The Hubris of Marketing

Marketoons

Hubris: "...an excess of ambition, pride, etc, ultimately causing the transgressor's ruin."

After you've been around a few decades, you realize that there are only two kinds of marketing - the kind that works... long term... and the fads.  I love the fads, they have the biggest booths at the trade shows, lots of sharp young people and often as not - they even have a new vocabulary of trending hashtags (see I know a few myself).   It doesn't surprise me that there are new terms for the same old... what surprises me is that so much of the meaning has been left behind.  Even more startling... that clients either gobble up the fads (for a while) or decide that they've been burned too many times and can forget marketing strategy all together. 

I guess I can't really blame them... I was that sharp young guy who didn't know what he didn't know - or even know enough not to spout off about it.  My recommendation - find someone who has a track record of success - you can be the one to translate the wisdom into the latest buzz words... and he may not even mind.

Book Marketing & Selling Tips for Authors

Yes, I published this book 10 years ago.  How could a ten year old book in a highly technical and fast moving category have anything to say to today's BIGdata professionals.  Well, in the past 10 years, we created 4 new case studies and won 11 documented head-2-head tests against 8 of the worlds best modelers.  In one of the last, our names out performed them by 321%.  I doubt there is another modeling company in the world that has that kind of competitive success story.  If your company is struggling with your customer data, this is a MUST READ.

To promote the book, I have joined with Authors Marketing Club.  It is essentially an author's co-op where we download, review and promote each other's books.  First promotion launches 11/14/12...  I'll keep you posted - literally!

Book Marketing & Selling Tips for Authors

Good Data in BigData?

How to Find the Good Data in Big Data

Guest Blog by Ray Schutz, TellAllMarketing

There’s one thing wrong with Big Data. A lot of is is “a little big like overhearing a conversation,” says John Miglautsch, chairman of Miglautsch Marketing Inc., in the second in a series of videos on data. .

 Ray Schultz contributes a summary of my second video in the series 'Making Money With Data'. 

Ray Schultz, journalist and author, has written so much about marketing that he is now a marketer himself. He has launched TellAllmarketing, an agency specializing in content marketing.

TellAllmarketing is devoted to the idea that relevant, well-done content attracts leads and moves them through the B2B purchase funnel. We produce white papers, case studies, email newsletters and other forms of content for clients like IBM Netezza, KBM Group, InfoGroup, NextMark and Reach Marketing.

Founder Ray Schultz has solid grounding in both marketing and journalism. As editor of DM News, he tracked the growth of direct marketing as it evolved from a business backwater into a global force embraced by Fortune 500 companies. From there, Ray moved to Direct, where he documented the online and CRM revolutions.

Spinning Straw Into Gold (overview)

Find out why so few turn their data
into money and also how to do it.

It IS  possible to turn data into money. I’ve seen millions of extra dollars generated on one mailing, catalog response rates of over 100% because of modeling. In the past 6 years, we have beaten 8 modeling firms in 11 massive tests... Gold can happen, but it generally does not happen. People think it is a systems problem and it is NOT a systems problem. It is a thinking problem, it is a brain problem.

Consider the Grimm's story of Rumpelstiltskin. A miller says his daughter can spin straw into gold (a big lie). The king sends for the daughter and says, “Here is a room filled with straw. Spin it into straw or you die in the morning.” 

The database marketing industry also has lies. Only by exposing the lies, can we spin straw into gold. 
more...  

Just posted a short version of my book Spinning Straw Into Gold finished the audio recordings today as well.  

Why am I promoting a book that is almost a decade old?  When I first wrote this, I knew that I was on to something.  Being largely self-taught in statistics and modeling, I kept being amazed that we not only beat mature mailers, but also seasoned modeling companies.  However, since we have continued to pile up wins (so great that we've been accused of 'cheating') I knew I needed to reiterate WHY our system WINS.  It is because we think about the process and have spent over 20 years molding and perfecting a system to achieve it.  Last week I opened our doors to a company that builds databases.  We spent a day showing them everything we could.  Why?  Because this isn't a system that can be easily copied, even if the technology were simple (it isn't) it could take years to prove that it was working as expected... then more years to run all the tests which ours has won.  In addition, it incorporates so much that we have learned from our world class clients - yes, we also include their variables in their systems.  There is a reason why it works and the time has come to share this amazing breakthrough.

Look over this article and see if it makes sense... and if it does, perhaps we should talk about how you handle your customer contact system.

I'm working with Author Marketing Club to promote my book on Kindle - click this picture to check it out.