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Have you ever wondered why some companies marketing is phenomenally successful for long stretches of time while others seem to burst onto the marketing scene and then quickly fade away? Many marketing companies rely on tricks and manipulative techniques while hoping a big flash splash will do the trick. Another school of thought emphasizes research-based marketing with a principled approach where ads focus on value, testimonials, wholesomeness, honesty, and persistence. In this episode of Working the Web to Win, we will compare and contrast the two schools of marketing and provide 10 principles we believe produce long term positive results.
What are Best Practices? If you ask any professional marketer, they will tell you that sticking to best practices (i.e. Marketing principles) is important. Yet many rely on the latest tricks and shortcuts used to gain position in Organic Search or exaggerated claims in their ads, saying they are just embellishing the perceived value of their product or services. Many advertisers will imply unrealistic, exaggerated or outright lies about the features and benefits of their products. This is particularly true with children's products like toys, and food. The diet industry is replete with exaggerated product claims. On the other hand, marketers who stress the importance of principled marketing generally follow a more scientific method using tried and true practices. This doesn't mean that unethical marketers don't have their own bag of tricks, because they do. They just don't care what the long-term implications of their current ad campaign are. Their only focus is to produce immediate sales and profits. The real problem for any company that tries to take shortcuts is that sooner or later, tricks and unethical techniques lead to expectations not being met and a bad reputation as an end result. In other words, taking shortcuts will eventually poison the reputation of the product or service being advertised.
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Now I am not implying that most marketers are unethical. In fact, I believe the opposite. However, sales reps need to make sales quotas and agencies need to make traffic happen or risk losing clients. This often leads to individuals and agencies taking short cuts and exaggerated claims. In a three of our previous articles called; "Marketing 101 – What you need to Know before Buying Advertising", " 10 Things Your Online Marketing Manager Doesn’t Want You to Know" and "Avoid Being Cheated by Online Advertising Companies", we discussed how to avoid being cheated by various tricks, traps, and other unethical behaviors by unscrupulous marketers. On the other side of the coin, we have several dozen articles that discuss how to use principles and a scientific approach to ethical marketing.
Each article we write and publish provides a different perspective on principled marketing. Some of them focus on methods, elements and techniques. Other explain our process for various types of marketing modalities including social media, blogging, video, and search marketing (aka SEO). The following list of articles is a small sample of the dozens of articles on our blog that focus primarily on marketing and internet advertising. Each brings a different perspective, problem and solution to light so our readers acquire a broad understanding of how to maximize the marketing efforts.
Internet Marketing Tips and Best Practices Articles
Not long ago we had a prospect come to us because his primary competitor was showing up above their organic listing when you typed in his company name. Our analysis showed the competitor was engaging in black hat tricks by producing false 5-star reviews (500 of them) which were the primary reason they were ranked higher than our prospect. We developed a plan that would take about six months that was guaranteed to get our client to the top of Organic Search. After three months, we were making progress because the client now had an additional listing on page one, but was still listed below the one competitor who was engaging in black hat tricks. At this point, our client decided that they wanted us to engage in black hat tricks to get them to jump to the top right away. We told them that while this could get him to the top, eventually his website would get de-listed. The client said that they needed to get to the top immediately, at which point we disengaged their agreement and wished them good luck since we refuse to engage in black hat tactics. Soon, both of these businesses fell off page one.
Here 10 Best Principles worth implementing
- Providing True Value - A product or service can be hyped into stardom for a little while, but this will wear off quickly. Long-term success is based on providing real benefits.
Its based on real reciprocity where payment is exchanged for a real or perceived benefit. Benefits can not only include tangibleitems but also intrinsic value as well. To have true value, a product or service must produce a positive result or reason for a customer to be thankful they bought your product or service. Sometimes the only thing missing to push your product or service into the true value arena is a compelling offer. - Focus - Success is greatly increased if you
target the audience. Having focused landing pages, ads, blogs, videos and social posts don't distract prospects and can provide easy stepping stones that lead them in the positive direction toward a purchase. Providing ads, web pages and highly diverse or eclectic web properties generally have lower success rates. 
Courtesy of Pixabay - Leverage - Engaging in marketing should include the creation of advertising elements that can be used multiple times. Better still, savvy marketers leverage elements that can be deployed in multiple venues simultaneously. For example, a blog post is used as the script for a live internet radio show that is also
video -cast on any of the social networks at the same time. These marketing assets can then be recycled by postingthem to on your web properties and the social nets. This content can also berepurposed for the creation of ezine articles,ebooklets and even printed books. - Consistency - Building credibility and an audience requires that you consistently provide high quality, useful, relevant and timely content.
Inconsistency on the other hand will kill credibility and lose an audience even if you provide high quality, useful, relevant and timely content. - Persistence - There is an old saying that goes something like; "Quitters never win and winners never quit". It is rare to get your marketing formula right the first time you try it. What's required is the staying power that includes constant monitoring of results and using the results to tweak the process. Being patient and measuring the results allows you to improve. Being impetuous and constantly changing direction provides inadequate data which
leads to failure. - Relevance -
Anytime a message is not targeted it risks being perceived as inappropriate or worse a lie. If your marketing message is relevant, it compels the person who perceives your message as relevant to explore it further. A non relevant message is dismissed immediately. This is why TV stations who run ads are suffering because viewers today can skip commercial altogether. - Timeliness - The importance of advertising at the right time of year, day of the week and hour of the day
can not be underestimated. Running Christmas ads too early or out of season is a waste of money and can even turn off prospects who perceive the ads as inappropriate.Likewise if you run ads outside of office hours, callers who respond will get frustrated and call your competitor who is available. Even running your ad on the wrong day of the week or time of day can greatly diminish its effectiveness and reach. - Renewal - Advertising comes with a specific
lifespan . Your ads pulling power will diminish over time until one day it no longer works. It is important to take into account that ad fatigueeffects all types of advertising and that you must bewilling create different advertisements to keep your audience interested. This includes changing ads, updating web pages, providing weekly blogs, videos and daily social posts. - Setting goals - Running a marketing campaign without planning and research is a formula for failure. By include planning and research, you can better focus your message, better target your audience and produce more compelling offers and ads than if you try and do this by flying by the seat of your pants.
- Being Accountable - It is irresponsible for a business to think that marketing does not have to be accountable. Some businesses run ads because they have a budget to spend, but they don't include the cost of research, testing, measuring
and producing a final analysis of the results. In essence, they are always throwing away a portion of their marketing budget every time they advertise. Being accountable is the other side of the goal-setting coin. Goals that are not followed up with analysis, are just guesses.
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That's my opinion; I look forward to reading yours.
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Hector Cisneros is COO and Director of Social Media Marketing at Working the Web to Win, an award-winning Internet marketing company based in Jacksonville, Florida. He is also co-host of the weekly Internet radio show, "Working the Web to Win" on BlogTalkRadio.com, which airs every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern. Hector is a syndicated writer and published author of “60 Seconds to Success” and the co-author along with his business partner Carl Weiss of their hit book also called “Working the Web to Win.”
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