Internet marketing Archives - Page 7 of 18 by Mark Murnahan

Marketing at 20 Percent Brilliance and 80 Percent Trial

Wouldn’t it be great if all of your marketing efforts worked just exactly as planned? Just imagine how great it would be if every piece of marketing material that you put on the Internet or elsewhere was a smash hit. That would be amazing! You could cut your expenses, earn squillions of dollars, enjoy more leisure, and retire early.

Now rub your eyes, grab another cup of coffee, stop daydreaming, and get to work. This is the real world, and we welcome you to come back and join us.

Nobody is brilliant 100 percent of the time. Some people come closer than others, but none of us walk on moonbeams while tending to our herd of unicorns. It is just not going to happen, but that should not discourage you from trying.

What is more important than creating 100 percent brilliance is to keep trying and testing new things. Even the least glamorous of your marketing efforts can have some level of success. This is more important to remember on the Internet than any other place. If you are holding back your efforts because it doesn’t peg your spectacular-ometer, you will miss out on a lot of what makes your brand what it is. Like any brand, your brand is made up of people … people and their opinions. These people are not all the same, and even some of your bottom percentile marketing efforts will be appealing to some of them.

Marketing with Juran’s Pareto Principle

A historic man named Joseph Juran observed that approximately 80 percent of effects come from 20 percent of causes. Many people know this as the 80 / 20 rule, and if you consider it carefully, you will likely find it to be both fascinating and virtually unbreakable. If you are unfamiliar, I strongly urge you to read the astonishing findings of Juran and the economist he named his studies for, Vilfredo Pareto. You may read more about The Pareto Principle and related Pareto Distribution at Wikipedia. Note that The Pareto Principle is not guesswork. It is a diligently researched, mathematically defined, widely documented, and well accepted socioeconomic principle.

Some ways the Pareto principle of 80 / 20 may be observed in your Internet marketing are as follows:

20 percent of your website pages receive 80 percent of web traffic.
20 percent of your marketing receives 80 percent of social media sharing.
20 percent of your blog articles receive 80 percent of reader comments.
20 percent of your marketing efforts can be tracked to 80 percent of your sales.

There are many other examples in which you will likely discover this principle to hold true, but I just want you to consider it and how you may apply it to your marketing efforts. Applying The Pareto Principle to your marketing may surprise you.

It is important to remember that if you reduce the 80 percent, you will also proportionally reduce the successful 20 percent. Do not neglect or devalue your 80 percentile efforts, because it has a purpose, too. Consider this: Have you ever received a compliment for something that you didn’t consider your best effort? I have, and sometimes for things that were not very popular or amazing to the masses, but were just right for somebody. I offer you this example that started with a home video of a little girl named Madeline from a few years back. I saw a message in it, so I put it on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. It did not have amazing results, but a few people thought it was cute. Those few people were worth it, and the video brought me just a bit closer to my next great 20 percentile effort. Plus, it is another tiny piece of branding that makes up the whole mix. Is it brilliant? Perhaps it is not brilliant, but do I think is it valuable? Yes, without a doubt.

Do Not Neglect Your 80 Percent Marketing

It is certain that you cannot achieve 100 percent brilliance, but even that 80 percent that is just “pretty good” may be what somebody was looking for. If you keep it to yourself, you will miss many opportunities for exposing your work to that smaller percentile of people who will think it is brilliant.

Nothing is an out of the box success. Any product or service offering will require a lot of effort to become successful. If you look at the 80 percent of less-than-brilliant efforts as simply wasted, it will not mean that the 20 percent left is all perfect. It will just mean that you still have only 20 percent of that 20 percent that is the most effective, but there will still be 80 percent that is less effective.

When you consider your marketing, remember that it cannot all be your best. There will always be a portion of your marketing which is more successful than the rest. If you try to reduce it down to just the things which are “perfect”, you will reduce your reach of a message that will work just great for some people.

So where does this article rank among my marketing efforts? I do not expect it to be a top 20 percentile piece of work. That does not matter to me as much as the fact that I am still trying, and getting even closer to my next 20-percenter all the time.

Remember This: Marketing talent requires practice.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Market Research Tip: Jumbo Jets and Jelly Beans

Shoppers lie. It happens all the time that they say they want one thing, but the truth is actually quite different. This happens because most shoppers feel a bit insecure about their purchases. Just picture yourself walking into an auto dealership to understand this better. You probably make up reasons to say “no” before you even drive on the lot. It is how consumers “protect themselves”, and it is rooted in cynicism. People want to buy things on their terms, and not the seller’s terms, and if that means they have to lie, they will often lie.

