The Web Uncovered

Part of working on the world of online marketing is  that you are straddling two very different worlds.  One on hand you have the seasoned Chief Marketing Officers, whose education and understanding of marketing predates the internet.  They often are confused by the technologies, and attempt to apply their knowledge to the new media, not realizing that a new medium requires a new strategy.  On the other side you have tech-heads, who are absolutely necessary as they hold the key to using these technologies, but often have no basis of understanding marketing principles, or best practices.  Your basic need is to be their middle man, and your endgoal should be to understand both worlds well enough that you can take over both their jobs.

When it comes to online marketing, the most elemental part of traditional marketing that I believe is missed is marketing research.  Once you have your target segment, you MUST answer these questions:

1.  What websites is my target segment patronizing

2.  How are they using the website

3.  What is important to them, and how can I reveal our value added?

If you don’t have a marketing background, think of it like fishing.  If you grab random bait and go to a random body of water, if you catch fish, it was dumb luck.  Most fishermen find out what fish they are targeting, then put together a tackle box of what they need.  The most important part is your bait or lure; without the bite, there is no fish.  Your fishing pole, bait, etc is all dependent on marketing research.

Now let’s just avoid a fishing story.  :)

Creating fake websites is a means towards several ends.  While some implementations are funny or catchy, some can be unethical and even illegal.   A Fake website is a website whole sole purpose is something other than what would seem to be the obvious.  One such example is the ever famous petsORfood.com, a website that pretends to sell unwanted pets for food, including species on the endangered species list.  It’s totally believable with its extensive online content, complete with order forms and checkout.

Why create fake websites?  There are two main reasons why you might consider this.  Firstly, by creating content that has virality potential, you could set up PPC ads and then just sit on the ad revenue.  While it may not turn into a cash cow, it could give you a nice side income.  Another reason why some people create fake websites is to create a reputable link to their site.  Not only could it bolster traffic, but it has positive SEO effects as well.   Find a list of such websites here.

The Takeaway:  

While creating a funny or unbelievable fake website may advantageous, make sure you are complying with FTC regulations regarding misrepresenting yourself.  Furthermore, avoid lawsuits from refraining from lying about medical matters.  Finally, consider the use of these fake websites as jokes, if yours isn’t in good humor or obviously a hoax once scrutinized, you may need to reconsider your own ethical limits.

So for those of you who have a content-based website that you are marketing, you know that search technologies are important.  Not only are these technologies important to understand, but media consumers are increasingly looking at keyword searches and trends to determine legitimacy.  Showcasing your own searches, or searches for keywords related to your product or service, has been impossible.

Until Now.  Google has released Google Trends Gadget, which is available for free.  Still not sure how cool this is?  Imagine you are selling an over-the-counter flu remedy from your website.  When people visit your website, they can see how the search results have increased for the word “flu” at the beginning of the flu season.  Also, it allows for comparables.  The customizable aspect of the tool makes it easy to implement and use.  

The Takeaway:   In the new epoch of microblogging, the term “now” means less “this year” and more “the next fifteen minutes.”  Harness developing technologies to exploit this trend, especially those involved in search technology.

For those of you who are managing one or more online marketing campaigns, you may want to consider using multiple identities for your work.  One reason is simply to separate your work social networking from you personal life.  On most sites, my family and friends find me by my real name, Frankie Fredericks.  However, I do most of my online marketing work with  psydonyms.  This allows me to both keep my private life private, and save my friends from seeing how obnoxiously frequent my use of Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, and Twitter is.  

Just make sure that when you are using multiple identities, that you are keeping within the limits of laws regarding spamming (everyone hates spam, don’t be part of the problem!), and also be sure to play by the terms of use for the sites that you use.  This is speaking practically, as if you use an account for much activity, breaking one rule that leads to the deletion of your account could cost you hours and hours of lost work.

For more reasons and ideas about using multiple identities, check out this post on the blog SEO Smarty.

While online marketers are still determining the best practices for online marketing, the Federal Trade Commission is also figuring out some details regarding regulations governing online marketing.  Blogger Jordan McCollum explores these new policies in the blog post “Are You Breaking the Law with Social Media Marketing?”

The key phrase that the FTC is pushing is:

If you’re being compensated to talk about someone’s product, then you need to disclose it.

There are various implications and applications of this philosophy.  For more details see the original post here.

As Twitter begins teasing users with the idea of bolstering their search engine so that it not only searches through tweets, but also crawls the content of links in tweets, a new door of possibility has opened.  This would create a much more time-sensitive search engine, where search results could be populated by content updates within the last hour.

Not only could this change search technology as we know it, but it also could impact your search engine management (SEM/SEO).  This would be especially true for buzz marketing.  One key way to generate a buzz marketing campaign in the digital age is to create a very specific campaign with a viral capacity, and to create a microsite that is solely used for the campaign (see my favorite example here).  While they are created with SEO in mind, with high keyword density, often times there is a lag between their release and when search engines actually show their content.  This new search engine technology would pick up on the microsite faster  than ever, granted you successfully generate attention to it with twitter users (who are increasingly becoming representative of the American market in demographics).  Utilize the power of now in the digital age.

The Takeaway:

With traditional marketing and public relations, timing is everything.  In the modern online marketing world, the same is true, and the specificity of time is more acute than ever.  While utilizing technologies that allow you this chronological targeting, begin recognizing how changing technologies further change the face of online marketing.