MarketingSherpa Blog

This year, I suspect that marketers are considering becoming consultants more than at any other time in history. It’s due to a confluence of factors, including recession layoffs and insecurities, boomer demographics, and the work-from-home fad.Is consulting for you? Take this quick quiz:

#1. Networking
Are you the sort of person who instinctively networks with other professionals? Do you actively participate in industry associations or clubs? Do you have more than 50 LinkedIn connections? When you attend a live event, do you mingle with people from other organizations and make new connections or do you stick with people you already know?

#2. Self-Promotion
Are you comfortable with selling yourself? Do you promote yourself in your organization currently or is the CEO unaware of how great you are? Do you have a track record of publicizing your accomplishments or professional opinions? Have you done any successful public speaking? Have you gotten any press? Do you have a blog?

#3. Working Virtually
Have you worked from home for long periods before and gotten much more done than you would have at the office? Will your social life and need for human companionship still be satisfied without office interactions? Do you have a room to work in with a door that can be closed and a family who can respect that closed door?

#4. Business Travel
If you are planning on reaching out to clients and prospects that aren’t in your geographic corner, are you able to travel? Do you enjoy occasional travel, despite airport security lines and having to dress up in business-wear? Will your house, pets, kids be able to cope with your disappearance when a client needs you? Do you have the funds to front travel costs when clients won’t pay you back for 30 to 90 days due to accounting cycles?

#5. Power & Control
Consultants often have little control over which of their advice clients actually take and how it’s implemented. Are you OK with this loss of control over the final marketing product? Being subject to a client’s whims can be tough for marketers who are accustomed to having more power.

#6. Administration
Are you any good at paperwork and office management? As an independent contractor, you’ll spend more hours on administration, such as quarterly tax filings, billing, legal paperwork, software installation, and maintaining office supplies than you imagine. Also, will you happily cope if you have computer problems? If you’ve worked in a larger organization for most of your career, and you’re used to full IT, HR, and accounting support, going freelance may be your worst nightmare.

#7. Money
Are you switching to consulting because you strongly suspect the work will be more satisfying? Or is it just to earn some more dough? (People who are primarily driven by money often don’t do well as marketing consultants because their heart’s not in it.) Are you able to say, “You’ll have to pay me for that,” if someone asks you for free marketing advice? Do you have the chutzpah to ask for a decent rate and to raise rates when merited? (Hint: Have you been able to negotiate higher salaries for yourself at past jobs?).

If you answered “Yes” to questions in at least five of the points above, then you may have a consulting future ahead of you.

Next week, I’ll give some tips on how to start your own consulting business. In the meantime, if you’ve tried consulting and have advice for others considering the same path, please post it here. Thousands of marketers are considering becoming consultants this year and they need all the input from the Sherpa community they can get!

Relevant Sherpa article

So, You Want to Be a Marketing Consultant: 10 Personality Traits You Need, 5 You Don’t
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30524

It’s no surprise that Canada leads the world in online banking usage. It’s a testament to information I found while reporting a two-part special report on marketing to Canadians. They have better access to broadband than the U.S. and Canadians tend to spend more time on the Internet. Read more…

There’s a ‘black hat’ marketing technique that predates search marketing, search engines and the Internet itself. It’s buying press. We’re all familiar with it.

Publishers try to avoid compromising editorial integrity at all costs, I thought.  But maybe I’m naive. A recent AdvertisingAge article on buying press says otherwise.

Read more…

MarketingSherpa data indicates that 59% of consumers and 90% of business email users view some or all of their email with images turned off. This includes people who may view email in their preview panels with images turned off (remember, this is the default for many email clients including Gmail and some versions of Outlook). It also includes people who view their email on a mobile device, such as a BlackBerry.

All of us in the email marketing world have known for ages that images aren’t always visible. But few marketers have redesigned their campaigns to get around the problem. Today, I’d like to celebrate one of the few email newsletters I receive that breaks the mold: HomeAway newsletter.

HomeAway is a vacation lodgings firm. Just as you’d expect, their newsletter is loaded with photos of enticing destinations. However, HomeAway’s email team obviously includes a smart designer and a great copywriter. If you open the newsletter with images blocked, it’s loaded with text descriptions of enticing destinations.

You don’t have to scroll past lots of dead white space looking for the text either – it starts right at the top of the screen. All of the links are usefully worded, explaining where the URL will take you (instead of a generic “more” or “read on”) and formatted in easy-to-skim vertical lists.

