Forming That Internet Marketing Bond

Internet Marketing Seminar of Prof. Erwin Globio

erwinglobio.sulit.com.ph - Saturday, September 24, 2011

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Forming That Internet Marketing Bond

No matter how many marketing platforms become available to businessmen to sell their products and services, one thing remains essential: creating that sincere relationship with the customers

You can bore someone into buying your product or you can develop a bond that will generate bigger market share.” These, according to OgilvyOne Worldwide VP for Consulting Services in Asia Pacific Lucy McCabe, are the two general things business owners can do with social media.

“Selling a brand or a product now is more complicated as compared to 10 years ago,” says McCabe in a recent press briefing on social Customer Relations Management (CRM). Not only do business owners and marketers have to learn newer platforms, they also need to determine how to take full advantage of these tools.

Social media has not only affected the way customers pick brands, it has also changed how and to whom people give their feedback. A few years back, when a customer had something to say about a product or service he acquired, he would share it with his family and friends in a confined gathering. Nowadays, a customer can share his thoughts on a certain product or service not just to his friends but even to people across the globe. Most of the time, sharing is so instantaneous that even if he is still in the process of experiencing it, he is already sharing it to the world via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Path.

E-commerce is also giving more brands the vehicle to reach a wider market. In Asia, the growth of e-commerce is expected to surge as more infrastructures mature and develop. Products that we only see in stores can now be purchased in just a click.

The above scenarios sound healthy. But the problem, McCabe points out, is that the brands are having a hard time catching up. For a brand manager, McCabe says as an example, managing the output or the product feedback within the world of social media can actually be scary. At the same time, a lot of brands are still learning the ropes of e-commerce. She said the challenge for marketers in the next five years is to understand how to make use of these media to their advantage.

“A lot of brands struggle as to what their e-commerce strategy should be,” shares McCabe. “It’s not just about the shopping carts, it’s the whole shopping experience—the process of discovering the product all the way to the purchase,” she says, adding that sharing this experience is crucial.

Bond With Your Customers

In a world where digitalization is one of the key trends, online recommendation greatly influences purchase. In fact, McCabe says online recommendation is in the top five influences on purchases in almost every single market in Asia. “That’s a massive shift from 10 years ago,” she reveals. And based on their surveys, she says recommendation is a key driver of market share.

That is why “bonding” with the customers—whether existing or potential—is important. “Bonding is when you feel a real emotional affinity to the brand,” explains McCabe. “If you’ve bonded with a brand that you trust, you will recommend it.” She adds that customers who have bonded with the brands they trusted spend up to at least 20 percent more recommending those to other people. “The higher the level of bonding, the higher the future level of marketing share, so there’s a direct correlation between that bonding score and the market share. It’s a critical number,” she says.

To be able to create that bond, one must earn the customers’ trust. “Trust and recommendation are big drivers of market. If you don’t have these with your customers, your brand is less likely to grow,” she says. This is how social CRM becomes the new era of relationship marketing. It’s building a relationship with your market through social media. For business owners and marketers, this means being perceptive of their audience. “Understand your audience, segment them; what will interest them? Understanding the audience means giving them the right content they need,” she points out. This is very important in this highly digital age and marketers now must have a rigorous approach on how to use the technology available to them.

“It’s like your relationship with your friends—it involves a lot of communication, of valuing their opinion, of celebrating with them, working with them, of learning how to be there for them and when to leave them alone at the same time,” she says. And if you find this kind of relationship with a brand you like, chances are you will share this experience with other people

Internet Marketing Seminar and Training of Prof. Erwin M. Globio, kindly click here to avail of the FREE Internet Marketing Seminar and Training Online

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The Internet vs. Facebook in 10 Years [infographic]

Internet Marketing Seminar and Training of Prof. Erwin M. Globio, kindly click here to avail of the FREE Internet Marketing Seminar and Training Online The Internet vs. Facebook in 10 Years [infographic]

