Your Marketing Mystery Box Didn't Work!

I just watched your ridiculously expensive direct mail marketing piece get opened in the elevator and I hate to tell you - it completely bombed. I didn’t get a chance to see your company name because it happened so fast, but I can tell you this – it was a complete and total waste of your money.

I was coming back from a walk and noticed a gentleman walking into my building with what I thought was a white cake box. After my mind cycled through all of the desserts I was craving at the time, I realized he and I were most likely going to end up in the same elevator. I smiled as I thought of how great it was going to smell in that elevator on the way up, especially if there was something good like donuts or fresh croissants in that cake box!

The gentleman and I made our way into the building through separate doors and he reached the elevator first. As he adjusted his grip on the box to free a hand to push the elevator button, I realized the white box was actually shaped like home plate. For you non-baseball-fans, home plate is the five-sided, square with a triangle on the bottom home base from baseball that you stand over when batting.

Just as the elevator door opened, two other gentlemen reached the elevator from the other side of the building and all four of us got inside. One of the newly arrived guys asked the guy with the home plate-shaped box, “Got something good in there?” As the door closed, the guy who asked the question pushed the “2” button and I pushed “7”. Seemed like they were all getting off at “2” so I made the assumption at that point, it wasn’t the random curiosity of a stranger wondering what was in the box, but that these three fellow elevator riders knew each other.

The guy holding the box said, “I don’t know, let’s take a look.” He flipped open the top flap of the box to reveal a home plate-shaped foam pad, obviously there to protect the contents inside, and a nicely printed letter sitting on top. Just as frivolously as he’d flipped open the box, the guy flipped up the letter as he said, “Obligatory letter,” and then reached for the padding.

I chuckled to myself a little here because as many of you know, I earn my living by writing the words that would go on that letter if this had been one of my marketing projects. I thought of all the hours the writer put into the content of that letter and all the hours it took that writer’s bosses to approve and refine that content. If only that writer and his bosses could have seen firsthand that their prospect spent an entire half-second on their letter!

So, the padding was flipped up to reveal a piece of white cardboard inset in the box with some cut-outs that held what looked like a couple notebooks, a couple brochures, and at the very bottom, a baseball with a lot of black words printed on it.

“Looks like another development kit,” the box’s recipient said as his fingers quickly perused the items in the box until they landed on the baseball. “Well, at least my kids can play with the baseball,” he said as he closed the box. We all chuckled.

Just then, the elevator dinged that we were at floor “2”, the doors opened, and the three gentlemen exited the elevator as the guy who asked what was in the box said in a disappointed tone, “Aww, I was hoping it was something good.”

The elevator door closed and I spent the remaining trip up the next 5 stories in the elevator contemplating what I had just seen. I’d say the box, it’s custom design, all the printing, the baseball and the shipping put the per-piece price of that marketing mailer at $20 if they bought thousands of them, and more like $30 or $40 if it was a shorter run. If you’re a marketer, you know the months and months of work that can go into the creation of a piece like that – all of the hours of salaried and hourly work that triple or even quadruple the actual cost of an item like that.

And in the end, what was the result of all that work and money? The prospect’s kids got a free baseball and maybe – just maybe – the prospect will remember that time he got a home plate-shaped box with a baseball in it, though he probably won’t remember exactly which company sent it to him. “Some development company, I think,” he’ll say.

Mr. Parker, Eternal Vigilance and Our Hard-Earned Money

Remember when we were kids and there were only a few things we had to watch out for? Things like strangers in vans, strangers with candy and strangers that offered you candy to get in their van? Remember when as long as there was an adult you knew and trusted that could see you from wherever they were sitting, things were safe?

I mean, we had to watch out for Halloween candy that had razor blades in it, open bottles of Tylenol and Richard Ramirez that one summer, but all in all, when I look back to those golden years of yesterday, I always felt pretty safe.

