Results-Focused Online Marketing Strategies

Viral marketing is an awesome, cheap way to get your product or service spread across the Internet, right?

Wrong.

The very idea that viral marketing can be applied to your business is a myth that has been perpetuated mostly by folks who are unwilling to believe that you need to work hard and do the groundwork in order to succeed.

Not to say that nobody ever succeeds in “going viral” but the bottom line is that almost without exception, most efforts that succeeded owed their viral success to either:

1. Giving away something for free that formerly cost money - i.e. Hotmail for email, Napster for music, Skype for long distance.
2. Creating a meaningful community - i.e. Facebook, MySpace, Flickr. OR
3. Both of the above - i.e. YouTube offering free video hosting and creating an online video community, Wikipedia offering a free encyclopedia and a community of contributors.

Other than that, there are a few successful examples (Mentos and Coke video, Axe viral commercials) but the bottom line is that the chance of orchestrating a viral campaign that succeeds in propelling your business to new heights overnight is about as likely as winning the lottery.

So, all that said, what CAN you do to leverage the Internet to spread word of your product or service online?

1. Identify a group of users who love what you offer. For instance, if your product is a time tracking software tool, your most happy users might be independent graphic designers.
2. Find out where this type of user congregates online and join in where possible and appropriate. There are numerous sites that provide resources, articles and forums for customers in just about any industry you could imagine..
3. Engage in these sites and communities in a meaningful manner. For example, in the case of a graphic design business forum, start to read forum posts daily and reply where you can add insight to business topics.

   Resist the urge to “pitch” your service, but rather focus on becoming a valued part of the community (be sure, however, to always include an online “signature” in your posts that explains who you are and what you do). In the case of news and article sites, figure out some topics that would be of interest and find out how to submit articles to the respective sites.

The most important advice, which may seem at first to be counterintuitive, is to avoid “selling” in your interactions. Focus instead on building trust, relationships and credibility (although never hesitate to tell folk what you actually do when it’s appropriate).

Also, once you’ve established your credibility in the group, it’s usually reasonable to do things like ask the group for opinions for product improvement, post short surveys to learn more, and recruit beta testers or focus group members.

If you take a long-term approach to this strategy and spend a bit of time on it weekly, you will eventually achieve widespread awareness of your product within the group, positive word of mouth, and a position as a leading supplier (in your field) to the industry.

Best of all, you’ll get to know your best users even better, resulting in product improvements that will make your product even better for them. In doing this you create an ongoing feedback loop that will give you the insights you need to become insurmountable in your chosen industry.

Hard work? It definitely takes a bit of time and patience, but the good news is that it will work for anyone who sincerely wants to improve their competitive position within a chosen industry. Plus, it beats waiting around to win the lottery.

Note: Obviously, if you want to embrace this approach there are lots of other things you can do in terms of Online PR, Word of Mouth Marketing, Article Marketing, etc. We’ll be tackling these in future newsletters and blog posts. In the meantime, check out the 5 Secrets To Success In Article Marketing if you’re interested in learning more about article marketing…

Money’s tight right now. With this in mind, do you have the background information on your own company that will allow you to make smart marketing decisions?

If you’re serious about marketing in a responsible and cost effective manner then you should definitely read through these questions and make sure you have answers for each one.

Even many large companies don’t have this information all together, so don’t feel bad if you don’t have all the answers (although I guarantee your marketing program is not doing all it can be if you don’t).

Products:

• What is your flagship/most popular product or service?
• What is your guarantee/return policy?
• Best features – what makes this a great product or service?
• Competitive Products - what would your prospective customers buy if they didn’t buy this product?
• Why is this product better than competitive products (Answer this question in terms your customers would use)?
• What are the answers to the above questions for your other top products?

Target Groups

• What specific and definable groups (i.e. engineers, skiers, dentists, crane operators, homeowners) benefit greatly from your products and are currently using them?
• Which groups are using which products and why it is they are using them?
• What groups are currently NOT using your products but would benefit greatly from them? Please match the groups to the products and mention why it is they would benefit from them.
• Is there anything that would prevent these groups from buying your product (i.e. technical hurdles, no purchasing authority, not enough confidence in your brand, lack of awareness, etc)? Be specific according to each group.
• If these are corporate groups, are they in industries where they are likely to share information on great products with others in their industry, or are they likely to keep it a secret?
• What channels do these groups use to communicate with others in their industry (web groups, communities, trade associations, industry publications, etc, etc)? What are the top 3 for each group?

Communications

• Which online groups or communities do people within your company currently participate in (i.e. industry chat groups, bulletin boards, Google Groups, Linkedin, industry web sites, etc, etc.)? Are these groups also groups that prospective customers participate in?
• What groups might it be valuable to start participating in?
• Does anyone in your company blog? What is the goal of the blog and what do they blog about?
• Do you have a newsletter? What is its goal, who’s it about, who does it go to, and how do you get new subscribers?

