I realize that I've strayed from my marketing research information over the last few posts, but I do plan to return to that topic soon. Today is not that day however, as I've been doing some reading that has got me thinking...For those of you who know me yes I DO read and even think sometimes.
First off - get some background for this one (read in order):
1)How to make money with seo
2)Theres more than two ways to make money with seo
3)Most SEO strategies are not focused hitting home runs
From this point on, I'm assuming you've dug through the previous three posts.
I'm not going to agree, disagree, rant, berate or any of that (as if I have any place to anyway) these three articles, but I wanted to make note of a key part of marketing that I think many small to medium sized businesses miss - making sure that offline and online marketing operations are cohesive.
Seth Godin (article 1) argues for building brand identity through a phrase, name, etc. that can be established online. The idea is than that you began to organically build your own following off of this term/brand/whatever you want to call it and gain web traffic as a result.
This makes perfect sense. Build the brand, create something unique, leverage it.
If this does not take place, or there is a lack of cohesiveness between your online marketing strategy/presence/seo efforts then you are in for a world of hurt. Not only will you end up double spending at times, you will suffer an opportunity cost loss from not taking advantage of a cohesive marketing strategy that takes potential customers from both channels (web, offline) and directs one to the other giving the customer a few simple options to satisfy their desire for what you've got. Sounds kind of sexy, and frankly, it is when utilized.
If you can creatively marry your offline and online strategies with your business operations and all the other nitty gritty you can find yourself in marketing heaven. You'll be effectively leveraging your brand both on and offline, and the power of social marketing, WOM, and all those other good things will really come to life for you as word spreads. Strength is gained as well in the longtail keyword, adwords, etc. development as you can began to pull strength from your established brand that people are hunting for into other words, phrases, pages, etc. that you want to fight for.
Marry the online and offline, have kids and reap the benefits of a cohesive strategy. I think that's part of what Seth was saying..or maybe I should just go back to not thinking.
Showing posts with label market analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label market analysis. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Passion Must Fuel Market Strategy
I just finished reading an interesting post by Aaron Wall of SEO Book. I hesitate to share the link as I have a secret desire to keep his brain and knowledge all to myself...unfortunately several thousands have already tapped him and he's now giving his freshest content/knowledge away for free via his blog. So at some point it becomes fruitless to think I'm being sneaky by keeping is name away from you. After all, if you were really into SEO or search marketing you would already know his name.
I suggest reading the article entitled Links Based Economy? No. Passion Based Economy? Yes. if you aren't familiar with it as it will give you some good background.
The main point I want to focus on is the need for new internet content to be passionate. There is something I hear implicitly, that I am not hearing explicitly as much as I think I should when I study web marketing. I believe this concept plays a key role in understanding how to market a site well. (Before I say this I need to point out that I am by many people's standards an SEO/web marketing novice, although I'm quickly becoming a junkie and want to flex my thinking a bit.)
To market a site well - don't play games, be true to what makes marketing a great field of study.
Be creative, be thoughtful, be genuine and real, operate ethically and work hard to understand what you have to offer people that is of real value and think creatively in how the message can be presented. BE PASSIONATE about what you are doing and working on. If you are, then without too much effort that passion can spill into how you work to communicate your message and will greatly help you bring the targeted, interested, traffic that you want.
As you work on the different aspects of online marketing, remember that Google and other search engines are attempting to match people with the most accurate information for their searches. Tricks, games, and everything that goes with them are continually being rooted out by these companies and won't give you long term, sustainable traffic. Be genuine in what you do, work hard to promote as you would normally and watch what happens. If you have something of value and know your market as you should the traffic, rankings, etc., will all come.
About 8 months ago someone asked me to write about why I enjoyed the SEO/web marketing concept as much as I did, when I often have a BIG problem with how the field of marketing is being run. Here's what I came up with:
"...good SEO represents a pure form of marketing to me as well. Instead of being as simple as paying for a billboard in an appropriate location to throw an ad on, you have to work at crafting several parts of your business into a cohesive effort that will bring you as much traffic and visibility online as possible. Because Google is now the major search engine, SEO is often focused on achieving high google rankings for certain keywords. The “pure” part is evidenced because Google is attempting to deliver exactly what a user is searching for...therefore tricks, games, lies etc. are all filtered out (or pushed lower) and the sites that are creating genuinely solid contributions in whatever their field (shoe sales, personal blog, etc.) will be picked IF they have an excellent SEO strategy to get them noticed.
The marketing here is to Google’s algorithm, not to an individual. This distinction creates a very interesting and unique challenge for businesses’ as the goal is not to market themselves to the end consumer, but to the machine with no emotions, thoughts, feelings, stupidity, etc, to play upon. Strange...but in some ways it strikes me as a purest form of marketing with some fascinating challenges that force a business to really learn who their customer is, and then apply the knowledge to create a truly valuable product for the customer. The business must be good, the value proposition must be good, and the SEO strategy must be good in order to gain success and web dominance."
