Marketing Deja Vu Getting You Down?

At some time or another we have all experienced that eerie sense of familiarity where we’ve “been there” or “done that” before.  Whether it is an actual memory or simply a “brain fart”, deja vu is an interesting experience.

Let’s assume for a second that deja vu is real.  If you found yourself in a situation you knew for certain you had experienced before that had ended badly would you have the tools necessary to change your course of action?  Many organizations have faced and continue to deal with “marketing deja vu” or ending up in the same situations over and over again.  What can you do to avoid making the same marketing mistakes more than once?

*Speaking of deja vu: If you are looking for additional tips on improving your marketing strategy be sure to reference the posts from the TopRankBlog archive that appear in this post.

4 Tips For Avoiding Marketing Deja Vu

#1 – Learn From Your Previous Marketing Mistakes

The best way to avoid repeating mistakes?  By learning from each experience.  Do not expect that you will have different set of outcomes from the same actions.  We must remember that marketing mistakes can mean a decrease in current customer base, as well as the loss of potential new customers.

3 Tips for Learning From Your Marketing Mistakes:

• Mistakes happen, the worst thing you can do is avoid dealing with the problem
• Move on but don’t forget the lesson you learned
• Don’t let frustration get the best of you

We All Make Mistakes:  20 Social Media Marketing Do’s Dont’s

#2 – Create A Structured Marketing Process

Errors can in large part be attributed to lack of process.  A structured process provides a framework and guideline for accomplishing your marketing goals.  Marketing process improves your ability to:

• Plan effectively for future marketing needs
• Implement Scale your marketing plan
• Test, implement, and refine marketing tactics

Implement A Process: Practical Tips to Make Your Blog More Useful Interactive

#3 – Don’t Rationalize Bad Marketing Decisions

One of the biggest mistakes we can make as marketers is to rationalize bad decisions.  It is important that we accept and face the fact that we didn’t make the best choice.  Once we’ve overcome the hurdle of admitting fault it’s time to take action:

• Focus on why a particular marketing tactic didn’t work
• Determine how your team can improve going forward
• Debrief other team members so they can avoid making the same mistakes

To Be Avoided: 4 B2B Social Media SEO Blunders to Avoid

#4 – Ask for Help Advice to Improve Your Marketing Plan

Pride should never get in the way of improving your marketing strategy.  Some of the best ideas come from where you least expect. Suggesting collaboration with other team members and influentials can:

• Help you come to a conclusion for next steps faster
• Remind you of mistakes they may have made in the past that you will want to avoid
• Provide a fresh set of eyes that may have a different perspective

Get the Help You Need: 4 Tips for Becoming A Better Influencer

Take Action

You may have heard some or all of the tips listed above prior to reading this post.  However, I want you to ask yourself:  How many of these tips has my team actually implemented and stuck with?  A good starting point to get on the right track to avoiding ‘marketing deja vu’ is to ask yourself and your team a few simple discovery questions:

• What are 3 instances in where your marketing team has made the same mistake more than once?
• Did you expect different outcomes each time the mistake was made?
• What were those expected outcomes?
• What have you done to rectify these mistakes, or adapt your process to avoid them in the future?

Remember, if you can’t answer these questions on your own perhaps you should try asking other team members.  Or you may want to consider or contacting an agency like TopRank Online Marketing to learn how you can attract and engage current and prospective customers by avoiding common marketing mistakes.

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I have been involved in weight loss and fitness related researches and projects for quite some time, and lately, I have been doing quite a lot of SEO and Internet Marketing for a couple of websites. And even though I wouldn’t rate myself as an authority on any of these topics, I can still brag about half a decade of research and reading on these topics. And one thing I’ve found true with both of these fields (i.e. weight loss and Internet Marketing) is that the Internet is beset with loads and loads of misinformation and half-baked theories coming from self-acclaimed experts. To say it in the most uncontroversial manner, there are quite some misperceptions and confusions when it comes to an internet marketing methods that deliver as well as a weight loss regime that works.

They say experience is the best teacher (and a very strict one too), and all my years as a close observer has taught me some lessons, and the best part is, these lessons have stood the test of time, regardless of how many updates Google makes. Keep on reading to find the lessons. Rest assured, they will continue to benefit you throughout your career.

