Manizesto

Have you ever watched Frank Caliendo? He is, among other things, an impersonator, and a pretty good one. His impressions of Charles Barkley and John Madden always make me snigger.

I find it amazing that someone can make a living pretending to be someone else. Copying their every move, mannerism and voice. It can only work if you do it perfectly though. It has to be so good you might even mistake the fraud for the real thing.

What impresses about good imitations is how much you learn about the real thing when you see the impression. They do tilt their head to the right like that. They do hold their breath mid-sentence. They do say “particular” a lot.

If someone does an impression of you, you may realize how easy it is to pick you apart, to steal your identity and to emphasize your ticks and flaws.

It’s disconcerting.

If you’re going to imitate someone (or something, like a business model), you’d better get it perfect. Bad imitations are awkward and embarrassing.

And while it’s entertaining to see imitations, you’d always rather experience the real thing. If you’re okay living in that space, fine. If not, then do your own thing.

[photo by Thomas Milne]

First of all, thanks for subscribing. Many of you subscribed while I was requiring subscriptions to access my full posts. But I received a lot of feedback from people saying they wanted to view the archives as well. So in the interest of each of you, I’ve decided to remove that barrier.

So when you have a minute, stop by the blog and browse some of the archives.

Plus look for more updates on marketing, copy writing, customer engagement and other marketing-related nuggets.

-Jonathan

It’s nice to talk about all the great things one has accomplished during the year and it’s easy to highlight the blunders of others, but I think it’s much more useful and tangible to look at your own marketing mistakes.

Here are the biggest mistakes I made in marketing this year:

* I neglected my best customers. Not completely, of course, but your best customers should truly receive the most pampering, the best support, the best offers and a truly outstanding experience. I didn’t give them that.

* I settled for sub-par technology. There are some amazing marketing tools out there that can make innovation very intuitive and simple to do. They allow you to market to your existing and potential customers in incredible ways. But this year, I plugged along with the same adequate but not robust technology.

* I didn’t emphasize Life Time Value (LTV) enough. I spent a lot of time focusing on acquisition costs and measuring the performance of each marketing channel based on how many dollars it took to get that initial purchase. But how much did that customer bring in after 3 months? One year? Five years? Understanding LTV and how to increase it will help you know how to spend your money more wisely and see where your best customers are coming from (billboards, radio, banner ads, email etc).

* I didn’t have enough fun. You can’t avoid the tactical work of marketing: setting up campaigns, running tests, analyzing results, compiling data and so forth, which is, you know, exhilarating and everything, but does leave me wanting. I had too many days where I went to meetings, executing campaigns and tracked them instead of finding ways to make the work more engaging and fun for me (and for my customers).

I’ll save the endless list of small embarrassments and mistakes for another post (teaser: I emailed a vendor saying “Hell Amy” rather than “Hello Amy”. Luckily she laughed it off).

Before you go jumping into making resolutions for next year, take some time and look at the biggest mistakes you made. Your goals should probably address those first.

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In marketing, we’re all hunting for something. But it’s interesting to me how some people put so much time and effort into things that often yield so little.

Millions have been spent looking for Sasquatch, but we still have no solid evidence he exists.

Many more millions have gone to looking for extra-terrestrials, with still nothing to show for it.

The Discovery Channel is running a show called Storm Chasers about people trying to capture tornadoes on tape and collect data about the storms. I’ve watch the show several times, and they’ve yet to get what they’re looking for.

Millions of acres have been mined in search of gold, but in thousands of years, man has only found enough to build 1/3 of the Washington Monument (Platinum is actually much more rare).

It seems like such a waste, but even though the efforts often fail and there’s always disappointment, the payouts (you hit a vein of gold or you find a promising footprint) are enough to keep you moving forward.

Two things you can take from this.

First, the hardcore hunters are much fewer than the number of Softcores. Softcores are people with a casual interest who like to watch shows about tornado chasing but who would never drive straight into an F5 storm. They’re people who shop for headphones, not Skull Candy Hesh headphones with 50 MM speakers, OFC cables and 32 OMS in Black and White Camo. If you want your organization to be revolutionary and big, target the more significant group, then lead them to appreciate the narrowness of your product.

Second, if you’re putting in a lot of effort for very little in return, take a step back. Maybe the payouts are too far and few between to warrant the work you put in. Consider marketing your business in a different, more dependable way, or market yourself to a different group. Better yet, consider going after that innovative marketing tactic that might help you discover something better than gold.

[Photo by kurtz]