Your success is determined by one thing

Posted on January 27, 2009 by marc meyer

I know this is going to ruffle some feathers, but right now your marketing initiatives, your social media efforts, your email campaign, your DRTV campaign and more- all of it will rely on one thing in the end. Consider the following scenarios:

You are going to launch a new product. You build a website but how are you going to drive people to the site? How do they find it?
You launch a new product with a new company, that no one has ever heard of before, how will people find out more about you, your company, and your product?
You launch a new social network, how will it grow? How is it found? You start a new blog and you want people to read your kick-ass content? How will they know you’re out there? You join a new social network, how do you meet others?
You launch a new brick and mortar business, how do you drive business? Newspapers? Radio? Magazine? What is a person’s first knee jerk reaction to your advertising?
Your reputation? Where can you find it? How can you find it? Do you know if anybody is talking about you, your company and your product?
Your friends? Your family, How do they find you? Old friends? How do they find you?
You need a new job. How will you get your next one?

I could go on. But I think you get the point. Everything. and I mean everything that you do revolves around…

Think about it.

User-generated content. 10 tips for marketers.

Posted on March 5, 2008 by marc meyer

Web 2.0 has empowered online users like never before. Because of this, it has opened up and increased the desire for marketers to tap into this group to unleash the potential to virally market products and services to levels only dreamt of previously. Here are 10 things marketers need to be aware of as they dip their toes in the water.

The Sixth Estate-respect its potential

If the 5th estate is the broadcast media then the 6th estate is anyone with a computer. Think about it, the 6th estate is, at this juncture, online users; every day run of the mill online consumers who can and do, crank out information, opinions and content, without the fear of any type of backlash. They can say virtually anything online and find an audience for it. Marketers can never underestimate the power of the this user. Regardless of their lack of an audience, all it takes is one piece of media that no one has ever seen. So never discount anything or anyone’s potential content or group in marketing your product.

The Marketing upside for user generated content will never be greater, so what are you waiting for?

But within that forum for their opinion, their thoughts, and their comments, lies potential. Marketing potential. The marketing potential of user generated content has never been greater than it currently is. The marketing impact and influence that user-generated content has over people, products, ideas, and decisions has never been more valued and never been more underutilized. User generated content if positioned correctly, can create a viral buzz for anything. The reason for this is that the growth of social networks is growing at a pace that rivals and exceeds the dot com boom of the late 90’s. To be more sucinct, a new blog, it’s been said, is created every second. THAT means, that someone is creating content. A user is creating content that COULD influence others. If a marketer has not immmersed themselves in all things social media driven, now is the time.

Marketers think they know how to position themselves

For marketers, the challenge has always been how to leverage and push their product. One key is to take the leaders, the movers and the shakers of user generated content and have them buy in. Or you position a product or marketing promotion in front of “a group” in which they want to participate, they want to crank out content and they want to share it with their peeps. The marketer can dangle rewards and other incentives to do this, and that can work but… The reward or payoff for the user, is the desire to be noticed, or found, or be recognized for their efforts in creating some viral multi-media based piece of content that “may” take on a life of it’s own. YouTube is a classic example of this.

Marketers should know that all creators of UGC are secretly hoping and looking for their 15 minutes.

Those people who don’t have an audience yet, may be wanting to grow to online stardom levels seen by those who have cultivated their sites over time. Some great examples of this would be The Drudge Report, Shoemoney, Guy Kawasaki, and Seth Godin. All of these folks have a loyal and large following. With the ease that it takes them to crank out a piece on something they may like or dislike or mention casually, they can influence thousands of people, who then can influence thousand of others. Instant traffic and instant credibility to something that previously had nothing. Therein lies the potential that marketers salivate over.

Marketers could theoretically get to these influencers and have them, for a price, (bare in mind that everyone can be bought, don’t be so naiive to think they cant) pitch or promote a product, a service, a sight, or whatever and in turn it will, if it hasnt already happened, have a direct and immediate impact on the audience of that influencer. An indirect example of this is Google adsense ads sprinkled all over sites with high traffic.