Don’t Look Out for The Short Cuts

I can’t comprehend why so many weight loss and Internet Marketing experts are making it sound as easy as ABC. If reaching your weight loss or Internet Marketing goals was that easy, it wouldn’t have been an accomplishment worth going for? People are keen to drop excessive weight, or get more and more visitors on their websites because it’s something that will enable them to stand out of the crowd, mainly because every Tom, Dick, and Harry can’t do it. It is actually the difficulty level what makes it worth going for. So why make it sound ridiculously simple and easy?

You will often see promises like “A perfect plan to lose 15 pounds in two weeks? Here’s how to increase your website traffic to manifolds in 7 days? Five tips to get a body like Daniel Craig or Beyonce in a month?”

Those who “have been there and done that” knows that such claims are all bull crap, there’s no short cut when it comes to getting on to the top and staying there. It takes patience and years and years of hard work. So, if you are an Internet Marketer looking to make it big, or an overweight fellow looking to get the mouth-watering figure you have always yearned for, you should be ready for a long journey, that too full of bumps.

You Must Persist

Talking of the journey, reaching to your destination, whether it is the waste size that you were aiming for or the number of unique visitors that you’d like to have, is never going to be an overnight accomplishment. I’ve seen many going for the glory and then stopping as soon as the initial excitement fizzles out. It’s good to have big ambitions, but you must cherish the smaller milestones to keep getting the much needed motivation, to make sure that you don’t stop in the middle. It always takes some time, months, or even years, but that’s not really a big price to pay when you look at the rewards.

So, whenever you are facing a setback, and you feel that you don’t have the energy or patience to carry on, try to remind yourself of the rewards and consequences of giving up, and how you will regret it later on.

Stick The Basic and Time Tested Methods:

There’s an entire world of hogwash and half-baked theories on internet, especially when it comes to the highly searched topics like weight loss and internet marketing. Being humans, we are inclined to opt for the shorter and the easier routes, the problem is, nature has its own pace and its own laws, and in most cases, opting for the shorter routes for success, fame, or money will backfire. Therefore, you have got to stick to the time tested methods. They might not be as quick in delivering sizeable results, but when the results come, they are going to be a lot more endurable and long term. You shouldn’t be doing a lot of experiments with your health or online business, because that’s a risk not worth taking.

Keeping Track

A very important routine that many Internet Marketers ignore is to try and keep track of their progress, and same is true for the people looking to lose weight. Keeping track ensures that you will be able to see the distance you have made. If you keep on waiting for the ultimate goal and forget to keep a tab on your progress, you will never be satisfied. Also, the graph showing your progress (or vice versa) will let you identify the methods or approaches that really worked, so that you can focus more on these methods and stop wasting time and money on others.

Self-Control and Application Is Important

At times, you will be coerced by the idea of reading more and applying less. You will keep on planning and procrastinating and the time will keep flying by. Remember that you are not going to reach anywhere without moving a muscle. You can hire the best of the trainers but they can’t do the reps for you, and you can employ the best of Internet Marketing experts but they aren’t going to put their best foot forward as long as you aren’t putting your foot on the pedal.

Don’t Overdo It

Something very common with the people looking to earn money online, or those looking to lose weight and getting toned up is the impatience, at times people exhaust themselves by overdoing the drills. Make sure that you are keeping up with the pace of the nature, both when setting your expectations, as well as making the effort to get there. Learn to enjoy the journey, because you never know if the destination is going to be that much fun or not.

Bashir offers coupon codes like 24 hour fitness promos and ediet coupons at his website. 24 hour fitness and ediet coupon codes will help you save while purchasing diet plans or fitness programs from these websites.

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Content Marketing World, We Found A Home

This recent video from Content Marketing Institute Founder Joe Pulizzi, provides some background into how Content Marketing World came to be.  If you are big or small brand, B2B, B2C, or virtually any organization that creates content this conference is for you.  Scheduled this year for Sept 4-6 in Columbus, Content Marketing World is now the largest content marketing conference in the world. TopRank is proud to be one of 4 exclusive media sponsors along with Copyblogger Media, Social Media Examiner and SmartBusiness Content Marketing.

