Thursday, August 23, 2012

Three principles of internet marketing

by Prof. Erwin Globio - eglobiotraining, Internet Marketing Philippines

I’ve put in some time lately talking about what internet marketing is not. I thought I’d take a crack what internet marketing is, for a change. Internet marketing’s driven by three principles that are often in tension:

Note that I didn’t say The three principles of internet marketing. These are principles of internet marketing. But I’m sure you’ll come up with others.

Discoverability

I’ve got a different take on discoverability than most. Yes, it’s about being found. But it’s not about people finding your site. It’s about people finding the first breadcrumb trail pointing to your site. That’s what separates discoverability from visibility (see the next principle).

People have to find you, first and foremost. If they can’t, you’re wearing a tux in an empty room. You have potential customers out there. They’re looking for value. Maybe they want to buy from you, or hire you, right now. Maybe they just need an answer, or some advice. If you provide it, they remember you.

But, they gotta find you, before they find you. That’s discoverability. It’s like some kind of Dr. Who time loop thingy where he goes back in time to tell himself what he’s supposed to do, so that he’ll know what to do, so that he goes back in time…

Never mind.

Discoverability is your presence, projected across the web: On Facebook, Twitter, search engines and whatever else folks come up with. It’s also folks’ experiences with your brand, and how they pass along/amplify their feelings after those interactions.

Kenneth Cole probably wants this bit of discoverability back

Discoverability comes from:

Build a path to your door, and you’ve got discoverability.

A lot of folks assume this is 100% of internet marketing. It’s not – read on…

Visibility

What folks do when they get on that path is all about visibility. Say I need help changing a bicycle tire. I go and search for “Changing ridiculously tight road bike tires.” Up pops 10 different sites. But of those 10, 1 catches my eye. All 10 were discoverable. One is visible:

Tight bike tires search result - all discoverable, one visible

Visibility drives more than search, though. It’s a core marketing concept. Check out these Facebook ads. Which one grabs your attention?

It’s not a trick question. At different times, different ads are more visible to you. Me and Rush, we’re buds (no), but I’m not going to click that one. AppSumo jumps out at me because I know the site. And ‘Become a web developer’ grabs my attention because the guy is looking right at me. But aside from AppSumo, none of these ads are particularly well-targeted, so none are that visible to me.

And that’s what visibility is about: Targeting, or, as I used to say, “Dressing appropriately.”

Visibility is driven by:

Targeting: Put the right message in front of me, when I need it.
Usability and navigation: If I find you in a search result, but then can’t find what I need on your site, you’re discoverable but lack immediate value. So you lack visibility.
Call to action: Tell me what to do!

Discoverability gets you seen. Discoverability + Immediate value = Visibility. That gets you a response.

Density

I discovered you. You’re visible. I click. Now what?

Density provides the ‘now what’.

HAH. I bet you expected something like ‘virality’ or ‘contagiousness’, didn’t you! I tried those, and they didn’t fit. So density it is.

Visibility and Density are always in tension. Visibility demands that certain messages stand out. That’s hard to do if you’re putting 100% of your information in front of the user the first time they see you. So you have to layer information, letting folks learn as they go. Density lets me drill down and learn more, when and how I want to. Apple does density on their iPad page:

Density - Apple does it better than anyone

I can stick with the top and just learn a little. Or I can scroll down and learn more. And then I can click and learn even more.

Density comes from:

Information architecture
A great design
Great writing
Not design/architecture by committee
Providing knowledge, rather than information

Density is what folks want to find when they dig deeper, wherever they start. A Facebook brand page with one update a week is not dense. A software website that tells me only 10% of the feature set and asks me to sign up for a demo is not dense, either.

But a brand page that keeps me up-to-date, or a software site that lets me explore as much as I want before I pick up the phone are great.

Density = Knowledge availability. If the stuff I need is available when I’m ready, the immediate value you sent my way turns into lasting value. You’ve won a customer.

The formula

Discoverability gets you seen.

Discoverability + Immediate value = Visibility.

Visibility + Knowledge availability = Density.

Discoverability + Visibility + Density = Customers.

What would you add?

Internet Marketing Philippines

Internet Marketing Is About Decisions.

by Prof. Erwin Globio - eglobiotraining, Internet Marketing Philippines

If you can’t make a decision, don’t go into marketing. Don’t try to manage a marketing team, either.