Fast forward to today, and I feel like they are coming at us from every angle! You’re able-bodied, you have a job, a little bit of money put away, a decent car and a decent place to live and now, all of the sudden, you are prime target #1 for every sleazeball out there!

We have to watch out when we get money from an ATM because they’ll sneak up on us, or maybe they’ve already placed a card reader over the ATM card slot and are waiting for us to simply take out 20 bucks so they can gank us for all we’ve got! We have to watch out for that same card reader scam at the gas pump, too. I know 99.99% of the people who handle your credit card are trustworthy, but you still do hear about people getting card numbers lifted at retailers these days. It also seems like you stand a much better chance of not getting ripped off by the actual human holding your credit card than you do once the merchant lifts all your personal information off of that card and then stores it in their payment system. Target ring a bell for anyone out there? I didn’t get any fraudulent charges on the card I used that month at Target, but I did get a nice, brand new shiny credit card and new account number from Chase just in case.

And speaking of scams, just this past Saturday morning, I got a phone call I have to tell you about. There I was, minding my own business, about to take a live check to the bank when the phone rang. Yes, folks, an actual live check, if you can imagine! I was going to have to actually walk inside the bank! Can’t remember the last time I had to do that! Yes, those ATM machines sure are scary, but hey, much less scary than the line in the bank or one of those many colorful Orange County bank robbers that get the cool names like the Hawaiian Shirt Bandit, Cool Grandpa Bandit, and Lady In A Crazy Wig Bandit. Yeah, I made those ones up, but you know what I am talking about.

But, anyway, back to my story – back to the phone call. I am about to take this live check to the bank and my cell phone rings. It’s a 202 area code phone number with a caller ID listed in Washington, D.C. My first thought is, what the hell do they want? Haven’t I sent them enough money already this year? I don’t answer the call, but the caller leaves an automated message with the phone number, asking for a return call. Normally, I just ignore these calls, but this is the third call from that number in three days so I figure I better call them back and tell them I am not interested in their magazine subscription, low-low financing on a new automobile or whatever thing it is that they are peddling that I don’t want, that way, at the very least, they’ll stop calling me.

So, I call the number, and that is when it gets interesting. A man that sounds to be about my age or so with a very thick Indian accent answers my call and proceeds to tell me that I have reached the “IRS” and that they have been trying to reach me.

I laugh as I think to myself that the United States Internal Revenue Service sure as hell has never had a hard time reaching me before! They always seem to find my paycheck and me just fine every couple weeks. The man on the other end says that he wants to just confirm that he is speaking to the right person, so I figure, I am game...let’s see what they know about me.

Turns out to be pretty scary – He’s spot on with my first and last name, middle initial, full address, and obviously, my phone number. Granted, this information is available all over the Internet from just about any form I have filled out in the past 10 years, but nonetheless, a little annoying that they have all this info ready and at-hand when they are on the phone with me.

I proceed to tell the man on the phone that I am not sure why they are calling me because I am all paid up. He then apologizes, but doesn’t understand what I mean. I proceed to remind him that he works at the IRS and ask him if he understands what they do there. I explain that the take money from me every time I get paid and then another lump sum once a year, but right now, I am all paid up!

He them proceeds to tell me they have sent me multiple unanswered letters because, apparently, I owe so much in back taxes that I am now subject to a lawsuit being filed against me by the government. Now, keep in mind, this entire time, I am being very patient while this man struggles to get this entire story out in English, tripping up more than a few times.

I proceed to explain to him that since they have my correct address, the letters should have reached me no problem and that I am starting to wonder if he is really calling from the IRS. He then proceeds to tell me that he wants me to write down his name, his badge number, my case number and the toll free number to the IRS so that I always have it handy throughout what is most likely going to be a long and drug-out investigation by the IRS to determine exactly how much money I owe them.

I proceed to listen as “Mr. Parker” – and I confirmed that was the last name he was giving me because believe me, he had a really hard time saying it – gave me his badge number, my case number and the toll free number to the IRS. I looked up the number and it is, in fact, the main information line for our friends over at Internal Revenue.

