Letters From Dan

So I saw that Janet Slack was doing a teleseminar on the top 10 Facebook Marketing Mistakes – but I didn’t get to attend. So I asked her if she could send me the recording or a transcript or something which I could learn from and then share here.

And she did just that.

In her own words, here’s Janet Slack talking about the top 10 Facebook Marketing Mistakes.

Marketing your small business on Facebook is the latest hot marketing trend.  But recent research shows that only 37% of businesses are getting new customers and revenues for their efforts.  Here are some of the mistakes you just don’t want to make with your Facebook marketing or you risk wasting time and effort.

I’m not sure what the most common affiliate marketing mistakes are, but I saw an article by Jeff Herring today that clearly illuminated a big one. Jeff Herring (as he explains in this blog post) had the unfortunate experience of having YouTube disable his videos. Jeff wasn’t at fault and is contesting the shut down, but it clearly illustrates a common mistake affiliate marketers make.

YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr and all things Google are not owned by you.  You may have an account,  and like Jeff Herring, you may be doing exactly what they want you to be doing. But the reality is you’re renting space.

Failing to understand that is the common mistake affiliate marketers make. They spend time hocking their products through these mediums WITHOUT capturing the contact information of those who are interested in what you’re talking about. Failing to use YouTube, Facebook and Twitter as traffic drivers to your website and opt-in form will trip up your long term plan.

Imagine if Jeff had spent his time telling you about great products he endorses and then sent you through his affiliate links directly to those products?  You would never be able to reach these people again. There would have been no information capture.

You may be saying “adding a step between the video and the sale will reduce the number of sales”, am I right? Because that wouldn’t be right at all.

Teasing a product in a video and then sending them to your website where they can get more information about the product and be further sold shouldn’t decrease the number of sales whatsoever. But more importantly, that extra step of information capture allows you to follow-up on your original information, provide more details, social proof and benefits.

Not only that, information capture gives you the opportunity to give your audience more useful information – when you want to provide it.

Jeff is a master at information capture, thus I was able to hear about his unfortunate circumstance through an e-mail he sent out. (That’s great transparency, community building and relationship making as well)

When you’re building your affiliate marketing strategy, don’t forget that you don’t own much of what you do on the internet. There was a day when MySpace and AOL were king – but how much are 5,000 friends on MySpace and your AOL Keyword worth today? YouTube videos can create a great constant flow of income – until people start using a new site or YouTube randomly shuts down your account.

And think of all the time you spend on these sites? Without driving your friends, fans and leads to some sort of lead capture funnel – all those hours of hardwork will someday be worth nothing. (In fact, I wrote a book called TwittrGlitch to help you secure your Twitter account from hackers, shut downs and other problems to avoid this exact situation).

One of the most common affiliate marketing mistakes that you can make is assuming that your web properties are your own. Don’t make that mistake and always be planning for the next Facebook Killer to come along and destroy what you’ve built.

With permission I’m able to relay this business to business marketing mistake that one of my mastermind members made these last few months. We all knew that the change he made was responsible for the error – but it took a while to pin down the “why”.

So an autoparts wholesaler has a pretty comprehensive website when it came to the products they offered. Each part comes with its own spec that many needed but often did without.

Wow! I’ve had some great discussions about whether social media is the right step for small businesses. Some have involved the ROI of social media and others questions about manpower and dedication. I believe there are some important social media marketing mistakes you should avoid. So let’s explore whether social media, as a time and activity expense, makes sense for small business.

Part of my discussion involved chats with both Norma Maxwell of InsideWebMarketing.com and Kelsey Foster of ReadyClickContent.com. Our Facebook discussion started with Norma pointing out the success an acquaintance had spending $10/day in Facebook ads to create an audience of 15,000 “fans”. And both spoke highly of the community building that goes on with Facebook – expounding especially upon its importance in business.

I argued then and I argue now that despite those benefits, social media may not be the right step for small businesses. With the exception of one thing. . .

Small Business Responsibilities

To start, time is the most precious commodity a small business owner has – and is its greatest foe. And the responsibilities required to operate successfully are enormous. Consider the marketing, operations, taxes, licenses, customer interaction, research, follow-up, signage, trash, SEO, websites, phone books, computers, HR, etc. . . there is really an infinite number of things to do and an infinite number of expenses.

And small businesses normally have one source of income – customers buying their products and services.  From a week to week basis, a small business has to measure their expenses against their income – and no matter who you are if the income doesn’t exceed the expenses you go out of business. And even when the income exceeds expenses – if that doesn’t happen in a timely manner, a small business may not have the cash to pay its expenses and must shut down.

