February 2, 2012 - Posted by Amy Rose Brown
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With all the advice floating around out there about online marketing, sometimes it can be hard to remember it all – or separate the good advice from the bad advice (from the weird advice). It’s easy to get caught up and forget the basics. If you’re feeling a little frazzled by it all, take a step back. Breathe deep. Then review our list of seven things you should know, but may have forgotten along the way, about online marketing.
You can’t set up a Facebook or Twitter account and expect it to be successful overnight. Sure, this happens every so often – but mostly for huge, established companies like Nike who have a staggering offline presence. You might not even see results within the first week, so you can’t get easily discouraged. However, we’re also referring to the fact that you and your team need to put some working hours toward your online marketing. If you just throw together a landing page in five minutes, that level of effort is going to show.
If you’re only creating new content once every month or so – or “when I remember” or “whenever I feel like it” – you’re destined for failure. Twitter users send 140 million tweets per day. If you tweet every once and awhile, you’re barely a drop in that vast bucket. As of 2008, there were 1 trillion pages on the Internet (according to Google) – but with the constant content creation that’s happened in the past four years, imagine how that’s grown! If you don’t keep up, you’ll be left in the dust.
The key components of your online marketing strategy (SEO, pay per click, digital PR, and social media) are not separate elements, working independently of one another. All the components of your online marketing strategy complement one another, and should work together to help you achieve your end result. The most basic example? Using SEO keywords in your social media profiles.
How do you know which copy and keywords work best for your intended audience? You test. And then you keep testing. And then you test some more. For PPC campaigns, try split testing your ads to see what works the best. Experiment with your landing pages – what’s the most effective headline? Call to action? If you stick with one, you’ll never know.
Don’t go running into the kitchen just yet. A cake recipe and an online marketing strategy are similar in some very fundamental aspects. Say you want to bake a cake, but you realize you’re out of eggs. Conventional wisdom says you should just run out to the store and buy some eggs, but your cake is already half done! It’ll probably be fine without eggs, right? Actually, your cake will probably not look or taste very appetizing.
It’s the same with online marketing. If you do digital PR and social media marketing, but don’t bother with SEO and your website is a disaster…that’s one nasty, inedible cake marketing strategy.
What if you’re running late? The cake calls for a 20 minute baking time, but you decide to increase the temperature and bake it for 10 minutes. You’re not going to get a cake – you’re just going to get a hot, possibly burned mess. But not a cake. Your online marketing can’t be rushed either. If you want to do it right, you’ve got to stick to the recipe.
Your website should be the hub of your efforts. Everything you do should help eventually direct traffic to your site. Your website is your house. If visitors to your site show up only to find broken links, outdated content, and no graphics, it’s as if you invited them to your house – but it’s a house with no living room furniture and a dirty bathroom. What does this say about you? Nothing good, that’s for sure.
This is where a lot of people get confused. It’s free to sign up for a social media site or a blog. There are many free TOOLS. But strategy, expertise, and implementation come at a price! Once you have people who know what they’re doing, you still need a budget. To see any type of effective return on your investment, you have to (come on, say it with me now) actually invest.
January 27, 2012 - Posted by Amy Rose Brown
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Let me guess: your company uploaded a YouTube video a few months ago, and you’re still stuck around 100 views or so. You’re not alone – more than half of all YouTube videos will be viewed less than 500 times. Ever. Considering people upload 48 hours of video to YouTube every minute, you’re going to need a better strategy than just recording stuff and putting it out there. “Like what?” you say. Glad you asked!
We’re talking about human faces, but “best” doesn’t necessarily mean “best-looking” or “highest-ranking” in this situation. The person you want in front of the camera might not be in your marketing department, so branch out. Take inventory of the people in your office: who has the smile that brightens up everyone else’s day? Find that naturally outgoing, charming person – they’re your on-camera talent.
Oh, so your company is results-focused? Do you integrate/deliver/synergize/think outside the box? By using a phrase like “think outside the box” you are, by definition, not thinking outside the box. Every company on the planet is results-focused; that is the purpose of a company. If you’re talking to people through video, just talk to them. Let your genuine passion for the subject shine through, and it’ll be way more interesting than anything you say about being a collaborative thought leader (yes, we’re already snoring over here).
