Promotional Content and Modern Marketing

Category Marketing concepts | Comments Off

Traditional marketing techniques are all about the push and the hard sell. And to be completely honest, these tactics are ‘traditional’ because they worked and worked well, but they don’t necessarily work well now. This doesn’t mean you can’t sell directly to a certain demographic. It simply means people no longer want, nor will they tolerate having products and services shoved down their throat. There are several reasons for this, but the main one is a change in consumer thinking and spending habits.

Consumers have almost gone backward in time with their spending. They no longer just want to buy a product. For them, it’s almost like buying into a company. They want to buy from a company they can trust and rely on to be there, and I’m afraid using the same tactics as your local used car salesman doesn’t conjure up images of trust or reliability.

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Advertising Isn’t About You, It’s About Them

I figured if anything could be considered the ‘best advertising;, it should be Super Bowl ads. With a single 30 second ad expected to cost more than $2.5 million this year, they would have to know what they’re doing, right?

That’s when I came across a recent study by Dr. Rama Yelkur and Dr Chuck Tomkovick of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (Report Available By Request).

After studying 462 Super Bowl ads from as early as 2000, the professors found the amount of focus on the products during an advertisement could actually harm the success of the ad. According to their study, the best ads were full of creativity and held some entertainment value with a minimal amount of information about the product. Interesting thought, don’t you think?

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Marketing in the Social Sphere

Social Media Marketing is all about engagement, blah, blah, blah. Let’s face it, Pepsi dropped its Super Bowl Ads and moved to the social sphere because it figured out the connection it makes with its ideal customer is better on the various Social Networks than on television during the Super Bowl. And when you consider Social Media Sites are experiencing continual growth while users are increasing the amount of time they spend there, this makes sense. But it isn’t just about where you are these days; it’s how you present yourself that’s making the difference.

(Before we go any further, I’d like to say that I’m a firm believer in the idea that SM is NOT for everyone. A recent study by Cone Research revealed that an estimated 41% of Americans don’t use websites, blogs, social networks, and other New Media. An additional 8% only use New Media once a year! So, if your ideal clients are in this 49%, chances are your money would best be spent elsewhere, but that’s another post.)

What Pepsi has done is take its brand out of the untouchable, ‘I’m a massive company you can’t touch’ shell and injected itself into the homes of millions while opening the door to becoming a part of every community in America. What they did is take $20 million of their ad budget, started a website, and asked people to go there to suggest community projects it should invest in. Smart. Freaking brilliant, if you ask me.

Now, they will have numerous non-profits and community organizations singing their praises in addition to the connections they’re making on the various Social Networks. Granted, their brand is plastered absolutely everywhere, but it still takes a back seat to their customers. I think we could all learn from that.

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Engagement and Non-Profits

Cone Research found that cause marketing had a profound effect on the results of a company’s marketing campaigns. They learned consumers who supported various cause marketing campaigns were also more likely to interact with brands through various electronic mediums. And while 28% of marketers think green marketing is more effective, only 22% of consumers have supported environmental causes. Hmmmm.

Bottom line, companies need to show they’re interested in more than just making money and selling products, even if they are! Marketing with mutual benefits has much more effect on consumers, and why wouldn’t it? After all, they’re no different than marketers. They only want to do things that have a direct benefit for them, even if it’s the warm-n-fuzzy feelings of giving to someone who needs it more than they do. They want to be entertained and informed.

So, whether you’re writing a guest post to promote a new product or starting an entire new marketing campaign, forget the cheesy selling and put some thought into it. The creativity definitely pays off.

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How To Fight Personalization — Is It Possible?

Category General | 6 comments »

Google has made no secret of its excitement over personalized search results. This only makes sense. After all, the goal is for them to achieve unspammable results (Ha!). Unfortunately, this has left some webmasters and Internet marketers unsure of where they stand and what to do next. So, my question is what are you doing to offset its effects, if anything? (Keep in mind that it’s certainly nothing to worry about, but it should definitely be in the back of your mind when making changes to your website, marketing, and business plans.)

I’ve had a few thoughts…

Social Media Marketing

One option webmasters have available to them is the incorporation of social media and social marketing strategies. This gives visitors and users the chance to ‘personalize’ the site a little themselves. There’s more interaction and it gives customers a feeling of being comfortable.

Now, there are strong arguments for and against SMM. Heck, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not for all businesses, but the big question is: Can it help counteract the effects of personalization? If you are able to make a connection with that customer, it’s possible to some degree.

(Matt Hamm)

Conversion Optimization

By analyzing your website, its visitors, and how users interact with it, it’s possible to customize a number of different paths in order to improve the user’s experience and boost conversion. This could include adding, removing, or tweaking graphics. It could be testing headlines, improving or changing copy, or altering keywords and navigation to make a site visitor realize that this is the site they’ve been looking for since the creation of the Internet.

Will this help sites compete with the constant inclusion of personalization? Maybe. To some degree anyway. If nothing else, it will help site owners make the most from each person who visits their site.

Untouchable Personalization Factors?

The methods included above can help to influence the possible behavioral factors included in personalization, but unfortunately, they do nothing for the geographic, technical, historical, or chronological factors (or others I may not have thought about).

I personally feel the best way to handle these types of factors is to simply ensure your site is as user friendly as possible.

To help combat technical factors, make sure your site works. For example, if your site doesn’t work with IE6, you might not do well in the search results for that browser’s users.

Geography might be kind of permanent, but this isn’t totally out of touch for webmasters. At least, it’s nothing some local SEO couldn’t help with. Of course, if you live in Las Vegas and want to show up in New York results, you’ll have to do a bit of work. It’s just not possible to show up in everyone’s local results, particularly not with geo-tagging becoming more prominent.

(Slightlynorth)

Other than that, webmasters need to give their sites a little TLC. Keeping a constant supply of new, quality content will help battle chronological factors and keep people coming back while helping to target a specific user.

So, my question is: What are you doing to combat personalization and improve conversion? Do you agree with my suggestions here?

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Every successful marketer must have this…

Category General | 4 comments »

 No, it’s not a product.

You don’t need to invent, design or develop a product to be a marketing success.

You can sell other people’s products-as an affiliate marketer.

But that’s still isn’t enough.

You don’t need a library full of marketing books or an MBA, though it wouldn’t hurt (well, the MBA might, but not the books).

You may be an unread, uneducated dolt and a monumental bore at a party, and yet you may have an unbelievably intuitive understanding of what it takes to quickly persuade and sell ice cubes to an Eskimo.

But if you’re missing this one thing, you’ll still never be a success.

You may be a master at SEO, designing websites, adding video, and every Web 2.0 trick of the trade out there to your thousands of websites. And you may have enough money in the bank to run thousands of pay-per-click campaigns…

But you’ll never be a marketing wunderkind-you’ll never make a 6 or 7 figure income as a marketer, if you don’t have this one crucial, absolutely vital thing…

A list.

No, not a list of things to do, or buy.

A list of names.

No, not any names. Not names from the yellow pages, not names from a “compiled list” sold by a list broker-but a list of names of people who are hungry, who are absolutely dying to buy what you are selling.

Without a list of such hungry buyers, the best product ever invented, ever marketed by the most cash-flush marketing organization ever built-will go unsold.

And where do you easily and quickly find such a list-how do you cultivate such a list?

It should be right under your nose-it better be right under your nose.

It’s your house list, your customer file. It’s the names of people who have bought from you before.

Such a list is worth more than ten times its weight in gold-it’s more valuable than any product ever invented and sold.

Why? Because you’ve already successfully marketed to and sold these people-on you.

You don’t have to convince them again, though it wouldn’t hurt to remind them, that you can be trusted, that what you offer is of great value. They know it-they’ve experienced it and they want more.

With a house list your entire organization, your entire inventory of products can go up in smoke-but you won’t go out of business. So long as you have these names, you can dust off the ashes and get right back to the business of marketing and selling.

Without such a list, you’ve got to start from scratch, all over again.

How do you easily compile such a list, if you don’t have one already and never sold anything before…?

Stay tuned.

–Barry

www.WritingWithPersonality.com

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