File this under bizarre retail experiences:

I went to Pavilions / Vons tonight to get balloons for my boy’s birthday morning. 10pm entry. Sign on the door says they’re open until midnight.

Very few patrons in the place – two in line, maybe. This is the Newport Beach Pavilions by Bonita Canyon. 7+ workers, one on the cash register, one bagging groceries. Several others about.

Knowing that I’m going to buy a few other things, I go straight to the cashier and box boy to get some balloons filled up while I shop (btw – I worked in a market as a jr high kid and hs freshman, so I know how cruddy retail can be).

The cashier and box boy tell me to go pound sand in no uncertain terms.

I start to leave and then ask them for their manager (I’m on the hook for birthday wake-up morning, remember). They make the call for Terii or Terrii. Lots of extra letters.

Terrii doesn’t show up, but someone else does. She’s very helpful and see’s that I’m ticked. This balloon thing is one of our traditions, so I’ve done this quite a bit over the years. I’ve seen 6am produce people fill em up.. cashiers, mangers, the whole crew. They usually make it work. Especially when there’s no one in the store.

I offered to do the balloons myself tonight. The box boy, btw, said he didn’t know how to do it. I scoffed, probably shouldn’t have.

The manager woman who eventually filled up the balloons was a true hero / heroine. That has to be said. She was great. Shoulda got her name.

Anyway – I get the balloons, thank said manager profusely, and head to check-out with my other items.

By this time, Terrii is the one at the cashier. She’s checking me out. As I’m sliding my card through the reader, the manager woman walks by. I’ve got balloons over my head, btw. What does Terrii say to the manager as she passes by?. . . “I can’t believe you filled up these balloons for this guy.”

I was stunned. I freak stared the supervisor Terrii and left the place in a bewildered haze.

As I was shopping, I kept thinking that maybe I’m the NB a-hole. Preventing these people from a clean getaway when their shifts change. But I was there 2 hrs before closing. And I was thinking about how it was one of those critical retail moments that create customers/fans for life – a father getting balloons for his son’s birthday wake-up moment.

There was a moment there when they could have been superheroes, recovering from the initial blow off and coming full force with super service. Instead I’m writing this.

I don’t really expect extraordinary things from average retail . . but with all this word of mouth (WOM) social media stuff, I thought the world might be shrinking a little and retailers changing.

Still 2nd guessing Vons Pavilions

It’s time to take control of your messaging, conversion rates, and traffic drivers before the market does it for you.

Are you familiar with the “inbound marketing” concept?

If not, here’s my quick explanation. If so, please scroll down to the bottom of this post to see if we’re on the same page and could possibly work on a project together.

Ok – inbound marketing is easy to describe if you compare it to traditional or conventional marketing/advertising methods.

Conventional marketing seeks to interrupt and pitch to people.

• It’s the unsolicited junk mail in your actual mailbox and the spam in your email inbox.
• It’s the car salesman that asks about your kid’s soccer team but has no interest or intention of getting to know the details of your son’s 8-2-1 season.
• It’s the 10,000 address Hoover’s mailing that seeks a 1-2% conversion via reply card.
• It’s the out-of-context XM radio ads that drone on and on about re-financing when you have no intention of re-financing your home. . or going bankrupt. . or rehabilitating your credit or whatever.

In short, interruption marketing is the old school approach that throws $10 million in ad budget at every method under the sun in order to bludgeon the market into coughing up a slim margin of return.

An Alternative to Annoyance

Inbound marketing is the modern, Web-connected alternative – although it integrates off-line advertising, direct mail, billboards, text messages, magazine ads and so forth. It’s really not about offline/online. It’s more about integration, conversion and accountable measurement.

Inbound marketing seeks to generate leads by offering content, value, conversation and education up front. It’s like “working the room” at a networking mixer. You ask about the other person first and try to understand what they’re up to before you lean in with your needs analysis. You don’t just foist out the business card and recite your elevator pitch. It’s about thought leadership, too. Inbound marketing might generate an email list by offering an in-depth, educational white paper.

Ideally, the best inbound marketing strategy should just offer up that white paper without any strings attached (no email capture or sign up form). Your content should educate and position you as the advisor resource right off the bat. That alone generates email leads, phone calls and qualified conversations about how your products and services can help.

Inbound marketing is also about measurement. How are your leads converting to real business? Can you measure that? Which landing pages are successful? . . which headline? Subheads? Photos? Calls to action?

All that stuff is easily measured with simple Web tools.

Have You Been in These Types of “Creative Meetings?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve suffered through meetings where marketing teams deliberate endlessly about subjective content treatments without having a clue about testing and conversion results (A/B tests or multivariate testing).

Inbound marketing strategies, systems and tools help you manage all this.

So . . do you agree with any of this? Are we on the same page? Are you ready to implement some real strategies and solutions for generating leads, improving your messaging, and cultivating enthusiastic product evangelists and “hub customers” that Tweet about your products, blog about your services, and promote you to their friends on Facebook.

Here are just a few general areas that you’ll want to consider.

Content Creation: Is your current Web site set up as a blog or do you have some other Content Management System (CMS)? Are you pumping out relevant, useful, well-written content on a consistent schedule? If not, why not? Your competitors probably are.

Optimization: Are you using tools to grade keywords, landing pages and inbound links? Do this right, and you’ll make some significant SEO strides.

Promotion: How are you using social media “channels” to connect with customers and leverage the exponential reach of friend networks? Do you have an efficient system for communicating with prospects via email and measuring the results of those interactions? Again, do this well and you’ll smoke your competition.

