The story from both Clients and vendors isn’t a lack of jobs –most are hiring – but, rather, a lack of talent. For more than a year, these companies have been actively trying to fill positions for Web site designers, marketing managers, sales people, equipment installers and other positions but of hundreds of resumes, barely a handful warrant even an interview. Few applicants bring the knowledge, skills and mindset needed to contribute to a company. But more alarming and disheartening, many applicants demonstrate a lack of desire, determination and urgency to get to work, the traits that exemplified the American labor force for centuries. Not anymore?

A Cintas laundry route driver said it best this morning as he loaded heavy mats onto his van, “You have to have the will to work.” Small business is still creating jobs, despite federal interference. What’s missing seems to be skilled people willing to get to work.

This was especially disappointing because once I unraveled his points, they made perfect sense. The author, a senior fellow at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, points the finger of blame in the right places, and in the final chapter, suggests the policies required to restore sanity to our economy and government. Meltdown reads quickly but other books may be more useful, such as Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt.

Ad Sales: “Oh! Thanks for returning my call (elation).”

Apparently, most people don’t return their calls. I can hear the keyboard being feverishly attacked as this sales person tries to call up my database entry. But to no avail. Stumped. Then near panic as if having a conversation without my contact information on screen would be too terrifying an experience.

“Wait, where are you located (confusion)?”

Me: “New Jersey. You just mailed me a copy of your magazine.”

At this point, I already know the most useful information I’m ever going to get about this publication is by reading it regularly and reading the media kit. But I play along to be polite. Remember, I’m trying to give a pass to the rookies. Then,

Ad Sales: “What’s your email address so I can send you my contact info?”

Me: “I’m holding your business card in my hand. You sent me your contact info with the magazine.”

And later,

“Send your press releases to me instead of the editor because he’s so busy but I’ll push it through.” Interesting, because I’ve placed news on your front cover, nine of my press releases come up in the online database on your Web site and I’ve never placed a single ad in your magazine. Your editor seems pretty comfortable running my news without a push from a sales person 25 years his junior. In fact, you said on your voicemail it was a press release published in the very issue you sent me that sparked your initial phone call. But I won’t say any of that. Instead,

“Thanks for the offer to help. I’ll keep that in mind.”

It’s even more painful with experienced sales reps because they don’t have inexperience as an excuse.

Me: “It’s more than a month since the issue came out, my copy never came in the mail, and I’m still waiting for the extra copies with my feature article in it.”

Ad Sales: “I’ve forwarded your request to circulation.”

Wow, what service! What dedication! Surely this sales rep must know there are several competing magazines serving the same readership and their ad sales reps would be bending over backwards for our full page ad program.

The good sales reps understand that if their magazine is truly the right fit for the advertiser then very little selling should be needed. If your target audience is converters, for example, and 98% of a magazine’s BPA-audited circulation reaches converters, then it makes sense to advertise. No amount of badgering or rate cutting can make a magazine that’s a poor fit become the right fit. No amount of discounting will entice a vegan member of PETA to buy a lifetime supply of buffalo burgers.

The good ones try to understand what their Clients are trying to accomplish. They understand advertisers are actual people, and paying Clients I might add. From a recent conversation,

Ad Sales: “I know you wanted more frequency of exposure…”

Me: “Yes, but we still need to work within a budget.”

Ad Sales: “If you went to a ½ pg. ad instead of an island ½ pg. ad you could run five times instead of four for the same amount money.”

Me: “Yes, but your graphic designer always stacks two horizontal half-page ads on top of each other. I want my ad to be the only ad on the page so it’s surrounded by editorial. Then your readers spend more time on the page with my ad. An island half is your only fractional size ad that guarantees we’re the only ad on the page.”

Ad Sales: “Well how about if you ran the ½ pg. horizontal and I’ll guarantee your ad is the only ad on the page? No extra charge.”

“Ok! Excellent idea. Thanks for the offer.”

