The Ebb and Flow of Storm, Seasons and Time

This post was initially inspired in part by the passing by of #HurricaneDorian (passing by Florida; our thoughts and concerns are now focused on the Carolinas and other states up the coast, I hope they pull through fine).

When a major disruption like a hurricane arrives, or even seasonal interruptions like vacations and back-to-school, many of my clients lament the ebb in their business flow, as if they were helpless observers of the business cycle. That perspective is indeed the problem.

Like the proverbial squirrel storing nuts away for the winter, there are plenty of things you can do to counteract the effects of the business cycle, seasonality and unexpected events like the approach of a major tropical storm. They include:

• Work your customer base. This is the most important tactic. It's always much easier to get repeat business out of an existing customer than acquiring a new one. Think of the approach of the real estate industry, that encourages several touches of a prospect a year. Keep in touch with your past customers, offer them updates and specials. Actively encourage them to do business with you again and regularly. 
• Budget for the slow times. When times are good, you may feel no urgency to spend money on marketing, and those funds may wind up spent elsewhere. But just like the proverbial squirrel, you should be stocking up for those lean times, so you can bring marketing and promotional firepower to bear when times get tough. 
• Cut against the grain. What I mean here is to run promotions when no one else is. Everybody tends to promote during the obvious times like the Holidays and back-to-school. Try running your promotions during those seemingly slow times when no one else is. 
• Advertise and market consistently. Too many of my clients scramble during a slump to get out there and they're essentially playing catch-up. Budget to get your message out consistently throughout the year so people are always aware of what you have to offer. 

If you need help with any of the above, give us a call at 904-744-8877. If you're a small business with a local trading area, visit my site jacksonvillelocalmarketing.com for more local marketing ideas. 

Silence in the Storm

We've touched upon this in earlier posts when a hurricane or tropical storm rumbles through the Southeast, which let's face it seems to be all too often every summer these days. But it's worth revisiting again.

Many businesses large and small feel compelled to say something when a once-in-a-lifetime storm like Dorian approaches (of course it seems counterintuitive that we could have once-in-lifetime storms every year but that's another matter entirely). From a messaging point of view, you'll usually find yourself between a storm surge and a hard place.

If you don't offer products or services that can directly help people in the path of the storm, then you're reduced to messaging that includes some variation of thoughts and prayers, which can come across as vacuous. If you do have a product or service that can help and you heavily promote it, it can come off as mercenary. You just can' t win.

The best bet, if you do contribute to an organization that helps in the relief effort such as the Red Cross, is to highlight that support while encouraging others to do the same. Other than that, it may be best to hunker down, as we say down here in the Southeast every summer.

Stay safe (although that's another phrase that comes perilously close to thoughts and prayers).

It's the End of SEO as We Know it (and I feel fine).

Recently on my Twitter feed (@lbconsultincinc) and on my company's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/LarryBassaniConsulting) I shared this article on the 10 most common SEO myths.

There's probably a lot more than 10 but the article is good place to start. It talks about those long-held hoary precepts like age of site, social signals, using Google Apps, the h1 tag, shared hosting and so on. The issue beyond those ten, however, is how the myth of search engine optimization has eclipsed what can be gained from the effort (and full disclosure, SEO is a significant part of the services that I provide).

The reality is, for whatever the query is, only the top five positions will see any significant clicks. Even with very specific or so-called long-tail queries, there's likely to be hundreds if not thousands of sites competing for the same result (you do the math). So many businesses put an inordinate amount of effort (or fall prey to companies offering to do it for them) toward a quixotic quest to get organic transaction.

Now local search is a little different (and my website www.jacksonvillelocalmarketing.com helps people tackle that) but whether you're a small business, local shop or a big corporation, the place to start is having a coherent message that crystallizes what you do, knowing the people who are out there that are most likely to engage with you and going out and getting them. In marketing, as in life, there are no free rides, and the myth of a free buzz is where a lot of the SEO and social marketing frenzy got started.

Look for tips on building and marketing your brand in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, give me a call for a free consultation.

