To early to wonder “where January went,” you say?

Is it?

If you are as much of a procrastinator as I am . . . you know, if last year you said: “I’m going to call that prime prospect right after the first” . . . or, “I’ll wait until January to draft that budget” . . . . or, “January will be the perfect time to plan a promotional campaign” (etc., etc., etc.).

Then, as if in the blink of any eye, you look up at the calendar and realize it’s January 31st and you’ve accomplished none of these objectives. What to do at that point? Obviously, you can put those goals on reset, which is better than nothing, but, after all, you’ve lost a precious month; one that can never be retrieved.

There, you’ve got my drift. So, what do I suggest? Start meeting your goals NOW. That way, just think how much better you’re going to feel about things on the 31st. And, what’s more, you’ll be on your way to making some meaningful progress.

Happy Marketing!

This piece from Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim is not your typical Top Ten list of “Things to Look for in the Next Year or So!”.
Here’s what he has to say about those lists, followed by his own, sensible, insightful “Top 10 List.”:
Andy says: There are plenty of those out there and they all pretty much say the same thing. So rather than add to the noise I am going to come at 2011 from a different angle. To be honest, none of these are going to bowl you over. Why? Because most things worth paying attention to really aren’t that sexy. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Here is my “Top Ten Things Internet Marketers Should Concentrate on in 2011”.

1.Choose Strategy Over Activity – This one is a biggie these days. Many people are still rushing headlong into social media, location based services and more so they can say they are doing it. Often though they are doing it without an express purpose or goal. None of the online world works on the “If You Build It They Will Come” principle. Just being there could actually mean you are spending valuable resources and cycles on things that aren’t getting the job done. Create a strategy that makes sense and get involved only in activities based on strategy that will generate revenue. All the rest is just being busy.

2. Get Back to Basics – In the rush to stay ahead of the curve, many businesses have left the basics behind and in most cases incomplete. For Internet marketers (especially the smaller players and B to B marketers) that means making sure that the foundation for your online efforts is strong. Does your website look dated? Change it. Have you not taken the time to make sure you have the basic SEO elements (for example, keyword appropriate content matched with title tags matched with H1 keyword use) in place on each and every page of your site? This is the absolute bare minimum but it beats not doing anything at all. Have you put in basic key performance indicators (KPI’s) to measure your progress or lack there of? Do you check them regularly? You get the point. Basics are boring but they are essential. Just do them before you do anything else.

3. Spread the Wealth – Share your knowledge with others in the company whether they want to hear it or not. Why? Because more and more people are seeing that Internet marketing and social media are rare in that anyone in the company can participate. Many do and don’t even realize it. If you are educating the rest of the company on what they can do to help, you are enabling people to be involved and contribute to the success. People like that. Management likes that. Don’t horde your knowledge. Be an educator and see what others can do to help once they are empowered to do so.

4. Fire Your Consultant – This is something that many people should have done long ago. If things are not progressing with any outside or outsourced help you are paying then stop paying them. The Internet marketing industry as a whole is rife with experts, gurus, mavens and more. If there is no progress in a relationship you have with an outsourced provider then end the relationship. It’s that simple.

5. Hire A Consultant – If you are stuck and have reached the limit of your knowledge in a particular area of Internet marketing (face it, no one as in NO ONE, can know all there is to know about everything related to Internet marketing and social media) then it’s OK to seek outside help. Find someone who is willing to work with you within your current constraints but is then willing to push you beyond those constraints if it will help you succeed. You may cycle through several consultants before you find the right fit. That’s OK. When you make this step though don’t think you deserve anything for free or that experience doesn’t carry value. Many consultants are not cheap and they shouldn’t be. In this area, the expression ‘you get what you pay for’ is a very real axiom so be careful and don’t be cheap!

6. Listen More, Talk Less – We are in an industry that has everyone out in the middle of the town square yelling at the top of their lungs in order to be heard. Don’t join the fray. Sit back and listen for helpful information. Turn your bullshit filter on high and make sure you are only letting in the information that will move you forward. If you try to take it all in you will waste time, money and more and get little or nothing in return. Use tools like Google Alerts or Trackur (shameless plug alert!) to filter through the noise.

