By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan
Do you know that the first testicular guard, the "Cup", was used in hockey in 1874, but the first helmet was used 100 years later, in 1974?
Yes, it had taken men only a full century to realise that their brains are just as important to protect as their balls.
It's also worth noting that Pfizer developed Viagra in 1989 to keep men sexually functional as they age, but no one has developed anything to keep men cerebrally functional as they age.
Are we reaching the point when an army of demented men with massive erections roam the land ready for sexual action at the drop of a hat but unable for intellectual action?
I see similar idiocy happen in real marketing because some new, impressive-sounding marketing methods make marketers think that if they throw some 21st-century marketing tactics to the wall, strategy is not really necessary because these new marketing tactics will compensate for the lack of strategy.
And I believe this lack of strategy comes from the idea that if we throw an impressive sounding marketing tactic to the wall, it will stick, clients will line up at our doorsteps and the future will be peachy.
What impressive-sounding marketing tactics?
Well there are a few.
They are not bad per se because marketers have been using them for donkey's years. The problem is some young marketers who wanted to make a name for themselves have decided to attach new, fancy names to these old concepts.
For a start, let's see...
Hurray, here is a concept that can save the human race from itself, even if not from COVID-19. But maybe that too.
So, what is this account-based marketing thingy anyhow?
Nothing. Not a sausage.
The whole idea of systematically selecting the companies you want to work with goes back to the 1950s when David Ogilvy compiled his list of companies - Rolls Royce, C. F. Hathaway Company, Shell, Dove, Schweppes, etc. - which he wanted to work with.
It was really just proactive marketing. Instead of targeting using various commonly used criteria (industry, location, etc.), David decided to target individual companies.
Granted, at his time, David didn't have the computerised CRM system and other technical gadgets, but it seems he managed quite well with only a pencil and a piece of paper.
He listed 20-30 companies that he checked and if he deemed them to be client-worthy, then he mounted highly customised campaigns to acquire them as clients.
So, this is how "new" account-based marketing is.
Content marketing is just some old wine in new bottle. The tragedy is that so many people are busy admiring the bottle, while ignoring the wine.
The Ladies' Home Journal started in 1883 and it was a supplement in the Tribune and Farmer. But by 1903, tragedy hit and due to the very high demand, Ladies' Home Journal had to become an independent publication.
Imagine a publication with over 1 million subscribers... in 1903.
By contrast, in 2020, The New York Times has about 4 million subscribers, but some 2.9 million are digital-only. That leaves us with about the same number of subscribers as the Ladies' Home Journal 120 years before.
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but which content marketing agency has over 1,000,000 subscribers in 2020?
None of them! I've thought so.
After the Ladies' Home Journal came John Deere's “newsletter”, The Furrow in 1885.
Then in 1900, in France, Michelin's published 35,000 copies of its 400-page Michelin Guide, offering information on car maintenance, restaurants, hotels and travel. Yes, 35,000 copies in a country with only 2,000 cars.
So, what's new in content marketing anyhow?
The difference is that those "ancient" content marketers had their marketing strategies and then printed their publications.
How is today's content marketing different?
Well, the main notion is that if you flood your platforms (website, blog, Instagram, YouTube channel, etc.) with tonnes of cheap content, then buyers will flock to you, grovel at your feet for your services and throw insane amounts of money at you.
Just yesterday, I got an email from an "industry leader" SaaS firm that wanted to hire me to write them 10-15 blog posts per week for $10 per blog post.
I emailed them back and asked them to send me their overall content marketing strategy, so I would knowhow the blog posts fit in. They emailed me back and told me I was too problematic to work with.
So, there is no strategy just conjure up an imbecilic dump of over-hackneyed rhetoric and vending-machine cliches based on an almost random dump of haphazardly patched together words and phrases that no one reads and gives two shits about. The more the merrier.
The main criterion is that it must be dirt cheap.
"Yes, we do content marketing. We have a guy in Bangladesh who writes half a million blog posts per month for a total of $50 or less."
Swell.
When I first heard the term be said with a high degree of seriousness, I almost got a heart attack.
Having learnt marketing from some of the best real-life marketing practitioners, not college professors who rather die than give up their tenures, I thought I knew something.
Then, falling back on my previous career as an electronics/computer engineer, I remembered something crucial.
Digital is NOT marketing. It is one of the main branches of electronics. The other is analogue. But no one talks about analogue marketing.
And neither analogue nor digital has anything to do with marketing. How interesting.
But hey, maybe I got misled in engineering school and analogue and digital have nothing to do with electronics.
Hm, digital.
I'm wondering, just because I time my Sunday roast with a digital timer, am I a digital chef making a digital roast?
Does that also mean that if I send a snail mail letter, it's digital marketing because computer printers are driven by digital signals. And they were driven by digital signals even in the 70s and 80s too.
So, what do the experts mean by digital marketing?
Letters, postcards, radio or TV? Hm?
