As humans, we are inherently against change—and so, there will always be those who resist it until beaten over the head. Think about some of the communication landmarks of the past 15-20 years and at what stage you and/or your company began to use them in your marketing strategies…e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, online networks (i.e. CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL, etc.), web sites, search engines, online video, blogs and now social media and mobile (in the context of the web).
The adoption curve goes like this:
Innovators – Bold people who pull change.
Early Adopters – Respected leaders who try out new ideas.
Early Majority – Thoughtful people who are careful, but accepting of change more quickly than the average.
Late Majority – Skeptical people who will only use new ideas or products once they’re being used by the majority.
Laggards – Traditional people who are critical of new ideas and will only adopt if forced to by the majority.
More than half fall into the last two categories, they are the ones whose businesses will be left behind in the new economy, there are new rules to marketing and PR and unless you begin to change and adopt at a faster pace, your competitor(s) will crush you.
It’s easy to think that social media will be a fade, but that’s what people thought of all the other technologies listed above…all of which were game-changers at the time. The web is different than other traditional mediums in that it’s also a technology; therefore it’s ever-changing.
Because of the lagging economy, many businesses are not increasing marketing budgets, but rather reallocating resources. According to Forester Research, 61% of businesses are shifting budgets away from traditional marketing to interactive, 75% will come at the expense of Direct Mail (40%) and Newspapers (35%). In the same Forester study the majority of the budget shift is going toward social media and online videos, followed by SEO.
Interactive marketing spending has, and continues to increase dramatically. In 2005 the marketing percent spent was 8% at $11B, 2009 was 12% at $25.6B and by 2014 it is predicted to be 21% at $55B. Of those numbers social media accounted for only $716M in 2009, but is expected to rise to $3.11B by 2014, a 442% increase. Mobile Marketing, which is also expected to rise dramatically, was $391m in 2009, expected to be $1.3B by 2014.
By 2014 over one-fifth of all marketing dollars will be invested in interactive initiatives…that’s amazing for a medium that just hit “late majority” status merely a decade ago (in Feb. 2000 10m domains had been sold, by Sep. 2000 over 20m). If you would like a copy of the comprehensive Forrester report in which I pulled this data from, please e-mail me.
I recently attended a Social Media panel discussion hosted by: AZIMA on how to integrate social media into your marketing plan—here were a couple of my take-aways…
Have a narrative
Don’t chase tactics before figuring out a strategy
Create a company policy
Scale resources
Address integration challenges
Create success metrics
Here is a good video on Social Media ROI, however I do object to one thing they allude to…nothing is “free,” while many of the mediums themselves are, labor isn’t.
Pepsi has had some memorable Super Bowl ads over the past 23 years, with such notable celebrities as Britney Spears and Cindy Crawford. This year however, Pepsi opted to forgo the Super Bowl in lieu of Social Media…is this a sign-of-the-times?
No question online marketing has been gaining traction over the years, and for good reason—online marketing is targetable, trackable and provides amazing ROI. The Holy Grail of online marketing is creating/getting something to go “viral,” meaning something that will resonate with people so much that they share it with their friends and those friends share it with their friends…and so on.
In Pepsi’s latest social media program, they are giving away $20 million in grant money, some critics say that if you’re going to spend that kind of money for a charitable cause, why not spend another $3m for a Super Bowl spot? To start with $3m is just for one 30 second spot, so they’d more likely spend $9-12m, plus production. I actually believe it was a brilliant P/R move on Pepsi’s part…think about all the media attention they’ve gained by NOT being in the Super Bowl this year (including this small blog post)…that alone is worth forgoing the big event. In addition, marketing is about about testing and taking chances…since Pepsi is such a big brand, they can easily take a year off from the Super Bowl and use that money to test the social media waters in a big way.
Taking a page from Google, Twitter is moving toward “relevancy” by adding a new feature that will allow you to see what’s hot geographically. This service is new and thus there are only 15 cities on the list so far, but I’m sure it will expand soon. If you’re in one of the 15 cities with this new feature, let me know what you think as Phoenix, being the 5th largest city in the U.S. is not on the list yet.
I had a conversation with a buddy of mine today and we were talking about what the next wave of the Internet will look like. I told him that I believed that Web 3.0 will be a lot easier to define than Web 2.0. Web 3.0 will be the convergence of web and mobile and consumer adoption of GPS web-enabled smart phones. I will prognosticate more in a future post...
My buddy then asked me how I would describe Web 2.0…I said, “It’s a lot more difficult to define, however I saw it as the departure from a static informational WWW to a dynamic one.” In other words, a website went from being informational to being a full blown communications tool. That may be over simplified, but I’m sure you get the point. Not only has development dramatically evolved, but Websites now communicate/touch a company’s prospects in myriad ways.
Web 2.0 connected people in a virtual way; Web 3.0 will bring them back together physically. Web 3.0 will be a marketer’s paradise. Lots more on the subject coming soon.
(Note: If you’re looking to build a “Groupon-Type” site, I can help: Contact Me)
If you have a restaurant, entertainment, tourism or service type business, there are a lot of new “Deal” type websites popping up on the scene. Some of these sites that have been able to attract a good following can help you generate instant sales and buzz for your business.
GROUPON is just one of many collective buying, or daily deal websites popping up.
Take the most popular one, GROUPON, they offer up a deal-of-the-day (one for each major city) in which users are required to purchase that day in order to secure the deal. Some of these new sites are just trying to be glorified coupon sites, however what Groupon does is focus on just one business per day by offering an extraordinary deal—they can achieve this by guaranteeing the merchant that “x” number of sales will be made. If the users don’t gravitate toward a deal and “x” number are not sold, then the deal is off.
