Author Archives for Josh Krafchin

Last week David Rodnitzky wrote a blog post criticizing a deal we had run on Startups.com: $2,000 worth of consulting for $39 delivered in a 45-minute session. You can read his post and my response here. The post got me thinking about what marketing is really worth.

We’re at a strange juncture in the history of online marketing. On one hand, there are guys promising quality link-backs for pennies; on the other hand, there are paid search agencies charging tens of thousands of dollars per month. You can get a logo crowd-sourced for a couple hundred bucks or pay millions to a Madison Avenue agency for a re-brand. There are tech companies (again) receiving millions of dollars in funding against little or no revenue, and a seemingly endless cadre of social media marketers who bristle at the word “conversion.”

A number of firms have tried to commoditize online marketing services by rolling them into packages or blocks of time. For pretty much every one of Clever Zebo’s online marketing services, there are dozens of firms and consultants offering every price point from free to a small fortune for a package of deliverables or block of hours. Contrast this to in-house marketing professionals who are paid $50K to 6-figures+ per year to slog it out in an office and usually aren’t paid by the number of links they build, press releases they write, and dedicated ad groups they create. Employees are paid to be there every day and are bonused when the things they do can be tied to company success (or at least should be).

The point is that pricing in online marketing services remains highly subjective, and there just isn’t a good calculator that takes into account all the options out there and spits out the right one for your unique business situation (but that’s not a bad idea for a product). Paying cost-effectively for online marketing is an incredibly hard balancing act. Low-cost firms that make money have hundreds and thousands of customers and hope that repetition creates economies of scale that still generate client results. Silicon Valley agencies follow the big law model – put a couple big names in front of the client and bill out graduates at multiples of their salary.

Ultimately, there is no such thing as the RIGHT price, especially in services businesses, but there is the right match for you. Expense is relative; performance is everything. There is no “real” price tag for the time of an online marketing consult. With price, there’s only the equilibrium point between the results a client expects and the lengths we’re willing to go to make it happen.

You may have heard of the Sales Warrior, that mythical hero who makes 200+ phone calls, has a new prospect lunch every day, and then goes home to write a few proposals.

As phones go increasingly unanswered, Sales Warriors are adapting. Today’s sales warriors tweet 10 articles a day, host interesting meetups, and interact with hundreds at a time through webinars. You might say that Sales Warriors are becoming Social Media Magicians. Multi-faceted, multi-talented networkers unafraid of trying new media are revolutionizing how we sell.

The common characteristic is clever strategy backed up by hard work. Behind the social media magic of seemingly endless amplification is a lot of nitty gritty attention to detail, tenacity, and being will to try lots of approaches.

As Sales Warriors adapt to a world in which conversations bend and twist among 1-1, 1-n, n-1, n-n and back, the way we sell is transforming. It’s all communication, and the Sales Warriors willing to work some magic is running away with the show.

Yes, a good sales guy can close some deals, BUT WITHOUT PRODUCT

It doesn’t snowball.

Yes, a huge SEM spend will produce revenue, BUT WITHOUT PRODUCT

The margins will be thin.

Yes, PR explodes a business, BUT WITHOUT PRODUCT

It falls away.

The product can be widgets, time, a book, or the promise of better results, but the story’s always the same. Great companies with great revenues are built on great products.

Yes, you need distribution channels, but if you’re wondering where to put the next dollar, put it into product. 10 Wows speak more loudly than 100 Ehs.