Devour The Web

Web marketers see it all of the time.

Companies of every size and description still have unrealistic expectations with online marketing.

Many can be described as web wannabees because they have no clear objectives for the Internet. There is also no vision or concept for being on the Web, other than a vague and urgent perception that "I’ve got to be on the Web now." This is the web wannabee syndrome and if unchecked it can be disastrous for a small business.

Ill-conceived, poorly-executed web sites have very little chance of success when there are so many sites being launched with an astute e-commerce strategy, good search engine optimization, aggressive promotion, attractive interactive tools and more. As a result, the web wannabee needs to shift thinking to a dynamic approach that is creative, innovative and strategically sound.

Any effective marketing strategy requires the deployment of a strong, mission-driven plan. And the Web is no different.

Here are some questions to ask:

1. What are my company’s goals and expectations from the site? Direct sales? Customer service? Image building? This sounds simple but the answers can drive the site in entirely different directions conceptually.

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Wouldn’t it be nice if Henry Paulson, Congress, and the rest of ‘em would offer the American people a guarantee that – if a bank bailout bill ever passes – we’ll get a positive return on our investment?

Ha.

While it’d be tough to trust in a guarantee given by the government anyway, online ad buyers may have better luck. Expanding on its “Brand Increase Guarantee” program, Forbes.com just launched the “Total Guarantee.” The promise: advertisers spending a minimum of $1 million over 90 days are guaranteed to hit specified reach and frequency targets. “With the Total Guarantee, marketers can specify how many individuals within their target audience they want to reach and the average frequency with which they reach them at the outset of the campaign,” stated a Forbes.com press release.

“They never seemingly lost any money on this,” David Smith, CEO of integrated media agency mediasmith told me yesterday. He calls expanding the guarantee program smart marketing, and wondered why he hasn’t seen other brand name publishers offer this sort of thing.

Getting an advertiser to move $1 million in a few months time could amount to “a nice piece of business” by the time the year’s over, added Smith.

Besides being innovative content itself, the Chuck Palahniuk novel and David Fincher film Fight Club contain several lessons about creativity and getting remarkable things done. In fact, I found at least 8 rules you can use to create more innovative content (or more innovative anything).

Of course, these types of tips are better suited for my new project, Lateral Action.

So, head over there for Tyler Durden’s 8 Rules of Innovation. This post is the tie-in for those of you who noticed Lou, Jack and Marla are all named after characters in Fight Club.

Little do you know but you too could be making mistakes with your website that are costing you your search engine rankings.

Goggle and the other search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to keep pace of search engine spammers. Some novice website owners may be like me and be making big mistakes in the eyes of the search engine bots which will lower their search engine ranking or blot their website right out of existence from everyone except those people that have been given their website URL.

Let me tell you my mistakes and what I’ve learned from them… In 2000, I started a small research vineyard. Soon I wanted a website to tell people about it, advise others how to grow grapes, and get my research information out to the public.

I was on a shoe-string budge so I learned HTML myself. My website was quickly posted to one of those “free” website hosts. Two months later, my website was hitting the top “5″ in the search engine rankings for all of my keywords. I had lots of relevant content which made this possible. I was in heaven!

Mike Michalowicz is the only guy I’ve ever heard talk about really being an entrepreneur on the real. Not the glitzy, surface material all the experts spout in their books about being a successful entrepreneur.

We’re talking about the nuts and bolts of what causes some people to achieve great success in business while others fall on their faces.

Grab Mike’s new book, Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, and listen in below as he gives you the tips you need to think and succeed like a true entrepreneur!

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I meant to post about this earlier, but remember way back when on Friday night when, during the presidential debate, John McCain mentioned a study costing taxpayers $3 million to study bear DNA as an example of pork-barrel spending? “I don’t know if that was a criminal issue or a paternal issue, but the fact is that it was $3 million of our taxpayers’ money. And it has got to be brought under control,” he quipped.

Well, he’s been running ads with the very same message — and strangely uncomfortable joke — since last October. The call to action of the ads, like others focused on pork-barrel projects and high gas prices, is to get people to sign a petition; the real goal is to acquire email addresses, to be used later for donation requests.

Well, you seriously can.

