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The day didn’t grow darker, exactly. But the light shifted in a way that was almost imperceptible, the day that Mediocrity rode into town. It rode a limping horse with a second-hand saddle on which it balanced precariously. Behind it rode its army: Whining, Ambivalence, and Lame Excuses.

Taking a deep swig from its flask of Lethargy, Mediocre started to spit then decided it didn’t have the energy. “Well, well, what do we have here?” Mediocre said, with a mocking eye. “If it isn’t Creativity and it’s earnest band of overachievers.”

He took in our shiny uniforms, our gleaming stable, and our stamping horses. “How’s burning the midnight oil going? Those brilliant notions still waking you up in the middle of the night….” he drawled. He jumped as Critical Thinking threw a knife that landed right in the center of a nearby oak tree. “We’re not going to mince words Mediocrity,” said Critical Thinking. “ We aren’t going to bribe and flatter. We are going to focus all our energy on the most effective way to run you out of town.”

“What are we waiting for?” cried Good Ideas, hopping from foot to foot. “I have ten scalable solutions in mind right now. He’ll be nothing but a case study by the time I’m done!”

Visionary just closed its eyes and hummed.

Lame Excuses lurched forward. “It’s not our fault. The muse just hasn’t been in,” it shrieked. “We can’t create on demand.”

“There just hasn’t been time,” Whining trilled. “No one’s even explained it right.” Ambivalence started to say something, but settled for a smirk.

“We are here to run you out of town Mediocrity,” Creativity said firmly. “Hop on the raft of Malaise and go back to the lukewarm land of Status Quo where you belong. You have no place on the Professional High Road. I’m surprised you were able to climb this far anyway.”

“Oh, we may have cut a few shortcuts here and there,” said Mediocrity, smiling sweetly. “But we still got here, didn’t we, just the same as you.”

Just then, the Results Police rode in, with Metrics, Testimonials and Revenue behind him. “You aren’t the same as Creativity, Mediocre,” the Sheriff said sternly. “And we can prove it. Me and my boys have been watching you for a long time. You may have gotten lucky for a while, sped through a few assignments, took the easy way when no one was looking, cheated your clients out of decent output. We are charging you with jaywalking across the street of Hard Work, shoplifting fancy buzzwords to avoid genuine thought and prostituting the integrity of your profession. It was only a matter of time before someone caught onto your Mediocrity. Let’s go.”

Creativity and its army turned and left, each blazing its individual trail home.

The title of this post is Search Engine Marketing Does Not Affect Your Business Model. If I went into a search marketing conference and proclaimed that Search Engine Marketing Does Not Affect Your Business Model I imagine that the conference organizers, the speakers and quite a few attendees would want to tar and feather me then run me out of town on a rail. I don’t care and I’ll say it again, Search Engine Marketing Does Not Affect Your Business Model.

Search Engine Marketing Should Emulate Your Business Model.

What do I mean by Search Engine Marketing Should Emulate Your Business Model? Chances are good that your website and your larger Internet presence (You do have a larger Internet presence, don’t you?) does not match your company’s business model.

Most business websites are designed for one audience, the sales & conversion audience. These are your company’s prospects, leads and current clients. The website content for this audience typically consists of extended brochure content for products and services, basic customer support such as manuals and some type of a Q&A process, plus information about your company. This focus is so pervasive that, as an SEO Analyst, when I recommend expanding website content the immediate reaction is to add additional sales pages.

Does this reflect accurately how your company operates in the physical world?

• Does your sales staff only fill-out order forms or do they spend time networking and building relationships.
• Do they limit their networking to prospects and leads or do they communicate with others as a part of their search for those leads?
• Does your company engage in increasing brand recognition and building awareness of your company?
• Do employees attend industry conferences, either for your own business or the businesses of your prospects and your prospects’ clients?
• Do people in your company speak at events or engage in other activities that demonstrate industry leadership?
• Does your firm lobby lawmakers or work to influence regulations and standards?
• Is your business engaged in community development and charitable causes?

Okay, that’s enough, almost. Let me ask you two more questions.

• Would your company be successful if it did not do all or many of the things in my list of questions?
• How many of these activities does your business engage in on the Internet?

I understand it is rather difficult to attend a conference or trade show online. The point is that your business is about more than sales.

• It relies on building your brand or company reputation so people will know about your company and think of it favorably when they need your product or service.
• It relies on networking and building relationships throughout your industry and your clients’ industries.
• It relies on being an industry leader and an active business citizen.

Marketing a business online is no different than marketing a business offline. It requires enthusiastic interactive communication on multiple fronts.

How does this affect search engine marketing?

Search engine algorithms are designed to identify relevance, trust and authority. Trust and authority are measured using signals from other websites like links to your website. When you engage vigorously in building conversations on the Internet, on and off of your website, you dramatically increase the opportunities for search engines to raise the level of trust and authority that they assign to your company’s website. That will increase your rankings across a variety of relevant search queries and, in turn, generate leads and sales.

