While the gushing about revolutions in business dramatically exceeds the actual number of revolutions dozens to one, a recent experience confirms that the Web is changing marketing's map.
For years, clients of exclusive wealth management services chose their firms based on peers' recommendations. For several reasons -- our mobile bordering on transient society is one key factor -- word-of-mouth no longer works as it once did. But you still would assume that the word from those mouths born with silver spoons in them would have great influence in wealth management, and that advertising and web sites for these elite services would not.
Yet for almost a decade we have seen 6x growth in a leading wealth management firm, Lowry Hill, driven in heavy part by their much-needed change of name almost a decade ago -- from Norwest Capital Advisers, a vague mouthful -- and a consistent campaign in major business publications and publications aimed at the very affluent.
Perhaps even more surprising, however, is that prospects now arrive in the offices having performed so much due diligence on the firm that they recognize some of the firm principals by name, despite never having met. These prospects are reviewing the websites, studying the firm's investment philosophy, even reading several of the articles posted on the site. As a result, these new prospects are already more than halfway to making their decision.
Of perhaps even greater significance is what else this suggests. Just as people are deciding to listen to you based on your website, an uncertain but potentially huge number are passing you by, for a simple reason: your website is too slow, too uninformative, too self-congratulatory, too bellish and whistly, or -- and this often is the case -- too dated.
As you might guess, this discovery has prompted at least one firm to have a new website up in the next few days: ours.
(Like other entries, the above is not a plug for our web design services, for a simple reason: we don't offer them. We do consult on content, but farm out almost the entire project to specialists.)
On Byrds and Blue Men
Speaking of creativity: If Harmon Professional Group, makers of the fabulous sound systems you hear at many major concerts, becomes our client, we hope to have an extended interview with the founders of Blue Man Group. In it we will explore, as we did with Roger McGuinn of the Byrds several years ago, the "creative process" -- or, in what more often happens, the process of connecting two or more things that never have been connected before.
Lighter Side -- Yet Heavier, Too
We are saddened by the death of Byron Nelson, and the failing health of the marvelous baseball player Buck O'Neill. The simultaneity of these events, announced on the same day (September 25) seems eerie, including the remarkable similarity of their names. It is hard to imagine two men more alike: true gentlemen, soft and articulate, gentle yet driven to achieve greatness, not just as athletes but as people.
This passion is suggested by a comment Nelson once made, when he observed that he knew very little but "I do know how to be a good man." One of our favorite stories illustrates this beautifully. A friend noticed that whenever Nelson arrived at a golf course he had never played, he always asked who held the course record. Finally, the friend asked Nelson why he did this. Because if the host professional holds the record, you never break it, Nelson told him.
"He lives here. We're just his guests, passing through."
Bless you, Bryon and Buck.
Volunteers Sought
If you would like to be added to our list of name-testers -- people whom we poll and interview when considering new names and themes for clients -- please let us know by emailing invisble@bitstream.net.
a Pigskin
Now that Stanford University's athletic department will be tapping my marketing expertise, we've devised a brilliant strategy for boosting football attendance. (As many of you are aware, college football foots the bill for a university's entire athletic program. Every other program, with the occasional exception of basketball at top schools, loses money). Our idea: stop losing consecutive games by scores of 10-48, 34-35, 9-37 and 10-30, especially to powerhouses like San Jose State, Navy and Washington State.
Theirs is a personally painful example of a common marketing misconception: the belief that you can get silk sales from sow's ear products. (And incidentally, some scientists recently did create a silk purse from a sow's ear. So it can be done.) Three times in four, when a prospect approaches us, we offer the advice that appeared in Selling the Invisible almost a decade ago:
Forget marketing for a moment. Improve reality.
Thinking Inside
the Box
On the other hand, ingenuity works. A favorite recent example is fellow author Mark Hughes's clever solution to this problem: Forbes' editor-in-chief Steve Forbes wouldn't return Mark's calls asking for a blurb for Mark's new book.
Mark drove to his local Radio Shack, bought a $100 cellphone, activated it, then stuck it in a Federal Express box addressed to Forbes. When Hughes got the receipt confirming that the box has entered Forbes' building, he began calling the phone.
"Our Fed Ex box is ringing. Someone better answer it," came the expected howls at Forbes' office. A few days later, something else came to Mark, too: Forbes' blurb for the book.
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Harry Beckwith is the best-selling author of Selling
the Invisible, which has been named one of the top
ten business books of all time, with over 675,000
copies sold in 20 translations. He is also author of
The Invisible Touch and What Clients Love, which
have sold over 275,000 copies in 20 translations. He has been a keynote speaker for 14 Fortune 200 annual sales meetings and the National Speakers' Association convention, and has |
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made presentations in Europe, South America and Asia. He is
cited regularly in national media including CNN,
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur,
Crain's New York Business and numerous
American, European and Asian newspapers. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Harry resides in Minneapolis with his wife Christine Clifford Beckwith. He is the father of six children. |
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E-mail questions and comments for Harry Beckwith to invisble@bitstream.net.