[if you couldn't tell - today's post is a rant]

Or, as I like to say: Behind every bad marketing campaign lies a herd of managers.
This is doubly true in internet marketing. 90% of internet marketing campaigns can be designed, executed and launched within 2-3 days. Seriously. Think about your last campaign. Was it a landing page? A blog entry? An Adwords campaign?
How long did it really take to put the campaign together and run it? 4 hours? 10 hours? Maybe a couple of days?

So why did it take four weeks from the date the idea sprang from your fevered brain to launch?
Because no one could decide. You probably heard questions like:
What are our guarantees this’ll work?
Have you run this past legal?
Has the Board of Directors reviewed this?
Can we make this blue instead of navy blue?
Somewhere after that, your head explodes.
All you CEOs out there, let me give you a hint: You hired a marketer. Let them market for heaven’s sake. Stop micro-managing. Stop expecting guarantees on everything. Instead, ask these three questions:

How will you measure results from this?
What will you do if it works really well?
How soon can you launch it?

If your marketer is worth their salt, they’ll toddle off and either launch and grow a great campaign, or launch and learn from a bad one. Either way, you gain important knowledge, you refine your marketing strategy, and your marketer does their job.
Please, for all our sakes. Decide. Or let us decide for you.

Internet Marketing Philippines

Integrated Marketing To Clever Monkeys (the more things change…)

by Prof. Erwin M. Globio - eglobiotraining, Internet Marketing Philippines

I am sitting in an coliform-riddled Best Western in Peru, Indiana right now (I’m not kidding about the e coli part), drinking bottled water and pondering the meaning of a marketer’s life. The answer, I think, is ‘Integrated Marketing’.
Here’s a conversation I had today with one of my sharpest clients:
Me Smiling victoriously: …and internet sales are up over 25% since 2005-2006.
Client Frowning unhappily: Sure, but what if our catalogs did that?
Me Nodding intelligently: Catalogs and other offline stuff definitely drive customers. Our online marketing insures that you’re visible when they look for you.
Client Parrying vigorously: Yes, but chances are they would’ve found us anyway.
Me Gurgling internally: Well, we know that 60% of your search sales were new. But we can never attribute any one sale to any one source. So you may be right – our work may not matter.

This does have a happy ending. Keep reading…

OUCH. The Truth Hurts

Welcome to life as a marketer. We can crow about analytics, talk about the beautiful stats we can provide, and wave three-dimensional bar charts until we tear our rotator cuffs. The truth is, though, that nothing is certain.
We’ve faced this problem for decades, if not centuries. Human beings are funny beasts. They don’t see an ad and make a beeline for the nearest web site. Any marketing has to chip away at their awareness, slowly, until it makes an impact.

Those Clever Monkeys

We are, after all, the cleverest of monkeys. You can’t expect us to make quick, easily-tracked decisions.
I have 2 kids – my typical train of thought is something like this:

This is a great TV show. I hope the main character doesn’t die of that heart attack.
Hahaha that’s a funny commercial for get well cards.
Man, I need to go to the gym.
I’ll ride the stationary bike for a while.
Stationery. Hmmmm… I need to do cards for my clients.
Man, the kids are awfully quiet. This is great. I can write a blog entry.
What’s that burning smell?
An hour later: Man, i need to go to the gym…

If I go online and buy a stationary bike or some nifty note cards, who gets the credit? The agency that created the commercial? The writer for the TV show? The web site designer?
It’s impossible to say. So what’s the answer?

Integrated Marketing

I told you there’s a happy ending. Here’s how the discussion ended (paraphrased, and continued from above):
Me: It’s certainly possible that our work did little. But we both know better. 15 months ago you didn’t earn a 3:1 ROI from pay per click marketing. Now you do. Online revenue is up, and nothing else explains that, either.
Client: That’s true…
Me: Everything you do to market your business, including internet marketing, adds up. Folks see your products in a magazine. A week later, they search for your name online, but misspell it. They see our PPC ad and click it. Then they buy. The magazine ad started the process. Our ad finished it.
Client: That makes sense.
I just described the results of integrated marketing: A message in one medium generates behavior in another. If you’re positioned to take advantage, that behavior leads to a new customer. If you’re not, someone else reaps the benefit.
Don’t try to take 100% credit. Instead, show how you played your part in the larger customer conversation.
With that, I bid you good night. I have to figure out how I’m going to boil water using the hotel’s iron…

For more information on how are you going to take advantage of Internet Marketing visit Prof. Erwin Globio Internet Marketing Website.