Forget Big Brother – What About Giant Google?
Last week Google released its full FCC report which contained information about data collection from unsecured Wi-Fi connections.  It appears that Google’s Street View cars were not only taking photos of streets, but were also intercepting email and SMS traffic.  Read more to see what else Google has up their sleeve.  Via Forbes.

Searcher Personas Driving Landing Page Design
Determining what drives your customers to purchase is invaluable information for any online marketer.  Using searcher personas to determine what techniques to use for your landing pages will improve targeting and therefore your results.  What motivates people to click?  Read on to find out more.  Via Search Engine Land.

Google Keeps It Real (Time)
Google News is getting an upgrade.  Google will begin rolling out further integration between Google+ and Google News.  Starting today Google News users will be able to see what their circles are covering and what they have to say about trending topics.  Another new feature is a “realtime coverage page” which will surface Google+ comments and new articles as they become available.  Via TechCrunch.

Enhance SEO with Author Avatars
Launched in June of 2011, Google’s authorship markup allows websites to connect individual authors to their posts across the web by adding a simple rel=author tag to their content.  Google plans to use this information to help connect people with authors and ultimately their content.  Via ClickZ.

5 Key Strategies for Building Your LinkedIn Network
With over 150 million members, LinkedIn is a valuable asset for business professionals.  This article provides some seemingly simple but effective tips on sharing relevant and engaging information with your network. As well as tactics for continuing to grow your network on an ongoing basis.  Via Social Media Examiner.

Tip Top TopRank(ing) Internet Marketing News

Brian Larson – Your Search Results Just Went Retro
Bell bottoms made a comeback, so why can’t a simplified SERP as well? Although Bing originally led the charge in creating a more customized (and busy) SERP, the search engine is simplifying its search results. Don’t expect anyone to copy the Alta Vista UI, but Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land shares what this retro look means for Bing searches.  Via Search Engine Land.

Jolina Pettice – Segmenting Traffic Based of Value of Device
Search Marketers are used to segmenting traffic based on sources which are known to convert at higher rates. i.e. Search Engines vs Direct vs Referrals.  However, we may need to add an additional layer onto this segment to account for the type of device the visitor is using. For example, are visitors from iPads more valuable in terms of time-on-site and conversion than a visitor from a different type of tablet or desktop.  This may be a data piece to mine further, if your visitors are viewing your site from an array of devices.  Via Search Engine Land.

Shawna Kenyon – How 7 Top Brands Are Using Facebok’s New Ad Tools
In 2012 Facebook previewed a slew of new ad products to people outside the industry, though to some these new initiatives might have appeared to be ‘old hat’, advertisers see them as anything but.  Among the new products were Premium on Facebook, Reach Generator, Offers and Logged Out ads.  These new advertising offers came as a way to showcase new products and services in more than a two dimensional way allowing for ads to reach all of a brands fans and designed to expose them to things they might not otherwise see. The article above showcases 7 big brands and how they are utilizing the new services.  Via Mashable.

Time to Weigh In: What emphasis does your company place on developing customer personas?  Do you consider an article in your Google search more credible if there is an author avatar attached?  Is your company currently segmenting traffic?  If so, based on what data points?

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The new book on internet marketing we’ve recently published, “Optimize“, has been very well received and I’ve been doing a number of interviews and speaking engagements (as you do) around it. One of the most common questions I hear concerns the challenges of implementing an integrated “optimized and socialized content marketing” approach within an organization.

This is a reasonable question, because while it makes sense that content, SEO and social media (as well as email, online PR and advertising) should work together, the challenge for many corporate marketers and communications professionals is how. That’s where a good approach and plan come in to play and Optimize is a blueprint for such a plan – in particular, when it comes to optimizing and socializing content. Here are a few key considerations for integrating these high impact online marketing tactics:

The challenge of optimized integration. When SEO is owned by marketing and public relations runs social media and content creation is shared across multiple departments, integration of those tactics across a company’s content efforts can be a challenge. What brings things together are:

• Leadership support through common goals
• Identification of how an integrated approach will help each individual group as well as the company overall
• Training, process and tools/technology to enable integration of tactics

Find the low hanging fruit for an integration project and share the results upstream and horizontally. Make sure that as different departments work together to integrate Social, SEO and content (as well as other online marketing tactics where appropriate) that there is a feedback mechanism in place for those involved to see that they are having an impact. Even if it’s not specific to them, showing a trend line of how something like website traffic, or share of voice or leads and sales have improved during the time integration best practices are in place can be very motivating.