Listening is also about knowing what the competition is doing, what people are saying about your company online, what prospects are really looking for. Remember that we are given one mouth and two ears so use them in the same proportion (for those who have a tough time with math that just means listen twice as much as you talk).

7. Don’t Assume – This goes back to strategy and is important in all areas of your Internet marketing efforts. Most people work on the assumption that if something is being written about then everyone must be using it. This could not be further from the truth especially in the Internet space. Make sure that the techniques and tools you are going to consider have a real chance of connecting with your customers and prospects. If not why in the world would you even consider them? Another old axiom that is SO true in the Internet space is “If you assume, you will make an ASS out of U and ME” (thank you Felix Unger).

8. Be A Learner – Never has it been more important to be a “life long learner” than it is today. In the Internet marketing space there are no ‘set it and forget it’ options. Things change rapidly and it is hard to keep up. Budget for and invest in education regarding Internet marketing and social media. If you are not learning everyday in this space then you are falling behind much faster than you could ever imagine.

9. Effective Trumps Cool – Based on what industry you work in and many other variables like resource availability, you may have to come to the understanding that what is deemed to be cool doesn’t impact your business at all so it’s not something to consider. It’s no fun making practical decisions that keep you from playing with the cool kids but at the end of the day wouldn’t you rather have the respect of your colleagues, a potential raise, job security and more over an ‘atta boy!’ by some industry flunkie whose ‘followers’ consist of 95% spammers and automated follows? Not everyone can be an Internet marketing star and really there are only a select few worth listening to anyway. Be effective rather than be cool. But hey, if you can do both then more power to you!

10. Avoid Shiny Objects – One thing that will happen in 2011 is that there will be Silicon Valley press folks drooling over some new technology or service that comes out in January and they will need to tell you just how game changing it is. Truth be told, many of these ‘cool’ things are used by the tech insiders and that’s it. They don’t have mass market appeal and never will. The technology insider press is very incestuous and self-serving (read: self-important) and while it’s tempting to think that what they are talking about could be ‘the thing’, most times it’s not. In fact, by the time you have worked out the plan to get that latest trinket into your system they have moved on, hyped something else and left that ‘next greatest thing’ on the Internet marketing scrap heap. They aren’t much different than that kid on Christmas morning who plays with the cool toy for 5 minutes then complains that they need another cool toy. Maybe we should take a cue from the little kids and play with the box instead. It’s not as cool but it does more!

So there it is. If you made it this far, congratulations. What would you add or take away from this? Agree or disagree? Thanks for playing along.

Here is the fundamental premise on which all marketing is based:

If the consumer isn’t aware that you exist, he can’t buy your product.

When encountering a prospect on the showroom floor or at a trade show, in every case, he or she was “delivered” to that critical point by an awareness of you; whether through an advertisement, a referral or, in the trade show circumstance, merely because you were there.

What takes place at that point is two-way communication (you standing face to face with the prospect, closing the sale). Though your degree of success will be determined by your persuasiveness, product, knowledge, price, etc., something that happened before that gave you the opportunity: a prospect had to be delivered.

At our marketing agency in Phoenix, we have learned – and base much of what we do on – this lesson: In today’s highly competitive marketplace, real success is largely a numbers game. To survive, let alone be a leader in your category, you have to close many sales. In order to do so, you have to have ample numbers of prospects with which to work. This applies whether you are a product or a service, large or small, with a reach that is local regional or national in scope.

Here’s the key point that most marketing, advertising and public relations professionals have learned over the course of the past several months, if, indeed, they didn’t know it previously: developing adequate numbers of prospects cannot be accomplished through two-way communication, either face to face, by phone, the mail or, even, the Internet. Neither you nor your sales staff has anywhere near the time necessary for this crucial function. We have had to talk long and hard, and demonstrate meaningful results to convince many of our clients of this. That because they long have been oriented to a sales force driven model, and sometimes have a difficult time learning “new” and more efficient ways of cost effective customer contact.

Prominent publisher McGraw Hill & Co. has estimated that the average sales call requires approximately 45 minutes, and that an average of three calls is required to close a sale. Surely, it’s no way to prospect.

