Google Adwords listings can provide an effective PPC program

PPC Advertising Does Not Depend On Having A Top Ranked Website For Good Results

Yes, we’re accustomed to hearing good things about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If done well, SEO can boost your website to high organic search engine rankings. Of course, a lot of good things must happen over an extended period of time… as you develop informative articles, blog posts, pages and YouTube videos for your site, along with highly optimized keyword strategies. But there’s no guarantee your content marketing will pay off. Google’s famous algorithm is a complex formula that calculates which sites ranks well for a particular page on a particular search query. First page ranking isn’t a sure thing, by any means.

To speak plainly, your site may never achieve satisfactory rankings for reasons that go beyond your business or organization. Have you ever noticed how often you’ll find Wikipedia entries, or in-depth research articles from recognized universities, foundations or scholarly journals on the first search engine results page? Their content ranks well because these organizations are devoted to producing articles that are purely informational. Additionally, such listings can often fill several pages of organic results for many important keyword categories.

So where does that leave you? If you’re aiming to sell a product you may find pay-per-click (PPC)  sponsored listings can benefit your online marketing program in several ways. Here’s a few important points to consider:

• In SEO the search engines control the rankings through secret algorithms, which are always changing.
• You can spend a lot of time trying to break into the first page rankings with years of organic SEO activity.
• Meanwhile your competition is converting online leads into sales!
• With PPC you can immediately start driving toward the final results you’re seeking. In a broad sense you’re taking a more direct path to the final goal.
• PPC advertising does not depend on having a top ranked website for good results. If your Google Adwords listings are well conceived — with a tight adherence to specific adgroups and landing pages — you’ll establish control over your settings and keywords while methodically testing your ad copy.
• The feedback you gain from PPC is much quicker than SEO. You can succeed faster, fail faster, and subject your assumptions to rigorous testing.
• It make sense to be there now using PPC data to optimize your campaigns, including the SEO rankings you’ll be using for the long term.
• You’ll discover what your customers are thinking, what they’re responding to, and what needs to change. Additionally, you will end up with solid data that confirms your sales premise, or refutes it categorically. Either way, you win!

There’s nothing wrong with SEO from our point of view. However, the benefits of a PPC campaign shouldn’t be dismissed without a fair hearing. Our advice: don’t automatically assume that SEO is “free” because you’ll most certainly have to invest precious resources into the effort, especially if you’re expecting to see good results. Instead, be sure to use both approaches — SEO and PPC — for best results.

Working with clients allows you to accumulate experience in small doses over a long period of time. Yet it can be difficult to distill all that experience into a great company story. Even when you have worked with a talented founder who has made a strong impression in their industry, it can be difficult to figure out what made their contribution so compelling.

Somerset Maugham, the British writer once known as the “most famous writer alive,” was often asked the question, what makes a good story? He responded by saying a good story must ‘interest’ the reader. Seems pretty basic doesn’t it? However, in the U.S. we’re a little more demonstrative. We like to think in terms of great stories, exciting movies and unbelievable products, etc.  So what makes a ‘great’ company story?

Great company stories don't require charismatic founders, but it can help.

Think about Steve Jobs and Apple Computer. What an unbelievable run! America’s top technology company (having finally supplanted Microsoft just last week). I recall purchasing the original Macintosh computer in 1985 as a young man, just a few months after its introduction. It was an obvious choice based on the machine, its POP displays and the friendly little screen with mouse and trash icon. The store’s staff downplayed it by saying I would feel ‘silly’ dragging a file to a little “cartoon trash can,” it was unbusinesslike, etc. Yet there’s such a great story here: Epoch making design and quality; a cult like following; a founder who leaves the company; the company in a sudden dramatic slide; the founder returns to an even greater success, etc. And, it’s all still going strong of course.

