July 17, 2019

*-- Twitter Tweet Storm - Real World Business & Marketing --*

by: Jaffer Ali @Jaffer22915438

1) Real World Business & Marketing: What follows is a Tweet storm that has real life lessons learned the hard way. This is a mini real world entrepreneurial guide. I included links to blog posts when appropriate. Inspired by RWRI & @nntaleb

2) If you are relying on social media platforms to sell your stuff, this is a short term strategy. Ex: FB let marketers build groups only to charge them to reach the audience.

3) Do NOT use Lifetime Value as a metric to run your business. The future does not resemble the past and the further you kick the can of profitability down the road, the more at risk you are. Agencies and media owners tout LTV to get you to spend more to acquire a customer. Good 4 them, bad 4 you.

4) Use break-even metrics for customer acquisition *targets* which are not as far down the road. https://jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/2014-what-marketing-idea-is-ready-for-retirement/

5) If you are using FREE SHIPPING, fughettoubit. Do you know how much free shipping is REALLY costing you? Read from my sister and co-founder of PulseTV.com: https://www.mytotalretail.com/article/how-much-is-free-shipping-really-costing-you/

6) Never use Google or Facebook's tracking to assess your profitability. They will attribute orders in a way to increase your media rates. "Fox guarding hen house" is operable: https://jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2019/06/27/facebook-con-will-it-lead-to-its-collapse/

7) Amazon, Facebook and Google trio represent MORE than 90% of all online ad revenues. Practice baseball hall of famer, Wee Willie Keeler when asked how he was such a great hitter, he said, "I hit 'em where they ain't".

8) There are MILLIONS of websites starving for your ad dollars and they are in a squeeze. The trio are squeezing YOU. Be on the right side of the squeeze.

9) Work obsessively to take advantage of the *zero marginal costs of media*. If you use free media, work tirelessly into internalizing this media.

This means converting all free and paid media into creating your own media: https://jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2016/04/13/zero-marginal-media-costs-the-marketing-windfall/

10) Marketers MUST learn to clip your "left tail risk". This means extrapolations from your media tests are fragile and remain completely suspect. You can never control variables "rolling out" needs to be a step by step process. Remember, you can never step in the same river twice.

11) You must always ask "What business am I in". Surprisingly, many do not know. Hint, the answer lies in who is paying you. Do not confuse what you do for the business you are in.

12) For every 1 hour you spend predicting, extrapolating, projecting or anticipating - spend 10 hours building strategies for when those future oriented impulses prove wrong. Understand, THEY WILL BE WRONG.

13) Breaking the paradigm of prediction is essential to make yourself less fragile: https://jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/the-paradigm-of-prediction/

14) Understand that obsessing about efficiency breeds fragility. Nature has many examples of redundancies that decrease fragility. Introduce these with mindful attention: https://jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/efficiency-and-fragility/

15) Big Data, Math, Behavioral Targeting, One-to-One marketing, technology, etc. will not solve your marketing problems. Beware of vendor snake oil: https://jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/behavioral-targeting-the-new-snake-oil/

16) The obsession with TARGETING misses the point that as costs go to zero, the need to target approaches zero. In the days of catalog marketing, it would cost $1.50 to reach a customer. Today that has been reduced to under a penny if you own your own media.

17) Nearly every vendor selling services in the media ecosystem is either stupid or a charlatan. The more they promise you ROI, the more full of crap they are because they would be doing it for themselves since the cost of setting up an online business is close to zero.

18) Making a business selling on Amazon is one of the most fragile business models you can dream up. Amazon uses your sales as R&D and will manufacture the top selling products and kill your sales.

19) Amazon (cont): Ask *why* Amazon wants to sell YOU advertising rather than use their reach to sell their own products? They have 700 million+ SKUs on their platform.

Obviously they will make more money selling shovels to miners than mining their own gold.

20) Amazon (cont): When you sell on Amazon, THEY own this customer data and not you. They leverage this in a multitude of ways. They are a 21st Century Tom Sawyer getting you to paint the fence.

21) VC or not VC: that is the question. Turn away from every parasitic VC who steals equity and does not care about you or your business. Capital is a commodity, you are not.

22) There is no algorithmic solution to your online marketing. The DNA of marketing is a combination of: Media; Offer (Product + Price); Creative.

Importance may shift from type of business or campaign. Blending them is an art, not science.

23) Avoid the latest, greatest buzz word. Remember One to One? Ream member Real Time Marketing?: https://jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/real-time-marketing-road-to-compulsion/

24) Understand, everyone will try to tell you how to make the right decisions. Ignore most. Instead, pay attention to those that help you make whatever decisions you make, right.

25) If anyone pushes you to grow exponentially while never making a profit, run away. These idiots will use argument of economies of scale. In 99% of businesses, scale is not the issue for profit (given Zero Marginal Costs popping up everywhere).

26) If you are spending your own money advertising, ALWAYS use *last click attribution* and tell agencies, pundits, VCs and media owners to go f**** themselves.

https://jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/does-attribution-beyond-the-last-click-help-marketers/

27) If your business relies on SEO, you are fragile. This *free* traffic is subject to a fragile Google algorithm that changes nearly monthly. You must build your own media like email and SMS Text.

28) If a vendor or agency tells you to purchase your own URL for Google search (SEM), find a new vendor. You do not need an ad on a search results page for your company.

29) If you try to emulate Amazon and their policies, remember they do not make money and are subsidized. If you do not have a reasonable idea how to combat the Amazon Effect, get a job at a bank.

https://jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/26/the-amazon-effect/

30) It is useful to apply Hammurabi's Code to media buying. The online media market is largely a "Lemons Market": https://jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/02/hammurabis-cure-for-a-lemons-market/

31) If you understand what I term "Moore's Law Of Media" and that online media is doubling every 6 months while ad expenditures are increasing 12%-20% annually, your business will change forever: https://jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/22/moores-law-of-media/

Original Article: Twitter Tweet Storm - Real World Business & Marketing

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