For this, let’s turn to the master of creative advertising: Google. After all, they own YouTube so it only makes sense that they would have pretty decent video content. In the past year alone, Google’s come out with a ton of new products. And sure, you can read tech blog after tech blog to figure out what’s going on. Or you can just head on over to YouTube and watch it.
For example, 4 million people have seen Google Chrome’s “Dear Sophie” video. It’s about a man watching his daughter grow up.
It’s also an ad for Google Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and Picasa. While watching, you get to see all the cool stuff you can do with Google Chrome – and even have your heart warmed at the same time! There’s also this popular video that demonstrates the effectiveness of Google’s search functionality (and yes, it also tugs at the heart strings – seems they’ve got a knack for that).
What do we mean? For an outstanding example, take this video by EA Sports featuring Tiger Woods. A player found what he considered to be a glitch in the Tiger Woods video game and posted a video about it to YouTube. According to Tiger Woods and the people at EA, though, he didn’t find a glitch at all.
In the video, Tiger mimics what the original video captured. Sure, making a famous golfer appear to walk on water is probably out of your budget for a single YouTube video – but you can still engage your audience by simply responding to them.
For example, why not have a question and answer session? Let people submit their questions to you via Facebook or Twitter, and you can respond to some with video. “Breaking Bad” actor Giancarlo Esposito recently used this technique to answer questions on Reddit. If you haven’t heard of that, perhaps you’ve heard of the Old Spice video response campaign – even we’ve referenced it before.
Do you have a story about successfully using YouTube for online marketing? Drop us a line and tell us all about it!
January 24, 2012 - Posted by Amy Rose Brown
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“Marketing Zen!” you say, “Someone said something rude and awful about my business on the Internet! What do I do about this?”
From Yelp to Google Places and many sites in between, consumers now have a variety of outlets to express their opinions about your establishment. This can be great for your online marketing – if you do everything perfect all the time. What if you messed up? Well, here are some tips for dealing with that unpleasant predicament.
Yeah, we get it. It sucks to put all your effort into something, only to see people trash it on the Internet. For an example from the publishing industry, take independent author Jacqueline Howett, whose defensive replies to a two-star review of her book went viral (although many of her comments have since been removed – probably because she realized in hindsight that responding wasn’t such a great idea to begin with).
People aren’t always going to like what you’ve created as much as you like it. That’s just how it works. If you get too emotional when people offer criticism, you’re probably not the right person to be monitoring what people are saying. Find a level-headed person whose judgment you trust and delegate the responsibility to them.
In summer 2010, a man named Joel went out for pizza in Scottsdale, Arizona. Then he wrote a one-star review of the experience on Yelp. Then the restaurant owner replied to let him know that their food was great and he was a moron. A little more research reveals that this restaurant owner has a pretty full history of poor Internet etiquette.
The “fake review” the owner refers to actually contained some pretty constructive criticism, had he bothered to pay attention. The reviewer thought the portions were small for the price she paid, and that the service was a little slow and inattentive. Which brings us to…
Negative reviews can hurt, especially if they’re anonymous negative reviews – those are the ones where people tend to be more rude, since no identity is attached. But take a step back for a second. Then ask yourself this question: Where’s the truth in what this person is saying?* Does my receptionist have a bad attitude? Does the decor really look that shabby? What’s going on that you may have not noticed? You may be doing something to turn away customers that you didn’t even realize you were doing.
*Note: If someone leaves you a review saying, “I’d rather drink expired milk every day for the rest of my life than go back to (your business),” do not try to find the truth in that. Just leave it alone.
So a person has indicated that they’re really disappointed and absolutely never going to return to your establishment again. Don’t just leave them alone to be angry. Here’s an example of how you could respond:
Hello (name of reviewer),
I am very concerned about your observations/experiences concerning (thing they did not like). We appreciate your feedback and can assure you (thing you did to fix it). I’d like to invite you back for a (discount/free item) so you can see how great we really are! Please email me at (email address) so we can work out the details.
We hope to see you again soon!
(Your name)
How have you previously dealt with negative online reviews? Leave us a comment to let us know!
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