Online Marketing Strategy: Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Social Media, Email

Written in binary….

I just had to share:

http://www.monkeychapps.com/my-love-poem-to-bill-gates-written-in-binary/

Anyone going to this?

http://visitmix.com/2008/default.aspx

Let me know if you are.

I came across this post by Vinny Lingham referring to ProBlogger’s Blogging Tips For Beginners. This post is jam packed with advice for beginners, so if you’re new to blogging it’s something that will really set you on the right path.

A last little whine and quibble before bed time - dearest friends on Facebook, please desist, stop, refrain from and hold out on any further requests to:

- Build a garden

- Find out my personality’s weapon

- Add stuff to a lil’ green patch

- Become a zombie, werewolf, vampire or any other form of undead (unless you’re Kate Beckinsale in “Underworld”, mind you)

- Become Best Friends Forever, Top Friends, Most Bestest Friend, Friend For Life or Sexy Friend (I don’t want to be your friend if you send me this crap)

- Join your petition, vegan society, charity or any other social niche

Stop it. Stop it now. Please stop it. Or I may have to remove you from my friend list (GASP).

In his book “The Advertised Mind”, researcher Erik Du Plessis describes one of those unbelievable but true marketing research anecdotes which goes as follows. In the late 1970s he was asked by South African Breweries to propose a research methodology to investigate the belief that South African black people see fewer colours than white people do. This theory was based on the focus groups conducted by a Dutch researcher for new SAB packaging. The Dutch researcher stated in his conclusions that South African black people see fewer colours than whites, and this is what Erik Du Plessis was asked to verify.

Erik soon realized that the real issue at hand was one of LANGUAGE, not genetics or skin colour. In Afrikaans, for example, there is no word for “maroon” or “beige”, so the English is used. In Zulu there is just one word denoting both “blue” and “green”. The Dutch researcher’s conclusions were debunked - South African black people are not genetically unable to see as many colours as Caucasians - there are just fewer words in their lexicon that can be used to describe them.

It is a sad reality that until recently most advertising companies did not have any evidence to prove that advertising works. Although they were often paid many millions in fees, agencies were never held accountable for the success of their clients’ communications. Bad advertising costs the same as good advertising. Most advertising is still not even tested to see if it works before it is rolled out to the unsuspecting and long-suffering public.
Gordon Brown, co-founder of Millward-Brown, which is one of the most successful marketing research companies on earth, has postulated theories on exactly how consumers use advertising - or how advertising really works.
One theory holds that when you and I see a commercial the effect is to change our perceptions of a known brand, or create a perception of an unknown brand - with a final result of us purchasing the item. Although we obviously do not rush out to the BP Garage and buy all eight products we saw advertised during the long commercial break flighted during “Heroes”, when we DO come across the product at some time in the future, we already have a memory and perception of it. It’s as if though something “sticks” in our minds and is recalled when we shop.
This brings us to the shopping process. Here’s how Brown describes the typical buying experience. Although most marketers would love to imagine that after seeing the TV ad for Lucky Pet (that cost R4 million to make and another R40 million in media costs to air fourteen times a day) consumers, upon entering their local Checkers think “I remember that great ad on TV last night and I must find some Lucky Pet to buy”, this is certainly far from the truth. When shopping you walk from aisle to aisle, getting constantly distracted by all the well-presented products, although in the back of your mind is a definite goal - buy milk and bread. So you get led past the pet food display and then the frozen goods and then the sweets and chocolates, past the stationary and then again past the pet food. Retailers design stores to expose you to the maximum number of products - they’re cunning that way. Why do you think essentials like bread and milk are found at the back?

So imagine, after being led around the mulberry bush three or four times you suddenly find yourself in the pet food aisle and realise you are very low on cat food. So you consider the brands presented to you - Whiskers, Lucky Pet, Felix, and all the rest. So you decide on a brand that you know and trust and have used before or have heard something good about from a friend or your wife always buys it. Where does the TV ad you saw come into it?
The fact is, it may not even enter your mind.
But it could influence your decision for various reasons if: the ad was memorable, likeable or if it was that most precious of all ads, the one talked about around the office water cooler (think Nashua’s “Internetlessness”).

Memory is what drives the purchase of a brand. Good memories mean more purchases, bad memories mean your competitors benefit.

Let’s take beloved Telkom for example. They made a lot of touchy feely happy bunny type ads in the past, like the one where the dude in the navy gets a call, out on a stormy sea, and manages to video conference with his wife who just gave birth to his baby. “It’s a girl” he utters through tears. And very touched we all were. So, chalk one up for happy memories.
Then let’s consider the other side of the coin - time spent listening to the awful call-waiting music Telkom offers as a value-add, while we sit waiting for fifteen minutes to get a reference number for an ADSL fault. And to top it off they throw in some “Lion King” advertising as if though we were really interested at that point in Hakuna Bloody Matata, when all we want is good service. Bad memories. Many, many bad Telkom memories.

So the question is, when we are, God-willing, in some distant future faced with multiple brand choice for our telecommunications needs, how will we remember Telkom as a brand? Will we embrace the positive, or remember the negative and go with Neotel?
Sometimes advertising plays a role in our decision-making choices, but only sometimes. The more this truth gets out, the more the big agencies of the world start to squirm.

Now, it’s not every day something quite so handy comes along, so I thought I’d blog about it. The OTHER DAY, a colleague of mine (yes you, Shaan), showed me a most useful tool for doing cool things like checking metadata, Alexa ranking, links et al on any website, all with a few light clicks of the mouse. This amazing tool is known by those in the know as SearchStatus, and is the brainchild and invention of Quirk.biz (props, y’all).

It’s what Chuck Norris would use if he was into the Internet and online marketing, SEO type stuff.

In order to use it, you must use Mozilla Firefox. If you don’t, you’re a Microsoft lackey and missing out on what all the cool kids are doing.

Get SearchStatus.

Get Firefox.

Go play.

Anna Goldsmith has this advice to all you aspiring freelance writers:

1. Create a strong division between work and home. This sounds way easier than you think. Your family, friends and creditors are all beating your door down, 24-7. Don’t let them. Make it clear you are on “work time” If all else fails, tuck your lap top under your arm and head to Europa for coffee and free wireless Internet. Bless them.

2. Look the part. S’true, no one cares if you sit at home behind your PC still wearing yesterday’s underpants and smelling like musty towels, but you’ll get a heck of a lot more work done if you shower, shave and get out of your paisley pajamas. You know you must.

3.  Maintain the working hours of the common man. This means you start work at 8, talk crap with colleagues for half an hour, go have some tea, catch up on the latest gossip in the canteen, have lunch at 12, answer your emails, have more tea, have a meeting, brainstorm and gossip, make more tea, and then head home at 5. Try and replicate normal hours, your family and friends will like you for this. So no working till 3am and sleeping till 3pm.

4. Make time for social interaction with human beings. Go out to lunch, meet fellow writers and clients. Don’t isolate yourself in your den and grow a three foot beard. That’s just weird and you may be labeled a cultist.

Lastly,

5. Turn off the TV. There’s usually crap on, and you’ll end up watching for hours until something good comes on. You aren’t making during this time and you’ll have to end up moving back in with your parents. This is a fate worse than death, so discipline is your watchword.

Find out more about the person who dispensed this advice, Anna Goldsmith, at The Hired Pens.