I then proceeded to explain to Mr. Parker that I still didn’t believe he was who he said he was and that I really did not think he worked at the IRS. Once flustered, he became even harder to understand and I wasn’t really sure what it was he was saying by the time I wished him a good day and hung up the phone.

I reported the number – (202) 684-6436, so you all can keep an eye out for it – to the Do Not Call Registry, which naturally has my phone number as a happy registrant, but as you can imagine, I have very little confidence anything will be done by the folks who actually work in Washington, D.C. to stop these guys from making these calls.

Naturally, a Google search of the phone number yields a number of scam registry sites and complaints and funny stories from people who messed with the person on the phone far worse than I did, but I always think back to all of those episodes of American Greed and all of our elderly Americans who continue to fall victim to scams just like these and it makes me sad that we live in a world today where things like this have really become so common place.

It’s bad enough that I have the real IRS trying so hard to milk me dry, but having to deal with Mr. Parker and his obviously organized scammer friends on one of the two days a week when I am actually trying to relax is really annoying. Makes you wonder how it is that we got here. How is it that I have to now watch out for people who will even go as far as to steal a house – go ahead, look it up – they file paperwork to steal the title to your house from the County Clerk’s office – when all I used to have to do was simply stay where an adult I knew could see me and all would be fine?

Don’t get me wrong, folks, we live in an amazing time, and I know that a lot of us live some really great lives – definitely not trying to be a Debbie Downer, but just remember, as the saying goes, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and eternal vigilance is the only thing that will keep me and you from losing our hard-earned money to all the Mr. Parker’s out there.

UPDATE: Looks like this scam is large enough,we're actually doing something about it. 

Who Is Driving Earlier Start To Holiday Shopping Season?

It’s July 1st and you’re walking through your favorite local big-box retail store (or the one you tolerate to save all that money every year) and suddenly, despite it being sweltering outside, you find yourself in the middle of an aisle fully stocked with brand new Christmas decorations. You shake your head and snicker as you say under your breath, “Already?!”

You’re not going crazy, my friends. What was once a holiday shopping frenzy that took up the last month of the year has progressed into a full-blown half-year sales and strategy extravaganza for both retailers and consumers. Who is to blame, you ask? Surprisingly, if you do a little digging, you’ll find this is not a one-sided push from retailers, but in fact, the market reacting to the demands of shoppers.  
Trust me when I tell you that retail marketers don’t want to be in holiday shopping season planning meetings in April, but they also recognize that if they wait until September to start thinking about the holiday season, they will have some serious catching up to do!

In fact, a recent CreditCards.com report shows that not only have more than 30 million Americans already started their holiday shopping by September, a full 50 million say they will start earlier this year than last year. Over 6 million Americans claim they are DONE with their holiday shopping by the end of September and nearly 64 million expect to be complete by the end of November.

From the Fiscal Times:

“We love to complain about stores putting up holiday displays earlier and earlier each year, but the truth is that millions of Americans start holiday shopping long before the first Christmas tree appears in a store,” CreditCards.com industry analyst Matt Schultz said in a statement.

So, gone are the days of black-and-white movies where the family piled into the station wagon and went out on December 24th to buy the tree and all the presents as soon as dad got home from work with his bonus. In today’s consumer-driven, always-open, online retail world, you can expect to see the vibrant colors of a fully stocked aisle of decorations on the first day of Q3. Enjoy your 177-day Christmas shopping season, America!

It's Time To Secure Cyberspace

Whether left or right, liberal or conservative, libertarian or mainstream party hardliner, taxpayer or tax money recipient, I think most of us as Americans can agree the one thing we expect from our government is to shield us from attack.

I am confident when alien invaders strike from above or a foreign army lands on the beach or zombies come streaming across the land, our military will be ready and willing to fight to defend us. But, there is a scary, new frontier that all the aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, smart weapons and the most highly-trained and prepared military force in the world are all powerless to stop without a serious shift in U.S. government policy: cyberspace.