Marketers need to be transparent

Within social networks for example, people who blatantly pitch a product can be looked upon has disingenuous, and thus will never be taken seriously. So a marketer needs to immerse themselves within a group and become more of an under the radar type of person who slowly and yet effectively influences the rest of the group. By doing this they gain street cred and legitimacy whenever they speak about anything. Thus, if they tell or mention or post about widget x rocking their world, then the rest of the group may listen. If marketer y comes right out of the blocks and says, “check out this kick ass product,” they’ll never get off the ground.

Marketers need to incent and leverage the group

Traditional online marketers look at social networks in a similar fashion, with the thinking, “I can market right to this captive audience”. And they are right! With some specific niche based social groups numbering in the thousands and within those groups are thousands more, marketers can tap directly into those groups who are possibly waiting or are ripe to be pitched with products, services and offers. If the pitch is right and the timing is perfect, it can be huge. To that end If a marketer can work with and enlist users of THAT group to carry the flag on behalf of a product, if they can get that user to become an evangelist of that product, then they will have hit the mother lode.

Marketers need to realize, it’s a marathon not a sprint

Although a new blog is created every second, a new blog does not grow its base overnight. It, like any social group grows over time. Marketers have the ability to drive traffic using specific and traditional means, but there still needs to be some meat on the bone, once someone arrives to the group and or the blog. And that does not happen quickly. Marketers have to acquire some street cred. They have to be able to establish a presence either under the radar or not. Social users have the ability to fact check more than they ever have and they do, thus the marketer needs to realize that. If they smell a rat, you are done. So stay cool. If the marketer paces themselves, the reward at the end will be recurring and not just a one time deal.

Screwing up is viral too

If you think success is great and viral and exciting; then keep in mind that if you mess up, if you wrong the consumer, then you can expect an equally as strong and viral reaction. With that failure or error in judegment comes a stickiniess and a refusal to forget that can kill a marketing campaign faster than bug spray. What’s more, with a users ability to fact check, they will to see if you have done something in the past that caused someone to post and vent online and complain. They will find it, and when they do, you and your marketing campaign or efforts will fail. You’re done. So in other words, the key to your future success is predicated on your online reputation and past. If you make a promise, you better keep it. If you have a made a promise, you better have kept it.

Know your audience and why they are creating their content

Marketers have to realize that the premise of all user generated content is that you have this person who wants to be seen or heard. You have to ask the questions: Why? What are they trying to get out of it? What is the purpose? Do they want a job? Are they venting? Do they want to be a star? A wannabe journalist? The more you know about your market, your audience and the reasoning behind their actions, the easier it will be to create a plan that will enlist their help, or incorporate their readers or audience into what you are trying to achieve. It may just be that all their user generated content is for entertainment and nothing more. It might be they are doing it, because they can. Which is cool. It’s merely up to you to figure that out.

You will never know as much as them, deal with it and then embrace it

You think you are on top of things, but you have no idea. Unless you have built the social site they are flocking to or you are immersed in their culture, you will never know as much as them and you will never fully know what they are thinking. So never pretend to, if you do they will bust you. Remember that with the user comes a sense of entitlement. Its the new culture. I’m going to get mine and I have a right to it. It may be why they think they should be a star. And you know that all might be well and good but remember, as a marketer the idea is to influence, and push ideas, products and services. It doesn’t mean you have to sleep with them, it just means you need to know that they think they know more than you do. They might and if they do, let them. Just learn, absorb, take it all in and then go get it! Give them what they need and you get to profit from their efforts.

The top searches for the week? Obsessing over hot women.

Posted on March 4, 2008 by marc meyer

In a tribute to the female form, apprently all anyone wants to search on anymore is female actresses and models. So does this mean that the majority of all searches done this week were done by males? Possibly. Does this mean that all they care about is hot women? Perhaps. Does this mean that the war in Iraq and the presidential elections don’t matter to them? Probablly. Of the top 20 searches according to the Lycos 50, 9 of them were the usual suspects when it comes to women in the news. Hillary notwithstanding.

