Part 3. The marketplace is in a state of disruption; it is distorted. In these difficult times, relationships count. Nurture new relationship and embrace old ones. The business lunch is now out and the Starbucks coffee meeting is now in. Listen to your customers. Empathize with their pain. What are their problems? Can you provide, simple easy-sounding solutions? If not, leave them alone. Do not over sell. If you force a sale, all you will achieve is an outstanding unpaid invoice. Loyalty and understanding (of your customer’s problems) today will endear a long-term customer relationship.
Just about every company and person globally is evaluating their priorities and investments – time and money. Become part of your customer’s solution, and not their problem. If you are looking for growth, it’s probably a good idea to focus on granular growth, line extensions, and profitability differentials within your business model or company.
Understanding the effectiveness of all kinds of media is critical to your success today. Don’t assume that the reach, frequency, and cost of a vehicle serve as an effective gauge for its effectiveness. E-mailing can be cheap, but is it effective? I do not think so.
I know that there is an entire direct marketing industry that has been created online who does not believe this, and I have been criticized by some of these people within this industry for some of my past comments, but I can only give you my experience with e-mail campaigns. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Most direct marketing experts will say something like, “you did not have the right subject line,” “your message wasn’t clear,” or “you probably had a bad list.” All that I can tell these critics is that our knowledgeable marketing team spent months thinking about our e-mail campaigns, and over time the campaigns did not work.
Why? Most likely the marketplace shifted as more and more companies adopted e-mailing campaigns as part of their online strategy, and people became overwhelmed by the avalanche of e-mails they were receiving daily.
At melslife, we had weekly e-mailing campaigns beginning last October. Around mid-January, I saw a precipitous decline in its effectiveness. For example, instead of getting a minimum of 700 hits per campaign, we began to get 53. E-mailing for melslife is no longer effective based on our return, time, and resources.
Quality of media is easiest to measure in direct businesses, but there are ways to estimate the quality of media vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook, Internet radio, radio, product placement, telephony solutions, television, and YouTube. No matter how you arrive at your media priorities and quality assessment, the real opportunity comes from combining the analysis with data on the reach, delivery, and cost of an advertising vehicle.
With ad dollars so tight, this combination of reach, delivery, cost, and quality helps companies compare the impact of different media vehicles. Keep in mind that every company has a different set of needs and media objectives. Even if the media is free – like most social media – it does not mean it’s efficient enough to achieve your goals.
If you are starting a social networking business, the data is on your side. According to a recent study by eMarketer, “the number of U.S. Internet users that visited social networks at least once a month increased an estimated 11 percent in 2008 to 79.5 million, and will rise nearly 11 percent in 2009 to 88.1 million. Between 2008-2013, the number of U.S. social net users will increase about 44 percent to nearly 115 million.” The problem that you have is developing a workable business model to fund growth, especially if there is no ad revenue.
I get asked all the time about social networking media like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. These are all wonderful free communication tools that add some search engine relevancy value, but don’t be fooled about their effectiveness.
Relevancy on these social media sites is usually immediate, and not a long-term solution for the marketing, promotion, or branding of a site, product, or company. If I read in a business plan that a start-up was going to rely strictly on social media, I would not recommend the business.
I read in the February 13, 2009 edition of Cynopsis Digital about the following research, “Video search engines may be improving but they’re still not responsible for much online discovery, according to a new analysis from online video tracking and analysis firm TubeMogul. The company analyzed a sample of 35 million+ streams over the period of 2 months and found that direct navigation to sites such as YouTube was still the most common way users find videos, responsible for over 45% of all views. Site referrals proved to be long tail of mostly blogs, which sourced some 80% of all referred traffic, but the top referral sites were as follows:
Site Share of Video Referrals
Google 7.19%
Yahoo 2.12%
Facebook 1.93%
Myspace 1.55%
Digg 1.49%
Stumbleupon 1.13%
msn/live 0.92%
blogspot 0.78%
aol 0.43%
reddit 0.29%
truveo 0.22%
flurl 0.21%
blinkx 0.19%
ask 0.19%
Comcast 0.16%
Twitter 0.15%
WordPress 0.15%
CN 0.12%
Wikipedia 0.11%
Ovguide 0.06%
Search Referrals by Category
Search engines 11.18%
Social networks 3.66%
Social bookmarking sites: 3.19%
Video search engines: 0.63%
Email/IM: 0.05%
blogs, etc. 80.88%
Source: TubeMogul”
If these numbers are accurate, this is startling information, and I have no reason to doubt the numbers. On melslife, we have 17 channels of video. I got more referrals from a TV Guide print edition mention two weeks ago for one of our videos featuring Adam Sandler than anything online.