I recently read an article from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on a small business that was forced to close its doors by a hacker, or a group of hackers, or maybe even that group of folks in those guy-from-England masks themselves. Sorry for the vague and wordy description, but I’m afraid to type out their name in case they have their Google alerts on!

The business featured in the article developed a site designed to allow people to post their opinions on political issues of the day, essentially providing a forum for people to debate back and forth through pre-recorded video. This was truly a small start-up, founded by college students and funded with a mere $35,000. This site could have been the next great thing, but once users posted videos commenting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, hackers set out to destroy the site.

The attack began by redirecting the site’s main page to another page, which featured a graphic of that famous hacking mask and some green Matrix-style falling letters and numbers. Every time the site’s owners had the page redirect fixed, it was hacked and redirected again. Each time a hack was fixed, it was costing the site’s owners money because paid contractors maintained the site. Though they eventually found some angel coders to fix the hacks for free, the relentlessness of the attacks led the business owners to abandon their site and try to operate their vision through a mobile app. Unfortunately, though, the mobile app never caught on and hackers successfully silenced another site that had great capital potential.

According to a study by the National Cyber Security Alliance, these small business owners are not alone. One in five small businesses becomes the victim of hacking and of those that do, 60 percent go out of business within six months. But, according to a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce article, as cybercrime increases, our country still lacks policies to defend America’s cyber networks and the companies that use them.

The biggest problem for businesses that get hacked is they simply do not have the resources to fight back. They are completely on their own, fighting the attack in a silo. There is no “911” to call, no federal agency to ask for help when an attack occurs. The business can only hunker down and rely on the limited personnel and funds they have to combat the relentless attacks of people with a very unlimited resource – their own free time.

The only way we can fix this problem is to demand that our government step in to defend these small businesses – to defend us as Americans – just as they would if the hackers landed on the beach with a gunboat and an army in tow.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

One of the first steps our country's leaders should take to strengthen our defenses, experts say, is to pass federal cybersecurity information sharing legislation, which would protect firms that share information about data breaches and other cybersecurity-related experiences with public officials and other companies. Without it, business leaders will remain understandably hesitant to share information about attacks for fear of litigation or other consequences.

This sounds like a really great idea to me. Fortunately, legislation that would accomplish this has already passed the House and is being debated in the Senate. Let’s hope the people we put our faith in and send to Washington see fit to make every small business owner just as safe from cyberattacks as they are today from aliens, zombies and foreign armies.

The Agile Marketing Method

For the past eight years, I have spent my life marketing software. When you market software, you end up learning more than just a little bit about the software development process, its benefits and its challenges. You also learn, like many others before me, that occasionally, the principles of software development can lend themselves to other areas of business, including marketing.

The term “agile marketing” is starting to get a lot more ink these days so I feel it is time for me to release a little something I originally put notes together on across a few evenings a couple years ago and refined over more than a few evenings over the past couple months – a guide on a little something I call “The Agile Marketing Method.”

In this guide, I give marketers insight into how they can apply one software development method – Agile – to their marketing projects. I explain a little bit about the history of software development methodologies that led to the creation of Agile, the principles of Agile, as well as how marketers can use some of Agile’s principles and processes to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their marketing efforts.

Read The Agile Marketing Method.

Photo by Woodsilver via Pixabay

Combatting Content Lengthiness: Why I Take My 15-Minute Walks

If you work with me, you’ve probably noticed that I disappear for 15 minutes a couple times a day. Sometimes I am just taking a break and stretching my legs, but most of the time, I am out giving one of my content pieces a length test.

We all know that content is king when it comes to marketing these days, but I also feel that much too often, I find myself nodding off due to the length of some of the pieces that find their way to my inbox.

