You don’t always have to try so hard

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There is a well-established pizza place near us that we just love called Labella’s. They’re very old school, but they make an awesome pizza.

When I say “old school”, I mean that you just need to call if you want to order something. There is no online ordering, no app, and they don’t even take credit cards over the phone. Call in what you want and go pick it up.

They recently rebuilt their website, and it’s an improvement over the mostly broken site they had before. However, they’re trying way too hard.

Too hard?

This is coming from someone whose company takes 4-6 months to build amazing websites, because that’s what many businesses need. In the case of Labella’s and others, though, that’s way overkill.

I say that Labella’s overthought their website based largely on their new page for their menu. A menu page is critical for a restaurant, but it can be pretty simple. In the case of a pizza place, just list what kind of pizzas you offer, what kinds of starters if you have, if you have salads, etc. It doesn’t need to be fancy. In their case, though, they started with a hugely complex ecommerce template and they’re working to simplify it down.

Most of the items don’t even work correctly, but those that do are not what’s needed. I’ll share a screenshot below in case it (hopefully!) changes in the future, but here is their “salami with provolone“:

There are a few good things on there (price and toppings being the big two), and then a whole bunch of rubbish:

  • Broken image of the pizza
  • “Free global shipping”
  • “Guaranteed Safe Checkout”
  • “Add to cart”, which you can successfully do, but you can never check out (and never will)
  • The description is all Lorem Ipsum
  • The reviews are clearly stock (and somehow all 7 years old)

It didn’t have to be this way. Just set up a text page, drop the menu on it, and call it a day. There are certainly ways to improve beyond that, but for what they’re doing that’s all they need.

I’m certainly not advocating for you to be lazy, but trying too hard can be equally problematic (as I shared a while ago here about elementary school artwork and some local car dealers).

Labella’s is awesome and if you live near me you should try them out, but their website would be so much better if they only put less effort into it.

There is no reason for anything, only reasons

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In a recent episode of the 2Bobs podcast, host Blair Enns was talking about how businesses fail. In his view, they never fail for a single reason but rather for a variety of different reasons. From the show:

“It’s a basic tenet of design thinking that there is no reason for anything. There are only ever reasons, multiple reasons. When our business fails, we go to the excuse and say, it failed because of reason and it’s usually external reason, but if you look at how species go extinct, it’s a combination of, it’s called the press pulse theory, pressure, constant pressure, and then a pulse. We blame the pulse, the external thing that happened to us. We don’t take stock of our role in the ongoing pressure that the business was feeling because of the things that we were doing or not doing.”

It’s a harsh way to view business failure, but I suspect it’s often true.

Following the same idea but flipping it around a bit, it reminds me of my recent post about the erroneous focus on last touch attribution. When companies are working to determine why a particular customer found them, they try to drill down to the reason. This is a fool’s errand, because it’s almost always a variety of reasons.

If your business is struggling, resist the urge to find “the reason”, and the same goes for your marketing — when you finally sign that great client, know that it was due to many of your great efforts and not the one that they happened to see last.

Last touch attribution will lie to you

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In the world of marketing, “last touch attribution” is very popular. It essentially says that no matter what a potential customer does before they find you, the last thing is all that really matters.

For example, if someone sees a great video that you posted, then connects with you on LinkedIn, then listens to your podcast, and then clicks over to a blog on your site, and then contacts you to start an engagement, the blog post receives 100% of the credit for that transaction. This is both understandable and problematic.

It’s understandable because some of those touchpoints are invisible to us. We don’t generally know who specifically watched a video or listened to an episode of a podcast, so we can’t directly attribute those anyhow.

It’s problematic because the last touch likely only happened because of the previous touches.

Blumer CPAs

I’ve shared the story of Jason Blumer and his CPA firm before, but it’s worth sharing again now because it illustrates this perfectly. We’re a happy client of his, and here is how we found him (over the course of around five years):

  • We heard him speak at a conference.
  • We subscribed to his blog.
  • We subscribed to his podcast.
  • We connected with him on LinkedIn (where he shares great stuff).
  • We Googled his company so we could reach out to become a client of his.

If they used last touch attribution they’d say “Ah-ha! Mickey found us through Google, so that’s what we need to invest more in. More SEO, more ads, more Google.“

It’s technically true, but it misses the point. We indeed searched Google to find him, but it was because of his speaking, his blogging, his podcast, his LinkedIn content and things like that. Without those efforts, we never would have searched for him.

