A Net Gain For Revenue » Marketing

Everything is Marketing

Anet Dunne — Thu, 13 May 2010 01:38:23 +0000

According to the new book “ReWork,” everything is marketing. Every word on your website is marketing. Every time someone uses your product, it’s marketing. According to authors Jason Fried and Daven Hansson, founders of software firm 37signals.com, Marketing isn’t a department. Accounting is a department.

This book is a speed-read of reality, like “Bernbach on Advertising.” It is an energetic exhortation to develop fast, lean programs and products and to resist the temptation to complexify. If your biggest client wants more bells and whistles in the software, let your customer outgrow your product. Don’t make it more complicated to appease one customer because that customer will eventually move on and you will be left with a bloated product that lost its original charm. Small is good. Fast is good. Big companies wish they were nimble. Stay nimble.

They believe in creative solutions rather than using a bigger hammer. They don’t think the customer is always right. They quote Henry Ford, “If I had listened to my customers, I would have built a faster horse.” As for creativity, ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything. But inspiration, that moment when you can see the path clearly, is perishable. When you are on a roll, don’t stop. Just make sure you are working on something that is important.

You can download a PDF excerpt of the book at http://37signals.com/rework/ Recommended.

Post from: aNetGain.com

Everything is Marketing

Domain Name Expiration Scam

Anet Dunne — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:38:40 +0000

Don’t fall victim to the misleading Domain Name Expiration Notice that Domain Registry of America mails out.

I register and manage my own domain names, and the domain names of many of my clients, at several registrars. Domain Registry of America is not one of them. I received a misleading “Domain Name Expiration Notice” from DROA for my own domain name indicating $30 to renew for a year, TRIPLE my current rate. A quick glance at the DROA Domain Name Expiration Notice does not reveal that the domain name is not registered with them. The notice is designed to confuse non-technical people into TRANSFERRING the domain name to DROA, and to pay triple the normal rate.

Then a client called. She received a DROA Domain Name Expiration Notice for their company domain name and she was puzzled because she paid me annually for the domain name. I’m glad she manages accounts so carefully and remembers annual payments. This kind of diligence is not widespread and DROA is preying on this. DROA even highlights “Reply Requested By” in a way that looks like “Payment Due By” and the date is several months before expiration so that TRANSFER can take place before normal renewal procedures kick in!

Beware of mailings from DROA. It is easy for them to get the address of the owners of domain names. My client originally reserved the domain name through the Yellow Pages (yikes!) and it took quite a bit of work to get it back from them, but I have managed the name for years. Unfortunately, this information continues to be on a contact database and the mailings will continue. Don’t fall victim to this misleading Domain Name Expiration Notice. It is predatory .

Post from: aNetGain.com

Domain Name Expiration Scam

How To Get Blog Sponsors

Anet Dunne — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:37:41 +0000

The husband of a blogger called me. “I’m told you do advertising. Can you get sponsors for my wife’s blog?” Her do-it-yourself home decor blog has a clean and inviting style, some sponsors and some advertising. It sounded like he wanted more income from his wife’s efforts.

The advertising on the blog is very subtle. There’s two words you don’t hear together very often: subtle and advertising. It reminded me of the challenge I have with a friend who has a food website, a food blog, a cooking website, a cooking blog, videos on YouTube, DVDs for sale and a monthly newsletter. In an effort to consolidate her work so that her fans could find everything from one website, I built a spec website for her. She loved it, but she hated the catch. I wanted to put advertising on the site. By consolidating the food, cooking, recipes and how-to videos, I could create a compelling marketing strategy and attract sponsorships that would pay for the web work. I know how to get sponsorships, but she was afraid advertising would make the site look tacky. So a year has slipped by.

Advertising is Your Friend

Some people think advertising is bad the way children think vegetables are bad. But advertising can be very nutritious, as in “you need money to keep going.” I suspect that the home decor blogger (let’s call her DIYgrrl.com) feels that keeping the “organic” quality of her blog is crucial to long-term audience growth. And she’s right. So here’s how to add national sponsors while retaining the design purity and increasing revenue.

Rotation – It Makes the World Go ‘Round

Most national brands use television advertising which is sold in rotation. This is a concept that advertisers and media buyers are familiar with, but few bloggers are aware of. This panel shows six squares of sponsor ads. If DIYgrrl want to limit advertising space on her blog to this area, and to triple the number of sponsors, all she has to do it ROTATE the ads. Think of each square as a slot with three flash cards in it. One flashcard appears in the square each time the web page is loaded. Simply sell the ads “in rotation” and you can have 18 sponsors in the space of six.