Some true copywriting pros and I are putting on an amazing event for freelance copywriters called Copywriting Success Summit 2008. And no… you don’t have to fly anywhere or get a hotel room… it’s an online event for copywriters who want to grow their business to the next level, or for those looking to get in the business and succeed.

This is the first-ever online summit dedicated to helping copywriters win high-caliber clients, better market their services, and earn an executive income in the world of no-hype copywriting. I’m proud to say we’ve got an all-star line-up.

Presenters include bestselling authors and experts such as Bob Bly, Peter Bowerman, Steve Slaunwhite, Michael Stelzner… and oh yeah, me.

If you’re not familiar with some of these stellar people, check out their bios here (there’s a cool audio presentation at the site, so turn up your speakers to hear the good stuff).

Here are some of the sessions:

• How to Be a Highly Paid Copywriter as a One-Person Business
• Contact to Contract: Turning Prospects Into Clients!
• Your 60-Minute Marketing Plan
• Becoming the King (or Queen) of the Hill in Your Niche

The clock is ticking on the great Google-Yahoo search union of 2008, yet new hurdles keep rising up. The latest challenge: Canada’s Department of Justice has retained a big name litigator, David Kent, to look into the deal’s underpinnings.

Market Watch confirmed with Kent, an anti-trust attorney with Toronto’s McMillan LLP, that he was retained by the DOJ but would say nothing else. As with the appointment of Sanford Litvack by the U.S. DOJ, his involvement doesn’t imply the DOJ will sue over the deal, but it does complicate matters.

Below, an incomplete tally of objections and investigations to the deal on the eve of its scheduled implementation:

• Senators Question Deal’s Benefit to Advertisers
• ANA Formally Objects
• Global Newspaper Group Pans Deal
• European Commission Inspecting Tie-Up
• World Federation of Advertisers Bashes Pact
• U.S. DOJ Hires Litigator to Look Into Deal

Although Blog was the most requested word of 2004 as per Merriam Webster Dictionary Online, there are quite a few people, for whom the word Blog is still unknown.

Blog is an online journal of events, raves, rants of the people. When blog first came, it was gladly adopted by teenagers and later by adults to write about their daily lives. Then writers and journalists entered the mix, writing about books and investigative reports on their blogs. Blogs gained prominence in 2004 US Presidential Elections. Meanwhile few innovative people invented "Business Blogs", "Corporate Blogs" and "Company Blogs". Suddenly Blogs started appearing on the Company web pages. Somewhere along the line, people discovered that search engines like Google and Yahoo were displaying Blogs, in most cases, above other search results. Impact of this discovery was huge! Corporations started writing blogs in the hope, to get more prospective customers to visit their websites.

So what exactly is a Business Blog? It is a blog about a business. It is a carefully planned journal about company products and/or services, tips and tutorials about using company’s products. At times, customer service issues are addressed using a blog. Some companies have put up white papers on blogs, while others are achieving branding of their products on the blog. On rare occasions, blogs are used to launch or test market the product.

At ContentNext’s EconMusic conference in London last week, music industry executives gathered to discuss the future of the music industry, as physical sales nosedive and P2P sharing becomes increasingly commonplace.

The Social Media session threw up the most interesting ad-related insights, with musician Billy Bragg among the panelists, alongside Last.fm’s COO Spencer Hyman and Index Ventures’ Danny Rimer.

Bragg’s gripe, predictably, was that musicians aren’t seeing enough, if any of the ad-revenue generated from sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Last.fm. “How much does MySpace make from advertising, $800 million? And how much do they pay for content?” he asked. “In order for [musicians] to make a living, the industry has to recognize that the old model doesn’t work anymore, and has to be restructured,” he continued.

Last.fm’s Hyman suggested that it was almost impossible to pay artist royalties through models such as Last.fm’s, stating, “We’re happy to share the advertising revenue we get, but what we can’t do is to give more than we’re getting in.” He added, “Internet advertising is really, really hard.”

Intriguingly, Index Ventures’ Rimer suggested that it was up to the artists themselves to be shrewder, thinking of themselves more as brands and giving their music away entirely free, monetizing it instead through endorsements and advertising.