If he were to change tack and stop everything to focus on Google (because that’s what “worked”), he’d lose.

That’s not to say that working to improve your Google standing is a bad thing, for sure. That’s a key part of marketing and shouldn’t be ignored. However, while Google still drives most of the traffic on the internet, the vast majority of it is for branded searches because people already know what they’re looking for.

Pay attention to the last touches that lead customers to you, but don’t skip all of the others or you’re likely to make some bad decisions.

Good headlines are a courtesy

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With most things related to business, a “yes” is what you’re really going after but a “no” isn’t bad either. Better to hear “no” today than to waste weeks before getting to the same result. This why we’re happy to send business to our competition if it makes sense, as it becomes a win for everyone.

The same is true in marketing. Tricking people into viewing your content isn’t going to do any good for you; you’ll get more generic traffic, but it won’t lead to sales. Why not be up front about what you’re offering?

In David Oglivy’s book “Confessions of an Advertising Man“, he pulled some great thoughts from Barbara Minto’s “The Pyramid Principle” when it comes to headlines. Those thoughts, in part:

Whether you’re crafting an ad or any other kind of writing, summing up your conclusion at the beginning allows readers to immediately understand what you’re trying to say. Minto contends that if you fail to do this, readers will struggle to identify your conclusion as they read—a slow, mentally taxing process. This flawed structure makes your ideas and arguments seem weaker than they are.

Ogilvy emphasizes that a preview-headline can lure readers into the rest of the ad, but Minto contends that a preview can also be valuable for its potential to push away those who don’t need to read it. In other words, previewing your argument allows readers to decide whether they want to keep reading.

For this reason, Minto argues that writing previews is a courtesy.

As you saw, there are two main purposes behind Minto’s idea:

First, you want to help interested users understand your content. It’s similar to the idea of reading a table of contents before diving into a book, so that you can appreciate what’s coming your way.

The second is to provide that courtesy to users that might not have an interest in what you’re offering. Don’t try to trick them to read more; let them go on their way, and you can dig in deep with those that are truly interested in what you have to offer.

Committees should never be creative

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There are good sides and bad sides to having committees involved with a project. Oversight and a variety of opinions can be helpful, but things can often get bogged down if consensus can’t be reached.

One thing that committees should never try to do, though, is to be creative.

In his classic book “Confessions of an Advertising Man“, David Ogilvy said it simply:

“Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.”

Taking it a bit further, he shared this thought:

“Search all the parks in all your cities; you’ll find no statues of committees.”

Committees can be helpful, but they should be kept under clear restraints when working with a creative project of any kind. Let them criticize, but never let them create.

Informational keywords don’t help your business

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The world of search engine optimization has been changing dramatically over the past few years, and you can find many of those changes in my SEO category of posts. However, there are still some fundamental truths that people often miss.

A big one is around keyword targeting. The goal is often to get “more traffic”, but a better approach is to get “good traffic”. The mistake I see is when companies work to rank well for informational terms that won’t lead to new customers — it brings traffic to the site, but sales don’t come with it.

For example, if you’re an HVAC company you might try to rank for the phrase “why don’t they still use freon in air conditioners?“. It’s a good question, and might get some good traffic, but who is asking it? It’s unlikely to be someone looking for help right away, and more likely just a general query. You’ll get traffic from it, but it won’t help your bottom line.

Correcting this mistake often leads to a weird result — you’ll get less traffic on your site, but more revenue. Getting better traffic to your site can lead to more sales, even if the overall volume of traffic is down a bit. Rand Fishkin recently shared a great “5-Minute Whiteboard” video that unpacked this further, and I encourage you to check it out.

Traffic from those informational keywords isn’t hurting you, but it’s giving you weird data and isn’t supporting your goals. Focus instead on terms that convert and you may seen the fun mix of traffic dipping and revenue rising, which is ultimately your main goal anyhow.

Customers make a list of brands before they research, and most of them buy from that list

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It’s well-established that most customers make a list of vendors and do some degree of research before they make a purchase, so the traditional best practices make sense: have quality content, answer questions, and be a guide as customers are doing their research.

However, prior to that research, 80-90% of customers have a short list of vendors in mind already, and 90% of those people end up purchasing from one of those vendors! In short, if you’re not in your buyer’s mind before they start their research, you have no chance with more than 75% of your potential customers. You can find some detail on that in this great article from the Harvard Business Review.