Dithering Over Details Can Make It Hard To Uncover The ‘Underlying Drama of The Brand’

As a creative marketing professional, I think it’s very much part of my job to find that story for each of our clients and help them work on it in their branding and marketing without allowing it to come across as self-serving, boring or egotistical. How to make the story memorable is also challenging. The raw material must be there, but the right solution may not be so obvious. The client may be inclined to downplay himself, or the product may need renewed positioning so the prospective customer can perceive it in dramatic terms. There’s literally  hundreds of issues that can arise. Clients often want to tone down the narrative and make it safe, universal or compliant, thereby turning a great story into something perfunctory or dull. Dithering over details can make it hard to uncover the ‘underlying drama of the brand.’

That last one is a paraphrase of Leo Burnett on advertising. As Leo inferred in his book, the underlying drama of a product, company or brand requires some digging and a little insight — if not some great streak of luck — because it takes a client with an open mind to let the story come out on its own terms.

One customer of ours is inherently interesting because of where he began in the U.S. aerospace industry. Mr. Egon Jaeggin helped in building the first hand held camera used in outer space. He has been active with prime contractors, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, over the past forty years. His firm Numerical Precision Inc., built the Mini Power Tool for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Upgrade Mission, completed last year. The Power Tool allowed the astronauts to remove fasteners in outer space that were never meant to be removed, all the while sustaining an astonishing range of temperature extremes.  The entire mission was so riveting (forgive the pun!) that a first rate film documentary is now touring through OmniMax Theaters and currently showing in Chicago. Mr. Jaeggin has shown the Power Tool to selected groups, from industry VIP’s to a local Veteran’s Group in his home town.  Yet, he always remains self-effacing in his comments. Never talking in a way that might over shadow or diminish the achievements of his client (a note of disclosure: we built and currently maintain their corporate website, email newsletter, and other marketing programs).

The Fundamental Truth

Despite his soft-spoken style, Mr. Jaeggin enjoys a world-wide reputation in his field. We have never burnished his firm’s reputation with hype. What his company does takes years of hard work to achieve. Which brings me to the core point of this post. You need to be connected firmly to a fundamental truth, one that naturally supports and underlies a strong product or service, in order to express the unique qualities of a great brand.

A great story sells itself. But it must be presented well, in a compelling way. And, it has to connect with people. I believe there’s almost always a good tale of innovation at the heart of every great entrepreneur, service concept or product that’s enjoyed continued success.

Perhaps you have something that comes to mind? A great product or service which you have observed in the making?

Please take a moment and reply to this post if  you will. We would love to hear your thoughts on the ‘underlying drama of the brand.’

In this third part of our series we cover an important topic. Based on recent pieces we’ve seen online, or in magazines, many private business leaders are frustrated with the complexity of digital marketing and it’s new applications, online tools and strategies. While many of today’s consumers blithely transition to the Next Thing,* a host of marketing managers and corporate VP’s find themselves camped on the threshold of important changes.

Our Online Marketing Awareness Map

How to make the right decisions with so many new choices? We’ll admit there’s no single easy answer to that question. But then, marketing has never been easy. Web 2.0 is often called the participatory Web, a place where blogs, social networking sites and media sharing sites have transformed the world of marketing.

Our own efforts in this regard are straightforward. We developed an Online Marketing Awareness Map as an early step in creating a visual tool for discussion. It has since led to a laptop presentation, and to this particular series of Infusion Blog posts (please see Part I and Part II if you haven’t already read them).

Your Website Is The Base Station For Your Online Marketing Program

Websites

Our map begins (see illustration) with the top circle, labeled Websites. Today we field fewer questions about websites (we’ve all seen our share). Yet many clients do not fully realize their website is just the beginning of their online marketing program. Yes, it must be supplied with good content, usability, optimization and branding. It is indeed the base station for an entire online marketing program. Yet, it’s also a latent form of energy. For most business websites there’s much to be done in bringing real excitement, traffic and new results. Often the goal is to transform a static asset into a compelling and effective online marketing program. Think of  your business site as the first step. It’s important to have a sense of where that latent energy may be going: to substantiate your credentials, or tell a product story, or generate direct e-commerce sales. The purpose and overall depth of content on your domain may suggest a follow up strategy for online marketing.

