“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” — Walt Disney
The Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization -
If you’re new to Search Engine Optimization, or just want a recap, check this out. It’s a free online manual from SEOMOZ (a company that provides SEO tools). Very cool stuff. Know any other guides or places of knowledge? Drop your links in the comments below and share the knowledge.
It’s very easy to complain about something. All you have to do is point out faults and you’re done. But to actually be useful to your company, you need to be focused on actionable issues that you can solve. You need to be solution oriented. This means that instead of just looking at what is wrong, you need to focus on what you can do to correct those errors, mistakes, problems, etc. It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Really, it’s just a simple attitude adjustment.
Most people are not satisfied with thier jobs for one reason or another. The first thing you should do when trying to become solution oriented is to look inward at yourself. If you aren’t satisfied with your job, ask yourself why, and more importantly ask yourself what you can do to make things better. You cannot control anyone but yourself, so you need to be able to find a way to take action and solve your problem. Once you can do this, you’ll be ready to apply that thinking to other problems. The trick is to look at what you yourself can do to solve the issue.
Weather you’re a manager or not, it’s your job to get things done, and to do so, you will need help at some point. Sometimes you just don’t have the expertise, or talent, or whatever to fix the problem yourself. It seems like an easy task; all you have to do is ask for help after all. But the fact is that you need to get buy-in from your team first. No one is going to throw their back into the work if they don’t believe in it. The best way to get buy-in is to clearly identify the problem, and communicate why your team should care. If you can’t do that, then you’re done. To be effective at this, you can’t just point out the problem. You need to focus on what your team can do to solve the problem, and what the possible outcomes will be.
Not every problem is solvable. Sometimes there are things outside of your control. The economy, for example, is something you can’t really control. What you can do is try to take advantage of the situation in some way. You can only play with the cards you’re dealt, and sometimes you are given a bad hand. The game is still winnable… if you are smart and bold enough to do what you have to do.
I guess to sum it all up, please don’t be one of those people that just sits around and complains about things. Be the person that gets things done. To become a true asset to your company, try to be the problem solver, not the complainer.
If you want business, you have to be willing to do what it takes to get it. The days of sitting back and waiting for your phone to ring are over (and have been over for a long time). Not only do you need to actively look for new opportunities, you need to know when and how to negotiate. Why let some new business walk out the door, when you could easily come to some sort of agreement. I think many businesses hide behind policy, and don’t empower their employees enough to negotiate with prospects (which is a whole other problem).
Policy is usually there for a good reason, but in today’s marketplace, business people need to be flexible enough to understand that one size doesn’t fit all anymore. Sometimes there are exceptions to rules, and at the end of the day you have to do what you can to keep business coming in. If you are a decision maker at your company, please look at your current policies and see if there is something there that could be hurting your business. Better yet, call up your salespeople (or whoever interacts with clients the most) and ask them what they think. You may find something that needs to be updated or changed.
Being aggressive doesn’t mean offering deep discounts or huge concessions. Obviously you need to know when to say no. However, think about your competition. If they are passive and you are active, who do you think is going to get the business? If they say no to a client, and you say yes, who do you think just made a new client? Look for opportunities like this in your market, and you may be pleasantly surprised.
The bottom line? In business, or any other kind of competition for that matter, effective aggression is one of your biggest allies. What do you guys think? Am I full of it?
You may be thinking, sponsorship isn’t really that big of a weapon. Yeah, tell that to Subway who for years has been beating us over the head with the story of Jared. Jared is a guy that reportedly lost a ton of weight by walking to a local subway and eating one of their sandwiches every day. Now he’s basically the face of Subway. Sponsorship can help you communicate to your intended audience in ways that other marketing tools can’t. It’s a great way to clearly tell everyone what your brand stands for.
My dad, who is a 3 year prostate cancer survivor, decided to stay in shape so that he could limit his chances of a recurrence, and began running in 5K races. Every race, he wears a sign on his shirt that displays the logos of all the businesses and non-profits that have helped him in his fight against cancer. One of those businesses, USMD Prostate Cancer Center, thought that it was such a good idea that they started sponsoring his runs. By sponsoring my dad, he is able to run in more races, and thus promote these organizations more effectively. He’s become a vocal spokesperson for USMD’s services (which did indeed save his life), and gets the message out in a very low cost way. By the way, you can check out my dad’s latest racing exploits on his blog here.
