©2012 Market Moose. All Rights Reserved.

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©2012 Market Moose. All Rights Reserved.

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©2012 Market Moose. All Rights Reserved.

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One of the best uses of personality studies is in thinking about our marketing. While our own motivations are shared with about 25% of the rest of humanity (allowing for four general, not perfect, directions of motivation), that means that:

No matter what motivates you or I to respond, the vast majority of people will not necessarily respond to it or respond in the same way. By being 1/4 of the population, we’re saying that 3/4 of the population are driven by very different motivators from our own. In short:

You and I are always the minority of the population. That’s a hard bone for people to swallow, which is why it’s so important to face up to it, if you’re going to do effective marketing.

If you structure your marketing in a way that it appeals primarily to you, and people like you, it can fail 75% of the time, apart from any other considerations. And that’s if it’s perfect, otherwise. The number goes down from there.

See, most of us have a heretical (untrue) theory that we don’t admit or own up to. We think we’re normal. We think most people are like us. Or we think we’re like most people. And no matter who we are, or how we are, that just isn’t so.

It’s so important to remember this, because our own motivations are so ingrained (operating at the level of innate personality) that, in the absence of consideration, we tend to simply think of what motivates *us* as what motivates “people” – we regard how *we* work as how the “world” works. And that simply is not accurate. It’s not even accurate in various locales. It’s common to hear that “people around here” are a certain way. Nope – “people around there” are also differently motivated in about the same break down as everywhere else. The blindness we can experience, the ‘prejudice’ about what makes people tick is up against pretty good science that indicates we are actually born with certain personality traits – with some core tendencies in general directions that are not merely learned phenomena – they exist in the womb. It’s true that some communities will tend to impose more standardized roles on these differences, but the core distinctions still come through even in the pecking orders and differences in collaborative roles that exist within the community. The quieter, more thoughtful, less prone to act quickly individual works in the same coal mine as the hotter-headed, louder, more ‘high strung’ type. It’s not hard to see on any set of bar stools or in any extended family gathering.

This will necessarily be simplistic, but let’s break down the four core directions for purposes of marketing. Think of these as four ‘model’ prospects – four types of prospects that may visit and/or respond in different ways to your marketing:

• Fact-Seeker: focused primarily on the rationality of your offering – will not be persuaded by hype, superficiality, or mere image – requires sufficient details to act – generally reserved about acting until there’s been sufficient thoughtful consideration – centered on information. Responds well to flowchart-like presentation (e.g core services list, details of rational differences from competition, path for action) that makes it about logic and information..
• Driver: focused primarily on bottom line of your offering – less interested in details – tends to skip to the end – acts quickly. Responds well to summary presentation (e.g. core message, only sufficient details, multiple options for action) that makes it about accomplishment and options.
• Helper: focused on attitude of your offering – cautious about acting – not generally an early adopter if the offering is radically different – checks for reference points in conventional experience – concerned about the social value – engagement as a person with a person or people. Responds well to credible reference points in conventionality, reliability, stability, and personal relationship that makes it about integrating better with society in general.
• Socializer: focused on image-value or personal enhancement value of your offering – responds strongly to social prestige value and how offering positions them in relation to other people and to society in general – tends to skip over details in favor of style and attitude – acts quickly. Responds well to image-based presentation that makes it about ascending to a spotlight position in society or self enhancement.

Now these are necessarily generalizations. In fact, you might call personality studies:

The science of generalizing about prospect response. That’s why they’re useful memes for constructing our marketing. It’s not possible to interview each and every prospect before we market, it wouldn’t do any good if we could draw some general conclusions from such interviews anyway, and just because someone tells us why they respond doesn’t mean that’s accurate or even that they really know why they’re responding.

What personality studies give us is 2500 years of consensus about differences that we can import into our marketing plan to help us structure different campaigns. We might, for instance, decide to do four campaigns:

• A landing page, e-mail or postcard campaign, or series of posters or videos that position our company’s offerings in terms of image-value, summed up in one phrase, visual, or vignette that isn’t a direct presentation of features and benefits. It might center on how the company’s offerings enhance the individual, alter his/her image in society, or why they’re chic. Imagine a man standing in line at a coffee shop, and he’s hit on by a girl, who simply sees him dangling a gold key fob with a brand emblem on it. Not exactly a rational presentation, is it? There’s at least 25% of the audience that won’t respond at all, and maybe only 25% who will. But personality studies indicate that’s true of any campaign, which is why this can’t be your only one at any given time. Which personality type do you think this is aimed at?
• An in your face summary of a problem that you solve, in giant fonts, three sentences, no details or bullet points. Enter e-mail address at the bottom to act immediately (acts quickly) or call (options). This could be a landing page, for instance, or a short video, or a poster which features your e-mail (or URL) instead of asking for theirs. Which personality type might this appeal to most?
• A simple chart consisting of 3 boxes with arrows, showing a linear process (problem to solve – bullets for examples, solutions available, and options to proceed). Each box has a [more] link to jump down to full details. In the latter section is a link to frequently asked questions with an invitation to engage and ask anything we haven’t covered. In addition there’s a video embedded that walks you through the process. This could be your main web site, or a landing page designed for this campaign, or a live presentation using a powerpoint. Which personality group is this primarily targeting?
• A landing page featuring a) a warmer, more personal, more conventional presentation of your business. If your insurance company, this might include a local agent sitting down in an almost familial conversation with a group of family members (never just one type of person – it’s inclusive, and the client is not outnumbered). b) an emphasis on community involvement, the charitable activity of the company, or the ethics – how the company gives something back or takes care of people by maintaining sensitivity to people in general. Which general personality type is this campaign aimed at?

The mistake people often make is in structuring not only their core marketing, but all their marketing along the lines of what they think “people” respond to. It’s interesting, from the standpoint of a marketing professional who hears people’s versions of reality all day long.