On Tribalism, Alternative Facts, Fake News, Facebook and Marketing

I’ve been mulling over this post for nearly three months now (you do the math) but I’ve been consciously trying to distance myself from a visceral reaction to what’s gone down while giving me time to see how people -- and advertisers -- reacted.

First let’s get the backstory out of the way: the 2016 election spotlighted a behavioral and social dynamic that was baked in many years before the campaigns started. People tend to group themselves with like-minded people who look, act, think and share the same interests they do. Social media -- and Facebook in particular -- amplifies this by design. You’re shown things in your feed from people who are your friends or relatives (and who presumably have a shared affinity) and on topics that you’re interested in. They don’t call it Like for nothing. So, the companies’ protestations to the contrary, social media is not a place where you discover anything new, it’s to give you more of whatever is familiar.

Then it's not at all surprising that the social media revolution merely reinforced our tendency to group ourselves into tribes, and our outlook and values are driven by that tribe. In that kind of environment, any claim, however outlandish it may appear to those outside of the tribe, carries the weight of truth -- like if you leave the rainforest you’ll be swallowed up by a fire-breathing volcano god. In the end, this is what gives fake news such credibility.

A long, long time ago (the early 1990s) in a country that now seems so very far away, I conducted sales training classes for financial services. These were the kinder, gentler, times of read my lips, thousand points of light, SCUD missiles and alleged pubic hair on coke cans (perhaps a quainter version of today’s discourse). What I taught was that each individual’s or group’s experiences, values, perspectives, feelings and goals can be put into a circle. And where the circles of different groups intersect is where communication occurs, in other words, in the universal. That intersection is where you communicate as a marketer or a sales person.

It may seem that in today’s polarized environment that intersection no longer exists, but it always does. There are things we all share -- like a desire to be happy, secure, fulfilled and maybe not get swallowed up by a volcano tomorrow. You would think that marketers or advertisers would be aiming for that intersection, but so far that hasn’t been the case.

Advertising instead has tried to a) delve into escapism (see the plethora of “most magical time of the year” holiday ads) appeal to one segment or another or in the case of the current Cadillac campaign, try to preach to people on how we need to come on people, smile on your brother, everybody get together and love one another and by a Cadillac.

My advice, in brand or marketing communications, is try and find that spot inside the intersecting circles that strikes a nerve with everyone. Ironically, Trump himself did a better job at articulating this in his State of the Union address, whether action will back the words or not.

Someone in the White House was paying attention.

Your Hip Grandma

What am I: An internet property that organizes and filters Web content for its users. A place where people can keep in contact and share things with family and friends. A service you can find like-minded people with similar interests in groups. And it includes a messaging application where you can instantly chat with anyone with whom you chose to connect.

Of course I'm describing Facebook, right? Wrong. I'm talking about AOL. Yes your grandma's AOL.

It's not that much of a secret that the idea of a "behind the fence" or "gated" internet community was first manifested by that old dinosaur AOL, and is what in part inspired Mark Zuckerberg to do the same. It's also apparent that the old AOL "away" message is the antecedent of the Facebook status update.

But there are important behavioral differences and these are critical to marketers. In addition to providing access to the Web, AOL was a place where people sorted through the internet for solutions to their problems, conduct research, access services and to buy things. So in many ways it was closer to Google than Facebook.

And hence there's the rub with Facebook. Facebook is not the place where people go for information, to research solutions or to buy stuff.  They go to keep up with their friends, for amusement and, let's face it, to be diverted. Someone who's looking for diversion may not exactly be in the buying mode. Even when it comes to news, I know very few people who use Facebook as their primary news source, and if they do, I fear how they might vote in the coming election.

So yes, there are millions and millions and millions of users that spend hours a day on Facebook. But just because they are there, it doesn't make them ripe for the picking. There used to be the same numbers of people watching Friends on TV in the 1990s, but,

except for the most big-bucks marketers, were they looking to buy what businesses had to sell?

On Labor Day (and other hollowed holidays)

No, that's not a typo. I did mean "hollowed" rather than "hallowed". It seems that as more years go by, these three-day holiday weekends are further and further removed from the origins and intent of the events that spawned them, so they have been sort of hollowed out. Now they seem to be uniformly about beer (nothing wrong with that) barbeques and much-needed time off for the beleaguered American worker, who works longer and harder than anyone in the industrialized world (if they get any time off at all in this service economy). And mattress sales. I don't know what it is about three-day weekends and mattress sales, but you could realistically change Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day to Mattress Sale Day One, Two and Three to avoid confusion.