I am not going to call everybody a liar. No, I am not going to do that. What I will say is that during the purchase process, there are often things which are not exactly as they seem. This begins in the very earliest steps to a purchase, and it is the marketer’s job to overcome those smokescreens. We do this in many ways, including fact-finding about our market to better understand the ideal customer and how to meet their objectives. We perform careful propensity modeling to determine exactly who to target. Then we create a strong call-to-action to entice customers to take action now, before they can dream up another lie to help excuse themselves from committing to the purchase.

It should not be surprising that much of this process is made far more difficult by trying to market to the wrong people. A lot of marketing efforts miss the target miserably by skipping the research and trying to sell to people who are only marginally interested in the offering.

NOTE: When I say “take action” I mean for the customer to get what they want … what they came for. After all, when a prospective customer comes out of hiding, there is a reason. They want what you offer.

The purchase of anything from jelly beans to jumbo jets has two sides; one side who wants the sale, and the other side who wants the sale. They ultimately both want the sale! Marketers often neglect this, and place themselves in a very defensive role as if the customer holds all the cards. Something important to remember is that the customer also wants what the seller has to offer, often much more than they will let on. After all, they are ready to trade their money for it. You just have to suit their objectives and help them to buy on their terms. The best way to do this begins long before you ever even encounter the customer. The best answer is to know who the buyer is, and to know their terms.

Stop Marketing Jumbo Jets to Jelly Bean Customers

I have taught many people how to market and sell things, both online and offline. I have been in the marketing field for over 20 years, and I have seen a lot in that time. I have seen about every smokescreen that a customer can hide behind. There is a common saying that “buyers are liars”. It sounds ugly, but it really just means that until you uncover the customer’s real objectives, they will often be less than forthright about their purchase decision making. It may sound like a “lie”, but it is actually just to cover up deeper objectives, and a prospective customer’s attempt to feel secure while getting what they want. You see, if they tell you the whole truth, then you have too much power (in their mind), and they become “vulnerable”. The common fear is that if they open themselves up to your influence, they may end up coming to you asking for a bag of jelly beans and leaving with a jumbo jet. Of course, if that is the case, it really means they actually wanted a jumbo jet, but they were afraid to admit it and afraid of the sacrifice. It also means that the seller was reaching out to the wrong audience instead of discovering the people who are asking for jumbo jets. When you reach the right market, much cynicism is averted.

Marketers who understand what customers really want are the marketers who earn happy customers and become very successful. Effective marketers do the necessary discovery work to find out who the customers are and what they really want. This helps us to understand how to reach the right people, define the marketing approach, and thus improve response rates.

If a given group has a propensity to purchase jumbo jets, effective market research will uncover the facts. Market research helps to determine the most effective means to reach the target audience, and the right marketing message to implement. In my work, I find a lot of people trying to sell jumbo jets to jelly bean customers, simply because they never took the initiative to understand who the customer really is and what the customer wants and needs.

Wasteful Marketing Efforts

Many people will take the approach of simply seeking more audience. We all want more audience, but as a sole effort, that can lead to a whole lot of waste. Marketing duck hunting to vegetarians may reach a lot of people, but it will not produce desired results.

Other people will focus too much on a stronger call to action. A strong call to action is good, but again, this alone often leads to more waste. Offering a huge discount on lipstick will probably not bring the greatest results at a gun show.

Another huge waste I see in many marketing efforts is to assume that markets are less defined online than that of vegetarians and gun shows. The fact is that marketing online provides much greater definition to market segmentation. I encounter many people who think of the Internet as a place to market to the whole world, but take little or no care to define their market and understand the best ways to reach the right segments.

These are extreme accounts of wasteful marketing, but I see much more subtle mistakes being made every day. A better option is to know who to reach and what they want. Put yourself in their shoes and research your industry from their standpoint. This is not easy, and it is not natural for most business people. It is also why there are people who specialize in the field of marketing.

Wasteful marketing efforts will cause you to constantly be at odds with the prospective customer and they will seldom come over to your side to see the benefits of doing business with you.

How Do You Bring the Customer to Your Side?

The first step to winning customers is to know your market and why they want what you have. If you can realize the objectives of your market, you can bring the customers to your side so they can see it from both perspectives. Then they can see your vision of how your product or service will benefit them. If they want a jumbo jet, you will be the one who sells it to them.

Market research and gaining an understanding of the customer is a huge missing piece in many marketing campaigns. I have been shocked countless times to find that for many companies, market research is a confusing task that just seems like wasted effort. You can believe me or not, but it is the most important piece of all. Market research allows you to know what people want and what they will respond to. It is what tells you who to reach and the message to reach them with. Without proper market research, you may as well advertise jumbo jets for sale in your local candy store. If you keep trying to sell jumbo jets to jelly bean shoppers, you will waste a lot of time and expense.

Take your market research seriously.

