Time to Eat Your Own Cooking

Since becoming one of 10 Duct Tape Marketing Coaches on the planet and getting hip deep in the Ultimate Marketing System for my own business, I've discovered something you may have noticed already.

Too many marketing professionals do not do what they write about.   It's theory--not results backed up by testimonials from customers who will say "These guys do what they advise and it has achieved success in my business."

Actually, this discovery first came during the first round table discussion with all 10 coaches and John Jantsch, the guy who invented Duct Tape Marketing--the company, the blog, the Ultimate Marketing System, the coach crew, and (soon) the soon-to-be-famous book.  "Do you eat your own cooking?" several coaches asked each other at a dinner meeting.  Have you completely worked your way through the Ultimate Marketing System and put everything into practice?  The answer is, "Well, guys, the UMS just came out in it's new, total workbook and audio CD form, and I'm going through each of the 15 workbooks as fast and completely as possible."

What they were asking was even more basic.  Do we live this blog or simply hand out customer creation lessons and stories?  You betcha! We actually do all of this and then some.  If you want to have more customers than you ever thought possible, this is the right place to get what you need, plus the help to do it.

What made me stop and wonder about others who know better was a really beautiful newsletter from the guys who have developed several websites for us and our clients.  They are nice looking sites, but not the "marketing sites" that we have created with other developers who "eat their own cooking."

The headline of their newsletter caught my attention: "How To Get Valuable Feedback From Your Web Visitors"  As I read the article, I wondered who their customers were.  Certainly not me or any clients I've brought to them.  My eyes went down the entire list they published  in that newsletter about the "eight techniques you can use to get valuable feedback from your customers."

In the four years I've been their customer they never did one of those eight techniques with this customer.

1. Use surveys and questionnaires regularly to improve your business. (Never got a survey from them.)
2. Create an online community for your customers. (Not on their website.)
3. Offer your web site visitors an online product or service from your web site at no cost. (Where's that?  Nothing on their site on this.)
4. Create a customer focus group. (Great idea. Never invited to be in a group and never saw any results from ever conducting one.)
5. Stay in contact with customers on a regular basis. (Oh!  My favorite!  I would love to get a call from those guys, just asking how my business is doing.  I have to go into email and put in a "job ticket" to contact them.)
6. Make it easy for your customers to contact you. (Sounds easy, doesn't it?  Why would I want to run after them?  What's wrong with this picture?)
7. You could regularly contact customers on birthdays or holidays. (Still waiting by my mailbox for the first birthday card.)
8. Invite your customers to company meetings, luncheons, workshops or seminars. (Again--a great idea.  If they do it, I've never seen an invitation.)

Clearly, they never put their advice to work for themselves. What good are a bunch of tactics without strategy? What a waste of good time and money! That's why we have Duct Tape Marketing, which is all about strategy, first, and a system that makes it impossible to fake it.

Comments

[Meikah Delid]

Yes, it's definitely time to eat our own cooking. Some theories are good only as theories. They even sound doable. But when youg get down to doing it, you will find out they are not as easy as they seem. Keep up the good work, Duct Tape Marketing!

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