Social Media vs Advertising

Social media is NOT a form of advertising. Before you react to that, answer this question... Would you subscribe to a magazine, newsletter or cable channel that did nothing but pester you for more purchases?

No, you would not. You can advertise on social media platforms, but if you become all ads all the time, you will have no audience. Thats the danger in confusing the two.

The fact is we are all bombarded by advertising. We get 30 spam messages in our inbox every day. Not to mention the robo-calls, pop-ups and every other venue by which advertisers pester us. And we have learned how to opt out of that messaging daily.

Social Media is an entertainment venue. we visit sites that interest in and share a glimpse into our personal lives with people who share those same interests. It is a RELATIONSHIP. and one built on trust. If an advertiser is constantly reaching for my wallet, I wont trust... (unfollow/ unsubscribe). 

To be successful combining advertising, with social media remember first that it is a form of entertainment. We choose to spend time looking at cat videos, scrapbooking demos or skateboard fails... Thats the entertainment. And if we feel those sites meet our expectations as an entertainment venue, then we engage frequently... We TRUST.

Once the trust is established, we can sprinkle in an occaisional ad. And people wont be put off by it. That also generates trust... Not over-doing the ads shows respect. It tells the consumer you value their time... Which enhances the relationship...

Fast forward a bit... I need a product or service... I have a relationship with a provider. I am comfortable with them because we've engaged before, and theyve earned some degree of trust by not soliciting me to the point of disengagement.

Thats who will come to mind when I am ready to buy. the challenge is maintaining the balance and its not an easy line to walk. but it is the only one that works. But this is so poorly misunderstood that the vast majority of social media pages companies sponsor have very few followers. Understand WHATS IN IT FOR ME and your Social Media site can be an enormous promotional tool. Misunderstand and you go to the bottom of the abyss of missed opportunities.

Innovative Solutions: Find the Pain, make it go away.

Marketing, at its very core, revolves around satisfying needs or unmet demand. The most successful sales and marketing people have an uncanny ability to ferret out the pain points and recommend a cure.

It goes by many names: Consultative selling; Needs Analysis, Situational awareness but its not really rocket science, its about effective listening, collaboration and experimentation. I was fortunate enough to be in a position to affect such an outcome when NASCAR had a Pain Point. Wet Tracks make for dangerous racing. Working with a combination of stakeholders, race professionals, distributor partners and us as a manufacturer, we were able to develop and implement a system that dried a NASCAR track in two hours when in the past, it could simple result in a race cancellation.

Today that technology is being introduced throughout the racing circuit. Solution Delivered!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETkWk33UYjo&feature=player_detailpage

Expertise: Publish or Perish

Expertise is sometimes hard to come by... But when you have knowledge, you have power. You also have value. Bring that value to the table and others will recognize you for the contributions you make to the state of your industry.

"Expertise: Expert skill or knowledge in a particular field or subject matter..."

Note the definition does not say "TOTAL UNDERSTANDING". In fact,  there really is no such thing. There is only a partial understanding based on known research, experience and that which is the acknowledged consensus at the time.

Remember, "experts" have KNOWN the earth revolved around the sun. They've KNOWN the earth was flat; and they've KNOWN that man would never walk on the moon.

With those examples we must admit knowledge to be an imperfect thing... Subject to revision and improvement. ALWAYS up for debate. SO BE THE AGENT OF THAT DEBATE.

Share your best understanding of what is commonly understood or Best Practice. Invite discourse and counterpoints to improve your understanding (be open-minded) and the understanding of others.

Do this by putting yourself out there. Join a trade association. Contribute to the discussion. Publish or Perish to establish your own expertise. And dont worry that others will find fault in your logic. Expertise means only that you know a little bit  more than someone else does. and once you share that knowledge they know as much as you. But they also remember the source... And ultimately they will share what they've learned with you. Win-Win. To begin sharing, write something that will benefit others... Share it.

