Five ways to maximize your marketing dollar via the web

I gave a talk today at the Sales and Marketing Executives meeting in Baton Rouge on the topic of using the web to maximize your marketing dollar and presented some cost-effective strategies to market through the recession.

At the conclusion of the meeting an attendee, Kent Blumberg, asked if I had blogged this information. I responded with no, but will before the day is over. So, Kent, here it is.

I started out by talking briefly about two current trends...

Marketing budgets are tightening. That's news to no one. Bizzuka CEO John Munsell told me several weeks ago, "Paul, you are our marketing budget." I'm sure companies much larger than ours are scaling back. That's what all the emails I get from various sources indicate.

Money is moving from offline to online. Newspapers are losing revenue hand over fist. To a lesser degree, the same is true for radio/TV/print media. The single winner in all of this is online media, and that's not growing as fast now as hoped.

Given the current economic climate, there is a need, particularly for small businesses, to maximize their marketing dollars and I'm here to trumpet the Internet as the place to do so. Here are the five ways I suggested.

1. Put yourself in the "findability" business

At the New Marketing Summit last October Todd Defren, Principal of Shift Communications, said, "You are no longer the marketing department. You are now the 'findability' department. What I think he meant was that Google is the new yellow pages and if your business can't be found there, for many people you don't exist. PPC/SEO are two ways to get there. My second point elucidated another.

2. Think of yourself as publisher and your Web site as a media property

What I'm referring to here is content, content and more content. Content is STILL king!

David Meerman Scott said companies should consider hiring people with the skills of a journalist to churn out content, which can come in many forms: video, photos, podcasts, blog posts, articles, press releases, etc. And they don't have to all live on your own site. It's good for link love and Google Juice purposes to have them on third-party sites as well.

It doesn't have to be expensive either. At Bizzuka, we use every one of those tools. With the exception of press releases syndicated via PRWeb, everyone one of them is free. If we can do it, you can too!

And it's given us a lot of presence on Google. A search for our name reveals returns from Flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook, PRWeb, Twitter, Blog Talk Radio, blogs and on and on.

An added benefit is ubiquity. You're everywhere! That's something I think carries with it social capital and credibility.

3. Participate in social networks

Social networking via LinkedIn (your business suit), Facebook (business casual) and Twitter (the networking cocktail party) are places you should have profiles established and where you should, to the degree time will allow, be actively participating. It will pay off over time. We're seeing the fruits of it here. Again, if we can do it, you can too.

4. Get closer to your customer

Marketing strategist John Moore says there are three ways companies can increase revenues:

• Raise prices
• Get new customers
• Sell more stuff to the customers you already have

In a recession, raising prices is out of the question. It costs more to get new customers than to keep the ones you already have. Therefore, getting closer to your customers and upselling them on new products/services is the preferred route.

While nothing beats an in-person, real life connection, via your Web site, blog, email, social networks and online communities the Web can serve up a digital handshake to help keep you top-of-mind with customers.

5. Start a tribe

Seth Godin's latest book, Tribes, talks about how people form communities around leaders, brands, products and services. These are often self-forming groups in which the brand may be a non-participant.

I often use the idea of "getting a seat at someone else's table" to describe how brands should find communities of interest wherever they may exist and join as co-participants. I also suggest it's not a bad idea to "set a table of your own" and start such communities.

A great example is Vertical Response, the small business email marketing software company. They built a customer community, VR Marketing Lounge, using low-cost social network platform Ning that numbers several thousand members.

While that may be only a fraction of their total customer-base, it's still significant. Just think of the feedback that group can provide and the potential for word-of-mouth growth that can come as a result of increased tribal affiliation.

So, there it is -- five ways to maximize your marketing dollar via the Web. If you found the post helpful, let Kent know. It was his suggestion... and a good one it was.

Comments

[Kent Blumberg]

Paul,

Thanks for the links, and thanks even more for the blog article. Great stuff to pass along to my clients.

Kent