Is Anyone Honestly Honest?

Is it possible to grow from zero to 500,000,000 customers in 6 years?

The answer is yes.

The answer is Facebook.

Based on the sheer number of registered accounts, it is the most successful social networking company ever.

Let's look at another one: Starbucks.

Most of their customers are unaware that Starbucks is nearly 40 years old. Founded in 1971.

Today Starbucks has over 17,000 locations worldwide.

Step back in time to 1962. That's when Sam Walton opened the first Walmart. Last count was 8500 stores in 15 countries.

One more blast to the past: 1940, the year the McDonald Brothers started selling burgers. Now they have over 31,000 stores around the world.

These are just three companies that came to mind as I was thinking of Mega-Success Stories.

Each one of these grew because they had the money to grow.

A couple years ago I read the book, McDonald's - Behind the Golden Arches by John Love and learned the struggles and near bankruptcy that McDonald's went through in the early years. (The book was published 25 years ago and McDonald's is one of my clients.)

Each of these companies have had to fight the temptation to rip off their customers. And each have had their share of controversy in their lifetimes.

Many people misquote the Bible, "Money is the root of all evil", and then proclaim a gospel of poverty as a more honest way of life.

Let's clear up the quote.

From Wikipedia: The phrase derives from a saying attributed to Jesus in the Apostle Paul's First Epistle to Timothy in the New Testament: "The love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10, KJV). The expression is commonly misquoted as simply "Money is the root of all evil". A more accurate rendering from the original Greek may be: "For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil," (New American Standard Bible).

Ah, ha... It's not money, it is greed and what how people act out their greed that causes the evil.

So, back to the question, Is Anyone Honestly Honest?

Look at the motives, look at the heart. Everyone is tempted. The small business owner is tempted to pay someone under the table. The millionaire is tempted to sock away assets in an offshore account.

The man in poverty is tempted to rob, steal, even kill for money.

Temptation does not always result in bad behavior. It 99% of the temptations we face we overcome. The same is true in the business world.

So what does this have to do with marketing, and advertising?

Advertising is the paid form of marketing that you buy for your business.

Marketing includes advertising and everything else related to your business and that includes you and your staff.

Are you honest? Look at your motives.

Is it okay to want to earn lots of money? Look at the motives behind it.

If you let greed take over as you primary motivation for making money it will fail eventually.

If your primary focus is on helping people by selling them a product or service, and set your prices and fees accordingly, everyone wins.

Enjoy the Holidays.

Privacy & Personalized Marketing

Facebook just launched a location service where people can update where they are on their Facebook page.

This is not a new service in social media, there are a couple of others including the one I use on occasion, FourSquare.

But Facebook is a giant. If you watched the video I posted last week, (Click here to see it again), did you catch that if Facebook were a country, it would rank 3rd largest in the world?

Facebook has privacy issues because it is so big.

Let me explain.

Because Facebook is so popular, unscrupulous people have found ways to gather information that most people would want kept private.

To Facebooks credit, they have created increased privacy options, but the general public hasn't locked down their Facebook pages and taken advantage of the privacy options Facebook offers.

I prefer location services like Foursquare, because I can use it when I want and only include people that I trust as my friends. Tonight I'm going to a baseball game and I'll use it to see who else is there.

Some businesses have used Foursquare as a marketing tool by offering specials to people who "Check in" on Foursquare when they are at that particular business. At lunch today, I was checking in on FourSquare and noticed that the Radio Shack in the same shopping center was offering a FourSquare special of 10% off just for showing them your phone with the FourSquare offer. It's a form of Word of Mouth endorsements via social media.

Most people however I not aware of all of the ways they give up their private information.

10 years ago, my mom was afraid of ordering anything online, yet for years she would freely give her credit card number to a stranger over the phone when placing an order at Sears.

Take a look at your key ring.

Do you have one of those loyalty cards with a bar code from your grocery store that they swipe in order to save money?

They have a record of everything you buy. Sometimes that is helpful like when they had the egg recall last week, some of the grocery stores were able to call customers who purchased the recalled eggs and leave them a warning and recall message.

And unless you are buying stuff that would be embarrassing, then you probably have nothing to worry about.

Personalized Marketing at the grocery store also occurs when they hand you coupons for your next visit that are based on the items you just bought.

Websites, and search engines do personalized marketing too, with ads that are relevant for what you are searching for and/or your location.

In the radio business, I've done a form of personalized advertising too.

No, I don't call your name in a commercial, but I'll target a very specific person in the content of the ad and keep it as time relevant as possible too.

A few other thoughts on this subject, when I turned 50 a few months ago, the direct mail and some of the email (Spam) I started receiving was geared to the 50+ generation. More like the 65+ generation.

And if you are going to send a direct mail piece to me addresses to RESIDENT or OCCUPANT, I'll probably be calling on you to teach you how to do a better job with your advertising and marketing.