• 25% of clients start off with, “I think people basically don’t like a lot of detail and clutter, and I want a warm, personal, friendly feel”.
• 25% say, “I want a kick-ass presentation that really packs a lot of oomph, because I think people are bored by details and basically respond to a sharp or polished image.”
• 25% claim, “I don’t need a lot of fluff in my marketing. I think if you just present the facts, rationally, people respond to that, not a lot of hype. I want to make sure they see the information they need to actually make an effective decision.”
• 25% say, “Bottom line, I don’t really care what we do as long as it works, but I do think you’ve got to position our bottom line right up front, prominently. All the details and stuff are fluff – put those somewhere if we need them, but hit them with the point first thing.”

You see? What you and I really tend to believe, if we’re honest, is that we’re representative. We don’t have to ask people why they say these things, but if we do, the response is usually, “I think most people…” Except, of course, they can’t all be right, can they? We’re not describing the world, we’re describing our own experience – not other people, but ourself and people we identify with. In fact, we tend to most identify with people who are most like us, and that tends to confirm (artificially) our suspicion that most people are like us.

In short, we tend to have cognitive biases that interfere with our ability to market our services more effectively.

This is enhanced by the fact that stereotypical marketing (which is the kneejerk marketing that most of us engage in if we don’t put more careful and challenging thought into it) is based on traditional sales, and not the newer, more evolved consultative approach to selling.

Traditional sales utilizes some variation of this formula: ask data-gathering questions, ask superficial probing questions to identify an opportunity or opening to seize upon, present a proposal, overcome objections, close the deal. This kind of sales is often called transactional sales because it relies on heavy turnover and fast numbers of initial deals but is less effective at a) retaining clients and b) keeping clients for repeat business. It’s not without value, though. In certain fields, for certain purposes, it’s appropriate – generally where we’re going to do business once, right now, and never again. And from it we take some valuable things that are still useful in today’s new marketing.

Traditional sales (and the marketing based on it) is now far less effective than it once was, because of the glut of such attempts and the vast increase in services available along with vastly enhanced means of access to those services (especially with the internet). Ask any real estate appraiser whether they’re having to contend with automated valuation systems and the attitude shift brought on by Trulia. The marketing effect of lingering in the older sales model boils down to simply a) deliver your information or message and b) ask for the sale. It’s simple, and it’s the minimum, and it’s the shortest, most direct route (the most efficient, if you ask fact finders). It does have value but, if that’s all there is, it’s already setting aside the majority of prospects from the start. A point of clarification here:

It doesn’t matter what you think you do for a living, you are involved in sales. It doesn’t matter if you “offer” services instead of products, you’re in sales. Best to face up to it. So we use the word sales here freely, and simply dismiss outright any semantical claims that “my business isn’t about selling”. Yes it is. That said:

The newer consultative sales models are based on increased engagement with clients, tailoring the relationship to their core motivations, and developing a longer-term relationship focused on repeat business, referrals, and additional ways to add value over time. It’s no accident that successful use of social media, which based on more balanced two-way communication (consulting) – less top-down or one-way pitching or talk, on keeping people in your orbit (as “friends” or “followers), and building a community or tribe or referral “group” around oneself within the larger professional community, has everything in common with consultative selling.

It is possible to try to make sure all the elements that appeal to all the personality types are presented in a balanced way on say the main web site of a company, which is what we try to achieve. However, that’s a subjective set of choices and in reality, that means that no one motivational direction will be wholly pleased. No matter who looks at it, they’ll either compare it to some typology of “good” sites based on a standardized criteria and stereotypes of how selling works – a cognitive checklist, or they’ll be prospects who you haven’t asked for evaluation, and we know how they actually respond by how they interact with the material and whether they act on it now, or in the case of the more reserved or cautious types, eventually. In short, we proceed at least partly against the notion of standardization itself, and partly in a concerted attempt to appeal at least somewhat to people who, in the main, are *not* like ourselves at all. This is why it’s important to not rely on just one marketing campaign, especially not the merely passive campaign of creating a web site and sitting on it waiting for the phone to ring. Whatever personality motivations we’re referring to have no trouble discovering gazillions of web sites and are not merely sitting around waiting for yours or mine to pop up on some radar grid, so they can swoop in and be wowed by it. Effective marketing will be active (you’ll get out of it only what you put into it, on a sustained, prolongued, ongoing basis), and it will proceed according to a coherent plan to engage the majority of prospects – that is, the ones who are very different than ourselves. In that regard, all effective marketing is counterintuitive – that is to say, it goes against our cognitive biases that suggest that we are representative of people in general.

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©2012 Market Moose. All Rights Reserved.

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©2012 Market Moose. All Rights Reserved.

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©2012 Market Moose. All Rights Reserved.

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• maximum competitive and marketing value
• lowest possible cost, no frills
• no learning, understanding, attention, or involvement required

In other words, we want to spend very little money and no real effort, but want to dominate our market place which is highly competitive. Oh, and by the way (it usually goes), will you throw in ongoing maintenance for the indefinite future at nominal or no cost?

If you have ever run a successful business, of course you already know that you didn’t operate this way, and neither did anyone you respect or anyone that lasted. There are people out there who try to deliver on this falsehood, either because they need the portfolio badly enough, or they really want a chance to learn the ropes on your dime. But we’ve never met a skilled plumber willing to replumb a house with superb materials, do all the work, make sure it lasts and remains effective, and charge you only what it costs for a couple of decent meals in New York. What’s the equivalent in your business? Do you get asked similar questions?

So we usually make one effort to explain how the value proposition in business works, because not everyone has operated a successful business before. For those who have, we’re also indicating that we’re not stupid or financially suicidal, and we adhere to the value proposition too. Others who know the value of good work respect that. The value proposition is simple: You can have it: effective, cheap, or time & effort-free – and you get to pick two. The dream is out there, of course. People still want to chase the dream of having it all. But those guys don’t ever do anything anyway. We’re talking about reality here.

