Things I do not do to make money from blogging

Things I do not do to make money from blogging

Sep 26, 2016 | Customers, Strategy

StrategyAudit has been going now for quite a long time, almost 1,500 posts to date, averaging between 2 & 3 a week. Every month there are  around 1,000 unique visitors, who consume on average 1.8 posts each visit.

By some standards these are pretty modest numbers, but at least I am reasonably consistent and persistent.

I am asked from time to time how much money I make from the effort, and most are surprised at the answer:

Nada. Zilch. Nothing.

There are so many blogs out there that have no purpose other than to squeeze a bob, I am reluctant to add another. Besides, my purpose is to capture, organise and record my mostly random musings on various  matters of interest, and to make my living providing insight and advice to my clients, not flog stuff to random visitors led to the posts by PPC ads.

It makes me a better confidant and consultant to my clients, as well as sharing a bit of the love around.

I have however, thought about it, and been very tempted from time to time. I thought about it again over the past weekend, and decided against it, again, but in the process, assembled a list of ways I thought I could ‘monetise’ the effort, should I decide to do so, at some point.

Affiliate marketing.

This requires that you either put an ad on your page for the affiliate product, or put in a link that sends a visitor to the sales page directly, such as to the Amazon site. There are many variations on the theme, and there are many products available to sell as an affiliate. Most responsible bloggers restrict their affiliate efforts to products that their specific niche may be interested in. Were I to do it, the sorts of products might be business books and courses, website hosting, and various tools such as autoresponders, and CRM software that automate parts of the digital marketing  ecosystem.

Affiliate marketing is the most common and biggest money spinner for most bloggers. The two biggest affiliate sites are Clickbank and Amazon Associates, but there are many others.  Before you venture into it, consider the sorts of things that you might sell that are consistent with your niche, and that your audience might welcome being able to get from you. Generally it also comes with some level of implied endorsement, so caution is warranted.

Google AdSense. 

Google makes it very easy for you. All you have to do is sign up, they will stick ads on your site, and give you a fee for every click from your site. For a small blogger like me, the amount is pretty small, and Google controls which ads get placed on your site. When you work hard to service a niche, risking them being alienated by ads for the flimsy promise of a few dollars does not make much sense to me.

Sponsored posts and reviews.

Some bloggers get paid to write a post, or review of a sponsors product, presumably favourable, which is the point. There are many books and writers that I am happy to endorse, but I have never taken a buck to do so, as that would compromise my right to absolute independence.  Similarly, paid guest posts are a great way to build a ‘list’ trading on the readership of others. This certainly does work, and I have guest posted a few times on sites relevant to ‘my patch’ but never been paid. (it is also true that nobody has offered to pay me, but don’t tell anyone)

Paid directories.

The double sided nature of the web means that assembling links and content that others might like to use is a service that can be sold. It is easy enough to use a WordPress plugin to enable such a service, but then to my mind if you are to make any useful money from it, marketing the service has to become the focus of the blog. Not interested.

Create a product and flog it.

This is an extremely useful strategy, but contrary to all the hype from those seeking to profit from your efforts by teaching you how, is it very difficult. The 1400 plus StrategyAudit posts give me a significant well to dig into, and clearly I have done a lot of writing work to get there, but it is still not easy, as my several efforts to collate my musings into still unpublished books will attest.

There are many options, give away e-books as lead magnets,  e-books for sale on Amazon and others, hard cover books and guides, courses, membership ‘clubs’, the list goes on, all designed to generate so called ‘passive income’ a really attractive prospect.  All however take effort to create, curate, and market the content on an ongoing basis. One day perhaps.

 

Be an expert.

This is the one thing I do set out to do. By writing and publishing those sometimes random thoughts, I hope to demonstrate rather than just talk about the expertise and experience I have gathered over 40 years of commercial life, and just life itself. The ‘urgers’ around tell me I am just trading time for money, without the option of scaling, and that is true, but it is also comfortable. Perhaps that is the problem, I am genuinely setting out to help others, not just myself into their pockets.

 

Let me know what you think, am I mad??

How to build a sales process for your human salesforce.

