It’s a funny line and — unfortunately — not terribly far off from reality in a lot of cases. And it goes without saying that there are many business practices that can be considered unethical, even predatory without being illegal. But if you read this blog every now and then you probably already know my feelings on that.

Yesterday, I wrote about the dangers of hiring SEO/SEM people you’ve never heard of. Today I wanted to follow up by discussing a particular pitfall in hiring someone you might know… And yes, you know these folks. You know them because you’ve bought cosmetics, legal services, kitchen accessories, plane tickets and maybe even your home gas service from them. Thats right, they’re Multi-Level Marketers (MLM’s) and believe it or not there are several MLM groups selling Search Engine Marketing services. I won’t mention them by name but one of the more prominent ones almost rhymes with “BadMove.” I wouldn’t ever hire one of these firms and I’ll explain why in a second.

First of all, if you don’t know how MLM’s work, do some research on Mary Kay,which is often held up as the gold standard for these types of businesses. I don’t want this post to be interpreted as an indictment of MLM’s in general; my only concern is how this model has been applied to SEM services.

Selling cosmetics or home goods is one thing, but in selling ongoing business services, there is a fundamental problem with MLM’s in that the person selling the service has little business interest in what’s good for his or her clients long term — the system doesn’t reward salespeople for that. The salesperson has a much greater interest in meeting their quota as quickly as possible and moving on to more profitable activities like recruiting people to work underneath them in the MLM. I always take umbrage when the person selling me a service has little to gain from my success in using his or her product.

And because just about ANYONE with a pulse and willingness to sell a complex service they don’t understand can represent these companies, buying from an MLM also means that you won’t have any direct contact with anyone who is truly an expert. Note also that some of these services do not actually drive traffic to YOUR site with their ads, they drive traffic to a custom page that they create on THEIR site. Not a fan of that either because visitors are still another click away before they get to experience your brand directly.

No, it’s not a scam… It’s business. But it’s a business that will undoubtedly waste your time and money. Only buy search services from real experts that come highly recommended and bring real references. Otherwise I guarantee that you will be sorely disappointed in the results.

If you want to know if SEO, PPC, social media or another online marketing initiative might work for your business, talk to people you know and see who they’ve worked with and what the relationship was like. And even with a high recommendation from someone you respect, spend some time with a prospective vendor before hiring. A true expert will be willing to spend an hour with you to make sure they can help you; a true expert will help you separate the fact from the myth and explain how winning campaigns are built; a true expert will tell you not to waste your time or money on an initiative that isn’t likely to help you even if they stand to profit from it. And be wary of anyone that appears to be selling a “silver bullet” solution that seems to be the answer to all that ails your online marketing.

I know this search engine business is complicated stuff… But that’s all the more reason to do your homework before you dive in. Talk to people about what you really need. You can even talk to me if you like; I’ll give you an honest opinion and I don’t even sell SEO. But don’t hire a stranger, not for this.

Could it be? A traditional direct advertising model that is targeted, available to small business and has analytics built right into the platform? Watch this space; ScoutMob may very well be the start of an important trend in small business marketing and perhaps a renewed relevance for more traditional advertising in local markets.

You can listen to Tuesday’s episode of GFR below. The interview with Michael from ScoutMob starts about halfway through. But don’t be too hasty to fast forward through the first half — we were talking with Amy Pedersen of Slimpressions, a truly homegrown Atlanta-area business.

At our presentation last week at Roam Atlanta, one of my colleagues asked me to explain the difference between marketing and advertising. It was a fantastic question, as many business owners use the two terms almost interchangeably.

First, let’s address the terminology. If you ever have a question about what a marketing term means, make yourself look smart by visiting the extensive marketing dictionary available on the American Marketing Association’s web site. Here is how the AMA defines marketing:

“Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”

This, by contrast is the textbook definition of advertising:

“The placement of announcements and persuasive messages in time or space purchased in any of the mass media by business firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/ or persuade members of a particular target market or audience about their products, services, organizations, or ideas.”

So what does it mean? First off, marketing is BIGGER. It encompasses value and managing customer relationships. (By the way, if you have questions on managing customer experience, you should listen to our interview with experience guru Mike Wittenstein on Gravity Free Radio). Advertising is also tactical while marketing is strategic.

Most importantly though,especially from a small business perspective is that advertising is PASSIVE. You put your message in front of as many eyeballs as you can afford and wait for the customer to make the next move. Marketing, however is an ACTIVE process by which you determine how you are going to reach your customers, persuade them to purchase from you and, after the purchase, make them happy.

The passive, impersonal nature of advertising, along with the staggeringly poor ROI usually makes it a poor investment for small business owners (unless it is meant as a brand awareness-builder to support an existing and ongoing campaign). However, ALL entrepreneurs need to build winning marketing strategies in order to compete effectively during tough economic times.

Focusing on value, message, experience and brand are all great ideas that can positively influence your company’s sales… And you didn’t even need to advertise.

When putting together a marketing plan, many small businesses look at their budgets and try to think of where they can advertise to boost sales.

Instead of taking that approach, here’s a different angle… Look at your marketing plan and look at your budget and try to think of all the ways you can improve sales WITHOUT advertising.

It’s true that there exists no better and more efficient way to put your business’ name in front of a lot of eyeballs. But at the same time, it produces low ROI in comparison with other types of marketing like public speaking, networking, PR or even direct mail for example. And it’s usually terribly wasteful.

Consider this: in your local community newspaper, your ad can probably be seen by 10-20,000 people every week. But how many of those 20,000 are really ideal customers for you? It likely isn’t 20,000. For example, if your product or service is geared more towards women than men, you can already cut that 20,000 in half. Geared towards women with young children at home? Take another significant cut. Odds are that when you really narrow it down, you’ve only got a couple thousand people left out of the 20,000 you’re paying for.