Labor Day in particular has been hollowed out by the fog of time. It was originally proposed by an American machinist in 1882 to celebrate workers and promoted by the American union movement. It was formally adopted as a Federal holiday in 1894. International Workers Day, celebrated pretty much by the rest of the world on May 1, actually has is its origins in an American event -- the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886, when police fired on workers protesting for an eight hour workday, killing four. Still most Americans are unaware of the union and socialist origins of Labor Day, and a Republican lawmaker even went so far as to say that Labor Day is a chance to express appreciation for all those business owners that create jobs. Now I'm a business owner but even I went -- huh?

So what does all this mean to your communications? Well, usually people in business feel compelled to say something about a holiday that sounds wholesome and appropriate, like one client who on Memorial Day insisted on using that occasion to thank the brave men and women around the world who are protecting our freedom. Well Memorial Day is about remembering men and women in our armed forces who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the past and hopefully the service men and women they were referring to will never have to make that sacrifice. Or on Veteran's Day, where it's more appropriate, thanking men and women for their service on your website or Facebook page becomes like wallpaper because everyone is saying it. So here are some tips for making the most out of acknowledging a holiday:

• Make it specific to the original meaning of the holiday
• Tie the origin of the holiday to how we live today
• Put some meat behind it: If it's Labor Day talk about what you're doing for your employees, if it's Veterans Day, talk about the support you give to veteran organizations and so on. 

If you do this, your message will resonate with more depth, will more likely get noticed on the Web and in social media and you just might educate a few people too.

Getting Saturated (And Not Just by the Rain)

As Hurricane Hermine was preparing to strike the Florida Panhandle last week, here in Northeast Florida I was deluged by a torrent of another kind -- wall-to-wall "storm coverage" by both local and national news outlets.

Now although the storm did create some serious havoc along its direct path, we along the fringes were subject to breathless speculation about wind speeds, rainfall levels, storm path possibilities -- all widely varying and as it turns put completely wrong. On top of that you had local politicians posturing to be somber and leader-like, intoning on how prepared they were and why we should take this threat seriously.

This scenario has played out several times over the last few years as we've been lucky enough to escape major storms here in the hurricane capital of the U.S. (Hermine was the first hurricane to strike Florida since 2005). And you get the sense (justified or not) that the media weather departments can't wait to put their crack storm watch teams into some live action, sort of like invading a country because you want to do something with all that gear and training.

The problem with all this of course is that people start to tune the information out -- sure, whatever you say, heard it all before -- and then when there's a real need to, they won't be listening. But Larry, you might ask, beyond your usual grousing, what does this have to do with marketing since this is a marketing blog? Well I'm getting to that.

I've run across so many companies who think that more is necessarily better. Flood the Facebook page with posts. Send out those email blasts every other day. I actually ran across a prospect who placed the same print ad every day in the same position in the paper.

This is obviously counter-productive from a communications standpoint. You become like wallpaper and people start to tune you out. What's more, with email marketing, open and click-through rates diminish with increased frequency and with Facebook, the more posts you throw out there with no engagement, the less likely you are to get in anyone's feed.

So pick your spots carefully. Make sure you have engaging content with something that will hook your audience. And don't feel the need to beat them over the head with it. Take your cue from David Byrne and the Talking Heads' Psycho Killer:

"When I have nothing to say my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again?"

Be a Real Local Marketing Hero

Why spend money on a human directional dressed as a chicken or a giant submarine sandwich? If you're a business with a local trading area, your best bet to get seen by your potential customers  is through local search. It's really just a matter swimming with the current (or dropping your line where the fish are swimming or whatever aquatic metaphor that you prefer) because that's how most people begin to search when looking for a place to go or something to buy. And with Google looking to return localized results with every search and mobile searches growing exponentially (where local results are most prominent) needing to succeed with local search is as essential as paying the electric bill to keep the lights on. In fact, it may just be the most effective way to keep the lights on!

