This is the final post of the series. To start from the beginning. click here.

In this post we will briefly explore the last example in that post. For a recap, the business up for discussion involves a toy company. The following bits of information were given.

1. The company’s website is subpar.
2. They are considering a radio campaign.
3. They are launching a new product shortly—so shortly, in fact, that they have determined that it is unlikely that they will be able to wait for a purely internet marketing campaign to return results.

This will likely be the most expensive of the discussed campaigns (though by no means are we going to forget about trying to reduce costs by developing a deliberate marketing strategy), so it may be a lesson that planning early is key to minimizing costs. Luckily, if the company is considering the use of a radio campaign, they already know that they may need to spend a couple bucks.

When conducting a radio or television campaign, the first step must always be to prepare the website. Quick changes which make the web presence presentable are key. The reasoning behind this argument is that in nearly every case, a radio or television advertisement drives potential customers to Google for a quick web search. In most cases, the consumer should not be left to respond to the call to action directly. Rather, the consumer, it should be assumed, will forget nearly all of the information from the advertisement. The use of any active marketing strategy, therefore, should only be expected to influence the desires, and therefore searching habits, of a desired consumer base.
The first step, therefore, is an emergency website facelift.

Next, quick optimization tactics (META information optimization, content generation, etc.) is key to try to tackle some of the keywords of utmost importance.

Third, frequent and directed press releases (and article directory submissions) can produce significant results in minutes to hours. Though these will do little to boost the company’s website itself, the press releases will give the company high ranking search engine results for difficult keywords.

Fourth, the radio campaign may be conducted. The building blocks are all set, and after the other steps are complete, the radio campaign can be a success. In order to minimize costs, the campaign should begin with an attempt to get free exposure from local and college radio stations. Frequently they want local content and will allow the company to get air time at no cost.

Fifth, the radio campaign should be complimented by an inexpensive direct marketing strategy (mailing, flyer distribution, etc.) to maximize the return.

I will now discuss a typical marketing campaigns for the second scenario posed in the first blog of this series. If you missed it, click here. The situation is this:

An established mechanic finds his business in heavy competition in recent years. Many shops are popping up around his, and he is seeing a steady decline in business and must lower his rates to stay competitive. He doesn’t want to spend a fortune on marketing as his operational costs are significant, but he can’t fathom a 20 thousand dollar a month advertising strategy.

Three key elements of this scenario really stand out as the most important. Once again, we must consider the stated fact that his operational costs are high. Second, the budget is described to be low. The third point, which is that time is of the essence, is perhaps of even higher priority. I will describe these issues in reverse order.

First, time is of the essence. That is to say that no matter the plan, no matter the marketing campaign, no matter the tools used, we don’t have much time. The difference between this example and many others is that while the mechanic cannot spend money like an enormous corporation would, he cannot afford to stay in business very long with the current trends: lowered prices, increased competition, etc. This information is not given, but it comes with knowing the industry. Having had experience in the automotive repair industry, casey troy marketing, has worked closely with clients to develop strategies that would fit their budgets while dynamically adapting to their industry. As such, it has become abundantly clear that there are two ways in which automotive repair/mechanic businesses run. First, they may employ mechanics at an hourly rate. Second, they pay by the job. In either case they face the risk of operating costs running above revenue generated or losing employees if they do not maintain adequate business. In other words, marketing strategies must have a quick turnaround.

Next, the budget must be considered. While we will seek a plan that maximized budget, step one is to determine the type of budget. In this case, the budget is described to be on the low side while taking into consideration the above paragraph’s message.

Lastly, his operational costs are high. This is incorporated in the paragraph above last, but the fact is distinctly important in that the implication that the business needs to see a turn return remains important.

All things considered, a fitting campaign may include the following:

• Guerrilla marketing tactics to hit high yield niche locations and demographics. If the shop is near a school, flyering, direct distribution of coupons, etc. should be inexpensive yet effective.
• Press releases are key if the area is small enough to capture. casey troy marketing, for example has been working with many clients in smaller districts of Los Angeles and its surrounding areas. Smaller area such as Santa Clarita (Valencia, Newhall, Canyon Country, Castaic), Gardena, Santa Monica, Studio City, etc. are areas in which conquering keywords with frequent press releases is feasible.
• SEO… just about always, these situations dictate some basic search engine optimization, search engine marketing, or SEMM.
• Cheap radio/Television publicity. All attempts should be made to gain free or affordable exposure through local TV and radio stations.

