Wow! What a relief! I said it and I feel good! How about you?! OK, so it wasn’t so much of a secret was it? It’s this reality that brings me to the next way that business really needs to look at their content no matter how dry the subject matter may be. There needs to be a level of entertainment.

People often work in environments that can sap the lifeblood from them. As a result, anyone who can brighten their day with something amusing yet still relevant to business scores a big win. While it sounds interesting, it’s not as easy as one might think when putting it into practice.

The best way to show this is an example of someone who took a dry subject (lighting) and turned it into something that made me chuckle and think. These are two desired results that are rare in the world of business to business marketing, let alone marketing as a whole.

The following video was done by Cree Lighting’s Ginny Skalski. She and Cree as a whole have done a great job of taking a rather dry subject matter, lighting, and built interest around how Cree intends to revolutionize lighting through LED technology. Their blog is accomplishing this task, but what really caught my eye was this video that is worth the minute and a half look to see how one can both entertain and educate even on the most mundane topics.

While it’s not obvious from the video, the timing of this video adds to the humor a bit. You see, Cree did this at Easter time, so the use of chocolate Easter bunnies for this particular demonstration is even more clever.

So how do you entertain your audience? A better question to ask first might be, “Do you believe that you even can entertain your audience?” Is your product so dry that nothing could breath life into it, let alone entertain someone? Is your company so “old school” and boring that they wouldn’t consider this kind of approach to marketing even remotely plausible?

Well, you might be working for the wrong company or you might have been thinking about things from the wrong angle. As with any content question, the particular company situation and specifics will dictate what might or might not be done, but here are a few areas to consider if you think you can have a chance to make this happen.

Video – People watch ridiculous amounts of video online and the B2B space is not excluded from that. With the ability to shoot HD-quality video from a little handheld device, such as an iPhone or a Flip MinoHD, there is little if any capital investment required. What is needed, though, is some considerable thought and planning. While the Cree video looks simple, it wasn’t as easy as it appears to make it happen.

Twitter – With Twitter you can get away with more, especially if there is a personality attached to the account. Sometimes it’s better for a business to let one of their more creative types engage with customers so they can ‘keep it light.” This tactic, however, is fraught with risk so be very careful.

Blogging – Corporate blogs are a great place to throw in material that is on the lighter side. You can profile people or show some of the faces behind the products. There are many options with a blog. If your corporate blog is lacking personality, then I would suggest that it is lacking engagement which kills its effectiveness. Lighten up a bit.

Overall, finding ways to entertain people in the business world is much easier to talk about than to execute. Remember this, though. You don’t have to think that everything has to be THE piece that will go viral and get a million views. Look at the Cree example. It has received over 22,000 views as of this writing. Not bad. That’s 22,000 people who now think that LED lights exist and that they are different in a positive way. That’s success in any marketer’s book.

So look to entertain your customers and visitors alike. Remember that all work and no play makes a company look dull. Are you dull right now? Well, you need to get busy and laugh a little.

Comments

My fear is that in short order they will be closing down as well and here’s why. These smaller franchisers appear to have built a model that is focused on them. They sell the franchise rights and collect fees from the franchisee but have little skin in the game moving forward.

This is most evident in the Internet marketing efforts or support that is provided to the franchisees which in most cases appears to be little or none. This leaves these fledgling franchisees / entrepreneurs to their own devices with regard to promoting their business on the Internet. As a result there is a lot of disillusionment and confusion because Internet marketing is not something that everyone knows or has the time to learn.

What these franchisees get instead are “referrals” to search marketing companies who then put them in poor performing paid search campaigns that produce little or no business. No skin off the franchisers nose here because it’s the little guy, the franchisee, that is shelling out for these services without even considering if this is the best thing for them to do as a part of an overall marketing campaign.

If you are considering buying a franchise make sure that you have the following as a bare minimum relating to Internet marketing and your ability to use it.

• Your own web site – It seems that most franchisers are loathe to let the local franchisee have any local web site that they can control and build for their market. Having a landing page on the corporate site IS NOT the same as having a web site. I see this time and time again and it always ends up with the franchisee wondering because they thought they would have their own web site.

• Internet marketing strategy – If the franchiser does not take the time and invest the money in the overall Internet marketing strategy of their franchisees then there will be trouble. Most SMB’s don’t know much about Internet marketing so when they are pushed out of the nest and told to go do business they end up struggling to find new business, especially online, due to ignorance.

• More than a referral – If a franchiser is just handing out names of search marketing service providers then stepping back and putting their hands up saying “Hey, we gave you a resource, it’s not our fault!” then that will end badly for the franchisee. Most of these search marketing shops are just putting together cookie cutter campaigns that are not addressing the true local needs of each market. They also collect fees on the monthly spend that many of these franchisees think is being spent on clicks. Not good.

