Ideas for Marketing Using the Internet
May 30, 2008
If you’re a small business owner, chances are you’ve searched for ideas for marketing your business using the internet. The internet can be the best place to find innovative marketing ideas… or it can be the worst.
Most of the innovative marketing ideas you’ll find on the internet are merely marketing tactics. The problem with marketing tactics is that they require a cohesive marketing strategy to be effective.
So begin with creating a marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy will revolve around delivering your marketing message to your target or niche audience. If you need help with this, pick up a copy of the book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results
Once you have your niche market in mind, then it’s time to begin searching for effective marketing tactics for your business. It’s amazing how natural and easy marketing can be when you keep your niche audience in mind as you search for ideas for marketing.
For example, if you know your niche market isn’t searching for solutions on the internet, then launching a blog is probably the WORST thing you can do to market your products or services. On the other hand, if your potential customers are searching for answers via the internet, then launching a blog would be a GREAT idea for marketing your business.
The key lies in knowing your target or niche market audience.
Branding and Blogging: Getting to Know you but Not ALL About You
May 28, 2008
Branding is all about the way your business is perceived by others while blogging is all about communication. Effectively communicating what you and your business can do for your potential customers is one way a blog can act as a powerful branding vehicle.
According to Rosemary Davies-Janes, a branding consultant with Miboso writes in the post The Branding Point on the Authentic Personal Branding blog:
Effective brands have three key components.
The first is a clear-eyed, precise understanding of your personal genius. Your genius is a composite of your natural strengths, learned skills, values and preferences.
Secondly, you’ll need an equally clear understanding of your target audience; where they hang out, what they do, what they think about, what they long to achieve.
Finally, you’ll need to build benefit statements that connect your genius with what your target audience ‘thinks they want’ — as opposed to “what they really need.”
So, share what your audience needs to know via your blog and you’ll be good to go. However, many freelancers take it a step further. They share about their inner turmoil… their relationship troubles… their financial difficulties…. and suddenly it’s not a marketing vehicle but a group therapy session online.
It turns out that it’s possible to share TOO much information via your blog. Just because you can share spontaneous information doesn’t mean you should. While a certain level of familiarity will indeed build your business… take it too far and it’s possible that utter and complete transparency in your business can do more harm than good.
Over at the Psych blog, there’s a report on “Why Familiarity Really Does Breed Contempt”
“the more traits participants knew about another ‘person’, the more likely they were to find dissimilarities with themselves, and so the more likely they were to dislike them.
…once we perceive a dissimilarity, it’s all downhill from there. Even traits we might have liked, or been neutral about before, now get the thumbs down.“
What does this mean for you, your business blog and your branding?
It means sharing information on a need to know basis. Do potential marketing clients really need to know that you have a tendency to get involved in one bad relationship after another? Do your freelance writing clients need to know you’re catching flak over your anticipated move to Bimini?
Some blogs are built upon utter and complete transparency however, those blogs are not BUSINESS BLOGS!
When it comes to a business blog, keep the tone professional and the information on a need to know basis! Ask yourself before every post, “Does this enhance my professional image? Does this post inspire trust with my audience?”
There’s certainly a place in the blogosphere for discussions on politics, religion and sexuality… but if yours is a business blog… then I strongly suggest you launch a free Wordpress.com or Blogger.com blog for those discussions. Keep them FAR away from your business presence.
I once had a client who launched a side business in which she featured racy and provocative greeting cards. She WISELY kept the greeting card business’ existence very far removed from her “day job” as a corporate trainer.
Blogs make it SO easy to communicate that sometimes, you may be tempted to “cross” the line. Whether it’s posts or comments, remember… the internet never forgets!
Trust Building Practices in Advertising Today
May 26, 2008
One of the most important jobs your advertising can perform is to build trust, which explains why even the WORST advertising messages still are somewhat effective.
The mere ACT of buying advertising, whether it’s on television, newspaper, billboards or radio automatically grants you a baseline level of trust with potential customers. There’s almost a “Hey, I’ve heard of that company- they must be OK.”
One company that really understood the importance of building trust was Lifelock. For the past 2 years, Lifelock founder Todd Davis has been advertising his social security number on radio, television and anywhere else he could post it as a trust building practice in Lifelock advertising.