Oh and the obsession with Clay Aiken continues, as he slides in with the number 2 ranking this week. Interestingly enough, if you are to look at the big picture of what is getting press right now, 2 of the entries were Facebook and MySpace, which I thought were curious searches in that one merely needs to type the addresses into the browser. So perhaps it might have been parents who were doing research on, “what this Facebook, Myspace stuff was all about”.

At #1, is there any real surprise?

Lindsay Lohan

Clay Aiken

Britney Spears

Paris Hilton

Angelina Jolie

Pamela Anderson

Disney

Pokemon

Naruto

Easter

Juno

Facebook

MySpace

Jessica Alba

Apple

WWE

Jessica Simpson

Poker

BitTorrent

Carmen Electra

Golf

NBA

Salma Hayek

Sailor Moon

Customer Acquisition in Social Media Marketing

Posted on February 26, 2008 by marc meyer

After reading this entry in Top Rank Blog about tips for marketing with social media, something crossed my mind. Though there were some great tips on things that people can do to use the power of social meda to bolster marketing, I was not seeing THE sure fire way. It was gray. I think it’s still gray, and I’ll tell you why.

Lets take for example Client A. Client A wants to use social media, has heard about social media or at least has heard about blogs for example, and wants to use it to drive traffic to his or her sites, increase sales and or use it for branding purposes. That seems to be a safe assumption for most companies.

Well those are all well and good, but first things first. Where does the client go? You have consultants running around out there claiming to know how to do it, but by the looks of the tips. I saw nothing that was a “business process”. I saw a here try this, or this works, or a you might want to try this or I have seen that…..Get the point? A client needs to know what are you going to do, how are you going to do it, how long is it going to take, and what will I get from your efforts, amongst other things.

The problem is, with social media, though you can measure traffic to a certain degree, the “process” or the initiation of a social media campaign is not an overnight phenomenon. there are some instances of it occurring from a viral marketing standpoint but It’s a process that needs to be cultivated. The issue that most clients have with this business model is that they don’t have time to nurture their presence in social networks. Their businesses require immmediate results and returns.

Businesses know this and need to know this: 1) Here is my customer I know what it takes to acquire this customer via this form of advertising, sales and marketing and channel. 2) Here is my customer, what is it going to cost me to acquire that customer through social media? And what are the steps that you are going to take and what are they going to cost me for you to achieve that? After you first explain to me what social media is…

After they ask you “Is it like Myspace”?

If you the social media marketer come to me and say, “We’re going to create a Facebook group for you, A couple of blogs, maybe a bbs, a couple of microsites, and we’re also going to Twitter and use Stumbleupon as well as a handful of others.” I’m first going to say, “Huh? and then “ok, what is that going to do”? And you’ll say, “We’re branding you, and we’re driving traffic to these sites and pages and they’re finding out more about you”!. To which I will say, “Thats great, how many sales can I expect? What kind of conversion rates can I expect from social media???” At that point I better get a really good answer or another plan that perhaps uses a widget or two that is placed in strategic social media sites that can drive traffic and convert sales.

That’s the real question, or rather one of the many questions. Here they are and you might want to use them as you are approached by social media marketers or companies who will claim to know what they are doing.

What is your social media plan?
Do I need sales, leads or traffic
What types of social media do you plan to use and why those? and why not these?
What will be the upfront costs? What ongoing costs can I expect?
What will be the costs of customer acquisition? A cost per acquisition model certainly applies here!
How long will it take to roll this plan out
What kinds of deliverables can I expect and when
What is your track record
Have you ever worked with this type of product or my type of company before?
How successful have you been
What will it take to manage it on my own
Lets focus on some deliverables
Lets set some benchmarks with incentives
What is your plan to integrate this social media plan with our other marketing plans
What if you fail
What guarantees do I have
References

The key here is alot of agencies are starting to add social media as it’s own division within their companies. Though there are very few companies and agencies who have done it right over a sustained period of time, because of the “new-ness” of it all. It’s up to you to figure out who can deliver what, and in what time frame. The last thing you need is for someone or some company to experiment with your brand as they muddle their way through figuring out just what works and what doesn’t work with social media marketing.