I suggest reading the article entitled Links Based Economy? No. Passion Based Economy? Yes. if you aren't familiar with it as it will give you some good background.
The main point I want to focus on is the need for new internet content to be passionate. There is something I hear implicitly, that I am not hearing explicitly as much as I think I should when I study web marketing. I believe this concept plays a key role in understanding how to market a site well. (Before I say this I need to point out that I am by many people's standards an SEO/web marketing novice, although I'm quickly becoming a junkie and want to flex my thinking a bit.)
To market a site well - don't play games, be true to what makes marketing a great field of study.
Be creative, be thoughtful, be genuine and real, operate ethically and work hard to understand what you have to offer people that is of real value and think creatively in how the message can be presented. BE PASSIONATE about what you are doing and working on. If you are, then without too much effort that passion can spill into how you work to communicate your message and will greatly help you bring the targeted, interested, traffic that you want.
As you work on the different aspects of online marketing, remember that Google and other search engines are attempting to match people with the most accurate information for their searches. Tricks, games, and everything that goes with them are continually being rooted out by these companies and won't give you long term, sustainable traffic. Be genuine in what you do, work hard to promote as you would normally and watch what happens. If you have something of value and know your market as you should the traffic, rankings, etc., will all come.
About 8 months ago someone asked me to write about why I enjoyed the SEO/web marketing concept as much as I did, when I often have a BIG problem with how the field of marketing is being run. Here's what I came up with:
"...good SEO represents a pure form of marketing to me as well. Instead of being as simple as paying for a billboard in an appropriate location to throw an ad on, you have to work at crafting several parts of your business into a cohesive effort that will bring you as much traffic and visibility online as possible. Because Google is now the major search engine, SEO is often focused on achieving high google rankings for certain keywords. The “pure” part is evidenced because Google is attempting to deliver exactly what a user is searching for...therefore tricks, games, lies etc. are all filtered out (or pushed lower) and the sites that are creating genuinely solid contributions in whatever their field (shoe sales, personal blog, etc.) will be picked IF they have an excellent SEO strategy to get them noticed.
The marketing here is to Google’s algorithm, not to an individual. This distinction creates a very interesting and unique challenge for businesses’ as the goal is not to market themselves to the end consumer, but to the machine with no emotions, thoughts, feelings, stupidity, etc, to play upon. Strange...but in some ways it strikes me as a purest form of marketing with some fascinating challenges that force a business to really learn who their customer is, and then apply the knowledge to create a truly valuable product for the customer. The business must be good, the value proposition must be good, and the SEO strategy must be good in order to gain success and web dominance."
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
SEO prioritization post by Aaron Wall at SEOBook
I rarely jump up and down in excitement over what I read on other blogs (not that mine is so great...). However, I am consistently impressed at the information given and the straightforward writing style of Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com. I just read a post titled "What Aspect Of SEO Should You Be Spending Most Of Your Time On?", that needed to be shared, as it is one of the better basic starting point lists for building an SEO campaign (and remembering what SEO is all about) that I have come across. Nice job Aaron and thanks for the references within the post as well!
Monday, March 30, 2009
Marketing Situation Analysis and Resources
Before we start, if the text looks small hit "ctrl" and "+" together to increase the size.
If you've come once and decided to come back - I appreciate it. Marketing research and market analysis aren't always the most stimulating topics but they are key to success, and I believe even more so for smaller businesses where every dollar is very precious.
I've been studying more specifically on how to perform a strong market analysis, and have some basic outline information I'd like to share, that some of you may find valuable in your market analysis efforts. Also, at the very bottom are some links to basic, but good resources non the less for getting some data on your target market.
Situation Analysis
First off, lets get some purpose behind doing a situation analysis. I like the general one given in the text I've largely been reviewing (Author information below) called Marketing Research - A practical approach for the new millennium. Essentially, they argue that the point of a situation analysis is simply to determine whether or not a marketing strategy is proving effective or not. This analysis is broken into 3 main areas:
1. Market analysis
2. Market segmentation
3. Competition analysis
The Breakdown
Market Analysis
Market Analysis refers to studying a product market to possible gain information on how the market may change in the future. This includes studying such aspects as political trends, regulatory actions, economic trends, social trends and culture (this one is big), and changes in technology. On a side note - I like to watch for when these trends are combining and think of what opportunities or changes that might be creating (read social+technological).
Three great ways to work on a market analysis include:
1) Content Analysis through studying written works, stored data, various forms of media
2) Interviews - Strong, deep, interviews of experts in the industry with formal structure
3) Interviews - Formal questionnaires designed to pass to a variety of users to gain information on an environment.
