marketing Archives - Page 30 of 41 by Mark Murnahan

99 Percent of Marketing Fails, But Eleanor Can Fly!

I have heard percentages of marketing efforts that do not work. I have witnessed those statistics enough to reach the top of my throat, and to declare that most marketing is little more than miserable failure, like the last squeak of a mouse in a trap. In fact, if you held my job for a day or two, you could even taste it like bad acid reflux. It is really true though, that most marketing falls on deaf ears, and the masses are immune to it. This is largely because these days, anybody with a computer and an Internet connection can bill themselves as an expert marketer. The barrier of entry no longer requires aptitude, experience, or even desire for anything other than somebody else’s money.

The odds of a marketer to recognize the root of our field as helping others with respect, dignity, and a desire to serve them has diminished to a point that skepticism is allowed to take over as a prevalent factor. This means that trust … hard-earned and well-deserved trust is due for a resurgence. A recall to the very root of the word “sell” is what it takes to be really great in a marketplace. If you have not learned this from your marketing pedigree just yet, the word “sell”, in this context, owes its origin to the Norwegian word “selje”. The literal translation is “to serve”, and that still means a lot to some of us.

The job of a professional marketer is to figure out that tiny fraction which does work. What we do is to serve our clients in a way which reflects our desire to benefit more than only ourselves, and to serve others at our highest capabilities. It means that a great marketer must look beyond the benefit of a few bucks today and understand the greater benefit of tomorrow.

A Happy Marketing Success Story

As the economy spooks many companies into bankruptcy and executive fears of failed marketing reach the brim of my digestive system and invoke my gag reflex, I want to tell you a success story. Yes, amongst all of the corporate scaremongering and enterprise torment, there really is success in the mix. This story is a real one, and if it is what I believe it is, it exemplifies success in the hardest market ever, which is to find personal and professional satisfaction.

Join with me and jump on board with my excitement for a moment. Raise your hands and start cheering while I share an exciting story of enterprise SEO success.

There is a company, a tried and true success in their marketplace, who picked up the mouse and found me. They searched for what I do, they took time to read a small share of my facts, figures, and persona, and we met by voice over the telephone. The story has more detail, which I will share as it unfolds, but for the moment, I offer you a piece of my expectedly upfront social media transparency.

The caller on the other end of the phone was a bright and cheery executive who revamped much of the delight that I have held so dearly as my ideal marketplace. This was not an intern at the local veterinary clinic asking how they could get a few more sick dogs to treat. It was not even an auto dealer seeking answers to social media marketing. It was a fellow gearhead executive calling on behalf of a gearhead company. He spoke my language, and we held discussions of real marketing beyond just the couple clicks up the roller coaster track that most companies will attempt before they take the chicken exit and get off the ride while the cars roll back into the loading area.

This guy was speaking my kind of language. You know, the language of waking up and smelling gear oil, coffee, and yesterday’s sweat. The kind of stuff that would intimidate Clint Eastwood and force Chuck Norris to turn in his “Man Card” and scream “Uncle” like a crybaby-sissy-bed-wetter. Yes, it was as if the Chairman of Manhood and the CEO of Testosterone were in stereo driving an epic bass line directly into my entrepreneurial earphones.

When I tell you this guy is right up my alley, I only claim that because I actually pictured him taking down six Chicago street thugs with nothing but a toothpick and a rubber band … yep, in an alley … my alley. Indeed, this dude instilled just enough of a masculine man-crush that when I told the story to my wife, she actually recounted it, in jest, with a boy-meets-girl kind of scenario and somebody was about to lean in for the first kiss. She didn’t get to the part where they sweat on each other, but probably just because that made her a bit weak in the knees. The fog of testosterone floating around would be enough to stop most hearts dead in their tracks.

In our encounter, it was as if I was driving Eleanor from the movie “Gone in 60 Seconds” and … well, like we were both driving Eleanor (e.g. Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction LOT: 1287). All but one detail, he actually has yet come to liberate my Eleanor-plus sized budget from the company’s board of directors. He will be working on them this week, and I will assist him in that jailbreak all I can. It will be important that my new gearhead friends understand that there is a vast difference between Lot 1287 and the dozens of other nice 1967 Mustangs in the list, and the difference is not all about the price … it is value which matters.

