AAA Marketing

Back in the day, small biz owners thought they were über-clever when they named their buisness something like ‘AA Plumbers’.

It was a telephone strategy so that they would appear first in the Yellow Pages or other directory listings.

Flash forward to today and see what the market thinks about Yellow Pages. They make YouTube videos mocking the wasted marketing dollars.

While it’s easy to tsk-tsk thousands of businesses whose names start with AAAAAAAAA, pause and make sure you’re not doing the same thing. Are you writing web copy solely for SEO and not people? Are you clamouring for Facebook likes? Are you spamming inboxes with irrelevant messages?

There’s a difference between marketing tactics, marketing strategy, and marketing philosophy. Don’t get them mixed up.

Things change. Your success today doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve built a long term brand. Remember these words from the movie ‘Patton‘,

A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.

Don’t make ‘core DNA’ business decisions based on today’s business fad. You’ll eventually regret it.

business connections

I don’t care for professional networkers … the glad handlers … the schmoozers.

However, I do enjoy meeting new people who have similar professional interests. And I absolutely love meeting people who are interesting.

But if our meeting feels like you’re trying to sell me something, you’re not making a connection. You’re just checking me off a list. It takes time and conversation to develop a professional relationship.

I think (most) people have gotten to the point that they can spot these people in the digital realm. You’ve been followed and then unfollowed by someone with 50,000 folllowers who is following 50,000 and has nothing but garbage tweets. You’ve been asked to connect by someone you don’t know who has 500+ LinkedIn connections.

But maybe easy digital connections have desensitized the process in real life. The professional networkers have always trolled their nets in business meetings. Watch to make sure they really want to connect or are just trying to collect business cards to hide in their secret cubby.