A client (accidentally) told me one day that they didn’t know the breadth of our services or the depth of our people. It wasn’t their fault. It was mine. I let my marketing guns down by not promoting and educating, while focusing on the work at hand. Their accidental admission was my wake-up call. I had put our new Train of Thought site development on hold several times. Big mistake.

I’ve always told clients if you stop marketing, your business will absolutely drop off. And it’s true. Even if you are so busy you can’t imagine bringing on another client, you must continue marketing, even if only a little bit. You have to keeping educating the clients you have, and continue reaching those you hope to one day land.

That one interaction lit a fire under my tail. After all, we began the project in May, 2010! I’m stoked to announce the new Train of Thought site has finally launched. Is it everything we’d hoped? Resoundingly, yes.

This is the first site we’ve had that accurately describes who we are, what we do, the depth and breadth of our work, speaks in the tone we actually use (minus any occasional expletives), and shows large work samples complete with strategy or background details. In short, it’s completely true to our brand.

As a person who is usually looking for a better way, I’m pleased to say I am completely happy with the site. You can read about our goals and accomplishments with it here. I hope you will poke around, read the branding blog, check out our portfolio, and generally find the site useful.

Being ballsy is a two-sided coin. On the one side, it’s risk-taking, and we generally like people who take smart risks (but being more important than your prospect isn’t smart).

On the flip side, ballsy is riddled with male-hormone stupidity; you know, that stuff that makes dudes sound like morons just when they hope to sound amazing. (I’m a guy, and I surely have my male moron moments.) Thing is, sounding like a moron on a sales call is generally not good.

What you want is to be so important they can’t ignore you. But you don’t want to be more important. Because here’s the reality: If you are more important than your prospect, you don’t need them. And they get that feeling when you say, “I wanted you to know.”

There are plenty of ways to be noteworthy without placing your own importance above that of prospective clients. Find one that makes sense and use it!

But that’s not the wrong kind of wow I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the kind of wow that’s really more ‘Ouch’ than wow. Ouch wow is when you utterly fail to support what you sell, which is perhaps okay for short term sales, but will inevitably damage your brand (if you care).

An example of Ouch wow
I had a need to put up a quick website in one day, and rather than bother my fully scheduled development team, I decided to use a stock theme (whoops). I found the one I wanted, forked over my dough, built the site, got down to one final detail that I could not crack, and SNAP! I can’t launch.

I emailed the developer off the demo page, and got a response within ten minutes. Awesome! Oh but wait. His response (not an autoresponder) was that I should email him from the form on the theme purchase page, which I did within one minute. Then… cricket silence. Not a word. No support whatsoever.

So I found the developer’s Twitter, read a few posts, and (Ouch wow) the guy is not someone I would want to do business with. He’s actually tweeted that he hates it when theme buyers request support! He’s sold tens of thousands of dollars in themes, and he’s leveling complaints about supporting his own work. Wow! (the wrong kind).

Now I have to go bother one of my real developers. Or switch stock themes. This is why we do custom themed websites. Clean code, great support, no hassles (that, and our customers don’t want to look just like their competitors).

Avoid ‘ouch wow’. Love your customers. It’s smart marketing.

Like many people, I’m annoyed by online banner ads. It’s not the ads themselves I mind (well, there are some terrible ones), but the manner in which companies aggressively place them that is beyond annoying.

If I want to buy a product, I check it out, then like most consumers, I either think about it on my own or I buy on the spot. If I choose to think about it, it means I want time, on my own. By default, it also means I do not want to see it over and over on every website I visit, which only deceases the likelihood of a purchase.

Banner advertising networks track your every online move, with tactics that throw ads in front of our eyes for nearly every product we view online. There is no better way to thwart a sale that to annoy the customer.

The more a company contacts me, the less likely I will buy. For example, I bought a shirt at BaseballSavings.com, being careful to uncheck any email subscription boxes. I received no less than a dozen email advertisements in the month after the sale, many after requesting removal from their list, and still more from their other sites. In response, they’ve been added to my ‘do not buy’ list.

I suspect as advertisers get more and more aggressive, more people will respond by buying less or buying the competing product. Which is good, because it will force businesses to simply do better advertising creative instead of taking invasive maneuvers.

I’ve been a professional graphic designer (and art director, creative director, senior copywriter) for 26 years, yet I still get asked to do work at near-minimum wage by some companies, and I’m not the only one. Professional graphic designers commiserate about this all the time. Would you ask your marketing director, bookkeeper or auto mechanic to work at minimum wage? Of course not, because they all play pivotal roles in keeping you and your business healthy, as does your graphic designer.