Internet Marketing Philippines

10 Steps to a Sound Internet Marketing Strategy

by: Prof. Erwin Globio - eglobiotraining, Internet Marketing Philippines

You need an internet marketing strategy, even if it’s just “sell lots of stuff”. Here’s how you do it:

Tear up the old marketing plan. Chances are, if your company’s been around for a few years, someone wrote you a marketing plan. It probably has an executive summary, spans 3 years, and cost a lot of money. Feed it into the shredder. Planning for marketing conditions 3 years from now is like breathing through your ears: It defies anatomy, and common sense. Now breath deep, and enjoy the smell of freedom.
Promise yourself you’ll plan 3 months, not 3 years, into the future. In internet marketing, you can’t possibly predict what’ll happen beyond that.
Write down your business goal. Not a marketing goal – you can accomplish your marketing goal and still go out of business. Your business goal is what really matters. And “making money” is not a business goal, FYI.
Shovel everything off your desk. You want a clear, empty desk. Get a pen and paper or grab your computer keyboard. Lock your door. You need quiet time.
Write down the key phrases your customers use when describing your product or service. This isn’t just for search engine optimization – you need to know how customers think of you.
Write down the clinching questions. These should be 3-5 questions that, when answered, virtually guarantee your customer will buy.
Write down your customers’ favorite search engines and web sites. If you don’t know, you can do something revolutionary: Ask your customers.
Get a calendar, or a project planning program, or whatever works best for you when planning stuff.
Write down “Make sure my web site answers the clinching questions on the home page” as the task for the first 2 weeks. It shouldn’t take longer than that. If it does, you’ve got a sluggish web developer, or a really screwed up web site. Revise your plan accordingly.
For the remaining 10 or so weeks:
- Make Mondays pay-per-click day. On Mondays, you or someone you hire will set up (and then optimize) paid search ads that address the clinching questions and appear for the key phrases. If you don’t know how to do this, hire someone who does.
- Make Tuesdays outreach day. Strike up friendly conversations, via comments or e-mail, with the people in your industry you most respect. Every few weeks, drop them a line on news about you and your company. The worst they’ll do is ignore you. The best they’ll do is write about you.
- Make Wednesdays brainstorming day. Every Wednesday, sit down with one other person – either an employee or someone in your industry – and write down 10 ways you can build more business with existing customers, or get new ones. Don’t worry if you repeat week to week.
- Make Thursdays marketing day. Pick one of the ideas you brainstormed on a previous Wednesday, and make it happen. If you can’t do it in a day, don’t bother. Chances are there are plenty of quick things you can do that’ll give you a boost.
- Make Fridays analytics day. Someone who knows a bit about analytics should take a look at your site’s performance, and decide what should change for the next week.

Yes, this is a bit simplified. But it gets you started. As you work within this framework, your strategy will evolve. Keep at it.
You can, of course, hire a professional (ahem), and get a more complete plan. But, if you lack the budget, this can get you started.

Learn more about Internet Marketing and earn a lot, Kindly check this website about Internet Marketing.

Prof. Erwin M. Globio, MSIT - Internet Marketing Philippines

Internet Marketing Expert
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11 Recession-Proof Internet Marketing Methods

by Prof. Erwin M. Globio - eglobiotraining, Internet Marketing

The R word is in the American air again: Recession. Hard to believe it hasn’t already hit, given the money pouring out of the USA, the lack of money coming in, and our, cough, leadership.

OK, I just got political for a second. I’m sorry. Note that I’m not specifying any particular leaders, though. Republicans and Democrats can choose who to blame.

