Apart from the fact that we are lazy, we have a lot of reasons why we don’t want to learn something new (be it PR or IT or Accounting). So we outsource to this to professionals to do this for us. We are not asking them to teach us how to fish but asking them to get us the fish, every day, so that we can focus on our core activities.

The outsource provider that understands that what we are asking them is to make it easy for us to easily consume their service so that we don’t have to focus on how they make service works, wins. We don’t want the fishing rod or the hook or the net, we may also don’t want to know where they caught the fish. We just want the fish. Often the outsource providers give part of the service e.g. giving the customer a Google Analytics Report that don’t make sense unless the customer is technical. If the provider gives the customer a commentary on what they should look at, what they should be aware of, what the problems are and what should be done etc., the customer gets thrilled. Really, that is the fish they wanted.

There are many experts suggesting how long a visitor will “give” a website before pressing the Back button.

Some say 1 min and some say 8 seconds – and there are others between these two time lines.  If the site loads fast enough, the visitor sees the banner (or above the fold) and decides whether to stay and read the rest. So, do you think your banner says enough to make the visitor understand what you are offering and enough attraction on the banner to read the rest?

Malcolm Gladwell (of Tipping Point fame) says in his book Blink that we make most of our decisions in a blink. That is it. I see a person for a blink and my old brain decided if I like them or not!

Maybe we can use the same Blink test for our website and see if you like your site or not.

“You are what you think about”

“You are what you eat”

“You are defined by your biggest fear/enemy”

“You become what you don’t want to be, if you think about it frequently”

“You are your choices”

“You become the people you are surrounded by”.

I read all these. Who am I now?! Is there a single answer, seriously?

The National Advertisers Association in the US released a study saying that

• 9 out of 10 CFOs don’t use ROI (return on investment) numbers or forecasts from their marketing department.
• 7 out of 10 CFOs don’t use marketing department’s input for financial guidance.
• 6 out of 10 CFOs believe that marketers don’t understand the financial implications.

If we can’t convince the person with the money in the organization, how are we to get any funding? While we may blame the Sales department for the inaccuracies , there are certain things we, as marketers, can do.

Here are some:

1. Get input from customers creatively, including past customers for developing the forecast.
2. Understand the changing market place.  Demonstrate the changing customer preferences in product and media consumption in your forecast.
   • I remember the saying:
     “There are three types of people. Those make things happen, those watch things happen and those wonder what happened.”
     If you want to make things happen you must keep a pulse the trends.
3. Involve your CFO in the forecast development. Even if their involvement is small, make sure it is important so that they see the valuable work you do.
4. Track your forecast and compare with actual ROI so that every one learns from the variance.

I signed to give monthly donations to a charitable organization.  Many people here in Australia nowadays know that Mani Padisetti is a male’s name – possibly, because there are enough of Indians around.  However, this organization got the gender wrong.  They sent a few emails addressing as Ms Mani Padisetti.

Soon after that, there was SPAM – unsolicited offers – not Viagra kind of offers but from Australian discount shops and online shops etc. Hard to imagine that it is a co-incidence. On the hand, am at a loss to understand why they would sell the email (biting the feeding hand!) and on the other hand, it is inconceivable someone SPAMming to sell?  In this permission-based marketing, do they really believe that they could make someone buy by annoying them?

As an information junkie, I subscribe to many online forums, newsletters and RSS feeds. It is frustrating that when we unsubscribe from some of the well-known internet marketers’ lists, we still receive their emails.  If we stop a payment subscription, some of them never stop charging.  With some of the internet gurus, the only effective way to stop them sending emails and stop them charging my card was to change the email id and change my credit card.

I am all for lead generation and lead nurturing, like the next marketer.  However, SPAM via email is the most annoying one compared to snail mail cards, direct mail pieces, or faxes.