Will Work for Free

Attention small business owners, entrepreneurs, and startup mavens! If you’re looking for someone to work for you for free, I’m going to tell you who will do it.

And by “work” I don’t mean respond to the occasional and casual marketing- or PR-related question. Nor do I mean provide the free resources for small business that are readily available from a marketing professional’s website (such as my marketing plan tool).

I’m talking WORK, as in bringing to bear their experience to help you solve a specific-to-your-business challenge or fulfill a specialized need. Work is the kind of thing professional marketers and public relations people usually get paid to do.

But, there are 3 types of people who will work for you for free, yet with the same commitment to your success as if backed by financial motivation. (Drumroll, please.) They are:

1. Business partners and co-owners who, like you, believe in the business and will put blood, sweat, savings, and tears into it. They will work the same crazy hours that you do, at the expense of all else, because they are investing in their own success. They can postpone the reaping of any benefits for longer than anyone else you’ll find because they have part ownership (officially, with a contract) in what will be very lucrative in the future. You don’t need to sell them on doing the work for free; they are right by your side. If you don’t have one of these, you are missing out on getting a lot of work done for free and should try to find one, particularly someone with complementary skills to yours. If you work in a larger office environment, perhaps without the authority to bring on a business partner, you’ll want to see #2 and #3 below. (Note: For the right opportunity with the right ownership split, I might leave my cushy, independent professional lifestyle as owner of my own marketing firm to be your business partner.)
2. Humanitarians and volunteers. When you serve the public and the greater good, you can find volunteers who, like you, believe in the cause and will put blood, sweat, donations, and tears into it. (This next part may sound familiar.) They will work the same crazy hours that you do, at the expense of all else, because they value the organization and believe they can make a difference. They can postpone the reaping of any benefits for longer than anyone else (and sometimes never require anything in return). This is because they have commitment, drive, hearts of gold, and sometimes, other jobs or independent wealth and lots of time. In some cases, when they don’t have other jobs or means of income, the community or family members may take care of them instead (as in on a kibbutz). If you simply change your business model, you will improve your chances of getting work done for free. (Exception: If you are a nonprofit, you can and should find companies like those small businesses being addressed herein to give you stuff and work for you for free instead. Here’s one opportunity to get you started.)
3. Suckers. There’s one born every minute so you do have a good chance of finding one. The downside is, with the time and energy you might waste trying to find a sucker and convince them to work for you for free, you could have paid for real results. Which might beg the question, Who’s the sucker now?
   
   I was a sucker before. I worked for free because I genuinely like helping people. Now I know that sometimes potential clients knowingly attempt to maneuver getting work for free and sometimes people do it unawares.
   
   I understand the need to get things done economically when you’re starting out. When that’s the case, small business owners and entrepreneurs really do need to have a budget that makes sense for the kind of results they expect to achieve. These are tough decisions but in many cases, a business only has one chance to make the first impression that will set the stage for their brand. It seems like an important investment to me.

P.S. This is probably the most irreverent post I’ve ever written, but I’m contemplating a brand shift to “the nicest rebel.” Did that come across? Did I go too far? Other comments and perspectives?

Favorite Email Marketing Resources

Here’s a quick list of resources about email marketing for anyone  planning an email campaign:

E-dialog: Provides the Relevance Trajectory. Their website (www.e-dialog.com) expands on 6 factors (Segmentation, Lifecycle management, Triggers, Personalization, Interactivity, and Testing and Measurement)  to consider when planning your email communications.  A good starting place.

Firedrum: This local (Scottsdale, AZ) provider sent an email with a few holiday tips, such as “Do not flood your subscribers' inboxes with an email every day.” You have to scroll down past the marketing message to get to the tips, though.

Constant Contact: Along with webinars and hints & tips, they provide the first chapter of their book The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing for free.  And a recent article looks back and ahead to 2010. 

iContact:  Offers a Holiday Email Marketing Checklist for download.  Some basic stuff but good reminders such as “Plan for January: Don’t forget your long term strategy... Thinking past December can lead to a solid start in 2010.”

Lyris:  Offer a guide 25 Essentials for Exceptional Email Campaigns for download. Among my favorite: Integrate email into your complete marketing mix, Test for correct rendering of emails on all email clients, and Focus on list quality over list size.

Silverpop: Provides webinars and a resource center.  Next topic: Your 3 "Must Dos" for Email Marketing in 2010, which are Leverage the Data, Engage With Customers/Subscribers, and Automate and Optimize. 

That’s all for today, although I know there are several others to watch, such as Experian/Cheetah, Campaigner, Emma . . .  one list of email service providers is available at the Email Sender and Provider Coalition website.  If you have any resources to add, please comment on this post!  To plan your small business marketing efforts for 2010, including your email marketing campaign, download our free tool, The 50 Questions. 

Technorati Tags: iContact,Lyris,Silverpop,Constant Contact,email service provider,email marketing,tips,email newsletters,Scottsdale,AZ,Phoenix,Arziona,small business marketing,e-Dialog,Firedrum,2010 planning

What are your thoughts on social media for companies and their brands?

This question was posed by my colleague Jen. Before I launch into the answer, a few words about blogging on this subject:

1. I’m going to respond within the context of micro and small businesses. My assumptions are that the brand is undefined, formative, or MIA.

2. I could write a whole article/white paper on this subject (and I might just do that!) but for today I am going to shoot from the hip and also try to keep it brief.

3. For brevity, and because you’ve introduced the B word, I’m going to limit my discussion of “social media” to what’s available and typically undertaken by this audience—not custom platform development or integrated marketing campaigns. Also, my comments will be highly generalized. And I will use sentence fragments.