I am still bullish on social media, but if you are running a business, social media should be part of the solution, not the only solution. Even WebMD recently launched a television campaign. Many companies do not have marketing or promotional budgets so social media is their only choice. In these situations, sifting through the hundreds – if not thousands – of relevant sites, blogs, etc. is critical in selecting the opportunities that work best for you. Time has value.
Many companies and start-ups rely on press releases to build cost-effective and productive marketing strategies that can produce steady results. If your goal is achieving search engine relevancy for low investment dollars, issuing multiple timely press releases is probably a good strategy. If your goal is to build site traffic, it probably is an inefficient use of your money.
All businesses and start-ups need Search Engine Optimization, which is two-fold. Most businesses only focus on the need for titles, meta-tags, content relevancy, and sitemaps. They should also focus on the need to seed links, content, and brand identity around the Web, which I usually refer to as “the poor man’s search engine optimization.” The latter focus takes weeks to execute and is usually handled internally, but once executed, the results can live on forever and produce steady Brand Equity results, which is one of the main reasons to use social media.
Old media is not dead; it’s just being reinvented. New media is still in its infancy and will continue to grow. I would suggest that companies find opportunities in both new and old media. As the demand declines for old media and the inventory increases, many companies with cash will find incredible bargains, especially at hard hit local broadcasters, radio stations, and newspapers. As more social media sites gain traction, there will be many niche opportunities to be found. What are your marketing plans like for today’s economy?
Part 3. The marketplace is in a state of disruption; it is distorted. In these difficult times, relationships count. Nurture new relationship and embrace old ones. The business lunch is now out and the Starbucks coffee meeting is now in. Listen to your customers. Empathize with their pain. What are their problems? Can you provide, simple easy-sounding solutions? If not, leave them alone. Do not over sell. If you force a sale, all you will achieve is an outstanding unpaid invoice. Loyalty and understanding (of your customer’s problems) today will endear a long-term customer relationship.
Just about every company and person globally is evaluating their priorities and investments – time and money. Become part of your customer’s solution, and not their problem. If you are looking for growth, it’s probably a good idea to focus on granular growth, line extensions, and profitability differentials within your business model or company.
Understanding the effectiveness of all kinds of media is critical to your success today. Don’t assume that the reach, frequency, and cost of a vehicle serve as an effective gauge for its effectiveness. E-mailing can be cheap, but is it effective? I do not think so.
I know that there is an entire direct marketing industry that has been created online who does not believe this, and I have been criticized by some of these people within this industry for some of my past comments, but I can only give you my experience with e-mail campaigns. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Most direct marketing experts will say something like, “you did not have the right subject line,” “your message wasn’t clear,” or “you probably had a bad list.” All that I can tell these critics is that our knowledgeable marketing team spent months thinking about our e-mail campaigns, and over time the campaigns did not work.
Why? Most likely the marketplace shifted as more and more companies adopted e-mailing campaigns as part of their online strategy, and people became overwhelmed by the avalanche of e-mails they were receiving daily.
At melslife, we had weekly e-mailing campaigns beginning last October. Around mid-January, I saw a precipitous decline in its effectiveness. For example, instead of getting a minimum of 700 hits per campaign, we began to get 53. E-mailing for melslife is no longer effective based on our return, time, and resources.
Quality of media is easiest to measure in direct businesses, but there are ways to estimate the quality of media vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook, Internet radio, radio, product placement, telephony solutions, television, and YouTube. No matter how you arrive at your media priorities and quality assessment, the real opportunity comes from combining the analysis with data on the reach, delivery, and cost of an advertising vehicle.
With ad dollars so tight, this combination of reach, delivery, cost, and quality helps companies compare the impact of different media vehicles. Keep in mind that every company has a different set of needs and media objectives. Even if the media is free – like most social media – it does not mean it’s efficient enough to achieve your goals.
If you are starting a social networking business, the data is on your side. According to a recent study by eMarketer, “the number of U.S. Internet users that visited social networks at least once a month increased an estimated 11 percent in 2008 to 79.5 million, and will rise nearly 11 percent in 2009 to 88.1 million. Between 2008-2013, the number of U.S. social net users will increase about 44 percent to nearly 115 million.” The problem that you have is developing a workable business model to fund growth, especially if there is no ad revenue.
I get asked all the time about social networking media like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. These are all wonderful free communication tools that add some search engine relevancy value, but don’t be fooled about their effectiveness.