If you run a web site, it’s easy to sit back and shut your eyes as we start the long downward roller coaster ride. But there are some things you can do to recession-proof your internet marketing:

Make every customer happy. It’s easier to keep a customer than it is to get a new one. If something goes wrong, or if someone’s blasting you via e-mail, think before you respond. Of course, you should always do this, but maybe think a little harder this time.
Focus on content. Go back over your site. Is every single page a perfect sales letter? If not, go over it again. Edit and re-edit. Post your edits each time. This is an iterative proces. But constant improvement will mean better conversion and better search rankings. If you’re not sure what to do, eglobiotraining's new guide is a great place to start. Click here Internet Marketing Philippines.
Think search engine optimization. Pay attention to the basic principles of search engine optimization. Have great content. Make sure your site is easily ‘crawled’ by the search engines. Don’t engage in any tricky stuff that might get you banned.
Measure everything. If you’re spending money on advertising, measure every ad for effectiveness. If it’s not converting sales, dump it. No sense spending money that doesn’t generate a return. Just keep in mind the latency of your customers: If it takes 4 weeks for someone to make a buying decision, don’t delete the ad after 2 weeks.
Go back to fundamentals. Some marketing methods have worked for decades: Honesty. Clarity. Research. Don’t get cute – stick to the fundamentals.
Find safety in numbers. Seek out your favorite competitors and work with them. Sounds nuts, but think about it. Find the customers you don’t want, but they do. Have them do the same. Refer them back-and-forth. Even do some co-marketing. You’ll both make more money that way.
Go wild. This is not a time to get conservative. Your competitors probably will. This is a good time to stand out, not by being silly or overspending, but by making sure you have a particularly effective message, and that you carry that message everywhere. Remember, internet marketing is always cheaper than other media. So expand, don’t shrink, what you’re doing online. OK, I’m biased on this one. But you don’t have to hire me. Just go do it.
Expand lines of communication. If you aren’t blogging yet, start. It’s access to ‘soft dollar’ marketing that only costs you time. And it gets you access to an entire world of social media. Then get yourself an account on one or more social networks (Facebook, 9Rules, MySpace, etc.). Don’t spam. Just make friends. If something exciting happens in your business, communicate it there. If you have 100 friends, and they each have 100 friends, that’s 10,000 potential listeners.
Go deep. Deliver more information than ever on your web site. Be sure that visitors can learn every detail of your product or service online. That means fewer phone calls, and less of your time. Time costs money, so this saves you money in a time when money’s a bigger concern.
Be careful about price cuts. All of your competitors are going to cut prices. You may have to – I’m not an idiot – but try talking about value first. Does your product save money in the long run? Talk about that before you slash prices. Or, offer discounts for bigger purchases. Give customers ways to save money that help you earn more, not less.
Panic calmly. Trust me, the word ‘recession’ scares the bejesus out of me, too. I’m a small business owner with a family, and I’m the sole wage-earner. But panicking – laying off staff, reducing marketing, shutting down distribution channels – will do irrevocable damage that costs far more to repair than it saves in the short term. So do what I do: Panic, but panic calmly.

Now I’m going to go have a beer and try to remember my own advice…

For more information about Internet Marketing Seminar kindly visit my website by clicking here.

Learn about the secrets of Internet Marketing.

15 Principles of Internet Marketing

by Prof. Erwin M. Globio, Internet Marketing Philippines

In no particular order:

No one’s lives depend on what we do.
But people’s livelihoods do. So take your work seriously, and take pride in it.
75% of your audience uses a search engine to find you. Get used to it. All the banners and ‘viral’ marketing on earth won’t come close to results produced by a top 5 ranking for a relevant phrase.
But, a broad base is better. Don’t rely on just one marketing vehicle. Build a complete internet marketing strategy that includes, at a minimum, paid search, organic search, e-mail and online PR.
Never underestimate the power of an angry customer.
Never underestimate the power of a happy customer.
Pretty is great. Easy is better.
You’re not the customer.
Karma exists. Treat customers and prospective customers with respect, and they’ll reciprocate. Spam them, annoy them, and lie to them, and they’ll retaliate.
Risk is necessary.
Risk without measurement is suicide. Analytics are a must.
IT is not marketing. Don’t make them run the web site. It’s not fair to anyone.
A web site does not equal an internet marketing strategy.
Plan, but adapt. Don’t be stubborn. Listen to what your customers tell you in their response.
All marketing has a message. What’s yours?

For Internet Marketing Seminar and Training inquiries visit my Internet Marketing Website. Need to learn Internet Marketing as fast as you can? Kindly contact Prof. Erwin M. Globio, Internet Marketing Consultant.