Gumas. Marketing Smart

Imagine for a moment it’s the early 1950s and you’re the CMO (or senior-most marketing executive of the day) at Colgate-Palmolive Company.  You’re about to invest tens of thousands (millions in inflation-adjusted dollars) in the sponsorship of a radio or television program.  While you would have faced challenges in the process, the one challenge you would not have had to face was that of a Challenger Brand trying to do something similar.  Smaller, less affluent competitors could not afford to produce and broadcast such programs.  Fast-forward to the second decade of the next millennium, and that same CMO would be faced with a multitude of challenges from Challenger Brands.

Thanks to vod-casting, pod-casting, vlogs, blogs, etc., anyone with a flip video and/or handheld recorder can create, produce, direct and even star in a broadcast-quality video or audio production and deliver that message to an even broader audience for literally pennies compared to that 1950s investment.  And Challenger Brands are doing just that with startling results.  The world has shrunk even further as a result of the Internet.  Small Challenger Brand companies are making substantial inroads in ways in which they could never have even imagined just a few short years ago.  Challenger Brands are leveraging this advantage and making significant progress in absorbing marketshare from their less nimble and formerly formidable competitors.  Challenger Brands are embracing and leveraging technology as fast as it is made available.  They are using it to their full advantage to consistently lead popular culture somewhere new.  Are you leveraging technology to its fullest?  Are you a Challenger Brand?

It’s hard to believe that the “New Millennium” has been underway for 10 years. It has been a time of great change, challenge and also possibilities. So, what are the “next big things” we as marketers need to be aware of? Following are five trends and predictions that we need to think about.

1) My Internet
The Internet will continue offering users more and more options for obtaining the information, services and products they need. Websites will transform into collections of web services and web applications that are easy to export, allowing users to use all the services they need at one central location (email, online collaborative platform, Twitter, etc). For brands, the key is to give consumers the ability to find and get information, products and services when they are most relevant.

2) “Go green” and mean it
Not so long ago, implementing the green attribute into your business and communication strategies gave you a premium product or competitive advantage. Good intentions are no longer good enough. Being green will become the new price of doing business.

3) “Exclusivity” is the new gold
What is your brand doing to offer customers “exclusivity”? If you don’t know, you’d better start thinking about an answer. In 2010, it will be about offering people new ways to experience their lives, as well as sustainable, authentic products that have a story. Products that are merely expensive will be meaningless (and embarrassing) unless they are backed by substantive “specialness.”

4) Tough consumers
Consumers will be more demanding, and their expectations will only rise. Brands will have to anticipate consumer expectations and start to build from these in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Are you thinking about how your customers are living today? How are you evolving to accommodate their needs more effectively? Is your website accessible on their smart phones? Are you contactable 24/7? How will you service these customers in the way they’ve become accustomed to in other parts of their lives?

5) Consumers are talking. Get in the conversation.
The amount of discussion in the online social space will continue to increase dramatically. You will not be able to control this. But you will be expected to participate via reputation management and social-media monitoring tools. With these tools, brands will have the possibility to measure their own online activity and identify patterns between online activity and sales. “Social-media ROI” will be one of the strong online marketing terms of 2010 and beyond.

From the Gumas Family to yours, here’s wishing you a very prosperous New Year filled with great branding campaigns and increased sales!!

Having a marketing program that includes interactive strategies is critical for today’s marketers. As such, your goal should be to try to convert your marketing monologue into a marketing dialogue whenever possible. One of the most cost-effective ways to make this happen is through a blog.

But before you go off and start a blog, you and your company need to commit to keeping it up to date and relevant. And, importantly, it must reflect your overall marketing and branding strategy.

Here are ten suggestions to help you take your blog from good to great:

1. Be personal and conversational in tone.
2. Consistently deliver original and relevant content.
3. Ask questions and encourage feedback. The more you get your readers to participate, the more loyal and engaged they will be.
4. Configure your design and layout for SEO.
5. State the purpose of your blog in your header. Don’t force your readers to search to discover what your blog is about—because they won’t.
6. Don’t sell anything. The first time you do is when you begin to lose the trust of your audience.
7. Always lead with the most important “takeaway” of the post.
8. Be sure to provide links when talking about other people, companies, posts or websites.
9. Take the time to create the most compelling post titles. Great titles generate more traffic.
10. Engage your audience with interesting polls.

These are just some recommendations that will help improve your company blog. And always remember why anyone reads a company blog in the first place: to find information that they deem relevant, informational and/or valuable.

In addition to being the largest depository of videos, did you know that YouTube is now the second-largest search engine in the world?

For marketers, YouTube offers a number of opportunities to promote your business to millions of users worldwide. Because of its unique video search technology, you can easily find videos on just about any topic you need—from great vacations in Greece to how to grill the perfect hamburger, and everything in between. Just like Google search, the videos that are most relevant to the search terms show up first.

When someone searches on YouTube using a keyword that is relevant to your business, wouldn’t it be great if your company’s video showed up on the first page of the search results?  How do you optimize your videos to make this happen?