Relevancy on these social media sites is usually immediate, and not a long-term solution for the marketing, promotion, or branding of a site, product, or company. If I read in a business plan that a start-up was going to rely strictly on social media, I would not recommend the business.
I read in the February 13, 2009 edition of Cynopsis Digital about the following research, “Video search engines may be improving but they’re still not responsible for much online discovery, according to a new analysis from online video tracking and analysis firm TubeMogul. The company analyzed a sample of 35 million+ streams over the period of 2 months and found that direct navigation to sites such as YouTube was still the most common way users find videos, responsible for over 45% of all views. Site referrals proved to be long tail of mostly blogs, which sourced some 80% of all referred traffic, but the top referral sites were as follows:
Site Share of Video Referrals
Google 7.19%
Yahoo 2.12%
Facebook 1.93%
Myspace 1.55%
Digg 1.49%
Stumbleupon 1.13%
msn/live 0.92%
blogspot 0.78%
aol 0.43%
reddit 0.29%
truveo 0.22%
flurl 0.21%
blinkx 0.19%
ask 0.19%
Comcast 0.16%
Twitter 0.15%
WordPress 0.15%
CN 0.12%
Wikipedia 0.11%
Ovguide 0.06%
Search Referrals by Category
Search engines 11.18%
Social networks 3.66%
Social bookmarking sites: 3.19%
Video search engines: 0.63%
Email/IM: 0.05%
blogs, etc. 80.88%
Source: TubeMogul”
If these numbers are accurate, this is startling information, and I have no reason to doubt the numbers. On melslife, we have 17 channels of video. I got more referrals from a TV Guide print edition mention two weeks ago for one of our videos featuring Adam Sandler than anything online.
I am still bullish on social media, but if you are running a business, social media should be part of the solution, not the only solution. Even WebMD recently launched a television campaign. Many companies do not have marketing or promotional budgets so social media is their only choice. In these situations, sifting through the hundreds – if not thousands – of relevant sites, blogs, etc. is critical in selecting the opportunities that work best for you. Time has value.
Many companies and start-ups rely on press releases to build cost-effective and productive marketing strategies that can produce steady results. If your goal is achieving search engine relevancy for low investment dollars, issuing multiple timely press releases is probably a good strategy. If your goal is to build site traffic, it probably is an inefficient use of your money.
All businesses and start-ups need Search Engine Optimization, which is two-fold. Most businesses only focus on the need for titles, meta-tags, content relevancy, and sitemaps. They should also focus on the need to seed links, content, and brand identity around the Web, which I usually refer to as “the poor man’s search engine optimization.” The latter focus takes weeks to execute and is usually handled internally, but once executed, the results can live on forever and produce steady Brand Equity results, which is one of the main reasons to use social media.
Old media is not dead; it’s just being reinvented. New media is still in its infancy and will continue to grow. I would suggest that companies find opportunities in both new and old media. As the demand declines for old media and the inventory increases, many companies with cash will find incredible bargains, especially at hard hit local broadcasters, radio stations, and newspapers. As more social media sites gain traction, there will be many niche opportunities to be found. What are your marketing plans like for today’s economy?
Part 3. The marketplace is in a state of disruption; it is distorted. In these difficult times, relationships count. Nurture new relationship and embrace old ones. The business lunch is now out and the Starbucks coffee meeting is now in. Listen to your customers. Empathize with their pain. What are their problems? Can you provide, simple easy-sounding solutions? If not, leave them alone. Do not over sell. If you force a sale, all you will achieve is an outstanding unpaid invoice. Loyalty and understanding (of your customer’s problems) today will endear a long-term customer relationship.
Just about every company and person globally is evaluating their priorities and investments – time and money. Become part of your customer’s solution, and not their problem. If you are looking for growth, it’s probably a good idea to focus on granular growth, line extensions, and profitability differentials within your business model or company.
Understanding the effectiveness of all kinds of media is critical to your success today. Don’t assume that the reach, frequency, and cost of a vehicle serve as an effective gauge for its effectiveness. E-mailing can be cheap, but is it effective? I do not think so.
I know that there is an entire direct marketing industry that has been created online who does not believe this, and I have been criticized by some of these people within this industry for some of my past comments, but I can only give you my experience with e-mail campaigns. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Most direct marketing experts will say something like, “you did not have the right subject line,” “your message wasn’t clear,” or “you probably had a bad list.” All that I can tell these critics is that our knowledgeable marketing team spent months thinking about our e-mail campaigns, and over time the campaigns did not work.
Why? Most likely the marketplace shifted as more and more companies adopted e-mailing campaigns as part of their online strategy, and people became overwhelmed by the avalanche of e-mails they were receiving daily.