And that didn’t even cost them anything – just some time and effort thinking about how to serve the advertiser. We scored a 25% increase in exposure at no charge and the entire process was done without my contact information being on anyone’s screen.

Content for your Web site – relax knowing your Web site will always feature fresh, new information. This instills confidence in prospects and customers and ensures coverage in search engines with both the content needed to appear in relevant searches and the frequent site updates needed to support high rankings. Google considers the freshness of content as an important factor determining search results.

Content for your email newsletters – it’s easy to stay in touch with customers and prospects and stick to your email newsletter schedule when you already have current news in the can that may be rewritten to suit an email publication. Plus, the email brings prospects back to the original article on the Web site.

Content for your social media program – now that your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn pages are setup, it’s easy to keep them fresh by leveraging your news to suit the format of each platform. Your PR program provides a steady flow of postable material that can be rewritten to encourage comments and discussions and attract fan support.

Content for your blog – use your blog to reveal the backstory behind the news or add a personal angle to the story. Surely, developing a new product over several years required overcoming a host of challenges and surprises and sparked several inside jokes among the project team. This is the material that draws comments and interaction.

Once you get access to a constant flow of newsworthy concepts that warrant media attention, you’ll soon see there’s no reason to restrict their release to the media – there is every reason to leverage and reuse these concepts everywhere. The key is to uncover the worthy concepts hiding inside your product, service or company.

In Praise Of Print

I admit I was one of the first to jump on the digital magazine concept. After moving three times in six years, getting my address updated on 50 or 60+ magazines and newspapers had become quite a hassle. Now that we’ve had several years to grow accustomed to receiving digital versions of print magazines, I’ve noticed a few things that might be useful for publishers to consider:

The ability to click on links in articles and ads is great and it’s certainly a benefit for advertisers but I don’t click them as much as I’d anticipated. Why not? Probably because I’m not actually reading the digital editions as much as I’d anticipated. Reading on screen is simply not a comfortable experience. I typically open a digital edition as soon as it arrives in my email, read the editorial, and scan the entire issue page by page. If an article warrants more in-depth reading, I print it out or simply plan to go back to it later, then close the issue and return to whatever I’d been working on. Rarely do I seem to go back to the issue. And once it’s hidden in the In Box or deleted, it’s not likely to be seen again.

Print magazines stick around. They often get read or at least skimmed and scanned several times before being discarded. A 30-day shelf life for an ad in a monthly magazine offers far more opportunities for exposure than a 30-second shelf life in a digital edition if it’s deleted. Sure, there are opportunities to forward a link to an article or ad in the digital edition but people have proven their willingness and desire to go to a Web site upon reading a print ad or article despite the inconvenience of having to type a few letters into the browser.

Thankfully, advertisers don’t need to choose in which edition their ads are to run – the digital edition is typically included at no charge. Of course, if there’s no print edition in which to advertise, everyone loses.

See the list of magazines that folded here

Someone in the marketing department may have thought this was a brilliant extension of their Old West image. Or maybe their marketing team had grown tired of showing Billy Kidd skiing through trees in waist-high powder every year – a photo now relegated to a gatefold. But it’s precisely that Billy Kidd photo that gets skiers excited to go skiing. That’s the product. And one of the most important rules in developing brochures, ads, postcards and other marketing materials is to show the product. Don’t show me horses unless you’re trying to sell me horses.

For more incongruity (yes, incongruity!), the tagline under the herd of horses states, “#1 Family Resort in North America”. For whose family? Mr. Ed’s? If Steamboat wants to attract families, their marketing team might have considered replacing the horses on the cover with the excellent photo depicting the perfect American family smiling on a perfect, sunny day under the warm, enclosed gondola. But that photo is pushed back to page eight.

Their marketing team also forgot to test the wafer seal. My mailer ripped right through Billy Kidd when I opened it because the wafer seal was overspecified – thicker and stickier than necessary. With all the investment involved in developing the self-mailing brochure, it’s important to make sure it can be opened.

Steamboat also broke one of my personal rules: don’t try to be cute and clever just to be cute and clever. When you truly have a superior product, just say so.