Market Segmentation
The short and sweet of this is to figure out what makes people similar, and what makes them different, and then organize them into groups based upon this information. Market segmentation can include gathering information on brand preferences, product likes/dislikes, customer characteristics, as well as the normal social/economic studies.
I believe that this is an area where a business can gain an advantage through clever evaluation of the data gathered. Obviously gathering this information is helpful and obvious trends and groupings will probably appear, however the real competitive edge comes when a business is unique in interpreting and measuring the data. Learning to look across a set of data and spot unique trends or groupings can open up a deeper understanding of a market and how to reach them. The internet is great for this as there are thousands of attempts being made to combine different market segmentations into new products/venues for attracting consumers.
Competition Analysis
I'll try to make this breif. The goal is to understand your competition and predict their movements. Take your competition and rip them apart just as you would examine and rip apart your own company to spot flaws in your amour. Examine operations, strategies, marketing techniques, financial moves, branding, everything that you can think of. Then, go to the consumer and ask specific questions relating to a product market (brand preference, pricing, quality, shipping accuracy, etc). The goal is to identify a list of items that consumers can then rank by level of importance. This list can then be used to help evaluate how successful competiting companies are with hitting the consumers in the target market by measuring their success in each of the ranked areas. This competitive market analysis may show you areas to improve as well as help you predict what your comeptition may attempt to do next.
Quick resources for research data:
www.census.gov
market research firms (expensive, but good ones can give you a big leg up)
censtats.census.gov (provides some pattern information, by county, zip, etc.)
www.fedstats.gov (federal government stats)
www.businesslaw.gov (business law information
www.lexisnexis.com (gotta pay to play, but if you know how to do it you can gain some good info)
If you've come once and decided to come back - I appreciate it. Marketing research and market analysis aren't always the most stimulating topics but they are key to success, and I believe even more so for smaller businesses where every dollar is very precious.
I've been studying more specifically on how to perform a strong market analysis, and have some basic outline information I'd like to share, that some of you may find valuable in your market analysis efforts. Also, at the very bottom are some links to basic, but good resources non the less for getting some data on your target market.
Situation Analysis
First off, lets get some purpose behind doing a situation analysis. I like the general one given in the text I've largely been reviewing (Author information below) called Marketing Research - A practical approach for the new millennium. Essentially, they argue that the point of a situation analysis is simply to determine whether or not a marketing strategy is proving effective or not. This analysis is broken into 3 main areas:
1. Market analysis
2. Market segmentation
3. Competition analysis
The Breakdown
Market Analysis
Market Analysis refers to studying a product market to possible gain information on how the market may change in the future. This includes studying such aspects as political trends, regulatory actions, economic trends, social trends and culture (this one is big), and changes in technology. On a side note - I like to watch for when these trends are combining and think of what opportunities or changes that might be creating (read social+technological).
Three great ways to work on a market analysis include:
1) Content Analysis through studying written works, stored data, various forms of media
2) Interviews - Strong, deep, interviews of experts in the industry with formal structure
3) Interviews - Formal questionnaires designed to pass to a variety of users to gain information on an environment.
Market Segmentation
The short and sweet of this is to figure out what makes people similar, and what makes them different, and then organize them into groups based upon this information. Market segmentation can include gathering information on brand preferences, product likes/dislikes, customer characteristics, as well as the normal social/economic studies.
I believe that this is an area where a business can gain an advantage through clever evaluation of the data gathered. Obviously gathering this information is helpful and obvious trends and groupings will probably appear, however the real competitive edge comes when a business is unique in interpreting and measuring the data. Learning to look across a set of data and spot unique trends or groupings can open up a deeper understanding of a market and how to reach them. The internet is great for this as there are thousands of attempts being made to combine different market segmentations into new products/venues for attracting consumers.
Competition Analysis
I'll try to make this breif. The goal is to understand your competition and predict their movements. Take your competition and rip them apart just as you would examine and rip apart your own company to spot flaws in your amour. Examine operations, strategies, marketing techniques, financial moves, branding, everything that you can think of. Then, go to the consumer and ask specific questions relating to a product market (brand preference, pricing, quality, shipping accuracy, etc). The goal is to identify a list of items that consumers can then rank by level of importance. This list can then be used to help evaluate how successful competiting companies are with hitting the consumers in the target market by measuring their success in each of the ranked areas. This competitive market analysis may show you areas to improve as well as help you predict what your comeptition may attempt to do next.
Quick resources for research data:
www.census.gov
market research firms (expensive, but good ones can give you a big leg up)
censtats.census.gov (provides some pattern information, by county, zip, etc.)
www.fedstats.gov (federal government stats)
www.businesslaw.gov (business law information
www.lexisnexis.com (gotta pay to play, but if you know how to do it you can gain some good info)
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