So if that doesn’t work, we know we’re talking about unicorns – that is, rare animals that everyone has heard of that don’t actually exist. We don’t mean that people don’t sell marketing unicorns. You see ads for them every day. They sound like this: “ultimate effortless low-cost marketing solution”. In other words, they’re utter and unmitigated bullshit – or, if you’re of a slightly more delicate disposition, fluffy white unicorns. And the folks selling these adorable fantasies will have tons of reviews and testimonials by “customers” claiming how they’ve seen the unicorn and it has revolutionized their business. All you need to do is sign an annual contract for that nice monthly fee, give us your credit card number, and sit back and do nothing. They don’t even need your passwords. We always hang at the contract because, if it works, why wouldn’t you just keep on paying without the contract to force you to do so?

So along with unicorn merchants, there are unicorn believers – people with an unshakeable faith in those cute, fluffy bastards. And once we determine it’s a true believer we’ve got on our hands, there really only are two options. Keep trying to convince you (but we’re going to have to charge for that – that’s consulting), or let you go and exercise your faith in the open marketplace. Either way, there’s one point we like to leave everyone with: Anything effective takes either money or time and effort or some combination of both. We all want things. We want to be on top. We want to get more or have more of something, or at least to maintain what we have. The guy that tells you it’s possible without either money, involvement, or both is a liar. He might wear a suit. He might have a great web site. He might have tons of followers. He’s a liar. He’s telling you that the world is populated by unicorns. And we can prove he’s lying. It’s very simple. There’s one very easy way to tell. Ready? Here it is:

He’s telling you that unicorns exist, and he’s still asking for your money. Just like those guys that sell videotapes on how to become a millionaire, out of “altruism”, because they want everyone to achieve what they’ve achieved. You know the ones – standing in front of a rented Ferrari and a high rise condo tower they don’t live in, near a wonderful beach full of people whose parties they’re not invited to. If they really believed in unicorns, they’d be off chasing them. Doesn’t the nouveau riche gold jewelry and the silly macho sunglasses give them away? He’s lying. Otherwise, he’d be doing something else for a living.

The guy that tells you that anything good – anything that really works consistently and over the long haul – anything genuinely effective will cost you – either in money, time, or some proportion of both, is being honest, at least about that. And at some point, he’ll prove it, by letting you go if you don’t believe it. We pay our way in the world, or else we believe in fluff. That’s candid talk – maybe even offensive, if you’re in the church of unicorns. But it’s true, nonetheless. And truth is the starting place of effective marketing. We hope you appreciate it. If you don’t, just google “ultimate effortless low-cost marketing solution” and you should be on the unicorn’s track. Good luck. And let us know if you finally capture the unicorn. poopa dulk goota yundug

©2012 Market Moose. All Rights Reserved.

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Recipe for Success: The most successful companies are:

• Planned: They are operating from an overall, customized marketing plan that has marketing initiatives broken down into specific campaigns with target audiences. Planning keeps them from engaging in only sporadic or short term efforts. Most small businesses aren’t working from a plan, so that’s especially helpful for the ones that are. Consulting is usually how this gets done.
• Coherent: They have very clearly defined market differentiators, and have worked on these as their primary marketing message, so that they are genuinely different from competitors in ways that have actual marketing value and directly add value to clients. The company is willing to change its businesses processes to create market differentiators if the company is not sufficiently differentiated from competition. Most businesses have really badly defined market differentiators, so this is especially helpful for companies that get this right. Consulting is usually how this gets done.
• Prioritized: They have placed marketing at the *top* of their business efforts, not the bottom. They lead with marketing and follow with the work they do, unlike less successful companies who have inverted that order and treat marketing as an afterthought or merely a necessary evil. Where these companies invest, they invest foremost in their marketing since, without that, you can have the best service, product, or idea in the world, and no one will realize it or find out. Small, local businesses in particular often invert priorities, placing “work” first, marketing last, and therefore experience a rollercoaster of being alternately “too busy” to spend time on marketing (it becomes sporadic and short-term) and being “too slow” to spend money on marketing (same effect).
• Diversified:They are spread out in multiple areas of marketing, treating it like spokes on a wheel. There is a web site or store front at the center, but they are engaged frequently, consistently, and long-term in several venues. These are usually broken down into overall areas like:
  • - Blogging (creating engaging content – on the web site)
  • - Social Media (essentially off-site interaction, microblogging, video blogging, building a community, actively engaging prospects & clients in social media – funneling traffic back to the site)
  • - Search Engine Marketing (essentially off-site blogging, engaging content, actively engaging the rest of the web with helpful content and funneling traffic back to the site)
  • - Premium Content Generation (ranging from ebooks to video series’ that have a ‘sticky’ effect with lasting, long-term value directly to prospects)
  • - Opt-in Marketing (list building, creating engaging content, exchanging it for leads, creating more content that adds value for prospects, funneling traffic back to the site)
  • - Event Marketing (offering seminars, webinars, classes as a way of adding value in exchange for credibility, perceived expertise, and an e-mail list – you almost never pitch at these things – it’s marketing not sales)
  • - Traditional Marketing (efforts that use paper in some way)
  • - Advertising (pay per click, targeted ads – revising keywords and content according to analytics)
  • - Sales (contract sales, cold-calling, targeted leads, in person sales calls etc.)
• Dedicated: Their marketing efforts are frequent, consistent, long-term, involved, thoughtful, and relentless, with the upswing in returns coming after that has been sustained for a long time. Small businesses are particularly vulnerable to becoming sporadic, short term, inconsistent, and unconcerted in their efforts, making it easier for competitors to successfully occupy the field, as the company starts to starve. The quality of ‘patience’ in regard to marketing does not involve passively sitting around to wait, but rather actively acting as if it’s a process that takes constant gardening to produce fruit.
• Add Value: They are creating and disseminating very engaging, useful, helpful content that is of direct interest to prospects aside from and apart from the sale, selling, or convincing them to buy their services. By doing this, they earn permission to occasionally give a pitch, because they have been adding value consistently for a long time. Then when they pitch, it’s brief, direct, and not heavy handed – it relies on the built up stock of credibility as the area expert in the field and trust that you’re not trying to ram a sale (of services or products or ideas) down their throats.
• Involved: They are engaged with marketing as a primary business function – they have a genuine thought leader in the company engaged in marketing, even when a lot of it is outsourced, and that person is at least interacting consistently with marketing efforts, though not necessarily controlling them. Small companies are particularly tempted to “dump” the marketing on a barely interested techie, spouse, receptionist, or other person who really isn’t consistently energized, motivated, or prepared to spend a good portion of his/her time on marketing efforts, at least through consulting, if not through direct efforts.
• Balanced: Marketing is adding value, while selling is making a pitch. It’s not that they don’t also do selling, but the balance in most successful companies is tilted heavily toward marketing. It’s maybe 80% marketing, 20% selling and advertising.
• Unashamed: Their company is on a sales footing in general. The balance is still tilted toward marketing – stellar value being delivered in the content they create and share, and in the services, products, or ideas they provide. But everyone in the company also either markets or sells. The receptionist asks open ended questions, captures lead information (like how you found us, and your e-mail address). The guy on site asks for referrals. Etc. Shame about the relationship with leads and prospects is poison to the company.
• Other: The list could go on for a long time. Responsive, Timely, etc. There’s no one magic formula. In short, the most successful companies are good – they’re rock stars. It’s not one thing – it’s rocking in general. Many small businesses fall prey to being excellent at one thing – that’s actually an adage – some companies just make great burgers. And we all know companies like that which didn’t survive after a few years. They had a good run, but they couldn’t adapt to the changing economic conditions. Good burgers, maybe not so good at the things they needed to survive. Not so good at survival or, “thrival” – being a rock star.

