Who Do I Pay?

When a conference recently asked me to pay five-figures to speak to an audience of a few hundred professionals, mostly third-party service providers, I presented an alternate case.

• "Why would I pay five figures to speak to maybe 75 decision makers when I interact with my community of anywhere between five hundred and ten thousand professionals (depending on the content) on a daily basis at no cost to me?"

Let's just say the "alternate case" didn't go very far.

In fact, whenever I communicate the concept of building a community (i.e. best customer and prospect list) so you don't have to pay a third party for access to anything, I get the "Ed Bowling" response.

At a conference, a Marketing Executive looked me in the eyes and earnestly issued a memorable sentence.

• "I just want you to tell me what the next big thing is so I can pay for it to scale my business."

Come on. The marketing executive was not willing to do any work. None. She wanted me to tell her something for free, something she could throw money at so her business would thrive and she'd look good.

Her business recently announced that it was shutting down.

Do you want to know what offends so many of my readers? They're offended when I talk about the marketing brilliance of Headphones.com ... especially readers who advocate a "pay to play" style of marketing (i.e. give Google money, Google gives you clicks). Think about what they've done.

• 500,000+ registered community users (i.e. a prospect list), plus all the data of what each registered community user is interested in / reads / views, paired with an Action Stream of email/text featuring items/content that relates to the content the registered community user interacts with. You could do that, right? What stops you from doing that?
• Nearly 200,000 subscribers to YouTube reviews, content, and the weekly podcast (a three-hour show published live nearly every Saturday and then recorded for everybody else).
• At least a half-dozen hired in-house influencers who produce content ... hundreds of articles and videos. They know their products. Their editors/producers make it look professional.
• Mid-eight-figures in annual net sales of items that can be purchased easily on Amazon for the same price and delivered by Amazon days earlier. There is a disincentive to buy from this brand, and yet customers accept the disincentive.
• A 365 day returns policy (vs. 30 days on Amazon).

I mean, 500,000 registered users ... that's your prospect list, right there (plus your most active customers to boot ... they're teaching your prospects on your behalf). And you know exactly what they are interested in in-between purchases ... you can act upon it. Would you rather act upon that or act upon some rando who typed the word "WIDGET"? (and yes, the answer can be you'd like to do both).

All of that represents modern e-commerce.

None of that represents paying Google money.

None of that represents paying Facebook money.

All of that represents putting Google/Facebook to work FOR YOU, not the other way around.

Still ... here's the feedback I generally get.

You can build a team with modern in-house marketing expertise, paying them to do brilliant work building your own community (i.e. your own prospect list).

Or you can rent temporary access to your own customers and prospects, enriching Google/Facebook in the process.

You have choices. Who should you pay?