I have an uncommon analogy for you to consider today. I sometimes feel a bit like a mad scientist slinking into my secret laboratory, just a little bit like Dr. Frankenstein. It seems especially real on days when I sit at this computer for sixteen hours, nap for three hours, and then return with my crazy mad scientist hairdo and coffee breath. Creepy? Perhaps, but it is always fun to exclaim “It’s Alive!” after it all comes together just right.
I realize that some people are squeamish about biology, but don’t worry, we are just imagining this for a few minutes. Think of it like a science fiction movie scene.
Try to picture the Internet as a sci-fi creature with living tissue, nerves, and blood vessels growing every day. It is alive and growing, and it has defense mechanisms just like most organic life forms. If you introduce a foreign object, it will either accept it, or it will reject it.
Now try to picture a surgical introduction of an organ transplant of a man-made synthetic tissue. Your website, along with the rest of your online branding assets, make up that donor organ. In the beginning, it is laid on the surface of the huge Internet organism, and surgically connected by way of new social networking efforts and a micro-web of hyperlinks to and from other websites. This is the toughest time for the transplant, and requires a lot of nurturing.
The donor organ is nourished with the textual content of the website, but it cannot live on its own for very long. It will need to connect with and become a part of the larger organism. The surgical team (web developers, SEO, owners, management, and etcetera) will need to work diligently if the donor organ is to be accepted to live and grow as a healthy addition to that larger organism.
Like any organ transplant, if the organ is not well-matched, it will not grow, and it will be rejected. To improve its odds of acceptance, the website medical staff needs to introduce antibodies to the larger Internet organism, and connect the nerves (the people) carefully. Think of the antibodies as the useful things the website has to offer, and the nerves as the people. The delivery method is social media and appropriate business networking with existing parts of the larger organism. You know, instead of hypodermic needles and pills.
The useful “antibodies” help to keep the nerves (the people), and other defenses of the large creature soothed, and even bring it to embrace the new donor organ (website). It is critically important that the surgical team connects the right nerves in the right places in order to make it a healthy transplant.
Why the Organ Transplant Analogy?
This concept came to mind as a prospective client asked me to help her launch a new surgical center website and social media campaign. She did not seem to grasp all that really goes into developing a successful online presence, just as I don’t fully understand how to perform surgery. She mostly just wanted to believe that a good website with a little search engine optimization fairy dust and social media chattiness was all it took. That is kind of like if I assumed surgery just takes some sharp knives and clean towels.
Things such as targeted marketing using customer modeling based on demographics, psychographics, and propensity analysis held no importance to her. She didn’t understand or want to accept those concepts in the beginning, just as I don’t understand why they can’t easily replace my blackened smoky lungs with a new pair.
While visiting with her, I decided that I needed an analogy, so I used the example of the online marketing work I do for myself. That is easy, because I never have to worry about treading on a client’s non-disclosure agreement (and most of my clients require them). It also shows that I have faith in what I was telling her … after all, I performed the same surgery on myself.
So, I explained that there are over 157,000 links pointing to my blog articles, according to Google Webmaster Tools, and that indicates a healthy transplant. Google Webmaster Tools Links Screenshot
They each add up to connect my blog to the rest of the Internet organism. They are like the nerves and the blood vessels that have adopted my blog as a part of the larger organ which is the Internet. Now my blog helps to nourish the larger organ, and the Internet nourishes my blog as an accepted donor organ.
Then she was concerned about how much it would cost to do it the right way, but without any apparent concern about the cost of doing it the wrong way. Of course, everybody wants to know the cost, but as I’ve explained before, simply asking “How Much Does SEO Cost?” is the wrong question … for many reasons.
The cost of good marketing is kind of like paying taxes. If somebody asks me about taxes, I will tell them I’d prefer to pay a billion per year in taxes, because that means I earned a lot more than that! Similarly, if you spend a lot of money on marketing … the right marketing … it pays you many times whatever you pay for it.
She eventually steered away from her cost concerns, and she began to recognize that she was doing this to increase profit … and not to waste profit. Then she was concerned about how long it would take. Of course, we all want things fast … especially when it comes to money. The more important and seemingly obvious consideration is not only in how long it takes, but whether you implement the skill, the time, and the effort to make it possible at all. If you are doing it well, the time frame is shortened accordingly.
