Situational Marketing

Using PPC In Your Marketing Plans

I'm not a big fan of PPC for marketing. It's not that I don't think it works - it's that I don't think it works for most people.  I can't tell you the number of clients I've seen who've dropped a grand or two into PPC and had no results.  Or $50 a month with no results, but hey, it's just $50 a month, right?

PPC is a discipline, and as such, it takes someone who knows what they're doing to get it right.  The limited PPC campaigns I run are for branding, so I'm not an expert.  I know just enough to tell you if you're wasting your money or not, but your accountant can do that.

So I turn to people who do know what they're doing. One is RobDogg, a commenter from February who writes about online marketing, and clearly understands the correct way to run PPC campaigns.  In this post, he covers Grouping of Ad Words in a video tutorial on bridal dresses.  It's 15 minutes, but if you're running a campaign, it's 15 minutes well spent. 

Hey RobbDogg - if you want to integrate with us for texting, e-mail, or voice broadcasts, let me know.  You're now on my short list for PPC referrals. 

Learning Business From Other Smart People

Blast Companies is an entrepreneurial company.  We're constantly looking for ways to grow our business, build a better product, position ourselves in the market, invest in ourselves wisely, and save every penny for rainy days.

What's the key to our success?  We surround ourselves, both online and offline, with people who like to learn.  We learned a long time ago that success can always be achieved as long as you don't give up.  That doesn't mean that your business will succeed, but it does mean that you personally can find a business that makes you proud to get up in the morning, keeps you working late into the night, and ultimately fulfills your financial goals.

That's why we like reading people like Rob May, formerly, and kind of currently at the Business Pundit.  Rob gives the lowdown on entrepreneurship in the best blogpost I've read all year.  Top 10 Changes In My Business Thinking.  Rob really gets it, and he got it the old-fashioned way - he worked through his challenges. 

Chief among his findings are the importance of luck, the importance of economics, and the importance of looking forward, not back.  What I like best is Rob's understanding that success is fluid.  We wish him well at his new blog, coconut headsets.

What Kind Of Community Are You?

Church of the Customer wants to know if you're a Network or a Cult.  Or rather, they're helping you identify just what kind of a customer base you want to build.

For companies just dipping their toes into social media, the question, what kind of community do you want is usually met with a blank stare or a joke about KoolAid.  Deep down, I think most business owners want customers to join their cult.  It seems like the easy way to insure loyalty, but we often don't think about what you need to do to make a cult work for you.

There's the lighting, the robes, the 10 gallon drums for mixing the Kool-Aid (told you there'd be a joke).  The graphic tells a better story, which is that if you're building (or joining) a community online, what kind of community do you want to build?  And for Blast Marketing readers - how do you want to communicate with them.

   Check out their definition of a cult:

Cult
"Your community could be of medium size and resemble a cult. Its value is a strong belief system not fulfilled through mainstream channels. A charismatic leader has codified the belief system into rituals that people love and believe in. It may not be huge, but its devotion meter is off the scale."

That seems like a good idea, but it requires you to have a cult leader.  Anyone want to volunteer the time? 

The network sounds pretty good if you're a marketer, but it's difficult to sell a product to a network.  Everyone is in it for something.

Large communities form nations, but nations often don't want to hear from you.  They have their own agenda, and it's usually not selling 15% in the third quarter.

Which leaves Cliques.  Most social media marketing should focus on Cliques, because cliques form around a narrow set of criteria that are often complementary to you selling your product or service. Cliques are numerous, easy to find, and if you're willing to put the time in, you'll get a reward equal to or greater to your effort.

Unless you're one of those really lame cliques that are full of pretensions, but end up never really being much after high school.  Ben really makes you think about this.  What kind of community you want to build/join should be something you're asking yourself prior to the launch.types f

More Automotive Marketing Work

As a companion piece to Monday's primer on Automotive marketing, we suggest you check out BlogProAutomotive, a marketing blog set up to educate auto dealers on how to use social media marketing to sell more cars.

The essential story is the same - learn to speak to customers in a way that showcases your strengths and respects their time, and they'll reward you with brand loyalty.  BlogProAutomotive, which has the blog, AutoConversion, discusses SEO strategies, comment campaigns, and running a blog to boost your online presence. 

Combine this with a messaging system that connects to car-buyers the way they wish to be messaged, and you have something unique in the automotive world,  a self-selection buying tool that gives control to the customers.  Giving your customers "choice" is a powerful marketing tool, and helps eliminate the concern most people still have when purchasing a car.

If a customers feels they know your dealership when they walk on the lot, they're going to buy a car from you.  Currently, 88% of people who walk on the lot are going online before coming to you.  What do you want them to read when they type your name into a search engine?

Research by Yahoo! and The Cobalt Group shows that 88 percent of new car shoppers research auto dealerships before making their first visit to a dealer lot. In fact, search engines have become the method of choice for dealership research.

According to the study, 79 percent of consumers use search engines to research auto dealerships. Not including physical drive-bys, online search now trumps all other media as the number one source consumers use when locating a dealership.

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Getting Customers To Listen

If you talk to a winning basketball coach, they'll often tell you the basis of a championship is the fundamentals.  The key to winning teams is taking these phenomenally talented players and forcing them to practice the basics of basketball.

"Hey, kid.  Can you make a free-throw?"

"Sure, Coach."

"Good.  Make four hundred in a row.  Start now."

All too often, good talent, or good ideas, or sometimes even marginal ideas and talent are left alone to perform with the assumption that talent or smarts or willpower is all you need to succeed.  In marketing, as on the basketball court, that attitude leads to inflated expectations and devastating failures.

Over at Interactive Marketing Trends, Giles Rhys Jones covers the basics of any e-mail marketing campaign, and for good measure, I'd like each of your to write them out four hundred times.