Recipes for Failure: The least successful companies are:

• Underinvested: They have excellent reasons for not marketing effectively, and they boil down to can’t spend time (too busy right now) or can’t invest money (too slow right now). It’s similar to the old project management adage that it can be done cheaply, quickly, or correctly – pick two. The most successful companies invest a consistent, steady proportion of both time and money, without relenting during peak or slow times. Some companies might shift the balance slightly – doing a little less direct time investment during peak seasons, while remaining engaged and consistent, yet upping the financial investment at that time, and maybe spending a little less money during slow seasons, but upping the time investment. The most successful ones keep investment of both time and money steady all the time, with spikes for particular new marketing initiatives or campaigns.
• Sporadic: They engage in mainly sporadic, infrequent, inconsistent, or only short term efforts, thereby wasting their initial or occasional efforts and often concluding, therefore, that internet marketing doesn’t work. It’s the “if you build it, they will come” mainly passive approach. They often then assumes that marketing or internet marketing only works for some industries, because the mainly small, unsustained efforts don’t produce bigger results. Often, these companies are not utilizing a customized marketing plan and are therefore not consistently marketing at all, but only sporadically engaged in small or short-term efforts.
• Undifferentiated: They offer the standard stuff that everyone says about being ‘fast, fair, friendly, honest, really really fast, really really fair, etc.” – their message reflects the general indifference to marketing itself, as an afterthought. These companies are not utilizing clearly defined and effective market differentiators.
• Boring: They use unoriginal, unengaging material, offering mainly advertising or self-focused content (they’re not really interested in anything their prospects are interested in – they just want orders – it’s a utilitarian approach that just doesn’t work unless you bottom out your price lower than anyone (if it’s cheap enough, you don’t have to be engaged). But then of course you face the Walmart thing – there’s always a bigger price competitor willing to go lower. These companies’ marketing is often marked by the most direct route to someone’s wallet, and is therefore decidedly uninteresting and lame, if not offensive. “We offer… we provide… we… we… so call us… so buy our stuff… so….” etc. It’s the lowest level of advertising presented as though it were marketing.
• Disengaged: They dump the marketing on someone else – they don’t engage personally with their marketing, but outsource it all so they don’t have to think about it (even huge companies have internal marketing departments that are consistently, actively engaged with marketing companies – not just toss it to someone else) or else they assign the internal role to an uninterested, half-committed underling.
  Polarized: They either a) don’t really listen to or hear advice on how marketing works – they tend to decide and dictate what they want to do without getting consulting or operating from a consistent plan – or else b) they completely dump their intellect, will, and interest (their engagement), to “let the experts handle it”, so they’re checked out of this major area of their company’s business, and just throw money at it. This drive it or dump it approach is the dark side of the time or money equation.
• Inverted: They don’t make marketing a business priority – marketers know that 80% of the company is marketing, and only 20% is infrastructure and the other work. How many artists put a hundred hours into a painting, and get less than a hundred dollars for it, because we don’t know who they are, why we should care, or what the significance of the work is? The 80/20 ratio is just an illustration – maybe it’s 50/50, but marketing isn’t 10% – let’s put it that way. Smaller companies have a harder time accepting the significance of marketing in the ratio once they’re past start up phase. Healthy companies return continually to startup mode, treating it as a cycle, and continue to inject new ideas and simultaneously new marketing efforts into their stream of work. You can do the best work in the world, but if no one calls, what good is it? Marketing is closer to the 80% than the 20%. Less successful companies relegate marketing to a nominal status, necessary evil, or afterthought – like janitorial or bookkeeping. They’re often doing excellent work, when they can get any.
• Passive: This bears special mention because of the myth of the web site. The myth of the web site is that owning one will bring you business, if you just make it look good and put in some search engine optimization. It’s the easiest thing in the world to sell a client, that myth. It pays high dollar, and people eat it up, because they want to believe that you can get a steady, revolving door of clients by buying a package. It’s the internet equivalent of buying the red sportscar and suddenly being surrounded by girls. Those commercials are great. But it’s not true. People will mistranslate, revise, plead, negotiate, and even ‘just have faith’ to try to get an honest person to tell them you can just build a web site and have clients, but it’s not true – popular, but not true. If you build a web site, optimize it, and wait for the phone to ring, it simply won’t. Marketing is an activity, not a purchase or a product. The least successful small businesses are based on the Field of Dreams (“build it and they will come”) model, because someone has decided that marketing works how we wish it would work. But people aren’t cows who respond to the simple stimuli of putting out some hay. They’re complex animals who expect to be engaged with interesting and useful things by people they grow to like and trust. There’s no test-tube customer you can clone. In short, the least successful companies are the least successful because they have, somewhere in their thinking, at some key point, believed a falsehood, whether they insisted on telling it to themselves, or they were told it by someone else, and they either never discover it or, upon discovering it, refuse to accept the alternative reality and act upon it. They starve on an island, surrounded by well populated shores, from clinging to an imaginary cruise liner that will bring them what they need rather than building a raft.