As your audience increases and you increase your advertising rates, explain to your original sponsors that prices have gone up, and that you will honor the old rate if you can show the ad in rotation with new advertisers. If a long-time sponsor insists on paying for all three “flashcards,” make three separate, similar ads to create visual interest in the spot each time the page loads.

Where’s the Big Sponsorship Money?

DIYgrrl will not do paid product reviews, but she has developed a preference for some national brands and the husband has these targets in mind. Most are paint and hardware products typically marketed to men, so let’s use the hypothetical paint brand “Coatorama.” I recommended putting together a compelling presentation showing

existing articles that put the brand in a favorable light
comments from visitors grateful to learn about the brand
photos showing the brand being used in creative, innovative ways

The husband needs to persuade the Coatorama brand Product Manager that the blog is a channel to new markets — women who are unafraid of tools. The blog often shows how different Coatorama products can be used to get fabulous home decor results. The Product Manager, who works for Coatorama, is always looking for new categories of customers and ways to reach them economically. This blog would be a great way to showcase his product to a market segment (homemakers) that is a small but growing portion of total sales.

Can the Product Manger (PM) make the sponsorship deal? Maybe, but he will probably say, “I can’t sign this, all the media buys are made by our ad agency.” Husband persuades PM to set up an appointment with the Account Executive (AE) at the ad agency. AE says, “Our client Colorama likes this idea, but you have to talk to the media buyer.” Husband takes the media buyer to lunch, she signs the contract giving the appearance that it is her decision, but it is really the PM’s decision just going through the chain of command. Note: this process does not work in the other direction.

Two ways to sell sponsorships

Nearly all advertising is purchased on “efficiency” which means getting the most for your advertising dollar. On the web, it means that you reach a lot of people in your target market for a reasonable price. Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens have great websites, many more visitors, plus they throw in magazine ads to get the “efficiency” ratio that media buyers want.

DIYgrrl has a great blog and the audience is growing, but the numbers are still too small for a national advertiser to consider it in the ordinary “efficiency” calculation. Time to go to the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl Sell

You know what that means… the ad costs so much money you can’t possibly justify on “efficiency” but the client wants it regardless of cost. That’s the strategy this blog needs. Locating the Product Manager and getting the meeting takes a lot of work. Linked in and Facebook contacts may help. A Skype meeting may be easier to set, and he can make an almost-in-person pitch that allows him to demonstrate the blog while selling. He need to show the PM the enthusiastic product comments and photos. He will talk about the rate of growth and project this growth into the future so that the PM is looking at some decent audience numbers one or two years out. He needs to have some dollar figures ready, to be willing to negotiate, to have a contract ready to email, to make sure the ad is sold IN ROTATION for a year, and that the sponsorship runs until canceled.

Who can sell this?

So, if I know all this, why didn’t I take the job? Because a sponsorshp like this can be sold only by the blogger herself, or the husband. The “Super Bowl Sell” requires you to have substantial skin in the game. The PM and AE must be convinced that there is a continuing commitment to the blog and that the quality will continue for the years necessary to build the audience that they are buying on the come. They must believe the blogger and her husband can go the distance before they buy the sponsorship.

A Fine Line

There will be some discussion with the PM and the AE about the content of future articles on the blog. The husband must be charming, diplomatic, and crystal clear that Coatorama has exactly the same amount of content control as if they were advertising on The Daily Show. None. The PM and AE will ask, and he must say no. It’s part of the dance.

I hope they succeed because it is a great blog. And I hope my food friend comes to realize that advertising is a valid source of information to readers and income to writers. What do you think is the best way to get a sponsorship? Any special sponsorship tips?

Post from: aNetGain.com

How To Get Blog Sponsors

Choosing a Domain Name

Anet Dunne — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:06:40 +0000

A valued client called me on his cell from his car. His friend was going out on his own after years in high-tech, would I help? My client could not remember the domain name exactly, so I typed in several guesses and described the results as my client wove through Los Angeles traffic. No luck, we couldn’t find the site. I waited for the call from his friend “Phillipe.”