Conversion: What’s do your lead-gen process and pipeline/nurturing practices look like? Do you have simple, clean yet powerful ways to manage prospect lists and leads?

Analysis: Who are you reaching? When are they most receptive to your messages? Are they weighing you against competitive offerings? Are they asking their social networks about your solutions or products? Do you have a way to track all this and “listen” to the market?

Ok – enough with the questions. You get the point. Inbound marketing is an integrated, accountable approach to lead-generation and conversion. It’s about creating great content, making promises, having conversations, delivering value and converting interest to revenue.

Are you at the point where you want to do some these things and start making a measurable difference?

Call (949-244-9440) or email, and let’s talk. We recently gained partner status at Hubspot, so we can get you into that system. Or, we can pick up a few small projects and take it slowly.

This is one area of your business that you don’t want to ignore. There’s a big shift going out there in sales/advertising/marketing/lead-gen-land, and you don’t want to get caught behind the curve. Your competitors will just beat you up at every turn.

And please don’t get suckered into green, newbie “social media” and SEO outfits that promise to solve all your problems by setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts. (This is the part about burning your as$.) Inbound marketing programs are about reasoned, focused marketing campaigns. You don’t want to keyword stuff, pump out useless blog posts, or spam your press releases every 1/2 hour on Twitter. Content development is the key. You need writers, designers, creative input and cohesive strategies to make progress.

Contact us today, and let’s talk inbound marketing and meaningful content development.

949-244-9440

service@qualitywriter.com

Ironically, me too. My gripes with all this Facebook, Twitter and Social Media hysteria.

I haven’t seen The Social Network yet, but it’s already bugging me. My neighbor, for example, announced that she took her entire family off Facebook after seeing the movie.

Now, I can understand why people would do this. Kids can get into a lot of trouble with social tools online. They need some tech guidance when it comes to the open-ness of these platforms and the traps that lie in waiting. Part of their education should also cover how to express  ideas, what to omit, how to communicate politely, etc.

But that’s not the point here.

My biggest, general beef is with the way people discuss these things. They place a lot of blame on the messenger and demonize the tools people use to express their ideas and connect with others.

It’s like a journalist from 1975 blaming his typewriter for the word f*#k. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

These tools we’re using evolve over time, and they have some features that can get non-techies into trouble. But they’re only tools with people behind them. Back in the 50′s there were people new to telephone communication who didn’t quite understand the concept of the party like (this is when neighborhoods were bunched into common calling lines – before the advent of one line, one house). They got caught gossiping while others listened in on their calls.

Similar things go on today with Facebook and Twitter. You’ve heard the stories.

So technology is disruptive because it catches those who remain unaware in these difficult situations – they get fired, their kid gets called into the principal’s office, a photo of their donger gets passed around the Internet (sorry Brett Favre).

The horse was disruptive, as was a car, and texting is disruptive (thought not as impressive as a horse). “The network” might be as impressive as a horse (e.g. Web/Internet/Social Media). Blah, blah, blah. It’s all technological leaps.

As long as you stay clear about what technology is, then you’re ok. We’re just talking about communication tools, really.

Modern, Web 2.0 tech helps you communicate with people, express your ideas, look for things and check things out. End of story. If you’re abusing those tools or using them stupidly, then it’s your fault.

That’s why content curation and filtering are going to be so critical moving forward. There are lots of companies in this space already, but I’m guessing that we’ll see even more interesting things develop in the months ahead. Mike Elgan wrote a great article about How Facebook Could Rule the World that relates to this.

Let’s just agree to stop all the stupidity about the tools themselves.

I like to periodically reset and remind myself that tech is only a bunch of tools for ideas. That’s why they’re important to me, at least.

Spreading ideas, sending them quicker, forming them, getting exposed to different ones, etc.

That’s my $0.02. What do you think? Please comment below.

Oh – regarding the irony – I tend to post a lot about technology, marketing and communication. . so I’m guilty of obsessing .

A lot of people talk about email inbox distress, “inbox zero” and other related phenomena. Yes, too much email blows, and there’s no end in sight. You can filter conversations and contacts via Facebook, Twitter, IM, Gist and the like, but business people still rely heavily on email to track projects and keep in touch.

But.. I’ve got another problem that I’m sure you’re familiar with.

I call it Tabbed Browsing Hell for lack of a better name. This is the scenario where you’re so engrossed in research or just plain media consumption that you open tons of tabs. Eventually, you become burdened by them. They have psychic energy that can drain and distract you.

So what’s a boy (or girl) to do?

I found a nifty way to clear things up (at least for a while). It’s akin to stuffing papers into file folders in order to get a clean desk.

But it’s pretty slick to boot.

First, check out this nifty little service: Read Later

Read Later allows you to click a bookmark/script and save articles for later on your Instapaper.com account.

But wait, there’s more! (not steak knives or a slotted spoon)

When you want to back and read the articles you’ve gathered in Read Later, you can use another bookmark/script to force them into a clean, standardized format for consumption (you choose the font size and format). It’s called Readability. The buttons on the side allow you to easily and quickly get back to the original article (for Tweeting, sharing or Facebooking purposes, for example).

I think it’s pretty cool. And it helps me “get clear” and get back to work.

Have you tried it? What do you think? Please share your thoughts below.

P.S. The two solutions go great with RSS feed readers, too. Good way to filter articles and read later in a clean, consistent format.