What kind of bug are you going to be?

While I promise not to make this blog a whiny mid-life crisis blog, I do occasionally think about my life and career. I am 40 after all. Maybe I think about my life more than occasionally.

Am I trapped doing the same job at the same company? Is there a corner office waiting for me somewhere? Am I too good at what I do to move up? Can I stomach being a heartless prick in order to move up? You might have all these or similar thoughts in your head, too.

I've started to realize that I need to consider my career in terms of being 'manager' instead of being 'marketer'. One of the things that has been on my mind is how my behavior should/would change in order to be a better manager, and, of course, be ready to move up.

I found this article in June's Men's Health by Gil Schwartz enlightening, The Metamorphosis enlightening. Here's a quick synopsis, in which he uses the metaphor of a bug changing:

"To achieve true career success, be prepared to make these 4 major transformations along the way"

1. Associate to Manager
   Transforming moment: The first move up comes when you're willing to assert your personality over those more powerful than you. The capacity to be unpleasant about your own cause ruins you as a slave -- and marks you as a manager.
2. Manager to Senior Manager
   Transforming moment: You decide that young Bob can handle three or four of the 12 things on your plate. When he's almost done, you grab them back so you take can credit for them. Crack! You just earned your new skin.
3. Senior Manager to Executive
   Transforming moment: You realize you care more about 2017 than you do about 2007. You look in the mirror and see your father, or what he looked like when he dressed up for a big occasion.
4. Executive to Regular Guy

Well, this article was Gil's way of announcing his retirement from CBS, I can only assume. In reading up on him, I found that he started writing under a pseudonym, telling tales of the corporate life, much like my favorite Big Picture Guy.

Anyway, I found this article (and previous columns) great, gritty food-for-thought. It's hard to set true goals for your future without realistically understanding what it takes to get there, and what it really is like once you do.

Fast response = more conversions

From the latest SitePoint Tribune one of my favorite newsletters:

Answer Your Email Right Now!

We have a number of clients in the same market niche who all sell basically the same thing from their web sites in basically the same way. But here's an interesting finding:

• The client with the highest conversion of inquiries to sales is the client who answers their email the fastest.
• The client with the second-highest conversion of inquiries to sales is the client who answers their email the second-fastest.
• The client with the third-highest conversion of inquiries to sales is the client who answers their email the third-fastest.

Noticing a trend?

Not rocket-science, but a strong reminder and motivator to improve response time by your sales staff to web-leads.

A landing page? Phooey!

Over the years I've heard the advise that I should have a dedicated 'landing page' designed to maximize 'conversions'. I've always said phooey. Turn 'em loose and let them find what they want once I get them to our site.

Now the Marketing Maven at GlobalSpec is backing me up. In their latest newsletter, there is an article titled Landing Page or Landing Path? Improving Post-Click Marketing that identifies why landing pages may not be a good idea.

"But landing pages can be fraught with problems that turn visitors off and lower your conversion rates. Some of the common problems include:"

• Loading up on content
• Trying to close too soon
• Being all things to all people
• Looking cheap

In other words, for the 'complex sale', you can't try to force the visitor to fit their complex needs into a simple one-page landing page. Better to make a 'landing path' with navigational cues based on different needs of the visitor.

The Maven goes on to give some clarification when to use a 'page' versus a 'path'. Ultimately, it depends on your products and prospects. Use what makes sense, not what you hear others saying should be done.

Caution when allowing access to Adwords

I'll save you the long story about why, but I had granted someone access to my Adwords Account. Then I deleted their access account. Easy enough, right?

Nope. I was mystified when I found some changes made that I didn't do. Some digging around and I found out they were continuing to gain access via API. (API allows the use of other master accounts or external applications.)

Turns out when I created their account, the API access was actually a different 'account' listed under a different section of the Adwords site.

My experience to your future benefit, I hope.

(Those of you familiar with Adwords campaigns may have a guess as to what I was up to. Hopefully I can share the details later.)

I can't help myself...

