Andrew Eklund :: Founder & CEO
Ciceron :: Digital Marketing

Nothing has become more laughable or terrifying in all of marketing than to see those monstrosities of marketing invading office and apartment lobbies. Last year around this time, I drove around in an '84 Camaro with a mulleted-American (yes, this would be the second straight post where I've conjured up the ghost of Jake) collecting unwanted Yellowbooks and delivering them to the doorstep of the local distributor. They were kind enough to take them back. Others, like Ed Kohler of Minneapolis, have been much more militant in their approach. Hats off to him and others.

This morning I learned from my colleague Julie that Seattle is considering legislation to limit the distribution of Yellowbooks. Of course this is a great idea. I'd love to see our mayors consider similar moves.

Yellowbooks may seem the most offensive because they're the most visible. In some office buildings, it would take a forklift to remove the stash of unwanted booty. Yet I wonder how many companies have their own version of "Yellowbook" waste in their plans. No secret here that I've long been a critic of banner advertising, where billions of dollars flow into ad networks with no real accountability or promise of results. The dreaded "impression" is a sort of don't-worry-be-happy metric that lulls advertisers into thinking they might actually be doing something worthwhile. So I find it curious that we loathe the sight of a stack of Yellowbooks when we ourselves might be staring down the barrel of our own deep ocean financial oil leaks. Sure, it's going on down there but just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening. (Man, I love mixing metaphors! Yellowbooks! Oil leaks! Google bait!)

Here are some other egregious marketing oversights:

- Blindly taking Google's recommended spend with them on keywords that simply will never return high quality traffic.

- Batch-n-blast email campaigns where a single, non-targeted or segmented message is wantonly sent to an entire database. Waste of time, money, and efforts...over and over again.

- Twitter. Yup, I said it. I worry that agencies and companies alike are spending loads of precious brainpower communicating in a Chinese-water drip torture fashion only to their friends, employees and colleagues. I worry that no one has any idea who's following them or who cares.

So, the next time you pass a mountain of Yellowbooks in your lobby and before you become offended, think carefully and loudly about where your own looming stack of unaccountable dollars are flowing. If you don't know, you probably have a problem right there. Know. Then know a little more.

I mean this quite honestly. If you're reading this and worry even a little bit about your own wasteful ways, get your marketing team together, shut the door, and ask yourselves, "Is there a stack of Yellowbooks in our marketing and advertising plans?" Then do something about it. And if you come across some interesting finds, share them here with others. As business pundits talk of a possible depression in the American economy, I would suggest that there's no better time than now to start investigating.

www.ciceron.com
612.230.3901 :: LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andreweklund
Professional Twitter: @HeavyThinking
Personal Twitter: @aeklund

Focus To Grow is a SMarketing company, providing inbound marketing and sales execution services for b2b companies.

We recently talked about the fact that there is indeed a bottom to the sales funnel, not just a top. But taking that a step further, we feel that the whole analogy of a single sales funnel is incorrect. The single funnel pictures all leads following the same path, so we've created what we call The SMarketing Funnels!

 

What the Heck is SMarketing?

SMarketing is a sales method we've developed that integrates inbound marketing with direct selling to decrease cost and speed up the sales process.

SMarketing can:

• Enable sales people to sell consultatively
• Decrease sales overhead
• Improve the health of the sales pipeline
• Increase sales
• Reduce cost for each lead by 60%
• Achieve closed/won rates of 90%
• Track ROI in a closed-loop system

 What the Heck are the SMarketing Funnels?

The o'mighty Internet has people consuming differently and has allowed companies to generate a ton more leads in a more cost effective way with inbound marketing. But what exactly is a lead, and where do these leads go once they're generated? 

A lead is a likely candidate who intends to buy a product or service soon. In terms of SMarketing, a percentage of leads come from inbound marketing and a lesser percentage come from outbound marketing. But whether inbound or outbound, all leads develop at different rates, and if placed above a single funnel they would not all trickle down the 'Buy Later' funnel in a predictable, orderly fashion (as the single funnel analogy shows). Instead, some leads would fall to the right of the funnel, some leads would fall into the funnel, and some leads would fall to the left of the funnel.

The SMarketing Funnels are a network of funnels that represent the 'true' sales process. Some leads fall into the 'Buy Never' funnel and should immediately slide away. Other leads fall into the 'Buy Now' funnel and proceed to slide into the sales funnel below. The last set of leads fall into the 'Buy Later' funnel where they need to climb down a few nurturing ladders before they reach the slide to the sales funnel below.

It's a bit like a SMarketing Playground, and we've created an image to sum it all up! 

  Check it out!

  

Focus To Grow is a SMarketing company, providing inbound marketing and sales execution services for b2b companies.

The Setup

10 years ago, with little money but a lot of drive and great ideas, you took a risk and started a small business. Thinking ahead, you even took a deep dive and created a corresponding website.

Today, that same business exists, is your passion and continues to thrive. After many technological breakthroughs and several revamps later, your small business’s website now serves as your greatest marketing tool (it costs the least too!).You’ve learned to leverage inbound marketing; creating remarkable content, optimizing your site and taking full advantage of a business blog and social media. Online prospects find you!

Things are going great... that is until one day you receive an email offering you a large sum of money in exchange for your web domain.

Your Brain at the Moment

Q: Do you take the money and redirect your site to a different domain?

A: You could, but that would mean losing on-page SEO... not to mention all the time and effort it took to create the SEO in the first place. And losing SEO would mean getting leads at a much slower rate than before, and thus closing new business at a much slower rate.

Q: They offered a lot of money, but is it enough? 

A: You would lose all of your current inbound links, and thus lose a lot of rank with search engines, too.

Q: Who does this person think he is? Is domain bidding fair?

A: Inbound marketing originally leveled the playing field between large and small businesses. If you had a website, you no longer needed a lot of money to generate leads. But domain bidding seems to have tipped things in favor of big business again.

Q: How much would they need to offer to make up for the loss of leads and sales I would see?

 

As the Internet grows, web domains are an investment of growing importance. Domain bidding may not be fair, but it is happening. Wait too long and the domain best suited for your business will most likely be gone... along with the online opportunities it may have held.

 

Secure your website today! We build sites that align with your identity, generate traffic, and bring people back for more. (click below for a free Web Design consultation)

Focus To Grow is a SMarketing company, providing inbound marketing and sales execution services for b2b companies.