Need an example? See below:

Published Works and Presentations

1.     “Inventory Turns versus Opportunity Costs: Adding Pigment to the Invisible” Blogger May 2014 http://rogercperlstein.blogspot.com/2014/05/inventory-turns-versus-opportunity_26.html

2.     “Enlightened Self Interest in Educating Millennials”  IVY Tech Community College Opening Dedication: Keynote Presentation, Madison Campus, January 2013

3.     “14% of Online Viewers Trust Advertisers…90% Trust Friends. What Does that Imply for Marketers” Blogger December 2012 http://rogercperlstein.blogspot.com/

4.     “Social Media for Sullair” Prezi August 2011 http://prezi.com/t5n1xg6gxex4/social-media-for-sullair/

5.     Dover Industries: Marketing to the Military. January 2011 Lecture

6.     “The Application of Social Media to the Marketing of Industrial Products”. State University of New York Press. December 2010. https://docushare.sunyit.edu/dsweb/Services/Document-190944

7.     “Targeting the Government Market in 2009” Sales and Marketing Management Contributing Author. July 2010. http://www.salesandmarketing.com/article/targeting-government-market-2009?page=51

8.     “Rotary Lift Creates Lift Inspection Program” Fleet Owner Magazine September 2009. http://fleetowner.com/equipment/news/rotary-lift-inspection-program-0914

9.     “The Impact of DC Drive Technology on Competitive Advantage and Profitability” State University of New York Press. September 2009

10.                        “Applicable Codes and Design Considerations for Lifts in Vehicle Maintenance Facilities” American Institute of Architecture. January 2007

11.                        “Technology Maintenance Council Adopts New Recommended Practice December 2008. http://www.rotarylift.com/uploadedfiles/News/Press_Releases/12.04.2008_TMC.pdf

12.                        “Lift Maintenance; It’s the Law”. Fleet Maintenance Magazine Vehicle Service Pros June 2007 http://www.vehicleservicepros.com/article/10333958/lift-mx-its-the-law?page=2

Trap-shooting for business.

Pull the trigger.
Do it sooner versus later.
If you miss, adjust your aim and shoot again.

Being successful in business has a lot in common with Trapshooting. More often than not you have to be able to react quickly. You can study your scenarios, you can make some educated guesses but to enjoy success you have to act.

I enjoyed trap shooting today for the first time. Realized how much like business it really is. You get up there, You've never done this before and you have to make things happen.

As in business you just have to go for it. When the pigeon flies, you can wait, but as you do, it gets further and further away. And the further away it gets, the more your shot is disbursed or unfocused...

Opportunity is almost always linked to risk. You might miss your target, But that's only one type of risk. But failing to act entirely is also a risk and in many ways its a far greater risk then pulling the trigger too soon and missing. Moving swiftly provides feedback... It allows for learning, adaptation and refinement.

But when you understand the basics, you can take a shot without incurring too much risk. Experiment a little, learn what you can from both the successes and failures. Don't hesitate.

Act to succeed... Pull the trigger.

Inventory Turns versus Opportunity Costs: Adding pigment to the invisible

Good Day friends, thought leaders and social scientists...

Today's post is about Inventory Turns. Most businesses understand the cost of slow turns. The capitalization requirements associated with slow moving inventory can eat a company alive. Since the cost of money is so well understood, many companies focus on inventory reductions to improve their bottom lines.

What is often unclear is the opportunity cost of having too little inventory. What happens when "Just-In-Time" (JIT) is actually LATE? In fact, this happens fairly often.

But Why?... Just-In-Time was developed as an outgrowth of the application of Lean Principles to Automotive manufacturing primary at Toyota. And the theory is sound. But there is often a distinct difference between JIT in Automotive and the rest of the industrialized world. Its a difference of scale.

JIT in an automotive plant or at a cell phone manufacturing facility is different than a factory that turns out product by the hundreds or even thousands. If you build garbage trucks, rock drills or CNC machines, you just don't rate. Now I will be the first to admit that its not a situation that ALWAYS exists, but it is much more the rule than the exception and you need to build this understanding into your business model. Here's why.

If you build garbage trucks, you'll purchase a few hundred truck/chassis combinations from your supplier. The engines in those vehicles are being supplied by the tens of thousands to the primary vehicle manufacturers and so are the electronics, and the hydraulics and all the other sub-assemblies that you'll need to complete the manufacturing process. Keep in mind that your sub assemblies are made up of your suppliers' sub-assemblies and so the opportunity for a missed critical path item grows geometrically with each complex part added. and failures in supply chain cascade.

Here comes the obvious problem statement... and the under-utilized solution. You cant sell product from an empty shelf... But you can build a model for the value of that lost sale.... And you MUST do so.

In manufacturing environments of limited volume, you have to track the sales you've lost. Most companies only track the wins (Revenue). But unless you know what you've lost and why you lost it, you cant value stream a solution.