How to build a sales process for your human salesforce.

Jul 14, 2016 | Customers, Sales

These days great sales people, real ones, those that go and talk to customers and potential  customers are expensive, and hard to find.

Most often in a B2B environment their role is not just closing a sale but developing a relationship that is deeper and longer term than the individual  transaction. Success is measured not just by the transactions, but by the quality of the relationships they build, and the trust, that will take the pressure off price, delivery times, and the other quantitative measures used to judge performance from a distance.

It also true that the first time many sellers know a potential customer is in the market is after that customer has done a considerable amount of research, arrived at a short list, features required and price  point, which gives them the power in the conversation, unless you are able to re-frame it somehow.

The word ‘Process‘  in the headline implies repeatable, subject to continuous improvement, and measureable. In order to achieve these outcomes there are a number of building blocks:

Plan

The old cliché “failing to plan, is planning to fail’ is unfortunately true, that is why it is a cliché.  The caveat of course is that just planning will not generate an outcome, you actually have to implement. The gap between planning and implementation is deceptively wide and full of very hungry crocodiles  that will consume your will, time, and financial resources given the chance.

 

Don’t spend time, Invest it.

We demand a return  on our financial investments, why don’t we do the same for that most valuable of resources, our time? Most of us complete some sort of post capital expenditure review to check that the returns we expected and planned for prior to a capital investment actually materialised.

Why do we not do the same thing without most valuable resource, time?

This may be a challenging idea, but if you allocate your time to the ‘important but not urgent’ category rather than the seemingly urgent, but not important things that consume our lives, the returns will flow.

 

Learn continuously

Being able to learn is a gift, leverage it. Nobody becomes outstandingly good at something without learning from those who have gone before and mastered  the skills. Beyond a base level of skill, you need coaching to learn,  and it is the primary role of a sales manager to coach those in their team, so they learn, do better, effectively leveraging their time and expertise, learnt from those who went before, and their hard won experience.  A core part of learning is being able to be reflective about what worked and what did not, then making those small adjustments, day after day, to test and improve.

 

Be proactive

An old football coach of mine used to bang it into our heads that while defence was a critically important component of any contest, you did not win by preventing the other bloke from scoring, at best, it was a draw.

Being proactive is about experimenting, taking considered risks, searching for opportunities, prospecting for ideas and applications that others have missed, being unafraid of the power of the status quo, and being prepared to ask for forgiveness rather than waiting for permission.

My standard mantra is ‘get out of the building’ meaning nothing different or innovative happens within the context of your normal, routine activities.

 

Follow up obsessively

Few sales are made at the first contact, or second. It takes time and polite persistence mixed with an understanding of why the ‘target’ will benefit from buying from you. Failing to articulate the value of your proposition results in the follow up being Spam, but if the value is genuinely there, follow up builds credibility, and in a small way, a sense of reciprocity or obligation to at least give you the opportunity to make your pitch.

 

Remove ‘busywork’

We all know that work fills the time available, but we also know  that often the stuff being done is just ‘busywork’, stuff that rally makes little difference apart from reassuring yourself that you are needed, and others that you are indispensable. Remove it, ruthlessly, in favour of activity that customers would be prepared to pay for, because that is exactly what they are doing, indirectly.

 

Most of the real work is not digital

It has becomes to easy to rely in digital to do our jobs for us. It won’t, it can only do exactly as it is told. Besides, people buy from those they know like and trust, and I never met a computer I completely trusted, somehow they are not completely human.

 

As noted previously, the term ‘Sales’ is to my mind approaching redundant, as it conjured up in most people minds something less than what it is, or should be. The term I favour is Revenue Generation. This simple semantic change tends to shake perceptions and put the sales function into the spotlight as being vital, not just those people down the hall with company cars who go out to lunch a lot.

How to create a persona that will deliver sales

How to create a persona that will deliver sales

Jul 6, 2016 | Branding, Customers, Marketing

Three key questions all marketers (should) ask themselves at some early point in marketing program development, and obviously have a great answer, are:

Who are we talking to?

Why should they listen to us?

What do we want them to do now?

