Tag: marketing

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Paid, Owned, Earned marketing approach {article worth sharing}

The Marketer’s Approach to Balancing a Paid, Owned, and Earned Social Media Strategy – via SumAll http://blog.sumall.com/journal/marketers-approach-balancing-paid-owned-earned-social-media-strategy.html

Some Key takeaways:

“…The ‘paid, owned, earned’ approach. The idea is essentially that all marketing falls into three different categories.

First there is the media that you pay for. This is traditional advertisements and promotions.

Then there is media that you own – think blog content, visuals and other offerings that you or your team will create.

And finally, there is the Holy Grail of marketing– earned media. This is the fabled word-of-mouth that everyone is always talking about.”

. . . . .

“… without doing or collecting things worth talking about, brands just end up talking about themselves. Not only does nobody listen to, or interact with shameless self-promoters, it actually turns users off to your brand.”

Hilary’s Note: This second takeaway is one I see small businesses doing all of the time. They think that marketing is standing on the soap box and just shouting that they exist and expecting people to care. And it’s even worse when they won’t acknowledge that they could at least talk about the benefits or unique qualities of their product or service.

In the case of some products or services it doesn’t even have to be words. With clothes or jewelry for example, a good photo, as they say, is worth a 1000 words (though some descriptions for SEO reasons are also important when online.)

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Be your best self in business
& stop trying to be something you aren’t

I want to scream anytime someone says :
• “I want to be like xyz company because they seem to be making money”
It’s very unlikely your business will really flourish with this mindset.

You can’t just say “oh that business looks like they’re making money I want some of that pie” particularly if you don’t know how they got where they are today … or don’t want to put the time or money into it. OR worse, you want to make money but think that they charge too much so you want to be like them but cheaper without sacrificing quality … and without first reviewing what business expenses might be. I have heard it SO many times in my life it’s not even funny anymore.

You need to be your best self in business:
• “I have these core values and my business provides a valuable product/service for this need/desire/problem”

But I want to make a boatload of cash!

Money isn’t magic. Money also isn’t evil. Money is certificates of appreciation for something you sell or offer that someone else values. Money is a standardization of value instead of trading goats for crops and vice versa. Whether it fills a basic need, a desire or fixes a problem, people pay because it fulfills something in their lives. Physically or emotionally.

See also: Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

What makes you you?

Trying to be someone else means that you are less unique and have less to offer the world. And therefor people are less likely to give you those certificates of appreciation we call money. This doesn’t mean your business can’t be similar to someone else’s just that it needs to focus on what makes you unique. USP or Unique Selling Proposition.

Yell it from the rooftops!

So what about marketing? No matter how awesome your service or product is, “Build it an they will come” is not a reliable business marketing plan. Whether you market traditionally (magazines, tv or radio) or via more current method (social media, website, streaming radio) you need to have a USP and some effort put into spreading the word.

Do you still really want to BE amazon.com or Google or Apple or Microsoft or other large national organization?

If so, you really need to just go apply for a job with them.

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Are you marketing via product launch or by personal milestones?

Are you marketing via product launch or by personal milestones like a new job or even a broken refrigerator? There’s value in new products but you may grab people’s attention more when they are shopping based on a specific life event.

Screen Shot 2013-12-18 at 3.02.34 PM

http://www.google.com/think/articles/build-your-engagement-engine-part-3.html

Key article takeaway:
“…are your media plans built around product milestones such as a launch, a new feature or a line extension? Or are they based on people milestones such as a new job, a recent move or the birth of a child?

Take refrigerator manufacturers, for instance. The traditional approach might be to step up their media efforts when they launch a new state-of-the-art model.
…
But what would happen if they used the same investment and anchored it to people’s lives? As a consumer, when do you think about buying a new refrigerator? For most of us, it’s when the old one breaks or when we remodel our kitchens. At all other times, chances are we are much less attentive to refrigerator ads.

At Google, we talk about winning the moments that matter. [People doing] a search for “broken refrigerator” or “kitchen remodeling.”…”

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SEO in a nutshell (really oversimplified)

There are certain things that can be done to increase your chances at showing up for certain search words and phrases. HOWEVER, no matter what is done to increase those chances, we do not have control over the search engines.

If you absolutely MUST show up for a certain search phrase, I would recommend PPC (Pay per click) using Google AdWords, Bing ads and Yahoo Advertising.

However if people are not even searching for xyz (description of your product/service and any related terms) then you still need to find other ways to increase demand. Send samples to bloggers, advertise in traditional media, go to trade shows (the list goes on.)

This is oversimplified but hopefully will help you grasp larger seo and marketing concepts that require this base knowledge. SEO is not a quick fix. Neither is building a website.

Related: SEO / SEM / PPC