These strategies (and others) should give high yields with low costs, fit the industry and business model, and be dynamic enough to strategically change over time.

Stay tuned for more.

In continuation of the previous blog post (if you missed it, click here), I will discuss the answer to the questions posed. That is, what kind of marketing strategy would best fit each of the mentioned businesses?

The first example was as follows:

A law firm is opening a new service which relies upon unique customers calling in. Their marginal cost is low but fixed operational costs are high. It is therefore important that any proposed strategies create a bang. It simply isn’t cost effective to keep lawyers in the office, sitting around waiting for phone calls.

The first thing to note is that the business relies upon unique customers. Next, the call to action is a phone call. These points alone suggest the need to an active advertising strategy. This alone will not promise a successful marketing campaign, but the recognition of these facts is an important start.

Next, the example discusses the business costs. Often marketing consultants take little heed of the advice I am going to give, but the world would be a better place if we could all promise to change our dirty ways. If you are interested in marketing your own business, then this should already be clear. The advice is this: understand the business cost structure. Otherwise, if I didn’t know how the company makes money and how they pay it out, as a marketing consultant, I would just be a salesman shoving another cost down your throat. If I understand your business just enough to see what kind of money comes in, how, and where it goes, I can tailor the marketing strategy just so.

Apparently, in this example, the fixed costs are high, but the marginal costs are a fair bit less of a worry. This is not uncommon for a brick and mortar business. Often rent, equipment leasing, and even the most basic employee payouts are the most substantial of costs. Therefore producing sixteen pieces versus fifteen pieces has a far smaller impact on the overall money flow than anything else. This situation (high fixed costs and low marginal costs) are indicative of the need for a BANG! type of marketing strategy. That is, there is no time to sit around waiting for customers to stroll around and find the business. Costs are too high, so even if it is pricy, it is very worthwhile to make sure that any campaign will let the product (or business) hit the ground running.

Now let that percolate for a few. Done? Okay, read my proposed strategy below.

I would suggest an extremely content heavy website campaign about six to nine months ahead of launch. This would give the hardworking internet marketing team plenty of time to hone in on important keywords, put significant content up, and get the social media marketing juices going. Over time, this will help the company’s web presence gain some seriously important rankings. But what will get people to the website?

I would then suggest the most proactive advertising media that the budget will allow. I utilize what I call a “tiered budget diagnosis.” Don’t look it up—it’s my term, but I am thinking that it will stick one day soon. What I mean by that is that if you can only afford a small viral Youtube-esque, blog-commenting, direct mailing style campaign, go for it. If the budget allows for radio, do that, but (here’s where my term comes into play) do NOT cut out the lower tiers. They are a give-in, they are successful if done right, and they should not be neglected. Further, if the budget allows for television ads or billboards, etc, etc, great! Then get those going, but don’t, no matter what, forget about the lower tiers.

The idea is this: Any of the (coincidentally) more expensive strategies will inherently advertise for the competitors as well. That is, if a law firm advertises for a call-in service on the radio during morning commute, any law firm boasting such a service will reap benefits of increased consumer interest. Inevitably, though, the potential customer will forget the name of the company, probably the location, the number, the website, and basically any bit of information that would make that campaign give a decent return on the investment. What will stick, however, in the minds of the important listeners (the paying customers) is the idea to check the service out online. The interested potential customer may get on Google and try out a few search strings, say “los angeles law firm phone” or “radio ad law firm klos.” Whatever the search strings may be, if the first step (the web marketing one) was deliberate in nature and successfully planned, these string should turn up the company in question. If not—if another company dominates the strings—well then the company who bought the radio ad just wasted a lot of money.

And it all comes full circle.

Stay tuned for discussions of marketing strategies for the other examples.