The conversation was very familiar. She was terrified of making good business decisions. I don’t blame her for that. It is a challenging process, and the world of online marketing has tried to overlook good business principles of “pay now, play later“.
Do Surgeons Have All the Answers?
I told her that I could create the tissue in my lab, surgically implant the tissue into the Internet body, help her with the antibodies, and nourish its growth. Then, in her wisdom, she decided that she just wanted me to create the tissue, but that she would handle the surgery and the after-surgery care.
This was because she thought it would save her some money. Yes, the surgeon decided to be a marketer … or to assign it to somebody she could pay the least possible amount of money to. The truth that she does not want to face is that she would be wiser to create a novice website but hire a great surgeon. The even more astonishing truth is that she would be a lot better to count on professionals to carry out the surgery from beginning to end, just the way her patients do.
Can you believe that even somebody so intelligent as a skilled surgeon does not understand the much higher value in allowing the professionals to do the work they are trained to do? Seriously, when people are so absurd to believe that they should add another profession to their resume to save a few bucks, just imagine the dollars they leave behind with their even more expensive and time consuming trial and error learning.
In summary: The next time you, or a loved one goes into surgery, be sure to ask the doctor if she does her own marketing. If so, she is probably not the smartest surgeon.
You may wonder how I will make this turn out to be both useful and humorous, but have a little faith, my Google searching friend. This is a list of my answers to some the dumbest Google searches I recently found in my server logs. Before I cut straight to my list of absurdities, allow me just a moment to set the stage.
I love SEO. There, I said it! I really do love my work, although it is usually much more fun to do it than to explain it to people. I am the first to suspect that, as I have often said, “When I Go to Hell, They Will Have Me Selling SEO“. Yes, fun to do it, but tortuous to explain it.
One of the reasons I love SEO so much is the great humor and insights to the human mind that it offers. This is also one of the reasons you may sometimes find me to be condescending and uppity, because there are truly some dumb people out there. Yes, saying that makes me a jerk, but actually more of a “PECKER” (Reference: “New SEO Acronym to Replace SEO by 2012“).
It takes all types to make a species, but wow … just “Wow!” I am a fan of people, but sometimes I have to feel just a little tinge of embarrassment for the floaters in our genetic pool.
The term “SEO”, for the uninitiated, is an acronym for “search engine optimization”, and as a practitioner in the field, it means that I can generally rank at the top of the list for damn near anything I choose. That is why companies pay me to provide this service for them. Yeah, can you believe it? Being ranked at the top of search results is actually worth paying for. That is totally crazy, I know!
Don’t hate me for it, because it comes with a touch of insanity, and a good dose of time. Like well over a decade of practice and studying SEO to know what works.
A good amount of this particular achievement comes down to having a squillion website links pointing to my blog from other websites, and having just a touch of Murnahan wit and charm. OK, you can call it “BS”, or whatever you like, but let’s face it, some websites will rank well in search engines, and some will never be indexed for popular searches. This one ranks particularly well, which comes with a great potential for humor.
I previously wrote about the downside of being obsessed with statistics and over-monitoring of user data, but it is also very important to know how people are finding a website. It tells us what we need to know, and how to make things even better. When you dig really deep, it can sometimes make hot coffee shoot uncontrollably from your nose as you laugh. This is especially the case when you try to picture what in the world those people were actually hoping to find in their online search.
NOTE: Although I am a huge proponent of targeting a market based on specific propensity of readers to become a customer or to refer business. Targeting is why I write things to attract specific searches from specific people. For example, I wrote about NASCAR start and park teams to reach the racing community, while offering good marketing thoughts.
With the good comes the bad, and sometimes it all goes wonky. If you rank well for the useful search terms, always it comes with unexpected absurdities. Although some of these may not seem so humorous on the surface, if you squint and look closely, there is something just a bit funny going on here.
Each of these searches have come in many variations of the search, and each is an actual verbatim quote taken from the top 5,000 searches in my website analytics within the past 30 days (typographical errors and all).
OK, I hate to drop this little peach so early, but this one does set a certain tone. This is an actual search that has been repeated in many various forms, including some that were probably typed urgently like “what;s good for hemorrhoids” (Twitter, of course!). It leads users to an article that asks “Is Twitter Good for SEO?“. The article may actually be useful, but I didn’t write this one for bums. If your butt hurts, I really don’t have a lot for you, but dozens of people seem to think that ice cream may help.
