Digital Marketing Success

When you’re starting a new business one of the key things you need to do is market research. Who are your potential customers, and what are their wants and needs? What sort of demand is there for your products or services? Who are your main competitors, what are they offering, and how can you differentiate your business from theirs?

So many questions… when all you really want are answers. You obviously need to know all of these things and more to help you define a viable business plan and create an effective marketing strategy for your new business. But where do you start? Things like surveys and focus groups are often prohibitively expensive, and more often than not out of the financial reach of new businesses. You could make informed guesses, of course, but you’re really looking for something a bit more tangible.

Enter the Internet – that huge and ever growing ethereal melting pot of consumers and business. According to the latest figures there are some 1.3 billion people online, and they span the demographic gamut. There’s a pretty good chance that a healthy portion of your target market, and most of your competition is already online.

So what, you might think. Well, on today’s interactive web people are doing much more than simply looking for and absorbing information; they’re engaging in a two way discourse with their peers, a constantly evolving discussion about anything and everything that interests them – from how to grow runner beans to the relative merits of the Lisbon Treaty to what brand of hair-colouring they prefer. The web offers you a window into their world… a window of opportunity that could give your fledgling business that elusive competitive edge.

Web 2.0 maven Vanessa Fox, one of the guest speakers on social media at this year’s Search Marketing World conference in Dublin, believes that access to social media is levelling the playing field when it comes to market research. “Particularly for small businesses, who perhaps before didn’t have access to things like market research, focus groups and all those things that cost a lot of money, I think it’s very easy now for them to tap into the [online] conversation and see what’s going on,” she said.

Vanessa points out that there are all sorts of conversations going on online – not just about your business, but about key competitors, and about your industry in general – from which small businesses can glean real insight. “Even just the ability to hear what’s going on and take feedback from that I think is really valuable,” she said.

From conducting a simple keyword search to see who your main competitors are; to browsing through online groups, forums and blogs to identify the key influencers in your space; to setting up automated alerts and feeds that flag the conversations you want to track, and much more besides… there are a raft of tools out there to help you find out more about your customers, your competition, your industry and ultimately your business.

In the next article we’ll take a closer look at a few of them.

Image Credit: Explain market research by mafleen on Flickr under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Prominent Irish blogger Damien Mulley recently pointed out the folly of focussing on some elements of online marketing at the expense of others.

Pursue more established online marketing strategies and ignore social media and your letting a golden opportunity slip by – but by equal measure, if you put all your efforts into social media and eschew more established online avenues you could be missing the lions share of online business.

Or as Damien puts it:

How many people have an email address, how many have a Facebook account?

Consider all your options

You absolutely can’t ignore the online "conversation"… but then neither should you neglect the more established elements of online marketing, like e-mail, SEO, PPC, affiliate programmes and even online display advertising if it dovetails with your particular audience. Also, its often worth considering how offline marketing can augment and complement your online campaigns.

Do your homework

Know what you want to achieve before you start, know your market and where they spend their time online, identify the key influencers. Then align your marketing strategy accordingly.

New marketing doesn’t kill old marketing

Marketing is evolving — but that evolution doesn’t eradicate what preceded it, it just adds more strings to the marketers bow, giving you a suite of new and exciting ways to engage with the people who really matter to your business.

You can see — or rather hear the proof of this in any outdoor market, anywhere in the world. From the street markets of London to the Souks of Marrakech to Asia and beyond,  you’ll find the very first marketing medium in history — the human voice — employed to hawk the merchants’ wares, as effective in the digital age as it ever was.

A more rounded future

I think we’ll see a much more holistic approach to marketing emerge over the next few years, and will gradually see the stark delineation between "traditional" and "online" marketing converge into a much more rounded whole. We’ll stop thinking in terms of “traditional” versus “digital”marketing… it will just be marketing, and we’ll employ a carefully tailored blend of techniques spanning a variety of media to engage effectively with our target market.

It’s going going to take time, of course… but it promises to be an intriguing transition.

The subject line is perhaps the single most important piece of content in your entire e-mail marketing campaign. It’s the line that differentiates your e-mail from the raft of promotional messages cluttering your readers’ inbox.  Will they open your mail, or won’t they… a lot of the time it can depend on your subject line.

Naturally, then, it pays to spend a little time, care and attention on your subject line. You want to craft a subject line that clearly states the value proposition of your message, and obviously make sure there aren’t any glaring typos in it that make your organisation seem unprofessional.

It’s a shame that Irish e-retail portal Buy4Now.ie didn’t do this with their latest missive. I just received the following e-mail promotion from Buy4Now.ie on behalf of Thomas Sanderson conservatory and sunroom blinds with a glaring typo in the subject line. Instead of “sunroom” they’d typed “sundroom”. A perfectly understandable typo… but why, oh why, wasn’t it checked and corrected before hitting send?

A closer look at the offending subject line showing the offending typo:

If I was Thomas Sanderson I’d be less than chuffed with this effort. It reflects badly on them and on Buy4Now. Come on guys… you can do much better than this!

