marketing

Search drives the sale; branding just validates it

In a fascinating article about branding versus SEO, search engine watch put into words very nicely a feeling that has been tugging at me for a long time:

Before-

In 1991, if you wanted to buy a portable compact disc player, you had to know:

1. What you wanted to buy (portable compact disc player) R.I.P. Branding
2. What brand you wanted to buy (Sony)
3. What product you wanted to buy (Discman)
4. What store to buy it at (The Wiz)
5. Where to find that store (Menlo Park Mall)

Aside from Step 1, every other piece of information came to you from branding.

After-

Can't afford to hire locally

In the past, we’ve only hired local sales people but we’re looking at the possibility of hiring remote reps. I know it’s hard to find employees in South Florida and I was wondering if you have any staff that works remotely and if so is there anything you can tell me that would help us?

My answer -- you can't afford not to. We tried for years to grow our sales team by hiring locally. We would hire-train-fire and then repeat. But all the while, I was watching Don Firth (friend and fellow Florida job board entrepreneur) grow his sales team three and four times as fast by hiring virtually from around the country.

I'm on twitter -- fashionably late?

I'm on twitter now too -- fashionably late according to Toby Dayton. Until recently, I thought twitter was just foolish but somehow in a very short matter of time, I have completely reversed my opinion. It took me a few years to start blogging and I generally prefer to arrive late to a technology party. So, I still consider it a bit early for twitter in spite of Toby. In fact, I am intrigued by my own reversal.

The most important reason, is perfectly articulated by Joel:

Check your Alexa ranking

Alexa has just announced that it changed the formula used to rank websites.  The formula now factors in data from other sources than the Alexa toolbar.

In recent months we've heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest. Ask and you shall receive!

We listened to your suggestions, and we believe that our new rankings system is much closer to what you asked for. We now aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users.

Sell premium content advertising yourself

Jason Calcanis is growing on me. First, his post about controlling startup costs and now sharp advice about selling ads through 3rd party networks. Conceptually, some of this thinking applies to the way we sell job postings as well.

It's so obvious to anyone with premium content that giving it away is a huge mistake in the long term. HUGE. It is a zero sum game: you have a limited amount of inventory. Give it away and folks get trained to think your inventory is cheap. Do it for too long and marketers don't want your audience.

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Blog politics -- the dogfight

Want to make a living from your blog? This is Michael Arrington, writing about how VC money is flowing into the blog business and touching on the dogfight:

And writing good content is only half the battle. You have to figure out the complex, dynamic web of politics between bloggers and mainstream media before you post to know where to get support. And you’ll need support in the form of links from other prominent bloggers. An early push can take a post and make it a headline on TechMeme, which leads to page views and notice by sponsors. But since blogging is almost by definition a conversation between bloggers, fights tend to break out over emotional issues. Cliques develop. Can you count on them to support you down the road?

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Evidence That Domain Ads Convert Better

Which advertising converts better - a search engine ad (Google AdWords for example shown to the right of organic search results) or the same ad displayed on a parked domain? 

In the domain industry, the latter is referred to as "the domain channel".  But in Google AdWords, you won't find any mention of domains at all.  Domain ads are included in Google's "content network" and Google provides  virtually zero information about it's content network and the "domain channel".

The Future of Internet Marketing

Frank Schilling calls our attention to a lengthy article by John Reese who gave the keynote at the recent TRAFFIC show in Las Vegas. There is a very convincing discussion about the use of video in here.  Also discussion of the long term future of SEO/SEM and content is very interesting.  A great read.

 Here's a piece of it to think about.  Imagine how this tidal wave will affect what you do:

Three Ways to Make Your Strategy Stick

If you read Guy Kawasaki, Jim Collins, Pat Lencioni, Verne Harnish and other  top gurus, you may develop truly world class mission statements, values, brand promise, and strategy.   But  if you don't communicate them well, they won't take you nearly so far.  Here's how to make sure you communicate these things well.  

From the co-authors of ¨Made to Stick¨, brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath comes their
manifesto, ¨Talking Strategy: Three Straightforward Ways to Make Your Strategy Stick¨.