Break at Your Own Risk – 14 eMarketing Rules

Over recent years we have noticed things that work – and things that don’t with regard to emarketing. For what it’s worth, we thought we would share it with those who are committed to marketing that makes a real contribution to your Company.
1. Clarify the problem before rushing to solve it.
2. Show us a picture of your ideal buyer.
3. Speak plain English. You are dealing with real people. Drop the Corporate-Speak.
4. Be found. All the millions invested in advertising won’t come close to the results produced by a top 3 organic ranking for your relevant phrase or words.
5. Use video on your website – it communicates.
6. Never underestimate the damage an angry dissatisfied customer will create.
7. Never underestimate the power of a happy customer.
8. When designing your website – Pretty is great. Easy is better. Useful is wonderful.
9. You’re not your ideal customer. You don’t have to like the creative to approve it.
10. Treat people with respect, they’ll reciprocate.
11. Campaign analytics are a must. Test, Test, Roll.
12. IT is not Marketing. Don’t have them run the web site. It’s not fair to anyone, especially your prospects.
13. Plan, but be flexible. Listen. Make changes.
14. Don’t let your competition ambush you via the Internet.

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December 21, 2010|emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Social Media: Effective communication tool or just more noise?

We have seen clients just jump into social media marketing without a strategy.  They would never have thought to run a newspaper ad campaign without a clear objective, but for some reason they see social media in a different light. But if ever a sound strategy was needed, it is now (emarketing toronto services).

During the ‘mass marketing’ period when we spent a lot of money (advertising), hunted for customers (cold calling) and hoped they remembered us when it came time to purchase, we could “broad stroke” our mass media strategy and still affect enough people to cause the desired result. Many pundits have said for years “ half my ad dollars are wasted – I just don’t know which half.” We know now: it was more than half.

Then The Google Age arrived. Web 2.0. Social Media. It brought millions of people online for many hours at a time. But more important; it returned the buying power back to the consumer. It literally changed the way people buy. For almost anything we are thinking of purchasing, for business or personal, we usually Google it. We do our homework so we are a much more educated buyer.

This transformed process means we are less likely to “be sold” something today than we are “to buy” it. And that shift changes everything for marketers. Rather than ideas and promotions that sell people, we are seeing firms give away a tremendous amount of “inside information”. Information designed to help educate the public. An open and transparent way of doing business. We are educating them and allowing them to buy. Some might say the good marketers have always done that.

The transfer of power is simple: prospects can now “click a brand right out of their life”. If they are uncomfortable or annoyed – poof, they’re gone. And so are you.

So strategy has never been more important to marketers. You must:

1. Know (and speak to) a single primary target

2. Understand and articulate clearly, exactly what you are selling.

3. Understand the single, relevant issue that people need to know in order to buy.

Make sure that social media does not just become more noise. The consumer will just turn you off.

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May 2, 2010|emarketing Strategy|1 Comment

Let Plumbers Plumb

Never let your IT people build your website. It is one of your most valuable marketing initiatives.

We used to give it to IT because they could “speak geek” and communicate with the programmers. But for the most part we ended up with sites that were using the most advanced techie stuff and served little to no marketing purpose. In fact they often worked against us!

Web development has changed over the past 10 years. Programmers no longer have us in a corner. So do your IT folks a favour and move the website development and management to marketing. It’s where it belongs.

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March 20, 2010|emarketing Strategy|1 Comment

Social Media Marketing – No Quick Fixes

Time and time again we hear clients asking for the short-cut – the quick, cheap fix that will allow them to participate in social media marketing. Although some activities result in immediate results, overall, a sound digital strategy takes some time to bear fruit.

That does not mean your digital agency gets a 6 month pass. They should definitely be accountable for their actions even while they are laying a strong foundation for a long term online strategy. Buck Rogers said “It’s no good picking up speed if you’re on the wrong road” and we could not agree more. So to take time to think through your approach, test a few theories and do some A / B testing to see what works makes a lot of sense. But so too does setting clear objectives within a specific time frame.

Speaking of time – it is only going to get more expensive to get in this game. As competition increase, both for PPC and for organic search terms, it will take more time and effort or require more dollars to achieve your goals. So jump in now. It is far less expensive to defend a first page ranking for a keyword than to gain it.

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March 18, 2010|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Digital Strategy – Learn To Be Hunted

We have developed a smart process to generate qualified leads online. In essence we help clients make the shift from “hunting for customers” to “being hunted by customers”. And for almost all it makes perfect sense. They nod their heads and even engaged in good questions and they truly “get it”.

Yet they continue to buy newspaper and radio ads. They continue to use the expensive, mass media options we all grew up with (or at least most of us). The 2 most alarming or mind-boggling responses we get are:

“We have no budget for online lead generation this year – we will look at it next year” – well folks that may be one of the best examples of closing the barn doors after the horses are out” that I have seen. The consumer has already changed the way they buy. In fact, The Globe and Mail recently interviewed the CFO of Google who reported that more than 70% of all consumers do their research online before buying. In other words -  they come up with their short list. It’s really simple: if you are not there, you do not make the short list. This year, or next! We know change is often difficult, but stop wasting money on expensive mass media options. We now know they don’t work.

