Best Practices are kinda like fairy tales.

It is late, dark and quiet. A beautiful woman sits alone on a red leather couch wearing only a tank top and a pair of short shorts. Her hair is in a pony tail and Letterman is on in the background but she barely notices it because she is lost in her computer. Every few minutes Tweetdeck chirps and she is follows a new stream of ideas and conversations.

Without warning there is a loud crash followed by a scream and then crying. The woman springs to her feet and runs up the stairs of her home two at a time until she is in the dark doorway of a bedroom…looking down she sees the source of the tears, her son is on the floor.

The woman sweeps up the boy in her arms and consoles him by lying down beside him in bed and gently rubbing his head. As the child begins to settle down he looks at his mother, eyes still a little wet and asks her to tell him a story, but not just any story, he wants to hear the same story he has asked to hear every night for the last year.

“Mommy, Can you tell me the story of when you increased sales 25% by launching your company blog?”

…and just like all the times before, the woman gently ran her fingers through her son's hair and shared her story she likes to call "Best Practices"

I was at the Canadian Marketing Association National Conference yesterday and found it interesting how many people still in this day and age ask for and rely on Best Practices. Now before I get into what may be perceived as a mini rant I want to say that the Conference was very well put together and I got a lot out of it so please don't take my observation as a criticism of the event.

Best Practices are an old way of looking at things and should be called "Things that worked for someone at some time but probably won't work for you because your goals, situations or conditions will all be different."

I am always for blazing new trails and not following others but even I realize the importance of understanding what works but please also understand that conditions change daily and things like geography or change in economy or where your company is in the brand development stage (and about 100 other things) all contribute to how ideas are received and accepted so if you are going to invest time in reading Best Practices please treat them as fairy tales and allow them to inspire you not influence you.

What says you?

Net Promoter Score: You are silly and asking the wrong question.

I love net promoter scores. They are cute, make people feel good about themselves and most importantly they mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

For those not exactly sure what a "Net Promoter Scores" are, it is a rating companies obtain by asking customers a single question on a 0 to 10 rating scale:

"How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?"

The main reason this is outdated is because a good company shouldn't care how likely someone may recommend their product or service.

Caring if someone is likely to recommend you is the same as asking if someone is likely to wear blue tomorrow or put on your pants right leg first...it means nothing and doesn't give a metric that people can do anything with.

The actual question that should be asked is: "Have you recommend our company to a friend or colleague?

Talk is cheap but action isn't.

If people actually refer you then you know without any hesitation that you are on to something...and if they haven't recommended you to anyone you now have an opening to ask why.

...and seriously, how likely are you to tell the truth when asked a question with the word "Likely" in it?

Forget engagement for a minute, would you fight along side your customers?

At last count there are exactly 763418 ways to attract customers and build brand loyalty. I'm not going to list them all but I am going to focus (for this post at least) on one of my favorite ways.

Advocacy Marketing.

Advocacy Marketing is basically picking a cause that directly affects your industry or customers and fighting on their behalf...and just so we are clear, this is not picking a charity and donating to them (that is a good thing as well) but rather picking an issue that people that rally around and if you win the fight you will have made your small part of the world a better place.

There are a lot of great examples of this but my favorite right now Is the fight against spec work being led by Upstack. You see they are a service that matches people looking for creative work with amazingly creative people. Their business relies on having a full roster of happy designers to fulfill their brand promise so this makes sense to fight on behalf of the designers who work with them but more then that (and this is the impressive part) they made their advocacy stand one of the differentiators in their business while a majority of their competitors have based their model on the spec work/contest model.

Wes Wilson, the guy behind Upstack is a friend and I am helping with some of the idea generation for this (that's how I know so much about it) because he and I share the same passion for this cause.

The interesting thing about advocacy marketing is that it doesn't apply to every business or situation but if it did and you had the choice between marketing to your customers or starting a movement (maybe revolution is a better word) what would you choose?

If you were asking me, the answer would be fight every time.

Paying to Speak at Conferences ain't a bad thing.

I speak at a lot of conferences and I like to think I am being invited because my talks are a mix of interesting and informative with just a dash of southern charm that you only get from being Canadian.

Because I speak so much I think I understand the conference scene pretty good and found a recent blog post by Scott Stratten interesting because he was saying that a certain conference was charging to speak at their event and he didn't like it.

Now I don't and wont pay to speak anywhere. I will waive my fee for friends or a great opportunity but paying to speak is not something I would do so he and I are similar in that way but I don't share the same passion as Scott on this subject because paying to speak at a conference isn't such a bad thing under certain circumstances.

If I was a freelance consultant offering my services to a specific industry I would absolutely pay to speak at very targeted conference because it would be an investment the same way as advertising is but this would be laser targeted and probably reap a financial return right away. There is no better way to develop new business then to stand on a stage and prove to people through your own work examples how great working with you would benefit them.

There are plenty other sides to this argument but on a whole it is just about opportunities matching your personal or professional goals...and if you don't want to pay to speak because it doesn't match your goals then do what I do....I delete those offers.

What says you?

Man Plans [marketing], God Laughs.

Have you ever heard the expression "Man Plans, God Laughs"?

I think there is a lot of truth in this saying, well maybe not the part about God getting involved because she is obviously too busy helping professional athletes make winning plays to notice small business folks but rather the part about planning and over planning.

I got to thinking about this last week while I was in Halifax delivering the closing keynote at the Aim Conference because it was there that I met Heather Ritchie and learned about the start up she works at called Lymbix.com. Heather is in full on planning mode to launch her product and being the "helpful sort of guy" type I offered some possibly "bad advice" about how to not over plan for her launch. I have no idea if she will take any of my advice because she is no "Damsel in Distress" and knows what she is doing on her own but here is the advice I gave her and you can decide if there is anything you can take from it for yourself.

When sitting down to write a Marketing Plan figure out what you want to do to launch and get you through the first six months. On top of that, figure out where you want to be in 3 years and nothing else. The 6 month plan should be thorough and complete but in my experience you will find that so many things will change or you will have a much fuller understanding of your business and the possible opportunities at the six month mark that no plan you wrote at day one will be as targeted as you thought it would be when you wrote it. Once you are here you could write a new plan or just start working towards your three year goal.

What I mean by this is once you actually understand your business you can make real decisions and it is at this point you should be thinking about the 3 year goal. With every opportunity that comes up you ask yourself "Is this getting me closer to [the 3 year goal]". If it isn't then it isn't an immediate priority and should be put aside until it is. This doesn't mean these opportunities can't be secondary priorities and acted on but things with the fuller impact should be acted on first if so you are always working towards your goals.

Heather rewarded me for all my free advice by personally driving me to the airport. I just can't decide if she did it as a thank you or to just make sure I actually left and stopped poking my nose in her business, either way I appreciated the lift and the inspiration for this post.