so special, so unique, so rare and weird, that
we talk about it and blog about it and tweet about it and share it. Perhaps the
worst part is there's no long-term magnification.


One of the things that I always talk about, that Moz always talks about, and
that we've had a lot of success in investing in channels of all kinds is that
because there is a long-term focus, because there's a relationship that's being
built, we are essentially biasing to get long-term returns over short-term
returns. That means, over the long term, more and more people magnifying,
amplifying, saying nice things, helping us out when they don't need to because
they have that connection with the brand.


If you're missing that, the flywheel that you should be building with things
like SEO, with things like social media marketing, with things like content
marketing encounters too much friction, and it actually becomes a transactional
model, just like paid advertising, and you lose a ton of the benefit that you
would normally get from inbound channels. So don't do it.


Instead of doing this, I would urge you to seek common ground with every kind
of relationship that you build and seek common ground apart from purely the
relationship, although business and professional topics are certainly great
places to start with those. If you can find the things that you have in common
-- these two for these guys -- among any of these kinds of partners that you're
interacting with and any type of outreach that you're doing, any type of
relationship that you encounter, it's going to remove the purely transactional
from the model.


The thing is it has to be authentic. You can't do this in such a way that
you're sort of going down a checklist of, "Oh, yeah, hi Fred. It's nice to meet
you. Are you also a Seahawks fan, because I am a fan of this football team?"
It's insanity. It's obvious.


Authentically seeking out relationships as you're going relationship
building, rather than biasing and prioritizing the transactional model, can be
felt in every interaction that you have. Go out of your way to help. Go out of
your way to help, and do it before you're asked to do it.


One of the things that I love to do is when I encounter someone who impresses
me, a product that impresses me, a company that impresses me, I like to share
it. Because I have a reasonably nice social following, that actually turns into
a lot of amplification, and those people are often very appreciative. But when
someone shares something of mine, even if they have five followers on Twitter,
no presence on Facebook, they pinned something on Pinterest, and they have four
followers on their Pinterest board, it doesn't matter. Especially if they're
doing it before there's any kind of interaction or before there's any kind of
ask from me, it shows me that they truly care and they value something of mine,
and that feels good. That's a great way to start a relationship.


Don't negotiate hard to get every last penny. I think that one of the things
that we're trained to do again as marketers is, in these kinds of marketing
opportunities, we go out and we see, "Well, what's the maximum that I can
possibly get? I'm going to push this other person up against the wall until
they're getting minimum return and I'm getting maximum return."


This is actually a terrible way to build a relationship. Of course, it
results in this feature where people abandon the brand as soon as you're not
providing the best service to them or as soon as you're not the best
transactional option for them.


So if you can follow these things and go and change the way you do outreach,
the way you do social media marketing, the way you do business development, the
way you do advertising placements, the way you do pitches, generally speaking, I
think you're going to see a much greater return.


All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday.
We'll see you again next time. Take care.



Video transcription by Speechpad.com
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