Jeff's Online Marketing Thoughts

Where I've Been

For those of you still out there that read this blog, I appreciate you hanging with me even though it has been almost a year since I did anything on this site. I appreciate the loyalty and continuing to support me and this site. As to where I've been, I changed jobs one year ago that caused me to re-prioritize and frankly, I lost the desire to keep up this site.

Lately, I've felt the urge to get back in the game so to speak but the topic of this site didn't feel right. It was more job related then based on my passions. So a few more months of searching myself and what I was looking for lead me to launch a new site. You can find it at http://www.jeffruley.com and while the topic has changed, I'm hoping you will join me there as I expect that the style and my personal touch hopefully haven't changed. I'm very excited to hear from you and expand the conversation.

See you at www.jeffruley.com!

It's The Internet, But It's Just Marketing

The funny thing is how much people fear the Internet, especially people that have been in business more than the past 5-10 years, because the game really hasn't changed that much. Yes the medium is different and speed to market is insane, but the concepts are no different then they were 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

1. Know your customers - If you don't know your customers, what their pains are and what they need to make their life easier, how do you know what to market to them? The biggest tragedy today is how easily people get blinded by technology and don't consider how it impacts their customers. Customers are the lifeblood of any company and you need to truly care about them to be successful. There are plenty of other businesses out there that will gladly steal your customers, don't give them a reason to leave you.
2. Know who you are - The marketplace gives people more choices than they know what to do with. In order to stand out you have to think about what makes you different in the eyes of your customer, that they will notice and talk about you. If all you offer is the lowest price people will shop elsewhere because, while price is important, people want good customer service and a company that stands for something. Figure out what you want to be the best at and do that. Stop following the competition and imitating everything that they do.
3. Know your objectives - In any marketing activity you should have a clear picture of what you want to accomplish, and it should be clearly measurable. If you are trying something without knowing what you want to gain, how will you know if you should do it again or not? Don't start a blog just because everyone else is doing it. What do you hope to gain and how will you know if you are successful?
4. Measure - The best marketers have always been good at collecting objective data that gives a true picture of how a campaign faired. It is surprising the number of people that don't measure things on the Web when it is the easiest channel to track things on. When you know what your objectives are, you should be able to measure the data to give you facts in determining what works and what doesn't.

Nothing I've said has to be any different on the Web than a traditional method. The fact you don't know the technology to use in delivering your idea is not necessarily your responsibility. Be able to describe the project and what you hope to achieve, what you will need to measure and how this impacts the customers. Once you have that definition work with your IT staff, vendors and other partners and your own network. More often than not you will find someone that can point you in the right direction.

Don't make your job about technology, keep it about marketing. You never know because some solutions are worse once they involve technology. Find the best, right and simplest solution to solve your customers needs, always.

Facebook vs. Google - The Future Of The Internet

I heard many people talking about setting up an account on Facebook so I had to follow the crowd and see what the hype was about. I had thought of it as one of those sites where kids spend way too much time rather than getting out and talking with people face-to-face, or *gasp* get some exercise. But I have to admit, it is pretty intriguing. While I still have some work to do to get my profile up to par, looking at it from a business standpoint you can see why marketers are exploring Facebook more and more. The ability to connect with people, interact and share with your friends is turning the Web from a "You and the World" model and mimicking real life, your small group of friends that you share, talk and interact with on a daily basis.

John Battelle talked about how Facebook still seems to be turning down offers to purchase the company. This got me thinking in the difference that Facebook has that really gives it an edge over Google. Everyone has tried to take on Google at their own game, trying to improve on the process of search. Where Facebook is a more legitimate threat is that they are changing the game, much the same way Google changed the game when they came along. They are looking at it from the network you have rather than what you as an individual are searching for. After all, are you more likely to trust the results of the vast network of Google servers calculating what you want to see or the recommendations of your friends and family?

Thinking About Changing Your Technology?

I'm sure you have dealt with this question as everyone has these same problems at one time or another. You aren't happy with your current technology provider or they just aren't keeping up with the technology to give you the site your customers expect and demand. In order to stay competitive you need to make a change. This isn't going to be about which technology choices are best, but more about what to consider when choosing a technology.

1. What are you missing? - This needs to be the first place you start because often there is something that isn't keeping you happy, but until you take the time to sit down and document what it is that you are missing you will have a harder time determining what you want to find.
2. What is there that you can't live without? - Often systems aren't the worthless piles of junk they are made out to be. If they were worthless you would have switched a long time ago. What features are there that are very nice and you need to ensure are there in the new system?
3. How long is it going to take to select? - Going through a vendor analysis is a time consuming process, expect to have someone spend the majority of their time contacting prospective vendors, setting up demos, working with everyone that needs to be in on the decision to ensure you make the right choice, selecting vendors, hammering out contracts and negotiating terms. Even if that is a group of people and each have a piece of the responsibility it is going to take time, how does that fit in with your plans? What else is that going to prevent getting done?
4. What is the stability of the vendor? - In this age where companies (especially technology companies) are started, merged, restructured, consolidated, acquired and closed, what would happen if 6 months from now there is a change in the selected vendor's structure? You need to have some sort of understanding to make sure the proper terms are in the contract before you sign. Nobody likes being stuck and scrambling.
5. What is it going to take to migrate? - You've gone through the process to select the vendor, now that you have the system you are going to have to set it up. Make sure you talk with other customers of theirs to understand what it takes to launch. You probably have hundreds or thousands of products, with pricing and content. You not only will have to move that but you have to consider all of the other pieces as well. What about your customer's profiles? Do they transfer over or will they have to setup a new one? Same goes for order history. A plan needs to be made on how to transition.
6. How long will you run two system? - You will run two different systems, there is no way around that. It might be short but even while you are launching your new site you have to maintain the old. Sometimes for an extended period of time. What is the impact of that going to be on your business? Usually it means that there is more work as some things are doubled with the two systems.
7. How will your customers react? - I hope you are doing all this for them, if not then you need to rethink why you are making the decision to change. When you change, what is their reaction going to be? Are they going to like the change enough to ignore the pain? Yes, there is going to be pain. I know you expect a flawless transition where none of your customers know any difference, but that is just not the case. Customers will feel pain. Hopefully not all and hopefully not bad, but you need to expect it and be prepared in how to handle it.
8. Do you trust who you are working with? - This should probably be the first question you ask, because it is often what really causes you to make the choice of selecting another vendor. If you don't trust who you are working with it is not going to be successful.