Online Advertising

Moving clockwise to Online Advertising, our next circle. Again, few of us are strangers to this. By online advertising we refer to web based ads such as banners, tiles, widget ads or sponsored listings on Google (organic listings are discussed in Content Marketing). For banners, tiles and other units we’re looking at a Push Strategy similar to offline advertising, where you pay for exposure based on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM). Sponsored listings emulate the search characteristics of organic listings in everything but price, since you must pay for them, typically using a Pay Per Click (PPC) model. Online advertising in all its forms… requires a direct monetary investment. Dollars for traffic!

Dollars for Traffic!

For many marketers this is as far as they go: build a website and buy online ads linked to specified landing pages. An ecommerce site with branded items or specialty merchandise, coupled with good prices can do this pretty well, especially if they have read their niche properly.

Content Marketing - Builds traffic, credibility and reputation.

Our next category is Content Marketing. We see Content Marketing as long content designed to display thought leadership with high “favorables” on search engines. This means well developed websites, blogs, or sites in combination with blogs. With a blog you add fresh content and a new page to your domain with every post. Attract visitors with comments and your blog is building inbound links, another natural Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefit. Blogs build traffic, credibility and reputation — nice things to have for one’s professional life or brand.

A good approach to blogging may require originality, or an Outside the Box approach to a niche topic. But it doesn’t have to be creative per se. Start by solving a problem your audience cares about. Find a voice. Build trust, confidence, desire. Be engaging. And, don’t oversell. In effect, you may want to begin by commenting on something that others in your industry have expressed or said. When you begin blogging, you’ll want to read other blogs and make appropriate comments. Join the discussion. Just don’t be too obvious about selling or becoming a shill for your product. Think of yourself as attending a business reception. Show a sincere interest in something someone else has said or written, that’s a good way to obtain natural reciprocity in a return visits to your blog.

Blogs humanize a brand, which is a very special thing. Who is blogging these days? A huge number of organizations and people involved in virtually every business and profession, from software development, training and freelancers, to product manufacturers, distributors, wineries, galleries and travel destinations, etc.

As with everything else, you’ll want to open yourself and your business to further innovation. Think of it as a creative fusion between the offline marketing you may be accustomed to and the new digital marketing you’re seeking to engage.

This discussion of the Online Marketing Awareness Map continues in Part IV.

Stay tuned.

Best wishes…

Greg Johnson

The reasons people ask this question differ slightly. Perhaps they’re skeptical because a previous advertising campaign didn’t work. Or their website generates little interest or comment. Some are uncomfortable with the hustling and hype they associate with marketing and they assume we will be offering the same old stew.

That’s why we don’t just sell creative services; we produce creative marketing. There’s a difference. Creative marketing is based on two principles:*

• That a great idea is often based on a new combination of old elements;
• That a new combination of old elements depends on the ability to see relationships.

A common definition for marketing means matching products and services with the people who need them. In practice it is the sum total of everything a client may be doing to gain customers and keep them. Creative marketing looks at baseline fundamentals. In particular, how the customer sees the product, including the psychology, product quality and underlying chemistry that makes the sale. Between every product and its best customers… there is an individuality of relationship which may lead to a big idea.*

Why hire a creative marketing firm?

Let us list a few reasons:

1. To save money and attain higher ROI
   Much of what you’re currently doing may be a waste of time. That’s the part where you save money. When you move on to more effective techniques, you end up with more qualified prospects per dollar. Assuming your conversion rate is a good one, this means higher ROI.
2. To help you drive better results
   There are so many new and exciting ways to engage customers. The Web is the fastest growing marketing medium in the world. We can help you make good use of it.
3. To gain outside perspective
   We look at your product with fresh eyes and help you focus on the most compelling message. The outside perspective we bring to the table is one of the best reasons to form a relationship with our firm.
4. To attain renewed focus on what matters most to your business
   You’re paid to focus on your customers and their needs. Not the tedious time it takes to handle your own direct marketing, web development, advertising or online marketing. By partnering with us you can spend more time working with your customers and serving them. Isn’t that the best use of your time?