Philippe had been advertising on Google for 10 days when he called. He had nearly 50 clicks, but had sold nothing. It took me several tries to find his site because the domain name is not spelled the way it sounds. He did not know why visitors were abandoning his site, or where in the process they clicked away. I explained Google analytics to him and he grabbed the code and sent it to his e-commerce website developer. The analytics were running the next day, and will help him pinpoint where his visitors are bailing out.

Philippe is a very bright guy who moves with the speed of an entrepreneur, but he skipped over some important marketing foundation work. His new company is selling brand-name products to consumers. He is in competition with Dell, Apple and Best Buy.

You only have four lines to make your pitch on Google: a headline, 2 lines of text, and your company name. Don’t waste 25% of your advertising real estate on a meaningless domain name.

Well, it’s not meaningless to Philippe, it’s his son’s nickname. It reminds Philippe why he is working so hard and taking such a big risk. But it does not tell shoppers what he sells. Your domain name DOES NOT HAVE TO MATCH your company name. It would have been wiser to name his company Sonny, Inc. and use Electronics-Cheap.com on his website and in his advertising.

In 1960, the word McDonald’s did not mean “burgers.” McDonald’s spent millions getting people to associate that name with burgers. How much money did Burger King spend getting people to associate their name with burgers? Zero. Your domain name is a crucial part of your advertising message.

You can also advertise on more than one domain name. For example, Gould Stainless Products sells manways to wine tank fabricators. It’s their big moneymaker in California. They advertise their stainless valves over the name GouldStainless.com, but they advertise their manways over the domain name TankDoors.com, which I arranged for them. Much more effective for that line of products.

Make the first word the most important word. Tank-repairs.com is stronger than AcmeMetalFabricating.com. Fancy words don’t make good domain names.

Find the shortest, most memorable domain name you can. Make sure it is easy to spell when people hear it on the phone. No silent letters like Schultz.com, Shultz.com, Schulz.com, Shults.com.

I strongly recommend getting a domain name BEFORE starting the website. Flicker.com would have been MUCH better than flickr.com. People don’t remember .net and .org very well, so don’t make them your first choice.

Hyphens work well in Google advertising, but not for e-mail addresses. Electronics-cheap.com is a great name to use in your advertising, but the website and e-mail address should be the company name. As long as the advertising isn’t deceptive, this can work in Google advertising.

I like to lock up similar domain names so they they don’t fall into the hands of competitors. For example, I reserved GardenWeaver.com, GardenWeaverDesign.com, and garden-weaver.com. You know which one I used for the website and e-mail, but all three names are valuable. Get McDonalds, MacDonalds, McDonald (singular) and MacDonald. Did you know that domain names are not case sensitive? I capitalize them so they are easy to read and understand.

Where do you search? I don’t use GoDaddy to search for available domain names because they seem to disappear the following day. Try DomainBank.net, DomJax or AJAXwhois You don’t have to register the domain name where your shop for it.

Happy hunting. Call me if you need some ideas.

Post from: aNetGain.com

Choosing a Domain Name

MySpace, “Forget Paris!”

Anet Dunne — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:05:47 +0000

MySpace, which Rupert Murdock’s News Corp acquired for $580 million in 2005, has been eclipsed by Facebook, particularly overseas. In May, MySpace had 125 million users ages 15 and older, nearly half of them in the United States, according to ComScore, an online audience measurement service. Facebook had 316 million users, nearly four-fifths of them outside the United States. Over the past year, Facebook’s user numbers have grown by 155 percent, according to ComScore, while MySpace’s ranks have grown by only 9 percent. As a result, MySpace said it intended to cut 300 out of 450 jobs outside the United States. The June 23 announcement followed recent news of plans to cut about 400 jobs in the United States, about 30 percent of the total there.

Despite their popularity, social networks have been slow to attract paid advertising — in part, analysts say, because marketers can use these services more effectively by getting users themselves to spread the word about a music band or a brand. This is why I’m posting this in “Marketing” rather than “Advertising.” The most effective use of Facebook and MySpace pages seems to be viral marketing, not demographically-targeted advertising.

Post from: aNetGain.com

MySpace, “Forget Paris!”

Microsoft has another “bright idea!”

Anet Dunne — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:58:32 +0000

Like a lightbulb over your head, Bing is Microsoft’s new idea for search. With only 8.2% of searches in the United States, according to comScore, Microsoft plans to spend more than $100 Million to attract new users to Bing, their latest search engine effort.

According to the New York Times, Bing will present detailed results in travel, health, shopping and local, plus it offers cashback for online buying through it’s Facebook page.

