Is that like an IED? Not exactly. IMP, that’s an Internet Marketing Professional. While we may be able to extract significant “damage” to a client’s competitor base, no road-side bombs are employed.
It was a sort of an epiphany that some people may not understand what an internet marketer actually does, and the mind through which we operate. Here’s my answer:
Intelligent – Internet marketing professionals are intelligent. We have to know what the current trends are in the market, what’s going to impact a targeted market, and what the new strategies and technologies are to make that impact.
Methodical – Believe it or not, there actually is a method to our madness. While some people just throw out marketing efforts, hoping to make something work, Internet Marketing Professionals are armed with best practices, current market trends, and a plethora of analysis to make sure the efforts made on behalf of our clients are successful.
Poetic – Yes, poetic is a great description of an Internet Marketing Professional. What we do can be compared to writing a great poem. It may never end up in a classic literature textbook, but our goals are the same. Poets and IMP’s are both driven by what will move someone. In the case of Internet Marketing Professionals, we want to move someone to a specific action, and that is practical poetry (even if it doesn’t rhyme).
Have you taken the time to talk with an Internet Marketing Professional to discuss how to move your business forward? If not, reach out, and let’s make something great happen for you!
Last week, I introduced you to Josh, our new search engine optimization (SEO) specialist, and I promised you we’d be rolling out search engine packages. We’ve put together basic packages where we make sure your pages are set up with the appropriate tags and content/copy. Our packages are a la carte so if you only need us to do the set-up, we can. Or if you need monthly link building, we have that, too.
We’ve also heard from a lot of you that you’d like a Facebook page, but aren’t sure how to set it up. Take a look at the pages we’ve done for Atlanta Women’s Specialists and Happy Baby Solutions. Looking for a more custom look? Take a look at this custom welcome page Kemba, our creative director, designed.
Our social media starter package gets you a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Kudzu, Yelp and Wikipedia. It’s a pint-sized package designed to pack a lot of social media punch. <groan>
Click on the image below to read details of our online marketing packages and pricing. Let me know if you have questions (email: sherean at newthoughtmarketing dot com or call 404.641.9134). We are working hard to stimulate the economy by helping you stimulate business. I hope these packages are a good place for you to start.
We’ve been looking for a great search engine specialist to add to our team for YEARS and we finally found one! It was important to me to find someone who understands that search is an important component of marketing – but still just one piece of an overall puzzle. Frankly, I met with a lot of people who detailed pages and pages of what they consider “basic” search engine optimization services. To me, it read like b.s. busy work. I wanted to understand what are the main activities that are going to get my clients 90% of the way there?
Josh gets it. Big time. He knows the basics very, very well. He knows the extra stuff if you have the time and budget, too.
Josh worked with a National Recruiting Network over the last two years, helping client offices achieve organic visibility through intense Search Engine Optimization campaigns. Outside of working with recruiting firms, Josh has also worked to launch start-up websites and help them achieve organic rankings very quickly to build their businesses.
Josh gets search. I get that you have a budget. I think you’ll like our search engine packages: basic optimization services for just $600/month. E-mail me for details (sherean at newthoughtmarketing dot com). Set-up fees are affordable, too (just $250/page).
p.s. – He’s also a social media whiz and will work with Terri, Vesatee and Cara on social media projects as well. Bonus! (Actually, as you may have heard, social media’s an important piece of the search puzzle. So it’s a good thing he knows it.)
Starbucks has an iconic cup design that is a major part of their brand identity. Even still, they want to figure out a way to reduce the use of their cup and move towards a day where all cups are reusable, recyclable or compostable. And they’re backing that desire up with some cash. They co- sponsored a competition to come up with eco-friendly alternatives.
The winner, Karma Cup, has an absolutely brilliant plan: put up a chalkboard in the store and mark off every time someone uses their own reusable cup. Every 10th person will get a free cup of coffee. Genius! You’ll want to encourage your friends to do it because the more people do it, the more opportunities you have to win a free cup. The chalkboard is a great reinforcement tool. Read all about the contest and the great runner up ideas at FastCompany.
How could you use something like this in your own business? This goes beyond a personal frequent shopper card because it enlists your customer in actively recruiting other customers. Is there a product or service that you’d like to encourage the use of? Maybe it’s new and unproven and you could use a similar technique to motivate sampling.
Yikes! Chevrolet in its pursuit of marketing excellence, has decided that they want their cars to be called “Chevrolets” and not “Chevys.” As if they have any say in what the consumer will call them. I can only imagine the board room discussions about brand consistency and how that will help them . . . help them what? Sell more cars? DON’T THEY KNOW THEY ALREADY HAVE A WELL-KNOWN BRAND NAME? AND IT HAPPENS TO BE . . . CHEVY?