So how do you get into their mind before the research? Spend time in the same places as them online.

Rand Fishkin recently put out a great (short!) video that walks through this, and you can check it out here.

Ultimately, you need to be present on podcasts that they listen to, on social media sites they frequent, in videos that they may want to watch, in blog posts that provide information, and in email newsletters that they consume.

The best part about this kind of work is that it’s a win-win-win:

  • You show up where they already are.
  • You’ve providing content and value to help them for the decision ahead.
  • Large Language Models (like ChatGPT) will eat up that content of yours and make it more likely that you’ll show up there too!

So much of marketing these days involves simply staying top of mind. When a customer is making a list of vendors like yours to consider, make sure you’re already one that they’ve thought of before or else you’ll never even have a chance.

Don’t market more, matter more

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As a marketing guy, I certainly appreciate the value in great marketing. However, too many people work on their “marketing” when they should be focused on their “mattering”.

In a recent podcast from Jay Acunzo, guest Laura Gassner Otting shared this awesome little quote:

“Don’t market more matter more, because when you matter more, you need to hustle for their attention less.”

It reminds me of something that Seth Godin said years ago:

“The people you most want to engage with don’t want to be hustled“

Hustle is a good thing in baseball, but it’s not good in marketing. You should certainly invest time and money into your marketing, but make sure that your company ultimately matters to those you wish to serve.

Check out Jay’s full podcast for more.

Are you eagerly sending business to your competitors?

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The title of this post might seem a little odd, but if your company has solid positioning then you should be turning away many of your leads. If your ideal customer is “anyone”, then who are you really trying to serve?

If you’re well-positioned then you shouldn’t be getting too many ill-fitting leads in the first place, but when you do you should be quick to recognize them and pass them along to another company that is better equipped to handle that kind of opportunity. I’m good friends with most of our business “rivals”, and we pass potential clients to one another frequently in an effort to find the best solution for them.

This came up in a fantastic podcast episode where Stephen Houraghan interviewed Seth Godin about the state of marketing today, during which he unpacked this very idea. You can watch the full interview right here:

This reminds me of a story from years ago when I met an insurance agent that sold literally every kind of insurance, so I had no idea what he really was an expert in. If I had a specific need, he was never going to be the ideal answer. His audience was literally everyone so he was the perfect fit for no one.

None of us are going to be truly eager to turn down business, but if you have a clear position it should make it very easy to send business to your competitors. As a result, when the right opportunity comes along they’ll know that you’re the perfect fit for them.

What is considered spam?

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The definition of spam and cold calls is pretty simple — it’s outreach that the recipient didn’t ask for. If you do cold outreach, you’re showing that you’re not an expert and you’re not really “marketing” to folks.

I recently read (part of) a book called “No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls.” by Latané Conant, largely because the title grabbed my attention. I talk about this stuff a lot, so I was curious to see their angle. It wasn’t good.

Early on, Conant shares the experience of being super busy with life (arms full, dropping the kids off at school, worried about a meeting later that morning) and being disrupted by a cold call. It’s the worst, no doubt. The book is very clear that cold calling is awful, which I completely agree with.

However, later in the very first chapter, she shifts gears with this:

“If you follow that rule— if you only send emails to people you know a lot about and who are in- market— it’s nearly impossible to spam. When you deliver content you know people are interested in, right at the time when it’s useful to them, that’s not spam. It’s just a good customer experience.“

By their definition, it’s not “cold” or “spam” if you research your targets ahead of time. Does that really track? I don’t think so.

So what is spam?

Seth Godin says spam is “the email you didn’t ask to get” and that it’s “not moral to steal people’s attention“.

David C. Baker asks if any other experts ever reach out cold, saying “divorce attorney, or maybe it’s a medical practitioner, an expert, or maybe it’s somebody that’s trying to get you out of a tax issue or something, did any of these people call you ahead of time and ask for your business?“.

Baker also shares that “outreach is unprofessional and unbecoming of the expert firm“.

The bigger problem is what Conant says above, with “when you deliver content you know people are interested in…” because every spammer thinks that way. They (hopefully) believe that their solution will help people, and therefore it’s their duty to send it to as many people as possible. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, but either way it just doesn’t scale. If every company that thought they had the solution to your problem cold called you, your phone would literally never stop ringing.

I hope that the product or service that you’re offering is truly valuable and that you make a ton of sales, but I also hope you do marketing the right way so you can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.