I wrote a tip check out this morning to the woman who delivers my Wall Street Journal. Although I’m billed directly for my subscription, she often includes an empty envelope with my paper — the message being, “You owe me a tip, honey.” I hate these empty envelopes and the implied directive.

I don’t get a thank you note with the envelope — something along the lines of “Thank you for being my customer.” Nor do I get exceptional customer service as she drops the newspaper at the edge of my driveway and the road. If I don’t get out there early enough to retrieve it, it gets stolen.

So I write these checks for tips with a lot of resentment, but I do it because I know delivering newspapers before the crack of dawn, rain or snow, is not an easy job.

Writing the tip check this morning made me realize that I’ve learned a great deal about excellent customer service over the years, starting with my first job at age 11, which was delivering newspapers. And it’s this service — or perhaps outlook is a better word — that has allowed me to grow my business and work with some really cool clients.

1. Always aim for excellence

Right around the time Title IX went through, the local newspaper in my hometown began “allowing” girls to deliver the daily rag. You had to be 11 years old to snag a gig. I signed up right after I turned 11 and began delivering 76 newspapers six days a week. I’d get up at 4:30 AM, fold and bag my papers and deliver them before the deadline of 7:00 AM. Yes, I did this via bike — and I did it rain or shine.

I learned a great deal about customer service delivering the newspaper. The first month I collected the fee for delivering the paper from my customers, I learned that people would give me $.25, $.50 or even a $1.00 tip for getting their newspaper on the porch. Wow! I made sure that *everyone’s* newspaper made it on the porch — every single morning — whether or not they gave me a tip. (Got pretty good at aiming / throwing, too.)

2. Remain calm while under duress

My first “real” job was at a flower shop, which I started right after I got my work permit at age 16. When you deal with people — both customers and your boss — crap sometimes happens. The woman who owned the flower shop had real mental problems (which took me a bit to figure out).

On Valentine’s Day she decided to go home and left me in charge. The only problem was, she hadn’t purchased enough stock. By 4:30 that afternoon, we had sold out of roses.

By 5:30 PM, I had a line of angry men that went out the door. They wanted their flowers and here I was, by myself, trying to wrap suitable but not really suitable flowers plus ring up sales. I remember smiling at each and every man and thanking him for his business, even though some were really rude.

The next day one of the men came back and asked me to come work for him at his business. He said anyone who could handle that much pressure without cracking had to be good. I’ve never forgotten that and have used that lesson in all of my jobs.

3. Answer your phone

These days, you can find lots of advice from time management gurus and others who say you shouldn’t answer your phone as phone calls from people are seen as interruptions to your “real” work.

I don’t follow this advice — although I’d probably save lots of time if I did. That’s because I actually like getting calls from my clients and from people who may want to use my services.

I learned how to give “good phone” while working at a small manufacturing company. For seven years I ran the front office and spent my days managing four phone lines. The owner of the company, and my boss, used to read lots of books about customer service and actually recorded me answering the phone and talking to customers so that I could do it better!

Answering my own phone — and letting myself be interrupted — has paid in spades. My client, Dr. Helaine Smith, called me in 2005. When she tells this story to audiences she says, “Dianna was the only person of the three I called who answered her phone on a Friday afternoon.”

4. Do things without being asked

One of my son’s chores is to bring in the trash barrels. Last week he didn’t do this chore — despite the fact that it was school vacation week and he really had nothing else to do.

When I came home and asked why he hadn’t brought them in, he replied, “You didn’t tell me to do it.” I hit the roof! My reply was, “If you want to succeed in life, buster, you need to do things without being asked.”

It’s this philosophy that drives me to give my clients exceptional customer service. As one of my clients recently said to me, “I like working with you because you’re accessible. You’re always happy to hear from me. It’s obvious you’re tracking my industry because you refer to news articles and help keep me informed. You always say ‘yes,’ and you do what you say you’re going to do. You treat me with respect. All of this makes me feel heard, cared about and important.”

