Another pitch that goes wrong

  

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

Visit WriteWayPro.weebly.com  Like and follow on Facebook and on LinkedIn

Marketers fall for the streetlight effect

There are more things in the buyer's journey than are dreamt of in your tracking system. 

Illustration of the streetlight effect or the drunkard's search

The mistake marketers, especially SaaS B2B marketers, make in focusing on what is easy to measure rather than on what is truly meaningful reminds me of an old joke that has gained the distinction of the name "the drunkard's search" or the streetlight effect."

It goes like this:

A police officer sees a drunken man searching the ground under a streetlight. He asks what he's looking for, and the man answers that he dropped his wallet (or a quarter or keys in some versions).

The policeman aids him in the search for a few minute but doesn't find anything. He then ask the man if he's certain he dropped it there.

No, he said, he dropped the wallet across the street.

"Then why are you looking here?"
“The light is better on this side." 

In the same way, B2B marketers go for the light -- whatever is easily tracked -- even if the key information like what really made an impression on the customer cannot be found in the click stats and the like. The actual trigger that converted the prospect into a customer may not be something you sent at all but a recommendation on a review site or even one given orally by a friend. 

But you wouldn't likely discover that if you limit your understanding to what your analytics tell you about your site, blog, and social media content. 

Related:

Visualizing the customer journey

How content marketing keeps it Rrreal

What the Little Prince teaches us about marketing

How to get everything wrong in a pitch

Visit WriteWayPro.weebly.com  Like and follow on Facebook and on LinkedIn

How content marketing keeps things R-R-R-E-A-L

 

Content marketing is the heart of an organic growth strategy. When you do it right, you keep things RRREAL, as you increase:

Reach, as more people in your target market become aware of your brand
​Retention, thanks to nurturing the relationship with relevant content
​Revenue from gaining new customers and increasing the LTV of existing ones
Engagement, as people read, like, respond to, and share your content
Authority in the eyes of readers and Google's algorithms as your content gains more clicks and rises in the ranks  
Leads when people in your target market who respond to your content connects with you

Learn more here: WriteWayPro.weebly.com

Related:

Visualizing the customer journey

How to get everything wrong in a pitch

Visit WriteWayPro.weebly.com  Like and follow on Facebook and on LinkedIn

How to get everything wrong in a pitch

 

Some of the work I do for clients extends to drafting Letters of Introduction (LOI) for them to use as a cold email or introduction on LinkedIn. The general principles behind crafting such letters is to keep them brief (like five sentences long), focused on the interests of the receiving party, and not to attempt to sell on the spot.

Rarely do people get all the above right. Instead of starting with LOIs to ease into gauging interests, they tend to move directly into pitches, and many of those are the opposite of intriguing.

I recently put up a post on LinkedIn about red flags in cold pitches. Someone seems to have mistaken that as an invitation. Today I saw an Inmail that ticks most of the boxes for how not to message me.

This message came from someone who describes himself as a content writer and ghostwriter hitting up someone who also offers exactly those services for potential work. Here's the screenshot:

Shooting yourself in the foot from the opening

The person claiming writing expertise already gets everything he could get wrong in just the opening with "Hello Mr. Ariella Phd."

I have 3 strong objections plus one more nitpicky one.

1. Why assume Mr.?

2. Why not use my last name that is listed before the the PhD?

3. Why show that you don't know what a PhD means by treating it as a last name and not using it to come up with a gender-neutral title of Dr.?

4. In direct address, you really should have a comma between the Hello and the name. I know very few people bother with that for emailed messages, but a professional writer should still know that.

Using cliches and vague terms

It doesn't really get better after that. After the "Good Day!" greeting, the writer goes on to say, "I'm asking for a few seconds of your valuable time to offer my content writing expertise in your endeavor to keep the industry thriving."

1. You can't literally mean just a few seconds of my time, as that wouldn't suffice for your pitch.

2. What do you think is my "endeavor," and which industry do you have in mind with the definite article?

Not showing an understanding of the recipient's perspective

The next sentence is: "It will be my pleasure to get the chance for a progressive discussion with you."

Of course it will be your pleasure. You're the one reaching out to me to try to pitch your services, so you assume it will be beneficial -- "progressive" not the right word in this context -- for you. But that's hardly a point to convince me to hear you.

Needless to say, I didn't respond.

Related:

Another pitch that goes wrong

Define good

Visit WriteWayPro.weebly.com  Like and follow on Facebook and on LinkedIn