Getting rich: the secret is to sell others on the secret

By Ariella Brown

Everyone is doing it!

I'm on an email list from one of the hundreds maybe even thousands of people currently positioning themselves as experts who offer "masterclasses" on improving one's earnings as an independent marketing professional.

Today's email offers the tantalizing lure of drawing in clients that pay $60K a year. The possibility of getting just two of those pushes one into that highly coveted six-figure income slot.

Definitely worth paying $1500 to learn how to earn nearly 10x that amount this year, right?

Then rational skepticism kicks in, and you think this: "If he really has no problem getting all these clients that put him in what he says is the top 1% of earners for this category, why would he take any time away from that highly lucrative work to produce these classes?

He's not retired, so he's not just passing on what he's learned to the next generation. He'd be passing it on to his competition. Altruism is certainly not the motivation here because the cost of the classes are substantial, particularly for something that wholly virtual and not accredited.

How did we come to this?

Perhaps what happened is that when the economy was in a much better state, some of these consultants did very well. The self-proclaimed masters have, indeed, experienced high earnings.

They had already acquired some key connections when the pandemic hit and create a new surge of demand for digital marketing content. With everyone working remotely anyway, it was a lot easier to be accepted as a consultant who delivered without having to be present in a NYC or LA office while still demanding the rates associated with those high-cost cities.

What a difference a year or two makes!

However, times have changed. Now these people have found that they're not nearly as in-demand at present as they likely were when brands were investing heavily in content marketing, particularly during the pandemic.

Finding that their income has dropped, they are now trying to supplement it with courses and some with other materials you can purchase.

In fact, some are even starting to boast about how much they've made from such sales.

Those who are trying to appeal to the value of exclusivity will like not publicize exactly how much they've made. For example, the "master" behind the course I described earlier claimed he will "restrict" attendance to 60 for his course to allow for "individual attention."

At $1500 a pop that amounts to $90K over mere weeks. But that will only happen if he gets the 60, which I seriously doubt. I'm sure he'll get a handful of people, but I believe he priced something with no guarantees too high to attract the desperate.

Of course, there are techniques one could learn and improve. But it's not really the quality of your work or even the leads it brings in that guarantees you're paid what you're worth. However, my own experience of 18+ years in the biz has taught me that timing and connections count for far more.

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Why you always need the original source

By Ariella Brown

Always, always go to the source cited to judge how relevant it is. That's my rule of thumb -- not just for my journalistic work but even for my content marketing. And it never ceases to amaze me how many people don't bother with that even while positioning themselves as authorities on the subject.

I knew I'd regret it, but I gave into temptation and clicked on an article with the title "How to Write Headlines That Grab Attention and Convert"

It gave the usual advice that most seasoned writers already know, including writing the title only after you've finished writing the article, being specific but not giving everything away, etc.

But it also sought to add insight taken) from "Data Driven Strategies for Writing Effective Titles & Headlines," the 28 page report put out by HubSpot and Outbrain.

Instead of putting in the title and link properly as you should do for anything you cite, it introduced the information this way:

Lessons from a 3-Million Headline Study

HubSpot and Outbrain analyzed more than 3 million paid link headlines from Outbrain’s network of 100,000+ publisher sites to find out what kinds of headlines can increase CTR, reader engagement and conversions, and this is what they found:

It then proceeded to share stats and insights from that study for the next 16 paragraphs. (I'm not exaggerating; I counted them). Despite drawing heavily on the study, the article never puts in a link to it.

In fact, it never even shares the title, which made it a bit more difficult to find. But I am nothing if not persistent when it comes to research and tracking things down.

I located the original source, which says that it was based on headlines in the time period of 2013-2014. That's right, the data is form nearly 10 years ago. In the world of online content, I wouldn't bank on anything more than two years old to still be current.

So why did the writer of an article published in August 2023 not include the link? It's possible that he deliberately intended to obscure that bit of historical context by not linking directly to the source. What's more likely, though, is that he came across another secondary source that cited those figures and takeaways and so didn't even know when the original study came out.

Unfortunately, that is often the case for writers who just go with the first Google result, which is more-often-than-not not the original source. You have to dig more to get the source in context.

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Trying to stand out either by embracing digital or going old-school

By Ariella Brown

Johnny Rose is right, and that's a major problem for marketers.EVERYONE has an online presence, and EVERYONE is using digital ads, emails, and even texts to try to stay top-of-mind for their target customers. 

We're all inundated by ads any time we go online. For brands looking to get attention, what's the best way? Should the up the ante on digital with splashy CGI effects to achieve viral status? Or should they take the opposite track and return to paper images for billboards and catalogs to connect more intimately and concretely with their customers? 

Both approaches are currently in use, and the splashy ones are definitely getting more coverage.

Upping the ante for digital

You must have seen the gargantuan Maybelline mascara wands appearing to brush giant lashes no buses and Tube trains:

A similar tactic was used to show a skyscraper-high Barbie stepping out of her box in Dubai. 

Both the makeup and Barbie movie promo grabbed a lot of attention because they looked like real custom installations on location. Many people first thought that there really were giant lashes attached to a bus or train. In fact, though, these outsized promos only existed in the digital realm. You could only see the CGI-generated mascara, lashes, and towering doll on a video that blended them with a real background. effects with the real world. 