The most noticeable new feature in Bing is what Microsoft executives call a table of contents, a navigation rail on the left that allows users to refine their searches and that changes with each query. Check out www.Bing.com and let me know if you like what you see.

Post from: aNetGain.com

Microsoft has another “bright idea!”

Appointment-Setting Scam Unmasked

Anet Dunne — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:04:01 +0000

Tanya called from Las Vegas about a month ago. ”Do you make websites?” she asked sweetly. “How about branding, print, collateral?” Tanya admitted that she was appointment setting for her “boss,” Bob Taylor at TSSsales.com. Bob never kept the appointment that Tanya set, and a month later I got a call from Steve Long in Las Vegas with the exact same opening question, “Do you make websites?”

Hmmm, how many other similarities? Steve was from TSFsales.com in Las Vegas and, (surprise!) Tanya and Robert Taylor used to work at Steve’s company. Robert Taylor was not only Tanya’s “boss,” he is her husband and they recently left the company to “work at a casino.”

Did Tanya and her husband Robert (Bob) Taylor take the prospect list and set up TSSsales.com using the same pitch? Tanya said TSS stands for “Technical Sales Solutions” and it had a rudimentary website. Steve Long’s company acronym stands for The Scroggins Family and has been in business for Las Vegas for several years. They verify that all their clients can pay their bills because they carefully review each companies financial information.

How safe is your financial information with a Las Vegas company that churns employees? How honest are the employees who review your financial information? Have you been cheated with an appointment-setting scam? If so, please leave a comment.

Post from: aNetGain.com

Appointment-Setting Scam Unmasked

Most Retirees On-Line

Anet Dunne — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:34:22 +0000

Are your customers active retirees or wealthy people with time and money to spend? Most people 60-64 are online now, and 60-plus is the fastest growing group of Internet users. According to the Pew Report released Jan. 28, 2009, the biggest increase in Internet use since 2005 was in the 70 -to-75 year old age group. Call me to find out how to reach this group with advertising for travel, health and wellness.

While young people are more likely to bank online and shop online, their parent make travel arrangements online and their grandparents widely use e-mail. While there may have been resistance in 2005, receiving photos through e-mail is much easier today and is widely adopted among users 70-plus. We can help you reach this valuable consumer segment. Call us today! 707-575-3446

Post from: aNetGain.com

Most Retirees On-Line

Online Sales Surged 15% on Cyber Monday

Anet Dunne — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:55:22 +0000

Cyber Monday is the big e-commerce shopping day on the Monday following Thanksgiving. Those who have scoffed in the past were startled at the comScore report that e-commerce spending on Cyber Monday was $845 million, up 15% from a year ago. According to the New York Times, Cyber Monday started as a marketing ploy by online retailers as a response to bricks-and-mortar retailers’ Black Friday specials. It has been a bellwether for the performance of the online holiday shopping season. Its year-over-year growth rate typically falls within a few percentage points of the final holiday season growth rate, according to comScore. Last year, sales on Cyber Monday increased 21 percent from the year before, and overall holiday sales increased 19 percent.

Traffic was so vigorous that the the sites of J. Crew and the Gap crashed for a period of time on Monday, along with Victoria’s Secret and Williams-Sonoma. A site run by Shop.org that links to e-commerce deals, CyberMonday.com, had 2 million unique visitors on Monday, up from 1.5 million last year.

Post from: aNetGain.com

Online Sales Surged 15% on Cyber Monday

Web 2.0 – Storytelling is a Team Sport

Anet Dunne — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:57:28 +0000

Renny Gleeson, the Global Director of Digital Strategies at Wieden + Kennedy, said in a recent edition of Creativity Magazine, “Marketing and brand communications need storytellers and their stories. We inform, educate and create cultures based on stories. We define ourselves through their telling and their interpretations. A story is realized through the act of storytelling. Of engagement with an audience. A great story, unread, isn’t. The interactive medium by its nature invites people into the process — suggesting, collaborating, amplifying, advocating and diffusing. And there will always be good and bad storytellers. The best of them move us, inspire us, change us, drive social change, and sometimes — yes, sometimes — sell us something. In advertising, when we are at our best, we build a message around a fundamental human truth, we engage the heart, and we tell compelling stories that create meaning for brands awash in a rising quagmire of white noise. And yes, we sell stuff.”

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Web 2.0 – Storytelling is a Team Sport