Archive for January, 2008

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If you don’t know who Seth Godin is, find out fast because his knowledge will make you a lot of money!

He’s different from most of the marketers I recommend because he’s not a “hands on” type of teacher, he’s more of a thought leader. You’ll know what I mean when you’ve watched the video Hope you enjoy it…

For the last several years internet marketers, web designers and programmers have been talking about “Web 2.0″ and “Social Media”.

This buzz has begun to spread as sites like Facebook, Myspace and Youtube have been growing in popularity.

In fact, most of us have experienced “Web 2.0″ even if we were completely unaware.

As I was working today, a program came on the radio that really piqued my interest for 2 reasons.

1. It was Jarvis Cocker presenting it, which was unusual considering it was Radio 4.

2. He was presenting a program about music fanzines.

(The BBC describes the fanzine phenomena far better than I can here, so I recommend you listen again on the BBC’s website.)

So, you may be thinking what have Jarvis Cocker and Radio 4 got to do with Web 2.0? Well, nothing actually - but Fanzines have everything to do with it!

Let me explain…

Fanzines were (and still are to a degree) magazines produced by music fans for music fans. They were impassioned, underground and followed none of the agendas or allegiances (political or otherwise) that the large publishing houses did.

They were distributed at concerts and the like by tiny distribution networks of friends of the author.

This was grass-roots, ground-up media. They weren’t doing it for the money; they did it because they loved it. And their readers loved them for it.

Some of the more popular Fanzines eventually became mainstream (I think Rolling Stone magazine began as a Fanzine), although the original fans trailed off because the publication became too mainstream, losing its edge and “selling out” to the major publishers.

So what has this got to do with Web 2.0? And more importantly, what’s this got to do with your business?

Even before the internet, there were people who felt passionate enough about a subject to publish their own magazine. These guys really struggled, (the program discussed the old fashioned crank-handles printers that were used) but they still managed to get their thoughts out there and influence the success of the bands they wrote about.

Some bands and musicians owe a lot of their success to positive reviews in popular Fanzines of the time.

40 years ago, to publish a Fanzine, you had to really want to do it. You had to have a deep, burning desire to get the printing press, typewriter, get distribution… etc. This meant that only the staunch fans would ever attempt it and it would quite literally be a labour of love.

Today, with websites such as Facebook, Myspace and hundreds of others, there’s no stopping the 21st century equivalent of the Fanzine.

The difference today is that creating articles, videos, audios, pictures about your area of passion is so easy. It’s so easy that it’s not just the stalwart, die-hard fans of a subject that are doing it anymore. More and more “ordinary” people are getting involved as well.

This may take the form of blogging, youtube videos, podcasts, myspace pages or any other website that allows users to create, share and vote on theirs, and others content.

In nutshell, that’s what Web 2.0 is all about: Anyone can create a “Fanzine” on any topic they want and share it with the world.
The media and advertising agencies no longer have the monopoly on what we watch, read or listen to.

“Top down” traditional marketing is beginning to lose its effectiveness.

People aren’t listening to advertisers as much. Word of mouth has been given the power of instant, global communication… The possibilities for growth are mind-blowing:

• Your potential customers may be talking about a problem your company could solve on a forum.
• Someone may be blogging about your industry.
• Another may be making a video about you (think that’s far fetched? Search for “iphone” on YouTube).

…And this is without you actively taking part or using this to your advantage. Can you begin to see the power of this if you did?

The way marketing works is beginning to turn on its head. The message is starting to come from the “bottom up” rather than the “top down”. The masses are now broadcasting their own content — not a handful of broadcasters creating content for the masses.

This change won’t happen overnight. This is a gradual process and is happening now, and you really need to know about it before your competitors do…
Like with all big shifts, there’s potential for profit for business owners (like you and me) who get the “first mover” advantage.

Web 2.0 is still wide open. There are lots of opportunities to be had but there are a lot of pitfalls as well.

I’ve spent the last few months investigating what works and what doesn’t with Web 2.0 and Social Bookmarking for “normal” small and medium businesses, not just the silicone valley start-ups… and the outlook is good.

Businesses that are good at what they do and keep their customers satisfied will do well. Businesses with poor quality and bad customer service will find it harder to hide that fact. (About bloody time too!)

I’m dedicating a lot of time (and money) to learning and testing some of the leading marketing strategies using Web 2.0 and sharing them with you when I know they work.

I’m keeping away from the faddish, spammy or blackhat stuff, and will be focusing on solid principles that’ll bring you more business and help grow your company.

In fact I’m in a lucky position because I can test these methods not only on my websites, but with my diverse range of clients websites as well. That way, I can be pretty certain it’ll work for you when I show you how it’s done!

Keep an eye on this blog for any updates.

The times they are a-changin’!

Cheers,

George

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Further reading:

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (Changed my way of thinking when I first read it!)

The Attention Age Doctrine by Rich Schefren (It’s rather hypey, but the points he makes are spot on.)