Make sense?

This week I’m in Belgium on my continued travels to spread the good word about an “Optimized State of Mind” and integrated online marketing. On May 3rd I’m giving a keynote presentation at Fusion Marketing Experience “Digital Marketing Integration: the Mix of Social, Search and Content“. Details on this keynote:

The sheer volume of content produced and shared by connected consumers is overwhelming. With independent search, social media and content marketing efforts, brands are hard pressed to find an effective model for integration.

The search and social web are reliant on content and it is through more effective content marketing that brands can cut through the noise to meaningful customer engagement and sales.

This keynote will outline key trends in the relationship between consumers and content by understanding Discovery, Consumption and Sharing preferences and how a content marketing strategy that integrates the best of SEO and Social Media can boost Digital Marketing effectiveness.

On May 4th I’ll be doing a workshop at Fusion Marketing to put those key integrated concepts into action: “Setting up a Winning Customer-Centric Content Marketing Strategy”. Details on this workshop:

Who are your customers? What do they care about? What content do you need to create in order to guide customers through the sales process from attention to purchase to advocacy? Get answers to these questions and more with a customer-centric content marketing strategy.

Improving content marketing isn’t about creating more content. It’s about content that’s meaningful vs. mechanical for customers that also inspires engagement and business outcomes. Effective content marketing helps brands reach more people ready to buy, refer and share. This workshop will provide the framework for an Optimize and Socialize approach to content marketing to attract and engage customers across the buying cycle.

Granted, I’m looking forward to a weekend in Antwerp and Brugge but I’m also excited to give these strategic and tactical presentations that exemplify the key messages of Optimize. Since the vast majority of our readers are not in Belgium this week, please be sure to check out future speaking events in the right sidebar of this site.

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Mighty Trends in Mobile Marketing

Every day we see mobile being used more and more for online shopping, local searches, email, social networking. And that is just scratching the surface.  This infographic from CultureLabel.com provides insight into the astounding use of mobile for Internet searches, as well as why mobile friendly marketing should be an essential part of your online marketing strategy.  Highlights include:

• 87% of the world’s population have mobile phones
• 300,000+ apps have been developed in only 3 years
• 74% of people use mobile at work

SEO SPAMMERS BEWARE! Google is On To You
Google’s recent webspam algorithm update (aka Penguin) released earlier this week is aimed at better filtering out spammy SEO tactics like: keyword stuffing, link schemes, cloaking, doorway” pages, etc. (Weren’t they already doing that?) Google’s official blog said “we also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded.”  The Panda updated affected about 12% of search queries on Google. Penguin is estimated to affect 3%. What changes do you think google will make next?  Via Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Google Launches Google Drive. All Your Files Are Belong to Us (what you say?)
The good news: Google launched a new cloud storage service that works with Google docs and syncs with your compter. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs, etc.  Via Google Blog

The not so good news: “Google Drive Sparks Privacy Concerns Among Businesses” CIO Journal. “Google Drive Doesn’t Work with iPad, iPhone” GottaBe Mobile. “Google Drive says it may ‘publicly perform’ your files. What’s that mean?” Christian Science Monitor. “Your Google Drive Files Can End Up in Ads” Wired Cloudline.

Selecting Social Networks for Business: Not An Easy Task
In an effort to stay up on the latest business trends many organizations will jump on board for a social network simply because it is new or receiving a lot of exposure. However, how much does that sort of fly by night strategy costing these companies?  It is essential that every company take the time to determine which networks are relevant for their type of business, as well as which networks their target customers are spending their time on. Via InformationWeek.

TopRank Online Marketing Team News

Jolina Pettice – 9 Tips to Develop a More Effective Internal Link Structure
The internal link structure of a website can be overlooked in the race to acquire inbound links. However, the link strategy on-site can be important in helping both search engines and users navigate the site.