Professional graphic design is not a commodity or unnecessary service in the way that flipping burgers might be. Smart graphic design feeds marketing pipelines, whereas clipart and non-strategic graphic design does not.

There can be no question about the marketing value of graphic design. That value comes into question primarily because companies hire based on price, not based on needs. They do it to themselves.

It is commonplace in the design industry for clients to price-shop. Companies routinely choose the lowest price, regardless of qualification or possibilities. If you hire based solely on price, the end-result will invariably be of lesser quality, which means you’re knocking the legs out from under your marketing.

Legs are what you get when you hire highly-qualified professional designers. Legs carry your marketing. Cheap design falls on its face, undermining your marketing.

There are two kinds of graphic designers: hobbyists who work for free or cheap and do work that helps you fill a budget sheet; and professionals who can make your marketing fill your pipeline. Only one of them has real value to businesses serious about success.

As with most shortcuts, the cost was far greater than the time and money saved. I could have gotten tested by the allergy doctor and known in a week. It would have cost me several hundred dollars and a few hours off work. Plain to see, it is now, that getting the testing would have been far smarter than potentially, you know, perishing.

Marketing shortcuts
There is a veritable laundry list of shortcuts are we asked to help clients take in the course of marketing a business. As with life, the cost of marketing shortcuts is far greater than the cost of just doing the work right.

Take photography for instance. Small business owners frequently try to take their own shots to save money, often with downright hideous results. Upon failing in their attempts to make poor shots look better, they commit the cardinal sin of shortcuts by asking, ‘Can you just photoshop it?’ (Conjures the old saying, ‘You can’t polish a turd.’) Better to take the shot right with a professional photographer, so it will stand out among peer products.

Marketing plan shortcuts are perhaps the biggest shortcuts of all, wherein business owners state that they don’t want a marketing plan, then wonder why in the course of the year their efforts aren’t panning out. Or we develop a marketing plan that they don’t bother to follow, then complain when the not-followed plan doesn’t work. (This is not exclusive to small businesses.)

The logo shortcut involves undermining every ounce of what a logo does by buying a clipart logo for fifteen bucks. A logo is personal and communicates ideas that make people think and form connections. A clipart logo is impersonal and generally communicates nothing.

I could go on and on, but the point is that the shortest route from startup to success is the longcut. It’s taking the road that will almost inevitably force you to do the work and reap the rewards of your efforts.

In a marketing context, this doesn’t mean you must have a Fortune 1,000 budget. It does mean that the road to success is not paved with clipart and marketing shortcuts. It means sticking to a budget and follow a good plan you believe in. It means measuring results, adjusting, and making another effort. It means doing things right, slowly, surely, keeping the end-goal in mind, and skipping the tantalizing shortcuts.

Paying the price of marketing shortcuts will take much longer and cost more. Take the longcut. Do the work.

Advertising limited by fear bores people, possibly the most dangerous result in all marketing.

There are very few things a company could say in an advertisement that would offend those loyal to the brand so greatly that they will go away. Boring them, on the other hand, can result in customers jumping ship to someone more exciting. Being boring always yields the same result: bad advertising. Boring ads usually result from fear of risk.

Some companies kill their own advertising efforts by asphyxiating creative or completely forgoing real strategy. Others buy media “deals” which waste budgets on mediums that will never pan out. Some companies insist on writing their own headlines and text, resulting in ads that they can connect with but no one else can. Still others go for “wow factor,” forgoing (or forgetting) to make real, meaningful connections. It’s easier to undermine advertising efforts with fear-rooted action than to hold high ambitions for success.

When I hear a client say, ‘advertising doesn’t work,’ what they really mean is that their past advertising hasn’t worked. They rarely can show measured results, which means they often base advertising effectiveness on feeling rather than any sort of hard data. Sometimes they have data, but don’t understand what it means. In order for data to have any intrinsic value, the advertising effort must have meaningful, stated goals prior to the creation of the campaign. Without goals, success is virtually impossible. Not determining or stating goals up front is a fearful approach.

Among initial advertising goals, I’ve often heard little more than, “more sales.”

“More” is a hard goal to reach because it could mean literally anything, and does little to inspire people in marketing, creative or sales.

Setting goals is risky because someone has to raise their hand, stick their neck out, and take responsibility. If the company dynamic says sticking your neck out ends in it being chopped off should the effort fail, fear rules and no does what it takes to realize effective advertising efforts.

I suggest a different approach.