I’ve just re-read this before I posted — it’s a bit of a rant. Sorry about that, but I do get quite impassioned when I talk about web design (yes, I should get out more…). Normal service will resume in the next post.

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When you or your web designer plans & builds your website, do you start with the end in mind? Or do you go get sucked into the trap of making it look pretty, or sleek to the detriment of sales?

My experience and testing (as well as many other marketers) flys in the face of pretty, sleek or clever websites. 99% of them simply don’t work for most businesses.

This is because of a number of reasons, but here are a few that I’ve experienced first hand:

1. The business who wants to “impress” their competition with an expensive looking site. Well, there’s better ways to impress the competition than that… Making more money than them is a good start

2. The business who wants to clone their (more successful) competitors web site, blindly assuming it’s actually bringing in sales for the competitor. (In about 80% of cases, it isn’t. This results in the horrible “marketing incest” that happens when bad marketing gets copied by rivals who don’t know any better either. Look under the Central Heating section in Yellow Pages to see what I mean!)

3. They rely on their web designer to write the copy, come up with a strategy and market it. This is where things usually go pear-shaped…

Now, there’s nothing wrong with web designers. I work with many of them and they’re cool people. However, they are not marketers. If they were that good at marketing, they’d be doing it for a living, right?

Some of them are now catching up quickly, such as Morgan Wylie, but most web designers are left stunned when I explain how I generate business online. (One such web designer was left looking physically shocked and bewildered after getting a 20 min direct response marketing crash course in a meeting I attended, but that’s another blog post…)

So let a web designer do their job: design your website. Nothing else. Get a copywriter to write the copy, and a marketer to market it. Of course each of the professionals paths crosses, and everyone has to co-operate, but the main, specialist tasks are left to the specialists. Don’t be tempted to cut corners and hand the whole job to one person - you’ll only end up doing it again!

4. The business that doesn’t really know what their website is for. There are still huge numbers of businesses, especially in the UK, who simply throw a website up and hope for the best. This is madness!

A business website must always start with the end in mind: money. I mean, that’s the sole purpose of the website when you strip away the pretty picture, the sleek logos and the Flash animated intro, right? We’re not here for the fun of it are we? The sole purpose of your website is to get more money in your pocket. Pretty obvious really, but it’s amazing how many business owners lose sight of that.

The next natural question once you know your site needs to make money is: “how is it done?” This is when most people get the “oh f**k” moment, and realise there’s more to this internet stuff than meets the eye.

This moment usually comes when they’ve either poured thousands in the a sleek website, or they poured their heart and soul into doing it themselves, learning web design from scratch. A large proportion of people are in this state when they contact me. This is tough, because I hate giving bad news - especially when I can see a lot of time or money has been invested in a website.

When this is the case, I go for the “clean sheet” approach. We set up new Google Adwords campaigns, design and publish landing pages in subdirectories (that usually pull well from the word go), implement analytics, and rethink the marketing strategy in a lot of cases. The results can be pretty amazing. Check these results out from the last couple of months I got for my clients:

Client #1 — Massive Click Through Rate increase:

Client #2 - New landing pages = massive conversion rates.

Implemented landing pages for Adwords campaign and reduced cost per conversion (lead) from £130.53 to £40.40!

These images are a bit big, so I’ve posted the links instead:

Before: http://www.laneconsultancy.com/blog/images/lpbefore.jpg

After: http://www.laneconsultancy.com/blog/images/lpafter.jpg

Note: In the last example, look at the average cost per click: £11.02(!) - and we still made it profitable with a good Adwords campaign and landing page.

Moral of the story:

1. Use what works, scrap the rest (no matter how nice it looks or how much work/money went into it),
2. Ignore any untested advice.
3. Web designers as a rule aren’t as good at marketing as marketers.
4. Use the right people for the right job.
5. Test everything like a mad scientist!
6. It can be done. Marketing online is a steep learning curve. It has been for me, but keep going — there’s a pot of gold with your name on it!

To your success,

George.

Add me as a friend/connection!

A big mistake many people make on the internet is they get all excited and forget good marketing practice.

It’s easily done, I’ve done it myself. (I’ve been looking into some very cool “Web 2.0″ stuff that I’ll be revealing in a future blog post.) However like most things, if you don’t know the basics, any attempts to do the advanced stuff will fall apart.

My friend and colleague Doug McIsaac has just posted a couple of “short and sweet” videos on YouTube, running over the basics of good direct marketing. It’ll take you less than 10 minutes to watch them both, but will give you a quick refresher if you’re a seasoned marketer and a good grounding if you’re new.

Direct response marketing is the foundation of all successful internet marketing, and if you learn these principles, you can apply them to the internet or any other media you can think of.

Watch Dougs videos here.
Doug’s planning to produce a series of these videos in the coming weeks, so subscribe to his YouTube channel to keep track of any new videos!

Cheers,

George.

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