No matter how you slice the pie, there are only two ways to increase your revenue: 1. More customers OR
2. More money from each customer

What should I spend time doing?

That’s it.  Building a community on Facebook can certainly increase both – but the question is how long will that take for the “community effect” to turn into dollars? And could your time have been better used another way to achieve the same ends?

Time is finite.

So a small business owner must ask him/herself right now, should I be editing and producing a new radio ad with a call-to-action that will fill my pizza restaurant tonite, or answer questions and update Facebook that may begin to fill my pizza restaurant soon? You can’t say both – because in reality you can’t effectively be doing everything.

If you decide your time is best used doing social media, then some time later decide it’s better used elsewhere – how profitable will a dead, untouched Facebook page be for you? With dates on everything, a failure to interact is one of many social media marketing mistakes.

The only way Social Media makes sense

So here’s my caveat to that (that one thing I mentioned) – and the only reason I’d agree that you can do both. Repurposing. Every owner should be repurposing their activities. Here are some examples of repurposing that could set the stage for a great social media campaign:

1. Instead of answering customer questions via e-mail, write a blog post and send the customer the link to it. Then post a corresponding link to it on your social media sites. You were going to answer the e-mail anyway, might as well turn it into a marketing activity. 

2. Anytime you’re in a position to give your opinion, analysis or consult on something in your industry, film it or record it with an .mp3 recorder. You’ve then got a podcast segment, YouTube video, transcript, blog post, FAQ, slide show, etc. . . . You don’t have to use it right then and there – but you can never go back to get it later.

3. Film your crew making the dessert special for the week, building a fence, fixing a roof, doing an estimate, or even cleaning the place. Don’t spend time setting the stage with that stuff – show your customers who you are.  Make every moment something you could market. Besides you were going to do it anyway, might as well make it a marketing moment.

4. Ask the news media to come to anything you can. While you’re doing your thing – they’re driving business. (And then you can save the article from the news media website,  and post it to your own. You can also print it and mail it to your customers. The ideas are infinite with PR).

I don’t think social media is always the best step for small business – unless it’s truly thought out and you know the costs associated with spending time on Facebook versus calling and thanking your customers – or any of the other 1,146 things you could be doing to increase revenue.  A failure to plan is truly failure to avoid the many potential social media marketing mistakes that happen to many.

I recently wrote about how the airlines are very close to charging you more just to sit down – which I thought was ridiculous. But then I went and saw that the Indianapolis Zoo has similar logic to their policy.

It wasn’t the Indianapolis Zoo prices that prompted this post, it was the feeling I had when I left that made me wonder if they understand the value of integrating price changes with value changes. When word-of-mouth is crucial to your operation’s success, problems like these turn into a major marketing mistake.

Companies raise prices for a variety of reasons, the worst of which is when it seems arbitrary. Gas stations raise and lower prices daily in accordance with the economics of that commodity. Retailers will often raise prices as a pass-through of shipping and transportation increases. But the real winners are the companies that raise prices because they ultimately raise value.

That brings me to the Indianapolis Zoo prices. I recently attended the zoo, the day after they raised prices for the summer. In fact, the price went from $8.50 to $15.50. That price change shows up on their website and in their pamphlets as the summer price increase – which you clearly know months in advance. There’s nothing in their literature about the extra value they’re providing because of the summer change.

Unfortunately, the marketing squad and the operations department must not have been communicating. For this seasonal price change to make sense, there must surely be new stuff to see and do. I was OK with the raised prices until I came upon a bunch of exhibits that weren’t yet open, bathrooms that weren’t open, water fountains that weren’t usable and their brand new Warthog exhibit without . . . warthogs.

In their defense I’ll say they did open a bat exhibit, which was a small 8 x 12 pen where 6 bats were hanging. And they also opened an Orchid exhibit. Not too shabby, eh? Well it appears the bats were placed in an existing cage that once held some other animal – and the Orchid exhibit. . . it wasn’t in the zoo. It was outside and was free to all who ventured to see it.

As I spoke about in my post Adding Value with Giant Marshmallows, you should not feel you’re earned the right to raise prices – unless you know customers will appreciate the added value to their experience.

So I left the Indianapolis Zoo feeling jipped.  I got to pay double what yesterday’s crowd had to pay – yet the experience was just the same. What is the likelihood that future exhibits will garner my attention?

My question to you, to answer below, is are you looking at your company from your customer’s eyes? Are you judging the value of their experience from a cost perspective? from a user experience perspective? And are you taking into account the perceived value you must be providing when you raise prices? Start the discussion with your thoughts below.