But that’s not the reason why this is my last post. The reason is because it seems this is my 3rd post in 3 months about Facebook and no one in the media or advertising seems to listen to what I say…

Or do they?

I’ve been critical of Facebook, not as a communication and social platform, but specifically Facebook Advertising, for a while. First, why advertising will kill Facebook here; second, Facebook’s major problem (which is advertising) here.

Basically, being someone in the advertising & marketing ecosystem for well over a decade, and someone who does in fact have a strong grasp of social media, I figured I was qualified to tell people that 1) advertising in its current form does not work and will not work in social media or in Facebook; 2) Facebook was and is immensely reliant upon advertising, to a fault. You know…because it doesn’t work! It was only a matter of time before people realized that, I figured. At Sprouse Marketing Group, we certainly have a list of marketing trategies and tactics that are well ahead of Facebook Ads.

Today, news came out that General Motors has pulled a pretty enormous campaign to the tune of $10 million. Yanked it. Said it was because, you know, the ads didn’t work!

This is the last time I will say this. I like Facebook, it is a fun utility. I dislike the notion that somehow Facebook is an advertising platform. It is not one, and will never be one. With services or platforms that are not conducive to advertising, you must charge some type of a subscription or fee. Facebook hasn’t and doesn’t (maybe the ship sailed on that already, but maybe not), and therefore will struggle (relatively, as much as a platform with 800 million users can) to really build a huge business long-term, which to me means 2-3 years from now.

The company will go public, and pretty soon the pressure is on to make real money; and when 85% of your company’s revenues come from something that doesn’t work, it might be time to pivot.

Talk to you about Facebook again in 2015!

Bull s**t.

The “investment argument” is usually made by one of two groups of people: 1) senior executives who really have no understanding of marketing and have to figure out something to say to justify marketing to their Boards or 2) marketing professionals themselves who can’t make a capable and coherent argument otherwise, and who are trying to convince others that marketing today may not reap rewards right away, but will at some point down the road.

Which is the exact wrong point of view of marketing today.

Before I tell you what marketing *is*, let me tell you why marketing is not an investment.

Think of the things that most people consider to be investments: your house, apartment or condo; your stock portfolio; or your 401k, to name just a few. What do these things have in common? They each require a cash outlay or cash distribution, and the eventual payoff is somewhere down the road (and often, years down the road). One does not usually consider an investment to immediately payout or provide dividends (cash, emotional, etc) right away.

Another attribute of an investment is the uncertainty of a future payout. Buying or putting money into your house, apartment or condo, doesn’t assure you of anything and any future returns are largely market-dependent. Likewise, with stocks or a 401k, you distribute money into it not knowing for sure that it will appreciate in value over time. In each case, given history, you can be fairly assured these investments will appreciate (depending on what decade you’ve lived in), but you can’t ever know for sure.

Marketing does not fit into either of these examples, and therefore is not an investment.

Marketing is, and should be from here forward:

* A cost, or purchase, that provides value immediately or within a short period of time.

* A cost, or purchase, that definitively and with certainty gives something back to the buyer in each and every case.

I say these two points having been on the corporate side of marketing as well as now in running my own boutique. Marketing is something that should provide value (sales, branding, ROI) right away. In every instance of putting together a marketing plan throughout my career, I don’t start my marketing plan six months from the start date. I don’t plunk down cash on day 1 and then think “gosh, in six months, I might really be onto something” or “gee, what a great investment I made by committing 10% of my revenues to marketing, I sure hope someday this pays off.”

In marketing, in today’s ultra-social, super-quick world, everything starts on Day One. For my company’s current clients, we have a 30-day plan, 60-day plan and so on. In the case of our clients, they know they are making a purchase for services that will immediately begin reaping rewards and providing tangible return. Further, almost everything nowadays in marketing can be measured in any number of ways depending on the tactics deployed. When someone buys or commits to any type of marketing services, they want to know what they’re getting for that purchase: marketers, or good and savvy marketers, can provide this intelligence and data.

You spent “x”, you got “y”.