Additionally, since you will be hiring us for what we do best, we can help you by continually look for better ways to increase the results of your marketing.

Peter Drucker puts it well: “Business has only two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.”

Dear Copywriter,

It’s never so easy. No matter how much advertising you have been exposed to in your lifetime, hitting the right copy is a great achievement.

Here’s a few thoughts.

1. Bernbach once said: touch the emotions of the reader.
2. Try removing any mention of the company or brand from the appeal, concept or headline. Work directly with the subject. Think only of the reader.
3. The reader will see the logo. We don’t need to push the client’s name.
4. Make a little magic. Introduce the product in a new way.
5. Capture the reader with a fundamental truth, stated memorably.
6. Link a unique selling proposition (USP) through the copy or subhead.
7. Yet, even without a USP, just capture the magic. Build readership for the message.

You have a few good starts. But we need more creative push. But don’t be too cute. Report what the product will do. Be intimate. Capture the reader by appealing directly to her desire and self interest. We’re trying to capture a fundamental truth on the unique relationship between customer and product.

If you feel stifled, try writing a personal letter to a friend. Show real enthusiasm for the product, how it will make her feel better, or help her do more things, or improve her health. Don’t mention the client. Just capture the story in a compelling way. This will produce a few lines of useful copy or headline. Maybe a strong headline.

Remember, it’s the emotions. Hit them in the right way; the rest comes on its own.

Newsletters come in different sizes and types from print versions to the electronic variety called email newsletters.

Think of how many ways you might do them (or even spell the word, with or without a hyphen). A successful enewsletter can be informal, formal, long, short; humorous, colloquial, cut and dried, filled with coupons and offers, devoid of coupons and offers, friendly, superficial, detailed, in-depth, frequent, infrequent, published regularly or whenever you get to it.

The only requirement, to paraphrase the late Somerset Maugham, is the email newsletter must “interest” the reader. But wait. Your email newsletter will also benefit from a regular schedule, a solid reason for being, and a steady dedication to the reader’s self interest.

So what does your email newsletter look like? Is it breezy and short… Or, full of detailed information? How many ways can you do it? Have you ironed out the big questions? Have you arrived at a style that will last?

If you are a serious marketer with a point of differentiation in your product or service, this final question will become important. Style matters to nearly the same degree as substance. Without getting lost in that question, you don’t want to be re-inventing the program with every issue.

So here’s a baker’s dozen for important points on how many ways to spell email newsletter:

1. Maintain an attitude of simplicity in how you structure the program (which doesn’t have to mean “Keep It Simple Stupid” or KISS), because the simplicity may be a subtle thing that helps you organize and express sophisticated content in a reliably consistent manner. Think of simplicity of structure as having a lot to do with your publication strategy. Simplicity of structure will help you maintain your email newsletter and keep it fresh.
2. Seek to surprise your audience or customer with interesting content. There is no substitute for this. It’s the linchpin for permission marketing (see point number 4). Few people will sign up (or opt in) for boring, illiterate, insubstantial or non-existent content. It just won’t happen. Okay, so maybe a few friends or family members might humor you, but no one else will. You can hire a writer, or a firm such as ours to help you with this, but you must have good, interesting content in order to succeed at permission marketing. If that seems frightening, then you should a take a breath and think about where the digital revolution is going and how you may need to change. Your company or product is boring? Then perhaps you need to consider what made you get into the business. You might be surprised what a good writer, a bit of original research and a few interviews, and a commitment to talk to your customers on a regular basis can do for your company.
3. Design, graphics, typography, and color will help you outperform your competitors. Research has shown this conclusively with testing. HTML graphics based emails out pull text based emails. This happens over and over despite what people say about download time and their email preview panes. Graphics make a big difference. But you will need to understand preview panes, and where to put the most important message components.
4. Permission based marketing is everything. Your customer, or audience is paying for it on their Internet account. You must have permission to send. The sole reason is the value you’re providing in the messages you’re sending: the timely offers, the insider news they will be getting, etc. The reason you like it so much is that it’s so much cheaper and efficient than all that printing and postage you were formerly having to pay for. Now, it’s their quarter and they rule. You can’t just send stuff, or do a Blast email to thousands of addresses. You will be following a new set of rules.
5. But don’t forget to do some selling. It’s okay once you have established good will, and the trust in you as a provider of valuable content. People realize the email newsletter has an objective or purpose. As long as you put their needs first, you’ll have no problem with them coming on board for your brand. Just remember to put marketing before sales, and everything else should work out just fine.
6. Delivery is huge. Remember, this is a arena where technology is the medium. Personalization, subject lines, spam filters, working with lists, managing bounces, subscribes, unsubscribes, and feedback. This is where the right kind of technical support is so crucial.

Are you seeking new email solutions that can take you beyond delivery, list management and the burden of testing a hundred email filters?

Are you yearning for a little creativity to make your message more effective and engaging?

Yes, email marketing is technical. The mechanics and technology of the medium can inhibit our ability to see holistically, with fresh eyes. There’s more than technique and applied science going on here. With so many challenges in optimizing for email clients, using spam filters, email audits, managing black lists, opt-in lists, testing parameters, original offers, and key performance indicators, it is easy to lose your life in the passing days, evenings and weekends (if you don’t watch out).

It’s not surprising the marketing world feels the pressure to eliminate redundancy, reduce costs and gain greater efficiency. It makes you want to stop creating the new wheels and submit to the tried and true in remaking the old wheels, or in using a re-tred when it’s just too exhausting.

It’s much like other forms of marketing in this regard. Originality requires sacrifice. You must pay the price for it. But the sheer weight of creation amid the pressures to ‘get it done’ takes some getting used to. And, the sparkle of something new may get lost or forgotten. The investment required for a new solution, may become truncated, or simply cut off all together.

As Bill McCloskey has said (Email Insider, Delivering on the Promise), “Generic images. Text chosen not for its impact, but for its ability to slip through spam filters. Copy with all of the subtlety of the ads in the back pages of comic books. Where is the email that impacts my life, makes me laugh out loud, furthers the brand equity I have with the product or service?”

He’s right of course.

Where is that new creative?

Here’s a debate: long copy vs short. Which pulls better? Direct marketers have maintained for many years the efficacy of long copy: “The more you tell the more you sell.” But this advice doesn’t sit well with image conscious branding and awareness marketers: “Please keep it short,” they’ll say.

You might ask, which pulls better? But there may never be a definitive answer that will please everyone. It’s very contextual. I have seen clients go crazy at the idea of too much “verbiage” (the very use of the word giving you a clue to their feelings). Others cannot refrain from adding more to each paragraph until a fortress of compounding words has emerged. In both cases we must work to open them up. The right solution is likely to be a bit different than what the client may be thinking.

So, here’s the long and short of it: always use the right words and the right length. No more, or less.

The right words must express themselves completely, in the right way. If it’s a one step selling process (classic direct mail), you need the reader to make a decision. Every bit of language must act to overcome any resistance the reader may have, and the offer must be so appealing that the prospect wants to act (once convinced of the value and suitability of the provider). This kind of direct marketing takes some very good copy and copy length to achieve results.

Then you have the marketer who seeks to build impressions and brand preference over time. Awareness advertising does not seek (in the same way at least) an immediate sale. The famous appeal by Nike for example, “Just Do It,” is all the copy that fits. The right words are very short indeed.