While we visited, I discovered the most awkward scenario. The company has me pictured as an in-house corporate SEO guy. At first, I felt a little tear on my cheek, because I know there are only a relatively few companies who understand the value that a C-level position in my industry can provide for them, or how much a long-standing CEO requires just to keep feeding his family. Then I started remembering how much I hate selling SEO. I mean, after all, you can Google something as simple as “sell SEO” or “how to sell SEO” and find that I know a lot about this business. My best scenario of how to sell SEO is just to be able to do it, prove it, and earn a squillion dollars from it. I already did that. My selling is over, and what I mostly want is to do the work I love, and to never have to slink my way out of a boardroom because some kid with less talent but a better line of garbage talked them into some cheap SEO. Realistically, any boardroom worth the table where they sit should be able to distinguish real marketing talent from a marketing representative waiting for his next diaper change. If they cannot recognize that difference, maybe a quick Google for “marketing talent” will flip the butter and the bread in the right direction and show them where the real deal lives and thrives. Where that butter meets the bread is with the guy holding uncanny skills (marketing and gearhead alike), a history of success, and a knack for telling what people need to hear even if it is not what they want to hear. That is a guy with the company in mind, whether he is working as their independent SEO consultant or as their boardroom fun department ready to whip out his clown nose and reveal his magic bag filled with market share, acquisition targets, increased leverage, stronger investors, retail fanaticism, and other boardroom delights.

In either scenario which my gear-hugging pals over there prefer, my Eleanor+ (performance bonus, equity, and etcetera) price point is a cheap jailbreak to fire up the passion of a real gearhead marketer who can come to the office and bang out high-compression gasoline flavored treats the way I would passionately provide for these guys.

 I doubt they can afford me, but I am just as sure as motor oil and gasoline going to give them every opportunity to try. It really comes down to how their board of directors view the value of the Internet and my impact upon it.

To my new gearhead pals, I have a tip for your use in our synergistic battle in the boardroom. If they want to know how to justify SEO cost, just Google it! They will find the same guy as when you were seeking how to find SEO talent. 😉

NOTE: To my many longstanding and devoted clients, many of which have been with my services for a decade, please be aware that nothing will shake my devotion to you. You will continue to receive the highest attention from my highly capable support representatives, and you can expect the same level of service which you have trusted me with for so long. As you are surely aware, there is no dollar amount which can purchase my integrity.

Is Squidoo Good for SEO? Likely More Than You Think!

Is Squidoo good for search engine optimization (SEO)? The short answer is “Yes!” The longer answer involves how Squidoo can help to improve your search engine ranking.

First, for the uninitiated, I will explain that Squidoo is a service which allows for creation of topical pages. Squidoo calls each of these pages a “lens”, and the lenses you can find on Squidoo cover a great deal of useful information. Your lens (or lenses) can include any topic you like, and in fact, I have a Squidoo lens just for that. It is titled “SEO, Social Media, and Other Stuff Murnahan Likes“, and it includes RSS feeds from some of my blogs. That means more syndication of my content. This is a good thing, although the RSS links are not very useful from a search engine optimization standpoint. It also includes RSS feeds for commenting services I use, such as my Disqus profile and Intense Debate profile so people can see things I am commenting about on other blogs. It makes a nice aggregation of things I like and things I am up to. The possibilities are vast, and Squidoo has a lot of nice modules that are easy to customize.

Squidoo Helps SEO, But Not How Others May Tell You!

There is a whole lot of speculation and contention regarding the SEO value of Squidoo. Just as with most services with any search engine optimization value, there are many dirty attempts at SEO using Squidoo. This does not mean it is overrun by spammers or that it is not still valuable. I simply point this out because I do not suggest tagging yourself as the next great SEO expert by trying to make Squidoo your platform. It is just another tool, and I recommend being respectful of the Squidoo community.

You may think I try to make the very best use of each tool to improve my SEO. I do enough that people often ask me if I ever sleep, but I do not hold any tool in high enough regard that I would call it my “silver bullet.” There are some social media and social bookmarking sites that I see more benefit from than others, but each of them will have some degree of importance. Squidoo is one of the services I like very much. However, I will openly admit to shamefully under-utilizing Squidoo. Like my father told me, “do as I say and not as I do.” I do as much as my days and nights will allow. As time runs short, we are each guilty of neglecting to do some of the things we know we should be doing. In my opinion, Squidoo is one of those things we should both be doing, and doing better.

