Sometimes it amazes me how much people detest strategy.

You might have heard the saying “stepping over quarters to pick up nickels” or some derivative.

But this is what it’s like for the freebie seekers who are after every possible tactic to improve their businesses but completely ignore their strategy.

Yesterday I was on Facebook and came across someone looking for feedback.

They were asking about how to improve clickthrough rate for advertisers in their newsletter.

The first response was the pick the right words to make the hyperlink - really get the action words that inspire them to click!

Everybody cheered for this response. Wow!

The next response was some other gimmick I don’t remember. It had an equal number of cheers from the horde.

I responded with two bits of wisdom:

1. According to the founding father of internet marketing, Ken McCarthy, 80% of the sale is putting the right offer in front of the right person. I recommended they pay closer attention to what was working and tailor their ads to that. They could even help their advertisers improve their copy.
2. Trust is key. I ignore links from people I don’t trust. But I would click on the same advertisement in a newsletter from someone who I do trust.

Of course, nobody was interested in my advice.

Strategy? Yuck.

It’s way more fun to play around with what words you make hyperlinks than it is to send an email every day with some valuable information in it that builds trust.

But who am I kidding.

I was the one responding to a post on Facebook.