If you have a LinkedIn account then no doubt you’ve been asked by a colleague, friend or long-lost acquaintance’s nephew’s roommate to recommend his/her work, abilities and expertise. I’m not going to discuss here whether you need to provide a recommendation to everyone who asks. But if you decide to recommend someone, here is a guide to writing the recommendation quickly and easily.

1. State how you know the person and for how long – this enables the reader to assess and weigh the credibility of the forthcoming recommendation.

2. Tell a story that exemplifies how the subject person faced and successfully solved a problem. Focus on the highlights and the outcome, not necessarily on the chronology of events. This story may recount how you worked together to complete an especially grueling presentation on a tight deadline or it may recount how you observed the subject deftly handle a sticky Client or customer situation, for example. Or the story may describe how he/she worked a trade show booth with an impressive level of knowledge and enthusiasm that helped reap 50% more leads than at the same show the year before.

3. Provide secondary information supporting the story – this may include complimentary character traits that correspond to the lead story such as persistence, tenacity, poise under pressure and sound judgment.

4. Reiterate your willingness to stake your name and reputation on this person. If this makes you think twice, then you may be better off moving on to a different project or softening the tone of the recommendation. Remember, this is an online recommendation that will live on long after you’re gone. The recipient may someday republish your recommendation all over the Web, in a TV commercial or in his/her marketing materials. Be careful, truthful and precise about every word.

For a few examples, see my LinkedIn page.

Paul Entin is president of epr – Ideas That Click, Bloomsbury, NJ (www.eprmarketing.com). He may be reached at paul at eprmarketing.com or follow on Twitter @paulentin.

Green is nice and highlighting it can help secure exposure in the media but it’s not the most important selling point. If it is, and if it’s not enjoying a government subsidy, then it’s likely not yet a viable product.

Google’s rankings – even with the rise of social media – are based primarily on:

1. The number of links from other Web sites to your Web site
2. The relevance of those links to the search request

Therefore, if you want to increase your rankings in Google, you need to increase the number of links from other Web sites to your site, especially among Web sites that relate to your industry and you need to do this without trying to defraud Google.

One sure way to get links from relevant Web sites while ensuring you won’t be penalized is by placing relevant news releases and articles in print publications. That’s right… in print publications. Nearly all trade magazines archive the feature articles and news releases published in their print editions on their Web sites. And in nearly every case, they also include a link to your Web site. By placing a single, worthwhile news release in five or six magazines, we might secure five or six links. Do this once per month for a year and we might secure 72 or more links!

See example

Like dollar cost averaging in a mutual fund whereby a constant amount of money purchases more shares when the price has declined, continuing to invest in high visibility marketing in the form of advertising, publicity and other vehicles during a slowdown yields substantial returns. Ads and articles running in thinner print magazines command more attention than in hefty editions, attention that is even more valuable if the competition has fled and retrenched. Online ads appear higher on the page for the same budget or bid amount. Plus ad rates are either reduced or can be reduced by a skilled media buyer. You can get more bang for the buck with less noise to drown out your message.

I’m not disputing the concept that investing in marketing during a slowdown yields a huge boost when the recovery comes around but my point is that there is no recovery coming around. The economic boom we longingly remember from a few years ago was artificially created by a series of government-driven policies involving interest rates, credit, taxation and other areas. Economic activity should not have been as brisk as it was. Therefore, to sit still while awaiting the return of another artificially created economic boom before taking action dooms your company to failure.

Instead, we need to operate not based on a hypothetical economic recovery but based on the actual economic conditions we face today and will likely continue to face for the foreseeable future. There is less low hanging fruit today than in the past. Each sale requires greater effort. More leads need to be generated to maintain comparable sales. More follow-up is needed to stay in touch as the buying cycle gets extended. More after the sale contact is needed to drive repeat business and referrals. Yet people and companies still need to buy things. They still need specialized services. The question is, “How will they know to buy them from you if they think you’ve disappeared?”