Unfortunately, this advertising tactic is backfiring on Davis. According to Wired News:
Now, Lifelock customers in Maryland, New Jersey and West Virginia are suing Davis, claiming his service didn’t work as promised and he knew it wouldn’t, because the service had failed even him.
Go ahead. Read the article. Read about how Lifelock is being sued in Arizona for OTHER misleading claims, including the $1 Million service guarantee. Read about how the credit reporting agency Experian has their own bone to pick with Lifelock and their business practices. Read the article and see if you’re willing to sign up for Lifelock’s services.
The problem with trust is that it is hard to earn and easily lost.
Advertising is about building trust, and Lifelock had earned a lot of trust with their advertising campaign. In an era when people are told to carefully guard their social security numbers, Todd Davis stood up and displayed his for the world to see. Tens of thousands of people said, “Gee. His service must be REALLY good! I think I’ll sign up,” upon seeing and hearing those ads.
Now, lawsuits abound as angry customers strike back because they feel they were lied to in order to gain their trust. Turns out, Todd Davis’ identity HAS been stolen repeatedly because of Lifelock’s ads… and according to the plaintiffs in the case… that means he knew he was lying.
In any case, Lifelock is about to learn a valuable lesson in the fragility of trust.
Advertising That Tries to Speak to Everyone
May 23, 2008
When I began my career in advertising (over 20 years ago… gee… I must have been 12 at the time ? ) my advertising mentor was Joan Elias. Joan had launched her own advertising agency and she took a chance on a recent college grad who displayed a unique ability to be able to “see” inside a consumer’s head.
Joan Elias taught me that when you try to create an advertising message that speaks to everyone, you create an advertising message that speaks to no one.
Many business owners often find themselves chasing after an array of marketing tactics instead of implementing a cohesive marketing strategy, a marketing strategy that has, at it’s core, the basics of niche marketing.
Unfortunately, niche marketing tactics which may result in great success for one business may fail miserably for the next… all because niche marketing tactics must be implemented within a cohesive marketing strategy.
Advertising that tries to speak to everyone will eventually be heard by no one. Define what your business does for your customers, whether they be businesses or consumers.
Got that?
Now, create advertising messages that tell that story to those customers.
Oh, and be prepared. See, advertising and marketing will DEFINITELY help a structurally sound business grow. However, if there are “cracks” in the foundation of your business, expect a successful advertising or marketing campaign to reveal those weaknesses in a hurry.
Advertising Today: Niche Marketing
May 21, 2008
I love it when 20 somethings write about how “advertising today” is somehow different than advertising at any other point in history. They write like ads never failed before the turn of the millennium. They seem to think that the practice of niche marketing began shortly after Al Gore invented the internet.
The internet hasn’t changed how people operate. The internet is just another communication tool. When men were drawing on cave walls thousands of years ago… they drew dirty pictures. When the internet became mainstream, guess what kind of pictures were leading the way?
The same is true of advertising. Advertising “truths” written at the turn of the 20th Century are still as relevant today as they were 100 years ago.
The difference is that in advertising today, especially with advertising on the internet, you can SEE what works and what doesn’t. There is little opportunity for delusional thinking. Either those waltzing dancers are driving people to the website or they’re not.
The waltzing dancers is a reference to a television spot which aired a few years ago. Obviously created in response to the “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance” television show’s success, the ads were aired outside of those tightly targeted programs. I wish I could remember who paid to produce and run those ads, but I can’t remember. What stuck with me was the way my teenage son gasped when he first saw it and uttered these immortal words:
“THERE IS NO WAY THAT AD MAKES ME WANT TO BUY THEIR TIRES.”
The campaign quickly died, but I still wonder what the agency AND the tire company were thinking.
Let me put it this way, I can’t FIND the waltzing dancers tire ad on YouTube… but I can find 81 versions of Bridgestones hilarious 2008 Super Bowl ad:
What makes that ad great…. it’s memorable, it’s hilarious AND it clearly illustrates the implied benefit of Bridgestone tires.
What the internet has done is provide a way for that classic to live on and be played over and over again.