When we take pause to appreciate where we are, we can truly appreciate just how far we’ve come. I recently stumbled across an interesting infographic as it made the rounds across the social web recently. Created by bestedsites.com, the graphic visualizes the meteoric rise of the Internet in just 10 years. For example, in 2002, the Internet boasted 569 million users, which represented 9.1% of the world population. In 2012, that number skyrocketed to 2.27 billion at 33% of the world population. Another tremendous stat is the daily time spent online. In 2002 it was only 46 minutes a day (that was probably the time it took to load one web site). In 2012, it’s clocked four hours a day. As I was reveling in the rapid evolution and ascent of the internet in general, I took stock of Facebook’s growth. Well, I suppose not literally. Looking at Facebook as a subset of this particular infographic would provide a visual comparison of the static and social web. I once wrote that to the connected consumer, the end of the destination web was upon us. The flow of information has been disrupted. While websites aren’t dead they certainly don’t meet the needs and expectations of a much more real-time audience who live in their egosystem and benefit from news and information finding them. We live in an era where news no longer breaks, it Tweets. As such, I’d love to see a visual comparison of the destination and social web and the numbers between them. In 2011, Facebook was the size of the Internet in 2004 That’s certainly a dramatic headline. And, it’s true. Last year, when Facebook hit 800 million users, Royal Pingdom reported that not only was the milestone significant in terms of user base, it was the size of the entire Internet in 2004. In July 2012, Facebook reported that its user count was approaching 1 billion with 955 million active users and counting. Those numbers are almost too big to truly grasp. So, I again took pause. In 2004, thefacebook launched for Harvard University students. Within 24 hours, thefacebook was already home to somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 students according to co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Within the first month, more than half of all Harvard students were registered. By October 2005, “the” was dropped from the company name, Facebook.com was purchased for $200,000, Sean Parker was now the company president, Facebook moved to Palo Alto, and the company opened the network to universities around the world. Over the course of eight years, the site continued to experience incredible growth, a story of which you’re more than familiar with today. Here’s a timeline representing milestones for each jump of 100 million users: August 26, 2008 = 100 million users April 8, 2009 =200 million users September 15, 2009 = 300 million February 5, 2010 = 400 million July 21, 2010 = 500 million January 5, 2011 = 600 million May 30, 2011 = 700 million September 22, 2011 = 800 million April 24, 2012 = 900 million Now (August 2012) = 955 million users CNET recently reported that as many as 8.7 percent of users are fake. Just to clarify, not fake as in shallow personalities, but fake as in bogus accounts that represent duplicates, misclassified, undesirable, spam, etc. But event at 8.7 percent, the the overall number of people who use Facebook in one way or another is staggering. It is its own Internet and that’s both frightening and fascinating. My colleagues at Altimeter Group Andrew Jones (@andrewjns), Christine Tran (@christineptran) and I took a look at the numbers to plot them on the infographic to truly visualize how big Facebook really is. Accounting for the 8.7% of fake accounts, Facebook represents 28% of all Internet users at ~12% of the world’s population (estimated at 7 billion).

Some day, I’d love to see Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, the Internet overall, side by side to show the different behaviors in information flow. Please feel free to share any numbers or infographics you’ve created that expand on this story. Internet Marketing Seminar and Training of Prof. Erwin M. Globio, kindly click here to avail of the FREE Internet Marketing Seminar and Training Online

Internet Marketing Seminar and Training of Prof. Erwin M. Globio, kindly click here to avail of the FREE Internet Marketing Seminar and Training Online

5 Internet Marketing Strategies That Don’t Work

1. Image Search –> Anything that produces income. This strategy works great if you want to boost your ego, because it can be extremely effective for getting traffic. However, if you care about internet marketing or making money, image-search does almost nothing for you. I challenge anyone to take a stream of image searchers and to try to get them to act. Getting them to click ads is extremely difficult and getting them to make a purchase is even more difficult.

2. Personal Blogging –> Adsense. The bottom line is that people don’t really care about us. They are self interested. If you are trying to establish a blog while hoping that people are getting interested in YOU, you have a long road ahead of you. People care about what you can provide to them – they care about how you can solve their problems.

3. Social traffic –> Adsense. It doesn’t take degree from MIT to figure this one out. Social traffic rarely clicks ads of any kind. This happens because more often than not, these individuals are looking for entertainment. They also have a solid understanding of what ads are, and what they can expect to see if they click one. You can expect social traffic to click on an ad less than 0.25% of the time they hit one of your pages. That means you’ll need 400 social visitors to produce one click IF you’re lucky.

4. Social traffic –> Sales. Social traffic is also extremely difficult to sell to. Again, these people are looking for entertainment and honestly, are often information addicts. However, it is often possible to get them to subscribe to a feed and then convince them to make a purchase later.

