7. Are you OK with Tweakers?

Are you a Marketing Sheep? 261 Questions

Lately, I've had the audacity to call myself a Conversion Scientist. Conversion Specialist is actually a more accurate, but "Scientist" draws more interesting pictures in peoples' minds. Plus, I love that line from Ghostbusters: "Backoff, Mam. I'm a Scientist."

Now Seth Godin has come along and declared that I'm really a tweaker. My job is to make those often small changes that cause a Web site to convert visitors into leads and customers. But, a tweaker is not nearly as cool as a scientist.

I found this post through a discussion on Social Media Optimization that Rohit Bhargava started. Of his five good rules on SMO (fight that gag reflex), I love the last, "Encourage Mashup." This rule tells the marketing sheep that his job is to put a little bit of his product out there for others to play with.

This was at the heart of the first item on the Massey Marketing Manifesto: "Marketing is a valuable service." It says that marketing is an extension of the serivces (or products) provided by your company.

What information does your organization generate that could be shared with the public?

Just because you don't know what they would use it for, doesn't mean it wouldn't be valuable to someone. And if it is related to what you sell, doesn't it stand to reason that the people using it would be somewhat close to those you sell to? The answer may be NO.

But to try out such strategies, you clearly need to leave the flock and embrace the tweakers.

Finally, Social Media Optimization?! That is a name that will be bandied about in the flock for years to come. I hope this is the last time I'll ever use it.