From leveraging the most linked-to pages to understanding the information architecture and creating a link dashboard to help identify the impact of changes made on-site, this article is a great start to a more effective internal link strategy.  Via Search Engine Watch.

Joe Manier – The Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization
What aspects go into a holistic optimization strategy for your business’ online presence?  Providing wonderful visuals from stage one of a website’s technical SEO foundation to the final stage of measuring   and improving your efforts, here is a high-level blueprint for succeeding online.  Via Search Engine Watch.

Mike Yanke – Swatted by Google Penguin?  Here’s Some Advice
Google’s latest algorithm update, Google Penguin, went live this week – and as designed – swatted down several websites that swan – or fell – in the seas of black hat SEO.  If you were one of those unlucky sites to be swatted down, what should you do?  Start by reading this post, full of advice, from SearchEngineLand.

Sara Duane-Gladden – How the B2B Social Media Marketing Experience Differs from B2C
Want to know more about how your social media marketing experience and efforts stack up against others? Check out this blog post from the Social Media Examiner that offers insight from the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. About 1,900 B2B marketers contributed to the study.  Via Social Media Examiner.

Brian Larson Roxanne Hagberg – Your Webmaster Tool Belt Just Got Lighter
If you’re a fan of the Google Webmaster features robots.txt creation tool, subscriber stats or the site performance report, you might be interested to know that those tools are going bye-bye. Learn what other changes are in-store including the YSlow browser plugin or other Google tools such as Google Analytics and PageSpeed Online for Site Performance analysis and how that might impact your reporting in this post from Search Engine Land.

Time to Weigh In:  Has your team considered adding a mobile marketing strategy to your online marketing mix?  What process did you go through to determine which social networks were the right fit for your company?  Do you think that Google’s new Penguin update will affect your search visibility?

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Pest Control Internet Marketing will help your company stand out so people actually remember your company when they are looking to hire a professional. Their services will help you build a website, build your SEO, and optimize your map listings on search engines. Whats even more cool about it is they will only do one client per area code, so no helping out the enemy.

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

About the author…

Dr Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2459 posts on ShoeMoney.com.

Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.

Images provided by ShutterStock

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Jeremy recommends you check out these amazing posts:

1. 
   Twitter will be as worthless as MySpace shortly
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   Seven Deadly Sins For People Trying to Make Money Online

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In the search engine marketing world, effective online marketing comes down to surfacing keyword opportunities that reflect a demand for solutions (products/services). Content about those products is created and optimized to attract search traffic for popular and relevant keywords.

Niche products often suffer from a universe of keywords that have low popularity counts and that creates a challenge. Because in the world of SEO, accountability starts with driving more organic, non-branded search traffic to a company website. If there’s very little demand for the keyword phrases identified, it can be frustrating for all.

A common reaction to that frustration is to accuse the products, company or industry as being “boring”.  But here’s the thing:

Challenges with marketing low popularity products isn’t an issue with the products being boring. It’s a problem with the marketers’ understanding of customers and the problems those product solve.  

If there’s a market for a product that solves a problem, then selling that product, as niche and “boring” as it may be, through SEO, content marketing or social media marketing has to do with better understanding the people and problems relevant to the product.

“One man’s junk is another man’s treasure” as the saying goes. What’s important is to understand the product and market well enough to know why a specific audience has value for it, what the end benefits are and the context for how prospects come to need and purchase it.

Here are 5 tips to help find ways to make marketing niche and low demand products more effective:

1. Who has bought the product in the past and why?  Current customers can tell you a lot that’s not revealed in analytics. Survey customers, sales people and customer service reps for the company to identify the company’s perception of their unique selling proposition and the actual reasons customers buy.

2. Segment buyers by common characteristics, pain points, goals and behaviors. Get in the mind of the customer and understand why, how and where they buy.

3. Map the buyer sales cycle from Awareness to Interest to Consideration and Purchase. What kind of content, search keywords and social topics are relevant to guide the buyer through the sales cycle (or better yet, attract them from other companies selling the same thing).