Credibility

• Is there anyone within your company that is widely known as an expert within your field or your target industries?
• If not, is there anyone in your company that has an expert level of knowledge in your field who is not widely known in your field or your target industries?

Content

• What content is currently produced on a regular basis within your organization (white papers, support threads, articles, help documentation, newsletters, blog posts, community postings, etc)?
• Is this content being leveraged to optimize your site’s SEO? Is it being proactively distributed to those who would benefit from it?

Marketing, Market and ROI

• Do you currently have a marketing plan that describes the activities you want to undertake in the next 6-12 months and ties your various activities together in order to maximize their contribution value?
• What tracking do you currently have in place to measure the ROI of your various marketing activities.
• Do you know what the total value of your market is within regions that are accessible to you (i.e. How much does your total accessible market spend per year on products that offer the same features as your current products)?
• What is the typical sales cycle for buyers of your products (i.e. immediate impulse buy vs. careful analysis over a period of weeks or months)?
• Do your buyers typically approve the purchase of your product themselves or do they need to defer to higher-ups within their organizations? Do their higher ups have a technical understanding of products of your type?
• Is there an event that typically necessitates the purchase of your software (i.e. year end, launch of new website, holiday, etc)?
• Do you know what your “customer lifetime value” is (the amount one customer will spend over the period of time they are likely to be a customer)?
• How much do you estimate that you spend on marketing to gain a new customer? Is ROI-positive?
• If marketing were as simple as “buying” new customers, how much would you be comfortable paying for one?
• Which is currently more important: engaging in short term marketing efforts that will drive short term revenues or building longer term marketing programs that will take longer to result in revenues but which will ultimately be more profitable?

Of course, the real question is what to do with these answers. Sadly, I’ve got nothing for you in this post!

Watch for upcoming newsletter articles and blog posts that will help you identify the most strategic marketing opportunities for your company…

I have a confession to make: I’m always a little nervous when I book airline tickets online. I’ve done it many, many times, but for some reason I always feel like I’m going to screw up my reservation and get stuck with the wrong tickets.

I’m going to go out on a limb and bet that I’m not the only person who feels this way.

With this in mind, let’s look at a huge conversion mistake I just experienced while buying tickets online from United…

I got through the flight selection process no problem (double checking my flights/times at each step), entered my credit card info, hit “okay” to purchase the tickets when the following (click to see full size version) came up:

So, this screen comes up and the first thing I see is the big, bold 932.51 when I had just clicked “okay” to a $584 total. My first thought was that there’s a mistake - given the prominence and the positioning of this price, it definitely looks like the price I’m about to get charged. Feeling a bit flustered, I started to read through the text and still was not immediately sure what the deal was.

Also, upon reading it and figuring it out, I began to doubt whether I should click on the “Purchase original itinerary” button. Taken literally, I was worried that it might truly be my original itinerary (I changed it a couple times while looking up the flights). Combined with the fact that the text above refers to the “current” itinerary and the text below refers to the “original itinerary” I definitely was not feeling too good about hitting that button.

Next, I found myself wondering whether I needed to “check” the “offer and conditions” checkbox. It kind of looks like you don’t need to, but on any other site I buy from you usually need to check such a box.

Plus, the page refers to you having to “Decline” the offer if you don’t want it. I didn’t see a “Decline” button anywhere, leading to further discomfort.

It also says it will expire in 5 minutes. Does this mean I’ll have to “rebook” if I don’t make the decision right away.

Furthermore, it’s a horrible offer! They want to charge over 50% more to upgrade ONE WAY on my 2 hour flight!

So, basically, United has taken someone intent on finishing a transaction, thrown in an unexpected/overpriced/confusing offer, and tried to add a sense of urgency to the whole thing.

Yikes.

At this point, I slowed down, determined that I was probably being paranoid and… saved a screen shot of this page so I’d have something in my defense if the wrong purchase went through.

What’s the takeaway from this? In the words of a manager I once had, “Once you make the sale, shut up! You only create opportunities for the buyer to change their mind.” This is great advice in this case. I absolutely guarantee that United loses sales with their confusing upsell tactic.

The lost sales may be balanced by the fact that United occasionally upsells the odd passenger to this ugly offer, but there’s another way to approach this. Why not make this offer AFTER they have made the original booking? If they offered this immediately after confirmation of the transaction they would remove all the risk of someone abandoning and there’s no reason why they couldn’t get the same amount of upsells (they could even keep the cheesy “expires in 5 minutes” part if they so desired).

The bottom line is to not try to accomplish an upsell before you’ve made the original sale, unless you can do it without risking the sale. United fails in this regard and damages their brand in the process.