It is my belief that 15 minutes is long enough for us content marketers to clearly and concisely get our point across, no matter what our message might be. If it takes our audience longer than 15 minutes to read and understand a piece of content, it is either too long, covers too many topics, or is just too plain wordy.

Hence, you can find me a couple times a day, out on a 15-minute walk with a piece content in my hand, ensuring that my reading doesn’t outlast my walking.

My goal is to make sure that I can read the piece completely and thoroughly and understand each word in the time it takes to walk my 15-minute-long route. But if by chance, I am back from my walk and find myself still reading, it is a clear signal that I either need to do some serious editing or break the piece down into smaller chunks.

Not that you need instructions on how to walk, but if you’re thinking of following in my footsteps to give your own content pieces a length test, here’s what I did:

First, I timed myself on a walk near the office that not only provides quiet, but is also safe enough to traverse while really only partly paying attention to the actual act of walking.

I found a mostly level route with some cover for those too-sunny or too-rainy days, though I will readily admit you will see me out there with an umbrella on rainy days because as they say in the marketing biz, the content must go on.

I also made sure my route did not cross any stoplights or intersections that cause me to stop and wait because that would throw off my time and impact my results.

Once I had my route planned and timed, confirming it was 15 minutes from start to finish, I printed out my piece of content, grabbed my pen and went on my first length-test walk. I have repeated as necessary for many months now.

If you are thinking of giving my length-test method a try, please do. You can choose to review your piece electronically, pick a route with no cover at all, or modify my guide as you wish, as long as you ensure that your route is exactly 15 minutes and that you are done reading your piece by the time your walk is done.

Just think, if every content creator out there adheres to this inexpensive, easy-to-set-up, easily repeatable length test, all of the content in our inboxes will be so much better! 

Photo by Jordan McQueen via Pexels

My Translation Of Ben Franklin's The Way To Wealth

From 1732 to 1758, Benjamin Franklin published his Poor Richard’s Almanac that contained weather forecasts, practical household hits, puzzles, and other amusing writings. Franklin often filled the empty spaces in his almanac with wordplay and witty phrases, many of which are used to this day. Many of the most memorable phrases deal with being courteous, thrifty and self-sufficient.

In the 1757 version of the almanac, Franklin compiled his proverbs about industry, frugality and self-sufficiency into a prefix that took the form of a wise elderly man imparting the knowledge he gained from Poor Richard to a host of people waiting for an auction to start. This prefix was later published separately in a wildly popular essay called The Way to Wealth.

To this day, Franklin’s The Way to Wealth remains sage financial advice. The problem is that much like many of the old English texts, the essay is becoming less understandable to all of us slang-slingers with each passing day. Fortunately for you, I have taken some of my spare time over the past couple of months to piece together an updated translation that makes The Way to Wealth a much easier read.

Click here to read the eBook.

Photo by Maklay62 via Pixabay

Did You Learn More From School Or Your First Job?

I'm celebrating a very important personal anniversary. Twenty-five years ago today, after spending the morning and early afternoon as a sophomore student at Westminster High School in Westminster, California, probably ditching at least one class, coming back late from an off-campus lunch, and more likely than not, spending most of my time writing poetry or a short story instead of paying attention in class, I donned my black Reebok sneakers, black socks, black dress pants, white button-down long sleeve shirt, burgundy and dark blue thick polyester tie (which I still have hanging in my closet as a souvenir) with a thick dark blue apron, and thanks to a car ride furnished by my mom, started the very first shift of my very first job.

Still six months shy of reaching my sixteenth year on this earth, I would spend what at the time seemed like a very long tenure of six months bagging groceries, mopping and sweeping floors, re-stocking go-backs and secretly assisting the cooler stock crew (don’t tell the union) for what started out as a mere 12 hours a week that quickly turned into a full-time 40 hours.

While at the time the day-to-day tasks that even included shoveling broken glass out of the recycling machines into transport bins and hand-trucking pallets of product out into the parking lot and then back into the store on the Fourth of July for the big parking lot sale seemed unbearable at times, there is no single period of time in my early years that had more of an impact on my work ethic, career and life thus far.