Prospecting is what marketing  the one-way communication element of sales  is ideally suited for. Expensive, time-consuming two-way communication simply isn’t necessary, nor is it efficient in developing prospects in the numbers sufficient for business success. Marketing communication, in one form or another, is the answer.

Most anti-marketing hard-liners got that way because they, at some point, were turned off by poor marketing efforts that failed to produce results. This is understandable, because much marketing is misguided or misplaced  but it is not justifiable, and, more than likely, will be hazardous to bottom-line business health.

Is marketing foolproof? Will it always produce infallible, guaranteed results? No it won’t, nor is it fair to expect it to (after all, what does?). But it is more science than art, and, as such, has something very important on its side: LOGIC. Marketing is measurable, quite often yielding predictable results, and as practiced by good professionals, should  and most often does  more than pay for itself.

Dear Santa,
. . . But there are a few things you could do to improve my job. If you can tour the world in one night, then surely you can help me with the following:

1. I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I want consistent messaging across all marketing/communication channels of every single business.

2. I’d like to buy the world a Coke (bottle—with no bottleneck). Limit the number of people who review my writing. Three is a good number. Any more, and version control becomes hard to manage.

3. Give the gift of mind reading. I want businesses to anticipate and fulfill my information needs—before I ask for anything.

4. Eliminate the middleman or -woman. I want to speak directly with CEOs, CIOs, and CFOs. I want to hear their “voice” with my own ears. Must I always go through someone to ask a few simple questions of executives?

5. Christmas comes but once a year—unlike clichés. I want the world to step up to the plate, think outside the box and become leading providers of new words and phrases.

6. Fewer silent nights. Enforce a 48-hour turnaround time. Too often, I have written content in a mad dash—only to have the review process put on hold for a few weeks.

7. I want to publish the words “holy crap.” Once—just once—I’d love to write something like this.

8. Borrow (kidnap?) my PR idols. If you’re not too busy on Christmas Eve, I would love for you to drop Mark Ragan, Brian Clark and/or Chris Brogan down my chimney. We’d have a fascinating discussion come Christmas morning!

So what do you say, Santa? Will you make 2011 the Year of the PR Professional?

Lindsey McCaffrey, who contributed this piece, is an Ottawa-based communications/public relations consultant, writer and editor.

The “I’ll Huff and Puff and blow your house down” blog comes in at number two (behind Gawker).

2. The Huffington Post, $112 million. The Huffington Post is ranked first among all blogs on the Technorati 100, which means it has a huge number of websites linking to it. Quantcast puts its global unique visitor audience at 20 million. The site is set up to encourage navigation from page to page and uses editor slide shows to build page views which are probably about seven per visitor. Huffington advertisers are a mix of high and middle CPM marketers. Average CPM per page is about $10. The company’s annual revenue run rate should be up to $16 million. Huffington executives say that the company does not make money. Huffington’s prestige and its strategic value to a buyer make it extremely valuable. The 24/7 figure is based on seven times revenue, a much larger-than-normal premium for a media property.

Here is the fundamental premise on which all marketing is based:

If the consumer isn’t aware that you exist, you can’t sell your product.

When encountering a prospect on the showroom floor or at a trade show, in every case, he or she was “delivered” to that critical point by an awareness of you; whether through an advertisement, a referral or, in the trade show circumstance, merely because you were there.

What takes place at that point is two-way communication (you standing face to face with the prospect, closing the sale). Though your degree of success will be determined by your persuasiveness, product, knowledge, price, etc., something that happened before that gave you the opportunity: a prospect had to be delivered.

At our marketing agency in Phoenix, we have learned – and base much of what we do on – this lesson: In today’s highly competitive marketplace, real success is largely a numbers game.

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Here’s the key point that most marketing, advertising and public relations professionals have learned over the course of the past several months, if, indeed, they didn’t know it previously: developing adequate numbers of prospects cannot be accomplished through two-way communication, either face to face, by phone, the mail or, even, the Internet. Neither you nor your sales staff has anywhere near the time necessary for this crucial function.