At melslife, we had weekly e-mailing campaigns beginning last October. Around mid-January, I saw a precipitous decline in its effectiveness. For example, instead of getting a minimum of 700 hits per campaign, we began to get 53. E-mailing for melslife is no longer effective based on our return, time, and resources.
Quality of media is easiest to measure in direct businesses, but there are ways to estimate the quality of media vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook, Internet radio, radio, product placement, telephony solutions, television, and YouTube. No matter how you arrive at your media priorities and quality assessment, the real opportunity comes from combining the analysis with data on the reach, delivery, and cost of an advertising vehicle.
With ad dollars so tight, this combination of reach, delivery, cost, and quality helps companies compare the impact of different media vehicles. Keep in mind that every company has a different set of needs and media objectives. Even if the media is free – like most social media – it does not mean it’s efficient enough to achieve your goals.
If you are starting a social networking business, the data is on your side. According to a recent study by eMarketer, “the number of U.S. Internet users that visited social networks at least once a month increased an estimated 11 percent in 2008 to 79.5 million, and will rise nearly 11 percent in 2009 to 88.1 million. Between 2008-2013, the number of U.S. social net users will increase about 44 percent to nearly 115 million.” The problem that you have is developing a workable business model to fund growth, especially if there is no ad revenue.
I get asked all the time about social networking media like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. These are all wonderful free communication tools that add some search engine relevancy value, but don’t be fooled about their effectiveness.
Relevancy on these social media sites is usually immediate, and not a long-term solution for the marketing, promotion, or branding of a site, product, or company. If I read in a business plan that a start-up was going to rely strictly on social media, I would not recommend the business.
I read in the February 13, 2009 edition of Cynopsis Digital about the following research, “Video search engines may be improving but they’re still not responsible for much online discovery, according to a new analysis from online video tracking and analysis firm TubeMogul. The company analyzed a sample of 35 million+ streams over the period of 2 months and found that direct navigation to sites such as YouTube was still the most common way users find videos, responsible for over 45% of all views. Site referrals proved to be long tail of mostly blogs, which sourced some 80% of all referred traffic, but the top referral sites were as follows:
Site Share of Video Referrals
Google 7.19%
Yahoo 2.12%
Facebook 1.93%
Myspace 1.55%
Digg 1.49%
Stumbleupon 1.13%
msn/live 0.92%
blogspot 0.78%
aol 0.43%
reddit 0.29%
truveo 0.22%
flurl 0.21%
blinkx 0.19%
ask 0.19%
Comcast 0.16%
Twitter 0.15%
WordPress 0.15%
CN 0.12%
Wikipedia 0.11%
Ovguide 0.06%
Search Referrals by Category
Search engines 11.18%
Social networks 3.66%
Social bookmarking sites: 3.19%
Video search engines: 0.63%
Email/IM: 0.05%
blogs, etc. 80.88%
Source: TubeMogul”
If these numbers are accurate, this is startling information, and I have no reason to doubt the numbers. On melslife, we have 17 channels of video. I got more referrals from a TV Guide print edition mention two weeks ago for one of our videos featuring Adam Sandler than anything online.
I am still bullish on social media, but if you are running a business, social media should be part of the solution, not the only solution. Even WebMD recently launched a television campaign. Many companies do not have marketing or promotional budgets so social media is their only choice. In these situations, sifting through the hundreds – if not thousands – of relevant sites, blogs, etc. is critical in selecting the opportunities that work best for you. Time has value.
Many companies and start-ups rely on press releases to build cost-effective and productive marketing strategies that can produce steady results. If your goal is achieving search engine relevancy for low investment dollars, issuing multiple timely press releases is probably a good strategy. If your goal is to build site traffic, it probably is an inefficient use of your money.
All businesses and start-ups need Search Engine Optimization, which is two-fold. Most businesses only focus on the need for titles, meta-tags, content relevancy, and sitemaps. They should also focus on the need to seed links, content, and brand identity around the Web, which I usually refer to as “the poor man’s search engine optimization.” The latter focus takes weeks to execute and is usually handled internally, but once executed, the results can live on forever and produce steady Brand Equity results, which is one of the main reasons to use social media.
Old media is not dead; it’s just being reinvented. New media is still in its infancy and will continue to grow. I would suggest that companies find opportunities in both new and old media. As the demand declines for old media and the inventory increases, many companies with cash will find incredible bargains, especially at hard hit local broadcasters, radio stations, and newspapers. As more social media sites gain traction, there will be many niche opportunities to be found. What are your marketing plans like for today’s economy?