I have no idea when and how conversion copywriting came into existence, but it sounds to me like technical engineering, corpse cremation and meat butchery.
I'm an engineer but have never heard about non-technical engineering.
Further...
In an obscure stage of my life, I worked in a crematorium and I can report to you that we cremated only corpses.
And whatever the Pet Obesity Prevention Society, the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society or even The National Christmas Tree Association says, in this world, only corpses are cremated.
Even further...
I'm a practising artisan butcher and I can tell you with some certainty that butchers deal only with meat. They don’t butcher cheese, strawberries or cabbages.
Although the new butchers may, but I'm from the old school.
So conversion copywriting is obviously about conversion. But is there any other form of copywriting?
No!
Copywriting is all about selling using the power of the written word.
In 1904, Canadian copywriter, John E. Kennedy coined the term “salesmanship in print”. In his view, that was the purpose of copywriting. He said...
"Copy truly is a disembodied salesman. Advertising is just salesmanship-on-paper. It is a means of multiplying the work of the salesman, who writes it, several thousand-fold. With the salary paid a single salesman, it is possible, through advertising, to reach a thousand customers for every one he could have reached orally. True advertising is just salesmanship multiplied."
And before you get your knickers in a twist over the word "advertising", think about what advertising means.
To me, advertising means to present your services honestly in the best possible light with all its values and vices.
Yes, we've learnt the negative meaning of advertising from overzealous internet marketing gurus who would sell their own mothers for a few clicks, but let's stay with its original meaning.
Copy's job is to convert people's interest and desire into revenue. That's the conversion part.
So, where is the problem?
Today, many people use content writing and copywriting interchangeably, but there is quite a bit of difference.
Unlike content writing, the ultimate purpose of copywriting is to make sales; to generate revenue.
So, why do we need the word "conversion" in front of copywriting?
No idea. But it sounds so eloquent. Even erudite.
The ultimate nonsense which states that do nothing and clients will flock to you.
There must be a reason why in his post, Greg Howard, VP of Growth Marketing at Harness, calls inbound marketing a Scientology-level scam.
While my definition is not as harsh as Greg's, I do agree with him.
My definition of inbound marketing is that you do nothing at all and in response to your inactivity, qualified buyers come out of the woodwork, flock to you, beat down your door and beg you to accept them as new clients.
Well, I'm not sure if life is supposed to work that way.
Whoever believes that fairy tale, must also believe in the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and that the moon is made of blue cheese.
I guess this inbound marketing nonsense is based on the old Ralph Waldo Emerson quote...
"If a man can make a better mousetrap than his neighbour... the world will make a beaten path to his door."
And this is the Emersonian type inbound marketing: Create a service and do nothing. Then people flock to you and hire you.
But do you know that the original phrase is from the American writer and philosopher Elbert Hubbard...
"I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods."
Ah, Elbert talks about common fame.
It means you're already widely known for your amazing mousetraps.
That changes everything.
You can also see why Hubbard can sell more mousetraps than Emerson. As the saying goes, the more you tell, the more you sell.
Emerson's explanation is short (and inaccurate); Hubbard's explanation is succinct.
Remember this difference when you want to hire someone to write your firm a 250-word home page.
Apple hasn't become a trillion-dollar company by keeping its products in secret and under wraps. Apple has been marketing to create Hubbardian common fame.
If we compare outbound marketing to hunting, then we can call inbound marketing to trapping.
But you have to put out a trap and bait it if you want it to catch something. Well, and doing all that in a field or forest where there are some trap-worthy animals.
Inbound marketing is a reaction (effect) to your action (cause) of putting out some valuable content that is worth reading, listening nor watching.
And now imagine inbound fishing. You lay the table, sit down and wait for some fish and chips or sushi to jump onto your plate so you can start eating.
And at that moment, inbound marketing zealots’ arses touch the cold wall and they wake up. But there is no fish and chips or sushi.
Oh, hell, one more day of starvation. No matter, but we must stay with inbound even if it kills us.
The way I see it...
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I'm sure there are many more forms of marketing non-sense, but right now, these babies have got my goat. Let's call the potato soup potato soup. Yes, we can call it traditional vegan vichyssoise soup, but let's get real for a moment.
All the above mentioned five methods work very well with their original names, and a new name won't make them more effective.
Look, some people call cold calls warm introductions, but the new name doesn't make cold calls more effective. So, we might as well stick with the original names.
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It's all well and good, but to apply it all, you need to know how your target market perceives your firm.
Is it a fungible IT vendor or a respected IT authority?
It's the market that hangs your brand around your neck based on the outside perception of your firm.
But you can also influence the outside perception by tweaking your firm's inside reality, that is, your culture, by consciously transforming your firm from vendor to authority.
In this peddler quiz, you can check whether your firm is more of a fungible IT vendor or a respected IT authority.
In the meantime, don't sell harder. Market smarter and your business will be better off for it.