And, taken on it’s own, independent of a bigger strategy, most small business owners can count the number of times that the local newspaper made their phone ring on one hand.

Advertising on it’s own can’t be a marketing plan for small businesses. Instead of going to advertising first, do it last… For a small business, advertising works best as the icing on top of working strategy, filling in the gaps and finding the people that your other initiatives just can’t get to.

So as you enter the new quarter and think about your marketing, think about how you can reverse the model and do it differently this time.

I’ve been telling this story for years and I’m sure that just about everyone who’s ever worked with me for any length of time has heard it. Early in my career I worked as a designer and production manager for a network security firm and I was always eager to impress our VP of Marketing with my boundless creativity. So I’d come into meetings prepared to present my very best.

But I very rarely made it onto the white board. Instead, my very best concepts usually got the following response:

“That’s a great idea… For a different company.”

I came to dread those eight words and I heard them often. But that experience taught me a very valuable lesson which I have carried with me for years… We are all capable of having great ideas — MANY great ideas. But you can’t implement them all. And most of your ideas, even some of your favorites — once taken into the context of your business — probably shouldn’t even make it onto the white board.

Effective marketing, and effective overall business management requires a degree of moderation. You’re always going to have more opportunities, more ideas and more creative insights than you will have the time, money and personnel with which to implement them. So don’t be afraid to kill the ones that don’t fit straight off, no matter how creative or innovative they are.

Here’s the bottom line: the folks that sell you your ads will never admit this, but the truth is that any kind of mass media advertising isn’t designed to “work” the way a small business owner wants it to. Those are awareness-building tools and not the kinds of initiatives that, on their own, are likely to bring you the kind of ROI you’re looking for… Namely phone calls, foot traffic, etc.

I recommend that small business owners invest their time and marketing budget into efforts that are likely to reach fewer people, but more likely to net actual customers. These would include networking, referral marketing, retention programs, email marketing, etc. And build an audience that you can reach over and over again.

I wrote about this in November and again in December but considering the topic, it’s work saying again. Marketing is a science of reach times frequency. Reach is sexier because we all like to think that because we’re in a magazine that’s read by 200,000 that we’re going to drum up a lot of interest. But frequency is actually more important. You’ll win a lot more business by reaching 50 people 10 times each than you will reaching 500 people once.

Another thing that works is incentives… Incentivize new customers, incentivize current customers to refer friends and family, incentivize partners, local business owners and others who can send you new business. When you network and meet people that have the potential to send you a lot of business, bring them in and offer them a free or discounted service so they can see how great it is. And make sure that when you do win new business that you have a retention process in place to keep those customers and stay in front of them.

The business that I mentioned that sparked this post was actually a massage business. Here’s what I suggested to the owner as examples of high-ROI but low-cost marketing efforts that would likely make more sense for him than traditional advertising:

• Create a referral program
• Create a retention program
• Solicit businesses to allow you to use their offices/retail locations for advertising; if you offer a discount it could be considered an employee benefit
• Also solicit business owners to buy your service in the form of gift cards for employee bonuses or x-mas gifts
• Office massage days are a great idea too as is offering massage in a company’s trade-show booth. These types of services have a great value to the business you market them to and gives you the opportunity to be paid to market yourself to a large group of individuals that could ultimately become your customers as well.

Traditional advertising is a great tool… just not for what most small businesses use it for. I usually tell small business owners to invest in developing low-reach/high-frequency/high-ROI initiatives BEFORE spending on advertising. Mass media is usually the thing I recommend that businesses do last after they have developed all of these other engines to acquire and retain customers. That ensures that we have the right processes in place to keep any customers that DO come into the system through traditional advertising.

Have questions about developing an effective small business marketing plan? Shoot me an email, I’m happy to help.

This is extremely important info for marketers and business owners and, may arguably be the single most important lesson there is to learn in advertising and marketing. For some of us, it means “unlearning” what we may have learned in business school where reach and frequency were usually given twin billing as the most important foundations of a marketing campaign. Not the case… Frequency should always take precedence.

Reach is definitely the sexier of the two… To say I reached 500,000 people with my ad campaign sounds a lot more important than to talk about how often it’s running. That’s why a lot of business owners make the mistake of choosing reach over frequency. “If I put an ad in this magazine, I can reach a MILLION readers!” That’s great, but what if you can only afford to do that once? The answer is simple: your money will be completely wasted.

Frequency is MUCH more important than reach. And at the small business level where budgets are tighter and the opportunity costs of advertising are higher, it’s really the only thing that matters. If you can market to a group of 20 people 10 times each in a relatively short period of time, I guarantee that you will get much more business than marketing to a group of 200 people once.

Repetition is important, it’s how we learn and it’s how we build trust and familiarity. How did the restaurant around the corner become your favorite? They taught you over several visits that they would treat you well, serve you good food and not overcharge you. They may even remember your name when you come in. It’s the same thing with marketing a business. If you communicate an effective message multiple times across different media, it will start to sink in.

But craft the message first and the plan second and focus on frequency. Always choose frequency over reach and always mix your media as much as possible. Don’t sink all your money into running an ad in the local newspaper every week of the year. Do the ad as much as you can while still employing other tactics like direct mail, email, sponsorships, networking, events, etc. If you have company vehicles, invest in wrapping them with graphics. Before you were only in the newspaper. Now, you’re in the newspaper and you’re all over town.

Maybe you’re not reaching as far as you can in terms of population or geography but you’re reaching a smaller number of people well and you’re building a marketing machine that can be easily scaled and replicated for other areas over time.