"... a type of engineering alchemy that, done right, almost guarantees a self-replicating, borglike growth: One user becomes two, then four, eight, to a million and beyond. It's not unlike taking a penny and doubling it daily for 30 days. By the end of a week, you'd have 64 cents; within two weeks, $81.92; by day 30, about $5.4 million.

Viral loops have emerged as perhaps the most significant business accelerant to hit Silicon Valley since the search engine. They power many of the icons of Web 2.0, including Google, PayPal, YouTube, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Flickr. But don't confuse a viral loop with viral advertising or videos such as Saturday Night Live's "Lazy Sunday" or the Mentos-Diet Coke Bellagio fountain. Viral advertising can't be replicated; by definition, a viral loop must be."

1. When you're delivering price information for the first time.  Never let the first time your customer sees price be in an email.  Discuss it with them first & get initial buy in or correction.
2. When delivering bad news of any kind.  You need the customer to hear the empathy in your voice.  An email can't do that.
3. When delivering good news.  This is your chance to shine!
4. Whenever you must disagree with something.  Most of us are passionate about our beliefs and in an email, that passion can come across as arrogance and an unwillingness to listen to all sides.

• You’ll stay informed on future developments in their business.
• Customers will know you value their business
• It Keeps You Top of Mind
• It Makes Customers Feel Good

I don't think there's a company we've spoken to that didn't want a better return on their marketing investments.  Everyone understands the concept of demanding a tangible ROI from marketing.  The challenge lies in helping clients understand that in order to effectively monetize marketing results, you must break down the initiative into smaller, digestible parts.

Swinging for the Fences
When we evaluate marketing programs, the most common mistake we see, whether it be an interactive marketing program, an event marketing strategy, an email marketing newsletter, or even a brand development effort, is that the promotion itself is trying to accomplish too much.  If we understand the buying process, and embrace all of the steps necessary to take a someone from cold prospect to loyal customer, we can start to shed some light on this.  With the exception of pure impulse buys, how many times has one ad, one email, one promotion causes you to make a major purchase?  We shouldn't expect the same from our customers.

In my experience the best approach is to break down the overall goal of increased revenue into digestible steps that mirror the buying process.  At the simplest level, we need to attract, cultivate, close, and retain.  Now, what should your next print advertisement, tradeshow or customer event marketing program, or email marketing campaign be designed to accomplish?  I might argue that it should be one clearly-defined step in your sales process or the customer's buying process.

For example, if I do a great job of getting people to sign up for a webinar, attend it, download a whitepaper afterward, participate in a demo after that, and discuss their particular requirements with me following the demo, I stand a great chance of developing a solution that meets their needs and closing the sale.  My communications around each of these should focus on accomplishing just that one step.  My goal is to achieve multiple small commitments from a prospective customer that are likely to lead to a signature on the proposal. 

By separating my communications and properly aligning my expectations with the achievement of these small steps in the buying cycle, I stand a much better chance of measuring my success and marketing ROI on each endeavor, and monetizing the results along the entire spectrum of marketing programs.  That's how you build an effective ROI marketing strategy.

• As a means to visually measure keyword density for a search engine optimization campaign
• As topic summaries for a business plan or interactive marketing strategy
• An 'at a glance' resume
• As brand clouds to give companies a view of how the world sees them before launching a brand development effort
• A means for political figures to visually measure popularity
• A research tool before you make your next hire, or before you choose your next Cincinnati advertising agency
  

The list goes on!

Want to have some fun?  Plug in your website, your advertisement, email campaign text or press release into the tool at http://www.tagcrowd.com/.  You can even get the code to place your very own tag cloud on your website. 

Interesting question on Linked In today that I posted an answer to.  I thought I'd post the question and my response here.  I'd be interested in your take.

The Question:  What is the ideal structure to manage search engine bids (SEM: paid placement) for large companies.  Posted by Pascal Coulier of HP.

