There are hundreds of specialists in pay-per-click marketing, but for inexplicable reasons there are no specialists in post click marketing.  Post-click doesn’t sound familiar?  Well that’s because most marketing teams ignore the premise of post click marketing – whether it’s accidental or on purpose.  Search engine marketers worry about keywords, negative keywords, and ad copy, but who worries about the landing pages?  What happens once the click brings a potential customer to the site?  Most companies either send you to their home page or create a single-page, stock template with a column of text, a couple images, and maybe a small video; all too often these are pages created by coding-inept marketers, not real graphic designers and Web developers.  These tactics hardly engage respondents and are a sign of complacency in the market.

In the next generation of marketing I hope to see real engagement in post-click marketing.  Microsites, apps, Web 2.0 (that oh-so-overused term), widgets, mobile friendly options, and more, passionately appeal to your respondents in a way a single page template can’t.  Now, all this isn’t to say that flashy widgets are a replacement for intelligent, quality content – it’s not.  But, you need the smart content presented in a creative and exciting way to encourage customer engagement.  Many companies are still “dangling their feet” in SEM, meaning the post-click marketing that needs to happen is still far off in the distance.  Those few companies who really understand what post-click marketing could do to conversion rates and page views and other measurable stats, are finding serious amounts of success.  Post click marketing is the future, and the only constraints are the imagination of the marketers in charge and some understanding from CMOs that this is the future and it deserves attention.  PPC is a viable marketing source, not a fun thing to try.

It’s amazing how one simple sentence, one word even, can set the internet and the blogosphere foaming at the mouth.  At the American Magazine Conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that the internet was a “cesspool” and that brands serve as the giant filter, the main form of protection from the cesspool.  Within minutes, the internet cesspool was ablaze with the one word – “cesspool” and the debates began.  Is the internet really a cesspool?  Are brands the regulatory agents?

Let’s face it, Google is a brand.  It’s one of the most famous and recognizable brands in existence, in fact.  John Battelle says that “Google is the greatest harvester of brand equity built elsewhere in the history of media.”  Eric Schmidt knew exactly what he was saying and what he was doing when he chose that one word out of a dictionary of more than 100,000 words and when he said the solution was branding.  Brilliant.  Just a few careful words have managed to stimulate dialogue for the last several weeks in every Web-related and marketing publication.  That’s crafting a reaction on your own terms.  That’s creating your dialogue.  That’s just plain brilliant marketing.

Don't Let Your Marketing Plan Get Scrooge'd

Christmas is my favorite time of the year.  The famous Christmas carol heralds that it is, in fact, the most wonderful time of the year, and I would agree with that.  However, it seems that this year may not be quite as wonderful as in years past.  The first spending projections for the season came out and they bore depressing, albeit totally expected, news.  TNS Global projected that this would be the weakest holiday since 1991 with growth at just 1.5%.  Products and services are going to be cut out this year by families impacted by the credit crisis and the DJIA falling into the 8000 point range.

Estimates say that spending on kids, spouses, and pets are the least likely to change substantially, while friends, coworkers, and holiday decor are the most likely categories to be cut out.  This is the season to stand out, not for the sake of being different, but for the sake of financial survival.  Now is the time to test a few great marketing strategies that can carry you through a lackluster Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Now is the time to think big, test everything, and think outside the box to bring real conversions to your marketing plan.  Not everyone can afford to film television ads and buy TV time during the uber-competitive Christmas season, so here are some questions to bring to your next marketing meeting to give yourself a better competitive edge in this season of limited giving – an edge that would make even Ebenezer Scrooge happy with the results.