I do cringe when I hear people use the word investment to describe marketing because it seems like such a far-off and vague word, and that has been marketing’s problem (as a whole) for as long as I can remember. The word investment connotes “slow” and long-term. There is nothing wrong with having a long-term marketing foundation, which every business should have, but when the fundamentals of marketing are viewed simply as not having any type of immediate payoff, it is just plain incorrect.

The next time you are thinking about marketing or marketing services for your business, think of it as any other purchase you make in the course of a given day. You’re not buying a house hoping it will appreciate, and you’re not putting money towards retirement in 30 years. You are purchasing something that has immediate payoff when executed properly. If you’re not getting both immediacy and certainty when it comes to marketing, something is wrong. Marketing is *not* an investment, and is not something you should “hope” will pay off in year 1.

Better yet, try month 1.

But let me say, if I had been in attendance, I would have gauged my eyes out. Here’s why:

“The marketing world needs to stop being so afraid and start solving problems.”

First of all, you could delete the word “marketing” in this quote and replace it with practically any other industry. Of course, marketing is about solving problems, mainly problems with communication. I honestly don’t think I’ve met one person in the marketing industry afraid of solving problems. When you get into marketing, you know that it is about solving problems and you know the best marketers find a way to do it. But really, how does this statement differ for any industry? It is so broad and so vague and so baseless.

“Such trepidation (that marketing in general is driven by fear), predicated by the economy, has caused marketers to become much more cautious, hence the emphasis on data collection in lieu of risk-taking.”

Data is good, and data informs smarter decisions. I would argue that data allows marketers to take more risks, and better calculated risks. And, in fact, most marketers I know – including myself – use the data for that very reason: to take better risks, not to take less of them. Marketing is inherently risky no matter what data you have at your fingertips. The emphasis is not either/or when it comes to data & taking risks. Data leads to better risks. Why the economy was highlighted, other than to illustrate people spending less perhaps on marketing overall, is beyond me. Calculated risks, ones driven by data, will be taken no matter what the economy is like.

“Design your own metric system.”

I’m surprisingly not as down on this little nugget as you might expect, but, I think if taken out of context it can be a bit overwhelming for your average marketer. Everyone knows that metrics we use online are not foolproof. Last-click attribution and other shortcomings make metrics from the digital world in general make things imperfect, and I agree in general that with each unique business there are unique attribution & metrics systems. Yet, phrasing it this way is a little impractical. Designing your own metric system might be fine for someone in a vaccum, but if you’re in a services businesses or any marketing business which touches numerous other companies, this suggestion won’t hold water and is simply impractical.

“The new creativity is data-informed”.

So, we went from TOO data-reliant to stating that marketing should be data-reliant? I’m confused.

Marketing is not broken. People talking about marketing, who are not well-informed, are what is broken. I would argue that Marketing has never been in such a positive position ever before. More and more companies and businesses understand that marketing is a catalyst, not a below-the-line cost drain or even an “investment”; it is more than that. Sure, you need a great product or service, but marketing is clearly gaining momentum in its importance, not shrinking. The wrong talking heads actually do a disservice to marketing, not the marketers day-in and day-out who are actually running companies and have their finger on the pulse of everything happening.

Sometimes people who are trying to make headlines about Marketing set the practice back.

A very close cousin to customer service is client service. This phrase is more routinely used for B2B organizations. For instance, my company, Sprouse Marketing Group (SMG) has “clients” which is a subset of “customers”. Many of the same principles apply to client service that apply to customer service, only with some minor nuances.

If you are in a B2B industry, think about your competition today. More than likely, you have dozens or sometimes hundreds of competitors depending on your geographic scope. To use my company as an example,  I know for a fact that we have hundreds of competitors, and probably a multiplier of that when you figure the number of competitors that provide just one of the services we do. Factor in the fact that we serve clients across North America, and again there is a multiplier effect. In short, marketing agencies like SMG are not in short supply; and smaller more specialized marketing services company aren’t either.

I believe the difference between hundreds if not thousands of like-businesses – more than anything else – is client service.

