January 1, 1970
For awhile now we’ve been hearing that video is the future of marketing. I tend to believe it, videos are persuasive and can convey information more easily than print along in a time-pressed, multi-language America.
If you need further convincing, look at the most recent reports on the number of searches conducted on various search engines. More searches are conducted on You Tube each year than on Yahoo. In fact, this past year searches on Yahoo dropped by 5%.
The Numbers:
You Tube: 2.6 billion searches
Yahoo: 2.4 billion searches
Although You Tube is not a general search engine, the numbers certainly support the argument that videos will be a key marketing component going forward.
Good news for video production companies and amateur videographers on the corporate web team.
January 1, 1970
What lessons can any small business learn from the phenomenal marketing success of Barack Obama? Here is the story of how the ultimate small business (one man) attempted to capture majority market share in the national marketplace – the Presidency. Well, as we know he oveturned established brands (Clinton, McCain) and created a new brand image (change) that no one could match. It was a brilliant strategy to turn the long experience of competitors into a weakness and then exploit that weakness.
Isn’t that the challenge for all small business competing with larger, more established companies? How can I make a major competitor compete on my terms, not it’s terms. The book may be incredibly useful in helping you think about your business in new ways. It’s something that a maverick small business marketer might try!
In a nutsell, the book suggests that Barack won with the mantra: Be Cool, Be Social, Be The Change. That’s pretty good position for marketing any small business.
January 1, 1970
At the Search Engine Strategies conference this past month, Yahoo reported that local search continues to grow as a search preference, far exceeding searches on Internet Yellow pages. This increase is seen as a “total” number and an as an average number of “local” searches conducted each month per searcher.
In a poor economy, consumers will increasingly try to find cheap, local solutions to their product needs. Taking care of your local profile on Google and Yahoo is the biggest opportunity for small business to improve market share – and it’s free. You’ll be hearing a great deal more about local search marketing in the near future.
January 1, 1970
Although most businesses would agree that their Internet search rankings within their business category are important, few do anything to protect them. Most businesses don’t even track their rankings very effectively. If you went to a business, large or small, and asked who had the responsibility to conduct regular generic Web searches on Google and Yahoo to keep track of the company’s search rankings, I’d expect you’d see a lot of finger-pointing from the Web team to Marketing to Corporate Communications.
At a small business? It’s just another duty for a stressed-out owner. You need only to look at the millions of unclaimed local business listings on Google and Yahoo to answer that question.
I recently conducted a search for Variable Information Printing software on Google. This expensive software is sold by large companies like Xerox and HP. The search listing returns showed multiple listings for a free shareware product, that was being sold by a legion of different “Black Hat” Web sites for $125. These spam sites crowded out the major competitors from the top listings. XMPIE, sold by Xerox, was the 80th return.
Yahoo, however, showed completely different results with Xerox as the first search return.
I’m sure at some point, someone at these major companies will notice this, and complain to Google, but not until weeks, perhaps months, have gone by. I wonder whose job it was to keep track of this? I bet it was someone in marketing, or maybe some guy on the Web team…
January 1, 1970
A new report from Forrester continues to track the growth of online video as a marketing tool:
- 64% of people online watch video on the Web in a typical month
- The Average viewer watches 56 minutes of online video a week
- In a typical week, 109 million hours of video are watched
Forrestor predicts that online video advertising will grow to $7.2 Billion by 2012.
Right now, everyone can upload to services like YouTube for free, but I wonder when the big money takes over this medium if that will last. It’s a great tool for small business to get seen in the competitive world of online marketing.
January 1, 1970
A Power Point on Local Search
January 1, 1970
Milner Hotels
(As a little diversion from modern marketing)
My dad spent much of his career at Milner Hotels, a chain that started in 1900 and lasted until the mid-60’s. It was a hotel for traveling salespeople in an era in which people didn’t mind sharing a bathroom with the people in the next room. At one point, it advertised itself as being the “World’s Largest Hotel Chain” – but that was in an era in which the numbers to achieve that ranking were much smaller than today – but still a significant accomplishment .