4. Optimize for a quantity of niche. Go horizontal and get creative with a wide variety of variations on keywords.  A keyword with a really low popularity count that is very high on relevancy only needs one sale to be profitable in many cases. Think about that and go wide for every situation there might be for buying the product.

5. Create a cycle of continuous monitoring, measurement and refinement that allows you to adapt and scale successes.

If you can think past keywords and get into the mind of the customer, their problem to be solved and the sales cycle they go through, you can develop an effective content marketing program that leverages search and social media to attract traffic, engage prospects and inspire both sales and social shares.  That’s the Optimized way of online marketing.

What are some of the tactics or situations you’ve solved with “boring” products or services?

 

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That’s Old News! [Infographic]

This new infographic from Schools.com dives into social media and how it is quickly replacing traditional journalism as a widely used news source.  Highlights:

• Facebook makes up 59.5% of news consumed online
• Since 2009, traffic to news sites from social media has increased by 57%

“5 Ways Businesses Are Using Facebook Timelines” New Facebook changes are opening the doors to even greater creativity for brands.  Additional storytelling and education of customers can now take place via the social networking giant.  Be sure to see this post for 5 awesome tips that you can apply to your organization’s Facebook page.  Via Social Media Examiner.

“What You Can Learn from a Deal Gone Bad”  Each lost sales opportunity is  learning experience.  Using that loss to determine what you could have done differently and how you could have better met the needs of your prospect are an invaluable education.  Read on to find out what else your team should consider when a sales lead is lost.  Via Inc.

“Marketing Research Chart:  Top-rated tactics for developing value propositions that resonate and convert”  Recent research by Marketing Sherpa found that 69% of B2B companies have a set of established value propositions that they believe differentiates them from their competition.  This study shares what these marketers said were the most successful tactics for developing these value propositions that resulted in customer conversions.  Via Marketing Sherpa.

“3 Social Community Strategies to Drive Innovation, Engagement, and Sales”  Marketing is only successful if brands or organizations are collaborating with their fans and online communities.  This post shares 3 great social media strategies that will position your company to engage more customers which will hopefully lead to more sales.  Via ClickZ.

“5 Great Starting Points for a Content Recycling Program”  Content creation can be an overwhelming task for companies of any size.  However, there is some good news.  Not all of your content has to be written completely from scratch.  Take a stab at repurposing and mix and matching existing content to cut down on time and investment.  Via Content Marketing Institute.

TopRank Breaking Team News

Sara Duane-Gladden: Crowd Riff Engages Social Fans, Especially at Events
With hundreds of millions of public Twitter streams, it can be difficult to make sense of all the chatter. Crowd Riff allows fans to connect with a brand’s site and view tweets about it in real time, without all the noise. It’s particularly useful for tracking tweets about an event. It also allows you to find your superfans by giving them a score based on what they tweet about your brand.
Via Media Bistro.

Mike Yanke: IAB PwC: Search Still Tops Online Ad Revenues, and Share Grew in 2011
Search ad revenue continues to grow, per the latest data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in partnership with Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), as published by Search Engine Land.  Per this report, search capture $14.8 billion in ad revenue for the full year 2011, spiking almost 27 percent from the $11.7 billion capture in 2010.  Via Search Engine Land.

Jolina Pettice: Understanding the Pinterest Audience – Intro Guide for Marketers
Understanding the potential of Pinterest, begins with understanding the audience and how it does (or doesn’t) make sense to integration into your marketing mix.  According to HitWise, the demographics on Pinterest break down into 3 categories:

• Boomers Boomerangs
• Babies Bliss
• Families Matter Most

Want to learn more about what these different categories mean?  Read on!  Via Search Engine Watch.

Brian Larson: Google AdWords Now Automatically Matches Misspellings Variants
People misspell things. There’s no way around it…and search queries are no exception.   Until now, savvy marketers have been accounting for misspellings and variations with their keywords. That’s now changed.  Via Search Engine Land.

Shawna Kenyon: Facebook’s Analytics Tool for Ads Will Soon Measure Actions Other Than ‘Likes’
In a few weeks Facebook plans to introduce a new feature called “Action Measurement” that will appear as a column and pie chart in Facebook’s Ads Manager. The new feature will allow marketers to dive deeper into user engagement data and go beyond typical stats. Read this article to learn more about the new capabilities.  Via Mashable.