Which brings us to what makes the ad above REALLY super stupendously great… I’m airing it here for free. Bridgestone isn’t paying me to air their ad. Yet, it’s getting played here and throughout the internet… long after the campaign ended.
Advertising today is no different that advertising 100 years ago. There are many different ways to make an ad memorable. Being funny is the hardest. Tightly targeting your message to your niche market is the easiest.
Niche Marketing for Small Businesses
May 19, 2008
When your business is small, you must develop a laser focus on your customers. Who they are and most importantly, why they buy from you. It doesn’t matter if your B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) the key to marketing success is to be extremely specific in describing what you do for your customers.
This practice is frequently referred to as “Niche Marketing“.
Many small business owners worry about excluding potential customers by tightly targeting a niche market. They worry that if they speak specifically to one customer, they may alienate other customers. Most small business owners err on the side of being so general that their potential prospects have no idea why they should do business with that business.
Anita Campbell provides a GREAT illustration in how frustrating it is when a business doesn’t define their niche in her post Does Your Business Have a Niche or Specialty?
Think about this: have you ever had the frustrating experience of visiting a website or talking with someone for a half hour only to end up afterwards with no idea whether their company would be a good fit as a vendor or provider. You come away knowing they are software developers. But you have no idea what kind of software or whether it’s in your price range. Or you discover that they are marketers. But you can’t tell whether they serve Fortune 500 companies or a 2-person business.
It’s been my experience that the confused mind says no. As a potential customer, you may SPEAK with a provider at a conference for 30 minutes without knowing whether or not that business might be a candidate to provide a solution… but only because you’re physically present anyway. When it comes to the web… and a potential customer visits a web page that does not offer a tightly targeted solution written with that visitor in mind… well, that visitor will appear in the log files as someone who stays on a page only SLIGHTLY longer than a search engine robot.
Mike Stevens writes in “Get Rich- with a Niche”
The bottom line: Hook a customer with what you do best, and then, once they’re a customer, hit on them for projects that are beyond your sweet spot but will help you expand your offerings. It works, and it’s the most efficient way to build your business.
In my book, Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results, I take you step by step through the process of defining your target audience. While marketing experts agree that targeting a niche market is a key to marketing success, few take you through the process of defining that niche market.
Can You Really Do Your Own Marketing?
May 16, 2008
As a marketing consultant, I often feel like I’m in the role of “marketing therapist.”
When I begin to work with a new client, I’ll hear of ALL the marketing strategies they’ve tried to implement. I’ll hear how nothing has worked. They’re afraid that nothing WILL work… but nothing could be further from the truth.
However, every once and a while… by no means with every client, but definitely with a few… I find can really related to the therapist’s situation in the following joke:
A husband and wife came for counseling after 20 years of marriage. When asked what the problem was, the wife launched into an extended tirade, listing every problem they had ever had over the past two decades.
When she finished, all three sat in silence. Then, the therapist got up, walked around the desk and asked the wife to stand. He took her into his arms and began kissing her passionately. The husband watched their impassioned embrace. When the therapist released her, the woman quietly sat down as though in a daze.
The therapist turned to the husband, “This is what your wife needs at least three times a week. Can you do this?”
The husband thought for a moment and replied, “Well, I can drop her off here on Mondays and Wednesdays, but on Fridays, I fish.”
I can relate. Every once and a while, I’ll be working with a client and suddenly get the feeling like I’m the only one who cares if this works. I feel like I’m doing the kissing while the business owner watches dispassionately and then plans a fishing trip for Friday.
Can you do this?
Can a small business owner REALLY handle the marketing for his/her own small business.
YES!
However, you’d better get passionate about your business if you want to do so.
You’d better get passionate about what your business can do for your clients/customers.
You’d better get your head out of “me” thinking and get it focused on your customer.
You’d better see clearly the destination you want to reach and the path you’ll take to get there.
Otherwise, you’ll end up watching as your customers embrace your competitor’s business.
Small Business Marketing Success Online
May 14, 2008
The formula for small business marketing success is the same online as it is off line. Small business marketing success lies in your ability to successfully identify your target customers and then create marketing messages that speak directly to those individual’s goals, problems or desires.