By the time I would leave college some four years later to take my first actual full-time office job with actual benefits like health insurance and a retirement plan, I had sold baby clothes and furniture, made and sold cookies and sandwiches at a bakery, sold books and helped manage a bookstore, and amassed an entire portfolio of part-time and full-time-by-hours-but-not-by-benefits jobs that even included three simultaneous 20 hour per week jobs while attending community college full-time for a few months during what I did not realize would be the last semester I attended school.

But when I look back on the 25 years that encompass both being an employee and a small business owner, working 12 hours a week and working 100 hours a week, working for minimum wage and not-so-minimum wage, working out in the sun with a shovel and working inside a posh, high-rise corporate office with the latest and greatest in computer technology while wearing a suit, I credit that very first job with teaching me more than any school ever did.

I look back at a good, solid 25 years of never having used any of that damned algebra that gave me so much trouble. Sure, I might use a little of the geometry from time to time when I’m hanging a framed picture on a wall, but that’s just the basic third-grade stuff, not any of the geometry with little “x’s” and “y’s” that I labored year after year during my teens trying to understand. I look back at a good, solid 25 years of never having used any of that damned base-six crap, or any of the stuff I learned in all of those College Prep Honors Science classes that I barely passed.

What I have used year in and year out are the interview skills I started perfecting the day my mom drove me to all the Lucky grocery stores in town so that I could ask for job applications. What I have used year in and year out is the skill set of knowing how to work with both fantastic and horrible bosses like good ‘ol Bill, my manager at the grocery store, who managed somehow to be both all at once. What I have used year in and year out is the work ethic that I first forged by completing a bunch of mindless, labor-intensive, repetitive tasks, all the while, steeling myself in the fact that no matter what happened in life, I was going to move upward and onward and never stop building a better life for me and those around me. What I have used year in and year out is the understanding that my work is my own, my work ethic is my own, and above all, my lot in life and the success or failure of everything about it is all up to me and no one else.

Unfortunately, these are all things that I did not learn while attending school for fifteen years. I really wish that in those very, very, very long fifteen years instead of being taught what I needed to know in order to do well on standardized tests, I had been allowed to pursue my own education path, much as I did as soon as I got home from school, and much as I have done each and every day since I walked out of a state-subsidized, taxpayer-funded classroom for the last time.

I cannot imagine how my world might be even better today were I allowed to reach an agreement with schooling to concentrate on the skills I knew I would need as early on as I knew that I was going need them instead of having to still learn skills that would later prove to be as useless as I always knew they were going to be. Schooling should have let me concentrate on the skills that I knew I would be using to make a living one day instead of the skills that simply allowed me to pass a test well enough for the school to get funded for another year.

7 Keys To Social Media Success

Deluxe Corp. recently conducted a survey that found only 21% of small business owners think social media is an important customer engagement tool. But, according to a CNET survey, 72% of U.S. adults use social media, and according to a Static Brain survey, social media usage skyrockets to 98% among 18- to 24-year-olds.

These survey results make it very clear that with each passing day, social media is playing a larger part in the lives of U.S. consumers.

While many small business leaders are reluctant to start the social media journey, countering that 73% of their business comes from word-of-mouth, these entrepreneurs are failing to realize an increasing number of consumers are using social media to facilitate their word-of-mouth recommendations.

In addition, many consumers who hear about a business via word-of-mouth often turn to the social media platforms they use most to learn more about the business. Without an active social media presence, these businesses are missing out on great opportunities to connect with potential customers.

So, how do businesses get started with social media? The very first step should be to create a comprehensive social media strategy. While this may sound like a daunting task, by breaking the work up into smaller, clearly defined tasks, creating a social media strategy can be painless.

In my guide, 7 Keys to Social Media Success, I outline how small businesses can get started with their own social media strategy today.

Photo by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay