Marketing

A journey to understand the marketing potential in today's world...

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CHAPTER TWENTY TWO: Search Engine Marketing

The content that appears as part of a search engine result is exactly what the user wants to see. This is how marketing has changed from the early days of interruption-based marketing.

The entire content (together) in websites, blogs, podcasts, e-books and so on, along with the relevant buyer-related keywords all lead to a great search engine marketing program.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the art and science of ensuring that the words and phrases used in all your online content are found by search engines. This will ensure high ranking for your site content.

Search engine advertising is when a marketer pays to have advertising appear in search engines when a user types in a particular phrase that the marketer has purchased.

Ensure that your landing page is clearly related to the content that the consumer/user wanted to see. Provide information and not advertising pitches on such landing pages.

A testimonial works wonders. Make the page a self-contained unit and write from the consumer/user's point of view.

Create the page with the company's look, feel and tone.

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CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: The New Rules for Reaching the Media

Do not send press releases and pitch notes to each and every journalist in your database. This will mark you as a spammer in the eyes of the journalists and also reduce your credibility.

Pitches have to be written specifically and targeting an individual journalist ideally.

It always works to share information that might interest the journalist on a regular basis, rather than just sending out press releases always.

Also focus on bloggers. Being featured in a popular blog could also attract the attention of journalists apart from prospective employees and customers.

Journalists do not want to know what your product/service does. They only want to know how it solves customer problems.

Blog posts about industry trends or customer problems can end up being directly picked by journalists, as against the traditional way of contacting people for quotes.

Paint a bigger picture to the journalists. This will help them create the right story.

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CHAPTER TWENTY: The Online Media Room: Your Front Door for much more than the Media

The most active page on a website has to be the online media room. The media section of a website will be visited, not just by journalists, but also by prospective employees, customers, investors, vendors and other target audiences.

Online media rooms on websites are also ranked high by Google and other search engines as search engine crawlers typically look at pages that are updated the most number of times and pull them high up in their ranking list/search results.

The marketing and PR department of an organization should control the content that goes up on the media room.

Analyze what information needs to go on the media room.

Optimize news releases for searching and browsing. This is an important factor as people who look for information on a website may be from different demographic backgrounds or vertical markets. They should be able to find information that specifically caters to their needs.

Complete company information has to be made available. This includes company history, biographies of executive management team and directors, detailed product information along with relevant datasheets/factsheets/brochures, recent media coverage and event participation. Do also include photos, videos, graphs, etc.

Keep the content relevant to the entire global audience and not just your geography.

Make sure the information is directly available for people with different levels of understanding and familiarity to the organization. A new customers visiting for the first time needs to be explained in detail the history and offering from the organization, whereas a journalist who has written about the organization earlier directly needs to be given updates.

Respond quickly to queries coming in from the media room, be it from journalists or bloggers.

Avoid jargon, acronyms and industry-speak as much as possible.

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CHAPTER NINETEEN: How to Use News Releases to Reach Buyers Directly

Publish news releases on your website and also simultaneously issue it through one of the news wires. Using news wire services will ensure that your release is sent to online news services like Yahoo, Google and many others.

Also try to use these news release distribution services which offer RSS feeds of news releases. This way, the release becomes available to thousands of people who have subscribed to RSS content feeds in your market/industry.

Repeatedly stressing the importance of this point - ensure that your release includes appropriate keywords and phrases that your buyers would use.

News releases can also be shared with clients and prospective employees. This keeps the audience aware of the latest updates from your organization, keeping them connected on a regular basis.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Video and Podcasting Made, well, as Easy as Possible

Companies using video for web marketing are still minimal in number. This is a relatively new area for most companies to explore for marketing purposes.

Nowadays, video can be made with low- or no-cost and can be completed in a few hours or a few minutes even. It is still a good idea to maintain a certain level of quality, so that the message is communicated clearly.

For a podcast, it is always better to have a script ready before you begin recording the content. Unless you are really good at talking extempore, this is the best bet to keep the podcast focused and give it a polished feeling.

A companion blog, a key component used by nearly all podcasters, discusses the content of a podcast. This text will be indexed by search engines, driving more people to sign up for the podcast feed.

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Blogging to Reach your Buyers

Readers of blogs view the information shared by smart bloggers as real, authentic communication. On the other hand, advertising is viewed with skepticism and pronouncements by CEO as out of touch with reality.

The first thing to ask before starting a blog is "what topic to blog about". This can be answered by identifying the target audience you wish to reach through your blog and in turn the message that needs to be communicated to the selected group of consumers.

Be ethical. Be clear about who is writing the blog, where the content is sourced from (in case it is someone else's blog post or a link to other sources) and give appropriate credits.

Use the correct keywords to tag your posts so that users who land on your post are getting precisely what they want to read.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Social Networking Sites and Marketing

Facebook offers four ways to deliver information and ideas to a network of people who are interested in your organization/products and services: (1) a personal profile for friend-to-friend communication, (2) company pages, (3) groups and (4) applications.

Through Tags and Likes, people can spread the information that is posted on a profile with their friends and network.

Acceptable marketing and promotion on social networking sites frequently involve offline brands creating pages to build and expand an online following rather than directly advertising products.

People use Twitter to keep their followers updated on their lives. Again, the best way to get people to pay attention to you is to participate by following others and responding to them.

While setting up a Twitter or other social networking profiles, take time to build your personality online. Choose appropriate profile names, photos and also give accurate and specific information about yourself rather than a laundry list of attributes.

Optimize your social networking pages: Target a specific audience, be a thought leader, be authentic and transparent, create lots of links, encourage people to contact you, participate, make it easy for people to find you and experiment!

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Mobile Marketing - Reaching Buyers Wherever They are

The use of mobile phones to connect to the Internet has drastically changed the way people do research, shop or other online activities.

Any website should be made mobile-friendly, displaying content quickly and optimizing it for viewing it on smaller screens. This could also be about having a different site map for mobile users and adding geographic descriptors to make your site location-search-friendly.

When using GPS capability, marketers can easily pinpoint their customers through various applications like FourSquare or Layar and target them for specific marketing promotions.

You can also create specific applications for an online media room, which will be accessed by journalists and share blog posts, podcasts, videos, e-books or news releases.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN: How Web Content Influences the Buying Process

Today when people want to buy something, they almost always do their initial research on the web.

This makes the right kind of information being available on your website at the first click very important.

Scott lists out the following elements that a "Buyer-Centric Website" must have:

Buyers' preferred media and learning styles - Depending on what format buyers like to use, be it audio, video, e-books or others, the website should have the buyer messages in as many formats as practical and appropriate. It is not necessary to have the messages in all possible formats.

Develop a site personality - Create a distinct, consistent and memorable site with a clear picture of your organization's personality.

Photos and images tell your story - These are powerful content when visitors to the site see that the images/photos are an integrated component of the site.

Include interactive content tools - These provide visitors with a chance to go deeper into the site content, making them more likely to progress through the sales consideration cycle to the point of being ready to spend money.

Make feedback loops available - Direct feedback mechanisms such as 'Rate this' buttons, online forums, viewer reviews, comments, posts, etc. should be  incorporated in plenty.

Provide ways for customers to interact with each other - An existing set of customers interacting with each other on your site is great marketing!

Make sure your site is current.

Include social media share buttons - To re-iterate a point made in the earlier chapters, a great way to extend the potential reach of your content is by making it easy to share within the networks of your users/readers.

Create content with pass-along value that could go viral.

RSS feeds are extremely important to deliver your web content to targeted niches.

Link content directly into the sales cycle. Effective marketers take visitors' buying cycle into account when writing content and organizing it on the site. People in the early stage need basic information about their problems and how the organization solves them. Those in the middle stage want to compare products and services, so they need detailed information about the benefits of your offerings. Buyers need easy-to-use mechanisms linked directly from the content to quickly finish the purchase.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN: How to Create for your Buyers

Buyers want to know what specific problems of theirs will be solved by an organization's products and they want proof that it works - in their language preferably.

Jargons and other overused words and phrases should, at all costs, be avoided in all formats of content.

When saying a product or service is "world-class", it is essential to indicate in the following content how this matters to your buyers and proof that it really is world-class.

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CHAPTER TWELVE: Online Thought Leadership to Brand your Organization as a Trusted Resource

Online tools provide the quickest and easiest means of sharing content of value with your buyers and promote yourself/organization as a trusted resource or thought leader.

The various tools include

White papers - these can also be syndicated through services such as TechTarget and KnowledgeStorm

E-books

Email newsletters

Webinars - in audio, video or PowerPoint slide formats

Wikis - these work in the way that an organization's target audience will add to the frequently asked questions and others can supply the answers, making it a community. Companies who are open and don't mind other people writing their opinions are likely to make the best use of wikis

Research and survey reports

Photos, images, graphs, charts and infographics

Blogs

Audio and Video podcasts

Each of these identify a problem and offer a solution without pitching the product or the organization.

It will also add credibility if you can get experts from your industry to author some content for your blog, website, newsletter, etc.

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PART III: Action Plan for Harnessing the Power of the New Rules

CHAPTER ELEVEN: You are what you publish - Building your Marketing and PR Plan

Marketing and PR departments have to align their goals to the organizational goals.

Identifying and profiling buyer personas is the next important step. The profile should be a short biography mentioning the age group, hobbies, preferences, job and salary profile, family history, problems, future goals, etc.

Once these two steps are done, you have to identify the best ways to reach buyers and develop compelling information that you will use in your web marketing programs. While building buyer personas, you also have to find out which media and multimedia appeal to them and which ones they use to search for answers to their problems.

Interview your buyers and list down the words and phrases they use. Check out blogs that they follow and study the agenda and conference/seminar topics that they frequent. This will help in making your web pages appear in search engine results.