A little off topic--I hate the seeing the bad guys get away. These guys come from a medium I've nearly abandoned: television.

Bad guy #1: Kevin Trudeau
Flipping thru Direct Magazine, my attention was caught by an ad that didn't fit. Turns out MacroMark is selling a mailing list of Kevin Trudeau's clients.

Who is Kevin Trudeau? I googled him and found out that he is a shady character gettting past FTC rules based on his first amendment rights to print and sell books that say whatever he wants. The books are sold via Informercials and are really just an entre to sell subscriptions to his website. He's a guy with a checkered past staying one step ahead, and by selling his client list, milking it for all its worth.

I can only hope that no one buys these lists and make this guy any richer. But if Direct wants to keep the message that direct marketing is above scammy infomercial and phone solicitors, they should distance themselves from this guy.

Bad guy #2: Bill O'Reilly
Marketonomy blogger Chris Kenton rants on Bill O'Reilly's recent snub of JetBlue giving some tickets to website DailyKos. I don't really care about O'Reilly or DailyKos, and I don't think Chris really cares either.

O'Reilly basically says that because JetBlue gave some free flights to support DailyKos's member convention, that JetBlue is endorsing hate-mongering speech that some commenters at DailyKos have made.

Knowing the simple fact that DailyKos is a community site with lots of members and free form discussions makes the whole 7 minute YouTube clip Chris linked to laughable. Well, I guess I'm not laughing, because Bill skips this fact and chooses to attack JetBlue and DailyKos, specifically calling DailyKos a hatemonger (note the singular term he uses). The pansy 'expert' from BusinessWeek is there just as a foil and does nothing except give Bill someone to hurl unsubstantiated questions at repeatedly.

Rant wrap-up:
Anyway, two crappy examples of what makes this one-way communication model of television is broken. And two people taking advantage of it, with major companies behind them. I'm just revolted. I hate when truth and fairness are abused while I sit her politely selling my B2B products.

Sorry, but these were bugging me. Now I can go home!

The new secret to credibility

The Small Business Commando Blog by Dick Larkin targets small, local businesses like electricians and plumbers that depend heavily on Yellow Pages.

So why is he talking about online video?

Imagine you need a fence for your home and business. You know whoever you pick out of the yellow pages (or on the web) is likely going to be who you buy from because it is a complicated purchase. The vendors websites are of such varying quality that you aren't sure who to trust. The slick sites are too slick, and the poor sites might just be hiding a top-notch pro.

How can you reliably judge credibility before making that fateful call? Video!

Take a look at Scott Fence's promo video (via Google Video)


Video isn't easy to pull off. This example is a great sample of what works for this type of company. Instant credibility!

When a web-form crashes, propects don't call instead

My current website is simple, stable HTML. The only server-side scripts on the site are for the web forms, using ASP. Our quote-request form being the most important, of course.

Well, turns out the forms stopped working early on Monday. I didn't figure that out until one of our salespeople told me he was getting a 'corruption error' when submitting an internal form via the website on Tuesday afternoon.

I guess I should have figured out that I hadn't received any web-leads in over 24 hours, and there might be a problem. Or when one of the sales people faxed a printout of the internal form. Or when one of the reps indirectly suggested they were having problems.

Lessons learned:

• Customers don't call and say 'your website isn't working'.
• Salespeople tend to think they did something wrong.
• The ISP didn't know there was something wrong with their server.
• And I was too distracted to notice the drop in activity.

The really big lesson here is this, however:
You'd think we'd at least have seen a pick-up in calls since the web form wasn't working. And one of these prospects would have complained.

NOPE.

Incoming calls weren't any higher than normal. No one complained.

I can only assume that the normal web prospect got the error and moved on. Potential sales lost! Crap!

Kinda scary isn't it? The prospect on your website who wants to fill out the request form, doesn't want to call instead. It wasn't that important after all. Or perhaps they didn't want to break their 'flow' of web surfing. Either way, there's not much I can do about it.

But for those marketers out there who just assume that 'the customer will call' if they have questions or problems on their website, the answer from this small debacle is no!