You don’t necessarily have to sponsor a person to get your point across. Sponsoring an event, or a cause of some kind also has the same effect. It gets your brand name out to people that are interested in what you do, and goes a long way in describing the intangibles of your company. What do you stand for (besides making money), and why should your target audience care? Speaking of targets, like all good and effective marketing, sponsorships should be targeted. You want to make sure that whoever, or whatever you are sponsoring has some interest to your target audience. Otherwise, what’s the point.
Anyone else have anything to add?
I struggled to make a point about advertising the other day, but there is really quite a bit more to the discussion than what I had originally posted. One of my friends saw the post and sent me a link to a recent article by buysight.com (thanks Francisco). They post a graphic and host a discussion about how advertising has changed over the last 50 years or so.
This is some interesting stuff, so if you haven’t checked it out already, I recommend doing so now. There are a ton of interesting viewpoints on display, and really got me thinking. Not only is advertising more targeted, but people actually opt in for advertising and marketing messages (using twitter, facebook, and all that stuff), which was unheard of back in the day.
Also, check out the amount of spending on media (according to the chart). There are some interesting things going on there. I was completely surprised to see that spending on newspaper ads was significant in 2000 then started dropping off (coincidentally) as the internet spending started increasing. I think many advertisers used newspaper ads to communicate with local consumers, but now are starting to use the internet to reach these local audiences.
Anyway, check it out, and let me know what you think.
We all know what advertising is, so there really isn’t much to say here. The first thing most people think of when you talk about marketing is advertising. It’s been such a big tool for marketers in the past, and continues to be one of the dominant weapons in the arsenal. Over time though, the nature of advertising has changed quite a bit. In the old days, you simply had to reach a mass audience and sales would follow. Today however, advertisements are much more focused. With the maturation of digital, online, and social media, this trend will not only continue, but will be taken to the next degree.
Targeted ads are when a company places ads in a location where they will reach their intended audience. If you’re selling toys, sponsor a children’s program on TV. If you’re selling to women, put an advertisement in a women’s magazine. Stuff like that. Even those are kind of broad examples, but you get the idea. This same philosophy works for online media as well. Look at how Google AdSense works. If you’re page is all about sports, then sports ads will pop up on you page. All of this is really a no brainer for marketers, and is simply the natural evolution of the advertising model.
One of the biggest advantages to targeting your ads is that you are not wasting any resources. By focusing only on media that your target audience relies on, you are not wasting money on people that don’t care about your offering. Of course, there is still a huge focus on mass appeal, but this is usually for products that have mass appeal themselves. Things like beer and food for example.
Personally, I think that we’ll see even more segmenting and targeting as time goes on. And why not. I think in the future we’ll see more advertisers decide to sponsor specific websites (instead of relying on AdSense), and make online ads more interactive. When you focus your ads on the people that are most interested in what you’re offering, then only good things can happen.
Kind of off topic here, but I took these pics on Friday night when I went with my dad to the now historic game 6 ALCS where the Texas Rangers finally won their first championship. I’m reblogging these from my brothers blog, realsportsfan. If you are a sports fan of any kind, go visit his blog and start following. This guy is like an encyclopedia of information.
Anyway, I’ll never forget how I felt at that moment. Whenever I feel depressed or whatever, I’ll be able to look back and remember how it felt to be surrounded by 50,000 people all united in joy. As a marketer, I think it’s important to store away memories like this. They help carry you over when you need something to get you through a tough day.
Check out any marketing blog today and you’ll see pages of posts about social media and relationship marketing. While social media is a very important and effective tactic, I think we all need to step back and realize that it will take more than one tactic to win in this game called marketing. While you may say that traditional marketing is not as effective as it has been in the past, I would argue that these tactics are the foundation of a solid marketing plan. Perhaps they need to be applied in a different way to be effective in this new era of marketing, but whatever. Anyway, I’m beginning a new series: Traditional Weapons of Marketing, starting with my favorite subject marketing research.