Again, reflect for a second on your business, your industry and/or your location or the regional landscape in which you do business. What are some potential differences in your business versus another? Talent (some businesses might simply have brighter and better people working for them). Sales (some businesses might simply have better salespeople adept at bringing in new clients). The product or service (some businesses simply have a product or service that might be better than the rest).

In my opinion, these differences are shades of gray and relatively small compared to the difference superior client service makes. In other words, if you employ better salespeople, your on-boarding success rate might go from 10% to 20%. If you have better, smarter, more talented people working for you versus your competitors, your client retention rate might increase by 10%. A superior product or service might be responsible for another 5-10% boost in terms of clientele. If your business has the advantage in all three of these areas, the incremental lift is certainly nothing to scoff at though it takes some capital, hard work and luck for all three to become sustainable competitive advantages.

Yet, I have seen instances where exemplary customer service has made a 50% difference between keeping and losing clients. In other words, client service has been directly responsible for attracting and then retaining 1 out of every 2 clients. What are some aspects of exemplary client service that could cause such a boost?

* Dedicated Account Management & Consistent Performance Benchmarking (in other words, how is your business actually doing for the client?)

* Constant Communication (are you shying away from communicating, even if there is bad news to deliver?)

* Giving Clients “Value-add’s” or Freebie service offerings (are you “nickel and diming” your clients all the time?)

* Quarterly Client Strategy Meetings (are you acting as a solution for the client or are you part of the problem?)

* Gifts (we’re not just talking American Express gift cards either; stuff that matters and is relevant to the client. Are you remembering anniversaries and birthdays?)

* Transparency about YOUR business (are you forthcoming when it comes to what your business is doing?)

Each of these aspects, taken by themselves, has its own strategy. Rolled up together, they form a foundation of fantastic client service. The most important elements of the foundation though is the mentality of the business and the client service infrastructure in place. Truly, the company has to embrace clients and client service. Likewise, there has to be a tangible “program” in place which centers on aspects of client service. If you aren’t constantly thinking about your clients like this, you’ll likely end up on the short end of the stick compared to your competitors. We deal with these client service strategies and micro-strategies every day not only for ourselves, but for our clients own efforts too. Literally every day, I think about how we can serve clients better and I know other business owners who do too. I can tell you that getting it right is part science (actual results) and part art (relationships).

Sometimes, this is an apt quotation for everyone and doesn’t discriminate. I think we’ve all had one of the following happen to us in no particular order:

1) We wake up, flip on the TV or check the iPhone or Blackberry, and say to yourself “uh-oh. This day isn’t starting off right.”

This had not happened to me for a long time, maybe years, and happened to me one day just last week.

2) We wake up, feel great and energized, go into a meeting you’re prepared for, and it goes abominably bad. You ask yourself “what just happened?”

Ditto.

3) Someone else does something that absolutely surprises and shocks the hell out of you.

Ditto.

4) YOU/ME/WE do something or make a decision completely out of character, or what we think our character *is*.

Ditto. My mind was someplace else and I snapped at a server at a restaurant. I *never* have done that. Ever.

5) Something happens that is completely out of our control, and we feel we got the short end of the stick. We shake our heads while muttering “what did I do to deserve that?”

Ditto.

All five of these things happened to me in a span of about 10 days when I really reflected on it. And I’m glad I realized it. The point is that there are any one of a number of distractions out there, and to be honest any one of a number of things that – depending on how you look at it – could really drag you down on a daily basis. Or make you want to scream. When I feel myself getting pulled in that direction, I try and go back to Mugatu (the character in the clip below portrayed by Will Ferrell) and laugh either at what a spazz I am or what a spazz he is. Yes, sometimes I feel like I’m metaphorically taking crazy pills either based off something I’m thinking or doing, or based off someone else is thinking or doing. But really, when you truly think about it, it boils down to this:

* Most of us are under a significant amount of pressure. I don’t know one person that isn’t under some type of pressure: professional, financial, personal, or otherwise.

* While I firmly believe that we all chart our own “paths” to a large degree, there are inevitably things that happen that are just completely out of control and require us to react.

* Therefore, it is much less about *what* happens to us, but rather how we deal with and respond to what happens to us. The “what” is a lot of times out of our control. How we deal with that “what” is within our control.