There seems to be a debate amongst many marketers (I really do prefer the term marketer—it reminds me off Willy Wonka!) between the proponents of internet marketing and classical marketing strategies. The argument is heated and peoples’ businesses are at stake, so it is important to understand both sides of the debate, the pros, the cons, and those involved.

The fact is that marketing is a field which is ever changing, often subjective, sometimes unquantifiable, and is dabbled with psychology and sociology. The field is arguably as old as mankind, but in its current form, with highly analytical and scientific notions, it is easily dated back to the industrial revolution. Any one of these facets would understandably make for a debatable subject, but all together, the mix makes for a messy, messy situation.

In my years working for a street-level/guerrilla-esque marketing firm, I heard over and over, “Sure internet’s great, but it takes too much time,” “SEO takes months or even years to bring results, and business owners don’t understand how to wait that long to see a return,” or most nasty of all, “No matter what happens in the advertising world, they’re always going to need us.”

I also spent my share of time involved with a web marketing group in my early years. There the statements ranged from “There just isn’t anything as cost effective or as worthwhile as SEO and web marketing’” to “Web marketing can do everything that other forms of marketing can do cheaper, better, more strategically, and with more traceable results.”

I challenge these attitudes. Neither marketing tactic replaces the other, and there are many scenarios in which either medium alone falls short. Take these two examples, and see what sort of strategies you would propose:

1. A law firm is opening a new service which relies upon unique customers calling in. Their marginal cost is low but fixed operational costs are high. It is therefore important that any proposed strategies create a bang. It simply isn’t cost effective to keep lawyers in the office, sitting around waiting for phone calls.
2. An established mechanic finds his business in heavy competition in recent years. Many shops are popping up around his, and he is seeing a steady decline in business and must lower his rates to stay competitive. He doesn’t want to spend a fortune on marketing as his operational costs are significant, but he can’t fathom a 20 thousand dollar a month advertising strategy.
3. A toy company is considering a radio campaign. Their website is a mess, but they are launching a new product and can’t afford to wait for search engine marketing to return results.

I will break these examples down in the coming posts, but for now, think about them, and challenge yourself to think of a deliberate and dynamic marketing strategy.

If you need a little help—here you go. The reality is simple. Nearly every company needs an effective web presence. Every business knows that the larger their footprint, the better the chance of catching the attention of their potential customers. A web presence is much like having another store operating in a busy thoroughfare. A website is basically the least expensive satellite store you will ever be able to open. Still though, how you do you capture the attention of the masses of those for whom a website would mean nothing (those in their car, outside, too busy to peruse, or not net-savvy)?

Stay tuned for part 2.

This week I have been counseling a business owner on some SEO practices. We are redesigning his site, and while it is still in the design stages, it is a few shades better already to say the least. While discussing with him the implications of site design, consumer awareness, general marketing, and web marketing, I took note of the biggest confusions that he had. Here are the discussions I had with him on each of those issues, which I think may be of huge benefit to you guys out there.

1)      Design, design, design: The fact is that if you get to the top of Google and you cover the page for your niche, you will make money. Still, don’t forget that the end user is your actual consumer, and if your site is terrible looking or un-useful, you are killing yourself. Imagine what those top spots on Google could mean to you if your users actually enjoyed your website—you would be visible and awesome (a great combo). Invest some time and energy into the design of your site, and you will see a huge increase in revenue.

2)      SEO, SEO, SEO: Maybe this should have gone as number one. Heck, read it along as 1a, but no matter what, let it sink in. If you are investing time and/or money into a website, make an effort to appease the search engine gods. A recent statistic I read was that less that 10% of all websites put any work into search engine optimization—that means that with a little will power, you can beat the competition (at least on realistic keywords… it might take a lot of willpower for the harder ones)!

3)      Consumer focus: the business owner discussed above has an online franchise company, and he therefore has different facets to his websites. He has aspects of the site for consumers, some for potential franchisees, some for current franchisees, and some for advertisers. We are working to separate them so as to keep the content pertinent to the reader. If you are careful, it is possible to have a site designed for many users, with each of them seeing only the content they want and need.