Squidoo Backlinks Help SEO

One benefit to Squidoo for your search engine optimization is incoming links to your website (backlinks) from your Squidoo lens (or lenses). I know very well that Squidoo links are valuable for SEO, but in case you are skeptical, I will show you just one way to measure them. I invite you to check the incoming links to this very blog, using SEOmoz Open Site Explorer. If you check my incoming links (yes, click this), you can see that Squidoo is listed with a “Page Authority” of 63 and a “Domain Authority” of 87. That is a worthwhile link, and one which should not be ignored. In the link above, I narrowed the report down to where you can easily find Squidoo in the results. It will look like the image below.

With enough links, such as I have explained here, it does not take long to start seeing better results in search engine results and more link authority for your site.

My SEO tip for you today is this:

Squidoo should not fall into that list of things you neglect. Take the time, today, to give a closer look at Squidoo and judge for yourself.

Squidoo Lenses Rank Well in Search Engines

Another example of the usefulness of Squidoo is of course how well the lenses (pages) rank. There is little mystery about the potential for making a Squidoo lens rank well for a target search phrase. You can often find popular lenses among the top results for popular searches. Although I do not use Squidoo for this in my own internal SEO, I have done so for client projects and witnessed a reasonable level of value in it.

I do not rely on any single SEO tool too heavily, and I do not recommend that you do that, either. There is not a short list of SEO tools and tricks that will make you famously successful with search engines. No, I am sorry, but that list of important SEO tools is long … very long. You should never place all of your SEO energy in only a few places, but instead use a wide range of resources. At the same time, I would submit to you that even if it took you the rest of the day to set up your Squidoo account or to add another Squidoo lens to your existing lenses, your day would not be wasted. By the end of the day, you will have become more efficient using another SEO tool that can give you more visibility to your Squidoo lens, and additional relevant links from Squidoo to your website.

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Do You Know What You Are Worth? Your Critics Seem to Know!

Do you ever impress yourself? Maybe you should!

A question came up today while I was talking with my wife as she created a masterpiece before my eyes. I asked her “do you ever impress yourself?” The natural answer that most people will give is “No, that sounds too arrogant.” She was not too off the mark from the popular answer, but based on her level of mastery, it puzzled me. It made me think deeper about a conversation that has taken place between myself and many clients in their boardrooms.

I want to explain that my wife is indeed a master at the work she does. She has many years of experience as an artist, and she deserves all of the kudos she receives for her work. In the instance of my question to her today, it involved her work in our cakes and confections business. She was creating flowers from scratch. She took sugar and turned it into flowers. I do not mean flowers like the average iron worker or Internet geek would make from sugar. She was creating lifelike flowers with petals, pistols, stamen, sepal, and other parts that many of us do not even realize flowers have. They are really delicate … like a flower.

I had to ponder why she would ever feel like she was not doing something spectacular. I mean, how many people do you know who can make a flower petal from sugar? Can they put it together with a whole bunch of other sugar petals and all of those other hard to pronounce flower parts and make them look like a real flower, and then sell them to people for the cake served on their wedding day?

This got me to thinking about the many times I have witnessed clients from my standpoint in my field of marketing who just don’t have a good handle on their value proposition. Their fear is often not so unlike Peggy’s concerns that she would seem arrogant, cocky, conceited, too confident, or whatever strangely negative twist you can put on doing something amazing that other people can see so clearly.

I think a lot of people have felt a bit kneecapped by the fine line between confidence and the point where it is distasteful to others. In the case of Peggy, just like so many others, they draw back so far from that line that modesty comes to take away their hopes and dreams. Modesty, when taken too far, can be devastating in a marketing campaign. I see it all the time that out of some deep-seated sense of modesty, a company culture will make it seem nearly impossible to reflect the true quality of their product.

In the course of this lengthy inner conversation, I had to confront myself. I am a race car driver, and in racing, I have always felt a bit shy with the flattering things people say when I come off the track. I know that other drivers are trying very hard to drive fast, and I want them to feel great about themselves. I don’t want to be the jerk to take away their glory, so I kind of hunker away and forget how well I drive.