Idiots.
Quick. Anybody remember the name of the electric car they’ve been working on and touting for years? Oh yeah, it’s the CHEVY Volt. Not the Chevrolet Volt. Or for that matter, nobody even calls it just the “Volt.” It’s the Chevy Volt, period.
<sigh> The brand police at Chevy, er, Chevrolet have gone so far as to issue a memo to its employees instructing them to stop referring to the brand by its nickname and instead, use its proper name. They’ve even – and I am not making this up – put little cuss jars up and have encouraged employees to put a quarter in the jar every time they slip and use the word “Chevy” instead of “Chevrolet.”
They cite great brands like Coke and Apple as models of smart, consistent branding. They did this without any apparent hint of irony because Coke is, after all, short for “Coca-Cola” and when was the last time you called your iPod an Apple anything?
OK so the lesson here is if you have a brand name that your customers use and it has positive associations, then be happy. Leave well enough alone.
As always, Seth Godin is a step ahead in understanding how product markets work and he is generous with his ideas. If I were Jeff Bezos, I’d pay attention. Godin’s underlying assumption is that whoever sells the most e-reader devices will control the publishing industry. So Amazon needs to drop the price of the Kindle and do whatever it takes to push the iPad out of the e-book reader market. He has some novel ideas such as:
Sign up to get a Kindle book of your choice every month for 12 months and get a free Kindle. Amazon presents you with ten book choices, and since the cost of delivering it is zero, there’s plenty of margin for all…
He has several more ideas so surf on over and check them out. It’s a smart, aggressive strategy. I hope Amazon is paying attention. I might add an idea or two of my own such as partnering with universities and textbook manufacturers.
What do you think? Is the Kindle going the way of the 8-track? Is Steve Jobs about to do it again?
Have you seen these pictures making their way around the Internets?
Yeah, I know it’s childish of me to pile on but this is the kind of thing that spreads faster than strep. The days of protecting your image and brand are OVER. Not just for BP, but for all of us. You can’t protect it; you have to sit up, take your lumps like a man (pardon the sexism), own what you did if you screwed up, do everything you can to make it right. Don’t take shortcuts or b.s. your customer (I’m talking to you, Toyota and you, Sigg, and you, BP) because we’re onto you and we will tell all our friends who will tell their friends and so on and so on and so on.
And you will live in infamy forever.
I still have businesses tell me they don’t want a Facebook page or a blog because they’re afraid they’ll get negative comments. Seriously? That’s what you’re worried about? The COMMENTS? How about the actual issues your customers have? Address them. And you know what? When you address them forthrightly in a public forum, most people will forgive you and even reward you for doing the right thing.
Having said that, I think it’s too late for BP. What do you think? Any shot of damage control here or are they done?
So if you’re BP’s marketing execs and your company just screwed up and spilled a bunch of oil in the ocean and keep screwing up with boneheaded statements from your CEO, what’re you going to do? Take out ads in major newspapers telling everyone how much you care? Check. Ads are running and roundly being mocked. What else? Oh yeah . . . how about buying up all the oil spill search terms? That way whenever anyone is searching for information on the oil spill, you can come to the top of the paid listings (which let’s face it, most people don’t know the difference between the paid and organic results) and direct people to your website with your propaganda?
It’s diabolical, isn’t it? Actually, it’s what I would do if I were in their situation. But still . . . ewwww. . . it’s kind of icky, isn’t it?
Two of my favorite sites are joining forces: Yelp and OpenTable. Have you ever used them? Yelp is a review site; you can review any business on there but it’s heavy on the restaurant reviews. It’s always the first place I check when I’m considering a new restaurant or looking for someplace different. And OpenTable is my go-to place for reservations. I book all my client lunches through them. Yelp users have been asking for a way to book a reservation directly from the review page and now they can.
Incidentally, if you haven’t registered your business with Yelp and other review sites like Kudzu, please take a moment to do so. Make sure you check your reviews regularly and respond immediately to any negative ones. Let us know if you need help; this is part of the Online Reputation Management service that we offer our clients.
The fastest growing demo on Facebook is . . . Grandma! Actually, adults 55+, clearly not all of whom are grandparents. But staying in touch with family members is a primary motivating factor for “older” adults to join Facebook. This demo grew over 900% in 2009. Yep, 900%.
We're the brains behind New Thought Marketing, a consulting firm based in Atlanta. When it comes to marketing, we know how to push the envelope and we know when to keep it simple. If you need assistance in strategic thinking, contact us. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy our blog.
Is that like an IED? Not exactly. IMP, that’s an Internet Marketing Professional. While we may be able to extract significant “damage” to a client’s competitor base, no road-side bombs are employed.