No one told me I had to do these things. I’m not even sure I read about them in a book. But when I put my newspaper carrier’s tip check in the envelope this morning, I realized that customer service has been the heart and soul of my business. I care about my clients and their success. It’s important to me that they know that. So I do things without being asked — even if it means it costs me in time or money.

Many thanks to Jason Fried, CEO of 37Signals, for inspiring this post. It’s based on his article, “How to Make Money in Six Easy Steps” in the current issue of Inc. magazine.

This post was going to be a direct refutation of the assertion by Rick Segal, President of GyroHSR, that B2B marketing is obsolete. But before rereading the B2B Magazine article, “Is B2B Marketing Really Obsolete?” by Sean Callahan, I did a quick Google search [B2B marketing is dead] to see what others had to say.

The search results made me laugh. Here I thought I was being way cool and timely and following David Meerman Scott’s advice with regard to real time marketing . . . . and dozens of people have already beaten Mr. Segal to the punch.

Judging by the search results, everything is dead, from traditional marketing and white papers to SEO. (Whether Elvis is dead is questionable.)

Here’s the deal: B2B marketing is definitely NOT dead! B2B marketing is alive and well and thriving, thank you very much.

What is dead, however, is the ability for high-overhead agencies and clueless consultants to pass on crappy marketing advice — and then charge mega dollars for it (case in point: an SEO firm charging $4,000 a month for regurgitated Google Analytics reports, cough, cough).

Why is that? Because now everything is measurable. In the old days you could get away with suggesting a huge ad spend in trade journals and then design image ads where you can’t even read the URL and even worse, sending people to the home page versus a (trackable) landing page. Not anymore ducks.

(The above link goes to a great Chasers column in B2B Magazine about print being the doorway to the Web. Be sure to read it.)

What do you think? Is B2B marketing dead or do you agree with me that it’s alive and thriving? Leave your thoughts below.

(Image by Frances Ellen Speaks!)

The word “innovation” conjures up big change, especially when the change disrupts entire industries or even society at large (think the Internet, Google, and Facebook, to name a few).

Yet “innovation” can also be small and still have great impact.

This idea was reinforced for me this morning as I pulled a package of frozen chicken breasts out of the freezer for tonight’s dinner.

The problem with buying packages of chicken breasts is that they normally come three (or more) to a package. If you’re cooking for one, you have to defrost all three and then find a way to use the other two breasts in the next couple of days.

Or, you have to be organized enough to separate the chicken breasts when you arrive home from the grocery store so that you can freeze them separately.

Harvestland, producers of all natural chicken and turkey products, solved this problem, and quite nicely I might add.

They individually wrap each chicken breast.

I’m moving toward organic and “natural” foods and picked up Harvestland chicken for the first time last week at the market (mostly due to the verbiage on the package). Imagine my delight when I pulled the chicken package out of the freezer and realized I had to remove only one chicken breast.

Woo hoo! Someone “got it.”

Wrapping each chicken breast individually isn’t exactly revolutionary — and I’m sure Harvestland implemented this change for other reasons. But I can just imagine the conversation at other chicken companies regarding this idea:

“We can’t do that. No one else is doing it.”

“Our customers won’t pay the extra cost. We’ll lose market share.”

“It’s never been done it that way before” or “That’s the way it’s always been done.”

“We can’t afford what it will cost to change our processes and packaging equipment.”

“Why would anyone want individually wrapped chicken breasts? What a dumb idea.”

Seeing the individually wrapped chicken breasts reminded me that small changes can often have big impact — on your company, your customers, and your industry. What idea have you had that you’ve nixed due to one or all of the above statements? What kind of change can you envision if you implemented it?

With print magazines and newspapers in serious decline, it’s easy to say that B2B print advertising no longer works. I beg to differ. I firmly believe that print advertising does work (and that people still read print, but that’s a different story). The reason people mistakenly believe that print advertising doesn’t work is because many B2B marketers / small business owners don’t know how to create print ads that drive leads.

Creating print ads that deliver a real return on investment isn’t difficult or expensive. It just takes a little know-how. Herewith, 10 tips you can use to increase B2B print ad ROI.

1. Develop a direct response ad versus an image ad — A direct response ad tells people what to do. If it’s done right, it also lets you track response.