What kind of sale, discount, or offering do your customers really want?  Do some tests and send out an email blast offering a dollar amount off a product and a comparable percentage off.  Which is going to perform better for your industry (in general, tests have shown that people respond better to a dollar amount)?  Try different email approaches – one with a lot of free information, maybe links to a microsite, and a special offer and compare it to a purely promotional email.  Join the social networks, blogosphere, and Twitter world to share your message without breaking the marketing budget.  At this time of year, your pay per click strategy will also change.  Do you need to develop holiday themed campaigns with different calls to action that feature updated specials and ad copy?  Do you have a holiday themed landing page that is more relevant to the season?  Do you need to add new keywords that include “holiday,” “Christmas,” or “festive” to your repertoire?  Since it’s the season of giving, does your brand stand out as generous, caring, and socially aware?  Is there a way to bring your charitable blessings to light in a way that does not come across as cloying or insincere?  Are you being true to your brand and what makes sense with your brand or are you too concerned with being trendy and “of the moment”?

What else can you add to this list? What do you need to know about your marketing techniques in this season to improve your chances of maintaining quality sales?

Generation Y is near and dear to my heart.  So few companies really understand how to market to this group because they have been surrounded by technology for so much of their lives.  Generation Y grew up on computers, not typewriters.  They have never lived without a gaming console, cable television with 400 channels, pay per view, and cell phones. They speak and dress casually, text instead of talk, listen to every genre of music, and customize everything.  Because they can.  Because they have always been able to.  They have short attention spans when it comes to something that does not immediately present utility.  Far too many of them have been told they have ADD and now believe it, the scapegoat for a generation’s jaded consumer-driven existence.

According to a recent e-marketer survey, 85% of Generation Y respondents say they participate in social networking.  57% reported involvement with blogs.  If your key demographic is concentrated around Generation Y, you have to be involved in blogging and social networks, or as I recently learned, SocNets.  If you aren’t, then your company and product probably can’t claim relevance in today’s market.  Myspace is the top natural search result and one of the top paid search results (ebay still has the market cornered on that one).  Facebook is rising in uniques faster than nearly any site can keep up.  Twitter and microblogging, LinkedIn and corporate social networking, iPhones and app stores… this is the Brave New World of marketing.  But if your company or product is using social networks or blogs, it has to be done in new and interesting ways, otherwise it’s falling on deaf ears and cast aside by attention-lacking young adults.

The key question is are you providing utility?  Utility can be educational, it can streamline daily life, it can just be escapist fun.  You can gauge your marketing’s utility by asking a few simple questions.  Are there customization options?  Is there a free, downloadable app that can be put on a cell phone or iPod?  Are there comment sections, walls, or feedback mechanisms for participation?  Are there contests, games, video?  Is there a method built in to encourage something to go viral?  Can it be shared quickly and easily?  Is it interactive?  Does it work equally well on all devices from phones to PDA’s to mp3 players to laptops?  All of these are questions that must be answered.  Having a facebook group is not enough if you hope to embrace relevant marketing.  Having a myspace page with a blog you update once a month is not enough.

Redefining how your customers interact with each other and with your company is just right.

Consumers love comfort. They love that warm, fuzzy feeling of being swaddled in a security blanket of a product or service particularly when dealing with the internet.  That’s why we have to check a thousand boxes with privacy policies and terms of service any time we sign up for a Web site, newsletter, or make a purchase online. That’s why there are dialog boxes that ask us if we’re really, really, really sure that we do in fact want to download a certain application. That’s why there are customer service departments – to serve the customer’s needs to feel safe and secure. All marketing on the Web must engender that same sense of safety that you would get talking to a customer service rep, to demonstrate that you are a credible business.  If you have the latest and greatest cutting edge product, you still have to woo your customers by making them feel welcome and safe.  Whether it’s through a Web site, e-mail communications, or banner ads, a crucial aspect of marketing, and web marketing in particular, is credibility.