Unless I am mistaken, you want to know how to earn more business by having more effective marketing reach. That is what I sell. You did not come here for jelly beans.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Statistics Obsession: Another Huge Internet Time-Waster

Do you check your statistics to see if your web traffic has moved up since you checked it an hour ago? Do you ever feel just a tinge of obsession over your Google Analytics or Clicky statistics? Do you wait impatiently for the next update of your score on Alexa, or Quantcast? Do you get frustrated when your Klout score is a day behind and you just have to know if they actually picked up on all of your hard work?

Stop it! Just stop it!

I know how easy it is to feel better when you go and see how (or if) people are interacting with your website or your social media profiles. It is actually very important information to know. Knowing your statistics, and understanding what they mean is extremely valuable for effective online marketing. The problem arises when it is taken to a level where productivity is lost.

Don’t take this wrong. I am not berating you, because I know how easy the trap can be. Allow me to jest. I am one of those guys who is drawn to statistics like a moth to a bug-zapper. I will probably know if you click this link before you can even pick up the phone to call me and ask how I can help you to grow your business. It is one of my important calls to action for people to visit my “About Mark” page to find out more about me, or my contact page to reach me about better marketing. (UPDATE: I no longer accept loser clients.)

When I see those things, it means somebody is interested in my services. Well, sometimes it means that. If they click on my link for “What Others Say About Mark” it must mean that they are going to spend a ton of money, and I can take a few more minutes to check out my stats on other sites, because I have already practically got their money in the bank. You know, because people are clicking all the right stuff, and I had a four percent increase over an hour ago in the stuff I wanted clicked. Now I am freed up to do more statistics-surfing. Maybe somebody retweeted me, maybe they bookmarked me somewhere, or maybe I have more FeedBurner subscribers. If I check these things, maybe I will feel better, like Oprah Winfrey with a double-scoop ice cream cone.

A Better Waste of Time

The Internet is such a fascinating place. It amazes me what kind of things you can find. Perhaps a better waste of time for those moments when you want to go and check those stats again would be to watch this nine minute video of some guys frying bugs in a bug zapper.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you are not checking your website statistics to know what your readers want and how they are interacting with your material, you should be. Just don’t be too obsessed with it.

New vs. Returning Users: How Readership Churn Counts in The Static Age

The Internet has changed. Wait, scratch that … the world has changed, and the people of the world are fully engrossed in “The Information Age”. Maybe it is even beyond that, and perhaps we can now effectively call this “The Static Age” because of the massive level of static we must sort through to hear or be heard. Right now, today, there are likely 42 squillion people writing about your industry on a daily basis, and unless you are the reincarnation of Elvis Presley, you will have a hard time capturing their interest.

It is time to take a closer look at an important metric of your website traffic. Who is coming to visit, and will they return? Did you do something that knocked their socks off? Did you have something to say that totally blew them away enough to subscribe and come back? Allow me to explain why this matters, and what you can do about it.

Good Bloggers Know and Care About Readership Churn

The number of bloggers in 2010 has shot the moon. If you don’t believe me, that is fine. I should not need to prove this with numbers, because you surely already know it. You probably already saw another blog (or three) in the last 1 minute and 22 seconds. The blast of information is fast, furious, and growing like a flu pandemic. Some of it is great information, but most of it will interest you as much as a knitting class interests a race car driver.

Much of the massive blast of information simply does not apply to your life. Even if it is reliably useful information, I think we can agree that a lot of what we see on the Internet is filed away in the “time wasted” category and we will not be going back to read more.

So what about you? Will you find yourself filed away in the bottom of your readers’ Internet history? If you want to avoid this, you must get a couple things straight right now. In my short list, I will include that you must be useful, pay attention to your readers, give them a great reason to come back, and do not disappoint them when and if they do.

There is Still Hope for Bloggers!

I have written about good reasons to blog. The reasons I have listed have been implemented and trusted by many readers. I write things to help people, and I do not take them for granted. Even with all my efforts to be useful, it would be astonishingly simple for people to forget where they got that useful idea (whatever the idea). I know this, because I forgot where I have found some great ideas, too. I am telling you … there is a massive wave of information, and even the best of us cannot keep it all filed away perfectly. So it is extremely important to help people remember you. If you are in business, it is important to help people remember why to come back to you when they want more, or they know somebody who does. How can you do that?

If you are blogging to advertise your goods or services, you will have a hard time getting people to pay attention. Something far more important is to give them something they care about. Give them something useful. Since you cannot do something amazing every day (nobody can), you should give them a picture of other things you write about. Give them an archive. If they think that you may be just a little bit interesting, let them see if there is more where that came from. I will blog about how to create various kinds of blog archives soon, but for now, just be aware of the idea and that it can help others see more value in what you provide.