YourNew.com Racing Corvette Z06: Driver Mark Aaron Murnahan

Confidence Perceived and Confidence Worth Stealing

I am a wickedly badass search engine optimizer and marketer … I can let that fly freely here on my marketing blog. I can whip the best of them, and I can quantify it in real numbers. Yes, I can back it up! What is profound to me is how the things where we seek the greatest gain in life is where we feel the most doubt. I love my work as a search engine optimizer and marketing consultant, so don’t get me wrong. I have done it for many years, and earned a handsome living following that passion. However, in my inner thoughts, I still feel that my big accomplishment will come from racing cars. I feel a confidence by driving fast, just as much as I do in the business which makes me money. In fact, before I lost millions of dollars in contracts during 2009 (and most of my ass with them), I was planning to retire next year and create a racing school to follow my passion.

How Money Changes Perception

It seems confusing and downright wrong how business endeavors make people more self-conscious than something perceived as a hobby. Noting that I am considering driving as my ultimate business endeavor, it really only makes sense when you examine how our modern society will criticize you more by things they perceive will matter to you or benefit you. What I mean is that I can tell you I am a badass race car driver and you do not feel threatened, because I am not trying to sell you a ticket to my next race or recruit you to my racing school. Racing does not pay me at this point. It actually has a cost to me of about $250,000 per race season, and a scheduled squillion-bazillion dollars to open a race school if I am done with this wicked-badass marketing gig before I am 300 years old.

You have no perception of loss just because I am fast, and I can even tell you I am fast. I am not a bad guy for being fast. Now if I told you that I am a badass at something which pays me money and feeds my family, you will be far more likely to take me to the ropes and beat me until I beg for mercy. How screwy does that sound, really?

Passion + Profit = Critics

This has all forced me to question how the things we feel the most passionate about are the easiest things to become modest about, and it is magnified if we actually receive a perceived benefit. I love racing. If I had to put this in terms for the average race fan without showing my modesty, I am one of the fastest men around a track you will ever meet in your lifetime. I have driven at speeds you will never comprehend and pulled off split-second saves, just inches from disaster that would have killed 99.9999 percent of people behind that wheel when the brakes got weak at 170 miles per hour. Now, if I tell you I have done the same thing and it helped me to buy a bag of groceries to feed my kids, it is strangely easier to criticize. OK, leaving the groceries and the kids out, if I said it makes me money, I am just a bit more of a bad guy. Don’t deny it … you see what a bastard I am if I charge money for my talents compared to doing something equally as passionate, but doing it for free.

Now then, why should Peggy feel awkward to express confidence about work done exceptionally well? Why is it easier for you to accept confidence about her work when the message comes from me rather than from her? Why is it even more exciting and acceptable to enjoy her mastery if you are far outside of her market area and you know she cannot sell you a cake? By the way, cakes are very hard to ship!

Why should I be so modest about the fact that I can own, manage, and drive for a race team that can take a track record on the first visit to a track? Why should I be so modest about the fact that I wrote three really good books in just three months during 2009? One of them (“Living in the Storm“) was written as my ass was falling off in business, but I completed it because I sincerely believed it would benefit others. Why should I be modest about the fact that more people read my work each month than reside in the city of Topeka, Kansas, where I live? Why should I be modest about the fact that I can rank my clients at the top of search engines for things which 99.9999 percent of the world’s competitors cannot achieve?

Well, I suppose that our reasons are not so unlike yours. Sometimes we just have to accept the talents we have developed and stop downgrading ourselves with the fear of the few jealous antagonists who will call us wrong for it while our fans are still waving our checkered flag and reveling in our winning the race.

I asked a few questions here, but what I really want to know is what you propose to do to stop acting like a Mark or Peggy? Maybe I can help. If this is the case, I will admire you for being uncommonly able to see beyond the perception of somebody having to lose just because somebody else gains.