At one recent establishment (who shall remain nameless), our lead times exceeded 90 days. It wasn't all that uncommon to go beyond 120 days. And we had no clout to demand better turn-around from our major suppliers. But we also didn't know the opportunity cost. To resolve the issue I implemented a lost sale log. At the end of one year, we knew we'd lost nearly $80 Million in orders from customers who couldn't wait. Even a company with the thinnest margins can reasonably claim they'd earn a 20% margin on those dollars so we'd given up $16 Mil in income. (OUCH)

Now I had a compelling story. The lost income was more than the cost of capital by a factor of 16. Whats more, we were then able to increase our inventory levels by just over $1 Mil in order to position ourselves for that growth. For the first time in decades, the company was quantifying the opportunity costs associated with increasing inventory turns. And it was not a desirable tradeoff.

As a Marketing Manager or a Sales leader, you have to speak to finance in terms they relate to. The same applies to other departments as well. If your audience is Engineering, understand the cost of quality in actual dollars NOT hurt feelings. Take the argument out of the emotional realm and translate theoretical costs into real dollars. We finally did it, and it translated into 20% growth and significant contributions at the top AND the bottom line. Good Luck

WebSite Best Practices- 6 quick concepts

Hello Friends...

Its time to revamp your website... OH NO! Not again. Dont worry, you need not abandon what you have, instead think of it as a garden... But understand some basics. Fresh content (fertilizer) drives growth. Failure to weed and feed, leads to death. Every month, add a little, clean a little. Don't ignore it, but dont throw the baby out with the bathwater... Tend to it so it remains vital.

Yes, Websites die. They die because your customers/ clients stop visiting once they realize you're not offering new content. They also die when they're too hard to navigate or have too complex of an architecture.

Some simple rules to make it easy below this example from my recent past:

1. The human eye responds to movement- Add a gif, or rotating backgrounds on the home page to keep peoples' attention. Just a little motion is all you need, not static, but not too much going on that it becomes a distraction

2. Anticipate- Consider what the biggest reasons people will have for visiting your site. Make those links the most prominent. INFORM. Realistically, clients visit your site because theyre looking for something. Your product, your service, your location (at least). Don't make people search for those things, make them "...obvious on their face".

3. Facilitate Quick- Consider the "rule of three clicks" in your architecture. Most people will leave your site if they don't find what they're looking for in the first three pages they click thru. Make sure your architecture supports the effort-less search.

4. Speak to varied audiences- People are wired differently, yet we frequently speak to others in a style that only we connect with. Is my audience the engineering community or might their occasionally be a purchasing agent in there? Recognize that you might be better served by creating simple messages at the onset (a summary of sorts) and then provide more depth for those who seek richer detail and understanding. Test your copy on your spouse, or your nephew. Is it plain to understand or is it jargon filled and overly technical?

5. Use third party endorsements- People don't trust advertisers... Its because they're bombarded by messaging about "getting the perfect body" or "becoming rich overnight". They do trust their peers though. So if you have satisfied users, let them tell your story. If you don't have satisfied users you can refer to, your website isn't going to be your biggest priority.

6. Less is more- The vast majority of users SURF. Think of surfing as skimming over the surface of a deep body of water (information). Make your buttons obvious, so people know exactly what they'll find when they click thru. Don't clutter your opening pages with excessive copy or ego shots about how much your company values its employees. Remember, the surfer will only read the headline to see if the content is relevant to their search. If the copy takes more than 10 seconds to read, you've lost your audience already

The PowerPoint Trap... Dont use words, ILLUSTRATE

Ever heard someone say I cant get that image out of my mind? or "...A picture is worth a thousand words..."

Consider these truisms when you deliver PowerPoint presentations. Think for a second about newborns... The recognize their mothers faces long before they can speak. And your audience, regardless of who they are, will respond more quickly to an image than to text. They'll also respond more quickly to an image than to spoken words.

So why then do people still deliver presentations in PowerPoint that are overwhelmed with text?
Despite this common practice there's a great deal of evidence to suggest that fewer words are better for connecting with your audience if you support those words with an image that proves what you're communicating. This concept is known as the Assertion Evidence model of communication pioneered by Professor Michael Alley of Penn State. 

Think Menu... Want to make an item on a menu seem appetizing? Show a picture. In fact to make your entire presentation more meaningful, deliver no more than one or two SHORT sentences (FACT) in your title, then leave all the other "Stuff" out except the picture that supports your assertion. Don't worry if it leads to more slides, because the presentation will still move more quickly... But RETENTION and PERSUASION will be greatly improved.

An example is included below:

Contact me if you'd like more info for your own presentations (no charge)