Internet Marketing

Apr 19 2012

The Power of the Third Person

Challenge: Write a blog post about marketing and business. Don’t use the First Person at all.

Roman Numeral One, Thanks, chrisinplymouth, used with cc License

Easy, right?

Here’s the thing: people love to talk about themselves. People love to point to the awesome stuff they’re doing – and, with the dawn of Social Media Marketing, it’s so much easier to be self-centered.

Because you have to connect with someone else, and they have to connect with you.

But How To Avoid Crossing “The Line?”

You know “The Line,” because it’s rather garish these days. Everyone has a book coming out, it seems, and they’re doing the mass market promotional thing. Everyone has expertise that they want to tout – for a fee, of course – and it’s tough to separate the value from the pablum, the pitch from the meat.

Even the uber-engagers – the ones who call their fans “community” – have to point to themselves as the examples of pure awesomeness…in a bottle, or on a blog.

Don’t Fall For It. Don’t.

Pretty soon, you can separate the wheat from the chaff.

The valuable posts start going away, the “Buy The Book” posts start arriving. Maybe there’s an F-bomb for effect, or maybe it’s just an old idea disguised by new social media buzzwords.

Don’t. Fall. For. It.

Don’t.

Third Person Credibility

So, here’s a list. Some blogs that aren’t all First Person. Ones that aren’t overly promotional – and, instead, give you a taste of knowledge that you can take and do something valuable with.

Go forth. Avoid the First Person.

Olivier Blanchard, The Brand Builder. This is worthwhile for the past couple posts alone: a frying pan to the face of conventional business wisdom.
Marjorie Clayman, MargieClayman.com. She’s just cool – but her insights, which DO sometimes involve the First Person, are spot on.
Shelly Kramer and Team, V3im.com. People from Kansas City are just really nice. Down-to-earth. And focused on helping you.

Done. One List, No First Person. What do you think?

Feb 21 2012

Internet Marketing Vs. Social Media Marketing

Hi. If you’re new here, be sure to learn more about our FORWARD:MARCH program, with private coaching starting March 1 and webinars kicking in on March 6.

We have often said that the work we do here at Area 224 – and the 12 Minute Marketing program we launched last year – has been at the intersection of Internet Marketing and Social Media Marketing.

Guess which camp we think Pinterest is in?

But what do we mean by that?

Good question…and, even though we see some real differences between the two – in approach, in positioning, and in numbers – we think both sides can learn lots from each other. Here are some key learnings:

Internet Marketing is All About Numbers.

Social Media Marketing – while getting better at it – is more of a “soft science.” Here’s what we mean:

Uber-Marketer Frank Kern has talked quite a bit about specific programs he has done – and he has opened the kimono and shared the nitty-gritty numbers. Like this:

10,000 emails sent
27% open rate
97 sales
$1397 per sale

The ROI here is unclear – we don’t know how much was invested in all facets of this campaign, but we can tell you this: Internet Marketing focuses on Sales Numbers.

To take it a step further, there’s a guy named Ryan Deiss – also someone who falls into the “Uber-Marketer” camp – who has often said that he zeros in on one absolute number before deciding whether or not to get involved in someone’s product launch:

Earnings Per Click. (Or, if 100 people click on a landing page, and 5 of them order a $49 product, take 5, multiply it by $49 and you get $245; divide that by 100 and you come up with $2.45 per click.)

Meanwhile, Social Media Marketing is Less Mature about Bottom Line Impact

Very simply put, if we have to explain any of the above concepts to you, you are probably NOT an Internet Marketer. You might be a Social Media Marketer.

OR, at the risk of being even more direct, you might just be “in Social Media.”

This is one area where big brands and big agencies have failed in the past: they’ll hire based on soft numbers that might be rather suspect. 5000 Facebook friends (the limit). 25,000 Twitter followers (many of whom may well be bots).

And, to expect “Social Media” to translate immediately into “Social Media Marketing,” you MUST have an Objective.

Gone are the days (and these were a couple years ago, mind you) where brands can say “get me on Twitter” or “get me a Facebook fan page” and have that translate into some definition of success.

Campaigns and Landing Pages are more the domain of Internet Marketing

Yes, I said it out loud: Social Media Practitioners – the experts, gurus, ninjas and rock stars you have heard so much about – these folks tend to NOT be very good at running a campaign that goes beyond really soft sciences like “engagement.” You’re possibly going to hear terms like “number of Retweets” and “number of Facebook Fans” – but, from the Social Media folk, you will not hear anything that makes the ears of the sales people ring.