So you may ask: "Larry, can I really get free visibility through local search instead of paying someone to stand all day in an uncomfortable costume in the stifling heat?" Not only will I say yes, but I'll tell you a few simple steps to get you started. So here goes:

• If you haven't yet claimed your Google Places listing (the one associated with the map, search for yourself (aren't we all searching for ourselves?) and click the Manage This Listing box in the right hand column. (If you've already have claimed your listing you can skip to the third bullet point.)
• Sign in with your Google account (if you don't have one create one; it's free) and the first thing you will see is a dialogue that will ask you to verify that you own the business. Chose phone verification (instant) or mail (takes about 5 days to get the PIN) and then return and read the rest of this post after you've verified.
• Make sure you complete all of the business information that Google asks you for (they give you a handy progress bar to let you know how you're doing. This includes choosing the category(ies) that most closely match your business, writing an about description using words that people use when looking for what you do or sell, adding hours and contact information (including your website). 
• Google has finally merged the Places listing management tools with the full Google+ Local panel with social functions. Using this dialogue you can upload a cover photo, other photos, add people to circles and post like you do on Facebook. You should post often.
• Encourage people to review you on your Places/Google+ Local page. Reviews count for a lot.
• Get your business listed in as many directories and local listings that you can. This not only gives you additional avenues of exposure but is a factor in how Google ranks your Google listing. This handy tool at getlisted.org can help you make that happen. 
• Make sure there are local markers on your website if you have one. This means having location words in the page title and main headlines but especially having location (including phone number) and directions on the home page if possible. If you want to take it a step further, you can put schema, or html markup language on your page for locations. There are a few tools out there, but here's one -- http://www.microdatagenerator.com/local-business-schema/ -- that's easy to use.
• Strengthen your website by sourcing quality in-links from other strong websites, preferably local ones.

So that's it. Give it a try and hang up that chicken suit for a while. If you have any questions, enter them here or call me at 904-744-8877. If you prefer to let us drive, click here to learn about our local marketing services. 

                                          

In Praise of Videos of Videos That Don’t Go Viral

This article in the New York Times gives helpful and practical tips for creating watchable, informative videos that may or may not get rapidly shared. But the hope of going viral is kind of like the hope of winning the lottery -- no matter how strategically you play the numbers it’s probably not going to happen.

That doesn’t mean businesses shouldn’t have videos -- in particular YouTube videos -- as part of their marketing mix. Of far more practical value is the opportunity to get a stronger presence in the search engines. A video, strategically targeted to search terms that reflect what you do, can:

• Give you another way to appear on the search-engine results page as Google blends video or YouTube items with the other results from the search query
• Strengthen the content on your website, helping to optimize it for search
• When uploaded to your Google Places/Google+ Local listing, optimize your business for local search (learn why local search is now so important)
• Gives you another avenue to build links to your site.

This article gives some useful tips on how to use video as a search engine tool. Some of the highlights:

• Open a YouTube channel and include in the title keywords that are relevant to what you do
• Add descriptions and video transcriptions
• Strategically use tags
• Embed your videos on your website, including text that describes the video and even include a video transcription
• Create a video sitemap.

Email me or call me at 904-744-8877 if you have any questions on how YouTube can benefit your business or simply post a comment here.

What the # is up with #hashtags?

I did get this actual question from a client with some letters surrounding the symbol along with a few other symbols. You know, like in comic strips when somebody stubs their toe and says something the writers don't want to explicitly show.

So for the uninitiated, hashtags (a word preceded by the # symbol) originated on Twitter as a way to organize conversations or topics. So in theory, it became shorthand or a shortcut for people to find a topic that they were interested in, users to see what topics are trending and for image-obsessed brands (personal or otherwise) to see if they were trendy, trending or whether they needed to start or jump on a trend before there were forlorn and forgotten.

But lo and behold hashtags starting appearing in other social channels like Facebook and even Google+, which I always believed to be the hippest and least trendy of the social channels and only in part because it was the least used (I always was a sucker for digging bands that nobody else had heard of). And I think I overheard people walking down the street actually talking in hashtags the other day and not just those who were wearing those goofy Google Internet goggles.