Target smart. Allow yourself to BFOUND when people are looking.

“Who are they?” – that’s the typical response when we show a “traditional marketer” the Google results of the term they think they should dominate online. You see they know their product inside out. They know that they are the best at X. Problem is: the rest of the world (and Google) does not know. They have not done the basics. The fundamentals of being found.

So what comes up on the search page elicits the response “Who are they?” as they point at the new competitors who are eating their lunch. They know business is off, but they blame it on the soft economy. They don’t realize it is never coming back. Like it or not, Google has changed the world. Now people know how to find you easily when they need you (or somebody else just like you). The consumer has become the hunter and the marketer must learn to be the hunted.

That’s a mind trip isn’t it?

Wake up while you can still influence the organic listings for certain productive search terms. In a few years the competition will be fierce and the cost to impact organic positioning for important keywords or phrases will be stiff.

Me thinks Google is in the cat-bird seat.

www.e10egency.com

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March 7, 2010|emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Does Our Advertising Work?

Now more than ever, marketers will be asked to defend their budget, demonstrate the value of their impact to sales and describe their unique value proposition to the business. It is truly ironic – businesses spent like drunken sailors trying climb over-top each other when results could not be measured. Now that promotional activity can be accurately tracked and measured, they do not want invest a nickel they don’t have to. Mass Media Executives liked that it could not be measured – it kept them in business.

How does marketing justify and account for all that investment? Sirius Decisions research has found that only 15 percent of b-to-b marketing functions use an automated marketing dashboard; another 62 percent are currently developing such a dashboard, suggesting there is still a significant amount of measurement work to do. While there are no shortcuts to properly deploying a marketing dashboard, we agree with Sirus that the greatest area of focus for 2010 must center on metrics that align with sales.

No client ever asked for website traffic or an increase in leads. They want more sales. Yet most Digital Agencies have little to no influence how those qualified leads are followed up. A measurement gap that every marketer must wrestle with. One clear solution is to have sales report to marketing. Then hold marketing accountable for performance. The tools exist to manage and measure all promotion activity designed to generate leads and sales.

Every marketer must know for certain where the leads are coming from. Measurement strategies are the key to Inbound marketing success in your organization. And the key to making your advertising dollars work.

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January 24, 2010|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|2 Comments

Facebook Beats Google!

According to All Facebook, Facebook was the most visited site on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, taking over the #1 visited site from Google. Impressive numbers for both.

Yet they are not competitors. So how can one beat the other in any truly meaningful way?

Google is the tool we use for SEARCH. When we want to look for something or someone. When we roughly know what we are looking for, and indeed when we are actually searching for something specific, Google is the go to site. They help us narrow it down until we find what we are looking for. So on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, it is not surprising that people were not searching for stuff.

On the other hand Facebook and most other social media sites are DISCOVER-based sites.  In other words when you want to be discovered, or you want people to trip across your message, social media is often the place. People are not really searching when on Facebook, they are being entertained by other people in their own communities. They are discovering what others in their community are up to. So again over Christmas, it is not surprising that people were checking in with family and friends. They were discovering rather than searching.

Being SEARCHABLE and being DISCOVERABLE are 2 completely different ideas, yet both allow you to BFOUND online. And being found online is a competitive edge that most businesses can no longer ignore. After years of learning to HUNT for customers, business is just now waking up to the opportunity of BEING HUNTED. Why try to sell people your product when you can simply allow them to buy?

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January 1, 2010|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

It’s the Consumer Stupid.

On October 21, 2009 in Advertising Age,  Judy Shapiro addressed the shift that is happening in the media world. With a good grasp of the issues she talks openly abou the opportunities and what it might take to benefit from all of this change. Einstein said ” The problem cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created it”. In other words we need to make a shift of mindset in order to come up with a smart solution with regard to the changes in the marketplace. Fact is there is nothing usual about business today. Companies with little focus and who have relegated marketing to the basement office will most certainly pay a steep price in The Google Age.

The main issue – the single action at the core of all this change is the fact that the consumer has changed the way they make their buying decision. I did not say they changed the way they buy or where they buy, yet those can well be impacted when they change the way they make their buying decisions.

In the past they would remember ads & promotions, talk to relevant friends & family, seek advice at store level and make their choice. In studies, it was difficult to give any one of these a heavier weighting than the others. But today, although we may still seek opinions and counsel from freinds family and store clerks, by far and away, in Google we trust. Now we simply Google what we are looking for, assemble all the info we need and make our choice.

The problem is not that the consumer’s buying process has changed, it is that our marketing and sales process has not. Most businesses are no longer fishing where the fish are. The consumer has changed and we have not. Easily corrected indeed, BUT the mindset issue comes into play big time. If a marketer uses the same language, tactics and thinking when marketing online, they will likely have their hat handed to them by the communities they engage with. Go slow and LISTEN first. Act only when you have a feel for the community and the environment. This is like no medium you have ever used. Lose the corporate-speak. These are people you are talking to. In fact, we have a list of 21 marketing thoughts & ideas we live by that would serve most marketers when they go online.