I can forgive this fella for misspelling testicles, and for not realizing that “themselves” is actually just one word. This came from a Korean speaking individual in Burke, Virginia, USA. What I picture is a really frustrated little Korean guy sitting cross-legged at his computer screaming at his lover and murmuring “You betteh be right woman, oh I keow you!”
I actually took a screen capture of this one when it happened. My guess is that he did not want to call 9-1-1, just in case he actually ended up killing somebody. I hope that poor guy is alright! I also hope he does not come for my testicles for wasting his precious moment with my article titled “SEO, Social Media, and Marketing Balls“. In my defense, I did not use the word “testicles” in the article, even once, and there was no medical advice.
I suppose I kind of asked for this one when I titled an article “Hookers Write the Best Blogs“. What I didn’t realize at the time was just how many people would be performing Google image searches for pictures of hookers. I searched it one time, just to see what they were seeing. A few transsexual hookers and other creepy images later, I washed my eyes out with Listerine and vowed to never do that again!
Who knew that termites were so in-demand? I see a lot of variations for the query of where to buy termites. Although I am sure a number of these are people seeking to study termites in their laboratory, it makes me wonder how many angry ex-husbands are dumping these voracious little monsters around the foundations of their former homes. For those looking for termites, I offer this article titled “Things You Cannot Sell Online“. Termites are not one of those things, and it is highly unlikely that what you sell is on the list, too!
I wonder what they want with a blog troll. Yeah, I am sure that some people are just looking for a picture of a blog troll, but nobody I know has actually ever seen one. They sneak around in the shadows of the Internet. Here is what I had to say about them: A Few Words About Blog Trolls and Lurkers.
This one is really dumb for a couple reasons. Sutures are those things they use to stitch people up after surgery. They generally come at an extremely high cost to we consumers. I guess maybe there is not enough markup in the medical field, so they have to find their sutures cheap so they can earn an extra four dollars on a $40,000 surgery.
The other reason this one cracks me up is that I was once contracted to place a client at the top of searches for cheap sutures. They still owe me many tens of thousands of dollars, but then, that is why I now hold five of the top ten search results for their company name, “Suture Express“, along with their coveted “cheap sutures” and the names of each of their executives. Oops! 😉
This one should be simple. What else could a person logically expect would happen? Your computer will be infected with a virus that causes it to explode into a squillion pieces. I would not suggest this, especially with a laptop, but if it happens to you, just Google me when you need those testicles reconnected.
In case you need to know more about Facebook or their computer-exploding virus, here is more information on the topic.
This one is actually a very popular search, and it blows my mind. I mean, seriously, just look at the source code on any one of my blog’s pages if you need a mental re-adjustment on the topic of SEO tips. I would like to give you a quote from the article these search patrons find:
“As long as there are people who ask “do meta tags help with SEO” there will be plenty of people to con them out of their money.”
I hope you are not searching for information about meta tags. If so, you really should stick around and read some more.
My answer would perhaps be to quit the job and seek something better. Please just don’t make it a writing career until you at least learn the difference between your and you’re. Sure, maybe this is no big deal, but if “your too good at your job”, you’re probably going to need a better resume writer.
Another idea for being too good at your job is to give it all up and become an SEO and social media expert. That seems to be mighty damn popular (in searches, too)!
My first thought here is “huh?” I am not so sure why, but a lot of searches just don’t make any sense to me at all. Apparently a limited few people are trying to find things people find. What they actually find is an article titled “Crazy Things People Search For” which addresses the ways people use search engines. It kind of goes well with this piece, so you may enjoy it.
This one actually comes with a whole lot of related searches that are equally as ridiculous. Some of those are social media rates, seo hourly rate, how much does it cost for SEO, social media marketing cost, how much will a social media strategy cost, and literally thousands more.
What these searchers are obviously completely terrified and confused about is that there is a vast difference from one SEO to another. Asking the cost without knowing what to expect or understanding that it is not about cost, but rather increased profit, is about as wasteful and dumb as any question ever asked.
Have you seen the Grand Canyon? I would like to submit that the difference in good SEO and bad SEO makes that thing look like a crack in a sidewalk.
My Dumb Summary of Dumb Google Searches
I guess eleven is enough for now. I gave you a whole lot of truly useful links dispersed throughout this article. In fact, probably enough that if you sit there and read them all at once, it will make your bum hurt. So, please bookmark this page, get yourself some ice cream to sit in, come back, and take some time checking them out.