Here are some of the basic strategies we use to maximize our clients’ exposure:

1. Make sure that your keywords are part of your video title
2. Try to keep your videos less than three minutes in length
3. Optimize the description of your video with the same keyword phrases
4. Make sure you use the same keyword phrases as part of the tags
5. Always provide a link on your website to your video on YouTube, using an “anchor text” keyword phrase

In addition, when you post a video on YouTube, you’re able to track how many people have viewed it and what kind of comments it has received (positive or negative). You can post follow-up videos to keep the conversation going, and, if you post something clever enough to create a buzz, YouTube allows viewers to post your video to their blog or website, or pass it on to their friends.

YouTube is just one of the many tactics that you should be using in your integrated marketing program to maximize your brand’s exposure. If you don’t already have them, consider creating videos about your company. Topics could include a discussion of your company’s products or services, client testimonials, how-to demonstrations, community involvement, unique interviews or special awards, to name but a few.

Until next month…

Social marketing is hard to ignore as it steadily gains popularity as an effective marketing tool. According to Forrester Research, 75% of Internet users participate in some form of social media, up from 56% in 2007. Now that’s the kind of fast-track mainstream adoption you can watch from the sidelines or you can choose to get in on.

Of course, we are not suggesting you dive in headfirst but rather ease into it gradually. Remember, social marketing takes time to have a positive effect, so the seeds you plant today can take up to a full year before coming to fruition. The following are just some of the strategies we implement when activating social campaigns for our clients:

1. Find out where your target is the most active on the web—Think blogs, Facebook, Linkedin, forums, Twitter, etc. Then set up a branded identity on each.

2. Be conversational—And please don’t sell. You want to be the purveyor of useful information, someone people come to for advice.

3. Connect your social media—With simple RSS feeds you can make sure that all of your content syncs up. This makes it easier for your customers to find your content.

4. Do something viral—Remember the last interesting thing somebody sent you? It didn’t cost the originator a dime, yet it paid big dividends in terms of exposure.

5. Become an influencer—Participate in forums. Identify yourself as someone from your company and say something interesting. It may sound easy, but it requires a commitment.

6. Nominate a social media person—Make it someone’s responsibility to actively participate on and monitor the web.

When properly planned and executed, social media campaigns can be a very powerful and cost-effective part of your overall marketing strategy, especially during these times of budgetary cutbacks and uncertainty.

Speaking of the next generation, we recently offered a free White Paper on the subject entitled Web 3.0. Bring it on! In case you missed it and would like to check it out, just send an email with the subject line “White Paper” to editor@gumas.com, and we’ll send you a copy with our compliments.

Until next month…

Most everyone is aware of SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click). Hopefully your agency has developed a good SEO and PPC strategy that has increased your natural search rankings and your website traffic.

In addition to SEO and PPC, there are other traffic-generating Web 2.0 strategies that you should also be utilizing to enhance your traffic. Below is a list of additional tactics that we use to help our clients increase their website ranking and traffic:

1. Linking strategy: Make sure you have a linking strategy in place that connects you with appropriate and relevant link partners across the web.

2. Targeted directories: There are many industry- and category-specific directories out there. And many of them offer free listings. Be sure that you take advantage of as many as are appropriate to your strategy.

3. Joint ventures: Consider doing a cross-promotion with a related product or service, and set up reciprocal links on each other’s sites.

4. Submit content regularly: Submit relevant content to online newsletters and websites that target your audience. Not only do you gain notoriety as an expert; this tactic increases your search rankings on the subject.

These are just a few of the many Web 2.0 strategies you can use to increase traffic on your website. We are confident that a mix of SEO, pay-per-click, and the above strategies will deliver a noticeable improvement in your website traffic.

If you are interested in what the next generation of web marketing (Web 3.0) will look like, we invite you to check out our latest White Paper entitled Web 3.0. Bring it on! Just send an email with the subject line “White Paper” to editor@gumas.com, and we’ll send you a copy with our compliments.

Until next month…

So you want to create the perfect website, a website that says all the right things and has that information placed in the perfect spot?

A recent study tried to do just that by utilizing state-of-the-art eye-tracking technology. This study used a combination of complex hardware and data analysis to map a viewer’s eye movements across the computer screen to determine the amount of mental strain exerted at any given moment while viewing various website home pages.

The findings of this study are very revealing and should help you create a more effective home page. Remember that these findings are specific to a website’s home page and not the interior pages.

The findings:

 - A very small percentage of the subjects scrolled down to see what was being offered below the browser’s bottom border. Clearly, home pages are viewed as portals to get where the visitor wants to go. They should not be lengthy destination pages.

 - Web visitors mostly look to the upper middle section of the home page first. Putting your navigation tools there allows visitors to get where they want to go faster. Over 20% of the visitor’s attention was focused in this area.


- Clean, uncluttered sites produced higher success rates. Users didn’t have to filter through as much unnecessary information.

 - Buttons or icons with one- to three-word descriptions were used most. Wordy button labels were used least.

 So before you design your new website, or redesign your existing site, keep these findings in mind. Just like any other visual medium, you need to know the flow pattern of your viewer’s eye. Don’t make them work to get the information they need. If you need help making your website, or other marketing programs, more effective, just give us a call.

 Until next month…