The amount of  buzz generated by  indicating that digital out-of home (DOOH) AKA faux OOH advertising may be the one to opt for to get the most publicity bang for your advertising bucks. While no one has shared exactly what these headline-grabbing stunts cost, it seems that they may be more economical  than traditional OOH advertising setups.

Retreating from digital 

Perhaps when the everyone else is zigging toward digital, the way to zag is to go in the opposite direction. That's seems to be the thinking of some brands that are conspicuously embracing good, old-fashioned paper to connect with customers.

It may not be altogether surprising that a bricks-mortar icon would return to its roots of publishing a paper catalog for its anniversary sale, a practice that it had abandoned only four years ago in the case of Nordstrom reintroducing the paper catalogs that it had abandoned in 2019. 

But even a brand born in the digital age is turning to paper. Zappos put its 2023 back-to-school catalog in paper format to be mailed out, Digiday reports, Perhaps the Amazon-owned shoe retailer is taking a cue from the ultimate online seller, which has mailed out holiday season toy catalogs since 2018. 

Amazon also has found it effective to use mail out paper letters, as I described in Amazon Uses Snail Mail. Amazon invests in the extra cost of printing and postage because when our digital inboxes hold thousands of unread messages, we still tend to open the envelopes that come in the mail. 

Reviving traditional OOH 

Instead of trying to compete with Maybelline to achieve virality from a faux OOH marketing setup, cosmetic brand Murad is investing in traditional billboards in New York and Los Angeles  to promote its products and store.

"The social space has become so competitive, it’s [become more] interesting for us to think about how to advertise differently,” Paul Schiraldi, CEO of Murad told Glossy .“It’s the old-school reach and frequency media advertising strategy, but it works.”


While traditional may resonate more with the viewers who see the actual billboards in strategic locations, including  Times Square, instead of having to view the effect on a screen, it certainly doesn't raise the same level of buzz as the CGI-enabled promotions.

But, at the end of the day, the goal is not just to have people talk about your promotions but to incentivize them to actually buy your products. So this may play out well for the company's revenue goals if it brings in their target market around that location. 

There's good data to back that assumption: The Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) recently reported that its popular has been increasing and accounted for $1.82 billion in spending in just the first quarter of 2023.  Businesses don't usually spend that kind of money unless they expect to achieve substantial ROI.

If you were faced with the choice of investing in paper or digital promotions, which would you choose? 

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Don't just aim for different
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What makes content marketing effective
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Another pitch that goes wrong

  

By Ariella Brown

This pitch arrived in my LinkedIn messages today: 

• Hello Mam, I want to collaborate with you regarding articles publications on techopedia.com plz respond so we could discuss further.

It's amazing how many wrong notes a person can pack into such a short message.

1. What is this "Mam" doing here? I'm not clear on whether he was going a casual "Hey, man," vibe and mistyped the last letter or if he is misspelling Ma'am as in Madame. But why would he do that when he can address me properly by name?

2. Jumping right into what you want without establishing some basis to interest me in the endeavor. What value is supposed to be in this for me? Do you have industry insight to share? More likely, he's just hoping to get his company offerings described in a publication without paying for it.

3. While he may have found me from Techopedia, he did not bother to check that on profile I show it as ending a couple of months back when the publication was sold to a new owner. It's being taken in quite a different direction by a company that heavily pushes gaming and crypto and so is no longer the same type of publication that I contributed to.

4. What's up with this nonstandard "plz" in this context? You're not texting a buddy but trying to set up some kind of working relationship with someone new, so this is hardly the way to express yourself.

In a certain mood, I may have responded, but I decided to write about this instead. Any other writers get similar messages with the same pattern?

One bad turn deserves another

Later, the same day, I got this message (all misspelled words retained from the original):

• Guest posting equries

  Hi! I saw the page of your blog techopedia.com and I saw that the page the page of your blog is beautiful and well decorated. I really enjoy your recent blog post. It is very effective and interesting. I want to share my thoughts on your blog. I totally understand that there would be some editorial fee involved and I'm ready to pay. I hope so you will like my suggestion and we will get benefited mutually side by side and this will help us both to rank our business. It's my pleasure that we work together I have bulk orders on your sites. Kinldy share your sites lists. Then we work mutually together. I hope u understand well. I'm waitning for your positive response Kind regards

A few weeks later, I got this doozy

I visited your YouTube channel and found that your channel videos are not SEO optimized and your videos have very low SEO scores. If you want me to grow your channel more and grow your business and your videos go viral, I will do on-page and off-page SEO optimization with your channel videos and work with actionable and performance tags of your videos and improve the SEO score of each of your videos to 95 plus score out of 100. As a result, your videos will go viral, every video will rank on YouTube, YouTube will get your videos first in search engines and people will find your videos very easily and your videos will come up in google-search. And I will promote your YouTube channel organically and manually. As a result, your channel will get more subscribers, likes, views and watch time day by day. As a proof I am giving you a sheet with before and after SEO results with links to some of my client's channel videos that are live on YouTube where you can see all the details. Please check this:[redacted] Please feel free to inbox me if you have any questions!

The reason it's such a doozy is that I don't have a YouTube channel, so the claim that he checked it automatically mark him an incompetent liar -- not someone I'd ever consider giving my business.

Related:

How to get everything wrong in a pitch

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