If you already have customers, then you are selling either products or services that solve your customer’s problems.
On the services side, accountants and bookkeepers solve accounting problems while therapists solve a myriad of psychological problems.
On the products side… if you’re selling cars, you’re not only selling a solution to a transportation problem but you’re also selling a means to achieve a goal AND a desire! If you’re selling clothing, then the problem you’re solving is nakedness… and depending upon the type of clothing you sell, you could also be selling a means to achieve goals and desires.
The key is, if you’re in business, you’re offering solutions to problems people have. Ideally, these are problems that people are willing to write checks in order to see resolution.
With this perspective, you can see that marketing is merely the act of getting the word out about the solutions you offer. Suddenly, your direct mail campaign will take on a different twist.
Instead of “selling” you’re “solving”.
Instead of pushing, you’re offering solutions.
When you view your marketing as merely the act of getting the word out about the solutions you offer to everyday business problems, suddenly the world is your oyster. Those grains of sand irritating your target customers are your golden opportunity to shine. This is your chance to solve a problem, win a client and save the world all in a simple, elegant act of using your skills, talents and abilities.
Now, with your new rose colored marketing glasses, you can see the different avenues available to you to “get the word out”. For some independent service professionals, just removing the stigma of “selling” from the equation is enough. For others, recognizing that what they’re really doing is spreading the word about the solutions they offer is all it takes to open the floodgate of ideas.
One client of mine is working on developing a television show for a local cable network with another service professional. When these two professionals realized how well their services “dovetailed”, they approached a local television studio with an idea for a show. Because of their unique “offering solutions” mind set, the station jumped on the idea and their show is now ready to begin production.
Another client began offering teleseminars addressing the core problems being faced by clients on a daily basis. By offering these free teleseminars, she offers practical solutions callers can take and implement immediately. Instead of using these teleseminars as “selling” vehicles, she uses them as “problem solving” vehicles. It’s worked like a charm. Participants love her low key approach and her client load is now so heavy, she’s had to hire an assistant 4 days a week just to handle the workload.
Remember, marketing is merely the act of spreading the word about the solutions you offer to potential client problems. Is your marketing (or lack thereof) hurting your business?
Customer Service in the World of Web 2.0
May 12, 2008
Many businesses tend to focus on acquiring NEW customers and lose sight of focusing upon EXISTING customers. The long term value of a customer is far greater than their initial purchase. Existing customers are the FOUNDATION of the holy grail of advertising…
word of mouth advertising.
One of the most frustrating parts about working with clients on their marketing is the frustrating fact of how intertwined customer service is with marketing. Many small business owners say they WANT to leverage the power of word of mouth advertising without recognizing that exceptional customer service is the KEY to tapping into that elusive marketing goal.
Any business that expects to stay afloat by merely using advertising to draw in a never ending supply of new customers is doomed to failure. The cost of acquiring new customers is always much, much higher than the cost to sell to existing customers.
Successful marketing means establishing a solid customer base, then servicing that customer base as you add to it via your marketing and advertising.
Erwin Steneker at the Learn Good Customer Service blog writes:
This is a wake-up call for anyone thinking that customer service is something handled by a customer service department, provided by customer service reps diligently typing at their help desk applications…
Stop chasing that ghost! You’re beating a dead horse!
The time has long gone, where your customer service was the only place unhappy customers could go. The Internet is a common place to talk about just about anything that’s on your mind. Forums, social sites like MySpace and Facebook, Youtube for videos, blogs, customer complaint web sites, the list goes on and on.
These days, it’s much more likely that your mistakes are plastered all over the Information Superhighway instead of coming to you. It’s only human to get mad, and get even.
You need much more than ‘just’ a customer service department to make and keep happy customers.
Every time a customer comes into contact with your business, you either add or take away from that relationship:
A hearty AMEN to that!!!
If you think your customers are happy because they’re not complaining… WAKE UP! Poor customer service has become such a staple these days that it takes a hugely egregious act to prompt a formal complaint from most consumers.
The first symptom that your customer service may need work is not an avalanche of complaints, but rather a lack of “word of mouth” advertising. Current customers aren’t referring new customers to your business anymore. However, instead of looking inside, many small business owners look OUTSIDE and call upon the marketing gods to come to the rescue.