My Answer:

Hello Pascal,

Here are some of my thoughts, much of which you may have already considered or executed, so bear with me if I cover anything you're already aware of.

Campaigns: Focus them on target market group or specific objectives, so in your case, this could be Individual, SMB, Enterprise, etc. Campaigns could also be focused on product groups such as photo printers, all in ones, laser, tablet/notebooks, digital cameras, ink/toner, or specific objectives like customer retention, loyalty, remarketing, upsell, etc.

I like to create separate ad groups for each campaign, and I focus those ad groups on categories of keywords with a small number of very focused keywords in each group. This allows me to create laser focused ad copy, to utilize those keywords in the copy, and then most importantly, to craft a landing page for each ad group, thereby removing the risk of degrading the relevancy by using landing pages across different categories of keywords. I want to present ads, copy, links and offers that are as specific to the search term as I can.

Probably one of the bigger challenges you may face in an organization the size of HP is going to be keyword selection and avoiding competition with your own folks on the other side of the world! It's going to take a very focused effort to analyze which keywords are driving specific types of traffic to your sites, and how that traffic is converting. For example, are searches on HP notebooks driving traffic from the SMB market or enterprise customers? How those leads are captured, cultivated through the sales process and closed is going to give you some of those answers. You may learn that 'HP notebooks' is a term that drives SMB customers while Enterprise customers use different terms. This is important knowledge to gain and it will help you in creating a system worldwide so that all SEM efforts can be coordinated to a degree.

There's a link below with case studies, and one of them includes HP!

Links:

• http://www.marketingsherpa.com/search-marketing-category.html

Just received another notice of the April 18th luncheon from the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Marketing Association which will feature Ken Pendery and Chris Tomasso of First Watch Restaurants, Inc.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

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First Watch was founded in 1983 on this simple concept. Today, First Watch Restaurants, Inc. is the largest privately owned, daytime-only restaurant company in the country.   Headquartered in Bradenton, FL, and operating more than 76 restaurants in 11 states, First Watch offers something for everyone, from traditional Breakfast, Brunch and Lunch favorites to their signature creations. Business or pleasure, First Watch takes pride in meeting the special needs of their customers.

Ken Pendery, President and CEO of First Watch Restaurants, is a visionary in the restaurant business.  He has created several restaurant concepts and has held numerous executive positions.  Ken and Chief Marketing Officer, Chris Tomasso will speak on the concept building and brand marketing strategies that have led to the success of First Watch Restaurants.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I've known a few restaurant owners who have really struggled with brand development, and defining a niche.  First Watch has definitely done a great job of that and I'm looking forward to learning just how they did it, and potentially bringing back a few tricks I can share with our clients.  As I've already said, I really do love this place.

As a full service advertising agency and marketing firm in Cincinnati, Ohio, we're demonstrating blog solutions to more and more companies everyday.  One of the biggest questions we receive is "What should I blog about?"

Many companies are unsure of how a blog fits into their overall marketing strategy.  We try to help them understand that unlike a website, which is communication from an institution, a blog is a much more casual, person-to-person type of writing.  As such, the range of topics and the overall tone of the blog is much different.

When it comes to blogging for business, extend the voice to as many employees as possible, and encourage them to talk about the common successes and challenges of their day.

• If you're a staffing company, blog about a candidate you helped today.
• If you're a technology firm, how is a client benefiting from what you delivered?
• If you're an attorney, what advice did you give a client today that others can benefit from?
• If you're a florist, remind your audience of an upcoming holiday.
• If you're a company that supports IT networks and/or desktop PCs, what tips can you deliver that will make someone's life easier?
• If you're a printer, what are some potential pitfalls of not setting up the art files correctly before delivering them to your pre-press department?
  

The possibilities are endless.  Blog about what you know, what you experience, and how you go about helping your clients.  Just blog.  You'll soon be seen as an expert in your field.

