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Published
Article
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| Don't Become
Another .com Road Kill
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| Remember those Super
Bowl and World Cup commercials where you saw talking hand puppets,
scantily dressed women, cowboys herding cats and crude lettering
on cardboard? Can you actually name one .com company that paid
for these millions of dollar/eurodollars for brand awareness
ads?
Doesn't this type of marketing remind you
of a IPO.com frenzied "drunken sailor school of budgeting"
- meaning, spend like a drunken sailor hitting his/her first
port of call in years, with no thought other than "brand
awareness" coming to mind? Got the picture yet? Want
the cliff notes to the rest of my article? Three words repeated
from my header - "target customers online."
Some do and don'ts, with the do's first:
| 1. |
Think
digital marketing - use keywords your customers may
punch in to a search engine to find your site throughout
your overall online and offline marketing processes. This
forces you to stay focused on your customer niche and
ensures context relevancy for your web site. The latter
is becoming critical to garner high rankings on Alta Vista,
Google and Inktomi.
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| 2. |
Advertise
cost-effectively online where your customers go -
this doesn't have to be top tier web sites (more expensive
typically); but can be second or third tier community
sites. Use online media buying to save money; look at
One Media Place, formerly Ad Auction for some unsold inventory
and bid with the best of them for a deal! http://www.onemediaplace.com
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| 3. |
Feature
opt-in e-mail as a centerpiece of your marketing campaign
- now is the time to negotiate a 90-120 day media plan
with some of the market leaders. Yes Mail (one of our
favorites) is offering a discount of 10-30%. And, use
HTML rich media, your ad copy will look much better, in
turn driving a better click-through results; but only
if you are a B2C if B2B then don't use HTML, just plain
text.
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| 4. |
Immerse
your business with the online community - post to
Newsgroups announcing a special online contest, promotion
or giveaway that builds over a finite period of time.
Get those geeks talking in the virtual world - remember
the truism of good PR, any PR is better than no PR.
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| 5. |
Ask
your existing customers where they would recommend your
advertising to reach them online. Everybody likes
to have their opinions valued - so reach out and ask for
their input, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
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| 6. |
Think
and act like a guerrilla marketing type - incorporate
"guerrilla marketing" techniques to drive your
business in unique ways. Go to the source, the guy who
coined the term and many of the processes, Jay Conrad
Levinson. http://www.gmarketing.com
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Ready for some don'ts?
| 1. |
Don't
use TV, Radio or Billboards unless you have lots of money
to spend (read millions typically). Yes, they work to
develop brands, but be aware of the disconnect factor
when you are trying to reach online customers. When was
the last time you jumped up from the TV set to write down
a URL you saw splashed across a screen or stopped your
car driving down your local boulevard when you saw a billboard
that caught your attention? Not very often!
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| 2. |
Don't
pay top dollar for banner advertising - negotiate
a good deal for yourself and don't believe the sales rep
when they tell you all inventory is sold out! There is
lots of unsold inventory out there, just look at the number
of "house ads" (done for the company who owns
the site and published on their site) being run on many
web sites. Do some old-fashioned digital horse-trading
and leverage your media buy!
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| 3. |
Don't
base your business on the "high tide raises all boats
model" - there is definitely a storm brewing
and we don't mean just at your local movie theater with
George Clooney starring (sorry ladies). We are telling
our clients to batten down the hatches and leverage their
marketing dollars as much as possible - the party is over,
time to get down to building viable business models based
on selling tangible goods and services.
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| 4. |
Don't
use biz speak verbiage in your marketing processes
- if I see another site that has "first mover advantage"
quoted throughout the site I am going back to the radio
for news/information. Be real, tell people what you do,
how you do it and what the value is based on - enabling
them to quickly (it's the web ...) understand what your
business is all about.
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Lee Traupel has
20 plus years of marketing experience. He is the co-founder
of a Northern California and Brussels Belgium based, privately
held, Marketing Services and Software Company, Intelective
Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com.
Intelective focuses exclusively on providing services
to small-to-medium-sized companies that need strategic
and tactical marketing services. He can be reached at
Lee@intelective.com.
Please click here to Contact us or call toll free 530.432.8764
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"Working with Intelective Communications
is pure joy and enlightenment. They are so much at the leading edge that it's
inspiring to be connected with them in any way."
-Jay Conrad Levinson, Author of Guerrilla Marketing
book series and Marketing Pioneer |
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