We’ve all been bombarded with Michael Jackson’s news in the last few weeks. While many, fans and non-fans alike, were affected by his death in some way, MJ’s father went on the offensive to promote his new business venture just days after. In these modern days, I guess there are still salesmen so blinded by money that they sell their souls too. So now’s a good opportunity to get back to basics. Marketing basics, that is.

Marketing – whether push or pull, traditional or online, outbound or inbound – is a game of either creating your own buzz, or riding someone else’s buzz. Creating your own buzz is tough to do, unless you have something new, unique with mass appeal to tell people about, or you can ride on your own reputation built over time. Riding someone else’s buzz, on the other hand, is quite easy. It’s popular for those who want a quick spike in their marketing performance and return on investment. It’s a legitimate marketing technique if done properly.

Here are a few “riding someone else’s buzz” ideas:

• Associate with well-known or recognizable brand names. It’s all about attention grabbing, and household names and celebrities give you instant buzz and attention.
• Hot topics or stories of the day. By definition these are already hot, so huge attention base already exists. All you have to do is make it relevant to your products, services or situation.
• Controversial or outrageous people and stories. These can come from anywhere and take many shapes and forms, but the bottom line is the controversial and the outrageous command free publicity, which also benefit from its natural viral characteristic.
• Stealing someone else’s great content. Even though this works well, it’s short-lived. Therefore it’s not recommended, and it’s against many laws, including the social networking law.

I may be guilty as the next guy who mentions MJ is his post. And maybe I am. But more importantly, if this post can stop a few marketers and help them think about what they do just for a little while, it’s done its job.

So, no, marketing basics do not start with what you may learn in business schools, from others in the industry, and certainly not by your desire to be successful. They start with you and your integrity.

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Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Marketing Basics and Building Buzz – What About Integrity?

Back in August 2008, Peter Kim blogged about “How to set an ego trap” on his beingpeterkim.com site. He received lots of feedbacks from both regular readers and the “influentials”, as Guy Kawasaki calls them.

Mr. Kim wrote, “In a nutshell, social technologies use game mechanics to get users hooked on participation.  People often get addicted to ego-stroking system feedback, until they can temper their usage (addiction?)” He gave a few examples to illustrate how well-known bloggers have used social networking for viral marketing and promotion, for both products and services. These can be read on his blog so I won’t repeat them here. For each example Mr. Kim observed some simple yet important characteristics. In one, he noted, “So why did it work?  The offer was simple.  It was personalized.” In other, “So why did it work?  The offer was limited.  It was relevant to the bloggers and their readers.” And in the third example, “Why did it work?  Game mechanics – competition and a somewhat objective comparison scale…” Mr. Kim ended the blog with the some suggestions on how to set an effective “ego trap” with your own offer:

• Keep it simple.
• Make it scarce.
• Personalize it.
• Use numbers.
• Appeal to the head…and the heart.

So now you may ask, “Ego trap or just human nature?” I would say probably both. It’s all about feeling good and important. We’re all humans, and many would agree that feeling good and important are two of human’s strongest straits – they’ve helped build empires and cause wars in our history. It’s all about self-importance. That’s why face-to-face networking works. That’s also why social networking works.

It’s no surprise we’ll use social media and networking to our benefits, and we’ll be glad to be used by the medium. So here’s a question: We’ve done face-to-face networking in older times. We’re now doing social networking in the Internet age. How do you suppose we’ll network next? Let your imagination flows.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Getting Used by Social Media Marketing?

So HubSpot gave us another very easy to understand and easy to explain term: Inbound Marketing. It wraps everything about Web 2.0 into a neat little package. According to the article “Inbound Marketing & the Next Phase of Marketing on the Web“, the current recession is pushing the next wave of marketing on the Internet. And it’s a good thing. Evolution is good.

Marketers are seeing the value of Inbound Marketing. While we can’t totally do away with traditional marketing, or Outbound Marketing, marketers can certainly step up their Inbound Marketing with little to no additional costs. Considering these 3 key components that make a successful Inbound Marketing, one can see why it’s so powerful.

1. Content – Content is the substance of any Inbound Marketing campaign. It is the information or tool that attracts potential customers to your site or your business. Content is king.
2. Search Engine Optimization – SEO makes it easier for potential customers to find your content. It is the practice of building your site and inbound links to your site to maximize your ranking in search engines, where most of your customers begin their buying process.
3. Social Media – Social media amplifies the impact of your content. When your content is distributed across and discussed on networks of personal relationships, it becomes more authentic and nuanced, and is more likely to draw qualified customers to your site.

The beauty of it is anyone can successfully put them to use at very low costs. You don’t have a budget for this? Or your budget has just been scaled down? No worry, you can still run an effective marketing campaign. Here’s a graphic comparing Outbound and Inbound Marketing, courtesy of HubSpot. If you work up a marketing budget for each side of the table, it’s not hard to see the budget needed to do the left side is going to overwhelm the one on the right.

Print ads, TV ads, cold calling, trade shows, email blasts will continue to cost a bundle to do. On the other hand, blogs, eboks, viral videos, SEO, webinars and RSS are all very affordable to start or even expand in activities. To be fair, Inbound Marketing does require specialized knowledge and skills, and this is a good thing. It forces marketers to move with the time. It will weed out strong marketers from the weak ones. It’s the natural law of survival in the business jungle.

Pounding your message out to the customers? Not too effective anymore and too costly. Attracting customers coming to find you? Now everybody wins.

So consider these. Inbound Marketing costs much less than traditional marketing. It has better targeting with self-qualifying customers. And it is an investment with  word-of-mouth and viral effectiveness.

If it’s not already in your marketing game plan, then you may as well make Inbound Marketing your new year’s business resolution. But don’t wait. Start today. Remember, you don’t need a budget to do this.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Who Doesn’t Want Inbound Marketing?