I was reading Seth Godin's blog recently and he was talking about how he's found himself using words like 'just' and phrases such as 'sort of' a lot recently.  'So what?' you might say, but his point is that we should all just get around to saying it.  To often when we marketing folks write, we get caught up in the vocabulary, 'hiding behind terms that don't mean anything,' as Seth explains.  Our email marketing uses unnecessary adjectives, drawn out explanations and meaningless modifiers.  Our marketing strategy documents become lengthy dissertations of goals and approaches and methodologies and justifications.  Just say it already.

His blog post also reminded me of some advice I received from Compendium's CEO Chris Baggott - advice which reportedly also came from Seth Godin - "Be Pithy".  Really great, and humbling advice.

Another great piece from Seth's blog:  "Humans like humans. They hate organizations."  Websites communicate as an organization.  One reasons blogs are such a great tool for growing a company is that a blog is communication from a human.  All of your marketing should communicate like a human.  Write in a conversational tone.  Just say it already, and be pithy about it.

As you embark upon selecting an advertising or marketing agency, is their physical location important?  As a marketing agency in Cincinnati, Ohio, we serve clients across the country, in addition to many here locally.  There are definitely some cases where I would say that location is important, but as communication and technology evolve, for many the location of their ad agencies doesn't matter much.

We just began work for two firms based in Atlanta, and they definitely were not looking for a Cincinnati ad agency.  What they were looking for was the right mix of marketing strategy experience, creative talent, business acumen, and knowledge of their industry.  For both clients, R.O.Why! Marketing fit the bill very well.  We've delivered branding, email marketing, search engine optimization, event marketing, advertising and other interactive marketing programs for companies in their industries.  We were familiar with the challenges they're facing, so location was much less of an issue.  In fact, we even offered to visit one of them for the project kickoff meeting and the client didn't feel it was necessary.  They work very well on the phone and over the web.

A great tool for addressing the issue of location of our marketing firm has been online marketing project management and client collaboration software.  We use a great produce called Basecamp from 37 Signals.  It's fast, easy to use, and our clients love it.  The product centralizes communication, files, milestones, and tasks in one place and has dramatically cut down on the email clutter & confusion.

My advice for companies selecting an ad agency in Ohio or anywhere else:  Find the marketing firm that can competently address your challenges with creative marketing solutions.  With great communication and strong marketing results, location becomes much less of an issue.

I REALLY don't like to talk negatively about people, but I absolutely hate when a few individuals give an industry a bad name.  I was talking with a company today who hired someone to do some internet marketing consulting, focused primarily on search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing.  Months have gone by, the client has spent thousands of dollars and is getting no report of marketing results and simply being told that 'you're getting some clicks, but you need to create more content.  Oh, and by the way, you can pay me to do that for you too.'

After spending about 30 minutes reviewing the website and listening to the client, it was very clear to me that they had been taken for a ride.  Now, I do strongly believe that they need a solid search engine optimization strategy, potentially some PPC internet marketing, and definitely a lot more website content.  However, I finished the call with the client suggesting that if we were chosen, we'd advise against continuing the PPC campaign at all until the content was completed.

Now, in the current SEO's defense, perhaps the client asked for exactly what was being delivered.  Perhaps they didn't really understand search engine marketing and didn't ask the right questions.  Perhaps they agreed to everything as it was presented.  However, isn't it the responsibility of the expert to help a client make the right decisions?

In addition, I found that the search engine optimization strategy consistent of 'stuffing' the website and HTML code with keywords - otherwise known as 'black hat' SEO techniques.  Marketers that do it right know that you simply cannot optimize a website page for more than a couple of keywords, yet there were at least 15 completely unrelated phrases stuffed into the meta tags.  Why?  These techniques haven't worked in years.

Bottom line for companies searching for a marketing firm to perform search engine optimization:  Do your homework and compare approaches.  Ask for references and ask to see search engine results of current clients.  Unfortunately, there are still some out there who are willing to take your money and run.