“We drove 1000 people to the landing page, and 125 of them filled out a form. All of them received a white paper from our firm; we were able to reach 15 of them by phone in the first week after the white paper arrived. We have appointments with 5 of them to talk about their business needs.”

A hypothetical quote…but which type of person produced it?

Internet Marketing is always wearing a Sales Hat

This might be the greatest difference between Social Media Marketing and Internet Marketing:

Internet Marketers always have a number attached to their name.

One reason yours truly got out of traditional PR back in the middle of the last decade: fighting for budgets and not being able to quantify the value you bring to an organization is TIRING stuff.

Our Point: if you’re in Social Media, think first like an Internet Marketer.

May 09 2011

Hellobar Is Still Cool…Want One?

Hey, party people. We’re still rocking one of those “Hellobars.” And you can, too…

Like to get visitors to your site to check out something else? Want to trade an email address for some good content?

Don’t want to be one of “those people” who does an annoying popup ad?

You should think about the Hellobar.

The fine folks at Digital Telepathy hooked us up awhile back, and we have a small number of invites.

PLUS…they’re launching a PRO service with A/B testing, and you can try that out for a limited time for free.

(We’re doing that here. A/B Testing is vital, in our opinion, and not just for webby stuff. More on that later.)

For now, if you want an invite, all you need to do is this…

Follow Area224 on Twitter.
Send a tweet to us asking for a Hellobar. Bonus points: say hello to @thehellobar in your tweet.
While supplies last. Offer valid in all 50 States, etc. No cash value, no purchase necessary.

Say hello to your own Hellobar!

Mar 30 2011

All Blanket Statements Are Dangerous

Remember the guy who taught painting on public television?

This guy: Bob Ross

Watching him was poetry. Relaxed poetry. No broad brushstrokes.

(Okay, that’s a broad brush he’s using in this photo. Work with me…)

Meanwhile…well, not everybody is this calm and peaceful. This serene.

For instance…

Watching the back-and-forth on Facebook between UnMarketer Scott Stratten and Direct Sales Social Media expert Jennifer Fong was all sorts of brushstroking. AND neither one was wrong.

After a couple comments about the dislike of MLM (Multi-Level Marketing), next came this exchange:

More comments slamming MLM, followed by…

And Jennifer’s Response:

NOTE: Here are the links Jennifer refers to:

http://dsa.org

http://directselling411.com

There’s another lost point in Scott’s original post: “Internet Marketing Seminar.”

Here’s where, one could argue, the “charlatans” Scott refers to might be even more dangerous. (See our post on Internet Marketing Explained from a couple weeks back.) Promises of riches with little work, while not overt, are really implied with “Push Button” and “Auto Click” and anything related to the word “System.”

So…Why is Neither One Wrong?

Scott’s point: don’t sell pipe dreams. Don’t sell the fact that there isn’t hard work involved. Don’t prey on people’s desires for a quick fix.

Jennifer’s point: hard work is involved. Focus on the positives. Lots of good people. Ethics, please.

My point (and I’m not accusing either of blanket statements): study the line of work before you jump in. MLM, IM, any M. Get a few opinions. Don’t believe the hype in either direction. You can find some success stories who are honest folks, and you can find some failures who are, also, honest folks.

Ask around. Bring a blanket.

Mar 16 2011

Internet Marketing Explained

Why 56 Days? Puzzling...
I’m a Social Media Marketing Guy. Won’t apologize for it, it’s how I make my living. But that means something way different than “Internet Marketing Guy.”

While we at Area 224 fashion ourselves as being in the “Social Media Marketing” camp, we study the other animal quite a bit. There’s nothing wrong with the “Internet Marketing” approach – but the two can look at the same thing from completely different perspectives. For instance:

The List Is Gold.

If you hear that phrase, you are more than likely hearing from someone in Internet Marketing. Why?

Internet Marketing focuses first and foremost on the use of the “Squeeze Page.”

Sniper Squeeze Most of these Modern Squeeze Pages have a couple things in common:

Numbers – almost always pulled from someone’s online marketing history (selling products through a service like Clickbank). For instance, this person made exactly $1,291 in 24 hours.

Video – there is almost always a video on “auto-play.”