If you like what I have to say here, please share it with others, regardless of whether I gain or do not gain. Your sharing of this line of thought with others may make a difference in not only the bag of groceries I bring home for my kids, but perhaps it could really help somebody else to gain a better view of their marketplace as well. Besides, if it helps you feel better, the vast majority of people it can help cannot afford to hire my services … marketing, racing, or shipping a four tier wedding cake. Oh, and I did not even mention the cost to have me write a book, but if I mentioned buying one for ten bucks, it would be even easier to see me as a bad guy. You see, that sounds kind of silly to not recognize your own contributions, right?

Corvette Z06 Photo Courtesy Pixx By Tango Photography

Marketing Strategy: Do Shit They Will Remember!

Yes, It Is Me. Yes, It Is My Chopper. — Yes, That Is My Chopper.

Are you being memorable? Do you recall a silly little man cruising the aisles of the grocery store nagging people to not squeeze the Charmin? His name was Mr. Whipple. OK, maybe that one is too old for you to remember, or you are not familiar with American pop culture. I remember it, and I’ll bet there are millions of others who do as well.

Maybe you remember Elvis Presley. Does he even need a last name? Can you remember what kind of outfits he wore? That’s right, he wore a lot of glittery white outfits and huge bell-bottom pants.

You don’t need a squillion dollars and a huge staff to be memorable. This is one of the beautiful things about the Internet. You just need some creativity and knowledge of spreading your message using search engine optimization and social media marketing. You don’t really even need these things, because they are available for hire! So, what is keeping you from making your brand more memorable? Are you afraid of shaking things up? Don’t worry. You don’t have to be outrageous, either. A consistent brand message that is all your own can still be memorable without being absurd or over-the-top.

Who Invented Business in Blue Jeans?

I guess I don’t really have the answer to this, but I retired my suits years before it became popular. It was not because I had a problem with the attire, but rather that it would often misrepresent my intentions. Many sales managers still believe that the “authority” of wearing a suit is important in instilling value to a product or service. It may strike some people as odd, but I have signed more million dollar deals in blue jeans than in a suit. I realized long ago that wearing a nice pair of blue jeans or casual slacks was more disarming. It made people more comfortable just seeing me being comfortable, and it even made me more memorable. If a client wanted to know that I am an authority, they could look out in the parking lot to see the motorcycle I rode in on that cost more than a house or two in most towns. It is far less assuming than a sharp suit, and better for conversation, too.

More memorable than anything else is that I would rather walk through spiderwebs and kiss a dog on the ass than to mislead people just to get what I want from them. If I don’t have what it is they need or want, I will be happy to help them find it, but I will not misrepresent something to make it fit. Honesty … now that is memorable!

What Will Make You Memorable?

Don’t be afraid to be a dubeshag. No, it is not what you think. “Dubeshag” is a nice word I made up a few months ago to describe people who can make their own waves instead of trying to surf everybody else’ wave. I guess the idea was memorable enough that it kind of caught on. Google now returns over 26,400 results for the word which had zero representation a few months ago. That is what I mean by being creative and memorable.

In short, I would suggest being creative. Think differently, because thinking just like everybody else is probably not your golden ticket. If you cannot think different from a crowd, hire somebody to do the thinking for you. Don’t be afraid to polarize your audience along the way, because you simply can’t make butter if you don’t stir the milk.

What do you think? What will make you different from the millions of others out there in the vast Internet marketplace? Can you set yourself apart and do shit they will remember?

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SEO Tip: Great Search Engine Optimization Means Paying Attention

My SEO tip today is about paying attention and taking action. There are about a squillion things that influence good SEO, and even more things are required to achieve great SEO. Paying attention to details can sometimes make the difference between good SEO and great SEO. Do I have your attention yet?

You are not, I repeat NOT going to get the best results that you seek from this article if you do not pay attention to detail. Good SEO has a lot to do with very fine details, and it often means paying attention to the details that the rest of your industry neglects. Today I am going to give you some thought-candy about the links which point to your website, but first, I am going to be sure that I have your full attention and that you are ready for this brain-exploding tip.

I think a lot of people try to make SEO seem a lot harder than it actually is. Really good SEO is actually quite tricky and time consuming, but there are many things that are pretty simple and tedious, but just need to be implemented properly. Knowing all of those simple and tedious tasks, and how they fit into the big picture of your search engine optimization strategy, and using them properly to receive optimal benefit is why people hire a search engine optimizer.

