Doing Something for the Benefit of Exposure May Not be Worth it

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Providing a service or product for free for exposure, or spending money on something for the sake of the exposure, is often a glamorous lie.  In most cases, exposure does not actually pay any bills and most bill collectors will not accept it as a form of payment.

I feel new businesses and up-starts fall prey to this more often than established businesses do.  The more established businesses may have already encountered a few glamorous exposure lies and new businesses are often targeted.  When I first started freelancing during my college years, I was approached a lot about doing graphics for free with the promise of the exposure it could bring me.  After I graduated, I moved to Atlanta and struggled to get my feet wet with my freelance business there.  Finding clients was my biggest hurdle.

Because I was still relatively new to not just the city, but also the industry, I was met with offers of designing, again for exposure, rather than a monetary payment.  Slim budgets, just needing something temporary or right now, were often the reasons given.  Having something I designed in front of lots of people, etc and/or having my name or logo listed and credited with the work would “expose” me and bring me more business.  At least, that is what I was often told.  I do believe that in some cases, the person pitching this to me really believed what they were saying.  I believed it to and ended up doing a lot of free work that did not net me a dime.

From a business standpoint, it was a loss.  What I do takes time and effort and I charge for that time and effort.  Doing it for free, was basically a donation to someone else’s dream and cause.  The reason why I did not net from the exposure is not because I didn’t do good work, but because the audience I was being “exposed” to, was not my demographic.  It was not the audience that would most likely use my services.  I highly doubt that someone received a club flyer and said, “Hmmm…although I am a struggling college student, I am going to hire the person who made this flyer to create my brand identity for the company I don’t have.”  I received exposure, but not to the right people.

It has been a long time since the last time that I was approached to do something for free, for exposure.  However, a few months back, I was pitched by the marketing department of a local news station to purchase advertising space on their website.  “It will be great exposure and put your brand in front of more people,” I was told by the marketer.  It sounded glamorous, and like something I might be interested in doing at first thought, but as I began to ask more questions; I realized that it wasn’t really that great.

I would receive a business page on their site and one web ad.  When I asked where the ad would be on their site, I was told it would be buried somewhere deep in an obscure part of their site.  Not their words of course, but the reality of where it would be in my eyes.  I asked if the traffic numbers he told me applied to that page…he did not know and needed to ask a supervisor.  The final answer was, no.  The business pages did not have those quoted traffic numbers either and the video that would appear would be hosted on their YouTube channel and not mine.  All in all, there was no value that I would gain by paying for this advertising.

It made me realize that although I was no longer being approached for free work in exchange for irrelevant exposure; I had reached the next level of being asked to pay for irrelevant exposure.  The glamorous lie was no longer free.

Have you ever been approached to provide a product or a service in exchange for exposure?  Did you benefit from the exposure?

Random Musing:: Email Marketing

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The effectiveness and relevancy of email marketing in todays technical landscape is a topic that I see pop in and out of marketing debates.  There is a school of thought that sees email marketing as a dead tactic and not relevant.  I think this thought is primarily because it’s no longer the cool trendy marketing item that everyone is buzzing about.  Email marketing was born during the email boom; during the age of AOL, Hotmail and the emergence of Yahoo.  By the way, as a side note; if you still have an AOL email address that you actively use, get rid of it.  It dates you.

I feel that as long as email inboxes exist and email is used as a way to communicate with people, email marketing will continue to exist.  I also believe that it is still a relevant tactic.  I feel the relevancy is lost in the way the tactic is used.  The way it was first used is similar to the way junk mail is used in “snail mail.”  I think direct mail marketing is a relevant and useful tactic, but most businesses use it in a way that is not very effective or relevant to what people want today.

That is the same problem with email marketing.  Most businesses are still approaching it in the same way it was approached during its inception.  Times have changed and people have changed.  I use the term consumer interchangeably with the word “people,” because consumers are people.  Like with snail mail, when junk mail (direct mail advertisements) first appeared in their mailboxes, they were new, interesting and gave them a reason to look at them.  Now, they are in most cases, instantly trashed and discarded.  A business today, has to send out twice if not triple the amount of mailers to receive the same type of results and response that would have been gotten many years ago.

Why, because people became desensitized to them.  They were bombarded with them and it made checking the mail a negative experience if all you often found were bills and advertisements for things you did not want nor need.  The same thing has happened with email.  At first, you loved to check your email to see if someone sent you anything; a note, a message, a poem, a chain letter…  Now, email accounts are quickly abandoned due to malicious hackers, viruses, spammers and unsolicited advertisements.

Rules were put in place just like with junk snail mail to try to cut down on unsolicited emails and subscriptions to lists.  You are supposed to be able to unsubscribe easily and technically you have to commit some action in order to be subscribed to a list.  The lines are often blurred when it comes to the action that is committed (I handed you my business card at a networking event) and not everyone uses an email service to send their emails (being cc’d with 500 other people on an email that you can’t unsubscribe from).

People have become desensitized to email marketing in the same way.  Businesses that buy email mailing lists like direct mail marketers do, will not see the same effectiveness that they would have from a list with subscribers who willingly signed up.  They will also see less unsubscribers if they also provide value in some way to those that have signed up.  What constitutes value is different for each business.  For one business, the value may be in coupons, exclusive offers and secret sales.  For another, it could be just an inside look into that brand’s corporate culture.

The key to it all is the people.  The consumer.  The one’s that you are actually trying to market and advertise to.  If businesses place a high priority on learning whom their consumers are as people and what those people want from them, they can actually be very successful with a marketing campaign.  The campaign that works for them might not actually be a direct line to a sale or purchase, but an indirect one.  Something else to keep in mind is that email marketing can work as a complementary tactic in an overall marketing strategy or campaign.

Email marketing is not irrelevant or dead.  It just has to be used and approached differently from how it was done at its birth.

Excuses

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“If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way.  If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” ― Jim Rohn

This is my favorite quote and I feel that it is so true.  So today, I simply ask one question?  What’s your excuse?

Merry Christmas!

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My “coworker” Petey and I, want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas today!

What is Holding You Back?

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Yesterday I talked about the dream I realized with my freelance business and today; I want to ask a simple question.  What is holding you back from realizing your dream?

For many, I think fear is the biggest factor; a fear of failure.  Sometimes thinking about the negative “what if’s” can be crippling.  What if I run out of money?  What if no one buys it?  What if I just can’t do it?  I think that it is a natural inclination to think about the negative implications.  I know for me, it is truly a challenge to try to think of the positive implications first.  What if I am successful?  What if this works?  What if I find true happiness?

The saying that you will never know failure or success if you never try or don’t start, is true.  None of the questions above will ever be answered if you don’t try.  You will never know until you do.