In any event, as a practical matter hashtags can be tricky. I find them annoying because they invariably take up a crucial character in a tweet that puts me over the limit. And if your hastagging a phrase, it's all run together, like #everydaymarketingadvice. If you are hashtagging inclined, you should a) see what's already out there that your tweet or post can tag onto (pun semi-intended) or b) create a hashtag that you think will be of topical interest to people who are searching. This article on Social Media Examiner has some helpful tips.

The premise behind all of this is that people are actually searching for stuff on social media, but are they? Ah, the topic for yet another future blog post.

How socially effective are you?

No, I don’t mean whether you invariably spill drinks on people at parties or find it hard to start up conversations with strangers (although there are probably virtual equivalents to both). I’m referring of course to your social marketing efforts.

Plenty of businesses spend lots of time on social marketing. Some measure effectiveness by the amount of followers or likes, how many comments they get, reach, or how many “influencers” they create (people that can affect other people’s purchase decision). Others even trot out the vintage Larry Tate (of Bewitched fame) or Madmen adage of brand awareness. Few can tell you what they're actually getting out of it when it comes to booked business.

Many do it because they read they should be doing or because they like it (hey, I’m on Facebook and Twitter all the time anyway). This is the equivalent of a job candidate saying I like to work with people because I’m a people person.

This article from Web Marketing Today makes a valiant attempt to give you a framework for putting some metrics around social. What strikes me is that of all of those listed, only one -- clicks to the website from social channels and the resulting conversions -- are hard metrics. That’s not the fault of the author, it’s simply the nature of the beast. From social interaction through engagement to the sale is a complicated chain and it can be difficult to discern what generated the behavior that resulted in a sale. A person could go to your website directly or through branded search (typing in your business name). There is no definitive way to know what generated that behavior -- advertising, social influence or even a prior search.

So the bottom line is, you have to be careful to calibrate the money, time and resources you put toward social with what you think you are tangibly getting out of it. Now if you can marry social with the search dynamic, that’s a whole other story. And yes, the topic of a future blog post.

Why Paid Search Advertising Still Rules

I have many clients, in fact all of my clients who have tried it, that have been very successful with paid search advertising, which, let’s face it, has become synonymous with Google Adwords. Still they can't help from wondering if a really cool rich media ad with a racing car that runs across the screen or a banner ad with a dancing leprechaun will somehow be more effective. I tell them, based on both click-through rates and conversion rates that this kind of online display advertising is unlikely to be more effective and now there’s research on user preferences that also supports this point of view.

A new study from Adobe indicates that the overwhelming majority of people prefer television ads and other forms of off-line advertising to ads in online media such as banners ads, social media ads and online apps. Over half (54%) said banner ads don't work, just 3% said they prefer to view ads in social media and literally 0% said they like ads in mobile apps. Whew!

Needless to say this should give businesses and their marketing providers pause. Just like banner ads when they were first introduced back in the day (and they have yet to live up to the hype) ads on social media and mobile apps have failed in delivering on the heavily-promoted promise.

But with online space occupying more and more of people's time and attention, what's the best way to reach that very large and responsive audience? I would say search marketing, particularly paid search -- yes, those stodgy, boring text ads on search results pages. They may not be as interesting as the dancing leprechaun or the race car that flies across your screen obscuring the the text you're trying to read, but they consistently perform better with both click-though rates and conversion rates.

Paid search combined with a strong local search presence on Google+ Local will get you seen by the critical audience of mobile users whose searches are expected to dominate activity within the next two years. Click here and here to learn how we can help you succeed with search marketing and if you really want a dancing leprechaun, we can give you one of those too.

A Domain by Any Other Name

Is still just a domain. Back in April I wrote in this post about the poor unfortunate soul who invested a huge amount of money in what amounted to an exact match domain (EMD). It didn't work out all that well for him and now, with Google's new algorithm update that affects EMDs, it's even more unlikely that it will work for anyone else.

According to this article on the SEOMoz blog, early data indicates many sites that had exact match domains (domains that match exactly the desired keyword, e.g., teethwhitening.com) took a significant fall in search engine results with the update. My take on it is that the sites that did drop probably were not that strong in other ways, so when they lost the advantage of having an exact match domain, they took a tumble.