These are the exact questions that  a well-crafted persona can help answer.

It will help you make good decisions about the content you create, and the channels you use to communicate to those who are most important to your success.

A persona is a composite picture of someone who incorporates  of all the behavioural and personal characteristics of your ideal customer. You can take it to the extent of being ‘hyper-personal’ and in some circumstances such as the sale of a very expensive, luxury car, that may be an effort well worth making, but in others, it may exclude many who may have minor variations, inconsequential to the purchase decision.

I have used the ‘Who, What, Where, Why’ model extensively to define the ideal customer with my clients. It is an iterative process, deceptively demanding, as it requires decisions about who is not an ideal customer, and therefore excluded from primary consideration.

Most small and medium businesses really struggle with this exclusion. It does not mean you do not sell to them if they walk in with money in their hand, but it does mean that you do not expend limited marketing resources trying to convert them, as there are better returns for your marketing dollar elsewhere.

Who: is the demographics they may exhibit. Where they live, age, sex, education, job, and all the other quantitative characteristics that are available. These parameters are all that was available until digital tools came along.

How to create a customer persona

Customer persona

What: are their behaviours. Do they go to the opera or rock concerts, perhaps both, do they travel overseas for holidays, what sort of causes, if any, do they support, are they likely to demonstrate their beliefs publicly, or are they just internal. All the sorts of things that offer a picture of how they think, feel, and behave in all sorts of situations.

Where: will you  find them digitally, as well as in the analogue (perhaps real) world, and what means can you use to make a connection. Are they likely to be avid users of Facebook, Linkedin or other social platforms, are they comfortable buying on line, do they ‘showroom’ digitally then visit the physical retailer, do they get their news from facebook and Reddit, or more focussed news sites, or even, surprise, surprise, newspapers.

Why: should they respond to your entreaties, to do whatever it is you are asking of them. Normally it will be something that will alter or manage their behaviour in some way. In every commercial case, this will end up being persuading them to buy from you, and certainly from you in preference to an alternative.  Interim steps may be to get some sort of conversion on the way to a sale, download a brochure, visit a location, whatever it is you are asking them to do.

Having built something of a picture, from the Who What Where Why method, it often leaves you well short of a complete picture that will determine the sort of material required, and the best means to communicate it. In any event, the process is iterative, and every step helps, and every misstep teaches you something.

An essential adjunct to the creation of a persona is to create a customer journey map. This is the process that your ideal customer will go through from the initial itch, to awareness, consideration, preference, then to the transaction. This will enable you to use the persona to inject yourself into the decision making and buying process a customer is going through to optimise your chances of success.

Identify. A potential customer only comes into the market when they see a need to be addressed, or a problem to be solved. In some way, the first stirrings that lead to them recognising that there is a need to do something, which may involve a purchase at some point, will start the process that leads to the transaction.

how customers arrive at a decision

Customer journey

Research. These days almost everyone goes to Mr Google as a first step in research for anything beyond the most mundane and regular purchase. Often the purchase decision is made before potential suppliers know a buyer is in the market, but it is in this research phase that canny marketers who understand the profile of their ideal customers have the opportunity to seed the sort of information that will get them onto the buyers short list, at least.

Evaluate. Emerging customers will evaluate the alternatives on all sorts of parameters important to them. Performance, delivery, style, price, after sales service, brand reputation, what their neighbours might think, and many others. It is this point where the parameters of the problem to be solved  becomes increasingly important as the customer removes options from the ‘possibles’ list to come up with a choice. It is also this point where the purchase decision still often moves off line. Not many people buy a new car on line without going to a dealer to drive it, or a shop to try on the new evening wear.

Buy. The transaction, now a tiny part of the whole customer journey, but still where the cash to pay the bills is generated.

Use. For many purchases, the transaction is only the beginning of a following process that seeks to ensure that the product meets or better, exceeds the expectation that led to its purchase, thus creating loyalty. Loyalty can be expresses as a willingness to recommend your product to others, the strongest marketing tool there is. When the product delivers less than the expectation, the purchase process is re-started the next time, and even worse, the poor experience is spread.