Now, my thoughts on social media for companies and their brands.

If your company does not have an established brand or brand guidelines, does not have a brand strategy, or has not organized internal branding efforts, whatever you do/say “socially” will build your brand for you. It sounds simple and a given, right? Without a brand to align communications with or to test your tone against, you are not doing much to “shape” the impressions of your intended audience.

SIDEBAR: We assume that this is possible or we would not invest in any marketing, packaging, advertising, research, etc. (although not necessarily in that order) and yours truly along with 167,463 other people with the title Marketing Manager in the U.S. plus who knows how many others would not have a job (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Office of Occupational Statistics and Employment Projections, 2006).

But it’s easier to go off and do the social media thing, jump on the bandwagon and just participate, than it is to do the hard work of creating a brand. It’s seemingly cheaper, too—a fact that is not lost on small business owners. It’s when we ask questions of effectiveness that social media, when conducted in this manner, falls apart. That’s why I say “seemingly.” Building on Econ 101, if there’s no such thing as a free lunch, how much does a cheap lunch actually cost? Which leads to the question of who’s managing those impressions at what hourly rate. Or at least monitoring.

At the heart of social media is a conversation, and someone has to take the pulse. We have to listen and speak. We have to do both to connect with people, although some marketers will insist that you be a spokesperson. I think there are important usage decisions to be made. It will depend on your business and your relationships with others (and how that gets played out). I like to put it this way: Are you a megaphone, a two-way radio, or an antenna?

If you’re a megaphone, you’d better be (a) pointing in the right direction and (b) saying something worth listening to—as defined by your listeners, which really means you have to do some sort of listening, even if it’s not via social media channels. There are too many broken records, especially on Twitter. If u tweet about the same thing over & over & I don’t care about it, reverse marketing happens: Unfollow & boycott. (That’s 116 characters, BTW, and you can RT @tracydiziere.)

If you’re a two-way radio, you have to be comfortable with whatever comes back. And gracious. And accepting. When you open up the discussion for feedback, and readers use the opportunity to knock your service or product, you have to be able to respond positively. Unfortunately for micro or small business owners, who feel like they ARE the product/service, this isn’t easy. In the best case scenario, you have a process in place for capturing that valuable feedback, which would otherwise be very costly to obtain. Of course, it may not be representative of the entire market and it will trickle in vs. be conveniently culled, but it’s your data and you know how to use it to your advantage, thanks to your process. If you don’t have a process, don’t bother with social media. Community members, consumers, and would-be customers can (a) spot a faker a mile away and (b) will be even more disappointed if you don’t have an honest response that attempts to fix the problem.

If you’re an antenna, you’re picking up on what’s being said in social media circles that apply to your business, but you’re not contributing or launching anything. This is a good place to start. Listening can make your marketing efforts uber-effective, not to mention make you a more tuned-in friend, family member, boss, co-worker, consumer, voter, etc. Even as an antenna, you can acknowledge you’re receiving a signal on occasion. What you do with the information is important too. Use it to spark internal discussions, to understand consumer views, to track the competition, etc. Again, have a process for what you’re doing and a way of transforming content into data.

Finally, the question most people want to have an answer to: Should we do it at my company? Some marketers convince every client that they all have to be megaphones in all the usual suspects of social media—Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, Ning, YouTube, etc.—and create their own communities or be left behind to die in the desert of traditional media. There is no question that mainstream media is freaking out, is in trouble, is still too silo’ed, lacks freshness, and has to change. To tell you to ignore that and go ahead with business as usual would be beyond foolish. But social media efforts are not one size fits all and I’m not selling you some elaborate plan for social media domination either (as if it were possible, duh, it’s democratic). I’m just saying small businesses need to consider all the factors that come into play when designing (that means professionally constructing an organized and creative effort) their communications strategy—regardless of media. Those factors include not only larger issues of who are we trying to reach and WWMBD (MB=my brand) but also who is going to do what, how often, how long, at what expense, and the most important considerations of all: What if, what if, and what if?

If you need an extra head to think those things through, mine is for rent. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. And why not post a comment acknowledging your feat, calling me out, or lending your support for something I’ve said? Tracy Diziere & Associates is a two-way radio, but it’s awful quiet out there! Feel free to post your burning marketing questions as response to this or my previous post "Can We Talk?"

Can We Talk?

In lieu of a blog post where I address an issue that may or may not apply to lurkers out there, I'm proposing a Q&A. If you have any burning marketing questions, post them in a comment and I'll give you my undivided attention . . . and the best answer that I can.

Quote for the Day

"A trusted advisor gives you the best options & advises you which to take based on your needs, not the paycheck he hopes to have at the end." --Tracy Diziere

Increasing Sales Article Launching Tomorrow

Tomorrow I am sending out the Q2 newsletter article (yes, on the last day of the quarter!) on how small businesses and start-ups can increase sales. To read it, sign up to be on the distribution list at http://tinyurl.com/tdiziere.

A Client's Pricing Issues

I just saw a very funny--or is it sad?--YouTube video on how client pricing issues would get played out in real-world scenarios. My apologies in advance to those clients who understand the difference between a taco-stand taco and a filet mignon vs. those who believe they are paying for beef.

It should be said, these issues are more likely to happen with large agencies and when clients are unfamiliar with pricing structures, have not been educated appropriately about the services they are buying, or in general lack the experience or humility to succinctly acknowledge differences in expectations. This can be exacerbated when a marketing firm is too busy to develop the relationship or believes the account is too small to act as a trusted advisor.

It would be interesting to see the client-side version of this video.

See for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY