The lifetime value of internet marketing
Internet marketing, or more specifically, search engine marketing, when done brilliantly, is the gift that keeps on giving.
It is most rewarding on a number of levels, and not least because enquiries are generally from new prospects.
But someone reminded me that levels of business generated over the last 12 months is important, but can be dwarfed when considering repeat business. Add to that any residual income such as support and training, those golden ongoing references and referrals, it is staggering how much more a happy customer can generate over and above the original order.
In search terms (sic), given that search engines give you plus marks for longetivity and credibility, your pages and content can improve their performance over time, and generate on an ongoing basis. Compare that to the cost of transient advertisements, as I heard someone do today, and the value becomes clearer.
I’m grateful to be reminded that I do important work, even if I was the only one who heard it that way.
Thanks to all at BNI Milton Keynes this morning, I enjoyed it immensely. See you next week.
I have set you a challenge. Why would I take this picture of my office for you?
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| From Conversationware |
You would need to see it in more detail, but feel free to submit your entries in the comments, the winner might even get a prize.
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Spend less, get more with PPC marketing
There is no such thing as a sales funnel with Google Adwords PPC marketing.
With traditional marketing, it is tempting always to contact a lot of people, and by process of elimination the leads will eventually fall out the bottom of the funnell.
Yes - the sales funnell is deliberately upside down, and you don’t need to read it. Starting with awareness and ending up with a deal is the old way.
Starting with your best prospects and working outwards is the new way, at least it is for us here in marketing newtown (milton keynes).
Search marketing visualisation
The reality of the search marketing world is that it’s flat. Time starts as soon as you press the ‘go’ button.
Advertising on the most specific of terms, those best describing the product or service you offer, the more likely you are to get contacts.
So, widening the search, so to speak, as per the diagram above, can result in potentially less hits for your money. The balance is to keep juggling factors to keep the return on investment.
In other words, the less you spend initially, the more likely you are to get good value. (why not start then?)
Broad search terms could still be desirable, because you may still influence people earlier in their buying cycle. But the key is to reduce the non-relevant clicks as much as is possible. Negative keywords, restricting location or keeping phrases and adverts very specific are good examples of digital marketing to the niches.
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Unfinished Websites
It is a state of mind.
How shall we improve it today?
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Splitting the marketing atom
You may know that physics has a rather interesting problem.
In layman’s terms (meaning I can get this ever so slightly wrong), there are;
a. well understood laws for large objects - bigger than an atom - called relativity, and
b. well understood (if not quite complete) laws for very small objects or particles in ‘quantum’ level physics.
And, these laws are mutually incompatible.
Up until 50 years ago, physicists were making brilliant progress, assuming that all was going swimmingly well, and but for a few pauses, discoveries of the 18th century were being developed and were informing the next logical theories right through to the point it all just….got really confusing, and nothing worked.
Even Einstein spent his last thirty years looking for something that would bring it all together, but ultimately he came up blank.
Marketing has similar issues.
As our friend Seth Godin says, mass marketing has worked fine, making its inexorable progress through the TV industrial complex, right up to the point where things got very small. Channels, readership, circulation, user bases, blog posts (twitter) and attention spans (I must get to the point), well, they have all shrunk immeasurably.
Suddenly, the old rules don’t work any more - in fact they’re more confusing than anything we could have possibly imagined. Just like our physics.
We’re dealing in fragments.
Fragmented tasks, fragmented communications, markets, job descriptions, jobs, economic realities, projects, product life cycles and fleeting fads, microscopic opportunities. Higgs Boson PR anyone?
Are we truly going to end up marketing on a one to one basis? Hasn’t anyone got a chaos theory we can use to put this together? Well, there have been a few viewpoints around one aspect - SEO vs PR. All from one conversation on a social network. Now there’s a promising start.
Jamie Burke and the evolution of Online PR
Jed Hallam, SEO and Public Relations
Stuart Bruce, Public relations is about reputation
Stephen Waddington, good summary from a technical PR perspective
Julia Shuvalova, you need every digital marketing skill in a perfect world (including the higgs boson perhaps)
My two penneth, at this stage, is that this seems like a classic big bang confluence of ideas, skillsets and job descriptions. A Large Hadron Collider…especially when you include communications technology, which is driving all this together (in circles perhaps). Convergence.
Industry vs techniques, pah, so much fluff to me. Where do we all come from, and what is the meaning of life? Is there a dog after all? Which particle of the marketing atom are you?
Forget whatever industry you think you’re in, it is about sales, marketing and relationships. But not necessarily in that order.
As an aside to my PR friends, isn’t reputation management only necessary when you’re not able to control your product or your people….oh wait, what? we can’t do that?
I do have some string theory, I’ll have to post soon, but I’m getting the feeling the attention span is ‘gone’, and we’re all moving on to the next big passing phase. So I’ll stop for now.
Any more views you can point out, the more the merrier.
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Businesses should not blog, part two
Blog technology is fantastic for generating more traffic from search engines, and for engaging with visitors.
That’s good enough for me, and I will always recommend blog technology for a website. In particular, I will shout about using Wordpress, for reasons I must go into soon.
Extra search engine traffic can be considered ‘deserved’, as the content of posts - as opposed to product pages - is usually more interesting, tells more stories and reveals more about the people behind the business shop window. And, google does apply a freshness factor to new content that improves rankings, however temporarily.
But there is a problem with the word ‘Blog’ and the verb ‘blogging’. They both describe a personal diary function, which is not what businesses need at all. A potential misunderstanding.
Part of marketing is to explain and clarify concepts, and so, if we find a word that confuses, perhaps we should start by using different words.
A ‘business’ should use blog technology, but write more articles. Like this one. Well, not exactly like this one, do your own.
Here’s another reason businesses should not ‘blog’. Know what I mean?
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