Great comments by Bill Tancer of Hitwise on the importance of understanding the long tail of online search behavior. His comments in "Sizing Up The Long Tail of Search" are backed up quantitative data to support his contentions. He shows that the long tail begins after only 18 seach terms out of 14 million, with those 18 terms comprising aobut 3.25% of searches. Tracer notes that if you had a complete monopoly of the top 1000 search terms you would still miss out on about 90% of all search traffic. Then for fun he notes that "if search were represented by a tiny lizard with a one-inch head, the tail of that lizard would stretch for 221 miles." Ultimately, the point is to validate that almost all search activity is beyond the reach of owning the big single keyword for your business.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Return on Marketing Investment for Small Business can exceed Big Business
Warrillow & Co., who was recently acquired by The Conference Board, comments in their most recent e-Mail newsletter about the ability of small business to survive in the tough economy because, unlike their larger corporate counterparts, most small businesses are not dependent upon bank borrowing to improve return on equity. Marketingwitz is thrilled to see that Warrillow appears to be thinking about balance sheets over income statements, as suggested in an earlier (3/16/08) MarketingWitz post.
ROMI, return on marketing investment, can be very favorable for business with healthy balance sheets in turbulent economic times. Most small business operate with positive cash flow and thus are not as dependent on the banks for day-to-day operating capital, and only 11% of small businesses, per Warrilow, rely on bank loans to acquire or start.
With more and more layoffs in the corporate section, and 516,000 new unemployment claims last month, look for a surge in new startups. The economic rebound will start on Main Street, not Wall Street.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Marketing Ins & Outs in Down Economy
Outs: Conspicuous Consumption, Indulgent Foods, Exotics (unless healthy), Spas, McMansions, Exuberant Expectations, Hummers,
Ins: Cocooning, Family, Home and Hearth, Home-baked, Safety, Value, Steadfast, Trusted, Reassuring, American, Security, Education, Self-Reliance, Heroes, Home Repair, DIY
Is your brand message aligned?
Maintain Business Databases for Optimal Marketing Performance
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Content Was King
"Content is King" has long been the mantra for successfully driving visitors to web sites under a paradigm that declares that consumers and customers will flock to sites with the most relevant information. This model generally worked as long as marketers could promote sites and generate initial visits. The fallacy is that the "Content is King" model lives in the old push model of content delivery. The advent of social marketing capabilities and the corresponding ability of consumers and customers to generate their own media/content leaves the content push model behind. Generating traffic and return visits is becoming a function of the ability of your audience to engage and immerse themselves by interacting with one another within your online environment. If content was King, "Place" is now Queen. Is your site a recognized and compelling Place for your customers to congregate? Increase your ROI on web marketing investment by offering a compelling Place rather than exclusively pushing Content information.
One more comment - I love the phrase "consumer generated media" rather than "consumer generated content". First labeled by old compadre' Pete Blackshaw (Nielsen Online), "user generated media" focused on the notion that users create media for consumption by others, making the process an interaction rather than simply a push of content.