Marketing research is my favorite of the traditional tactics, but that’s not the only reason why I’m discussing it first. Your marketing plan begins with solid research. Let me be very clear, all of your marketing decisions should be based on facts (I didn’t understand this when I first started my career, but it is in fact true). Research is where you get those facts. You can either collect and analyze the data yourself, or you can take it from a 3rd party’s already established results. This breakdown looks like this:
- Primary Research: If you need to know something specific, sometimes the best way to find out is to conduct your own research. There are alot of elements to gathering quality data, such as your collection methodology, survey design, incentives, analysis methods, and so on, but I’ll leave that for the research pros to discuss… or maybe for a future discussion.
- Secondary Research: Why go through the expense and effort of conducting your own research when the hard work may have already been done by someone else. There are tons of research findings, reports, and statistics out there for you to find. Sometimes it seems like these findings have nothing to do with you or your business, but you still may be able to apply them somewhere. The new US Census data for example is invaluable to marketers in that it describes what the standard US household looks like in each geographic region. Pretty handy if you’re looking to open a new market, or simply gain a better understanding of your current market.
All research is either quantitative or qualitative. Meaning that it can either be expressed in numbers or in a more abstract way. I’ve seen many companies only focus on quantitative research, or statistics. This is a mistake and is the reason why focus groups exist. Talk to your prospects and customers and try and understand their mindset. You may have a great product, but it may not be practical for the common user. Your inexpensive food may taste excellent, but perhaps your customers want a healthier choice. You need to know the right questions to ask so that you can get the information you need to make a good decision.
Just one type of research isn’t going to cut it. So you put together an excellent survey, and collected data from a very good sample. You’re still only looking at the results of one study. You should also look for existing data (like the census), conduct focus groups (have a discussion with your prospects and customers), and in general find ways to conduct research in your everyday business (go to a fast food restaurant and look at your receipt… you see that phone number to take a survey?). Research is not something that you do and then forget about, it should be conducted year round so that you can be sure that you are making sound business decisions.
So how can I use social media to conduct research? In this era, people are more connected than ever before, not just to each other, but to your business as well. Use this connection to open discussions with your customers. Ask some questions, and you may find some eye opening points that you never realized before. There are more obvious ways to use social media to your benefit (emailing surveys to people and so on), but you should look at the non-obvious and most importantly the non-intrusive ways to getting your information.
Anyways, enough of that. You get the idea. To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from The Godfather, a marketing plan that doesn’t include research is not really a marketing plan. (the original line is “A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.” and is my favorite line of that great film).
A while back, some information came to my attention that just made me smile my evil marketer smile. It was something I had never really thought of before, but is a real no-brainer common sense move. I’m not going to name any names, because that’s not the point. Apparently this company has learned a way to make some bucks off of its competition. Let me explain how…
Company A owns a facility that receives goods from wholesalers and distributes to retail locations all around the US. This type of set up is pretty routine, as most retailers do this type of thing. However, instead of branding the facility with company A’s name, they use a generic company name for the facility… and then they run it like it’s own separate company. This means that the facility is free to accept orders from other locations that aren’t owned by company A, and may even be competing against their corporate masters. What? You may be thinking that it doesn’t sound very smart, but indeed it is.
If you’re doing business in a free economy then you will have competition. This comes in the form of direct competitors and indirect competitors. For example, if you make soda then you are competing against other soda companies, as well as the guys that produce juice, sports drinks, lemonade, tea, and other beverages. They all serve a similar purpose, and they are all competing for a similar market. Like my man Luke Skywalker says “you can profit by this or be destroyed.”
By providing the same service to your competition that you provide to your own company, you can capitalize on this competition and make some money off of them. If they don’t come to you, they will get it from somewhere so it’s not like you’re going to put them out of business by denying service. On top of all that, if the competition begins to rely heavily on your services, you can always pick a strategic time to cease services and kick them while they are down. Hahaha, there’s nothing like pulling the rug from under your competition just when they need you the most. Suckers!