One way to characterize adopting the recipe for success is simply ‘shifting to a marketing footing’. That can take a company with no clients and turn that around to make it profitable, or it can take a venture that isn’t getting traction and give it clarity and direction so it survives and progresses. An established business that shifts to a marketing footing can go from stagnation and breaking even, living hand to mouth, to thriving (with the risk being that you then let the marketing deteriorate and reproduce the problem again). But coming up from an essentially ineffective marketing posture to one that’s highly effective is a process – it will take undeterred and relentless gardening. The instant solution of “buying clients” is as ethereal as it is imaginary – it’s predicated on a ‘livestock’ view of humanity that just doesn’t hold water. You spend the money on those solutions, and it’s like buying salt water in a desert. You have less to sustain you or make real and effective choices, when your realize it’s not going to work. Follow the recipe for success, toss out the recipes for failure, and enjoy the results of the new world of marketing.

————related articles————–

• market differentiators : Rules of Work
• VIDEO: Creating Market Differentiators – YouTube
• Why Should Anyone Do Business With You? | Market Moose
• Market Differentiators: product = service | Market Moose

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©2012 Market Moose. All Rights Reserved.

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The Sheep are Watching: Firesheep is a plugin for Firefox that allows anyone on an open wi-fi network described above to capture the browser cookies of other users on the network and instantly log-in to anything from e-mail to social networking sites as that person. It literally just presents them a list of who is using the wi-fi in the coffee shop that has log-in info stored in their browsers in the form of cookies. One click, and they’re in your e-mail account, etc.

Yes, You Actually Do Care: Don’t think it’s of no consequence if your e-mail is penetrated – that usually is the chief windfall of crackers trying to get your data, because it lets them reset passwords to more secure accounts (like Paypal), and discover past information sent to you (e.g. account info) as well as potentially track your online behavior (which sites you have accounts on). Ever said “I’m not doing anything wrong, and I don’t have anything to protect, so I don’t worry about privacy and security”? Yeah, a lot of other people said that in the years before identity theft, but they’re not talking that way now. Sure, we still hear occasionally, “I’m too old to care. If they want to steal my identity, let ‘em. They get my debt too.” What about your grandkids? That photo they shared with you still in your e-mail or social media account? What about their names? Ordinary e-mail headers tell us where someone is e-mailing from, too. Even if you’ve got no money and don’t care about yourself, you could be exposing everyone you have contact with, and without them knowing about it – same as typhoid, only remotely. If you don’t care at all, you’re actually a sociopath and probaby don’t need this article.

Nothing is truly foolproof: If you have Remote Support turned on in Windows, or folders or hard drives shared on that laptop, and then you connect to public or unprotected wi-fi, or are ‘borrowing’ wi-fi from the neighbor down the street, those are vulnerabilities that can be exploited to get in. That’s why you should never connect to one of those wi-fi connections in the airport or hotels or tourist areas that are labelled “free public wi-fi” just to avoid paying for a connection. They’re just waiting for you. Even the official free airport or hotel wi-fi is a serious risk. And if your own home wi-fi is unprotected, anyone can just drive by in their car and get into your e-mail account, probably with one click now – but even before Firesheep it wasn’t that hard. Of course, you can also click on a fake Paypal e-mail and “update your account” – providing your login credentials to a stranger in Nigeria or follow a bogus Facebook “app” that lets you see who is looking at your page (you can’t) which then spreads a trojan to your friends list. There are lots of ways to get taken for a ride. Networks are inherently unsafe.

Do something about it, anyway: What if we pointed out that cars are inherently unsafe? Would it make sense to then just drive down the center line, lights off at night, no seatbelt, and taking no precautions? If you can increase driving safety, you can increase your internet safety. You’ll never achieve 100%, and you don’t want to, because the thing would be so rigidly, hassled, and controlled, you’d prefer going back to analog. Because networks are inherently unsafe, safe networking is a basic, elementary level skill that anyone using a network (like the internet or wi-fi) should possess – like basic driving safety. People tell themselves they can’t function without those manuals “for Dummies” or there’s nothing they can do when things go wrong, except buy a new computer or reinstall Windows (if you don’t actually need a PC, why aren’t you using a Mac, anyway?).

Fortunately, there are some general rules to foiling most basic cracking by anyone who can download a plugin and show up at a local coffee pub:

1. Don’t engage in unprotected wi-fi: Don’t connect to insecure wi-fi sites. It’s one thing to have free wifi provided by a coffee shop, but if they don’t at least password protect it (so that they must provide you a password to use), then any cookies stored in your browser are up for grabs. You can bring your own 3G connection instead – some devices have them built-in, or you can “tether” your phone (a method of using the 3G internet from your cell phone to broadcast wi-fi to your laptop or other device), or you can get a USB 3G solution (e.g. from Cricket Wireless) or a MiFi solution fairly cheaply.
2. If you must engage in unprotected wi-fi, don’t log-in: If you must connect to insecure wi-fi sites, clear all cookies from any browsers you use, so they aren’t being shared in browser sessions, and then do not log-in to any web sites (which creates new cookies). Once you have deleted all existing cookies (and it might be advisable to further turn off cookies temporarily – though you still need to have deleted existing ones), then you can browse sites that don’t require a log-in with more safety.
3. If you must have unprotected wi-fi and log-in, use additional protection: a) consider using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) which carries a monthly fee and slows you down a bit, but “tunnels” your connection securely using external servers. b) consider using a browser plugin like HTTPS EVERYWHERE for Firefox (there are plugins for Chrome too) or ForceTLS that forces HTTPS (https:// – the secure version of HTTP) even after login (because many social networking and e-mail sites may have HTTPs login, but revert to insecure HTTP after logging in) – a plugin can help with that.