Alexis Hall: 5 Colorful Sketches on Conversion Optimization
This post makes some great points on conversion optimization visually, using the iPad’s drawing tool.  The sketches includes insight on the conversion funnel and landing pages.  Via Search Engine Land.

Time to Weigh In: How much news do you consume on social networks vs. traditional media sources?  Have you adjusted to the new Facebook timeline?  Do you agree with the consumer categories set forth by Pinterest?

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Every year thousands of online marketing campaigns are launched all over the world. Many of these campaigns are dull and ultimately fail in reaching their goals. Every now and then an amazingly orchestrated campaign is launched which becomes an immediate success, which far exceeds initial expectations. In this post I have highlighted three such campaigns. The post introduces the goals and methods of each campaign and what lessons we can learn from each one. If you have examples of other very successful campaigns which we can all learn from, please feel free to post them in the comments section below.

Campaign #1: Bing Decodes Jay-Z

Towards the end of last year the independent marketing network, Drogba 5, was approached by Microsoft’s Bing to help drive traffic and interest from a younger audience. Drogba5 used the book launch of Jay-Z’s autobiography, Decoded to create one of the most innovative online marketing campaigns of the year.

What we can learn:

• Create a connection between content and the real world – Drogba5 did an incredible job in creating a direct connection between the textual content of Jay-Z’s book and the real locations mentioned in his autobiography. By creating a link to a tangible location or object, your audience will have an easier time in relating to the campaign and this in turn will create more buzz.
• Gamification works – People love games and a challenge. By engaging visitors with an online game running the entire period of the campaign, Drogba5 created a powerful mechanism which kept people coming back for more. Try using gamification within your campaign to challenge your audience. It is in our nature to compete and challenge ourselves so use this behavior to create additional buzz around your campaign.

Campaign #2: Tesco Homeplus Virtual Subway Store in South Korea

Tesco is an international supermarket chain which faced unique challenges in becoming the number one shopping chain in South Korea. By studying the lifestyle habits of their market and implementing a marketing campaign involving smartphone purchasing of groceries, Tesco was able to become the most popular shopping chain in South Korea.

What we can learn:

• Understand your target market – Before any energy is spent on planning and building your marketing campaign, it is critical to fully understand the habits and lifestyle of your target audience. Most marketers take this stage lightly and this results in a campaign being dead before launch. Marketing is dealing with people and therefore requires an understanding how people behave and act in certain situations. Running a quick survey or a smaller campaign with a select group can save you hundreds of man hours and thousands of dollars.
• Bring your product/service to the people – Tesco created an incredibly convenient method to buy groceries by bringing the groceries to the people. Try to find ways to bring your product or service directly to your target market so getting exposure to your brand is as convenient for them as possible.

Campaign #3: Volkswagen’s Planeta Terra Twitter Zoom Competition

By using the popularity of São Paulo’s music festival, Planeta Terra, and social media services such as Twitter and Facebook, Volkswagen was able to run a successful online marketing campaign to promote their trendy car, the Fox.

What we can learn:

• Build unity among your participants – Volkswagen’s Twitter zoom game was played by all the participants at the same time to accomplish a unified goal, to zoom into the location of the tickets somewhere in the city. This dynamic brought everyone involved together and created an incentive for each player to bring new players to the game so that everyone would reach the goal. Try incorporating this concept in your next marketing campaign in order to build an every growing community of participants who are striving to reach a single goal.
• Give people what they want – A large part of the success of Volkswagen’s campaign was as a result of offering their audience a very valuable reward for playing their game. Make sure that there is an existing demand for the incentive you are offering to participants of your campaign. People have zero interest in taking part in something which may result in little benefit to them. Make sure the reward is forth competing over.

Conclusion

Even though these campaigns were run by large corporations, the lessons that we can learn are relevant to every marketer and should be considered before launching a million dollar campaign or a hundred dollar campaign. Let fellow readers know which campaigns inspired you and taught you valuable lessons by posting them in a comment section below.