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October 22, 2009|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Context Is Everything

HUNT or BE HUNTED

In order to understand what is happening to marketing at this early stage of The Google Age, we thought it best to examine the context. Said another way, context is what is at work in the background, informing our decisions. Indeed, if our context gives us our decisions and our decisions determine our actions, it would be good to understand the context in this situation.

As context is made up of many factors such as culture, experience and history, what has determined the decisions in business since the end of World War II? Even before 1945, mass media was shaping our world. What we knew and believed was heavily influenced by mass marketers and mass media owners. The technologies that we developed were, for the most part designed to reach more people at the same time. For those who grew up and entered the business world during this period, all we knew was “mass marketing”. Most of us just did not distinguish it that way. It just was the way it was.

It is believed that a fish has no distinction called water. It just is what the fish swims in. A fish can only get the distinction “water” if you take it out of the water. So lets pull ourselves out of the business world for a moment and look at what might be at work. The only business context we could have had for years is “mass marketing”. Given that, we spent our time and brainpower developing smarter, more creative ways to HUNT for new customers. We used every new technology to get an edge over our competition, and more important, we used genuine creativity. But HUNTING was still HUNTING. Given our mass marketing context, that was all we could distinguish.

We would SPEND significant ad, promotion and sales dollars.

HUNT for customers everywhere.

HOPE we can then catch them at the right time, or

HOPE they remember us when it comes time to buy.

We refer to it as the shhh model and the media owners were hoping to keep it very,very quiet. After all it was the source of their wealth. We have to pay the gatekeeper if we want access to the eyeballs that the gatekeeper controls. It is just how it works. The media owner invests millions in developing properties that your target audience is interested in, so they can sell you advertising and sponsorship opportunities at significant premiums. The transaction must be based on a fair, consistent factor so we have come to buy media on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis. As marketers we then had to separately weigh the quality of the audience (how targeted they were vs our ideal targets) as well as the CPM required to reach them. It is a subjective process that is extremely hard to measure.

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October 16, 2009|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Left-Handed Monkey Wrenches For Left-Handed Plumbers

Co-founder of Hub Spot, Dharmesh Shah says, the internet is great at connecting makers of left-handed monkey wrenches with left-handed plumbers around the world.

But the makers of left-handed monkey wrenches must:

  1. be very clear that they make left-handed monkeys wrenches
  2. not tell everyone about their full line of wrenches, hammers, screwdrivers and saws
  3. talk directly to left-handed plumbers and not be tempted to include right-handed plumbers, general contractors, the owners of hardware stores, the local handymen across America and anyone else interested in buying any household or industrial tool.

Inbound Marketing is, like the internet itself, far more efficient. Shah’s partner, Brian Halligan uses the example of eBay. Apparently the Founder started it because he wanted to expand the number of people to trade PEZ dispensers with, after he had traded with his entire rolodex. The internet offered free access to a lot of other people interested in his unusual hobby. Now eBay is the ultimate connector of buyer and seller in the world. Like Brian said – a very efficient system.

A more efficient marketplace truly allows for specialization amongst small business. So now the average small business does not have to be everything to everybody in order to survive. Due to the long tail effect ( see Chris Anderson’s Blog ) one could build a solid business making left-handed monkey wrenches for left-handed plumbers. And they can reach them all over the world.

In the old SPEND, HUNT and HOPE model, (spend lots of money, hunt for customers and hope they remember you when it comes time to buy) using mass media that was expensive and played to the large Company’s advantage, many small business owners believed they had to supplement their main offering with additional products and services, just to make ends meet. They had to add right handed wrenches and small saws, hammers and screwdrivers. The more products they offered, the more potential audiences they could identify to sell to so they forgot about the left-handed plumber and their left-handed wrenches. They lost themselves – but even worse, they collapsed sales and marketing into one big mess. In this state they want (believe they need to) tell everybody about all of the things they sell. Their ads lose focus. Their promotions are at best desperate grabs at low hanging fruit and they spend a lot of money on a lot of things. In other words marketing goes down the toilet. In this world they must sell hard and often to survive.

We conduct inbound marketing campaigns and as a professional marketer I see the Internet as the savior of marketing. The Google Era will put marketing back in the corner office. I will explain.

If a small business takes their traditional marketing mentality to inbound marketing it will fail. No ifs ands or buts. The keys to inbound marketing are:

  1. be very clear about what you sell.
  2. be very clear who your ideal buyer is
  3. put out content that educates that buyer about that product

If the business also has other things for sale, they need to run separate campaigns. That’s marketing. In this model customers buy and because they are in control of the transaction, they often enjoy it. So that left-handed plumber can easily find a left-handed wrench online.

emarketing toronto

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October 15, 2009|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »
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