• Internet marketing continuing education – If the franchise you are considering is not actively working to make you better by providing educational resources about search and social media then you may not want to buy in to the system. I am shocked at how little support is given to most franchisees I come in contact with.

I guess that there are few performance payments to franchisers because they certainly don’t seem to really want to help the franchisee succeed online from what I have seen (if there is a franchise doing this well out there please tell me about it!)

So the net / net here is that if you are already in a franchise that is not helping with  your Internet marketing efforts then you need to go it alone. Take your chances by “breaking the rules” by putting together your own web site or running with social media because your business life may depend on these efforts. if there is no support from the franchiser than it’s up to the franchisee. To wait around for promises from franchisers is business suicide as well because there will always be reasons to hold off on something that may end up being an expense to the franchiser.

If you are considering buying into a franchise and the franchiser cannot provide adequate answers to your Internet marketing questions then you need to seriously consider whether this is the right business partner for you. Right now the environment seems almost adversarial but for what reason (other than cost) I don’t know. Do your homework and hopefully you will avoid some of the pain I have seen recently.

Comments

Actually there is little doubt that the online advertising industry is still growing. The wildcard in any of these prognostications is the amount and for how long. MediaPost reports on research conducted by Publicis’ ZenithOptimedia Group.

The agency estimates that Internet ad spending will expand 10.1% in 2009, an increase of more than 1.5 percentage points over its last forecast in April.

“Its familiar virtues of transparency, accountability and flexibility have proved even more attractive in a recession than ever,” the Publicis shop writes in the new report, released early Monday morning.

The forecast predicts that online ad spending will account for 12.6% of all ad spend this year and increase to over 15% in 2011. Paid search is really pulling its weight with a predicted increase of 20% this year. Doing some simple math though tells us that the rest of the online industry is not nearly as robust since the segment as a whole is looking at a 10% increase this year.

Now the news for the rest of the advertising world

ZenithOptimedia attributed some of the surge in the U.S. search advertising marketplace to the launch of Microsoft’s new Bing search engine, which is creating “welcome competition to Google and should spur further innovation in search.”

The gain’s in the Internet’s share of global ad spending appears to be coming at the expense of every other major medium. ZenithOptimedia predicts spending in all other media will decline this year.

It’s not like there are new dollars coming into marketing during this recessionary period. It looks like it’s just the shifting of existing budgets into more efficient and effective methods like most online options. The ability to measure results is once again the focal point. If marketers are going to spend they better be able to report what happened for the company’s money. If they can’t then we’ll see the average life of a CMO drop below the current 22 month or so tenure.

The predicted effect on the other areas that are losing ground to online spend are:

• TV down 7.1%
• Cinema down 4.8%
• Outdoor down 7.0%
• Newspapers down 14.7%
• Magazines 16.7%

Despite these declines these traditional marketing vehicles still account for about 90% of the overall ad spend. How long will it take for online to reach a 50% share of ad spend? Will that ever happen? Will traditional media go away completely or just look very different? Can it stay the same and still survive? Let’s hear your completely unscientific predictions of the future of advertising. It’ll be some good summer fun.

Comments

Rich Cleland, assistant director of the FTC’s advertising-practices division puts it this way

“The commission is attempting to update guidelines that are 30 years old so that they address current marketing techniques,” he said, “and in particular to address the issue of whether or not the safe harbor that’s currently allowed for ‘result not typical’-type disclaimers is still warranted.”

It looks like the center of this intensified scrutiny is for bloggers who are paid for their posts by marketers. Of course, if the government wants to make someone appear as if they are MUI (marketing under the influence) one has to think that what looks like perfectly acceptable guidelines initially, could likely be blurred enough to make life unpleasant for virtually anyone the government wants to target. I’m not a big conspiracy theory guy but I have to think that if the government is given an inch that they will take full advantage of expanded influence and power well beyond a mile.

On the flip side, it seems that this could possibly help the blogosphere by lending more credibility to reviews. Jim Nail, chief marketing officer of TNS Media Intelligence has this to say

“The thing that makes word-of-mouth marketing powerful is people believing they are getting truthful and honest opinions from real users,” Mr. Nail said. “If people start disbelieving word-of-mouth marketing as much as they disbelieve advertising, we are in deep trouble.”

So it seems once again that the free market and some of its underlying principles are not enough anymore. This summer is the timeframe for these revisions to be voted on so change could be coming quickly.

Some fear that if the revisions are approved, marketers could be scared away from new-media marketing efforts.

“It’s possible there will be a hangover period, but it will self-correct,” said Joe Chernov, VP-communications at BzzAgent. “People get nervous when the government gets involved, and it’s possible the blogosphere will influence the trajectory of how brands respond.”

So, Pilgrim readers, how do you feel about the government telling us what can and can’t be said? Does this approach simply turn social media outlets, including Facebook, into another outlet for one way advertising pitches which then renders it no different than traditional media? If the free flow conversation is monitored and regulated what happens to the appeal of being on the outside of traditional media and being more open and honest? With Big Brother wanting to monitor every word and message at what point does free speech stop being free? Let’s hear it.