Also, please add your comments and tell me how you arrived here. If you are that poor Korean fella represented in this image, I’d love to know how things turned out.
If you are not that Korean guy, be sure you subscribe, because I’ve got a whole lot more where this came from!
Candles Can Burn Much Brighter
I know, you may be thinking to yourself, “Lighthouse Candles, Mark, really?” Yes, it is true that I am generally likely to write about something more exciting and manly, and include things like guns, race cars, and motorcycles. That is mostly because I draw things right out of my real life, and my life is manly. Don’t make me prove it!
Not this time, my friend. Today, I am taking “SEO and Social Media Marketing Blog” to a whole new level of lace pink pantie-waist and foo-foo good smelling stuff. Just go with it, because if I have my way, Lighthouse Candles will be researching gunpowder and locker room scented candles by day’s end.
I realize that a lot of small companies are struggling with their marketing. It is very confusing to a lot of people. A common statement I hear is “We just can’t afford marketing.” The trouble with that statement is how stressful and difficult it is to keep paying all of those other expenses without marketing. Marketing is what sells products and services. It becomes a chicken and egg question of which comes first. Without marketing, there is not enough money to afford marketing. Something has to give, because unless a business does afford marketing, they can’t afford marketing. Without marketing, a company is better described as a costly passion than a business.
Lighthouse Candles SEO Marketing Example
Like so many other companies, Lighthouse Candles in Salt Lick, Kentucky has a strong case for marketing their business online. They produce a consumer product, and in order to earn profits, they must sell that product. In very familiar fashion, their market potential is huge, while their market reach is comparatively minuscule. In fact, I was challenged to find them at all.
Candles Blow Out Without Marketing
Lighthouse Candles is representative of many small companies in some respects. So, I am using them as an example to pose some questions about business, and why some companies thrive, and others fail.
If the product is as good as they say, then why is their reach so small? Is it because people don’t like them? Sure, that happens with some companies, but it is more likely that the company is better at what they do than they are at marketing what they do. These people make and sell candles. They have done it for over a decade and a half, so let’s assume they have become pretty good at it. It is their specialty, and they are smart enough people to concentrate on that specialty. They make candles … but they are not a marketing company.
It is easy to wonder why they don’t take more care to market their company better, but I think it is really foreign and scary to many companies. I frequently find the cause of under-marketing to be fear of the unknown, apathy, finances, or a combination of these. It is seldom because they want to keep their revenue and profit low.
It is a big challenge to help companies like Lighthouse Candles to stop being afraid, start caring more about their business, and to grow their finances. When that challenge is overcome, it brings consistency to a company, and levels the ups and downs in business, and that takes knowledge!
Reducing Lighthouse Candles Challenges With Basic Education
It is hard to make good decisions based on bad information, or information that is hard to understand. When it comes to marketing, especially online, there is a lot of confusing information. I think it brings a lot of people to see marketing as risky, rather than to understand it as an investment. So let’s clear that confusion a bit and make some sense of this.
Many companies treat their marketing budget like risk capital, instead of a required operating cost. Marketing should not come from a slush fund, and it is not a luxury item. It is an essential component of business, and it is what makes companies more profitable.
I have to admit that there are levels of understanding of the Internet, and of marketing, that I tend to forget. I have been in my industry for many years, and it is a constant challenge to explain things in ways that both novice and experts will benefit from. If you will give me your time, I will try to deliver on both counts.
A friend told me, only yesterday, that some of my topics are “way over his head”. I really didn’t understand it, at first. I guess I often just assume that people in business know that being more visible, with the right message, to the right people, will increase sales, profits, and make a company more successful. Good marketing accomplishes those things, and the Internet is an extremely good tool.
I am sorry for the instances when I get too deep with my geekish chatter about SEO, customer modeling, propensity marketing, data analytics, and anything else that makes your eyelids heavy. The thing is, I really want to make this easy. I seriously, with every cell in my marketing brain, intend for people to benefit from the tips and advice I write about here on my blog.
Today, I want to break this down and make it easier than ever, while providing a good reminder for the experts. The SEO acronym stands for search engine optimization. There is a lot that goes into those three little letters, but let’s keep this simple.