Email “Capture” – this is where the gravy is for Internet Marketing. Often, the next marketing “thing” – a free report, access to another video, or a special presentation – is a quid pro quo. The quid is your email address, and the quo is the report.

You have just been “squeezed.” It’s not a good thing, it’s not a bad thing. It just is.

Monetizing the List.

We have talked here about how we think the “Sales Funnel” is dead. That pertains to Social Media Marketing and, we think, Facebook Marketing as well.

Sidebar: You are probably seeing scores of ads on Facebook, asking you to “Like” a certain page. While Internet Marketers ARE applying “Sales Funnel” tactics to Facebook Marketing, the reality is that the buying public can do – and IS DOING – a ton of search on their own while on Facebook. An estimated 60% of people who “Like” a page will never visit that page again; meaning that things like “context” and “content” on the part of brands, individual and business, is more important than using Facebook to grab a list.

Here’s where Internet Marketing practices focus much more on pure numbers than Social Media Marketing does. By pure numbers, here’s an example of what we were asked by an Internet Marketer (one with decent notoriety and, by our own estimate, a list of greater than 100,000 email addresses), while we were working on the launch of our 12 Minute Marketing service.

How big is your list?
Who is your copy writer?
What does the autoresponder sequence look like?
Do you have any testimonials?
What sort of traffic have you generated for these testimonials?
Can you show the revenue generated through your system?

It’s not a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. It just is.

What the true Internet Marketers do is this:

Squeeze you into a list.
Pepper you with messages from their “autoresponder” (aWeber and GetResponse are two of the biggies).
Get you to either convert into a paying customer or unsubscribe.
Lather, rinse, repeat.

This exact same Internet Marketer listed above has, through his “empire,” sent us no less than 5 different product offers in a single day. In many cases, once you “opt-in” to one list, they can legally opt you into other lists of theirs at the same time. This can be, for the prospect, quite painful if someone has dozens of products they are promoting.

Return on Investment.

This one is, honestly, the most DANGEROUS number in Internet Marketing.

Internet Marketer Frank Kern (he’s everywhere, made tons of money, all that stuff) claimed the following in one of his recent emails:

“Anyway – I’ve spent over $44K on Facebook ads so far, and I’ve BROUGHT IN $160,000.00 IN SALES. I’ve tracked everything, and my Facebook campaigns have brought in almost 400% return on investment.” (Emphasis his.)

Won’t argue with his spend, won’t argue with his sales revenue. BUT…

This is ROI in a vacuum – very VERY popular in Internet Marketing circles.

What’s missing? Lots:

Spend on other channels.
Email marketing spend.
PPC ad buy on Google, elsewhere.
Cost of doing business.
Brand equity already built up through Oprah-like notoriety.

This reminds us of Venture Capital vs. Angel Investing. Here’s why…

Back when we were running the startup – when we weren’t “pre-revenue” but we weren’t in the 7-figures, we were in “No Man’s Land.” VC firms were not interested in an investment because we didn’t have the “revenue run rate” they needed to justify working with us. Angel Investors were more likely to get involved, but their willingness (in 2006 and 2007) hinged, honestly, on whether or not we were a biotech firm. (Back then, that was the number one question.) Education Technology was not a proven concept and, thus, we found ourselves stuck, and thus we bootstrapped.

All About The Numbers.

All numbers in Internet Marketing are, again, DANGEROUS.

We have purchased Information Products pretty often – to research the marketing approach, to see what is out there, and to understand the competition. We have never purchased ones based solely on numerical claims: “I made 1,684,293.37 in 4 months” must, somewhere on the site, have the disclaimer that says “your experience may vary.”

What is absolutely missing from the Internet Marketing equation that IS present in the Social Media Marketing equation is “Social Proof.”

Internet Marketers will argue that, for them, Social Proof is in the NUMBERS. Number of Facebook fans (and, often, cost per click to get those fans). Number of Twitter followers, though some Internet Marketing people have left Twitter and don’t plan on coming back “because the ROI isn’t there.”

Social Media Marketers – again, put me in this camp – will focus more on Interaction, Conversation, Engagement. Which can be squishy – but it is easy to tell if an Internet Marketer is NOT “engaging” on social media, just by following for a little while and seeing whether their interaction is automated, whether they are starting conversations and not finishing them, and whether they are friending and following just for the sake of spam-like behavior.

We’ll boil it all down to two simple “equations,” and we invite your comments to tell us whether or not we are on target.