The next time you get frustrated to the degree that you think you’re taking crazy pills, remember Mugatu and then remember that stuff happens and those of us who respond best will be able to move on quicker and better. It really does come back to the Serenity Prayer:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

And if that’s still not helpful, just watch Zoolander.

If I linked to all the past Facebook posts I’ve done, I’d be accused of link baiting. So I won’t. But, a few things jump out at me now that happened to jump out at me several months ago too. Namely:

1) Every company’s growth rate slows at some point. The onus, then, is how to monetize the user base they have.

2) The company gets 85% (give or take) of their revenues from advertising.

3) Facebook users have paid nothing for the service until now; yet, one could argue its users have gotten tremendous value from the service.

Like I’ve said, Facebook needs to charge for their service. Something. Anything. Why?

For one, it has reached – or is in the process of reaching – critical mass. Many users log into Facebook every day, multiple times a day. Even for a casual user like me, I’ve got a few hundred “friends”; people I am very glad to be in touch with, and glad to share pictures with and glad to read about via my timeline. No matter how well-targeted an ad is put in front of me, I’m not clicking it! I do not think I’ve clicked on one ad in Facebook. In fact, for every home page takeover I see, I close it. Ads simply don’t matter to me in social media.

Knowing that so many users rely on the service, what if Facebook told me I’d have to pay from now on to use the service? What if I had to pay $.99 a month? Or $1.99 a month?

I’d pay.

Too much time invested so far, too many friends and pictures so easily shared, too many connections out there that I actually rely on. I’d pay. I think many of my friends would too (with one caveat: that I could be reasonably comfortable that Facebook got its privacy issues out of the way and wouldn’t let my credit card info leak…a pretty fair comment given their history). This is the only way they can monetize their current user base. Think about it: in every other instance in life, you pay to socialize. Sports games. Clubs. Cover charges. If the value is there, like it is with Facebook, people will pay.

Secondly, point #2 above, the reliance on advertising. This isn’t bad if we were talking about a medium like broadcast TV. We’re not. The promise of online advertising has always been the fact that you can measure and read results quicker and better than you could in any other medium. So, you can’t compare ads online (in their current form) to broadcast. And, not surprisingly, the heavy reliance on advertising – even if these latest results are an anomaly – will eventually come back to haunt Facebook. It is not an advertising machine and never has been; it has been, and is, a social network. Nothing more, nothing less. The irony is that if Facebook charged a modest subscription fee, their advertising revenue might grow. Users would be more invested in using the service and Facebook could charge premium brands for premium placements rather than just taking in whatever ad revenue they could (right now).

To finish this argument: the value of Facebook is something that I don’t think we should understate. It allows people to connect to others easily and it is a great service. Yes, great. But, with value should come payoff. The problem is that Facebook believes that value comes from advertisers. When in reality, the value comes from its users…who, by the way, know deep-down that they’re receiving ridiculous value already and probably would kick in some dough to keep that value rather than getting flogged with endless ads.

So, as Facebook’s marketing agency (ahem), I would tell them to 1) start rolling out micro-payments in the form of monthly charges that are very small knowing that they will lose some users, but will still keep an enormous number which will lead to 2) less of a reliance on advertising which let’s face it is flimsy at best right now and 3) keep focusing on building the service out to keep monthly paying users engaged over time. 900 million users times a small micro-payment goes a long way and would take an enormous burden off the company.

Not to mention…charging some reasonable monthly fee would actually fit with what the value for users really is. The platform was not created for advertisers in mind, it was created for its users if you believe everything you’ve read or heard. So, why is their economic model reliant on advertisers? It should be reliant on users, with a nod on the periphery to advertisers.

In this Utopia I describe, I’m sure this won’t happen and will be scoffed at. But it would work.

If you don’t know, Metta World Peace is the artist formerly known as Ron Artest, the NBA player for the Los Angeles Lakers. Before that, he was probably most notably (or notoriously) on the Indiana Pacers and famous (or infamous) for being suspended something like 86 games for being front and center of the worst brawl in NBA history. Here’s a 12-minute snippet.