Being listed at the top of the page when somebody searches the Internet is one big piece of that success. Being listed for something obscure is not good enough. Knowing what the people interested in buying your products or services are inclined to search for is another big part of the job. Then, after they search the Internet, find you, and click over to your website, you must give them something interesting, useful, and trustworthy enough to become your customer. Even when all of that is done, good SEO marketing includes giving them reasons to come back, and to tell their friends about their great experience.
OK, but this is about Lighthouse Candles, right? Yes, that is correct. Lighthouse Candles is a company I will use for my example. The example is intended to get you thinking about their missed potential, and how you would run things if it was your company.
Useful Observations About Lighthouse Candles
I have not spoken with Lighthouse Candles, so I am working with what I know of them from the Internet. I have the same information that any customer or potential business partner finding them online would have, if they looked for it. The first challenge was just finding them. It was seriously not easy, and their website was buried deeply from view.
Note that this is not picking on Lighthouse Candles. It is absolutely not one of my “Suture Express” jobs where I take over 50 percent of the top ten Google search results for their company name. It is more similar to the examples I have made with fearful Smart Slate retailers, apathetic online cigar stores, and lazy car dealers who fell asleep at the wheel and missed huge opportunities.
This is just observation, and it is an example that I find extremely common with companies that buy a website and are left wondering what to do with it. It is what often happens when a company realizes they need a website, but decide that the cheapest website price will be the best option for them. Then, their misinformed question of “How much does seo cost?” leads them to realize that marketing is much less about cost, and is better addressed by how much it pays them. It is called return on investment (or ROI for short), and it is based in mathematics and science, not unicorns and fuzzy bunnies.
How I came across Lighthouse Candles in the first place was when I saw a visitor to my blog that seemed to really pay attention and read what I have to teach about online marketing. Of course, every visit to any website is logged. Since I know what to do with my user data, I will often go through and take a look at people who are looking at me. I learn a lot from their actions, such as how they arrived here, what they do while they are here, how long they are on each page, and much more. I filter through and find users who visit certain pages, with a special interest toward anybody verging on an hour in a given week, and viewing 20 pages. These are the kind of website visitors I just want to reach out and hug. These are the kind of website visitors you should be reaching out to hug, too!
Fortunately, I discover a whole lot of users like this, which feels great, because it means I am doing my job well. Certain visitor actions will catch my attention when I don’t get a call or email. Here was a visitor who caught my eye.
Lighthouse Candles Wants to Learn
Whenever I see this level of activity, and when specific pages are viewed for given amounts of time, there are a couple of likely conclusions as follows:
a.) Somebody is really trying to learn and implement suggestions I make. b.) They are finding out what I know about SEO and social media marketing before they contact me to do the job. c.) They have a rogue SEO next door who has hacked into their wireless network and is reading my blog.
There are just not a lot of other reasonable possibilities. I don’t know which is the case here just yet, but those are each distinct possibilities. So, let’s split a, b, and c into some likely conclusions.
First, I want to applaud Lighthouse Candles for being more proactive in their business and trying to improve their online market. I think it is a grand idea for them to try and reach out to capture a larger market share. There is a reason Yankee Candle has hundreds of thousands of website visitors per month. They sell candles, and although race cars and motorcycles are popular, people apparently really like candles.
So, we must ask the real questions about why Lighthouse Candles is not making a more aggressive play at that Yankee Candle market. Some companies will say they just don’t want to grow, out of principle. We can rule that out, because Lighthouse Candles is researching how to grow. They wouldn’t be on my blog otherwise. We could assume their budget is insufficient, but budgets must begin somewhere. That “somewhere” is what determines how well a company reaches its market growth objectives. That can mean reaching several different market potentials such as the market of investors, the market of retailers and distributors, and the market for potential acquisitions. There is a lot more possibility than just setting a goal of keeping the lights on.
The first reliable market to reach, in order to attract those other potential markets, is the consumer market. After all, who wants those candles in their stores, distribution networks, or investment portfolio, if the consumer doesn’t want them?
I know that it is a scary thing to believe in your own company, and to see things from a clearer view of potential. I have built successful businesses for over 20 years. It will age you faster than nearly anything else. However, success would not be so alluring if everybody could do it. That would cause the whole complex of “survival of the fittest” to come crashing down! Let’s not make it that scary. Instead, I will try to offer my possible answers and solutions to the a, b, and c speculations listed above.