Lastly what companies and businesses and people need to realize is that social media marketing is a moving target. It’s changing and morphing into something different every day. The reason is, marketers are figuring out new and unique ways to leverage the media to the advantage of the client. Some are proven, some are loopholes, some are brainstorms and some are just plain strokes of genius. Though you still need a concrete strategy as you go forward. It doesn’t hurt to have someone who is willing to take a chance or try something different on your behalf. Keep that in mind as you work your way down the bulleted list. The first of many steps will be finding someone who knows social media marketing and actually has a business model wrapped around social media marketing. As it is a moving target, I’m sure that there are some differring opinons on this. What do you think?

Mobile, Social, and Search. Quick hits.

Posted on February 22, 2008 by marc meyer

In a quest to pare down my already slim posts, I’m going to fire off a couple of quick blurbs for everyone to chew on until the next post:

Aside from Microsoft not backing down in it’s quest to buy Yahoo, AT&T and Yahoo have entered in a multiyear deal to share revenue from advertising on Mobile phones. Yahoo will provide search and display advertising for AT&T customers. I’m shocked that Google did not get there first.
Speaking of Microsoft, the Wall Street Journal just cut a deal with them in which the WSJ’s paid search and contextual advertising services will be provided by Microsoft. Not to sound redundant but, I’m shocked that Google did not get there first…
Social media giants Facebook and Myspace will become application hubs and launch pads for niche based “smaller” social networks. Alot of this is the residual effect of Facebook opening its platform last fall.
Word of Mouth marketing is the new mode of marketing on the cheap. It’s also just as effective as traditional forms of marketing and has much more of a “buzz” factor.
Magazines drive more than 50% of online searches, followed by reading an article in a magazine and lastly by seeing something on TV.
According to Anderson Analytics, 32% of the 1700 marketing executives polled cited “Green Marketing” as an important emerging concept along with it being considered the trendiest marketing buzzword.
The hottest demographic that you need to be marketing too, but are probably ignoring are the hispanic and baby boomers.
According to Informa’s latest report entitled “Mobile Social Networking: Communities and Content on the Move,” the number of mobile social networking users exceeded 50 million, approximately 2.3% of the global mobile user population on December 31st, 2007

Mobile Marketers can fail and still succeed.

Posted on February 19, 2008 by marc meyer

Mobile advertising is projected to generate revenue somewhere between $1 billion and $24 billion within four years. However, at the moment they(analysts) still do not know which business model or marketing approach will be successful in tapping into that money.

So you’re saying,”Well how can they come up with those projections then?” They can come up with those lofty projections the same way analysts said that one day the internet would be really really big. The upside and the potential are so great, that even those numbers are skewed on the side of conservatism.

To put it in perspective you have to understand that nearly everyone including your average 10 year old and up is now carrying a cell phone. If you want a hard number, think north of 2 billion users worldwide. With that device is the real estate to market and advertise to a captive audience. With that device and it’s associated burgeoning high speed browser comes the ability to search, use the internet or access email. Currently in the US, there are almost 35 million users of the mobile “net”. So what comes with search? contextual advertising. What comes with surfing the net? Advertising. Or using email? Get the idea?

But see that’s the easy side to marketing on a mobile device. The challenge for marketers and advertisers will be how to create stickiness not only for search results for instance but also to geotargeted results via a mobile device. In other words, how are you/they going to create the mobile call to action?

Some of the other questions will also be; How intrusive can you as a marketer be on a mobile device? Do the devices need to also have micro-java apps for pop-ups for instance? Can a marketer hone in on perhaps using SMS alternatives or opportunities until a more solid marketing platform is developed? When you think about it, it really is wide open.

The answer is yes to all of those questions, and the best part about it is the result can be a complete and utter failure and thats ok. So now you’re saying, “what do you mean it’s ok to fail?” Well it’s ok to fail because the user has no preconceived notion or expectation as to how it’s supposed to be. And because they don’t know what to expect, they will be willing to accept, for now, whatever comes down the pipe.