With the economy sinking farther into a tailspin and the threat of further deficit spending looming, banks and financial institutions need to reach out to their customers and (sincerely) assure them that their money, their life savings, their homes, are secure.  I have searched all over my bank’s Web site (which shall remain nameless) to find some affirmation that a particular account is FDIC insured, that they are financially solvent, and that they’ll still be my bank next week.  But there’s nothing. No note, no alert, no email, no press release, no banner.  Not even a text link with an article about the largest single day point drop in the stock market ever.  Just the same old home screen.  Does this mean they are hiding something from me?  Are they unaware of the financial turmoil that has struck the globe?  Do they just not care about me as a customer?  I long for that comfort, those few choice words that say, “Hey, don’t worry. You’re safe with us.”  I want straightforward communication from my bank and every product and service I use.  My mutual fund company sent out an email blast about it, but my bank did nothing.  It is one of the key reasons I feel that one financial company is safer and more credible than another during this economic crisis – whether the numbers behind it back that up or not.  By not ensuring my comfort, my bank is making me feel uncertain about using their products, and thus, they could lose me, and those who feel as I do, as a customer.

Credibility.  It’s relatively simple to conjure by cultivating an environment of safety, but when lost, it’s very difficult to get it back.

There are so many things I love about this ad.  Targeted to the jaded, cynical youth of America who’ve seen nothing but amoral politicians, bumbling buffoons giving speeches, and the rampant double talk inherent in the political climate, this ad left me inspired.  Even in today’s soundbite world, I sat and watched the entire video.  Twice.  I’m already registered to vote but still it made me want to register to vote all over again.

Celebrities provide a great way to appeal to youth (how else would Perez Hilton get 3,000,000 visitors a day!) and there are a number of celebrities in the montage that directly appeal to this target audience.  Sarah Silverman and Jonah Hill appeal with their brands of base, foul mouthed humor, ever-popular celebrities like Natalie Portman and Leonardo DiCaprio pop up with their all-too-familiar (and swoonworthy) faces, and then there are those parental (and grandparental) figures who’ve been staples of the cinema for decades, like Dustin Hoffman.  One of the messages in the video will appeal to each and every viewer who sees it.  This makes it not only appealing, but effective.  The mashup quality gives it a homegrown vibe that any YouTube user feels they could recreate.  And of course, there’s the quoteable quality to it.  “You can literally register to vote while you’re pooping, if you have a laptop.”  That’s something I could see going really viral.  There will be t-shirts of it at bustedtees.com.  This video is a great piece of marketing… let’s just hope it’s as effective in practice as it is in concept.

Ten years ago all people could talk about was how much pornography was on the internet and how readily accessible it was.  People railed that all the internet could ever hope to be is a great pez dispenser of perversion.  Parents feared for their children, feared for the innocence lost in a tangled web of scary cyberspace.  In came the influx of v-chips, site blockers, pop up blockers, spam blockers, virus scanners, and moderate safe searches.

It has now become pretty clear that for a great number of reasons, the Millenials, or Generation Y if you prefer, don’t crave internet porn in the way that the older generation seemed to.  Their focus is all about social networks.  Marketing Vox noted that “Surfing for porn has dropped to 10 percent of searches, from 20 percent 10 years ago. Today, the top online searches are for social networking sites.”  While that is still an insane amount of adult content, the fact is, the millennium generation would rather look at Facebook or Myspace than porn.  The number one natural search query is myspace, for paid search it’s ebay or myspace.  Again, there are those who fear the pedophiles lurking in the shadows of the Jonas Brothers Facebook group – a fear that is not entirely unfounded – but the internet generation is using the social network, text messaging, and microblogging the way Generation X used the phone and beepers.  The way people in the 80’s met up at gyms and singles clubs.  The way people in the 70’s danced the night away at discos.  The way Ed Sullivan dictated what was popular in the 60’s.  Or so I’ve heard, since I wasn’t actually alive then.  Millenials aren’t using the internet the way the first internet adopters were – as the porn pez dispenser.

So what does this have to do with marketing?  Throughout the ages, media has grown, evolved, changed.  As one generation yields its technological prowess to another, more advanced generation, culture, and the marketing of culture, changes.  The good old standby motto of “sex sells” no longer rings as true as it once did.  Nowadays, you have to harness the power of the social network in order to be relevant.  Pretty girls in bikinis and fast cars aren’t going to cut it anymore.  Interaction is what sells now.

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