The moral of the story is that having a strong site that is properly optimized with informative content will carry you a lot further than any particular domain name (you can learn more about how we handle SEO here). So ignore all those resellers hawking the dream domain, or even those registrars trying to push the dot whatever on you as they're barely a step above the former. Build your site with quality content, optimize it and keep it fresh. Then no matter what your domain is, the business you get will still smell as sweet.

Google+ Local Update

This is both an update to my latest post on local search and a post about an update to Google+ Local so that we're all, well, up-to-date.

As promised when Google rolled out Google+ Local in uncharacteristically clumsy fashion back in March, there is now at least some integration available for those small business early-adopters who opened up a Google+ Business page for a local business or place and then found themselves blindsided and befuddled when  their Google Places page suddenly became a Google+ Local page. The result was that they now had two Google+ business pages: one with full functionality but couldn't be found that easily in local search and another that was basically a Places page skinned to look like a Google+ page, but with very limited functionality.

But the sun does rise, the cloud cover breaks, and now you can merge the two. What these means for you  is that you now have the best of both worlds -- a page that customers can find easily on the map and where they can post reviews plua a true social media page for you where you can post regularly, gain followers, create circles and so on. To merge the two, just follow these simple steps:

• When you visit your Google+ Business page you'll see a radial that says Verify Now in the right column. Click on it and follow the instructions
• You will, unfortunately, have to go through the postcard verification process again
• Once that's completed, Google will merge the local data from Places with your Google+ Business listing.

If you've claimed and populated your Google Places (+ Local) page but have not created a Google+ Business page, I recommend you do so to get more utility to connect and sell along with a better experience for the user. Then you can go ahead and merge the two but make sure you open your Google+ Business page as a local business or place.

If you haven't yet claimed your Places listing (see my last post) then it appears you'll still have to go through the Places interface, but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Local Search: Location, Location, Location

It's not just about real estate anymore (then again, even real estate is not just about real estate anymore but more on that in a future post.) If you're a business that trades in a defined local market area, your location is becoming the critical factor in customers finding you in the search engines, particularly Google, who over the last several years has been elevating local results displayed on the map.

And now, with Google+ Local (formerly Places) that emphasis is even greater. If those reasons aren't enough, more than half of Americans now own smartphones (a percentage that's expected to grow rapidly) and some projections say that in a couple of years nearly 75% of all searches will be conducted on smartphones. Local search results dominate the returns on these devices.

Now that I have your attention (or have at least inundated you into submission with facts) here are a few simple things you can do to improve your performance in local search:

• Claim your Google Places/Google+ Local listing here if you haven't already done so. Don't let the changing terminology confuse you, everything you will see still says Places when you work with your listing, even though Google has "transitioned" these listings to Google+ Local. It's free, but you'll have to open up a free Google account if you don't already have one. Google will also take you through some steps to verify that you're the business owner. 
• Whether you're just claiming your listing or are updating an existing one, fill out the listing as completely as possible, even though some fields, such as the additional information fields, for now don't appear on the Google+ Local listing. 
• Choose the categories that most closely relate to your business. Although you can enter a custom category, you're better off going with the existing Google categories. 
• When describing your business, use the words that you want your business to be found for, the words that people search on. And that's not to be confused with your business name. It's what you do, not who you are that counts here. 
• Upload several photos if you have them and also video if you have any into those sections. Get your customers to review you on Google+ Local, ideally they should be positive ones. 
• Update your listing from time to time; adding new photos is a great way to do this. There's also a "share an update box" you can use but currently that does not appear on the Google+ Local page either. 
• On your website, it's best to have your address and phone number in text on your home page. Having variations of the city you're in combined with your keyword variations won't necessarily get you there. 

Or you can have us do it. We'll set up and optimize your Google+ Local/Places page for just $149 or we can optimize for local search both your Google+ Local/Places page and your website for just $399. Click here to learn more about our local marketing special.