If you have an image-heavy or image-dependent email newsletter, take five seconds right now to click over to the real-life examples I’ve had posted of HomeAway’s newsletter. You can see the image version and the blocked-image version. Both have ideas your email designer and copywriter might be inspired by.
The link for samples is here:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/homeaway/study.html

By the way, if you have redesigned your email program templates to work better with images blocked, or perhaps with mobile devices, let us know at ChrisH(at)MarketingSherpa(dot)com. Sherpa just might want to profile you in a future issue!

One of the newer ways of marketing to consumers lies in the idea of being green. It’s pretty simple: If you can convince environmentally conscious folks that you care about running your operations responsibly, that sizable group becomes much more inclined to spend money on your products or services. Read more…

Three weeks ago a co-worker told me about great deals she gets shopping at Target online. It immediately sparked my interest. I never thought of shopping online at a store I could easily drive to. When she told me I could return merchandise purchased online to any of the physical stores … I was sold. Read more…

Mr. Phinney was a genuinely nice science teacher in my high school. He liked to relax and chat casually with students while not in class. Like many science enthusiasts, Mr. Phinney (or occasionally Phinn-dog) knew a lot of strange things about the world.

Read more…

Even after about a decade, the jury is still out on email open rates. Some marketers disregard them as pointless. Others check them daily to guide subject line and content decisions. Personally, I think there is value in measuring open rates — even if it is limited.

Read more…

It’s the time of year when I get emails from Sherpa readers who are proud parents, aunts or uncles of new college grads. They want to know, “How can my kid land a job?”

The good news: Even in this economic downturn, many companies are hiring junior marketers. The bad news: Most kids are woefully inept at marketing themselves properly to get these jobs.

Fact: When you’re new to an industry or job function, your resume is NOT going to help you much. Not even if it’s polished by a professional writer. Not even if it’s plastered on every job site on the Internet. Not even if it’s emailed out to the universe. Your resume doesn’t contain enough evidence or proof that you can do the job. It can’t – you’re new!

So, what do you do? It all comes down to networking. I’m not talking about an influential mom or dad making a call. That kind of hand-holding won’t help your child build job-seeking skills for the rest of his or her career. Instead, help your child stand on his or her own feet by suggesting these two tactics:

#1. Informational Interviews
Inspired by the perennial bestseller, ‘What Color is Your Parachute?’, I’ve personally used this tactic four times over my own career and, next week, my newly graduated son is launching his own career the same way.

Pick a particular niche you’d like to explore, such as marketing for a publisher in Washington DC. Then, write letters to people in that field asking for an informational interview. Be clear that you’re not asking for a job, you’d just like to hear what it’s like to be in their position because it’s your goal. Also, let them know you’re not asking for much time – just 15-30 minutes at a time of their convenience anytime in a particular week.

Key – the interview must happen in person so you can make that connection. Go armed with questions, including: “How did you start your own career in this?” and “What do you like and dislike most about this career?” Last: “Is there anyone else you’d recommend I meet with in this industry/area to learn more?”

In the end, you’ll have a much better idea if this is the right career for you; plus, you’ll have honed your in-person interview skills to help you land it. And, if a position does come up later at any of the organizations where you did an informational interview, your chances of landing it are 1000% better than anyone else’s in the stack of resumes.

How do you find the people to interview with? Try your college alumni center (the president of Google told me earlier this year he’s always happy to interview an alum), as well as LinkedIn (this is where your parents’ connections can help you) and, of course, the blogosphere (execs who blog are very likely to say yes to info interviews.)

#2. Targeted Temping
Again, pick a target city/area and industry. Then, contact HR departments of your target companies and ask them, “Which temp agency do you use?” Often, most of the companies will use the same couple of temp agencies. From there, it’s a quick day’s work to go down to each temp agency and sign up. Remember that typing tests, a suitable outfit, and office experience count.

Your goal is to get sent into one or more of your target companies in any position at all. It doesn’t matter if you’re at the front desk or back in the files. It doesn’t matter what department you’re in. Don’t be picky. You’re getting a golden chance to schmooze, networking within the company itself while you “work” there, if only for a few days.

Most executives would rather hire that bright young temp for a junior job than sift through the awful pile of resumes trying to figure out who the best one is. I know since that’s how I got my first job in marketing.
By the way, here’s a link to my past blog on how to break into the Internet marketing field specifically:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30191