What is a Geeky Marketer anyway?
Geeky Marketers Are Like Architects, Accountants and Engineers
In short, a Geeky Marketer is someone with techie skills, or sales and marketing skills, that others do not possess. Like a CPA (certified public accountant) or an architect, Geeky Marketers have skills that other people can learn – but they often choose not to learn. Instead, people recognize the need to have a Geeky Marketer on their team, or to handle a particular piece of a project.
I Started Life As A Geeky Anti-Social Valedictorian
Years back I was high school valedictorian. I was a rather antisocial intellectual kid. I played the clarinet, and did a pretty good job of learning the trumpet in short order. I did door-to-door sales in college, and studied in Spain for a year. By my shyness and discomfort in social situations continued for years. At one point, as a technical support person, I visited Brazil and was able to instruct corporate students how to use a complex computer user account management package – in Portuguese. I love languages.
So then I moved to Asia. My technical skills started to be less important, and I really had to understand people speaking other versions of English – Australian English, and the pigeon English languages in Singapore and Malaysia, commonly referred to as Singlish and Manglish. I’m still struggling with the pseudo-English in Malaysia. My take on this is – in the US, we are concerned with grammar and pronunciation, and “proper American”. Same goes in England, South African and Australia / New Zealand. Here in Asia, things seem much more focused on communicating, and “proper” anything is often out the window.
So now, again a handful of years later, I’m intrigued with marketing. Getting across an idea of what a software package, a book or a blog website can do for a person just piques my interest. Now, I can’t claim any great success at marketing as yet. But over the past years I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with the tools that marketers use. Blogs. Autoresponders. Membership scripts. Forums. PHP scripts for various things – social bookmarking, membership sites, forums, etc. Sales systems for managing a flock of affiliates so you motivate some affiliates, and they do the selling for you.
And since I have loved playing with scripts (PHP is a scripting language used on websites), I have been having fun modifying the way that various PHP scripts behave. When I get an idea in my head, 99% of the time I get the script to do what I want it to do.
Not A Marketing Superstar…Yet
I have dabbled in writing newsletters. I put up a few blogs but didn’t really have a clue what to say. But these never really fit me properly, or I never got my mindset in order for them. Looking back on that, I don’t believe I really had a good idea who my target audience should have been – and therefore I couldn’t possibly figure out what that group of humans might need from a geeky person like me.
But I’m much closer to a good fit on both counts now.
My Target Market
My target market have a handful of characteristics that set them apart from the rest of humanity. Here’s a few of the important ones.
- They want to use a website in running a business. Maybe they want to have a website be their store, and to run a mostly virtual business.
- They either don’t know how to… (build a website, collection electronic payments, automagically deliver purchases to their customers, send out follow-up messages of value and interest to those customers to drive further sales, etc.)… Or they cannot afford to do these things themselves. In other words, they know enough about their business so they can make more than $100 hourly “doing what they do”.
- Without some guidance they may fall victim to the marketing of training for Internet folk. There will always be people willing to train us to the level of a Master’s Degree in topics we should not delve into at all.
- They speak English or Spanish comfortably, and find my American and Castellano workable.
- They do want to delegate some aspects of their business, either for a specific “job” or on a long-term basis.
- They have either funds available to invest in this web business building exercise. Either they are putting up the funds themselves, or they have a successful business and can allocate funds from that business for these expenses.
Problems I Can Solve For My Target Audience
These things fall into two categories. One is, “Advising a client on what should be done, based on my learning and experience”. The second is, “Getting things done, based on my knowledge and experience.” I guess to add a third – avoiding the desire to do things perfectly, to learn everything and the resulting lack of accomplishment that can create. (I’ve done that enough personally for both myself and my clients; I can share the tales with you and save you months or years of time.)
- Get the basics set up – a blog or a website, a “contact us” form and follow-up emails, something configured for sale, and maybe a secure way to deliver an information product after a sale is made.
- Drawing up some plans that “get the job done” without a lot of complications. Breaking down the “perfect outcome” into smaller pieces, then attacking each of those pieces to build the eventual solution is a very good way to proceed.
- Coaching the customer through creating sales videos, pricing an offer, and making it available.
- Keeping the focus on things that truly matter, versus getting caught up in “make-work”. (Build a List of Targets Prospects; Make Them An Offer; Deliver Their Purchase. Then improve on and repeat those processes that are working.)
- Handling the background tasks. For example, distributing articles and videos; setting up teleseminars and webinars and notifying attendees, along with getting the recordings out to everyone after the event. Or making sure backups are taken regularly.
- Finding and selecting solutions, organizing projects and managing them to successful completion.
- For the advanced customer, I can take a set of tasks and get them done. This can include complex tasks like putting in an entire Rapid Action Profits sales process, with upsells and email capture and affiliate payouts.
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Hi! I like your Blog! (followed the link from List Bandits email…) I wasn’t valedictorian, but excelled in school, and also LOVE languages. (French major, fluent Spanish, some German) I appreciate your CORRECT English (don’t think I noted one proofreading error on your page, and that’s almost nonexistant these days!)
I once had ambitions such as: becoming a lawyer, working in International relations–there are even a few people out there who remember me (H.S. days) as the one who wanted to become the first Woman President. Then, there’s REAL LIFE. I Homeschool my 4 children (ages 11, 13, and twins 16), and have for most of their school years. I’m trying to get a Website or so up, and a Blog. (I figured out how to do it! Assign it as a project to my tech-saavy teens!) Haven’t quite found my ‘niche’ yet…
Anyway, I think what you’re offering is great. I’m sure I’ll be back again. If things go well, maybe we can post links on each others’ sites!
Hey Diane,
An aspiring US President!! I’m quite honored to have you visit. Mmmm….and then life happened. Yes, I think that reality does fall short for many of us, doesn’t it?
My correct English has been appreciated – THANK YOU! (There’s so little of it, I don’t think it is very appreciated. I’ll rant on that another day.)
Please do get a URL and a blog so we can do trackbacks! Let me know if your 11, 13 and 16 year-olds need any help getting that site built for you.
I believe I’ve finally fallen into at least one good niche for myself. Until I did, producing anything was quite tough. Good luck on your search for that topic for yourself. Can I suggest – Love of language? It’s another topic I will get to….just not this week. We NEED more multilingual Americans!
If you join us at “BMC” (http://BeginnersMarketingClass.com?rid=1&r=geeky-p1) – Chuck is passionate about getting people sorted out on that topic. The forum can be quite helpful in that respect.
Cheers,
Tim
Wow Tim you did a Great job on this site Good Luck with it found you on stumble upon. You should list on Web2pt0seo.com when it is working it was really going well now you cant even list any thing there.
Pete,
Yeah, gotta look up my login to your site!
Just dropped you email. I couldn’t figure out what the real problem is with your ScuttlePlus. But – there’s a workaround for you in your mailbox.
Cheers,
Tim
P.S. I might be ready for those Twitter lessons soon…