Speculation is guesswork based on limited evidence. When that evidence is enhanced by experience, its feasibility increases. So this is based on calculated guesses, rather than just randomness. Breaking this into simple terms, in my estimation, the answers to those earlier possibilities are as follows:
Speculation About “a” (trying to learn and implement): This often happens when the company either does not have enough funds, or belief in their market potential to hire a professional. You can give them all the facts, case studies, and trustworthy reputation, but their confidence will not waiver. Their hopes to gather enough knowledge from reading blogs and do it themselves is what gives them confidence, because if they fail, it was probably just “fate” anyway.
Possible Solution to “a” In this instance, I would suggest an investor, or a bank loan, or pulling their teeth and selling their gold dental fillings. Just like any field, an experienced and accomplished professional will do a better job 100 percent of the time. No, not 90 percent … don’t even go there.
Example:Suture Express tried to cut their expenses and do things the cheap way. Search Google for them and look at the top ten search results to see how well that went.
Speculation About “b” (seeking the right option): This shows a diligent business person who understands that one of the greatest assets a company can have is the right people to do the jobs they are trained for. Many famously successful businesses have credited their success to discovering the right people, and knowing when to delegate what is not within their area of expertise.
Possible Solution to “b”Try driving a car like in this video. If you crash, it should help to emphasize the importance of training and the difference between a professional and somebody “testing the water”. If that doesn’t work, a frontal lobotomy may be in order, but I am not qualified to give medical advice.
Example: I don’t try to make candles, and I don’t do my kids’ dentistry either. I know when to hire outside professionals, and I am far more successful for it!
Speculation About “c” (rogue SEO): I suppose “c” is a good example of just how badly they need somebody on their side who understands the Internet from every angle.
Possible Solution to “c” Buy a better firewall, use better encryption, and change all passwords to something a little more challenging than “candles123”. Then, spend some more time at that computer to find out how easy it really is to hack a network.
Example: This is what a password looks like … o*D#kV$j2X&c7X
Some Painful Truth About Lighthouse Candles
In the case of Lighthouse Candles, there is such a huge opportunity, but why aren’t they doing things right? Why is their first marketing statement on their website a disclaimer. Yes, seriously, the first word after their company name is “DISCLAIMER”. Is it likely that a professional marketing consultant suggested that, or is it the work of a candle maker? Would Yankee Candle do that?
Why did they hire an inexperienced website developer who does not have good design or programming skill? They hired him for an ecommerce site, no less! I mean, surely he is a nice fella, but my guess is even stronger that he is cheap … very cheap! Not surprisingly, the one outside link to the Lighthouse Candles website I found was an accidental link placed on the privacy page of another company that their web developer built. If you are HTML literate, you will love this:
Lighthouse Candles Subdomain-Level Links According to Open Site ExploreraWebGuy.com Subdomain-Level Links According to Open Site Explorer
In the real world, marketing, and all of those tedious related tasks like feasibility studies, customer modeling, strategy, planning, budgeting, psychographic analysis, making good connections, and all of those other eyelid droppers really do matter. They are what make up the biggest differences between Yankee and Lighthouse.
If you like candles, maybe you’ll like this song, too. Candles by Hey Monday. It is something to listen to while you add your comments.
I find that a lot of people are curious about breaking down marketing services like social media and search engine optimization to an hourly rate. I know this, because a lot of people search the Internet for pricing information and find me.
Silly me, I don’t have a standard rate sheet, but I will tell you why. I don’t know how much it will cost to perform SEO or social media marketing until I know what a company wants and needs from the services.
I understand the concern of marketing cost. After all, the reason for a company to spend money on marketing is to achieve a higher profit. This means the cost of marketing will be a factor. However, it is too common that the only set of numbers a client will clearly understand is the outgoing money, while they ignore the more important numbers such as accurate projections, goals, and increased profit.
The cost of marketing is not the same for any two projects, because the associated tasks are as different as the company itself. More importantly, marketing is something which spans the life of a company, and not just a set of tasks that are finished in a set number of hours. If you shop for marketing by seeking to buy a set of tasks, then you are essentially dictating a job, rather than letting the professional do the work they are trained to perform.
Reasons Marketing Cost Varies, and Menu Pricing Fails
Menu style pricing works great for some marketers, but it can create a huge disaster for the client. I don’t have time to list all the reasons the cost of marketing can vary widely, and you don’t have the time to read that list. I’ll give you a few points to consider.