Some Merchants may feel that giving a 50% discount is too tough on the bottom line, but what they need to consider is that this type of promotion is not a hit on sales, but rather a marketing investment. In addition to exposing your business to a great number of people, the ones that purchase are now future customers.
I love when I discover a cool and useful new product or service. I recently upgraded to a new computer and I use several browsers, so of course I can never find the “bookmark” I’m looking for. In comes Xmarks, an easy-to-use tool that synchronizes all of your bookmarks across multiple computers and browsers—you can even log into Xmarks from a remote computer to access your favorite sites.
Xmarks is not all that new and actually used to be called “Foxmarks” as it used to only work with FireFox. With the expanded usage, Foxmarks changed to Xmarks. The Wall Street Journal did a nice piece with video earlier in 2009 when the company was still “Foxmarks.” I just synced all of my computers and browsers…worked great. Let me know how it works for you.
Listen up all you entrepreneurs and small business owners…before you start your company or launch a new product…the very FIRST thing you need to do before you do ANYTHING else is…reserve your domain name(s)! It sounds so elementary to so many, but I can’t tell you how many people I still run into that don’t do it.
Tips on reserving a domain name:
In addition to reserving your domain name (before telling anyone about your business)—reserve social media urls as well, for example Twitter.com/YourDomain, or Facebook.com/YourDomain or LinkinedIn.com/in/YourDomain, etc.
If possible, try and integrate a keyword in your domain…for example: ShubicWebDesign.com (“Web Design” being the keyword). BTW, the reason I used “Web Design” in my domain rather than say, “Web Development” (which is a more accurate term for what I do) is because “Web Design” is searched a whole lot more than “Web Development.”
Reserve your domain for a long period of time; at least five years…this is a search friendly technique. All too often spam-type sites are registered for short periods of time and the search engines know it.
Reserve possible misspellings or variations of your domain and re-direct those domains to your main site. For example, if your main domain is Web2Mail.com you would want to reserve WebTwoMail.com and WebToMail.com…if they were available.
Don’t discount urls with dashes! If you have an online business where you are going to get most of your traffic from search engines, having a domain with dashes is perfectly acceptable and can offer up a keyword rich url where the variation with no dashes is already taken. For example AZWEbDesign.com could be AZ-Web-Design.com
Lastly, there are a ton of Registrars out there, the two I’ve used the most are GoDaddy and Register.com, both are very good.
This is a big and exciting week with respect to technology (hardware that is), as it’s time once again for CES (the Consumer Electronics Show). Having been to CES myself once, I can appreciate all the hype—it’s a time when all the big electronic manufacturers show off their latest gadgets. In the spirit of innovation, I have highlighted ten up-and-coming start-ups who’ve created the latest web-based apps that I think you’ll be interested in learning more about.
Forget cumbersome mobile browsing, Aloga makes finding your favorite restaurant or store super simple by proactively notifying you of interesting places, events and other activities near you…no matter where you are.
WildFire will help you promote your business using social networks with their simple “Wildfire Promotional Builder.”
Square credit card processing
SquareUp has created a super easy way to accept credit cards in the field. No contracts, monthly fees or hidden costs…what’s not to love?
CitySourced provides a free, simple, and intuitive tool empowering citizens to identify civil issues (potholes, graffiti, trash, snow removal, etc.) and report them to city hall for quick resolution. Anything that will make government more efficient has to be a good thing.
Are expense reports dragging you down? Expensify might be a solution for you. Throw away your paper receipts and stop tedious paperwork, get IRS-ready eReceipts.
Remember when the fax machine was the latest and greatest way to communicate—then came e-mail? Well, Google might just revolutionize e-mail and it’s called “Wave.” Currently Wave is in beta stage and you need to get an invite from Google to participate. I have been a Wave Beta user for a few weeks now, and while I don’t fully understand it yet, I can see the enormous potential. Frankly, I’m not even sure Google fully understands how Wave will work just yet as it continues to evolve.
Need to move inventory or put butts in seats? GroupOn might be for you. GroupOn is a bit like a coupon, but uses collective buying power to get good deals for their users. Say a local theater has an event that is only half sold out, they can tell GroupOn that their $50 tickets can be sold for $25 if 500 people agree/buy. Unlike cluttered coupon sites, GroupOn only serves up one deal per day (per city).
You’ve heard the slogan, “There’s an app for that.” Now, there is an app to make an app. Check out appmakr
GPS enabled smart phones are spawning all kinds of interesting new products. Gowalla will enable you to share your experiences with others while also rewarding you for “stamping your passport” (so to speak).
The true convergence between T.V. and the web might just be here…thanks to Boxee.
I know there are a ton of cool new tools, services and start-ups out there, but at the moment, this is my top 10. Please share or contribute to this post if you run into something revolutionary…or at least a 7 on the coolness factor.
I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about Google’s mobile Android OS and that there was rumor that Google would unveil their own
Google Nexus One Smart Phone
phone soon—well, looks like that day has come sooner than most expected. Later today Google is expected to announce the launch of Nexus One (or Nexus 1). Nexus One could be the first smart phone to truly compete with the iPhone. Everyone I’ve talked with who has an Android phone absolutely loves the OS. The unlocked version of Nexus 1 is expected to be around $550.
I subscribe to many newsletters and I have one in particular that always ends up in my “junk” folder. Unfortunately, email delivery is a big problem these days, so to help improve your email newsletter delivery rate, check out some of these terms to avoid and some alternatives to consider.
SPAM TO AVOID
SUGGESTIONS/ALTERNATIVES
Do not repeat words>>
Be succinct; try to avoid ’spam’ words.
Do not use all CAPS>>
Keep everything in lowercase if possible.
Do not use !, $, or 100%>>
Keep punctuation to a minimum.
Affordable>>
Reasonably priced, reasonable, within your means, inexpensive
