Mark Murnahan Archives - Page 3 of 4 by Mark Murnahan

Recession Marketing: Choosing Logic Over Emotion

Asserting marketing assets properly in an economic recession can be the making or breaking of a company. When everything on the news and everything you hear around the office sounds gloomy about the economy, you must question whether you are using more logic or emotion in your marketing decisions.

Regardless of the industry, we are all in the people business. When people are involved, it is easy to let emotion cloud logic, and this is very commonly seen in marketing during an economic recession.

Growing Market Share in Recession

Economic recession often provides the clearest path to expanding your market share. When the economy is strong, competitors are strong, too. Being persistent in your marketing is key to making it through a recession and growing your market share while competition is weakened. It is important to remember that you are not alone. You hear all of the miserable failures around you, but do not forget that all of the gloom and doom also includes your competition. Think of it like a staring contest. It is a test of will, and if they blink first, you win.

When people lose their wits to the point of cutting their marketing efforts, it serves only to worsen their market position. Looking back to the Great Depression, there are many lessons to be learned from companies who achieved success by continuing and even expanding their marketing efforts. As an example, Amana Appliances saw huge success coming out of the recession, because they appealed to the American housewife, and gave her something to feel good about even during the worst of times. There is always success in a recession, if you seek it, and if you continue to invite prospective customers to do business with you.

A recession offers much opportunity if you are persistent. You can cut costs in many ways, but if you eliminate your marketing, you eliminate your market. Remember what pays you, and remember why you spend money on marketing in the first place.

Redistribute Your Marketing Efforts

Evaluate your marketing, and redistribute it if needed. Tough times call for smarter marketing. Successful companies are moving their marketing away from television, radio, and print and focusing their efforts on the Internet. Cost per exposure and available customer reach of Internet marketing is far superior to any other marketing. According to widely accepted statistical reports by Nielsen NetRatings, Zenith Optimedia, and others, the Internet accounts for nearly half of the media intake of the average consumer. This quickly growing trend can be seen in many ways, and not the least of which is the 15.2% increase in Internet ad spend in the first half of 2008 while television, radio, and print marketing each took double-digit losses industry-wide.

Cutting Your Marketing Budget

Cutting the marketing budget is a common knee jerk response to economic recession. This reaction to the economy defies logic. After all, if you did not need the marketing, why were you buying it in the first place? Were you spending money on marketing because you had so much business that you just needed an extra tax deduction? Of course not. You invest in marketing because you want more business. For most companies, marketing is the single most important investment they will ever make. Only when the desire for more business subsides should you cut your marketing.

Author Mark Murnahan is the Chairman and CEO of YourNew.com, Inc. and provides SEO consulting services to companies and non-profit organizations. Mark Murnahan may be reached toll free at 866-A-Web-Guy (*REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*) for consultation.

Can Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization (DIY SEO) Work?

Do-it-yourself search engine optimization (DIY SEO) is possible, and may even bring you to the top of Google search listings for a few of your chosen keyword phrases. If you choose this route, be prepared to lose astonishing amounts of money due to lost opportunities. The opportunity cost of bad Internet marketing efforts will always be much higher than the cost of hiring a professional search engine optimizer.

Of course I have a stake in your choice, so this is admittedly not without bias. Just for a moment, try to give me the benefit of doubt. I am telling you this for your own good, as well as mine. Assuming that you can learn all that I know from my decade in this field, you will still have to implement it better than your competitors. While you are still learning, they are still growing their market share.

Reading a couple blog posts or reading a Wiki definition of SEO will not make up for the mastery of SEO professionals with experience and who do this for a living. If you really love to read, and you can gather enough information, particularly the right information, on this field, you will probably not need the Website you were trying to optimize, because you will likely have a very promising career as an SEO.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Art or Science?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a term that many people may recognize, but seldom clearly understand. Most people exposed to the term grasp the fact that search engine optimization is designed to help bring more traffic to their Website, but that is where their knowledge ends. Without a good understanding what search engine optimization is, many people are destined to either fail in their online marketing pursuits, or alternately throw good money out the window by paying the search engine optimizer with the best sales pitch … the SEO with all hat and no cattle. First things first, I want to address the title of this blog post “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Art or Science?”

Is SEO an art? The answer is clearly and undeniably “yes”.
Is SEO a science? The answer is clearly and undeniably “yes”.

If this sounds strange, let us look at each of these aspects of SEO so you can decide for yourself.

Search Engine Optimization as an Art

While you read this article, you can surely see the art. After all, I am writing to you in a conversational form, and the way in which I choose my every word is work that surely does not seem scientific. All the while, I am writing an article that will likely be plucked up by search engine spiders for inclusion in their databases and returned in many search results on this topic.

Search Engine Optimization as a Science

This is an area where many SEO firms will try to sell you. It is the wizardry and hocus pocus of the SEO industry. Some companies will try to tell you that they have special technologies to bring or keep your Website at the top of search engine results. Technology is certainly an important aspect of SEO, and cannot be overlooked. Factors I have written about such as keyword research, keyword proximity, keyword usage, keyword density, and many other search engine optimization technology practices are hugely important to the success of any SEO campaign. We must know what keyword phrases people are actually searching for, how competitive it is, how to format contents of a Website, and much more.