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Source: http://epiclaunch.com/3-digital-marketing-campaigns-that-you-wish-you-thought-of-first/

By now you may have heard that I’ve written a book called “Optimize“.  After months of writing and editing, it’s now the real deal and online orders just started shipping a few days ago.   I haven’t done a formal post talking about the book and so here are a few highlights.

Essentially, Optimize it’s a more holistic view of content and social media optimization than what you’ll often hear at events, read in other books and online.  So many optimization efforts are focused on chasing exploits and loopholes only to be shut down by search engine quality efforts. Why not focus on quality in the first place?

Optimization using keywords and links is making room for a new set of signals and tactics resulting in the need for a more customer centric approach. Many online marketers “get” the value of SEO, social media and even content independently, but working them together in a way that makes sense is often a challenge.

“Optimize” is organized in 3 phases (here’s a preview) and starts by answering why it makes sense to integrate search, social and content as well as practical examples for B2B, B2C, small business, a Fortune 50 and use case examples within organizations for marketing, public relations, customer service and recruiting.  There’s guidance on conducting audits for SEO, Content and Social Media for benchmarking and ongoing performance.

The second phase is by far the largest part of the book covering tactics and implementation ranging from customer segmentation and persona development to search and social keyword research, developing a content plan, on-page web page and social media optimization, social network development, promotion for links and measurement.

The third phase provides examples of bringing it all together and assessment for training and processes to scale an “Optimized State of Mind” to the rest of the organization.

Optimize is designed to be useful as a end to end guide for anyone that creates digital content in an organization that wants to extend the reach and usefulness of that content. That includes marketing, PR, customer service and other departments. The customer centric approach works as well for B2B as it does for consumer focused companies.

Optimize is also a great reference tool for experts. At the same time, Optimize can be used as a reference for those marketers and communications professionals that are experienced in a particular area and not others. They get the “why”, they need the “how”.

At the moment, there are a handful of reviews, webinars and interviews about Optimize but more are coming.  So far, I’ve had several speaking events specific to Optimize in Minneapolis, New York and Chicago with another coming up this week in Leeds, UK and then Antwerp Belgium. In between I’ll be visiting a number of regional events.

I owe a ton of thanks to the TopRank Online Marketing team for chipping in and helping out in a variety of ways. We’re really building something special at our agency and the real growth is just beginning now in 2012. Thank you too, to Mike Grehan, Vice President Global Content Director for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ and Search Engine Strategies for writing an awesome introduction.

A HUGE thanks goes to the following search, social media and content marketing smarties for giving early endorsements of Optimize (many are best selling authors):

• Chris Brogan - Human Business Works, Author, Speaker
• Ann Handley - Chief Cupcake Officer, (Oops, I mean Chief Content Officer) MarketingProfs, Author, Speaker
• John Jantsch - Duct Tape Marketing, Author, Speaker
• Melanie Mitchell - SVP Search Marketing Strategy, Digitas, Author, Speaker
• Scott Monty - Global Digital Multimedia Communications Manager at Ford Motor Company, Speaker
• Brian Clark - Copyblogger Media, Recovering Attorney, Entrepreneur, Speaker
• Joe Pulizzi - Junta42, Content Marketing Institute, Author, Speaker
• Mel Carson - Digital Marketing Evangelist, Community Social Media Manager, Speaker Blogger at Microsoft Advertising, Speaker
• Bill Hunt - BackAzimuth, SEO God, Author, Speaker
• Jay Baer - Convince Convert, Author, Speaker
• Michael Stelzner - Social Media Examiner, Author, Speaker
• Amy Lamparske - Director, Digital Communications at Walmart
• David Alston - CMO Radian6, Speaker

I couldn’t imagine a more impressive group of people to give their approval for a book on this topic.

So many people have reached out to me, unsolicited to offer help to promote the book through speaking, interviews and social shares. I really, really appreciate that! After sharing insights with our readers for over 8 years it’s great to see that kind of appreciation to help get the word out about Optimize.

If you’d like a practical content marketing book that does a deep dive into both why and how, especially when it comes to SEO and Social Media Marketing, then I hope you’ll check out Optimize: Amazon – Barnes Noble.

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