Tell them about it: If your coffee shop, library, school, town, restaurant, or other venue provides unprotected wi-fi, do them a favor and give them this article and/or [this one]. One qualm I have is that it’s not a good idea to use TOR, like they recommend, for security. TOR is for anonymity (and it’s not perfect there, either -you can be found!), but it’s not – definitely NOT – designed for security. Even if the coffee shop is not worried about *your* security on unprotected wi-fi, if they use their own connection to log in to something, the chances are *they* are vulnerable and the most obvious target, since they are there all the time. It’s a target virtually painted on their front door. Remember, there are tons of sites that map and share public wi-fi locations to the world – anyone can contribute to them – and they often specify whether it’s protected or not. Free doesn’t have to mean unsafe. Just create an easy to remember set of login credentials and put them up on the blackboard every day to let customers know. Remember (please, to save frustration) it’s case sensitive, and “0″ and “O” are not the same.

A word on VPN privacy: If you decide to use a VPN service for anonymity (not just security), the anonymity may not be enough, especially if the VPN keeps log files. HideMyAss, once the most popular VPN service going, is notorious now for turning over logs in the UK to satisfy a US law enforcement request that resulted in members of the LulzSec hacking group being identified. This has so angered the privacy community that HMA may never recover. After all, think about the dissidents for whom discovery may mean torture, death, and the same for their families. There are other VPNs like AirVPN, BlackVPN, and Mullvad that indicate they prevent logging, keep no logs, or destroy logs every few hours, etc. You can use [BestVPNService.com] to compare services or see [this article] for good examples. Just keep in mind, what you’re also looking for is high speed (lots of bandwidth coming off their servers), OpenVPN based security, and constant up-time. Expect to pay $7-$10/month. If you need to watch streaming video over VPN (e.g. through Netflix or Amazon movies), you’ll need US servers. If not, European servers often have advantages. FYI: if you read Usenet, then giganews.com comes with VyprVPN included in the subscription. If you’re technical, you could set up an Amazon ECS server with Debian or Ubuntu and compute at about 6cents/hour and use the OpenVPN protocol, but that’s only good for security, not for anonymity.

There are and will be other ways to protect against “session hacking”, but basic safety principles are good for another reason – they help us understand the technology we are using in a way that encourages us to adapt, in common sense ways, as risks develop. If the rule is “don’t give out your personal info to salespeople on the phone”, what do we do when they’re not on the phone but contact us through social media, or when they say they’re not salespeople? We have to learn more generalized approaches to network safety and security so that, regardless of the threat or risk, we are prepared to act for our own wellbeing.

Same as safe driving – we don’t just learn to use a turn signal when we turn – we learn, if we’re good drivers, the importance of letting other drivers know our intent well in advance, the importance of being predictable. That way we can apply it in situations not involving a turn signal, and create safety instead of enhance risk. The internet is no different. Be safe. If you’re going to use the net or networking, then engage in safe networking – use the basics of safety. poopa dulk goota yundug

©2012 Market Moose. All Rights Reserved.