When you look at a typical consumer image ad (re: Apple, Coke, or some other consumer product), you see a beautiful picture of the product and maybe some copy. An image ad differs from a direct response ad as it reinforces brand awareness. A direct response ad drives leads because it includes benefits-rich copy and a call to action (think TV infomercials). “Download our free report.” “Call today and request your free sample.”

2. Focus on what your prospects want — The best networkers know to keep the focus on the people they meet at face-to-face events and not on themselves. (Do this and you’ll gain a reputation as a great listener.)

It works the same for your ad copy. Instead of focusing on your company and how it’s an industry leader, focus on the challenges your target audience is experiencing and how you can help solve them.

3. Eliminate “we,” add more “you / your” — “We” is a very weak pronoun, as my good friend Tom Ahern says. Fill your copy with “you” and it will naturally be easier to focus on your target audience and their needs.

4. Send readers to a specific landing page — Want to waste a boatload of money? Create a print ad and include a URL that goes back to your home page. How in the hell do you track that? You don’t. Instead, create a specific landing page where people can go to get your offer and then track how many people visit and how many fill out the form. Tweak accordingly.

5. Create a great offer — Give people something of value: a new white paper, a report detailing survey findings, free samples, or a half-hour consultation. Make sure the URL directs people to this exact offer versus sending them to a page listing all of your white papers and reports and then make them hunt for the offer listed in your ad.

6. Put a benefit in your headline — Capture people’s attention by putting a benefit in your headline. Stay away from play on words or anything that will make people scratch their heads.

7. Include a testimonial — If possible, include a pithy testimonial from a big name client. Also consider dropping a couple of client names in the copy (i.e. “Product XYZ, used by Big Name and Big Name . . . “).

8. Include your phone number and email — Make it easy for people to contact you by including all relevant contact info including a phone number and email. Don’t hide this information in a 4-point grey font at the bottom of the ad.

9. Don’t use reversed out type — The biggest mistake I see people making, when it comes to print ads, is using reversed out white text on a tinted or colored background. This type of formatting was proven by Colin Wheildon and others to reduce reader comprehension. To ensure your ad gets read, stick with black type (in an easy to read font size) on a white background.

10. Don’t use stock imagery — Before the advent of sites such as iStockPhoto, we in MarCom would spend a great deal of time taking original photographs of products for ads, brochures, and press releases. The good thing about this process is that you had photographs that were used only by your company.

With the advent of stock photography, which is wonderful — and yes, inexpensive — you see the same people / photos *everywhere.* Spend some money and have original photography taken. The result is imaging and branding that is uniquely your own.

For additional tips, see my article, “Effective Print Ads: Tools to Increase Sales.” And, to see an actual B2B ad that’s getting phone calls, see the ad I created for Inca Gold Products, LLC (design by Sonora DesignWorks). Do you have additional tips? Post them below.

I’ve noticed people on Twitter talking about QR codes, so of course they popped out at me while I perused the November 15, 2010 issue of Fortune. Specifically, companies are using them in ads: in this particular issue, Time, Fortune and Ford ran ads that included QR codes.

What is a QR Code?
According to Wikipedia, “a QR Code is a matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by QR scanners, mobile phones with a camera, and smartphones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data.”

Because they’re so new, the three ads gave instructions for what to do with the QR code — which is how I learned that you need some background info in order to see the marketing riches behind these funky codes.

“Simply scan the QR code with your smartphone” . . . uh no.
The ads for Time and Fortune carried easy to follow instructions — “simply scan the QR code with your smartphone.” To me, scan means “scanner,” as in a scanner iPhone app, as in RedLaser, which is a really cool app, in case you don’t have it.

RedLaser does scan the QR code and then gives you a URL. You then have to cut and paste the URL into your iPhone’s browser, a two-step process. You can also download QR scanner apps. My son, who is much geekier than I, immediately took on the challenge of downloading QR code apps; we spent close to an hour trying to figure out how the codes and apps worked.

