Where do you want to be?
I received an email this morning and it included an article from Mr Frank Reed, “The Marketing Pilgrim” in the USA. I found it quite interesting and more than a little inspirational.
This is Frank’s “Top Ten Things Internet Marketers Should Concentrate on in 2011” and I’ve added my own comments too.
FRANK REED: 1. Choose Strategy over Activity – This one is a biggie these days. Many people are still rushing headlong into social media, location based services and more so they can say they are doing it. Often though they are doing it without an express purpose or goal. None of the online world works on the “If You Build It They Will Come” principle. Just being there could actually mean you are spending valuable resources and cycles on things that aren’t getting the job done. Create a strategy that makes sense and get involved only in activities based on strategy that will generate revenue. All the rest is just being busy.
PETER MASTERS: Frank is 100% right here. Where are YOU now? Where do YOU want to be? How are YOU going to get there? These are the most important issues. It’s very easy to spend a lot of time chasing Social Media ideals and getting nowhere. Beware of becoming busy fools!
FRANK REED: 2. Get Back to Basics – In the rush to stay ahead of the curve, many businesses have left the basics behind and in most cases incomplete. For Internet marketers (especially the smaller players and B to B marketers) that means making sure that the foundation for your online efforts is strong. Does your website look dated? Change it. Have you not taken the time to make sure you have the basic SEO elements (for example, keyword appropriate content matched with title tags matched with H1 keyword use) in place on each and every page of your site? This is the absolute bare minimum but it beats not doing anything at all. Have you put in basic key performance indicators (KPI’s) to measure your progress or lack there of? Do you check them regularly? You get the point. Basics are boring but they are essential. Just do them before you do anything else.
PETER MASTERS: I have spoken to many clients keen to address Social Media Marketing, but some of them aren’t aware, or not prepared to admit, that their websites are sad, dated and amateurish. First and foremost, a lone website just isn’t enough in 2011 and secondly, lots of websites developed over recent years look very dated. (It doesn’t matter how expensive they cost to develop in 2002!) Gone are the days of Flash firework displays, colourful, but boring gimmicks and taking 10 minutes to load a page; that stuff just doesn’t work any more! (I’m NOT too sure that it ever did!) Websites designed by website designers can also be a major problem too! Please look at your website from a marketing perspective, if people want art, they can visit the Tate! (Or go to Google images) DON’T forget, your company website (or Facebook pages or whatever) represent you, your company and everything you do. Make it the best it can be and if you’re really NOT sure, call someone who knows!
FRANK REED: 3. Spread the Wealth – Share your knowledge with others in the company whether they want to hear it or not. Why? Because more and more people are seeing that Internet marketing and social media are rare in that anyone in the company can participate. Many do and don’t even realize it. If you are educating the rest of the company on what they can do to help, you are enabling people to be involved and contribute to the success. People like that. Management likes that. Don’t horde your knowledge. Be an educator and see what others can do to help once they are empowered to do so.
PETER MASTERS: Internal marketing is sadly neglected here in the UK, perhaps not so much in the USA. I have mentioned this on LinkedIn and many people agree that UK management across the board, just doesn’t listen enough. I am a great believer in talking to staff at all levels and listening to their opinions and ideas, they like it too! It makes them feel valued and part of what’s happening. It’s very important that ALL employees know what the company is doing in the Social Media arena, why shouldn’t they? Don’t forget that every single person in your company is contributing to your marketing plan, whether they realise it or not! Be proud, spread the word.
FRANK REED: 4. Fire Your Consultant – This is something that many people should have done long ago. If things are not progressing with any outside or outsourced help you are paying then stop paying them. The Internet marketing industry as a whole is rife with experts, gurus, mavens and more. If there is no progress in a relationship you have with an outsourced provider then end the relationship. It’s that simple.
PETER MASTERS: Sorry Frank! Please don’t get into this situation; pick a good consultant to start with! If you’re in construction, don’t pick a marketing consultant with a FMCG background. There’s a lot of difference between marketing dog food and washing up liquid and construction services. ESSENTIAL: Find a consultant that speaks your language and knows your business and be consistent, please don’t neglect your established brand.