Squillions of people write tens of thousands of tips each day about search engine optimization. The good search engine optimizers choose their topic carefully, title it just right, tag the information well, add it to their search optimized website, and are sure to address it to the proper audience using just the right keywords. Then they emphasize the call to action, and make it clear why you found the information.

Good SEO (search engine optimizers) write their tips similar to the way they will perform SEO for their clients. In fact, you can tell a lot about them by the tips they give you (it is one of my top reasons to blog). Further, they provide the tips in the same way they expect their readers to implement their suggestions for those who try to take the do-it-yourself (DIY) SEO method.

The Great SEO will take a little additional time to do all of the things the rest of the world can only call “magic”. I do not want to let you down today, but this SEO tip is not designed to make a do-it-yourselfer a great SEO. It is just another piece in the puzzle that will help you to understand good SEO. I will say, however, that it is a pretty damn good tip that can help you move just a little closer to great. I still have to keep you reading regularly, so I cannot just give you that “SEO magic” all at once. Your head would explode, and I cannot have that on my conscience. Yes, imagine that, a search engine optimizer with a conscience … I guess there is just magic in the air today! Besides, I still want to leave you some reason to call on me when you have pulled all your hair out and get sick of letting business pass you by.

Now, on with today’s SEO tip!

Who Links to Your Site and Why Should You Care?

Links are at the front line of search engine optimization. The more high-quality links that point to your website, the easier it will be to rank for the things your site is about. The text within those links makes a huge impact on your ranking for certain topics. This is why many links to my blog include the words SEO and social media marketing. Those things are a focus of my blog, so it only makes sense that the links reflect this.

When important websites with a lot of authority start linking to my blog, I want to know it. I also want to be sure that they continue to link to my blog. I can control this in a couple ways, and the best of which is to keep producing consistently useful content. You know, the stuff people want to link to. Thanking them is not such a bad idea, either.

Another way to be sure the link-love keeps coming is to watch what received good links and write more of that. For example, a useful tip about a given topic (in this case, SEO) will often find its way into a lot of good streams of content, including both automated and manual linking. The automatic ones are pretty easy to manage, but the links created by people are a bit more tricky. You have to really blow somebody’s hair back to make them take the action of creating a link to you in their blogroll, or to submit your content to Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and etcetera. If you want them to write about it and link to you in a blog post, you practically have to reinvent electricity or come up with something so amazing that they want to print it out and rub it all over themselves. Short of that you must at least write about things that people want to read, and present it in a fashion they will keep reading.

Finding Your Best Backlinks

You should know who is linking to your website. I don’t mean just the links that are being clicked on. I mean the links that make your site more visible and valuable to search engines. Here comes a big fat juicy SEO tip for you. It is called Open Site Explorer and the information it can tell you is more than you may see on the surface. Yes, this is where you have to pay attention to the details. For example, I just looked at an Open Site Explorer report for this blog and found the interesting facts as follows:

The Technorati tag “guerrilla-marketing” has produced a link pointing to my blog article titled “Marketing Without a Budget: Guerrilla Marketing Tips“, but the new content under this tag has moved my link off the page as newer articles arrived. So it seems to me that since that link is from a valuable source page, I should probably write something about guerrilla marketing and be sure to tag it with “guerrilla-marketing”. Oh yes, this article is kind of Guerrilla Marketing related … gosh, I am glad I was paying close attention. I am going to add that tag in this blog post.

I also noticed that there was a pretty nice link from the tag “whiteboards” that pointed to my article titled “Smart Slate, Smart Airliner, and Other Interactive Slates“. Perhaps I should write a follow-up to that piece and tag it appropriately.

My point is that if you pay close attention to the things which make your website rank well, there is a lot clearer path to success. Knowing that I am in the blogroll of great blogs like the ones listed below can give me a lot of reason to want to throw back some link-love to them and also keep reading their work.

These matter to me, and certainly deserve my attention (Thanks Guys). After all, they show faith in my work by linking to me. To some people, this is just a small detail, but to me it is a really important factor.

Paying attention to the sites linking to you, both automated and manually, can make a huge difference in your success. Now the question that remains is this: What will you do with this information? Were you paying attention and will you use what I have suggested? I want to guess the answer is “yes”, but there are a lot of people who do not pay attention. I hope those are your competitors and not you!

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