I would always suggest to try and work things out with your current vendor because as you can see there are a lot of factors to consider. Work with their leaders even if it means going above your current contact to get to the power. Nobody likes to lose business so ask them what they are going to do differently to fix the issues that you have. Then, and this is the key, give them a date that they have to hit. If they can't do it by that time or don't deliver, everyone should know that the change is coming. Also, there is a good possibility that the overall costs will be less to go with your current vendor, but you have to have the data to compare.

At the end of the day though it is a business and if the change needs to be made, make the change and don't look back. Asking yourself the questions above will help you get a clear picture in your mind and to your prospective vendors, what is going to make you successful.

How To Use Video, Even If You Are Less Than Cool

I've talked in the past at how cool Video is and some possible ways to think about it. The hardest part with video that I hear many people talk about is that they don't have an exciting or viral product, so who would want to view a video. While that is the first answer that most people think of when it comes to video, it doesn't have to be the only answer. No matter what your product or service, you have to talk about it and you probably do on a daily basis, to customers, prospects and others. Why not put these words and thoughts on videos that can be viewed by many people? Ever feel like you've said the same thing a hundred times to all of your contacts? Why not make a video of it and make it available? If you are talking about your business you have subjects for video.

The other big stumbling block that many people run into is that they think they need to have these videos professionally shot and edited. Try it simpler at first and see if your users respond. My suggestion is to take a personal digital video camera (a fairly nice one that can get the job done is $300) and just shoot someone talking about a subject. Make sure the sound is good and you put the camera on a tripod so you get a good picture. From there you can edit the video down on any Mac, or if you need to most Windows PC's come with Video editing software now as well. Get the segments down to 10 minutes or less so your audience can consume them in bites. Now upload them to YouTube, tag them with your company name and other relevant terms and you have video online. If you want to take it a step further it is easy to embed the videos so they are served by YouTube but available on your own Web site. With very little money invested, mostly just time to create these videos and put them out for others to see you have video and appear that much more cutting edge.

Is this a viable solution for you?

Making Online Marketing Work

I'm in San Jose this week at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition. It is a great show that is a great source of ideas and an opportunity to network with many talented people. The thing that I've learned this week with the amount of ideas and variety of tools that help take your business to the next level, is the true success comes to those that put the effort in. The different tools or systems or vendors or any of that doesn't matter as much as focusing some of your time and energy to do something with the tools and data that you have.

1) How much of your time is spent reviewing data? How much is spent executing on information gained from reviewing data?
2) How much time do you spend learning about new ideas/technologies/vendors? How much time do you spend implementing one new idea?
3) How much time do you spend thinking about how you wish you knew about your customers? How much time do you spend digging into the information you do have and segmenting your customers?

How much time to you spend thinking and how much time do you spend doing? The companies that are doing are the companies that are successful. The even more successful ones are the ones doing things faster than everyone else. It isn't about the best ideas, coolest features or being on the cutting edge. It is about doing whatever to get better tomorrow than you are today.

How To Find Your Keywords

Since everyone knows that search is important and Google basically rules the online world I want to delve a little deeper into the heart of John Jantsch's recent post about using AdWords to identify good keywords to target in organic efforts. If an SEO consulting firm is basing their recommendations on keywords for your site based on the most popular search terms related to your business, run away. Traffic means nothing if you don't achieve your goals, which most likely relate back to a conversion in some way. Using AdWords is a great way to test certain words, and there are plenty of tools to help you choose keywords, but they aren't very useful if you are starting from square one and are new to selecting keywords.

One place for you to start is by listening to your customers. When someone comes to your business, one of the first questions you should ask is how they found you. Listen carefully, not only to what marketing efforts are working, but also to what terminology they use to describe your business. Another place to look is your top ten best customers in terms of the relationship you have with them. Who are your customers that recommend you to everyone in their network? Ask them how they talk about your business, listen to the keywords they use. Finally, the third great place to look is the internal site search terms people enter. Armed with all that data, now you can start testing and tracking which terms perform the best. By perform, you need to look at what drive the best conversions. Traffic means nothing, so you need to have a good Web Analytics package in place to really follow and report on what is working for you. Always focus on your end goal and don't get caught up in numbers like visitors or page views that might look good but don't help your bottom line.