The problem with using RedLaser to scan QR codes is that you have to ensure the code is in an upright position. To do this, I had to tear the ads out of the magazine and then hold the ad steady while trying to scan the code. This process worked for the Time and Fortune codes, but this is because the printed codes were fairly large. The Ford ad didn’t work at all and I think this is because the code is too small.

After trying to open the Ford QR code via TwittQR (see below) I finally followed the instructions on the ad, which read, “Simply open your phone’s browser and download the free app at gettag.mobi [from Microsoft] or text “MFORDTOUCH” to 4FORD. Then follow the directions to snap this tag and see MyFord Touch come to life.”

This worked. After downloading the app and then scanning the code, I was taken directly to a mobile Web page advertising Ford’s new 2011 Edge.

(You Droid users have it easy: a scanner is part of your phone.)

QR codes now part of marketing campaigns
During this trial and error time, my friend Margie Dana, founder and President of Print Buyers International, and I tweeted back and forth about our frustrations with QR codes and the apps. (Margie also has a new book out: “Print Buying Made Simple,” 138 pages of advice for print buyers. Be sure to check it out.)
In the middle of this, @SpeakFeel tweeted me to say I should check out TwittQR.com for an easy way to handle QR codes.

All you do is take a picture of the QR code, open your Twitter phone app and tweet the picture to @TwittQR. TwittQR then sends you back the URL, which appears in your timeline. You can then click on the link to view.

It took me a couple of tries, but I finally got it. The entire process made me see that I needed to write about this topic, because as I told Margie, if I can’t figure it out, how will non-marketers?

Since he had tweeted me the link to his QR app, I asked Noel Webb, Vice President of SpeakFeel Corporation if I could interview him. (This, my friends, is Real Time Marketing in action. See how it works?)

Svedka Vodka integrates mobile, Facebook
Noel’s company is the genius behind TwittQR and the new Sveda vodka campaign that’s been getting some buzz in the trade press. Posters around Canada advertising Svedka also included a QR code. When people tweeted the code (via TwittQR), they received a message with hashtags “#SVEDKA” and “#TwittQR” plus a custom message and a short URL that went to a mobile site.

Once there, people could then sign in via Facebook and “Like” the Svedka Vodka Page. (For those of you not using Facebook, this means that any time Svedka puts out a message to its “Friends,” that message shows up in their personal profiles. This is why companies are drooling over Facebook’s 500 million users. Who wouldn’t kill for that kind of one-to-one marketing?)

“One of the goals of the campaign,” says Noel, “was to increase the number of Facebook fans, which we accomplished. Svedka also outsold Smirnoff for that quarter.” You can read the full campaign details at Mobile Marketer. You learn more about TwittQR and SpeakFeel Corp. at Going Cellular.

Are QR codes the next best thing?
I definitely see the potential of QR codes and how marketers can use them to engage people by getting them from print to Web. However, the downside is that QR code use is not standard nor are the apps, something pointed out in the Going Cellular post.

In addition, marketers need to use language carefully. As my experience shows, telling people to “simply scan using your smartphone,” isn’t “simple” nor do you “scan” if you’re using an iPhone. And making people download an app, as the Ford ad did, is ok, but it did take me a few minutes. In our now “instant world,” these few minutes are the difference between campaign success and failure.

What’s your experience with QR codes and how do you think B2B companies can incorporate them into the marketing mix? If you’re a B2B company and have successfully used a QR code in a campaign, I’d love to interview you for a blog post.

UPDATE: Also check out these related items:

The CueCat — A barcode reader from the 1990s used for scanning barcodes in catalogs (way before its time, unfortunately). Hat tip to @PeterKretzman.

JagTags — Tags used by consumer brands, such as Macy’s. Hat tip to @LoisGeller.

2d Code — A magazine that is the definitive resource for all things QR Code. Edited by @RogerSmolski (and a hat tip to him).

61 out of 100. That’s the number of Fortune 100 companies that didn’t respond to an email from best selling author David Meerman Scott requesting information.

The big names are astounding: Abbott Labs. Comcast. DuPont. General Dynamics. Ingram Micro. Pfizer. United Technologies.