Following this incident in 2004, Ron Artest was a relative model citizen in the NBA. A cheap shot here and there, spitting in someone’s face once in a while, getting a few technical fouls. All in a days work though, despite the equivalent of a handful of misdemeanors, after last season Mr. Artest decided he had provided such a strong role model for people that he would change his name to Metta World Peace. Despite his 13 suspensions.

That was a bad day for world peace.

A worse day for world peace was yesterday. Why? Because, this happened. World Peace just dragged world peace into the toilet.

As I sat on the couch late last night next to my wife after watching a movie, I flipped on Sportscenter. Of course, the vicious elbow to James Harden, the leading segment on the show, was the worst thing to happen to world peace since World Peace. My wife kept going “ouch” and “no way” and “I can’t watch that again” watching replay after replay. All I could say was “that’s World Peace for ya.”

Here is my honest, not tongue-in-cheek reaction to this. Respected journalists like J.A. Adande seem to think World Peace should be punished according to how much James Harden was hurt. With all due respect Mr. Adande…what are you smoking and can I have some? What World Peace did and how much it impacted another innocent player actually have nothing to do with each other. He’s a repeat offender of the worst kind. He gets no slack from me and shouldn’t from journalists or the NBA. Skip Bayless practically stuck up for the guy on First Take. Bad on you, Skip.

World Peace is a joke, has been for years, and a few years of relatively good behavior does not erase the fact that the guy is a thug. A thug that can make a jump shot once in a while, legitimately shut someone on defense sometimes, and maybe help a guy up off the floor once in a blue moon. Big deal. Of course, there won’t be anything more than a slap on the wrist for two reasons: 1) because World Peace is on the LA Lakers and, well, there’s just too much at stake with a franchise of that magnitude; and 2) because overall the NBA front office is spineless and would never make a “real” example of someone with a history of causing problems. He’s a thug, not a basketball player, and not a peace maker.

For those who want to pile on me about using such harsh language, why don’t we look to perhaps one of the top 5 greatest – if not the greatest – LA Laker of all-time. Magic Johnson. After the game during the postgame telecast, Magic said that “he (World Peace) is an embarrassment to the Laker uniform.”

So in the interest of world peace, let’s put an end to World Peace in professional sports.

Last night, the NFL Network and ESPN both ran 3-hour specials in honor of the regular season schedules being released. Now, mind you, every team and every fan of every team already knew what opponents they would be playing in the upcoming season; we just didn’t know what order and when, and now we do. So for every football fan, yesterday they could watch and listen to analysts talk about specific matchups in November, when your team’s “Bye” week happens, and even pick the eventual Super Bowl winners. In April.

It’s brilliant. Why? Year-round relevancy and therefore supremacy.

What other sport has a 3-hour special on multiple networks just because the schedule comes out? In one week’s time, there will be another major event for football over three entire days: the NFL Draft. Televised for three days. During the peak of the season in basketball and hockey.

No other sport does this or could get away with it, which is what makes it brilliant strategy and marketing by the NFL and why football is truly America’s game.

Oh, and in case you wanted to check out your team’s schedule, here’s a link. I’m ready for football season, are you?

Now, I don’t really believe I’m a failure in general, or a failure in business at all. But, I do mean that I fail more than I succeed. And that can mean I don’t get the exact outcome that I desire or need, or I just flat-out lose. That means failure, whether minor, major or anything in between.

A few analogies:

1) Pro baseball players routinely fail at least 7 out of 10 times at the plate. That makes them a .300 hitter. Usually, if you hit .300, you are considered a great hitter especially if you do it consistently year after year. Yet, by the books, players fail more than they succeed at the plate and there is no player in history that has bucked that trend with any statistical significance.

2) Direct marketing is an industry full of failure. Have you seen or read about conversion rates? Offline or online, if you get 1-2% response on your campaigns, that usually means it is a major success. 98 out of 100 people could not pay attention to your marketing, but if you get two out of 100 to, you’re in business.

3) Most Hollywood movies fail. And by that, I mean “don’t make money” at the high side, and are “miserable failures” on the low. Whether they go straight to DVD or hit the big screen and flop, most movies that are produced don’t turn into The Hunger Games or Titanic or any of the Harry Potter‘s.

