Posts Tagged ‘marketing strategy’

CEOs Need to Know Digital Marketing Basics

October 1st, 2010 by Greg Head | 1 Comment

Remember the old days when marketing resulted in printed material you could touch and feel? Just 10 years ago, the majority of marketing artifacts included printed brochures, product packaging, magazine advertisements and direct mail letters. Stuff you could hold in your hands. Those were the days when most CEOs and senior executives felt compelled to comment on minutiae of decisions about marketing execution, whether they were marketing experts or not.

“Could we see that in a darker blue.” “I don’t like the feel of that paper.” “Why don’t we say this on the front of the envelope?” Business leaders chimed in and happily drove designers and copywriters crazy with their feedback. On the whole, though, executive involvement in the design details helped more than it hurt. At least leaders were passionately involved.

Now that marketing has gone digital, many CEOs of small businesses, non-profits and  tech startups are completely abdicating any involvement in marketing execution. “I’m not a technical person.” “I don’t understand SEO and website analytics.” “All this social media stuff is complicated. Don’t we have someone to do that?”

This is both ironic and scary. You can’t lead a business if you don’t know how your market engages to buy products and services. The tactics of marketing have changed drastically in the last 10 years — digital marketing has overtaken “traditional marketing” in most industries. (Most of my clients have NO physical marketing deliverables other than business cards. They are all digital.)

Marketing is also more content-driven, measurable, and modifiable than ever now that digital tactics dominate. This should be great news for business leaders, but many senior executives and founders have left the marketing discussion completely now that it’s “technical.” It’s not simply an “generation gap” issue either. I see just as many younger CEOs with this problem as older ones.

The sad fact is that many business owners and leaders have still not learned even the basics of digital marketing. They are getting left behind quickly, as did the sorry politicians who ignored bloggers and social media in the last few years.

Business leaders need to understand the basics of digital marketing

The main areas of modern digital marketing that business leaders need to understand are these:

  • Web search – How does the mechanism of web search affect how interested buyers find your products and services?
  • Social media – How is the growing conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and other social websites driving the discussion about your products and your business?
  • Websites – What story are you telling your customers in the content and design of your website? Is your content useful, clear and complete?
  • Blogs – How are blogs and review sites changing the way industry experts communicate deliver news and information to your market?
  • Web analytics – What information is getting tracked in every area of digital marketing that can help you understand what’s happening and improve your marketing?
  • Email marketing – How can you offer timely and relevant email content to prospects and customers that creates action?
  • Mobile – How are smartphones and the iPad changing how people get information and interact with your company? Is location important to your business?
  • Content – What useful content and information do you offer to attract and engage your customers?

There are many ways to learn about these topics so you can make informed decisions. Go online (it’s all there), hire an expert, go to local digital marketing conferences or have your website manager explain it to you.  You don’t have to be an expert, but you do need to know enough to make sound business decisions, including which digital marketing expert to hire and when you should hire them.

I know hundreds of CEOs and startup entrepreneurs. The winners among them have already learned Internet marketing fundamentals and are well-versed in the advanced tactics most important to their businesses. The struggling CEOs think digital marketing is someone else’s job.

Times have changed. Marketing has already gone digital. CEOs need to get on board before it’s too late.

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POSTED in Marketing Tactics that Work

Modern Marketing Requires More Effort, Less Spending

June 4th, 2010 by Greg Head | 2 Comments

Any business that is succeeding in the marketing game is relentless about executing their focused strategy. Owning a valuable position in the market is not easy. It takes focus, creativity and discipline. The discipline to communicate your focused message every day for years to the best of your abilities.

Technology entrepreneurs typically underestimate the marketing execution effort required to succeed – and overestimate the marketing investment.

Big budgets are no longer the magic pill that moves markets. The game has changed.

Execution is always harder than it looks

Like losing weight or getting fit, it’s easier to develop your plan than to actually give up sweets or exercise before the sun comes up every day. Billions of dollars are spent on diet plans, health clubs, and low fat foods, but more Americans are getting bigger each year. Most dieters have a decent plan, but they lack the discipline to do the hard things every day (forever) that are required to be healthier.

Unfortunately, modern marketing is more work and effort than “quick fix” spending on advertising and direct mail campaigns. It’s difficult to continually make your product or service great, write useful content for the Web, participate in the social conversation, develop partner relationships, test and retest new approaches, refine your strategy and all the other things required to grow fast and build a valuable reputation.

The bad news is most marketing activities these days require painstaking labor and detailed savvy about a wide variety of tactics. The good news that most marketing tactics don’t require significant budget any more.

Winning without big budgets

One fast-growing business that is succeeding in the marketing game is FireHost. FireHost delivers truly secure hosting for small and medium-sized businesses that have critically important websites but not big budgets. (FireHost has been a client of New Avenue and I’m an investor, too.)

Yes, FireHost offers much-needed service that is very disruptive to old dedicated hosting business (that costs too much and isn’t very secure). But the FireHost team is winning because they execute like crazy in every part of their business, including marketing.

During an important strategy discussion early last year, we decided that “secure hosting” was an available position in the big hosting market and FireHost was uniquely positioned to go after it. After this meeting, the FireHost team made a long list of the hundreds of additional things they would have to deliver and communicate to be known as the most secure hosting available.

Within months they delivered almost all the items on the list, including changes to their services, infrastructure, website, branding, marketing activities, messaging and content, search keywords, and on and on. When they finished that list they made a new long list. They have done this each quarter for a year. And each quarter they are more laser-focused than before.

Now FireHost is an acclaimed hosting company that is growing twice as fast as the industry and has successfully raised $2 million in capital to help them grow faster.

Lucky? Nope. Great product and terrific support? Yep. But that’s not enough.

The FireHost team executes 10X more marketing activity each month than any other company their size that I have ever seen. They have grown fast without a big budget. It is extremely hard work — and they do it better than most companies of any size.

Here’s another example: How did Marty Zwilling of Startup Professionals get over 200,000 loyal followers on Twitter and build hugely popular website for entrepreneurs?  Without a marketing budget?  Well, Marty has posted a useful article on his blog every day for the past two years. Every day.

This is how the fastest growing companies are doing it now. Modern marketing is mostly about work: consistent effort and constant improvement.  Not big budgets.

To win in the marketing game, be prepared to put in the extraordinary effort every day that is required.

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POSTED in Growth Strategies, Marketing Tactics that Work