We have had to talk long and hard, and demonstrate meaningful results to convince many of our clients of this. That because they long have been oriented to a sales force driven model, and sometimes have a difficult time learning “new” and more efficient ways of cost effective customer contact.

Prominent publisher McGraw Hill & Co. has estimated that the average sales call requires approximately 45 minutes, and that an average of three calls is required to close a sale. Surely, it’s no way to prospect.

Prospecting is what marketing  the one-way communication element of sales  is ideally suited for. Expensive, time-consuming two-way communication simply isn’t necessary, nor is it efficient in developing prospects in the numbers sufficient for business success. Marketing communication, in one form or another, is the answer.

Most anti-marketing hard-liners got that way because they, at some point, were turned off by poor marketing efforts that failed to produce results. This is understandable, because much marketing is misguided or misplaced  but it is not justifiable, and, more than likely, will be hazardous to bottom-line business health.

Is marketing foolproof? Will it always produce infallible, guaranteed results? No it won’t, nor is it fair to expect it to (after all, what does?). But it is more science than art, and, as such, has something very important on its side: LOGIC. Marketing is measurable, quite often yielding predictable results, and as practiced by good professionals, should  and most often does  more than pay for itself.

Anyone who remembers the stock market back during the .com days remembers who much juice companies could get out of issuing press releases announcing some meaningless biz dev deal.

Apparently that got to be such a part of the play, that one company issued an apology for not churning out press releases on a daily basis, promising that more would be forthcoming.

Check this out from March 31, 2000:

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–March 31, 2000

Track Data Corporation (Nasdaq NMS See NetWare Management System.
….. Click the link for more information.: TRAC TRAC – Text Reckoning And Compiling ) announced today that after a period of an uncharacteristic dearth of press releases, it will issue releases on corporate developments each day next week.

Commenting on the lack of recent news, Barry Hertz, Chairman and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. , said, “I want to apologize to our stockholders and members who look forward to starting their trading day with a press release from us. I can assure you that your management team is continuing to structure deals and identify new business and product opportunities. As I mentioned yesterday in my monthly chat, I am confident that the news releases made next week will be of significant value to our shareholders.”

Track Data is a New York-based financial services company that offers myTrack, a fully integrated Internet-based online trading and market data system. myTrack offers the first week of trading commission-free. To open a trading account, go to http://www.mytrack.com and click on the “Open a Trading Account” button.

That comes to us by way of Mike O’Rourke at BTIG who observes that we’re basically at the exact opposite right now in sentiment, as people still basically just expect bad news:

Yes, it was that ridiculous back then, stocks did move (a lot) simply on press releases. Today we may have witnessed the opposite in finding out a “New State‐of‐the‐Art LG Billboard in Times Square Designed to Collect and Distribute Only Good News.” According to LG “the overwhelming majority of Americans (83 percent) agree that the United States is suffering from a good news deficit, with six in 10 Americans saying they don’t even know where to look for good news anymore.”

Oh, and TRAC? It’s still around. Here’s a chart. It’s down from a reverse-split adjusted 5000 during the peak to 83 right now, trading on the pink sheets.
Thanks to Joe Weisenthal for this article.

. . . preferably over lunch or a beverage (you invite and you buy), but definitely face to face. Choose a person you like, like an old friend or favorite colleague from the present or past.

Have no agenda. Let the conversation wander into, out of and through any subject. At best, it will be a stimulating experience, a strengthened relationship and you may even learn something new and significant. At the very least it should provide a pleasant interlude, and a refreshing break from the routine. With just the slightest effort on your part, it should hardly be disappointing.

Very seasoned greetings to you.

The word “I” doesn’t have to be self-serving and arrogant. Art Petty, who runs a management and leadership consulting firm, says we can use the word “I” for empowerment, active listening, and accountability. “I am responsible for this outcome.” “Here’s what I understand about your opinion on this matter. Am I correct?” ”I could use your help.”

Back in the dark ages of 1971, Nobel Prize winning economist Herbert Simon wrote: “What information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Did Simon have a crystal ball? How did he know the attention tsunami was coming? In ’71, there was no Google, information superhighway, or text messages. Guard your time, attention, and mind carefully.