That is why I say Search Engine Marketing Does Not Affect Your Business Model. I say it because Search Engine Marketing Should Emulate Your Business Model.

Sometimes a rose is just a rose.* In other words, a landing page does not have to be a ship, a sandpiper, or a head of arugula in order for your audience to listen to you-really!

In fact, there are many other lonely literary devices out there that just might give your internet marketing an unexpected boost. Witness A List Apart’s arresting use of allegory in this article on Findability. I never met a metaphor that made me want to kneel down and Eskimo kiss an internet marketing discipline the way this article did. Similarly, at Christmas this year, I wrote an ad in rhyming couplets that went on to be a best-seller for one of our clients. And yet another time, we did an online mad libs campaign for a client, one of our most successful social marketing endeavors to date. What will we think of next?

Better yet, why don’t you think of it first? Next time you are writing marketing copy, don’t be muzzled by the metaphor. Try foreshadowing, irony (shown here with a healthy side of hyperbole), sonnets, epistolary, etc. Why? Because metaphors are going the way of alliteration when it comes to contrived “cleverness,” and because internet marketing could use some good old-fashioned onomatopoeia.

At the very least, if you must use metaphor, write what you have to say first and then apply the metaphor afterwards. If you do it the other way, you are destined to dilute your point.

Even better, challenge yourself to use of the above literary devices this week, because using metaphors to be clever is like eating Thai food for culture. It’s a little better than nothing, but barely (and for the record, that was an analogy, not a metaphor.)

*According to closet internet marketing genius Aretha Franklin.

Hello blog readers. My name is Stacy Conner. I’m a Senior Marketer here at Portent Interactive and my focus is on developing marketing strategies for our clients. Marketing strategy is a lot of fun! I thought it might be helpful to start a beginning level or 101 series on general marketing principals and Internet marketing. Let me know what you think!

Goals – Where Do I Start?

The first step in starting a new marketing campaign, a new marketing job, or a new marketing relationship with an Agency, is understanding and evaluating your goals.

First off, are goals preset for you?

If so, that doesn’t mean you stop there and blindly try to accomplish them.  Many times goals are set by people who don’t have the understanding of the true measurable of a position or department.  If not, then evaluating the company goals and working backwards from there to the parts you can impact is a good first step.

After initial understanding of the goals,

is determining if the goals impact or are in alignment with the company’s main goal. For example, if the company’s main goal is increasing profits at current expense levels, gathering new sources of leads may not be the best goal for marketing. A better goal might be evaluating and increasing the quality of current leads. Profitability might be increased by a decline in number of leads and an increase in the quality of leads. Different goals, but more aligned with company’s direction.

Do they need to be challenged?

Sometimes even the company goals need to be challenged by the major stakeholder of the project or department. Examples here could be a company that measures sales, versus profits. Completely different decisions could be made based on profits, versus sales. A growing organization may push for sales, trying to gain market share. An established or commodity market makes measuring profitability a better move. Make sure you are measuring the right one.

Measurability and Impact?

An example here is that a company may be measuring sales from leads generated by the marketing department, but the marketing department may only have control over the incoming leads. If marketing passes those leads to sales. What is the process to measure quality of leads and, for that matter, quality of the sales efforts with the leads? Benchmarking your own statistics or those in the same industry is a good place to start. Resources can be Marketing Sherpa for Internet Statistics, Google Analytics Benchmarking and many Industry associations.

Responsibilities?

Are you in control of all or as many as you can handle of the variables that can impact your goal?  If you are told to advertise here, by mucky mucks……but it’s not the best buy or the right target market, it makes being held accountable unfair and needs to be addressed. The other side of this coin is that when you do make a decision like this, the results are more effectively on your shoulders.

You have nothing to start with?

Sometimes, you are starting at the beginning of a process and may not have any information to begin with to create improvement goals. Then you need to evaluate what will make the most difference to the organization in terms of company goals. This could be profit, signups, awareness or anything else, create a one page dashboard to track your key performance indicators. And reevaluate often.  Make sure the actions you are taking are impacting the companies overall goals and shift when necessary.

Next time I'll explore Evaluating Resources

Yes, Gen Y is young, driven, spoiled, busy. But a slew of recent advertisements neglect to notice that we are also well-educated, scarily mature, and shrewd as hell. In other words, we know when we’re being talked down to. And now we are talking back with a message for you: When it comes to banking and savings accounts (and any other important issue), Gen Y doesn’t just want to have fun. When it comes to serious issues, we want to be treated seriously, shown the value, and supplied with all the facts. So please, lay off the bright colors and one word ads. We’re young adults, yes, but we’re not infants.