Which is More Important in SEO – Art or Science?

The art and science of SEO are both important for top search engine results, and I mean more than just finding your company name in a search engine. Without the science, you face an uphill battle against huge odds. At the same time, without the artistic part, it is like a house of cards. The truth is that the artistic part is more important to the overall results. I have been writing on the Internet for so many years that I often find that when an article is completed, I have met all of the science of search engine optimization, such as keyword usage, keyword proximity, and programming concerns without even trying. Most important to a search engine is the visible text content of the Website. The information is the most important part of this Information Superhighway. You may have noticed that I am writing about search engine optimization here, and not tractor tires and fishing lures. My content is on-topic and keyword rich.

Is GM Bailout Like Giving a Fish?

I do not support the mentality of a free-for-all “bailout” as has been so commonly sought these days. This comes down to the old “if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day” mentality. Whether a loan is appropriate, I do not know. I wish I had the right information and know-how to form a fact-based opinion on this. Maybe I am not that smart, and maybe it is above my pay scale. Read on and I will give you some opinion and insight to my opinion. Don’t get me wrong. I struggle right along witht the best of them. I lost millions of dollars in 2008.

I learned a long time ago that I have been able to perform much better with the understanding that when I fail to achieve my requirement of sustaining an income, there is nobody around to save me. I believe this to be among the most valuable business lessons I ever learned.

In my youth, I had parents with some money. They could have bailed me out and made life a lot easier for me on many occasions. I think this was in the back of my mind for a while as I grew my first couple companies. I never let those thoughts take over, but when I was 17 years old and off on my own and running a marketing company along with three to four jobs to support it, I suppose it was easier to think that if I failed, there would always be a warm bed and something to eat back at Mom and Dad’s place.

I have failed like GM, only worse. I remember some really hard times when I was all alone with nothing in the cupboard. I am not here to pluck your heart strings, so I will not get too far into the details, but I will say that there were times when I lost a lot of weight without trying.

I was not lucky, and I did not have huge windfalls. I took on as many as five jobs at a time and I developed my product better. This is the part that GM neglected. Jimmy Carter begged for cutting dependency on overseas oil 30 years ago, but GM had enough money back then to ignore the market. Over the following decades, there have been many indications of GM weakness, but they did not hear the call. It is not just about gasoline … it is about many other business and marketing strategies that have hurt them. They made a bed over decades, and allowed ignorance and arrogance lead them.

I believe that it is time for GM to do what I did in the face of catastrophic failure … work harder and work smarter. If their plans and ideas have failed, there is a reason.

As I write this, I would like to note that just in the past three years I have purchased two Hummer H2, three Corvettes, and one Escalade for a total of about $325,000. This makes the contents of my garage predominently GM in origin. I am certain some of you readers have sent some dollars their way, too. Yes, I am a fan of GM products, but what did they do with all of that money?

Increase Business Online in 60 Seconds?

Perhaps you have seen ads with headlines like “Increase Business Online in 60 Seconds” and you know in an instant that it is another scam (at least I do). That sounds silly, right? They are usually pushing some miracle cure for your business, but those of us participating in the real world know that nothing comes from nothing.

I belong to a face-to-face business networking group in my hometown of Topeka, Kansas. I will attend our weekly meeting in about three hours, and visit with 25 area business people and their guests. The group is a chapter of BNI, and it is based on sharing a mutual business ideology that what comes around goes around. It is a good place to build business relationships and receive qualified referral business from fellow members.

Within this group, there is only allowed one person from each profession, and I am the Internet guy. Each week, we have a 90 minute meeting, and as a portion of the meeting, each member is given the floor for a 60 second brief on their business and any target audience they are seeking. Each week, I am tasked with creating 60 seconds worth of valuable information to market my business to the group and their potential referral base.

When you are forced to condense your business to just 60 seconds, it can really help you to be creative. However, a marketing fact that many people never grasp or act upon is that brief moment in time where you actually have a person’s full attention. it only lasts a moment, and average Internet users will offer you less time if you do not grab their attention quickly.

I am still not sure what I will say in my 60 seconds this morning, but I am pretty certain that it will make the points as follows:

We are all aware of the Internet, and its broad reach.
Most of us know that the Internet is the best marketing method available.
I am here to help them and their peers with custom Website development, Internet marketing, ecommerce, etcetera.

I will wing it. I am a man of words, and I have been a member (and the current Vice President) of the group long enough that I can always recycle some good material from the past.

The point I want to make here is that you only have a short time to deliver your message. Internet users will not give you much time to make a quick point. Be sure that you deliver it to them right, and right now. This actually makes it possible to Increase business online in 60 seconds. If there was fine print, it would have to mention that, although you are actually increasing your business online in 60 seconds, it will take you some time to prepare for that minute. It should also say that this is best implemented with the help of an Internet marketing professional, like me. 🙂