FRANK REED: 5. Hire A Consultant – If you are stuck and have reached the limit of your knowledge in a particular area of Internet marketing (face it, no one as in NO ONE, can know all there is to know about everything related to Internet marketing and social media) then it’s OK to seek outside help. Find someone who is willing to work with you within your current constraints but is then willing to push you beyond those constraints if it will help you succeed. You may cycle through several consultants before you find the right fit. That’s OK. When you make this step though don’t think you deserve anything for free or that experience doesn’t carry value. Many consultants are not cheap and they shouldn’t be. In this area, the expression ‘you get what you pay for’ is a very real axiom so be careful and don’t be cheap!
PETER MASTERS: Sorry Frank! I DO NOT agree! DON’T work through several consultants, or please try not to, this will be counter productive and expensive. Chose the right one and work carefully and closely with him. Don’t EVER pick the cheapest option just to save money! An “almost” client of mine is still working on his “designed by committee and a guy who was cheap” website after 4 years, it’s still a nightmare and he knows it! (It’s probably cost him £10,000′s!!)
FRANK REED: 6. Listen More, Talk Less – We are in an industry that has everyone out in the middle of the town square yelling at the top of their lungs in order to be heard. Don’t join the fray. Sit back and listen for helpful information. Turn your bullshit filter on high and make sure you are only letting in the information that will move you forward. If you try to take it all in you will waste time, money and more and get little or nothing in return. Use tools like Google Alerts or Trackur (shameless plug alert!) to filter through the noise. Listening is also about knowing what the competition is doing, what people are saying about your company online, what prospects are really looking for. Remember that we are given one mouth and two ears so use them in the same proportion (for those who have a tough time with math that just means listen twice as much as you talk).
PETER MASTERS: Listen as much as you can and forget all the technical jargon from self proclaimed gurus. Read, digest and benchmark as much as possible and make your own decisions based on what you read, combined with the best and most relevant bits of what you hear. See what the competition is doing; see what works and what doesn’t work. Wherever possible learn from other people’s mistakes, NOT your own!
FRANK REED: 7. Don’t Assume – This goes back to strategy and is important in all areas of your Internet marketing efforts. Most people work on the assumption that if something is being written about then everyone must be using it. This could not be further from the truth especially in the Internet space. Make sure that the techniques and tools you are going to consider have a real chance of connecting with your customers and prospects. If not why in the world would you even consider them? Another old axiom that is SO true in the Internet space is “If you assume, you will make an ASS out of U and ME” (thank you Felix Unger).
PETER MASTERS: (Busy) Fools rush in!? Be selective about the direction you take, what apparently suits your competition and their strategy may NOT be right for you. You may not need a Blog and a website, a Blog might be enough for you! Your business may not justify having a Facebook, Flickr or StumbleUpon account or you might not really benefit from having a LinkedIn account. Just because everyone else is, doesn’t mean that you have to.
FRANK REED: 8. Be A Learner – Never has it been more important to be a “life long learner” than it is today. In the Internet marketing space there are no ‘set it and forget it’ options. Things change rapidly and it is hard to keep up. Budget for and invest in education regarding Internet marketing and social media. If you are not learning everyday in this space then you are falling behind much faster than you could ever imagine.
PETER MASTERS: Even Social Media experts such as Seth Godin and Brian Solis are likely to admit that because of the very nature of Social Media Marketing, to some extent, it will always be a learning curve. There will always be something new to learn or a new approach or platform to consider. Like a good website or Blog, a good Social Media presence is never finished; it is “organic” and a work in progress. (There lies the challenge, right?)
FRANK REED: 9. Effective Trumps Cool – Based on what industry you work in and many other variables like resource availability, you may have to come to the understanding that what is deemed to be cool doesn’t impact your business at all so it’s not something to consider. It’s no fun making practical decisions that keep you from playing with the cool kids but at the end of the day wouldn’t you rather have the respect of your colleagues, a potential raise, job security and more over an ‘atta boy!’ by some industry flunkie whose ‘followers’ consist of 95% spammers and automated follows? Not everyone can be an Internet marketing star and really there are only a select few worth listening to anyway. Be effective rather than be cool. But hey, if you can do both then more power to you!