4)      K.I.S.S.: Keep it simple-ish. Simple is good; clutter is bad. Most users read the top and bottom of a page. I have spent quite a bit of time in my career explaining to clients that it is great to have loads of content. After all, it’s good for SEO and for the user, but don’t just throw it all on one page, and don’t throw it on multiple pages without some serious planning, either. A lot of information can be a burden as well as a blessing.

5)      Abide by web standards. Check out the information from the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) at http://www.w3.org/. Live by the rules if you want users on different browsers to be able to access your content.

6)      On the same note as number 5, I must separate this point out, which I discuss with nearly every client. With the invention of WYSIWYG website design tools, many people who are creating websites probably shouldn’t. I don’t mean that with a tone which could stifle creativity, but make sure that the site is made for the end user, and don’t just trust your site designer. Check that it fits in a decently small browser window, make sure you don’t use crazy fonts, take advice from established and credible web designers, and you might just be able to do much of the work yourself. Again, though, don’t trust the WYSIWYG always really gives you “what you see.”

7)      Be social, but not too social: No matter what efforts you employ, don’t forget that you have a minion much stronger than yourself. If you have a decent size following, allow them to spread the word. Be careful with how you add social buttons to your web pages, however. Some “out of the box” buttons will leak out a lot of SEO juices by providing ungodly amounts of outbound link from your pages.

8)      Combine marketing efforts. There is no reason to stick to one marketing campaign or style. Cover more demographics and get a good return by analyzing multiple means. Often our marketing goals are to 1) manipulate interest and/or 2) enhance consumer awareness. Consumers are everywhere and not always reachable by one medium or another, so regard all marketing efforts as valuable if the ROI (return on investment) will be high.

There are loads more issues to discuss, but for now, take heed with these tidbits. I discuss these eight pointers approximately two to three times every day, so consider yourself a step above if you really implement them. In the future, I will discuss more tips.

One thing that you will hear my repeat over and over is the importance of a comprehensive marketing plan. There many levels to this, and like I mentioned in the last post, the first step is always consumer analysis. Many marketing consultants bundle this together with market research or “industry analysis,” but I prefer to single out the most important focus—consumer analysis. After consumer analysis, what’s next? In essence, the big question is, “So we know our consumers now—what they do, where they eat, how old they are, and the like, but how to do reach them?”

As you might suspect, finding answering this question is not a simple, “Do A, do B, and then do C, and I promise success.” Rather, this is a new tier of the marketing conceptualization. No matter the solution however, your market research, specific consumer analyses, and other marketing and advertising expenditures are for not if your product is not up to par. When discussing web marketing, your product, whether it is actually you company’s physical product or not, is the website. As such, here are some tips to help your company develop and implement an original, attractive site design.

1. Keep a consumer focus. Notice that the last few weeks, or perhaps months, have been dedicated to knowing your consumer. Now that you know what they like, make them happy to be treated to the look, feel, and functionality of your site.
2. Get inspired. Go through design catalogs, and see what you like. I often make use of inspiration I get by looking through architecture magazines, beauty products, interior design examples, and other web sites. If you take a gander below at one website for which I designed the layout, you may see hints of the classic Paul Mitchell shampoo bottle. I have appreciated that bottle since I was quite young, and I was able to make use of it on the home page of a client’s blog.
   
3. Abide by the rules; break some, but don’t feel like a vigilante—you might be sorry. There are times to break rule and times to fall in. When considering the aesthetic appeal of your website, go for the gold! Dream it, and make it. When it comes to conventions, however, remember that there are reasons that the W3C meets. You want your website to accessible through different browsers, in different resolutions, and for years to come. Make sure to go by their coding guidelines, or newer browsers and newer standards could leave you in the dust.

In summary, the issue is this: when developing a comprehensive web marketing strategy, remember that after putting in all the effort and funds it takes to get to the top Google listings for valuable keywords, the last thing you want is for your bounce rate (high rates indicate that visitors quickly leave your site—often due to disinterest) to be enormous. Remember, if your site is poorly designed, there is always a competitor’s listing below yours on Google, and if their site is designed better—and their bounce rate is low—well then site design is the difference between a good return on investment and a bad ROI.

Take some time to make your website representative of the great product or service your business should be famous for.

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