But marketers and their brethren will only be allowed to fail x amount of times before the user a) finds another solution that best meets and exceeds their intial expectation or b) becomes completely frustrated by the lack of performance. And trust us, they will find it. Either through another marketer letting them know that their is a better solution out there, or they will find it virally.

Until the bar is set, mobile marketers will have a grace period to get it right. The unknown is how long the grace period will be. The unknown is who will set the tone? Who will establish the way things are done in the mobile world? Because at the moment the canvass is blank and anything can be tried and ANYTHING can be successful. In the end the ultimate judge will be your average consumer, or your average 10 year old!

10 Insights From 11 Months Of Working At Google

Posted on February 11, 2008 by marc meyer

Here is a great piece on someone NOT bashing Google for being the great company that they are: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/02/10-insights-from-11-months-of-working-at-google.html

Buzzword Compliant

Posted on February 7, 2008 by marc meyer

Can anyone add some scalable and yet granular social networking, web 2.0 buzzwords to this bingo card to essentially bootstrap this into a viral marketing message?

What’s the deal with widgets?

Posted on February 7, 2008 by marc meyer

Ok so I’m going to go out on a limb and here and say that chances are that most of the common masses do not know what a widget is. Even if you use your computer on a daily basis, there is still the slight chance that you might not know what a widget is. No big deal. Yet…

Simply put, a widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate web page by an end user( You or I) without requiring additional work or previous knowledge on the users part. Other terms used to describe widgets include: gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake.

Widgets often but not always use DHTML, JavaScript, or Adobe Flash. A widget adds some content to that page that is not static. Generally widgets are third party originated, though they can be home made. They add a more rich, entertainment, multi-dimensional feel to a site that might be otherwise static.

Widgets are now becoming more commonplace and are used by bloggers, social network users, marketers, advertisers, and owners of personal web sites. They exist on home page sites such as iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes, SpringWidgets and yourminis, and hundredes of other sites.

Widgets are used as a distribution method by ad networks such as Google’s AdSense, by media sites such as Flickr, by video sites such as YouTube and by hundreds of other organizations.

Applications can be integrated within a third party website by the placement of a small snippet of code. Which is now becoming a primary distribution or marketing channel for many companies. The code brings in ‘live’ content – advertisements, links, images, and video – from a third party site without the web site owner having to update.

Thus the end users can utilize widgets to enhance a number of web-based hosts, pages or drop targets. Categories of drop targets include social networks, blogs, wikis and personal homepages. Although end users primarily use widgets to enhance their personal web experiences, or the web experiences of visitors to their personal sites, corporations can potentially use widgets to improve their web sites using syndicated content and functionality from third party providers. They are also now using widgets as a carrier of their branding message or product.

So where can you find some widgets? The easiest source would be generally on the page you are currently reading, either on the left or right side of the pages. The widgets are dropped in via a widget managment system. Should you feel compelled, check out KickApps which states: The KickApps hosted, white-label platform puts social media and online video functionality directly into the hands of every web publisher who aspires to be a media mogul and turns every web designer and developer into a social media rockstar! With KickApps, it’s now easier than ever for web publishers to leverage the power of social and rich media experiences on their websites to drive audience growth and engagement.

If you are the casual reader, then hopefully this helps you. If you are a certified blogging fool, then this is nothing that you already don’t know. If you are somewhere in the middle, then now you have been enlightended.

Global search revenue will reach $60 billion by 2011

Posted on January 23, 2008 by marc meyer

As if Google and company did not make enough money, by years end, global search revenue will reach $30.5 billion according to a recent JPMorgan report which hinted that investors still should view the web as a good “buy” or investment.

Contrary to the dot com bust of the early 2000’s, 2007 was actually a very good year for internet companies. In fact, due to the rising world GDP, according to the report, internet companies with a global reach would continue to enjoy a healthy profit due to the broad and seamless appearance of a global marketplace. Conversely, the US GDP growth has slowed in recent years.

By 2011, look for search revenues to exceed $60 billion according to the report. A lot of this groth will be tied into paid search as a global marketing vehicle. The growth will also be attributed to keyword price inflation and increased web usage. Tied to this will be an increase in the user experience and increase in click-through rates for all sites.