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From 6pm – 7pm GMT today 4th March 2011, Seth Godin will be making his first appearance on Twitter to discuss The Domino Project.
Seth has religiously stayed away from Twitter so today is a first!
You can follow the conversation and questions about Seth Godin’s new book for Project Domino entitled Poke the Box. (There will also be undoubted delight from many in the internet marketing industry).
Using the hashtag #pokethebox, Seth will be tweeting from @projectdomino
Interestingly, I was just penning a post for another blog on the subject of Rupert Murdoch etc when Seth’s latest article landed in my inbox – Rupert Murdoch has it backwards
I think Seth, and potentially many others, may have it wrong. I include myself on this as I am now re-writing my post for the other blog!
Why? Because I read this, literally seconds before Seth’s post landed, on The Register – Murdoch: Google is mortal and together we can kill it
Have some of us in the industry possibly become innured and accustomed to Google’s presence in our world? Do we fight it or argue about Google being the ‘main man’? Or have we given in? It isn’t that long (only 15 years) since I started in the industry, but there was no Google then. I don’t remember suffering to be honest.
The whole purpose of setting up an Internet Marketing business was to help companies to be found online. There were plenty of places where they could be found in the pre-Google days, but the SMEs didn’t know how to be featured in those places. For some, the costs vs rewards of internet marketing were infinitely better than now back then.And far less stressful!
Have we given Google an infinite rein to run around on like a demanding, spoilt brat? Or is it just “let the best man win” and Google are, indeed, winning?
I have just looked at the last 5 email newsletters from the industry which have landed today. I will choose one, at random, to illustrate how deeply ingrained our reliance on Google has become.
Today’s SearchEngine Land: SearchCap, the day in search for November 23rd. First 4 stories: Google + one ad for SMX. Look further down that email, 34 mentions of Google. Just to give you a clue as to its prevalence, there are precisely half that number of instances of the word “and”.
I urge people to read the somewhat controversial, possibly, article in El Reg and then comment. But only after you have paused for thought.
Forget you are American and so is Google, forget you earn your living from SERPs, and Google, adwords etc. First and foremost you are an internet marketer and should be using every channel and avenue for your clients.
What exactly does this alt.thinking mean to you?
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Seth Godin makes a relevant point in his Gotcha! blog post today.
As consumers we hate to be lied to, yet as marketers we are trained to hide the truth behind marketing spiel in order to gain a clickthrough, a conversion or a sale.
When marketing your products and services in this day and age, honesty helps. In fact, it is essential.
If you fail to mention a particular aspect of your product eg it won’t work in certain situations, or its size is cleverly concealed by “trick photography”, or any other issue that might affect the consumer’s purchase decision or use of your product, then you can guarantee that some dissatisfied customer somewhere will mention it.
Review sites, Twitter and forums are full of negative comments about products, companies, brands and so on. When trying to find the right product, consumers are becoming prosumers and increasingly looking to such sites to find reviews, customer comments, and complaints before making a decision on which product they will buy.
Many of these type of complaints can be handled by:
a) telling the truth about the product in the first place
b) dealing with the complaints as and when they occur and
c) rectifying the misapprehension of future customers by changing the description or photo of said product to be honest and accurate
A sale is not a good sale when that consumer ends up feeling misled. It is more likely to be the cause of many non-sales in the future if the customer then complains, whether online or offline, through word of mouse or word of mouth.
In a world full of lies, from politics to the corporate world, the media through to marketing, your every day punter needs to be told the truth. And you will win, long term, by telling it how it is.
Let your consumers be content with your content, and then they will be loyal, evangelical and return customers.
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Seth Godin has recently posted twice on the subject of the “middle of the market”. His first post Fast In, Fast Out obviously started a train of thought and triggered the second about The Paradox of the Middle of the Market.
Whilst Seth is mainly talking about product development and then marketing that to the masses, the same applies to internet marketing. For instance, keywords and optimisation.
When seeking keywords and optimising your website or campaigns, do you aim for the words that will appeal to the masses or do you actively seek out the cutting edge, trending words that will capture the interest (however short lived that may be) of the early adopters, geeks and nerds?
Or, do you look to the long tail? The stragglers who have taken a long time to convince that your product or service is precisely what they need may well turn into your long life sales. Although there are less people both at the forefront of adoption and in the long tail, the competition is highest in the middle of the market for those in the know, whereas being the first to market or the longest standing player with a ‘durable’ product/service has its benefits and less competition.
When developing your keyword list (or any other internet marketing strategy) it is important to think about the ‘marathon effect’ and endeavour to reach as many of the ‘runners’ as possible. There are a few front runners who are in the lead and inspire those behind them in the central main body of runners, leading to a long tail of those who are still in the race, just as determined to have taken part but slower to reach the finish.
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Seth Godin has written an article about the changes in marketing over the last couple of decades. Interestingly, as he was a large, corporate advertiser in his past life, he talks about the impact of the internet, and in particular, the growth of social media on advertising thinking to bring it round full circle to the ‘personalised interaction’ of the old days.
He points out that the marketing industry can no longer get away with force feeding ads and marketing messages to the masses. The audience is far more savvy now than in the past, and will retaliate if it is felt that the marketing is just spam. This can backfire profoundly on a marketing campaign, and it is teaching marketing execs to think smaller, local, personal. To try viral, word of mouse, community building. As he puts it, to build a tribe and lead those people to somewhere they (and you) actually want to go.
This level of thinking by such a respected thinker bodes well for small or cautious companies who wish to be ‘organic’ in the growth of their brand or business. However, as some have found, you can still be too successful for your own good and the brightly burning flame can resemble magnesium – fast and furious, and then out!
However, anyone seeking to build a community around their products or services should read our previous articles and posts about building subscribers through your blog, using social media successfully, socialising, and Web 2.0 tools.