Some companies will have well-formed projections of their market potential, and some will have already done the research to know how many people they must reach to achieve their goals. Some will have a targeted marketing strategy already prepared, and most will need help improving it. Some will have already performed A/B testing to determine their optimal conversion rate. Some will have creative ideas for their marketing, and even have talented people to help implement it.
Some companies have all of these things in place, but this is often not the case. Instead, I find that they come to me asking me to do whatever it is I do, without really even knowing what needs to be done. Then, without understanding the tasks, or reasons for them, they want a shortcut answer to “How much does it cost?“
The question of how much it will cost, without a clear idea of what is needed, or what will actually improve your return on investment is an easy way to waste money and time doing the wrong things. It is like shopping for a dentist by seeking the cheapest price for a filling while what you really need is a root canal. Worse yet, it is like telling the dentist how to perform the filling, and asking for a discount because you used less Novocaine. With that kind of thinking, should there really be any wonder why most marketing fails? Dictating Social Media Tasks is Like Telling Your Cab Driver to Swerve for Giraffes
Would You Buy a Cab Ride Priced by the Pothole?
It makes me wonder how many companies pay their building lease by the hour. What if they booked flights by the mile? Would you pay extra to fly around a storm? Would you tell the pilot which way to fly, or would you rely on the professional?
Some things just don’t sensibly calculate in the terms we think they should, or wish they would. It is not always because somebody is trying to hide an obscene profit. Many times, it is because the cost would be outrageously high to account for each item granularly. Imagine trying to account for a cab ride that includes a charge for every time the cab hits a pothole and gets a little closer to needing a new set of tires or shocks. Should stopping for traffic signals cost more to account for the brake wear, or should we burn more gas and take the longer route to avoid them?
The challenge for a lot of people to realize is that the cost of any product or service will be built into the price. The cab driver will need to receive more money for his job than what it cost him, so he sets his pricing and maintains his car to optimize his earnings. If you asked him to itemize each thing, you would have to pay him for that extra time he is doing accounting instead of driving his cab. If your driver lets you blindfold him and direct him how to drive, you are both foolish.
My point here is to express how easy it is to make mistakes when shopping for and comparing services in an unfamiliar industry. In the industry of online marketing, if you pay for somebody to account for every hour, you will likely pay a lot more for the extra accounting.
Then again, I guess I shouldn’t complain if somebody wants to pay me for the hours I lie in bed at night staring at the ceiling as I ponder how I can make them more successful tomorrow than yesterday.
Have you ever been hit by a stroke of Genius, telling you that automated directory submissions will help your ranking in search engine results? Maybe you thought that some nicely crafted meta tags would help your search engine ranking. I may be a bit too hard on people at times, but common sense just completely eludes many people when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization). Many website owners want to rank in the top of search results so badly that they will try almost anything. Well, as long as it is cheap, easy, and sounds techie-fancy.
When I started to write this, I was going to rant about automated directory submissions. Then I realized that I have touched on the topic of directory submissions before. I still have something to get off my chest, and I still have something to say about the toxic lies and misinformation that have been created surrounding the SEO industry. It is often fueled by greed and hope of getting something for nothing.
It is easy for liars to make something believable to people who know little about the topic. This has created an ugly monster of the SEO industry.
The SEO Monster Eats, Every Day!
In just the last spin of the clock, I have had several people ask me for information about automated directory submission services to improve their search engine ranking. It reminds me that most people really do not understand SEO. Judging from the glazed look on their faces, I can tell that many people really don’t want to understand. They just want it to magically work. I understand that, and I can imagine how frustrating and stressful it must be for non-SEO people to filter reliable information about search engine optimization through all of the common SEO lies (although this may help: 7 SEO Lies: How to Know When the SEO is Lying).
Outdated, Outrageous, and Downright Dishonest SEO Garbage
There is so much bad information and outdated material spread across the Internet that I think it would frustrate the heck out of me if I was trying to feel my way through it for the first time. What bothers me is how many people are out there trying to earn a buck by selling things that do not help, and even more commonly, severely damage paying customers’ hopes of being found in a search engine.
The world of SEO truly is like a foreign language to most people. They read something about SEO and meta tags, and they think they are on to something revolutionary. It just stuns me that with all of the great information out here on the Internet, how many people are fooled by the first scam they come across.