If They Want More, Make it Easy and Non-Threatening

The next thing to do is be sure that if people see a value in what you provide that they can subscribe to receive more of it. You do not have to beat them over the head with it, but you cannot expect them to go out of their way to give you their attention, either. It is not a promise that you will be amazing. It is not a promise that they will ever do business with you, either. It simply means that they will have more opportunity to see what you are about, and if they eventually need what you offer or know somebody who does, they will remember you. Timing is a big issue in business, and most of the time, people do not need or want what you sell at the moment they discover you. Things can change, and if they are at least aware of you, you will have a lot stronger chance of getting the call when they need you.

Give them an easy way to subscribe. Google’s FeedBurner is easy and non-threatening because people will never need to worry about you spamming them. If they subscribe by email, it is safe because they are not giving it to you. I never worry about subscribing to a FeedBurner feed, because I know my email is not going anywhere but Google, and Google already has my email. They don’t spam me. As for RSS subscribers, like email, they choose whether to subscribe and they will not need to worry about you having their email address, and the only way you can really “spam” them is by putting it on your blog for the world to see.

It is this easy to ask somebody to subscribe. Allow me to lead by example.

Please Subscribe by Email or RSS

or Subscribe in a reader.

… and it is this easy to show them your past performance so they know what to expect:

See My Blog Archive

To summarize this, it is important to remember the value of repetition in marketing, and that if you want people to receive your message over and over again, you need to do something useful that benefits them. You have to give them a great reason to receive your repetition. Then, you must let them know that you want to be in their list of considerations when it is the right time for them.

No, this is not a precise tutorial on how to get things just right. It is a message on how to think about your marketplace and why people will want to hear from you again. Just like any business endeavor, when you reach the same people again and again, it is a whole lot easier than trying to continually find new people. This is true whether you are giving something away for free, or offering something for sale.

Now I ask that if you have an interest in what I said here that you subscribe to receive more, because I truly do not want to have to replace you.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Influence Marketing: Reach Your Market Through Their Influencers

I woke up to another Monday today. Monday is the day I ask myself the question again, “Are you reaching the right people?” It goes a bit deeper when I start asking “Are you reaching them with the right message?” If I can answer both of these with the affirmative, the next step is to repeat it and try to be sure the message continues to reach the right people, with the right message, and at the right time. Getting the right time means doing it again and again until their time is right. At the top of my list is reaching the right people.

How To Reach the Right People … The Influencers!

I think for a lot of people trying to reach a market, the question of how to reach the right people totally confounds them. It is actually a bit tricky and it takes some serious thought. It gets easier with training, experience, and research, but it is always a challenging part of marketing. Good marketing often means reaching the buyer themselves, but the best marketing often means reaching the people who influence the buyer. It is called influence marketing. Knowing who is an influencer and who is a buyer is an important step to knowing the right message to deliver. Getting it wrong means wasting a lot of time and money.

Car companies learned about this a long time ago. They realized that, statistically, men will be more appreciative of the 7.0L V8 engine and the 505 horsepower, while ladies will care more about the handy button to automatically move the power seat back to where she left it (before her gearhead husband got in and moved it). They segment their market and deliver a different message to reach the right person with the right message. By doing this, they are selling features to each party, but they also know that if I want that 7.0L V8 engine, I will use that silly seat button they told me about to influence my wife. Now that is how to get a car sold! Reaching the right person very often means knowing more than just them, but also who influences them, and how.

If I was selling wedding dresses, I would know that the bride is not always the only participant. There is another important point of influence. I need to reach her father with the message that his little darling will feel like the princess she wanted to be when she was five years old and that this is that moment she had planned for all those years. I need to reach the bridesmaids who will tell the bride how gorgeous that dress makes her look. I need to reach the influencers or the whole thing could be shot down and I have just another expensive dress on the rack.

For me, I consider who reads my work. Exactly who is attracted to a blog about marketing? Probably people who have a product or service to offer, right? The fact is that it is mostly people who would never in a million years consider paying me to help them build their market. This is just fine for me, because it helps me focus on being useful. If I am useful, people will come back. If I am even more useful, they will pass it along to others in their circle of influence. Because I know that most of my readers are not directly in the market to buy my services, the focus is a lot more on being helpful. Reaching the right people means reaching the influencers, and not just the buyers directly. Seriously, most CEOs and VPs are not looking for me. My job is to be sure they find me, but when the message is delivered by somebody influential to them, it is better than if I deliver it right to them. That is crazy back-door thinking, right? Not really. Just imagine the marketing assistant who says “I like this guy, boss. We should talk to him.” That influence will always go a lot further than just reaching the boss and explaining how great my offering is. The right message is that I am not the competition, but rather here to be useful. The right timing means that readers will subscribe to my blog and find me again when their timing is right.

If you want to reach the right people, you often must look far beyond the obvious target. Think about how you can better reach your market influencers. It is Monday, and it is a great way to start your week.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download