Why Direct Mail Works for B2B

Recently on Google+ there was a posting, by Google Analytics I believe, passing on an article that basically stated that b2b and b2c were really no different, since everyone is essentially just a consumer. I took issue with that premise and further suggested that the most effective b2b tactic was actually physical direct mail. I was surprised at the reaction that I got, how audacious I guess it was in the online space to suggest that an old warhorse like direct mail was the way to go. (And no, the increasingly beleaguered USPS did not pay me to write this, although I would welcome the opportunity).

I've already expressed my skepticism when it comes to b2b social in this post and I wish I could link the Google+ thread to this blog, but I still haven't found a way to link my blog to my Google+ business page, not the personal account that it's under, as this thread was under my personal Google+ profile (anyone who knows how to do that please let me know). So I'll just excerpt my response here as to why physical direct mail was a more effective b2b tactic than say, paid search, with one of the reasons being that in search, the person doing the searching is different than the decision-maker :

"...Generally speaking (and I'm only making general inferences here) the CTRs (click-thru-rates) in paid search for b2b and b2c are comparable and at times for b2b they're higher. However, in my experience the abandonment rate on the form and/or landing page for a b2b product is much higher and since most times you're talking about generating leads, you have to factor how many clicks you have to generate to get a sale into your ROI equation. (Even for b2b products that can be self-served, like software trials, data backup or cloud services, I've seen this general pattern hold.) So that buttresses my theory of the discoverer being different than the decision-maker.

With physical DM, using a good hand-compiled list, you can get directly to the decision-maker for the product/service in question -- finance, IT, HR and so on. A couple of years ago -- after a long, long time away -- I briefly took a Director-level position at a corporation (although director is not what it used to be) and there was nobody opening my mail (I wish there was because I invariably forgot to approve invoices and so on). Even at an executive level where there is an assistant opening the mail, if you create a piece with a high-enough perceived value the gatekeeper is going to be very reluctant to toss it. So I find physical DM to be the most efficient tactic when it comes to ROI against a b2b target."

So there you have it, you heard it here first (or last since DM appears to have gone the way of vinyl records, but as any audiophile will tell you, they sound a helluva lot better). Oh, and by the way, b2b direct mail is one of the things I specialize in and I do it because it works. Considering the decline in popularity, I can't be doing it for the money and excuse me because I have to go meet my friends from the PO for a beer to commiserate.

Building A Social Media Plan

Here's a really good article from Social Media Examiner on building a social media plan. It contains a lot of good commonsense advice and steps that every small business can take.

Just a couple of things that I would like to amplify (and I would feel a little guilty or lazy if I just blogged a link; it seems like an unbloggerly thing to do). One of the best points this article makes is about committing the effort to social media and I find that many clients are ill-prepared to do just that. Too many businesses don't post enough or when they do, it's self-promotional material that doesn't engage the audience. Contests and exclusive expert information go a lot further to building a following than doings at the business or "hi, we're really excited to be us."

Businesses also don't realize that this is a long-haul effort with results that are likely to be incremental and supplemental rather than monumental. This is sometimes an outgrowth of misguided expectations as social media proponents and the media have been pounding this for so long as the next big thing that people almost jump in as a reflex reaction. However, just because you won't get huge results doesn't mean it isn't worth doing, it just means that social should be one component of an overhaul marketing plan, with the amount of resources you put against it (including sweat equity) in line with the potential return on investment. (Another related point that the article also makes: pick your spots, find the social channel that makes the most sense for you to be in based on your customer profile. Trying to be in all the social spaces or to make a splash in the biggest of them may not be the best place to focus your efforts).

In any case, enjoy the article and by the way, helping you build and execute a social media plan is part of what I do, in conjunction with an overall marketing plan that includes things like advertising, promotions and even direct mail. But more on that in another post.

Upon Further Review of Google+ Local

In an earlier post I expressed excitement about Google's transition of Google Places to Google+ Local and opined that it would give businesses owners more room and flexibility to enhance their Places listing. For the present time, this does not appear to be the case and in fact the opposite might be true:

• For the time-being businesses still need to manage their listing through the existing Places interface
• Among other things, this means that you're still subject to the Places character limit in describing your business and that paragraph is all that appears in the Google+ Local About page
• Other sections populated in Google Places, such as the Additional Information sections, don't appear to carry over at all, at least right now
• Many businesses report that they've been having trouble getting their photos to show up in Google+ Local.