What’s right for your campaign, message or direct response effort? What will reflect the quintessential uniqueness of your brand? Are you intending to launch an email marketing campaign, with a commitment to regular publishing and website integration? Or, are you planning a more traditional use of advertising in order to build awareness, visibility and brand equity?

All of the above goals are quite legitimate and worthy. It is important not to confuse methods and goals. Keep it straight. Know what you want and how you are going to achieve what you are setting out to do. Understand your customer and the context in which they will encounter your message. If you do these things you won’t have to worry so much about long copy or short copy.

The right copy will emerge in these conditions, if you let the right people and the right thinking prevail.

A short post before I go home tonight. It’s been along day. Sump pumps in the morning, my car to the repair garage this afternoon. Websites under construction, in varied states of readiness.

I’m too am ready… to go home. Connect my son’s iPod with the iMac (the system upgrade has not gone smoothly). So I’m ready to head for the door. Then all of a sudden I think, “Hey, the Blog!”

So here I sit, thinking of fruit stands, a.k.a. the fruit stand theory of marketing. Had a thought to add concerning this ancient and venerable theory (something akin to marketing Darwinism). But it ain’t quite so just yet. My brain is a little bit heavy.

The theory is simple enough: that many business owners think of marketing as they once thought of the lemonade stand they had when they were kids (the lemonade theory?). You set up the stand, place your merchandise on it, set your price and wait for business. Why it’s known as a fruit stand theory I can’t say. Unless people think of fruit stands as a more grown up substitute for the lemonade kart. Perhaps fruit stands were an early model of immigrant success. They were very simple: Sort ‘em, stack ‘em and price ‘em, and you’re on your way. (e.g. I’ve been told that the Dominick of grocery fame started out with a hot dog cart near Wrigley Field).

What I love most is how simple, logical and true to life the analogy seems to be. Many clients had a fruit stand in mind when they started their business. (and some think of it quite fondly). It represents a simpler time when the expansion of the U.S. economy managed to lift many businesses all at once, each of them able to focus on their product and manufacturing. Marketing could be kept simple.

A fruit stand with great fruit and other goods. Plenty of traffic.

And it all seemed to work so smoothly.

I have heard this one before. It is a comment reflecting the importance and personal pride of many sales professionals. Yet, I am left with a question. Is it really true?

They’re the one’s creating the opportunities and closing the sale through superior techniques, training, personal selling skills, etc. Of course, there is more than a little truth to this. Much of what we associate with corporate value, the company’s intrinsic worth, can be boiled down to a magic number called sales. And many companies are completely lost without a dedicated staff of sales representatives.

Yet it leaves me wanting for more, as it does many others who concern themselves with marketing. Harvard’s Ted Levine puts the counterpoint in succinct terms: “The goal of marketing is to make sales obsolete.” Which sounds a little harsh (even to me). Must these two points of view exist in such stark polarity? Sales! Marketing! Sales! Marketing! Each proponent quietly suggesting the other needn’t make so much of itself. In many companies the two disciplines fight it out during every budgeting cycle.

My own take on it is to say that we all exist on a vast ocean of economic activity which contains many fish. Lots of species and organisms thriving or not depending on the conditions of the hour. One such company depends on vigorous sales activity to generate its bottom line; another seeks it through effective marketing with far less attention paid to having a sales staff to differentiate itself. There are many combinations in the vast expanse of companies, selling B2B or B2C, through intermediaries and channel partners, with high tech goods and services which require personal presentations to products sold direct. Way too many fish to categorize so easily.

Yet sales can overemphasize their point that nothing happens until a sale is made. Because it is the outcome everyone wants, it may become the fixed center in how the thinking is done.

I have also come to appreciate Ted Levine’s famous line, i.e. marketing if done effectively will sell the product so well you won’t need a sales force. The product sells itself.