How about the people who stick their necks out get rewarded regardless of success? This may inspire a more constructive dialog, such as, ‘What a great failure that was! What did we learn? What’s next?’

Show me any other part of life where every single effort results in success. I think you will find that no arena offers guaranteed known success.

Activities as simple as walking present risk. You could trip and fall or step in a hole, but you don’t stop walking. You need to get where you are going, and walking forward is the most sure way to get there.

Similarly, an advertising effort might fail, but you keep taking risks and keep advertising because it’s the most sure way to succeed.

Our politicians talk of:
• More mass transit spending – which may not ease the amount of traffic, but instead only enable more traffic.
• More buses – which makes sense at main commuting times, but seem to just clog roadways (while empty) the rest of the time.
• Obesity – this comes up only when they’re talking about mass transit spending. (Gee, how about some public well-being?)

When they could be talking about:
• Public bicycle-share systems
• Subsidized bicycle and hiking boot programs
• Alignment of their special interests with transportation and (legitimate) fighting obesity goals
• Consumer health education

They say:
Mass transit helps fight obesity.

The idea being that people get exercise whilst walking to the bus or rail, which varies in degrees of legitimacy depending on how close people live. Interestingly, the further away from a stop an obese person lives, the less likely they are to make the trek, reducing the likelihood they will get that (limited) exercise. (Politicians never mention this.) So what they are really saying is mass transit helps prevent obesity, but does little to help people already suffering from obesity.

They mean:
Obesity helps justify spending on mass transit. Do politicians actually like obesity?

Raise your hand if you would like a little more direct dialog about obesity (or anything else) from politicians.

Raise your other hand if you are more direct in your marketing. Arms in the air, you are a champion.

Take going gluten-free as an example. Can you guess the biggest fears people have about going gluten-free?

1) They won’t like the taste.
2) They won’t be able to eat out.
3) They don’t know how they will find gluten-free foods.
4) They will always be hungry.

These are all myths people tell themselves to avoid change. Funny thing about change is that it almost always has positive benefits. Not changing, on the other hand, or investing in fear, almost always has drawbacks. People invest in fear because it sounds easier and seems to cost less from an effort standpoint, when the reality is they are making life or business much harder.

Like all myths, the above fears about gluten-free eating can be dispelled in seconds flat:

1) They won’t like the taste.
Finding a taste they like may be an exciting adventure. Just like with glutinous foods, there are artisan gluten-free bakers and brewers to be found.

2) They won’t be able to eat out.
Restaurants have one primary goal: to make people happy. The first person who requests gluten-free food might be an inconvenience, but everyone after that presents an opportunity to please. Eating out will not be a problem.

3) They don’t know how they will find gluten-free foods.
Finding gluten-free foods is easy, presents opportunities for venturing outside of old routines, and promotes positive change. Reading labels is easy and takes only a few seconds.

4) They will always be hungry.
In point of fact, they are likely to be less hungry. You need less food when your diet contains no gluten. Gluten reduces the effectiveness of the digestive system, so eating gluten in effect manifests hunger. Eating gluten-free foods allows the digestive system to pull maximum nutrients from food, so you require less intake.

In spite of all these facts, people keep eating gluten because it’s easier to invest in fear. Marketers understand this and play to it on a daily basis. The results of investment in fear about going gluten-free include a steady decline in health, a bigger belly, asthma, digestive problems, discomfort, sleep apnea, and so on.

Do you invest in your fears? We all do. Investing in fear is free and easy. It requires almost no effort. It’s also boring. Doing things that scare you just a little bit is healthier because you are challenging yourself and those around you to learn and grow.

If you are marketing fear to yourself on a regular basis, you reinforce your own status quo. It’s how bad hair, habits and horrible has-beens happen. Doing the opposite is exciting, scary, and actually pretty awesome feeling. The price is change. The benefit is priceless.

When we step into an automobile, we instantly wield a very heavy object approximately 50 times the size of ourselves, and we exert an influence on those around us. We can impose irregular actions on them. Call it defensive driving to put a spin on it. In a car, there’s an obvious physical reason why we influence the people around us, but in the space of humanity, of one person or family on earth, why would anyone have a need to influence fellow humans and neighbors in an oppressive manner? It’s a real noggin-scratcher.

Generally speaking, we don’t need to defensively live. There’s plenty of room for most ideas and for people to express themselves and live in those ideas without direct imposition.

Cheers to Kenneth Cole for promoting the strongest of human qualities—the ability to recognize and promote equality—in their marketing. Kenneth Cole ad for gay marriage.