People love to talk about what doesn't work: Super Bowl ads and other
expensive campaigns which raise awareness but don't attract customers;
annoying forms of "interruption" marketing; and so on. Inevitably, one
clever marketer has even launched a review of bad online marketing
strategies called fuckedmarketing.com. But let's focus on what works.
Search Engine Placement: Marketing that Doesn't Look Like
Advertising
It's no accident that search engines are still seen to be a great
marketing tool. Not only is much of the traffic free, but it's targeted, so
the response rates are higher. Think about it: you have pre-qualified
customers looking for solutions - even looking to buy something. They'll be
much more predisposed to your message, since in a sense they initiated the
transaction themselves. This and other forms of marketing which are unique
to the Internet are still poorly understood by many. Just as you shouldn't
believe the hype about everyone in the technology industry getting rich, you
also shouldn't listen to all the doom and gloom that says nothing works.
MSN Works the Soft Sell
Everyone's selling something on the net (or, some say, if they
aren't then they need to be). I just leafed through some featured "top" news
stories at MSN - they were, curiously enough, all about dating and
relationships. These things lead right into the more targeted (and highly
emotion-charged) content directed at women. Some of this stuff is very
successful, and why shouldn't it be? Print women's magazines make a bundle
on advertising, in part because the subject matter leads into sales for
products relating to personal care, which is linked to emotion and wants as
opposed to rational assessment's of one's so-called "needs." Although it
hasn't been totally figured out, content can sell products on the Internet
just as it does in print. You wouldn't believe that if you'd been reading
the newspapers lately. (Part of the problem, of course, is that some of the
more lavish online content sites were launched as if a whole editorial
organization could be supported by banner ads. Nope.)
But content can also sell content. If print magazines are
profitable, then maybe their online incarnations need to (a) reach more
relevant readers and (b) make sure there's a compelling reason for a lot of
them to subscribe to the print version! Thus let's never over generalize
when it comes to the media business. There are many reasons for trying a
number of strategies, and the "business end" may be lurking at several
removes. Hard-nosed students of business models may miss the subtleties of
how growing awareness can be turned into profit.
Why Shameless Self-Promoters Love the 'Net
It's also becoming apparent that individuals with something to
promote (even if it's just themselves) can make great use of online
strategies. Let's take a glimpse at something like this in action. MSN's
featured links about the perils of dating lull the voyeuristic reader to
glide from one article to another, and suddenly there I am reading a Miss
Manners column. Because of its subject matter (it's gossipy voyeurism), it's
fairly riveting. The first thing to realize about it is that in reading her
column, we just "bought" a bit of Miss Manners - again. What I mean by that
is that Judith Martin just got another bump in the mind share department.
For that alone, it was worth it for her to give away her column.
The coup de grâce, though - and what she couldn't get so directly
from a column in the newspaper - was a plug for her latest book. If you
liked the way she put readers' problems into perspective - a unique
perspective that is far from psychoanalysis but more like "sensible advice
for not making mountains out of molehills," you might be very interested to
read her latest book, Miss Manners' Guide to Domestic Tranquility. With a
column featured on a major portal like MSN, even a miniscule response rate
would sell a lot of copies of the book. Amazingly though, MSN doesn't make
it easy to buy (no link and no affiliation with Amazon or Barnes and Noble
online book sales).
The point is, this is a very old game. The Letterman interview
provides legitimacy for the sales pitch for the latest Tom Cruise flick.
Emeril Lagasse appears on nationwide TV for a cooking segment on Jay Leno,
and it boosts his ratings for the annual Super Bowl edition of Emeril Live.
The Oprah interview gives that John Gray book a publicity boost, and again,
the sales pitch aspect is almost invisible to many viewers. Why would online
media not seek to create similar marketing opportunities?
Online marketers therefore need to think a bit about what kind of
journey the customer is travelling before she lands on a site. What paths
set up the site as a legitimate authority or vendor? This is why there's so
much to love about search engines and portals from the marketer's
perspective.
Case Study: Say You're Promoting a Motorcycle Magazine...
Think about this for 30 seconds or so. A consumer who just happens
to use Hotmail frequently does many searches at MSN (since Microsoft has
done a clever job of getting a lot of people, not least Hotmail users, to
use MSN). They go looking for print magazines relating to their hobby -
motorcycles. Now here's the important thing: MSN uses the LookSmart
directory structure and LookSmart directory listings to power its web
search. That's a lot of queries, as MSN is a top three portal in nearly
every country in the world. This means that a magazine which is in the
category "Lifestyle > Auto > Motorcycles > Publications > Complete Coverage"
in the LookSmart directory is one of a select few which are getting found by
consumers searching on MSN. If Texas Moto has a prominent listing here,
they're getting a steady stream of paying subscribers. And if your magazine
isn't here, you're losing a steady stream of paying customers to Texas Moto.
And note the sales-friendly description the LookSmart editors have written
under the entry: "Publication contains useful resources for motorcycle
enthusiasts such as a dealer, ride and club locator. Learn how to
subscribe."
If you've got a business, then your issues are no different. You
need to take some quick shortcuts to ensuring maximum search engine
visibility. Instead of sitting around and getting jealous of the Texas
Moto's of the world, do what they did: get into the Looksmart Directory
right away. You can do this by paying for the LookSmart Express Submit
service, which gets your submission reviewed by an editor in 48 hours. Not
only does a listing in this directory get you into MSN results, but also
into search results for dozens of other wide-reach portals: iWon, Excite,
and the list goes on and on.
How To Get an "Unfair" Advantage
LookSmart listings (and other paid listings, like GoTo, Sprinks and
Realnames) can also give a site a higher ranking at metasearch engines like
Metacrawler, which gives sites an aggregate score based on rankings in
various search engines and directories, or Ixquick, which gives a site a
"star" for each time it appears in the Top 10 on a major search engine or
directory. As it happens, a search for motorcycle magazine using those two
keywords on Ixquick gives Texas Moto two stars - one of them thanks to
Looksmart, the other from Alltheweb, putting it on the first page. More hits
for the Texas Moto site, and more to the point, perhaps, a certain legitmacy.
Ixquick is a bit of scientific magic, so if you're ranked high here, the
user might assume, you've got to be doing something right.
A check of Metacrawler shows Texas Moto a #3 ranking overall there
using the keywords motorcycle magazine - another nice result, this time
owing to good (but not Top 10) placements in Google and AltaVista. It looks
like Texas Moto's really got some horseshoes. But to some extent, they made
their own search engine "luck."
Make no mistake about it: search engine and directory listings are
not just good because they're targeted, it's because they are seen as
legitimate, even scientific. Consumers click on search results because they
are NOT advertising, NOT a sales pitch. They're seen as objective - at least
about 100X more objective than a banner ad.