Can Your Internet Marketing Be Too Good?

Internet Marketing Lessons From the Outlaw Josey Wales

My regular readers here or on ScentTrail Marketing will know my answer to Can Your Internet Marketing Be Too Good, but let’s show rather than tell. Go to EarnestPackaging.com. In the hero click on the Discover the Earnest Edge video link (far right under a packaging partner with real vision).

That is some GREAT video marketing and serious budget. Here is what I love about the video:

Mixing outtakes with pitch makes both resonate more (who knew lol).
The sentiment is amazing, very up and fun.
Positive, fun things get attention (humans are naturally curious).
Fun gets attention and then we listen to facts (no other way around).
High grades for authenticity and honest feel.
Brilliant to use employee and customer tenure since they are linked.
Like the slight self-depreciating tone (only packaging, right clearly millions and Big Bucks in packaging lol).
Video consistent with the website’s look and feel.

The website has the same smooth, butter-like feel as the video. Well organized, content is above the fold, clear calls to action and tells a good story. Except there is a problem.

Internet Marketing Isn’t What You Think Redux

Sometimes it feels like I have the same conversations over and over. I wrote Why Internet Marketing Isn’t What You Think It Is to share the hard won lessons of a million fights, hundreds of thousands of transactions (with an Average Order Value or AOV of $65) and millions made $65 and 3 products at a time (average order had 3 products).

Here is the bad news for the Earnest Edge Internet Team:

PageRank: 3 (homepage)
Links In: 39
Page Spread: 400 pages in Google
Facebook Likes: 324
Twitter: Almost 2,000 followers

Spending $20 and a single hour on a video when a website is this vulnerable isn’t a good idea. I estimate those beautiful videos cost between $25,000 and $50,000. Fully load their video marketing P&L with people costs and opportunity costs and we are talking $100K easy.

Almost any Internet marketing team I know needs about half that much money to block the Internet marketing sun from EarnestPackaging.com for a very long time providing a great example of why you don’t put all of your Internet marketing eggs in any single basket.

Every Business Is an Internet Business Now

I agree with the video’s statement about customer relationships are beyond important, they are everything. Problem is their marketing talk doesn’t match EarnestPackaging.com’s Internet marketing walk because:

No Social Shares.
No Comments, Reviews or Testimonials.
No Contests or Games.
Ratio of TALKING to LISTENING is off (too much talking, too little listening).

Josey Wales Says Internet Marketing Not What You think on Atlantic BT blog link These things MAY exist, but they don’t jump off the page. The relationship building signals such as an email subscription form, social shares and testimonials don’t jump off the page as much as the, “Look how great we are and funny too,” videos. Continue to talk to yourself about yourself and, no matter how much fun your rap is, any Internet marketing team steals every customer in 5 years.

Actually, a competitor won’t have to steal anything. Customers will leave in droves heading toward CONNECTION, SHARING, STORIES and HUMANITY (empathy) because those are the websites Internet marketers build.

There is a reason doctors watch a procedure, then do the procedure and end up with teaching what they’ve learned. Teaching is the generous give and take our Thank You / Connection Economy are built upon.

Packaging Is Strategic and PROFITABLE Not Stupid or Boring

Consumers of your marketing are SMART. At first I enjoyed the self-depreciating humor and dancing clowns. It was fun, and then I looked more closely. I looked at that million dollar shipping bay, the velvet smooth no warts production value and the “just eccentric enough” founder and saw dissonance. Once you see for feel dissonance, the friction between what is being pitched and the HOW of its pitch, you never trust again.

Dissonance in marketing communications happens when:

Everything is too good.
Message is too pat, too “spontaneous” with a single stutter or blank stare.
Corresponding signals are missing (no social confirmation).
No independent authority (where are the prized lifelong customers?).

When they or YOU make a claim about customers not leaving the statement goes in the “suspension of belief” compartment of most viewers’ brains. If, after making such a claim, there is no customer to substantiate then the claim moves into the “don’t believe” compartment.

Once such a CORE claim moves into the “don’t believe” compartment the disruption in the force provides enough dissonance to make all other claims feel false too. As the Outlaw Josey Wales so famously said, “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it is raining”. These videos and the equally one sided website are pissing away money and opportunity on all the wrong things.
Sistine Chapel Internet Marketing On Atlantic BT Blog link

Sell In the Bazaar, Don’t Paint the Sistine Chapel

Let’s put INTERNET on hold for a second and ask a question. What is the purpose, the ultimate goal, of your marketing? “Make money,” doesn’t scale and it isn’t what your company is really about. There is a passion that drives your desire to create connection at an ever faster rate. You want to HELP people. You want your marketing to share your passion and enlist others. You know connection is always a two way street, so you try to do the hardest thing type A people ever do, slow down and LISTEN.

Your humanity, expressed in real and flawed ways, is what matters now. Greatness is required and only available to those willing to risk, fail and risk
more to earn the AWESOME badge.
Internet marketing will beat the perfectionism out of you.
From Time to Join the Humanity Revolt Is Now, Curation Revolution on Scoop.it

Time may be the MOST important part of Internet marketing’s algorithm. Here is another part of the same article:

No one can afford perfection’s tyranny in their Internet marketing. Sistine Chapel an Internet marketing effort and you lose. To “Sistine Chapel” means you take too much time and become obsessed with every detail. Create a Sistine Chapels and you end up with beautiful chapels no one ever sees. While you were busy creating perfection, competitors scaled and are now beating your website senseless. The time to do something online is always NOW.

The other day I explained the conundrum as, “As perfect as we can be NOW,” as a way of defining an Internet marketer’s philosophy. You must create great stuff FAST. Internet marketing is about trading in the bazaar not being up on the scaffold painting the chapel. When I see base Internet marketing values so weak and those beautiful videos I think, “Sistine Chapel”.

But Packaging is BORING Content

I may have to snap a rubber band at the next person who says this. I hear this “objection” all the time. This objection is a major denial of….well everything. The real objection is, “I LACK BELIEF in what you are selling and will continue to do things my way thank you very much.”

No worries, I’ve pitched content marketing and SEO since 2003. Teams I’ve managed helped reluctant catalog-based Direct Marketers make millions online and it was like pulling teeth. I don’t pull teeth anymore (lol). Life is too short and I have other fish to fry, so you are right Mr. Stick in the Mud. Your business is boring and the principles of Internet marketing I’ve spent long hours learning, testing and refining DON’T Apply to you and your boring content. What business where you in again? I will be sure to let my Internet marketing friends know and they will come a calling soon. NOTHING my wolf pack content marketing / SEO / social media marketing friends love more than rolling up a defenseless website to arbitrage the traffic back to you at $1.00 per click (why most of my IM friends have way more money than me, they are in this for the kill I do it for the art LOL).

Yes, your Internet marketing can be too good.

The Outlaw Josey Wales Internet Marketing Advice Contest

What about you? What Internt marketing lessons do you think Internet marketers can learn from the outlaw Josey Wales? Answer by leaving comments here or on Atlantic BT’s Facebook Page or on Atlantic BT Google Plus and please be sure to LIKE +1 and follow.