PETER MASTERS: Effective is essential, the move from traditional marketing to Social Media Marketing is ALL about being (cost) effective. A permission based marketing strategy is the way to go, give people the information they need and of course, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll come back to you. That’s why content is KING and you should strive to provide the very best! (Don’t worry if they don’t ALL come back to you, how many people that read your advert in the Yellow Pages or saw your newspaper advert went somewhere else?) Be innovative, be a leader, but MOST importantly, be effective!
FRANK REED: 10. Avoid Shiny Objects – One thing that will happen in 2011 is that there will be Silicon Valley press folks drooling over some new technology or service that comes out in January and they will need to tell you just how game changing it is. Truth be told, many of these ‘cool’ things are used by the tech insiders and that’s it. They don’t have mass market appeal and never will. The technology insider press is very incestuous and self-serving (read: self-important) and while it’s tempting to think that what they are talking about could be ‘the thing’, most times it’s not. In fact, by the time you have worked out the plan to get that latest trinket into your system they have moved on, hyped something else and left that ‘next greatest thing’ on the Internet marketing scrap heap. They aren’t much different than that kid on Christmas morning who plays with the cool toy for 5 minutes then complains that they need another cool toy. Maybe we should take a cue from the little kids and play with the box instead. It’s not as cool but it does more!
PETER MASTERS: I agree with Frank 100%! Try NOT to focus on every single new aspect of Social Media Marketing, there’s far too much to consider and you’ll spend your whole day surfing the Internet, reading emails and press releases and you’ll become a busy fool.
Ask yourself the 3 simple questions: Where are we now? Where do we want to be? How are we going to get there?
THESE ARE STILL THE IMPORTANT ISSUES. It’s very easy to spend a lot of time chasing Social Media ideals and getting nowhere.
MOST construction managers and property developers that I deal with would rather be building houses, apartments, schools and roads, than thinking of the next paragraph for their Blog or what photographs to upload onto their Facebook account. But they still want the business that Social Media Marketing can provide!
If you are in construction or property development and need some advice call Peter on 01473 435308 or email peter@constructionmarketinguk.co.uk
www.constructionmarketinguk.co.uk
We build the builders.
Great article, Peter – plenty of spot-on advice… from you and from Frank! For me, you hit the nail on the head with your comments about ineffective websites and the inertia from most businesses to do something about it. The clients I am working with to introduce video content onto their websites are in the minority at the moment – they realise they can capitalise on so many aspects of this social media explosion, and they’re prepared to exploit things like interesting, attention grabbing video on their site for increased SEO / rankings and getting traffic sent to their sites from YouTube (biggest search engine behind Google). We are also finding that by helping them with relevant social media activity (depending on their industry and customer base of course!) – we actually get results and everyone gets excited! You can get bogged down with the language of the black art “social media gurus” because you are right – this is all about understanding WHERE your audience is (is it Twitter? Is it LinkedIn? Is it Facebook? ) and then communicating on that forum with them with relevant and helpful content. That’s when you see all the benefits in terms of new business leads coming through the pipeline, reputation management (what are they saying about you out there? Do you even know??) and website visitors that you can actually statrt to convert – if you’ve got your website landing page right!! Thanks for this – really useful start to my day!
What a great response Tracy, thanks very much! It’s great when other professionals address Blog articles constructively, to me, that’s what Social Media is ALL about! Engaging, exchanging ideas sensibly and adding to the Social Media experience in a positive way! (Sometimes negative’s good too!) So many people (particularly in construction!) either still don’t have a website or blog or have a website developed (NOT by a marketer but by a designer) in the late 90′s! Look at how far technology has moved since last August, no wonder a 1999 ‘static’ website doesn’t create much excitement!! I am SO amazed at what joining Cory’s group has taught me in 3 days! Really!! I generally know what my customers need because construction is my background and marketing is my forte; once I’ve discussed their particular business and an appropriate strategy for them, I know it’s all about finding the target audience rather than just a random audience. The introduction to Facebook groups is perfect for connecting with this focused audience and so many people are still unaware of the groups! That gives me a significant advantage I think! What we should NOT ignore however, is the established branding that people have and their existing marketing both digitally (if they have any) and traditionally. Great to communicate! My marketing mantra is ‘communication adds value’ and it seems more than apparent today! Thanks for your time and stay in touch!