There is nothing routine or easy about all this, it is a journey for both the buyer and the seller. The sellers job is to find the ways to get into the buyers head as early as possible in the process, and better yet, assist the buyer to define the parameters against which the alternatives will be evaluated. This in not always possible in B2C markets, but in B2B marketing, being able to influence at an early stage is a crucial competitive tool.

The combination of a clear persona and therefore a definable market niche to which you are able to deliver a differentiated and valuable product is the foundation of commercial success.

 

How do you reduce customer churn?

How do you reduce customer churn?

Jun 29, 2016 | Customers, Marketing

Pretty simple answer really; you increase customer retention.

It costs way more to find a new costumer than it does to keep a current one, we all know that, but somehow do little about it. Almost every business I interact with fails to get an optimum balance between servicing existing customers and prospecting for new ones.

So, how do you do it.

Stand for something. I am a great advocate of Simon Sinek’s “Why How What‘ analysis. People buy products, not algorithms, and they buy at least partly with their hearts. Even aggressive  B2B buyers, and  multinationals who put in global sourcing by tender as a means to squeeze price, still buy with their hearts because there are people involved. They are more likely to buy from someone they see as standing for something they can relate to, even believe in, than someone who stands for nothing more than their own success.

Be human. Everyone likes to be treated as important, to know that someone cares. It is more than great customer service, it is genuinely caring about your customer. What a poor cliché it has become when much so called ‘customer service’ has been outsourced to low cost countries, where the so called service people have inadequate product knowledge, and no power to actually solve the problem, assuming they understand it in the first place. I received a parcel of stuff bought on line recently. The packaging was superb, and inside there was a note from the person who assembled the order, with her email address at the supplying company. It was such a unusual thing that I tested the email, saying thanks, and got a warm reply from the person. That is customer service!

Be a tribe. Seth Godin’s articulation of this phenomena is superb, people want to be a part of a group of people who are like them. Do you own a Rolls Royce because you want to pay 100 times more than you needed to get adequate and reliable transport from A to B? No. The ownership of a ‘Roller’ says something about you, and those you know and interact with, and attracts like minded people who want to be like you.

KISS. (Keep It Simple Stupid) Making it simple for customers to stay and interact with you is the key to keeping them. Why do Telcos have so much churn? Because they fail abysmally at customer service, and are so complicated and opaque in what they do that you feel encouraged to look elsewhere. It is only when you move that they come up with the better price, or service package, and make the moving of your account as hard as possible, hoping you will stay because it is easier. However, who wants to keep a customer who would rather be elsewhere? They will be restless and bad mouth you to all the time, rather than being an advocate for your product.

A management that encourages, particularly by means of financial incentive, investment in prospecting for new business, when their service to existing customers sucks is on the road to pain.

My preferred measure of churn and retention beyond the simple numbers is Share of Wallet. I recommend you use it.

5 things to avoid to do better consumer research

5 things to avoid to do better consumer research

Jun 24, 2016 | Customers, Marketing, Strategy

I sat through a qualitative research (focus) group a few weeks ago, recruited over the phone against a specific demographic list.

On the odd occasion I receive these calls, my stated occupation is never associated in any way with marketing, as that always disqualifies you, the excuse being you might learn something, which in my experience is pretty unusual.

Anyway, are we not consumers?

The moderator was a nice woman, probably had a psychology degree or something similarly disassociated from the tough task of creating value for money, and proceeded to make every research mistake in the book.

Taking ideas as gospel. Instead of digging around to understand why we said the things being tested would work, she just took the blanket statements as fact. The reality is that nobody knows for sure if something will work or not, so gathering opinions without the supporting attitudes and reasons why is dumb.

 Asking questions we could not answer. This often happens, I have seen it and fired researchers for doing it. Why waste time asking a question, then debating the silly answers when there is no way the group could know  the answer, as it requires some specific knowledge which was not in the filtering questionnaire.

Is it better? Collecting quasi quantitative data with questions like this can lead to gross misjudgements. Just ask Coke if they had the research assuring them that ‘New Coke” was better than ‘old Coke’.