5. PPC –> Adsense. People were making a killing with ‘Adsense Artbitrage’ a few short years ago. However, this is almost impossible to do in today’s climate. Google’s smart-pricing made this a LOT harder. There are still people claiming that it can be done, but as you might guess, these people are almost always trying to sell you a product that tells you how to do it.

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Internet Marketing: 5 Ways to Spot an Internet Charlatan

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Internet Marketing: 5 Ways to Spot an Internet Charlatan

As Web and internet marketing become hotter and hotter, more and more of our field will experience an influx of people who will claim to be “experts.” Here’s a list of how to spot an Internet charlatan — someone you should avoid, whether they are in a sales or creative position — if they say any of the following:

1. “THIS” Works

I begin with the bête noir of our lofty field — the idea that there is a magic bullet. There is no digital magic bullet, and there is no holder of a digital magic gun. Creating content that converts users to customers, tagging pages so they show up high in search results, developing code that loads quickly and designing user-friendly and graphically pleasing interfaces requires hard work, the combination and talent of many and an iterative approach.

If someone tells you that one service they sell will solve all your digital marketing challenges, they are (Drumroll!!! Lightning!!! Thunder!!!) an Internet Charlatan.

2. Links are the Only Things That Matter

This is my personal favorite and it drives me crazy, because it is partially true. Links are not the only aspect of your internet marketing that matter, but they are critically important to your search results, rankings and perceived quality of your content. However, we all know from Google Penguin and Panda updates that shoddy links are not going to get you anywhere fast.

Building an online reputation comes from building relationships. Links to and from other people’s blogs, social media, articles and comments are critical. Quality links arise from people who want to build relationships because of the quality and value of your content.

If someone tells you that links are the only things that matter, they are (Drumroll!!! Lightning!!! Thunder!!!) an Internet Charlatan.

3. We’ll Get You on the First Page of Google

It is sad that we still need to cover this, but as more people take an interest in spending money on internet marketing, more people will be fooled by this lie. The Internet is so competitive now (trust me — you think your customized baby straws are the only ones out there? Someone else in Texas (and China) is already making them.)

Being on the first page of Google is very important, as studies show that most people will click on one of those links. That should absolutely be your goal for the keywords that drive qualified leads to your website.

However, you should not believe anyone who tells you they can guarantee your results on the first page of Google. They cannot guarantee it, or they’re doing something illegal and trust me, Google will unleash some code with a name of a black and white animal whose name begins with a P and all your money, and potentially your hard work will roll right down the proverbial drain. Plus, Google may ban you, and then at that point, why are we still even having this conversation?

If someone tells you that they can get you on the first page of Google, they are (Drumroll!!! Lightning!!! Thunder!!!) an Internet Charlatan.

4. We can Definitely do That

Just today, with two different clients, I had conversations that appalled me. During one, a client informed me that a big consulting group told them they could implement a taxonomy during the contract negotiation phase and now, during the implementation phase they admit “they’ve never done one before.” Another client picked a designer who submitted a design that looks almost identical to their competitor’s website. (These are the days I hate consultants.)

When a company, or a consultant, or a design shop, or anyone, really, tells you they can do “that,” ask them for examples, samples and results.

If someone tells you they can do that, without proof of having done it before, they are (Drumroll!!! Lightning!!! Thunder!!!) an Internet Charlatan.

5. We Have a Secret Sauce for That

You know who gets to say “We have a secret sauce for that?” Google. Coca-Cola. Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yep … that’s about it.

If a consultant or company tells you they have a secret way of researching keywords, or a secret way of prototyping, or a secret way of knowing what your target audience wants, then they are either wizards from Hogwarts or liars. I am not talking about software that helps you write SEO code on the backend or a product like that. I’m talking about people who try to sell you on a proprietary way of doing something that doesn’t have some transparency.

For example, when my clients ask me how I do my SEO research, I tell them. I even hand them spreadsheets. What I do isn’t rocket science or neurosurgery, and even if it was, I think you have to be transparent about those things, too. “Hi Doctor, how do you plan on accessing my brain to take out my tumor?” “It’s a secret, Madam. How dare you even ask me?” Uh huh.

If someone tells you they have a secret sauce they won’t share, they are (Drumroll!!! Lightning!!! Thunder!!!) an Internet Charlatan.

So — in your opinion — how has an Internet Charlatan bamboozled you?

Internet Marketing Seminar and Training of Prof. Erwin M. Globio, kindly click here to avail of the FREE Internet Marketing Seminar and Training Online