I could go on, but my point encompasses two things: Perspective; and your measure of success. In baseball terms, 3 out of 10 is pretty good. In direct marketing terms, 3 out of 10 is pretty damn good. In Hollywood, 3 out of 10 is really doggone good.

For most, by the very exact definition, we fail more than we win even when there are shades of grey involved. The key is to make the most out of the wins, and not get too low when we lose. My old tennis coach in college used to say “you’re never as good as your best match and never as bad as your worst match.” The truth and reality is always somewhere in between. That’s called perspective.

The second part is that I’ve always measured success according to myself in my own bubble, and I think that is key. Baseball players have this .300 batting average to kind of judge themselves with. Direct marketing response rates (though in decline with every passing year it seems), same thing. Hollywood blockbusters, same thing. The problem with this is the self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you’re going to close 2 out of 10 new deals, or renew 4 out of 10 new clients…guess what? You’ll probably do exactly that. You’ll do what you feel you’re “destined” to do, and there is science to back that up.

I got asked the other day how I gauged the success of our business, based on new client adoption and client renewal. I answered that we’ve failed. The person on the phone paused and said “oh….I’m so sorry.” I said “why?” She said, “well, no one likes to fail.” I said “it depends on how you measure it. We’ve failed exactly one time in dozens of efforts of varying nature. So, we’re failures. It’s up to other people to decide whether our failure rate is too much or too little.”

She was stunned. She said things like “we were wildly successful by any measure” and I responded with things like “who is setting these metrics?” We do have minor failures every single day. I have failures every day. I like to think I, and we, have many successes every day. It is simply about perception and how you measure it.

And that’s really my point. If you’re gauging a successful career, or a successful company, or a successful job, have perspective and make sure that you set the measure of success. Let’s not get too far off the point here, because I’m not at all a proponent of setting low standards and calling yourself successful because of it. But, I do see so many people and businesses that think they’re failures because of wrong perception and because of absolutely wrong measures of success. It is unfortunate because if you go by what other people think you should do, you will likely never win.

Introspection is important here, and making sure you’re setting baselines and a very high measure of success are essential. While you can’t compare your success to that of an MLB ballplayer, or a direct marketing campaign, you should be able to set important parameters that matter to you, your industry or your career that can lead to greater success. Not just the clinical term of “success rates”, but true success in a much broader way.

He asked me how I got that opportunity, and got such great PR. I paused for a minute and said: “I asked.”

Now, he and I go back a long way and so he’s familiar with some of the interviews and things I’ve done over the years. He’s had his fair share too. I had never really seen him surprised, but he gave me the “you’re kidding me” look after I answered him with that. But it’s true. I just asked for the opportunity.

It got me thinking two things:

1) How much of the business relationships, press opportunities, career satisfaction, personal satisfaction I’ve had in my life has come from simply asking, or sending an email to someone, or sending a letter to someone?

The answer is: a whole lot. Sometimes, I have gotten opportunities or good fortune by just taking a little initiative and having the nerve to ask. The irony in this day is that it is easier for people to find you, through social media and what not. Yet, it is harder than ever for people to really find out about you. And there’s a big difference. And the difference is so big, that often the ones who ask will stand out.

2) How much have I missed by not just “asking” for help or whatever that something is that I need or want?

The answer is: a whole lot. Especially in business. Sometimes, I haven’t asked to be introduced to someone or haven’t asked for a meeting or haven’t asked for the opportunity to get to know someone a little better or haven’t spoken up when I should have. That is not a winning business strategy.

I believe the reason we don’t ask for stuff more often is the fear of hearing the word “no”. Which no one enjoys hearing; yet most often that is the worst thing that can happen. If you truly do right by people, you will hear “no” a lot less than you think. But that is the key: doing right by people and fostering good relationships. Then, and only then, can you be in a position to “just ask” for whatever it is you need or strive for. You won’t get very far if you’re a jerk that goes around asking for stuff from people without giving something back.

Good, solid, reciprocal relationships + just asking = a winning business strategy.