You can find the full report and analysis in David’s new e-book, Real-Time: How Marketing and PR at Speed Drives Measureable Success (and his new book, Real-Time Marketing and PR, a MUST READ).

One could argue that these multi-national companies are too big to respond to an email from a book author. After all, they’ve got so many more important things to do. And besides, anything can go wrong with an email, as I’ve learned when people say they’ve sent me email but I never received it.

I’m sure a few of the 100 emails David sent didn’t reach their intended recipient. But still, 61 out of 100 – that’s almost two-thirds of Fortune 100 companies that didn’t respond to a simple email.

As David points out after analyzing the Fortune 100 and their stock prices, the ROI of real-time engagement with customers, media, and prospects is glaringly apparent:

Fortune 100 companies that engage in real-time beat the S&P 500 while others, on average, underperformed the index.

Not answering an email from an author who writes about marketing and PR in the Internet age not only makes you look bad, it costs you money.

This holds true for small and mid-sized companies, too. I’ve heard horror stories of small companies who send all Web inquiries to an email address that rarely gets checked. In fact, I had an electrician to my house a couple of weeks ago who said that the email on his Website doesn’t work. (But he’s so busy, he didn’t seem to care, which is a shame.)

Email is a pain in the butt, but . . .

Look, I know email is a pain. I’ll be the first to admit that I struggle with keeping up with it. And sometimes things do fall through the cracks and to my horror I’ll realize I haven’t returned someone’s inquiry in a timely manner.

Unlike our Big League Fortune 100 cousins, however, we small business owners really have no excuse. And due to our size, the performance expectation is higher. I don’t expect an answer from a big company. I do expect to get one from a small company — and fast.

When you build a Website, you’re basically building a path to your business that anyone in the world can use to get to you. This path is used by spammers, clueless PR people, vendors who want your business — and prospects interested in your offerings.

This means that instead of keeping people at arm’s length via a contact form, which I often see companies do, you have to make it easy for people to contact you. This is why I think small B2B companies should post their phone numbers and email addresses on every single page of a Website (rather than just the Contact Us page).

When people do contact you (and I’m talking about real people, not spammers), return the favor and reply back to them. Who knows, you could end up a with a sale (which is what happens for me on a regular basis) or you may get a good write-up about your company in a book, blog post or news article, as the following examples show:

Does Your B2B Website Need a Facelift? — An interview with Samuel Greengard of ChannelPro SMB.

Are Customer Testimonials Smart Marketing Tools? — An interview with Lisa LaMotta of Forbes.com

Personal Branding Through the Eyes of a B2B Marketer — An interview with Dan Schawbel.

What do you think? Have you had a company respond to you in real time via email or Twitter? How do you feel when you call a company and get a “real” person answering the phone instead of voice mail? I’d love to hear your stories.

If you’re going to write an e-book that tells B2B marketers how to gain the attention of people in their target markets, you had better damn well illustrate how to do this yourself.

Velocity, a UK-based B2B technology marketing agency, nailed it with their new e-book, “The New B2B marketing Manifesto: Five imperatives and six staples you need to win the battle of attention.”

It’s not that the writers used irreverent phrases you don’t normally see in B2B marketing literature — stuff like “naked, desirable drunk person” and “social media ninjas” (all of which I adore).

It’s that they took a really complex topic, whacked away the hype and got right down to the challenge: in today’s over-hyped, media saturated, micro slivered world, you have just a few nano seconds to gain someone’s attention.

In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve all become hyper vigilant about how marketers / sales people can contact us.

Caller ID, Facebook privacy settings, email accounts set up just for spam unsolicited email, Do Not Call registry, ad blockers, the mute button on the remote, TV via the Internet (Hulu, Netflix), etc. etc. etc. — all of these wonderful tools and applications make it really easy to filter out unwanted marketing and advertising.

To get someone’s attention, you have to earn it. And you do it through engaging content that explains why you do what you do, is genuine, fresh and insightful (versus being warmed over and dull), and that goes beyond digital — as in, it ties together the offline and online worlds we all inhabit.

(Think uploading your personal life via photos and status updates to Facebook.)