For some people, I think there is a sense that if it is written, it must hold some truth. Once they find out the hard way that it was a scam and it didn’t work, they either give up and hate everything about SEO, or they take the time to learn the difference and read something sensible and logic-based like “Good SEO vs. Bad SEO: How to Tell the Difference“.
Even in large corporate settings, I have often found people in the role of search engine optimizer collecting a nice salary who got their job just by spouting out a few industry buzz words. The people hiring them are either enamored by their “vast knowledge”, or just give up and offer them a job on blind faith.
A really hard pill to swallow is that most of today’s SEO “experts” have never ranked for anything significantly competitive. That is not a gouge against my industry, and these people are not my competitors. It is a statistical truth. To make this point clear, just have a look at the backlinks to most SEO websites and then see where they rank for the first four words of their home page title. Try this with the website of the SEO who reaches you by email, on the phone, or in a paid advertisement, instead of you finding them through a search.
Productized SEO Services Created a Monster
I think that productizing SEO and selling easy to understand pre-packaged SEO services has created and fed this monster. As an industry, those of us who sell SEO services realized a long time ago that it is much easier to package things up and say “Here is your price, and here is what you get.”
This certainly makes it easier to sell SEO. After all, it is easier for clients to choose from a list and compare it to what others offer. Also, it is a lot more profitable for the SEO to create something once, and sell it many times. The truth is that it is seldom what is best for meeting the customer’s objectives, and it creates a mentality that ranking well in search engines is merely a predefined set of SEO tasks.
This is not to say that things like SEOmoz’s SEO tools, SpyFu, and the squillion other SEO tools are not just great. These are tools, but like a paintbrush, they are only as good as the person using them. A tragedy that happened is when a lot of SEO realized that they could sell far more, and easier, if they promised something such as top ten ranking for “x” number of keywords and then price it and put it in a shopping cart for people to buy. There are countless types of SEO services being promoted with a “buy it now” approach, without any consultation, without any strategy, and with a promise of easy results.
Do you really trust anything that is so easy? OK, rephrase … Do you really trust anything that is so easy in 2011?
Directory Submission Service Example
I started my rant with directory submissions, and I will still use it as an example. “What is a directory submission service?” I hope that is what you are thinking, but in case you did not already know, I will explain it. It is a once-heralded way to automatically submit a website to long lists of search engines and directories, with a hope that it would help search engine rankings, bring more visitors to a website, and boost sales.
I suppose it seems logical to a lot of people that if they use SEO directory submission services to add their website link to a squillion directories and search engines, it will produce magical results. Now let’s clear this up. Seriously, do you think that a magical automated fix like directory and search engine submissions will be your pink pony ride to success?
Oh, and nobody else ever thought of that, so it will be revolutionary! Right? Search engines will suck that up like grape soda and will count all of those backlinks (links to your website) as proof that your website is valuable.
Rub a lamp, sucker! Maybe a Genie will come to your assistance, too.
The Productized SEO Monster Awakens My Inner-Sailor
There are just a few things which make it hard for me to hold back my inner sailor and refrain from dropping severely foul language all over my blog. People falling for things like automated directory submissions and other simple tricks helping their SEO efforts is one of those things. I just don’t think I can even be nice about this. Shit! Call it a temporary case of Tourette’s Syndrome, but this inner-sailor in me is wanting out pretty badly.
People who actually fall for things like this drive me nuts. I just want to say “Hey, Genius, do you want to know the truth, or would you rather waste more money and time to screw up your website?”
If you want the real truth about SEO, slow down, pay attention, and stop breathing those SEO fumes in the air. Spend some time to learn things that will actually work, and will help you to grow your business. For example, those links in the text of this article are not just there for me, and they may help you, a lot. Better yet, here is a link for some relatively easy SEO tips that can save you a lot of time and frustration: SEO Lessons You Should Know.
These tips will not cost you a penny, and will only take a short time to read. Maybe I am just full of hot air, but if so, go ahead and search Google for SEO lessons and see where that link I just gave you shows up in non-advertised, relevance-based organic results. Hint: It is not number two on the list.
I do not write about this because I am seeking a bunch of customers. I only work with a couple clients at a time, and I turn away far more than I work with. Yes, writing about SEO helps people to find me, but it is not just here to help me. This is here to help you.
Just one more thing! Have you subscribed to aWebGuy.com yet?
