Who has time for new things? It appears that a small but significant number of B2B and B2C businesses do.
They’re finally embracing new marketing channels, including Podcasts, RSS feeds, viral video and more. Social media is worth trying – to a degree.
Successful marketing strategies are detailed in “Harnessing the Power of New Media Platforms,” a report sponsored by the Association of National Advertisers and BtoB magazine. Guideline led the research.
Interestingly, webinars came in near the top of the list. You often see a corporate website as the chief marketing vehicle followed by any combination of email, search engine optimization and paid search (all of which are still heavily favored). But webinars (which ranked second) still seem to be for the B2B crowd 54% compared to 27% among the B2C folks.
eMarketer reported on this and other related data today.
On the surface, opt-in email marketing sounds a lot like paid search better known as Pay Per Click (PPC).
You make an account, set up your campaigns and start rolling in the cash. If only life were that easy.
It’s virtually impossible for one person to effectively plan, launch and manage an e-mail campaign on his own. That’s why a consulting firm – with a team of specialists – is best positioned to make a project succeed.
If you’re hiring in-house, you need to ask yourself:
Is this person qualified? We’re talking really proficient in this area of online marketing. He doesn’t have to know email marketing inside and out to increase leads, conversions and revenue. But will he perform exceptionally well?
Is he responsible for many other tasks (i.e. natural search engine optimization, PPC, linking building, marketing collateral, etc.)?
Does he keep up with the ISPs and federal standards?
Does he know how to process the knowledge he encounters about email formats and designs?
Is he an outstanding writer – both with ad copy and landing pages?
Is he well-organized?
Is he persuasive and assertive enough to get co-workers to do their part (i.e. help shape messages that must be delivered)?
Are his design skills second to none? Or has he just played around with Photoshop? How do his designs (if he can design) stack up against your competitors’ landing pages. Be very honest. Is design really his vocation?
What delivery and tracking system are you using? How robust are its features?
If you can’t afford to outsource, it’s understandable that you might make the most with what you’ve got. But again, can you really afford not to improve your email campaigns by hiring a pro on the outside?
Sometimes it’s not just about those skills that are hard to find in any one person (the bionic online marketer). It’s also about sense and perspective. Firms like ours have been around a long time and worked with enough clients to get a good handle on best practices.
Sure, you can hire someone who worked for another business. Why not budget some money for an agency that has worked with numerous email clients? When you think along those lines, you’re buying wisdom, not just core skills.
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »I’ve been approach by clients several times about what they should do with their old domain, now that they finally acquired the domain of their dreams. For example, I own “company-1.net” and after 5 years of branding and Google indexing, I finally got “company1.com”. Now what do I do with my old domain?
301 REDIRECT! 
Tamar Weinberg wrote a quick blog on this approach today, “Don’t Let Your New Domain Hurt Your SEO” that I couldn’t agree more on.
The issue is that you should implement a 301 redirect. Otherwise, if both sites rank (as in this case), your redirected site might outrank the site with all the content. In this particular user’s case, an .edu site is outranking a .com. Chances are, the .com was also below the fold and the .edu wasn’t. You certainly don’t want to do it that way.
If you want to minimize your hit with the Engines this is the best route to take. Otherwise plan on it the road ahead being long and bumpy .
1 Comment »Flash! This just in! A lot more people are viewing videos online than they used to. Pew Internet & American Life Project releases a study that finds almost half of online adults have visited video websites. In December 2006, only about one in three had. That is quite the leap, and there is no reason to think 2008 will see a reversal.
Information Week tries to tie this growth to a previous NEA report that fewer adults are reading books for pleasure. My first reaction to that angle was to scratch my head. IW would be the last publication I would expect a nearly neo-Luddite reaction. To be fair, the article seems to offer the answer to that speculation.
Lee Rainie, founding director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project and author of the Pew video study, said his organization had not attempted to correlate the long-term decline in reading with the recent rise in online video viewing. “My guess is we would find a reverse correlation because the people posting material online have the same demographic as avid readers,” he said. “My guess would be that this isn’t the cause of the downslide in reading.”
(T)he group Rainie identifies as likely avid readers — those with some college education or college graduates — show a larger growth in affinity for online video than other groups…
This observation tells me there are opportunities for B2B marketers to find an audience. The common meme about online video viewers having nanosecond attention spans has a kernel of truth. However, this group might also be receptive to more sophisticated appeals than we commonly assume. But it still has to cut through the clutter!
By the way – I appear in an online video just released for marketers wondering about getting started in social media. It has images and sounds…and yes…even some written words for you avid readers.
Dominic Litten is kind enough to be our guest blogger today!
Part of my news routine each morning is perusing my reader, checking the SEO headlines and checking the Google Hot Trends widget. Yesterday, mixed in with the usual Monday morning news topic trends (e.g. the latest teacher or celebrity scandal) were such search terms as “columbus ohio newspaper” and “columbus dispatch.”
Still bleary eyed from the night before, it took me a few seconds before I realized why people were searching for Ohio-based newspapers: Ohio State had fallen for the second year in a row in the BCS national title game, and people wanted to read about it.
Apparently, Americans not only enjoy reading about their favorite sporting events the next morning, but also reading about the misery and pain of the losing city, school or team. This phenomenon does not start or end with Ohio State’s most recent bed-wetting. In fact, I have noticed similar searches the morning after other demoralizing losses.
In realizing this trend, I’ve come to this conclusion: we’ve become a nation of schadenfreude searchers. What is schadenfreude? Merriam-Webster defines it as “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.” I can’t think of a better term.
But is this normal? Should we feel bad for seeking out how the other half feels? In speaking with colleagues and friends, this is a quite common occurrence. In fact, I can recall searching for “Canadian soldiers” and “Yankees” the day after a plague swarmed the New York Yankees in the Divisional playoffs.
But in trouble times like these, who should be our guiding light on such search patterns and schadenfreude? Like most Americans, I sought out a Simpson’s episode, during which Homer Simpson gives us the final thought on schadenfreude: “Boy, those Germans have a word for everything.”
They sure do Homer. They sure do.
1 Comment »