If you’re in B2B marketing or marketing communications, and you’re struggling with how your world has changed (as Velocity states in its e-book, one day we were living in the black and white world of print ads and trade shows and the next day we opened the door to a Technicolor Oz of social media and iPads), you need to read this e-book.

Fill out the short form to get your copy — and once you’re done reading it, leave a comment at the Velocity blog.

From visiting Annabelle’s candy factory as a kid (think Big Hunk, Abba Zabba and Look — yummy!) to doing the Cape Cod Potato Chip factory tour as an adult, I’m a sucker for the factory tour.

Love ‘em, can’t get enough of them.

So I’m always thrilled when I get a new client and they offer me a tour. (It doesn’t even have to be a factory — I’ll tour anything including a golf course, a printing plant, and a university, to name a few.)

Tours give me a hands-on feel for the company and its products / services. When I toured the golf course, for example, I studied various types of turf, examined how balls rolled across the greens, and watched people play golf.

Learned more in an hour than I did reading reams of source material.

But the best part of doing tours is talking to the person giving the tour – and getting some of my best content ideas in the process.

It’s during the tour that the person giving the tour opens up in a way that doesn’t happen while sitting at a desk. All of a sudden, he or she is talking a mile a minute, pointing out things, introducing people and handing you things to look at or touch.

Best of all, if you pay close attention, you’ll hear the nuggets of information upon which you can build an entire message or marketing campaign.

On one tour, for example, the client said a few times that they had all new equipment. I finally asked, “Why is that important?” and she replied, “Oh, because we were outsourcing our manufacturing but the quality was really bad. So we invested in the equipment and now we produce everything in-house. Our quality is back up to close to 100% and we’re shipping product faster.”

I changed their entire messaging based on that one piece of information — which netted fabulous results for them that year.

Another client, Veterans Development Corporation, told me the story of how they got the West End Heating plant in Georgetown working again. The guys telling the story got all excited and animated and in turn I got excited — and ended up developing content for their revamped site around the messages buried in that story: fast response, deep know-how, creative approaches. They loved it.

Yes, yes, I can hear you thinking, you don’t have anything to tour because you make software, or something equally “flat,” and all your people do is sit pecking away at a computer all day.

So get up out of your chair and go for a walkabout anyway!

Going for a walkabout is one of my favorite ways to find ideas that become the basis for new content. What you’re doing when you go for a walk around your company is looking for “news” that you can can turn into case studies, application notes, blog posts, video, white papers, or newsletter articles.

Think like a reporter and sniff out the news by asking people what’s new and exciting and what kinds of projects they’re working on.

If they talk one-on-one with customers, ask them what customers are talking about. While you’re on the topic, ask which questions customers ask the most — you might be amazed at the answers.

If you work in a company that has a few buildings or multiple departments, go visit the other building or department and introduce yourself. Open doors, peek around cubicles, and go down hallways you’ve not been down before. If you need permission to visit an area (i.e. the clean room), ask for a guided tour.

In short, don’t be afraid to learn more about your company and the people in it. Once you make a habit of going for a walkabout, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without it.

“Our customers already know who we are.”

This is a line I’ve heard since starting my business 12 years ago this month. The reasons for the statement vary with the company and the product / service offered:

• “Our known universe of customers is small. They all know us and we know them.”
• “We’re a big company with a big name.”
• “We’ve been doing this for decades.”
• “No one else does what we do.”

But what “Our customers already know who are we are” really means is this: “We don’t want to go to the effort and cost of changing our marketing approach.”

This is why you see B2B Websites filled with hyperbolic fluff that says nothing and little in the way of high-value content that educates people (leads and prospects) on how the company can solve their business challenges.

It’s why B2B companies (large and small) continue to rely on marketing tactics from decades ago . . . the “old boys’ network,” the expensive print ads, the fruitless telemarketing calls.

Yes, yes, I know. These tactics still work somewhat. But what would happen if a B2B company approached its marketing this way:

“Lots and lots of men and women out there need our services / products but they don’t know who we are. How do we get the word out?”