We’re in the final furlong now. After six months of hard work the body of the book is written, and we’ll be getting the final bits and pieces (figures, diagrams, glossary, case studies, etc.) out to the publisher over the next week or so.

Phew! It’s been a marathon… but worth it.

Estimated publication date in the UK and Ireland is very early 2009 with international markets following later next year.

Very exciting stuff!

Why write this book?

Understanding Digital Marketing is a book for anyone who want’s to take their marketing to the next level by making the leap to digital as it moves into the mainstream. It’s for small business owners, traditional marketers, entrepreneurs and business executives who want a comprehensive overview of online marketing that will help them to hit the ground running to promote their business on the Internet.

It will:

• Help people with little knowledge of digital marketing to get up-to-speed quickly
• Deliver the the basic know-how people need to work effectively with online marketing professionals
• Provide a solid foundation for business owners and entrepreneurs looking to implement their own Internet marketing campaigns

More news on publication dates and availability nearer the time – meanwhile, subscribe to the Digital Marketing Success RSS Feed or check back regularly for extracts, insight and news from the online marketing world. And don’t forget to let us have your feedback in the post comments.

Calvin & Damian!

Just had to fire in a quick post about the twitter story competition being run by @copyblogger — write a story in EXACTLY 140 characters, post it on twitter, add a link to your tweet in the comments on the original blog post, and be in with the chance of winning an 8GB iPod Touch and lots of other goodies.

Outstanding!

I love the way twitter makes you condense your writing, squeezing the maximum out of every character. Here’s my swiftly penned missive:

She paused, shivering involuntarily; the wave of adrenalin surged through her, leaving her giddy and disoriented. It was quiet. He was gone!

Think you can do better — get tweeting, there’s not much time left.

We all know how crucial attracting and retaining bright, talented people is to the success of any organisation. Now is a particularly crucial time on the recruitment scene. The bright young stars of tomorrow — true digital natives (PDF File) — are entering the workforce… and things are changing.

These connected whiz-kids are looking around, wondering where they should work… and where are they looking? Online, naturally; but they’re not just looking at company and jobs websites, they’re checking out your online reputation on social networks like Facebook, MySpace and others, and are looking for the profiles of executives on professional networks like LinkedIn.

Social screening is a two way street

You read a lot about how employers are trawling these networks both to “check” applicants’ details and looking for prospective employees; about how candidates should have their professional profile up on LinkedIn, and how they should be aware of their online footprint and watch what they post. What you don’t hear much about is the fact that those same candidates are doing exactly the same thing in reverse. Be under no illusion, your prospective employees are checking you out too… and as digital natives they’re in their natural environment: i.e. they’re probably better at it than you are!

In a nutshell: if you don’t measure up, then sorry, you don’t get to employ the best and the brightest — and that could hurt the long term prosperity of your business.

[Read more →]

Jason Calacanis is no stranger to courting controversy. Not so long ago the serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur had the SEO community in uproar with his public comments at various search marketing conferences.

SMX Social 2008, Long Beach, CA: “SEO is a wasted industry. You’re wasting your time fighting off ranking problems instead of creating great content. You’re just spinning your wheels hoping the Google gods won’t kick you out. It’s a bad way to live your life. Using a human service is a better way to go about it.”

SES 2006, Chicago: “SEO is bulls**t…90% of the SEO market is made up of snake oil salesmen.”

The firestorm that followed reverberated across the social web….

At the risk of attracting a little vitriol, I have to say that there’s truth in both of those statements.

[Read more →]

I’ve been using Twitter in earnest for a couple of weeks now, and I have to say it’s genuinely surprised me. At first I was sceptical. What possible value can you squeeze into a 140 character post? Plenty, as it turns out.

But the real value of twitter (and I guess other micro-blogging/short message broadcast services like Jaiku and Pownce) isn’t about individual messages — it’s about the cumulative stream of messages: what that reveals about you and the people you’re connected with. I love it.

In the short time I’ve been using Twitter I’ve realised that it really can add tremendous value in lots of ways:

Some of twitters strengths

• you to feel more connected and in touch with the people around you
• it helps strengthen your relationships with the people you already know
• it’s a great way to hook up with like-minded people you don’t know
• you can follow thought-leaders and innovators in your field, see what’s on their minds, and gain tremendous insight from that
• it puts your finger on the beating pulse of your industry — if it’s happening people are talking about it on twitter, and linking to valuable resources on the web
• it’s a great way to harness groundswell to promote new products and services through social media (as witnessed recently with @patphelans remarkable Twitterfone launch) — see Pat’s Twitterfone launch summary on his blog.

I’m sure there are plenty more. Of course it’s also a big distraction and potential time waster… but I’m working on that .

But now the subject of Twitter Spam has reared its head, with the publication of a new Twitter Black List.

Which begs the question, is spam really going to be a problem on a service that’s fundamentally based around opt-in? You only see the tweets of people you choose to follow, and you can opt back out again at any time if they start posting lots of spammy tweets. From my admittedly limited experience you don’t need a blacklist to spot potential twitter spammers — you just need a soupcon of common sense.