Yes, Gen Y may be more free-spirited than older generations, but that cavalier attitude applies to things like exposed bra straps, not our hard-earned post-collegiate cash flow. By pandering to offensive stereotypes, these institutions ignore their very real selling points (Washington Mutual: free checking, ING Direct: best interest rates) in favor of bubblegum-colored advertisements featuring bonehead exclamations. Who thought of this? Hopefully marketers will soon realize if we’re old enough to have banking accounts, we’re old enough to care about things like ATM fees, interest rates and having our hard-earned money safeguarded with responsibility and respect. In conclusion, whoever said orange was the new Gen Y bank ad color was seriously disturbed! For examples of fierce creative done correctly, why not check out the Portentfolio?

With the ‘R’ word hovering, the volatile internet marketing industry is bound to suffer right? Not so fast. One odds-defying industry offers inspiration to those of us in the ever-fragile web biz. Read on for survival tips culled from their mysteriously hardy shelves...

Start With an Untapped Community

If you cater to a targeted community, especially one that had no other place to go before you came along, you will be able to withstand the impact of more generic giants. Such is the case with Barbara Bailey, who started Bailey/Coy books in Seattle in 1986. The first bookstore to target gay/lesbian literature, she’s sort of like the Perez Hilton of the printed word. Bailey knew she needed an edge to get her indie bookstore off the ground, and by paying attention to her community, the pride-filled mecca of Capitol Hill, she has preserved a following of people who remember when Bailey/Coy was the only place to shop for such GLTB books. Lesson: target a unique audience. Mistresses, Taxodermists, Hare Krishnas all need web love too.

Add a Practical Angle That Doesn’t Clash with Your Principles

It is possible to capitalize on a lofty dream in a lucrative way.The key is to look at what you are really trying to accomplish. For Pat and Ed Rutledge of the charming A Book of All Seasons in the snow town of Leavenworth, the goal was promoting literacy, but also providing a cozy place full of personality. By opening up a bed and breakfast upstairs, they were able to support their bookstore dream even when the sales weren’t there. As a result, they’ve been able to stay in business since 1992. Try and apply the same ingenious thinking to your website. When websites with personality pay off, everyone wins.

Have A Special of the Day

It’s not just for soup anymore! Weekly, monthly and daily features are a great way to capture and build an internet audience. From A List Apart’s Fresh every Friday post to Manolo for the Bride’s Friday Caption Contest, savvy websites know readers love knowing when to tune in for their favorite web fare.This is exactly what Chris O’Hara capitalized on at her Spokane bookstore “Auntie’s Bookstore” where she hosts a daily activity from reading, knitting, and live music since 1985.

Target a Certain Niche

This is similar to targeting a unique community, with a slightly different lens. What it means is that rather than focusing on a unique demographic, you target a unique subject matter that might actually draw a fairly diverse group of people. For example, our blog Bridezilla.com is about having a thinking-woman’s wedding, so it appeals to people interested in feminism, fashion, wedding planning and blogs in general. The same can be seen from Peter Miller Architecture and Design Books, an independent bookstore that carries only architectural, design and graphic titles. Though it’s a specific focus, these books would appeal to anyone from architects, art lovers, interior designers, graphic designers or people who just simply want to support indie bookstores.

Remember It’s Still a Business

You may not want to be cutthroat and corporate, but maintaining your professional polish is still the make-or-break factor for independent businesses. There’s a fine line between independent and the wedding singer lady who paid Adam Sandler for singing lessons in meatballs. Don’t let your “indie” attitude overtake your need for good customer service. I once walked into a Twice Sold Tales and asked for a title. The surly store clerk said to me “This isn’t Burger King.” Needless to say, that bookstore is still struggling and Burger King, is well, King. This is not the way it should be, and the ability for independent businesses to still maintain their professional standards is what’s going to change it. Peter Miller, a Harvard Alum makes this point brilliantly when he says “We try not to be floppy, we try not to be sloppy, and we try to be extraordinarily up to speed.” Staying up to date on your industry, presenting yourself in a sharp and genuine way, and not making careless mistakes is crucial advice for both indie bookstores and website start-ups.

Make Passion Your Profit

The truth is, a lot of these bookstores aren’t in the black every year. But every single one of them has stayed in business for ten plus years. The same can be said for many internet marketing companies. That rocks! The world needs more quaint, quirky creative spaces, from bookstores to crafty blogs, and I think it’s amazing when this big-picture principle sustains people through financial rough patches. So choose Etsy.com over Overstock, choose Abebooks over Amazon, and choose my quirky, creative internet marketing firm Portent Interactive (it’s not a plug unless it’s shameless) over big name internet marketing firms who specialize in one-flash-intro-fits-all. When independent businesses flourish, everyone benefits-and the world becomes more interesting.