• All of a sudden, marketing becomes an imperative, not a cost center that can be cut at whim.
• The Internet now becomes a tool for reaching many, not something to be feared.
• Marketing analytics and marketing automation become must-have tools that give knowledge and insight versus keeping a company in the dark.

Over time, the company increases sales and as sales increase, it hires someone fulltime to develop marketing campaigns and write content and use social media tools more effectively . . . which gets the word out even more . . . which increases sales.

Rinse, repeat.

In the old days, markets were relatively local. A business owner or marketer would might do business with people he or she knew outside of work. You found customers and vendors through your local Yellow Pages, Chamber of Commerce, or maybe even your Rotary meeting.

Now markets are “global.” Your competitor is no longer in the next town or state. Your competitors live and work all over the globe — and trust me, they aren’t resting on “Our customers already know who we are.”

No. They’re making sure your customers and prospects know who they are by pitching them. Every. Single. Day.

Thanks to the Internet, I can find and do business with a company in New Zealand just as easily as I can a company that’s a few towns over from me.

In fact, it might be easier to find the company in New Zealand.

Which is why B2B marketers and business owners really need to stop saying, “Our customers already know who we are.” Yes, yes they do because they’re doing business with you. Duh.

But what about all those people who don’t do business with you? Do they know who you are? No, they don’t. But they do know your competitors.

I have never forgotten the last paper I wrote in order to finish my Masters in English.

I wrote about Austen’s work, Emma. After being five years in the program, I had “good” writing and grammar down pat.

In fact, I strove to hand in error-free papers. I’d type and proof, retype and proof again. It took me days to write a simple five page, double-spaced paper.

I remember my Emma paper because the professor found a mistake.

When referring to Emma and Mr. Knightly, I used an apostrophe “s” after Mr. Knightley’s name only to denote they owned something in common.

The professor wrote, “A glaring error in an otherwise perfect paper.”

I can still feel the rage that welled up in my stomach when I read that comment.

I was so angry, I looked up the grammar rule and sent my paper back with a note to show that I was right.

The professor wrote back, “I stand corrected.”

A bad experience in an otherwise wonderful time in the Masters program.

In his book, Linchpin, Seth Godin writes:

Read someone’s resume, and discover twenty years of extraordinary exploits and one typo.

Which are you going to mention first? We are hired for perfect, we measure for perfect, and we reward for perfect.

So why are we surprised that people spend their precious minutes of self-directed, focused work time trying to achieve perfect?

I am not perfect.

Especially when it comes to writing typo-free content. When you get something written from me, it might have a typo in it. Or two. Maybe even three.

This is not to say I don’t care about my work. I do care. Deeply.

Like most writers, I proofread my work. I print out reams of paper, edit and proof, edit and proof. (I print out so much paper, I’m on a first name basis with A1 Datashred.)

For years I struggled to produce copy that did not have one typo. I firmly believed these truths:

• Typos show a lack of attention to detail.
• Typos reflect poorly on you and your work.

But given the nature of my work, I find it incredibly difficult to produce typo-free copy. I write all day long. I type a million miles a minute. My eyes glaze over from staring at the computer screen.

Given that 99% percent of what I write is digital content, it’s pretty easy to fix mistakes.

But here’s the big idea (you knew I’d get there at some point): I’m not writing so much as I’m creating content that will help my customers grow their businesses.

I’ve been working on my DH Communications Facebook page and found myself writing this little description about myself:

“Dianna Huff is an all around B2B marketing expert who has been in the trenches since . . . forever. My passion is helping my clients grow their businesses through marketing. I ‘woot’ when this happens. Woot!”

I love, love, love when a client emails to say, “Dianna! Someone found my Website via search and I just got a huge order that will keep me busy for the next two months.” Woot!

These are the clients that “get” that I’m on their team. Not just rooting for them. Trying to hit singles, doubles, and triples and maybe if I’m lucky, a home run.

So a typo or two just isn’t that big of a deal.

“Here’s the problem [when we measure for perfect],” writes Godin. “Art is never defect-free.”

What it means — which is the thesis of Godin’s book — is that measuring for perfect won’t get you anywhere. If you’re a business and you want to grow, you need to start looking for the “remarkable.”