When someone on twitter follows you, resist the guilt reflex to follow them back, and check their profile and their twitter-stream to see if they have anything interesting to say. If they do, great, if not… or if you see a lot of spammy links, don’t follow them… simple.

Where’s the problem?

Danny Sullivan posted a terrific summary of the twitter spam issue over on his Daggle blog recently. It’s definitely worth a read.

One thing in Danny’s summary — about Twitter’s @replies confused me a bit though.

Danny says:

@replies. By default, you will only see messages from people who call you out using your name (like @dannysullivan) if you are following them. This means you’re initially safe from unwanted messages — no one you don’t know can show up in your Twitter stream. But some change the default to see @replies from anyone. I do — and it’s a great way to meet new people you aren’t following. If they say something interesting, catch my attention somehow — I’m like great! A new person to follow. But it also means potentially, people you don’t know can get into your Twitter replies tab or if you use a tool like Twhirl (love it, recommend it!), then they’re potentially even more in your face. Yeah, there’s a “spam” potential there, and hopefully it won’t grow. If someone is abusive, you can block them individually. See this on Twitter for more about @replies.

Now, I interpret the Twitter Support page on @replies a little differently from Danny. I think the @reply settings on your Twitter profile relate to @replies SENT TO OTHER PEOPLE by the people you follow. The options are:

• You receive @replies sent from the people you follow only if they’re sent to other people you also follow. (this is the twitter default setting)
• You receive @replies sent from the people you follow to any user regardless of whether you follow them or not. (this is my preferred setting and a great way to find new and interesting people connected to the people you’re already following)
• You don’t receive any @replies sent by the people you follow to anyone other than yourself.

You will ALWAYS receive @replies directed at your particular username from anybody (i.e anyone who types in @yourusername), regardless of your settings and regardless of whether you follow them or not. Your Twitter @reply settings will dictate whether you see replies sent from the people you follow to other people… if you follow that!

To test this I just created a new user (not following anybody and not followed by anybody) and sent an @reply to my main account. It got through perfectly, as did the reply I sent back in return.

So — is the fact that ANYBODY can @reply anybody else, without the “Follow” opt in a good thing, or a potential loophole that spammers could exploit in the future… comments please!

An article in today’s Sunday Times outlines how spending on SEO in the UK is on the increase as businesses vie for potentially lucrative organic search listings in Google.

According to the article SEO spending in Britain will reach £400 million this year, and the figure is growing 60% year on year.

The article also highlights another, less welcome trend: basically that newspapers really don’t get Search Marketing!

When it comes to describing SEO I found it simplistic. Keeping things simple for the sake of clarity is of course a good thing… but in this case the article manages to be simplistic and confusing.

For example, Author James Ashton describes SEO as:

Part crystal-ball watching, part trial and error, it is the practice of improving lacklustre internet commerce by getting a firm noticed on the results pages of search engines.

Hmm! Not sure that’s really it.

Summarising how companies go about SEO he adds:

Most companies achieve SEO by peppering their websites with keywords that Google’s technology can easily read.

While comparing SEO and PPC he ventures:

Of the two, SEO was invented first, with the concept of paying for positions in search results introduced only a decade ago by Goto.com, now part of Yahoo.

Strictly speaking the article isn’t inaccurate, and it has some interesting facts and figures in it, but overall I found it a tad misleading.

Perhaps my biggest problem with it though is the unwritten implication that SEO is about gaming  the engines — when of course (at least for legitimate businesses looking for long term rankings), that’s really not what it’s about at all.

Think I’ll stick with this SEO theory.

Just reading this over on Conor O’Neill’s Argolon blog: should a small business blog about development of a new product? I think the answer has to be a resounding yes.

Gordon Murray of eWrite in Cork is apparently considering chronicling the trials and tribulations of product development in his blog. As Conor points out, there are naturally concerns and challenges for any business in opening up to very public online scrutiny… concerns surrounding intellectual property, and the time and effort involved in maintaining and updating a vibrant and compelling blog.

But open, honest communication is what it’s all about in this Web 2.0 world. The interactive web is about much more than pushing a marketing message — it’s about engaging in conversation, dialogue, debate.

I have to agree with Conor: this is a great idea. Brave souls like Gordon, who embrace the opportunity to engage with their audience online, to build a vibrant community around their brand that transcends the boundaries of their organisation, will, I believe, reap very real dividends down the line. Who knows, the community Gordon builds through his blog may even contribute constructively to the product development process — solving problems, making suggestions, requesting features….

Not so many years from now, collaborative product development will become the universally accepted norm. Sharing experiences and harnessing the collective wisdom of the crowd will be as natural as checking your e-mail in the morning. But for now its still bleeding edge… still the province of trail-blazers like Gordon Murray.

So go for it Gordon… and good luck. I for one will be looking on with interest.

Chronicle the development of an app and a business? | Argolon