Some Information Taken From: Washington CEO April 2008 Edition

Portent recently won an award for something I initially thought sounded very counter-intuitive, maybe even a little shady. But it turned out to be one of our most successful email opt-in campaigns to date. Below are the marketing insights I believe made all the difference.

The idea was to add an email subscription page between the free printables offer and the actual free printables download on a client’s site. My fear was, once people got in the free printables mindset, they would not appreciate being derailed by a page popping up and asking for their email address to receive a newsletter. But as it turned out, people actually did like it. A lot.

By adding this new sign-up page, Portent was able to increase this client’s subscriber list by 6,626 subscribers, an average of 828 per month since the campaign started last May.

Obviously adding just any page isn’t going to guarantee this sort of success, and including unnecessary steps or diversions can often result in high bail-out rates. That said, there are a few ways to make the bait-and-sweetly suggest marketing technique work for you:

1. Meets the same overall marketing objective. People may be clicking through the site to download the free printable, but that is not their overall goal. Their goal is to learn more about the product with minimal commitment. While the newsletter and the download printable differ in content, they both move the customer towards this overall goal. For this reason, offering a newsletter sign-up before the free download page isn’t spammy. It’s helpful! Case in point: The email subscription page is the equivalent of the waitress giving you the specials of the day at a restaurant. While it does momentarily deter you from your initial goal of opening the menu and ordering, it can propel you to your real goal (eating) in an appealing way you might not have thought of. So, when deciding whether to bait-and-sweetly-suggest, figure out your customer’s overall goal and make sure whatever ad or offer you include caters to that goal.
2. Makes eyes happy. When creating this page, we added one of our prettiest, nicest email newsletters to the page to reassure viewers that they wouldn’t be on the receiving end of some red-bulleted, free free free, frightening missive once they signed on the subscriber line. An attractive visual example comes across as genuine and enticing. Most importantly, it negates any suspicion that accompanies being diverted from one’s initial online objective.
3. Make it a choice, not a condition. A page like this is about providing an option, not holding a customer hostage until you have all their personal details. Forcing people to register and receive your emails for life in exchange for a one-time printable is definitely below-the-belt,and will ensure many customers bail from your site-especially if the initial ad they clicked through makes no mention of this registration. By making it totally clear that they can click right past this option and go to the printables, customers view this email page sign-up as a thoughtful offer, not a nose-wrinkling prerequisite.

What is your B2B Internet marketing strategy?

For most companies the answer is a website with:

• Descriptions of products or services, contact forms and perhaps a shopping cart
• Additional sales information in the form of case studies, industry lists or another organizational breakdown.
• A description of the company, press releases and job announcements.

This strategy dates to the early days on the Web, back when the first companies were establishing an online presence. And while people have become more knowledgeable and sophisticated in how they use the Internet to make purchasing decisions, most Internet B2B marketing strategies have not evolved beyond trying to create a better landing page.

Today is pi Day, in case you didn’t know. Geeks like us assigned 3/14 as ‘pi day’ because, well, it’s 3.14 and that’s funny. Chuckle chuckle snort.

pi Day is Great. But Why Not e Day?

E is 2.71828 (with lots more numbers after that).

It’s crucial for financial calculations around compound interest, probability, asymptotics and a whole range of other mathematical mind-benders that give me a headache.

Google stated their intent to raise $2,718,281,828 when they filed for their IPO. How geeky is that? Matt, did you have anything to do with the choice of target amount?

We also use e in a lot of Portent’s own tools: Our keyword research tools as well as our keyword quality measurement calculator, to name two.

So let’s give pi a rest. Next year, 2/7 is e Constant Day!

Google has introduced a nifty new benchmarking report:

With it, you can see how you measure up against others in your industry. This kind of data is pure gold.

There’s one catch: You have to agree to share your data with Google, so that they can establish the benchmarks.

I strongly, strongly suggest that you do so. Here’s why:

1. The tradeoff: Google gets some basic analytics data that they could have anyway. You get to compare yourself to the rest of your industry. It’s a no-brainer.
2. The data: While you’re giving Google data like pageviews and visits, and they could potentially share this data with your competitors, guess what? Competitors can already get this kind of information through Compete.com (for free) or Hitwise (for a lot of money).
3. It’s anonymous: Your competitors won’t be able to look up “page views for Portent Interactive”. They’ll only see aggregate data for the entire industry. So, for example, I’ll be able to see how Portent Interactive compares to similar internet marketing agencies.

While the jury’s still out on how effective this new benchmarking tool will be, the potential upside is huge: Accurate, free, anonymous information showing how you’re doing compared to the rest of your industry.

Share your data. Everyone will gain for it.

If you want to learn more about Google Analytics Benchmarking and data sharing, visit the FAQ Google’s posted: Click here.

To read Google’s announcement about the new feature, click here.