At any rate, I am always on the lookout for Milner Hotels memorbilia (which is seldom available). I found a guest magazine published by the Milner organization from 1954 on eBay. It was a monthly publication that was distributed freely in the hotel, to employees and by mail to people who wanted a subscription. There are no ads (except Milner promotions) and is a whopping 50 pages of text! The articles are like Dale Carnegie articles about being a good friend, a better person, and loving the good old USA.
What a different world. There are also profiles of hotel guests that would be impossible to print today. Let me summarize a story from the Enid, Oklahoma, Milner Hotel: A man called “Pistol Pete”, who was 92 in 1954 had stayed in the Hotel the previous month. Decades before, he participated in the fabled Oklahoma land rush. In the article he relates how he had tracked down his father’s killers as a boy and shot them with a pistol he still carried. He presented the gun to hotel guests, but now, however, it carried 6 notches on the handle. There is a photo of him in his cowboy gear and gun in the lobby of the Milner. Overall, it’s a very admiring story for, well, a man who claims to have killed six people who might have had a different version of how his father died.
If that wasn’t enough excitement for that month’s Milner Hotel Traveller, there was also an article about a manager who found an elderly guest dying in his room. The man was taken to a hospital, but soon died. It was not usually for people to take up residence in a Milner Hotel, and he had lived in the Milner hotel room for 6 months prior to his death. The manager returned to the old man’s room to try and find some indication of relatives to contact. He found, however, a cardboard briefcase with $250,000 in securities. That is like finding $1 million or more in today’s money. Like you, at this point I’m beginning to think this is all PR. But the man is identified in the story and he’s a former state politican and there is some amount of detail. Sooo, I guess it’s possible. The manager, of course, turns in the suitcase and is given $100 reward.
Just another month at Milner Hotels. I bet my dad couldn’t wait to get to work to see what would happen next! I’ll have more from Milner Hotels in my next post.
January 1, 1970
Thanks to Google’s Universal Search, there are a lot of new ways to appear at the top of search engines. One of these is Image Search. Google will be returning appropriate images back to searchers is a “blended” results page. It’s another chance to get to the top of Google results in a very competitive field. Each returned image, of course, will link back to the site that supplies the image.
To help your chances of your images being found by Google, make sure that your image tags provide detailed information on what the image is about: 2009 Ford Mustang Image. Also, make sure that it is found next to relevent text about the 2009 Ford Mustang.
Of course, it helps if you are not competing in the consumer marketplace. For example, in some large, slow-moving, business to business categories, it is still possible to add an image that will be picked up by Google. Identify the image with the keyword that you want to target, “variable information printing image”. Long-tail key words have the best chance to find a top image return in Google results.
January 1, 1970
Marketing technology doesn’t have to be used
Everyday at around noon, I get an automated telephone call on my cell phone. It’s a recorded message from a company that sells a service that will create these recorded phone calls for small business. It’s the most irritating interruption to my day. I can’t think of a poorer, worster, lamer, (choose your word) marketing plan than to send out unsolicited recorded messages to customers and potential customers. Why can’t marketers understand that just because a technology exists you don’t have to use it? I don’t mind recorded calls from my library telling me that a book I reserved is available. It’s performing a service and I can understand it helps the library save money, etc. But a recorded message in sales? I immediately understand that they don’t care about me as a potential customer, they’re simply trolling the waters. Now, let me think, which customers or potential customers do I want to send that message to….
January 1, 1970
Don’t Forget Direct Marketing
Every time the economy turns sour, businesses always cut back on advertising. It’s understandable but counterproductive. You may have to make your budgets tighter, but you can be smarter with your decisions.
For example, we hear that everyone is cutting all media except for Internet. Does that make sense? Are your current customers searching for you on the Web?
Your most valuable asset is your current customer base. If you had 30 seconds with a customer to convince them why they should keep buying your product instead of cutting back, what would that message be? It has to be strong, direct and clear. Work on it till you get it right.
Drop them a line.