Still, there are some things business owners can do to make the transition easier and eventually realize  the full potential of Google+ Local:

• If you've already claimed and fully-optimized your Google Places listing, it's probably best not to make any further additions or changes right now until the smoke clears
• If you already have a Google+ Business Page (the equivalent of a Facebook Business Page or what used to be called a Facebook Fan Page) it's best that the Places and Google+ Business page both be under the same Google account email
• Even if you don't have a Google+ Business Page, it will probably be helpful to open a Google+ personal account under the same email you use to access your Google Places account.

These blog posts from Search Engine Journal and Poobah Marketing contain additional information and tips and the latter includes a video from Google that has some helpful tidbits, if you can get past the annoyingly sunny disposition of the two Googlers delivering it. 

What's Really Behind the Facebook Disappointment

At market's close today, Facebook's stock price stood at $30.97, significantly below the IPO price of $38. Talk continues to swirl around pending or potential shareholder lawsuits and even if the Facebook brass did not reveal to the general public what it did to private investors, trading at 100 times earnings should have had everybody's eyes wide open, or at least anyone old enough to remember the last dot com bubble.

What's really underlying the disappointment in Facebook I think, is a growing disillusionment with Facebook as an advertising and marketing vehicle -- a disillusionment that is at least partly the outgrowth of unreasonable expectations.  The dynamics of interactions on Facebook make it less than marketing or advertising friendly and recent Facebook format changes like the timeline make it even less so.

Based on my direct experience and other available data, display advertising on Facebook performs at par or at times below other properties on the Web, which is to say not all that well at all. The only truly consistent performer in online advertising, at least on a click-through-rate basis, is search advertising and as any search advertiser knows there's a big difference in performance on Google for ads based on search and ads displayed on Google's content network.

Now many Web properties, including Yahoo and AOL, have tried to compile the information they have on their users and combine it with their Web behavior to lift banner ad results, as in Yahoo's short-lived SmartAds program of a few years back. This has had limited effect and so far Facebook has refrained from using people's profile information (beyond location) to trigger ads, relying mostly on friend associations and Likes.

And then there's the social marketing aspect of it or as some would have it, the holy grail. All those millions of people are on Facebook, we should be able to sell them stuff right? As I used to say to my clients, constantly pitching what you have on Facebook is like going to a party on Saturday night and spending the entire evening talking about what you do and handing out your business card. You're unlikely to make many friends. The social space is great for starting conversations with clients and prospects, establishing relationships and getting direct and indirect endorsements via Likes. But it will never be a primary marketing driver and give you "free" results, any more than PR can replace paid efforts with "free" advertising.

What should be your primary marketing drivers then? A judicious mix (driven by your business goals) of on and off-line advertising, search, direct marketing, promotion, PR and yes, social. More on each of those in future posts.

Google+ is Now the Place

Google has just announced a major new change that affects millions of businesses -- the conversion of Google Places listings to Google+ (for the uninitiated, this is Google’s social network, akin to Facebook’s, but in some ways better). This of course follows the transition of Google Maps listings to Google Places and as some unwitting small business owners found out, listings on Google Maps and Google Places weren’t always in sync, especially if the business owner or owners unwittingly claimed listings on both Google properties using different Google accounts (if the preceding phrases weren’t confusing enough in and of themselves).

Google stated the transition of Google Places to Google+ Local took place on Thursday May 31st and a quick perusal of my clients’ Places listings verified that was indeed the case. And this transition is a good thing for local small businesses for the following reasons:

• Google+ gives you much more space to talk about your business and what you do for people 
• Google+ gives you more ways to keep your content fresh and interact with customers through posts (just like Facebook) 
• Partly because of all of the above, Google+ gives you more ways to affect high how you are placed in the search engine results.

Because of its search engine visibility potential I recommended that my clients establish a Google+ presence upon its broad introduction some months ago. Now that Google Places has been folded into it, Google + has become a must for small and larger businesses alike.

Comment on this post or email me if you have questions or need assistance in establishing a Google+ presence.