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1. Maybe he’s not just focused on his web site, and you are. That’s really ancient marketing – tacking a flyer along the information superhighway and hoping people “find” it. If the other guy is out doing Search Engine Marketing (going where prospects go and contributing original content there, routinely), the resulting traffic can prompt Google to assign a higher value to his site. The passive focus of building a web site and waiting to be found in search engines is certainly the easiest route – therefore, it is the least effective route. So don’t complain if you’re doing very little active work for your internet marketing, and getting very little in return – you get what you contribute.
2. Maybe he doesn’t plaster his phone number on his home page and he gives people a reason to click through to additional pages, where you’re using your home page like a phone book entry. Search engines measure bounce rate (how often someone only visits your home page and doesn’t click through to anything) and click through (how often they click through to secondary pages). More click through tells search engines they’re finding what they want or finding more value. Higher bounce rate can make search engines assume they didn’t find much value there (and search engines aren’t interested in just being phone books).
3. Maybe he’s blogging and using social media, where you’ve merely invested everything in search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines care far more about continually growing, original, relevant content than about a lot of tags full of keywords tucked into the code of your web pages. For that matter, if you’re consistent about it, search engines care far more about posts (i.e. to your blog) than about static pages anyway. It’s an adage among those in the know that you could skip SEO altogether, and just blog effectively and consistently, and completely dominate your desired search terms.
4. Maybe his content is original and a lot of yours is borrowed. If he’s writing original content, or having it written, and you’re pasting in pieces from other people’s web sites, it’s a good bet you’ll do comparatively poorly with search engines – because search engines have already indexed that content once, so they recognize it the second time they see it. That’s what computers are for – their vast ability to calculate without being fooled by sleight of hand. Stop poisoning your site – every bit of pasted in content should be expunged.
5. Maybe his content is relevant (to a lot of specific searches) and yours doesn’t target specific searches. If he’s targeting Phoenix, Tempe, Scottsdale, and Mesa Arizona, in every post and on every page, and you just have a statement on your home page saying “I cover all of Maricopa County”, guess who is going to do better in searches related to Phoenix. If he is constantly posting about various specific services and they’re mentioned on his home page and secondary pages, but you’ve just mentioned the overall service you offer, guess who is going to do better for those specific seaches.
6. Maybe his content is dynamic (constantly being added to) and yours is static (hardly ever changes). If he’s constantly posting new content (e.g. to his blog) related to the locales he services, or the services he provides, even if he doesn’t talk directly about those things, he’s likely to do far better than you. And the more of that content, the better. If he’s got three dozen individual content pieces spanning nine months, and you’ve got one dozen that you put up all at once, he’s probably going to do better.
7. Maybe his site has been around longer than yours. No one likes to hear this, but it’s true. First, a newly commissioned site sits in the search engine sandbox for a while, because search engines don’t profit by featuring fly by night organizations. So if you just bought it, or you sat on a static page for a year or two, you’re starting from scratch. The site that has been there longer will not only have time to build up traffic, but search engines are measuring that traffic and rewarding it with still more search engine ‘juice’. To him who has, more will be given.
8. Maybe he registered his domain (his .com) for several years, and yours is only registered for one year. Search engines tend to regard domain names registered for only a year or two as more volatile, possibly fly by night, and sites with more venerable domains (have been around longer) and committed domains (are demonstrating a plan to be around longer) are likely to be treated better by search engines.
9. Maybe his domain name (his dot com) consists partly of search terms (like Scottsdale Real Estate) and yours is a vanity domain (like Jackson Realty). How many people are searching google for ‘jackson realty’ – it’s mainly people who are already your clients and are just looking up the number like they would in a phone book. But lots of people are searching for ‘scottsdale real estate’. Search engines tend to present domains that contain the searcher’s chosen search terms more prominently.
10. Maybe he is doing some do-it-yourself search engine optimization (DIY SEO), and you’ve left SEO only to the experts. For example, when he adds an image from his camera, maybe he’s renaming that image to contain search terms like scottzdale-az-home-sale.gif while you’re using whatever the camera calls it – e.g. image890890.gif. That’s just one example of a potential area for DIY SEO, but there are others.
11. Maybe his site delivers more value-added content on the site itself, and more original content, while your site is giving away it’s seach engine “juice” by featuring lots of external links (to other web sites) and low value ‘widgets’ (like a weather gadget). Search engines tend to favor sites that use original content, and keep the visitor on the site rather than act as a portal, sending them off to other web sites.
12. Maybe he adds value and you just sell services. Sites that get the most click through, and the best search engine treatment over all, tend to provide more than just sales info. If his site features a lot of good, helpful, original articles that add value by actually helping the prospect solve a problem, or educate the prospect without turning them into a specialist, he’ll tend to do better than a site that just says “Here’s what I do, buy my services” in one form or another.
13. Maybe his navigation and site organization is intuitive, standardized, and rational, where yours is more cluttered. If you’ve got 20 buttons visible on page one, each with several words on them (and they’re not standard words like ABOUT, SERVICES, or CONTACT), people are going to bounce more often from your site, and proceed more often with his. Likewise, if he’s got good lead capture (e.g. fast contact forms) on just about every page, he’s likely to get more contacts from reticent visitors (and more click through), while you’ll only see hits and not a lot of activity.
14. Maybe his web site looks professional, friendly, or modern, and yours looks more like a sales flyer from 20 years ago. Ask yourself, which one would inspire confidence in you, as a site visitor, to click through vs. bounce? That said, rushing out to adopt the latest gimmick in look and feel can be a real mistake. For instance, those fancy flash-intros you see can actually interefere with optimal search engine value, because the highest value page on your site, as far as search engines are concerned, is the one that comes up when we type in your domain. That page has to feature core content, rather than just images and video, or it’s like setting your site back a few notches.
15. Maybe he’s had professional search engine optimization, and you haven’t. There are all kinds of services out there offering “SEO” and most of them are bogus. If they don’t actually modify all your web pages, they’re not doing SEO – they’re just typing your URL (web site address) into a computer program that submits it to a lot of search engines (which usually don’t like that kind of submission). What’s awful, is that a lot of these companies charge whopping fees for this and place you under long term contracts. Most SEO is a do-it-once sort of thing, and then you observe good do-it-yourself practices when you add posts to your site. Some ongoing SEO can be done (we do subscription SEO for instance), but it does require that we actually touch your site content, and even add to it, and not merely “submit” your URL all over the web (the web equivalent of street walking). SEM (search engine marketing) can be even more effective on a subscription basis, but you should have some method of understanding what you’re buying. If the company doesn’t educate you on what it’s doing, how can you compare with what others are doing?
16. Maybe his home page features the core information needed to make a buying decision, and yours contains a lot of fluff. Search engines place a premium on the ‘landing page’ (whatever page comes up first when you type in your domain). That page needs to contain detailed and specific information relevant to the search terms you want to do well for (specific services, specific locales), and there is other info it needs to make it a successful page that invites visitor click through, like solid market differentiators that aren’t a lot of sales lingo and gobbledy-gook that everyone says (“we’re reliable, trustworthy, professional” – good, you’ve just met the minimum qualifications – so what?). The text content on the home page is crucial – if it spends a lot of time talking without really saying anything, it needs to be rewritten as a more effective marketing piece. Any page that isn’t marketing, is un-marketing, and that’s true ten times over for your home page.
17. Maybe he’s better than you. Another way to put that is ‘maybe he’s got very clear, verifiable, quantifiable reasons that he’s better than you’. Don’t underestimate looking hard at your business processes and where you add value to the customer experience. If he can articulate things he does (actions) differently than his competition (being more professional isn’t different – it’s nonsense – one either is or isn’t professional), and if those differences are tangible (not comprised of good feelings and perceptions) and specific (being reliable isn’t specific – “30 minutes or it’s free” is specific, to borrow from a pizza chain), then he is better than you – at least as far as anyone can tell. Better means that he’ll get fewer bounces and more clickthrough, more of his content trusted and consumed, more links shared by e-mail and social bookmarking, more “likes” on Facebook, etc. In order to ‘do’ better in internet marketing, focus on ‘being’ better, which can included modifying your business practices so they’re superior in tangible, verifiable ways to the competition, and communicating those differences specifically and in the form of described actions.
18. Maybe his web site has features that support the sale, and yours is missing some core components. If he has testimonials, and you don’t, he’s better supporting the sale. If he has a site map, for visitors that get lost or confused, and you don’t, you’ll tend to lose those visitors more often (and technology can confuse people). If he has an FAQ (frequently asked questions) page, that answers real questions he’s always getting with the real answers he actually uses on the phone and in e-mail, and your FAQ is either nonexistent or full of fluff and bogus Q&A (things we *wish* they’d ask), he’s probably going to invite more interaction, and that’s going to translate into better search engine placement.
19. Maybe his web site is social, and yours is… well, anti-social. The generation that was around prior to the recent birth of social media often prefers it would go away, and doesn’t want to get involved. That’s certainly up to you. But it does’t change the fact that increasingly people of every age (the fastest growing userbase of Facebook is people over 50, not kids – that’s a myth) want to be able to share the things they find on the web, get feedback from others, bookmark it socially, and interact or know they can interact with real people if there’s a problem, but also just want the ability to become fans of businesses they patronize (businesses tend to do better just because they’re social). The single most prevalent myth about social media is “prospects of my industry aren’t using it”. Yes they are, and you just don’t know about them, if you’re the one saying that. Again, it’s OK to dismiss it or write it off as something you’ll never do – just understand that there’s a cost for that, in the form of enhanced business, and leaving that field for the other guy to take, when he decides to become more competitive. We don’t care if you don’t go this route, we just want to be honest about it, and not pretend there’s not a crowd over there making all that noise.
20. Maybe his site is more personal, and yours is more distant. That’s similar to the point about social media, but is more about the style and marketing approach on your web site. At least 50% of site visitors like to do business with an actual person, and to feel they’re meeting that person when they land on the web site. It’s possible for a site to convey that there are multiple professionals at a business and still introduce each of them personally. Sites that use no photos of human beings (even just stock photos are better than nothing) and only photos of buildings, scenery, or products, are denying one of the fundamental marketing motivators. If your site feels cold and distant, and the other guy’s feels like a warm handshake, however professional and qualified, he’s likely to do better for about half of site visitors than you will. And that often translates into better search engine treatment. If you’ve further sabotaged the personal relationship by using forced popups and mandatory forms (introducing coercion into the mix), you can bet the momentary gains from that will be offset dramatically by an overall rejection of your marketing approach.

