You’ve just got to love Rube Goldberg. In the cartoon above, the object is to sharpen a pencil. This is accomplished by flying a kite. The kite string is attached to a birdcage. As the kite ascends, the birdcage door is opened, releasing the birds who fly into a jacket, lowering a boot by means of a fulcrum that then activates a switch providing electricity to an iron. I assume that the iron produces steam, which scares the squirrel through the bottom hole in the hollow tree. When he reaches the top hole, he launches an acorn into a basket, thus activating another fulcrum that raises the cage above a large bird, enabling it to eat from a feeder intricately connected to a sharp knife. The motion of the bird at the feeder causes the knife to whittle a sharp point on the pencil. Clever, huh?
This morning, I was asked by one of our folks to explain how this whole “marketing services provider” thing works. More specifically, I was asked how we were going to sell it. It struck me that before we go about selling a set of services, it would probably be useful to define them. So I began thinking about what we can do for a customer who wants to sell more ummh . . . pencil sharpeners. First, we could set up a WordPress CMS site for a small business and incorporate a blog, an online storefront, and an event calendar. We could print and mail personalized postcards with PURLs for them advertising the storefront and providing an incentive to subscribe to their E-newsletter, which would be set up using a totally ‘nother service. Then we could help them develop and manage a database of potential customers who might shop at their online storefront or even conceivably show up at their place of business. As the database increases in size, we could actually take a survey to find out what all of the customers and potential customers think about the website, the storefront, the blog, the e-newsletter and the PURLs. AND we could set up social networking on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to further enhance the breadth and impact of their communications efforts. PLUS we’ll put QR codes on everything . . . just because we can.
Sounds kind of like a Rube Goldberg device, doesn’t it? What we all innately know is that some things work and some things don’t. What we all don’t innately know is when some things will work and how they will work and how long they will keep working. This is the truth, no matter what Seth Godin or the latest marketing guru may say. Marketing, especially for small businesses, is not exactly trial and error, but it really is at best an intelligent guess. Poor Richard knows this from his experience as a small businessman and a marketer. (Fer’ instance, a year and a half ago Facebook ads worked pretty dang well for the printshop behind the red awnings on Poplar Street (name assiduously camoflaged from the franchise, who is totally embarrassed by Poor Richard’s blog). A Facebook ad could generate a phone call or two or three pretty quickly . . . and yes, it generated “friends” and likes on our Facebook Page. (Poor Richard maintains that friends, likes, and clicks don’t count for much if they don’t sell anything.) Don’t know what happened, but Facebook changed around June last year . . . since then zilch.)
Note: Please pardon me for the encapsulated parenthetical phrases. Poor Richard’s sixth grade English teacher, Miss Birch, is rolling in her grave.
But that’s really the crux of it, isn’t it? All of this messing around with technology doesn’t really mean much if it doesn’t sell anything. My next door neighbor applied a torque wrench to my level of frustration yesterday with a story about “saving money with technology.” They are planning for a trade show and had considered revising and reprinting their catalog. This is a major project for the company and not one that Poor Richard’s Printshop would take on, but the story irritated me just the same. Someone discovered that information could be conveyed on an iPad; so rather than produce a tangible printed product that could be given to prospective customers, they decided they’d just show ’em stuff on the iPad. They spent $1,000 on gadgets, rather than $10,000 on print.
Got to dig into this a little bit to make sense of it:
- Was the decision not to spend $10,000 on a big catalog wrong? Maybe not . . . it’s a lot of money and plenty of those catalogs would get tossed.
- Do the iPads really replace the catalogs? Absolutely not . . . whizbang toy that no one would remember unless you gave them one (and then you’re spending way more than $10,000 at the tradeshow).
- Was there an opportunity lost? To quote the megolamaniacal ex-governor of Alaska, “you betcha.” A printed piece goes into the sack and at the very least provides a reminder when the potiential customer gets home. The sack stuffer doesn’t have to be a full blown catalog. A one page flyer might do perfectly well.
- What else? The real opportunity for the iPad is collection of data. While my neighbors are showing stuff on the cool, new gadget; they could also get names addresses and particular needs that let them get back in touch with the prospect later on.
Will it work? Poor Richard doesn’t think so.
Trying to help our customers with “marketing services” or “marketing campaigns” really comes down to what works. There’s no way that we’re going to bat 1,000. Flying a kite is probably not the best way to start the process of sharpening a pencil and throwing the whole arsenal of acronyms at a customer who just wants to sell something is equally ridiculous. So what’s the answer? Selling “marketing services” and implementing “marketing campaigns” really has more to do with knowing what to try than anything else. What is the goal? What is the budget? What makes sense to try? How do we measure it? What do we do next? These are the questions that really mean something and the substance of the conversations we should have with our customers.
So what does work? We don’t have to build a Rube Goldberg pencil sharpener just because we’ve got a bunch of birdcages and a roll of kite string. It might be better just to whittle the end of the pencil with a pocketknife. Let’s try it.