Identify the message that you want each of your buyer personas to take away from your website. This should not be just another hard-selling punchline about your product but the belief that the buyer will get from buying something from you/your organization.

Develop an editorial calendar that will help to plan and space out different messages going out to your buyers. This could include news releases, blog posts, e-books, white papers or any other material that will give them valuable information.

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CHAPTER TEN: Marketing and PR in Real-Time

Creating marketing or public relations initiatives right now, while the moment is ripe, delivers tremendous competitive advantage. People believe in your word and look to you for future comments when they realize that you are giving them information without trying to sell yourself.

This can only be done by constant monitoring of the online media for news about your industry, organization or services that your organization offers.

This way, you can donate your products to those in need, tweet your thoughts or interesting anecdotes related to your offering to the market, or use another company's or organization's announcement to voice your views.

Social media even helps with crowdsourcing - outsourcing to a crowd - in real-time. Scott explains this with a wonderful example of Baked Relief, started by Danielle Crismani in Queensland during the floods that affected the area. By using Twitter, Facebook, and later her own website, to urge people to bring food for volunteers and people affected by the floods, Crismani ensured that people who weren't doing sandbagging or other such strenuous tasks, helped by providing food for the many people on field. Crismani's efforts revolutionized so many people that the Premier and Treasurer's offices of Queensland Government were openly associating with her  organization Baked Relief.

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CHAPTER NINE: The Content-Rich Website

Any marketing campaign has to be an integrated effort with links from each aspect or tool leading to a central repository or tool. Each of the tools need to tell the same story - unification is key.

Content-rich websites are the best websites, which focus on delighting, entertaining and informing each of your buyers who visit the site.

It is critical that interesting aspects and stories of your brand are highlighted on your website, rather than focusing on hard-selling messages. This attracts consumers to your website repeatedly and pave the way to turn them into buyers of your product or service. Information can also be made share-able by providing appropriate links (Delicious, Digg, etc.).

Content is most definitely the single-most important component of a successful marketing and PR strategy.

The key is to understand buyers and build content that is just right for them.

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CHAPTER EIGHT: Going Viral - The Web Helps Audiences Catch the Fever

The video of Mentos candy causing an explosion when put into Diet Coke is the perfect example of a viral phenomenon. This video drastically increased the number of hits that the Mentos website got once they put up a link on their website. A video created by two customers and without any cost to Mentos gave them such a remarkable amount of publicity. This is the coolest aspect about the web: an idea can catapult a company or person to fame and/or fortune for free.

While the urge to have such a viral campaign jump-start your organization's journey to fame could be high, it is important to remember that these cannot be planned or staged. The content shown in the videos has to be ground-breaking, amazing or hilarious and it needs to be great.

To reiterate an earlier point, it is extremely necessary for PR and marketing professionals to monitor blogs, tweets and other online media for a mention about their organization or product/service.

When a positive viral phenomenon like the Mentos-Diet Coke video is triggered off, the marketing team has to be ready to immediately give it the required push from the organization's side. Silence during such times will not be seen as a positive sign by the media and the online community as a whole.

The same applies to a negative news or issue. Do not remain silent and allow your customers to assume things about you.

A "World Wide Rave" is a viral phenomenon, according to David Scott, that crosses boundaries and is truly global in reaching out to customers. Again, a World Wide Rave also needs to be all about something interesting and different. Do not assume that you can control and create something out of the ordinary and hope for it to become a World Wide phenomenon.

Remember a viral campaign has to be easy for people to share and spread.

Scott also talks about Creative Commons in this chapter. Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization, makes it easy for people to share and build on the digital creations of others. You will never know what interesting new things might emerge, when you allow people to share, commerialize, re-mix or mash up existing content.

It can be difficult to purposely create viral marketing buzz. By creating a number of campaigns, one can then see which is a success and what fails. It is then a simply a matter of nurturing the winners.

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CHAPTER SEVEN: The New Rules of News Releases

Press releases are no longer targeted at only journalists. By using newsfeeds and electronic press release distribution services, releases are now available on the Internet for the consumer to directly access. No longer does a release have to be published in a newspaper or magazine for people to know the news.

This being the case, PR and marketing professionals have to re-think the traditional way of writing news releases. More keyword-friendly it reads, the more appealing it is to customers and the more number of hits that will be generated on your website.

It is not necessary for releases to be loaded with keywords and phrases in every sentence. By using them appropriately and as required, the customers will definitely come upon the news at the moment that they need it.

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CHAPTER SIX: Audio and Video Drive Action

Customer-generated video efforts are highly successful for organizations, especially for a product or service that has a visual impact. Organizations should encourage customers or fans to generate videos for them.

It is important as ever to have fun with any marketing activity. This applies just as well to videos: Keep them fun, interesting and as humorous as possible.

With the rise of podcasting and the minimal cost and technology required to create them, organizations can now create targeted information packages that will reach out to niche audiences. This way, sharing updates is easier and quicker too.

Podcasting now co-exists with blogging, a great website, e-books and other online marketing tools and programs in a cohesive marketing strategy.