Everyone wants to be #1 in Google, and it’s just not going to happen for everyone, or almost anyone. That’s especially true since the average small business is also competing against large corporations and organizations, as well as directories and other search sites. Even getting on the first page is only going to happen for about ten people for any given search (minus those big consolidator sites we mentioned), and some of those people will be the same people for every search they want to occupy, because they’re doing the right stuff. If you’re already asking ‘how can I only do the easy, cheap, and fast stuff and still instantly do better than my competitors’ the answer is that you won’t, and never will, until you start asking better questions, which are based on more integrity and more common sense.

Search engines are not the only way to get web traffic, and your first mistake could be spending 100% of your concern for just the web site itself, and search engine traffic alone. If that’s the sum of your marketing, you’re always going to do worse than the other guy, if he’s not hung up on just those two things. So that should tell you the first thing you need to do to beat him. Start thinking about doing more for your internet marketing than just having a web site, and start giving Google what it wants – which includes concentrating some of your attention on things other than Google (like various search engine marketing venues).

Even focusing entirely on “getting found”, even though that’s yesterday’s internet marketing and is rapidly sliding down the law of diminishing returns, despite all the ‘true believers’ in the easiest solutions, means giving search engines what they really want. Are you? Or did you just tack a web site up, like a flyer at the local supermarket bulletin board, and want to throw some technical flurry at it, hoping to make it gain more attention than the guy handing out candy in the parking lot? Again, if his site is dynamic (constantly growing content that’s relevant and original) and you’ve got a static site (content isn’t growing – it’s a flyer tacked to the web), then you don’t really want to do better in search engines than the other guy, or at least not enough to do what it requires. That’s OK, but be honest about it.

If you really want to go after the competition, keep one key thing in mind: don’t just look at what they’re doing and try to match it. It’s not enough. They’ve been active in internet marketing longer, better, and are already the king of the hill. To knock them off, also do the things they’re *not* doing yet. They’re not blogging? Then why aren’t you? They’re not doing search engine marketing (SEM), then there’s your assignment – get help, if you need it (we’re available, or there are others). Catch up is never sufficient and will never have the effect of bringing you into the #2 slot just below the other guy – it likely won’t bring you anywhere near him. There’s too much value in consistency and longevity for that.

In fact, commitment to long-term success and steady growth (not instant fame) are the hallmarks of successful internet marketing, because they’re very hard for the other guy to undo. Whatever is instant, is instantly defeated, marginalized, and reduced to nothing – remember that, the next time someone offers you instant results on the internet. Sure, learn from your mistakes – correct the things on your site that the other guy did right, but you didn’t. The above items can be used as a checklist. But that’s just resuscitating the patient. To get him up and walking around, circle the things the other guy isn’t doing, and do those.

Want the ones with highest value? They’re the ones that take longer to accomplish, require steady and consistent activity, and result in a proliferation of content on your site and on the web in general. Content is king, and steady, consistent additions to content are the single most effective internet marketing tool you can wield. Anyone can do it – you can do it, or you can have people like us do it, but it doesn’t require wizardry or lots of technical expertise. It needs to be done well – you can’t just “throw up some crap up there” as someone put it. But again, success comes down to integrity and commitment – those things the motivational speakers always told us it does.

We hope our tips help you be as competitive as you can be. – Daniel DiGriz, President of Market Moose. Image by Ohio BMV.

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©2012 Market Moose. All Rights Reserved.

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