Crystal balling. Asking a group to rub their crystal balls and tell you the future is dumb, dumb unless corralled by a statement such as “if A and B were to happen, what do you think would happen next?”

Defining behaviour by Demographics.  This is a general mistake in recruiting groups. Defining your target markers, which is what this is, by demographics alone went out with the turn of the century when we recognised and were able to track the impacts of the drivers of behaviour beyond simple demographics. Just because you might live in Blacktown and do not have a degree does not mean you cannot own a BMW, purchase expensive wine and go on holidays. Our cultural and social life is far more fragmented and eclectic than in past decades that demographics are now only a small part of the picture of who we are, what we want, and how we behave.

When you spend the money on consumer research, it pays to really consider the problems to be solved and how the answers might be used. If the answer to those is: ‘what problem’ and ‘To convince the boss’   or ‘because I do not what else to do’ it is better to save the research money and do something useful with it.

To Social media or not, that is the question.

To Social media or not, that is the question.

May 25, 2016 | Communication, Customers, Social Media

Many of the small and medium sized businesses I interact with still struggle with the notion that they should be investing in social media as a marketing strategy. Creating and sharing content of value to their customers, potential customers, and competitors runs against their grain .

In addition, the operational challenges are technically confronting to many, and the notion of having to write and produce the content necessary is normally a hill too far.

B2B, B2C,  it makes little difference.

The immediate reaction of my B2B clients is that this social media stuff is for consumers, not serious businesses. However, it is the reality that those in businesses who make the purchase decisions  are usually engaging, anonymously at first with potential suppliers during the early phases of the purchase cycle, and coming to the supplier only for the transaction. Not being in on the ‘conversation’ early is clearly a mistake.

vanity metricsIt is becoming pretty clear that social media well used is a remarkably potent marketing tool, but challenging for those with modest resources, as this stuff is time consuming, technically challenging to measure properly as distinct from just measuring what is becoming known as ‘vanity measures’ just thinking they are measuring something useful.

 

 

There are a small number of very sensible strategies you can use.

Use it as a tool.

Social media is a marketing tool,  and like any tool, the effectiveness is best measured by the outcomes rather than the use, so set out to measure the effectiveness by identifying the cause and effect links between the SM and your corporate objectives.

Understand the tool.

When you have a nail to be driven, a screwdriver is of little use. Same with social media, they are tools that can be used very effectively in the right circumstances, but are useless in the wrong place. Understanding how the tool works, and where it’s characteristics are best deployed is a fundamental part of the game.

Identify your key customers, and what they want out of it.

You simply have to  be able to put yourself in the customers shoes, understand the value you can deliver from their perspective, and be prepared to be patient. My favourite  metaphor for social media is to humanise it in a way everyone understands. You walk into a bar, and spot someone who just overwhelms you. If you just walk up and ask them to marry you, your chances are pretty slim. By contrast, introduce yourself, find shared interests, spend some time together, and you never know where it can lead. Social media is no different. To have a chance of the desired outcome, you need to do the spadework up front.

Measure, test & improve.

Be creative but deeply interrogative about the measures. (is interrogative even a word?) continuously test options, so you can continuously improve. Social media and digital generally have absolutely changed the practise of marketing. It has made it measurable and accountable, but there are limits.  ‘Vanity measures’ such as number of friends, and likes  are very poor measures. They are superficial and misleading offering no clue as to which activity is likely to generate a commercial outcome, they just look good on a piece of paper to a boss who does not understand. Understanding the difference between cause and effect and correlation is critical, observing correlation is terrific, but do not make the mistake of thinking it is always cause and effect and therefore measurable. A metaphor used by Gary Vaynerchuk is particularly potent here. He observes that everyone understand the value of good parenting, over time it has great outcomes for both, but trying to measure it in a month  by month basis is stupid, it is a cumulative effect of many small things over a long period. There are some aspects of measuring digitally the return on SM that can really stuff us up.

 

Success with digital marketing, including the leveraging of the potential of social media is not easy, despite all the nonsense and get rich quick promises to the contrary.

Hopefully now you are at least a part way to answering the question.