Before you begin any marketing or advertising campaign, take an internal check first of your customer satisfaction amongst CURRENT customers. Remember, satisfied customers will tell 3 or 4 people about your business… dissatisfied ones will tell, on average, 16.
Have Google Adwords Let You Down?
May 9, 2008
Have you been beating your head against the wall, trying to make Adwords work for you?
Google Adwords is for chumps…or at least for people without an eye on the advertising ROI.
Google Adwords used to be easy… easy to use and easy to make work. But things have changed and not for the getter. Winning with Google Adwords today is hard. If you’re winning with Adwords, then you’re in the minority.
The reality is that it’s REALLY hard to make Google Adwords work for the average small business owner, especially the one whose business isn’t internet related.
For example, I have a web development client who spent THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of dollars over the past year running Google Adwords. She has hired consultants to help direct her Adwords campaigns, one of whom set her up to spend $1500 in one month without so much as a single new lead, let alone a customer as a result.
When she turned to me in frustration, I did an analysis of the number of people searching for her “ideal” keywords. The research clearly showed that there just aren’t enough of her target customers searching for her solution via the internet.
It’s not a matter of tightly targeting her customers… she’s done that.
It’s not a matter of her customers not NEEDING her product… they do.
It’s not a matter of the quality of her marketing materials… when she speaks in person and promotes her product, customers flock to the website and the orders POUR in.
The problem is that her tightly targeted target market just don’t know her product exists. If they don’t know it exists, then we can’t expect them to go searching for it on the web. We need to find a way to let them know it’s available.
We need to look to other avenues to promote her product.
I’ve begged her try traditional media to promote her product, but it’s way too much “work”. The fact is, Adwords is easy and familiar. Direct mail marketing on the other hand is “new” and therefore “hard”.
The basics of direct mail marketing are amazingly similar to the principles behind running a successful Adwords campaign. The difference is Adwords is reaching the “active” user… the user who knows he/she has a problem and is heading to the internet for a solution.
However, there is another type of customer… the type who knows he/she has a problem and has no idea where to start. This “passive” user needs to be reached via “active” media… such as direct mail, radio or television.
Meanwhile, I have another client who hired me for marketing consultation. He read my book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results and wanted one on one help.
We first defined who his audience was and why they would hire him. We then created a tightly targeted message specifically for his audience. We invested in producing a television commercial to deliver that message and then started running his tightly targeted message on a cable network which squarely targets his ideal target client.
So far this year, my client has spent less on production + ad time than my Adwords using client spent on just adwords alone. Oh, and the client running television saw his website traffic figures grow to 5X their pre-ad traffic figures PLUS he’s seen new clients as a result.
The 2nd client got measurable SUPERIOR results for less money thanks to the smart use of traditional media.
Yet another one of my clients built her business on Adwords… but that was four years ago. She called today to ask my advice about traditional media. Her latest Adwords invoice was sky high and while her click through rates were dropping at an equally dramatic rate. Meanwhile she’s noticed that more and more “local” people are finding her. That’s probably thanks to her prominently displayed address on her web site. Her keywords plus her location = top SERPS in natural search for a long tail keyword.
So that got her thinking… what if there were a better way? What if she could reach people who hadn’t begun to search for her solutions via the web. After all, 5 out of 6 people in the world aren’t even ON the internet!
My formula for success with traditional media is as follows: Make sure the call to action is to visit the website. That way, you can watch the logs to see if the message is making an impact. If it is and the phone isn’t ringing, then you know to tweak the web copy. If visitors aren’t showing up at the website, then it’s time to tweak the traditional media message.
The same it true with Google Adwords. However, instead of paying for your message to be delivered to a broad television or radio audience, you’re paying for your message to be “hand” delivered one at a time to individual customers.
Sure, there are still some campaigns that can be run for a “reasonable” sum. However, if you’ve noticed all the banner ads on blogs lately… there’s a lot of discouragement amongst Google Adwords faithful and they’re turning to other avenues to present their marketing message. If your audience is internet users, then that’s your other option. On the other hand, if your audience is geographically local, then give your local media a stab at delivering your marketing message.
