Jeff's Online Marketing Thoughts

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?

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.
 

What Google's Purchase Of DoubleClick Means To You

A lot has been written about the Google purchase of DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion and it has been interesting to listen to the speculation on what this means. Interesting facts I've read about the deal:

1. This deal would give Google the corner on the online advertising market. Depending on how different people track it I've seen estimates of market dominance from 50% to over 80%.
2. The irony in Microsoft lobbying for an investigation on a potential monopoly. There are others joining that fight, but Microsoft? It just makes you smile.
3. The fact that the owners of DoubleClick sold to Google while Microsoft was offering more money.

I think the sellers of DoubleClick are getting shares of Google in return or some portion of shares and cash. The only way I can see someone taking less money up front is on the potential to have more money in the future. I also think that this isn't the last of the high profile mergers and acquisitions that will happen. It started with YouTube, next you will see Microsoft make a move. They obviously still want to play in the space from their pursuit of DoubleClick and have money to spend.

What does mean for you as an online marketer? I think it will end up being a good thing. It tells me that there are a lot of very smart people out there continuing to develop, offer and consolidate services that benefit you in your advertising efforts. There is the fear of a monopoly, but the Internet is too easy for someone to come up with a great idea and start it in a dorm room to take on the big boys. Heck, that is what Google did just 10 short years ago.

7 Ways to Expand Your Online Marketing

It starts with a Web site, you build a presence and sooner or later the question comes up about how to get more traffic. It usually starts with taking existing customers and transferring them to be online customers. There are a lot of positives from this, mostly around cost savings; but that doesn't gain you more traffic, it only makes existing customers more efficient. Eventually the basics are heard, "We need an email campaign and we have to do more with Pay-Per-Click." The problem I see is that this is often where companies stop with their online marketing strategy and these are the same basic activities that every other company out there is deploying. There are literally thousands of ways to promote your Web site, to be successful you need to have as many tools as you can manage. Here are some quick ideas to get you started:

1. Build a Squidoo Lens on a topic connected to your products.
2. Write a Wikipedia article on you company or product.
3. Build links through relevant directories like DMOZ and Best of the Web.
4. Ask your customers to upload video or pictures to YouTube and Flickr where they are using your product. Have a competition around it for the one voted the best.
5. Write a press release and post it at a service like PR Newswire.
6. Pay for someone to blog about your product or service at PayPerPost.com.
7. Read John Jantsch (Blog and Book) and Seth Godin (Blog and Book) on ways to use technology and speak to today's consumers.

The key to any of this is you have to have a passion for your products and learning about all the ways you can speak to them. Once you have that foundation, the opportunities are endless to expand your marketing. Go do at least one today.

Are You Ready To Change In 2007?

Well, it is a new year, do you have a plan in place for what you are going to do with your Web site this year? That is a good start, but expect that it will look extremely different at the end of the year then it does right now. What did your plan look like last year; did it change at the end of 2006?

You need to be ready to change. There are lots of books about embracing, accepting, managing and driving change. But change is still viewed as a negative thing by many. People don't like it. It stresses everyone out. It is painful to go through it. But this is a new year. Your New Year's Resolution, is to change how you think about change.

To survive today, you need to go beyond accepting change, but actually liking and forcing change. Creating change will make you successful in the Online Marketing world today. Business moves too fast and customers have shorter attention spans that only the newest and coolest things keep their interest.  If you had success in the past, remember it is the past and does nothing for the future. Everything changes. So rather than trying to catch up to the change your competition or customers are driving you to make, create your own changes. The more you change the more you accept it, the more you don't mind it and start encouraging it.

Change makes you better. Don't just accept it, create it.

4 Seconds To Make A First Impression

There is a great article on eMarketer.com that everyone should look at about Web characteristics that annoy users most. It is a great look at things not to do on your Web site, like pop-up ads, dead links and ineffective site search. The most interesting thing is how people's attention spans are getting shorter. If a page takes longer than 4 seconds to load, they are gone. That isn't a lot of time to dynamically generate all the interesting and targeted messages you want to create. It also speaks to people having shorter attention spans, which leads to the importance of good site search, clean navigation and a usable/pleasing design. First impressions are hard to change, and on the Internet, if you don't capture it first thing, they will never come back.

The Suffocating Effects Of A Big Company

John Battelle had an interesting post about Google becoming too big and the concerns about it becoming unable to achieve what made it great in the first place. I wondered about being too big before but this article got me thinking about my own company and how as we've grown, we have had to put different processes in place to make things "easier".

Seth Godin has a book on the subject, Small Is the New Big, that I've only read pieces of but I would still recommend because much is based on his blog that I'm a big fan of. The part that resonates with me that both Seth and John talk about is the agility that is needed to be successful. The more people that I have to get approval or input from just makes every task longer. The reasons that those people and processes are there make perfect sense, at least they did at the time. Now when you look at things it takes too long and people are not happier today then they were before, I might even argue that it is worse. That goes for customers and employees the same.

If you want to be successful, you need to move quickly. Opinions and advice from others is good, but get out of the way of people trying to make your Web site successful. How can you start talking about hours and days rather than in weeks and months?