Comments

Let’s not forget the Chesapeake Bay Bridge that is just incredibly cool, so who cares what it connects. These structures connect two important areas and make them one. Internet marketing has two places, The United States of Internet Marketing Theory and Internet Marketing Application Island, that apparently have an on-demand bridge system since they are not always connected although they should be.

These two areas are critical to each other, in that neither can exist to its fullest without the other. Just having too much theory and no application does nothing. In the reverse, just applying stuff randomly without having the knowledge of the theory is fruitless as well.

So what does it take to build a permanent bridge between these two “places” that need each other so badly? Essentially the same thing needed to build real bridges. Here’s what I mean:

1. A plan. Good luck building a bridge without a plan and all the engineering that is required to make the thing actually work. Same goes for Internet marketing. No plan means no good results. Whether you plan or not, you will get results. Just that the ones with no plan suck and the others have a much greater chance of success.
2. Raw materials. You are not going to build a bridge with straw and twigs. It requires iron and steel and asphalt. Same goes for Internet marketing. If you are trying to build your efforts with materials that aren’t “aged” (read have any experience) or are from the Dollar Store (read cheap), then your success will be spotty at best. You do not need to have the world’s greatest experts to do Internet marketing, but you do need to have someone who knows more than just the basics.
3. Teamwork. Bridges are incredible team efforts. In fact, most of the big bridge construction stories talk of heroism and even loss of life. Fortunately, Internet marketing isn’t so dramatic. It is, however, a real team effort. The biggest need will be between the Web developers and designers and the marketing folks. Make sure there is buy-in on both sides or else you will experience frustration and project overruns. Trust me.
4. Hard work. Plain and simple, it’s hard to build a bridge. Once again, while not nearly as hard, Internet marketing is still challenging. It requires a nose to the grindstone attitude. Part-time effort with Internet marketing returns half-baked results
5. Maintenance. Once the bridge is built, it better be maintained. There are awful stories of what results can be expected if maintenance is ignored. Same thing goes for Internet marketing. If you build it and it works for a short while, but you stop putting effort into it, then it will stop giving returns. You have to commit to maintenance or else your returns will be short lived.

So you want to bridge the gap between Internet marketing theory and application? Please do, because there could be many people who benefit from your willingness to do what others will not. Just like a bridge that is built by some for the service of many, the same can be said when you help your business thrive. Many people, like employees and suppliers, reap the rewards. Happy building!

Comments

Enough sarcasm, I know. My point is this. Yes, the economy is bad and we are faced with two very distinct options. 1) We continue to report that it is bad and drag people into a deeper malaise or 2) We figure out a way to get through it.

I don’t think that people should ignore the economic reality. That wouldn’t be smart. I do believe however that in the US we pride ourselves on figuring things out and coming up with answers. This constant barrage of economic distress news has taken away some of that spirit. It then becomes the job of individuals to influence their sphere of influence in a real way. As internet marketers we have a unique opportunity to do so. How? Here are a few thoughts.

1. Dig deeper into your current customers’ situations. Seek to help them beyond just SEO or paid search or social media. Help them see opportunities via the internet that they may not have been willing to explore when things were better. Give people hope through new ideas.

2. Get better at your craft. I am not ‘salesy’ enough to say to my current clients or prospects that I know everything about internet marketing. The reality is that nobody does. I am pledging to myself to learn more so I can get more mileage for myself and my clients regarding the work I do. Generate hope through education.

3. Experiment more. We certainly live in uncertain times. The reality is that on the other side of this it probably won’t be business as usual. Those who adapt to the new environment and adopt the new way of the economic world will be prepared for success when this turns around. Give hope through forward thinking.

4. Remember that business happens with people. I have spent my life learning about how to do business. I have seen a process take place from where I depersonalized (even dehumanized) the people that I do business with (to get the sale) to seeing them as people with needs beyond the sale. I have a responsibility to meet those needs. The needs may even be more than business. People struggle with life and sometimes need help. Internet marketing helps the bottom line for sure but what about the person who is hurting? Their ability to even care about business may be impaired due to life’s circumstances. We should help each other beyond the transaction. Give hope through caring.

5. Find business despite the news. As internet marketers we should be able to uncover the gems for our clients that are out there even during this mess. Is it reasonable to say that business has simply stopped happening? No. Has it slowed? Sure it has. All that means is that the numbers may not be as high but the numbers still exist and they have to continue to exist. Give hope by contributing to the positive not the negative.

Of course, there are a million other ways to give hope in today’s environment. Got any thoughts?

FT Takeaway: The economy is bad. Hope is good. Help people by giving them hope not more bad news. Use internet marketing for change and progress beyond the dollars and cents. Make a difference.

Comments