If you don’t have a GPS for your car you should buy one today. Imagine never printing Google maps or getting lost again. Drive around cities that you have no knowledge of with no problem. Buy.com has an insane deal of $124 after rebate.
My Inbox is also my To-Do list. If there’s a message that is part of an important project it stays in the box until it gets done. This can be a great productivity booster – many times if I am unsure about the importance of a project I leave it in the inbox. If I don’t remember what it was about by the time it hits the bottom of the box (or if the original requestor hasn’t asked about it in the 4 months it took to get to the bottom of the inbox) that’s an alert that perhaps that TPS report (re: Office Space) wasn’t that urgent, or it’s time for me to get to something I have been putting off.
I had started kicking a project around in the Summer that is moving again. As part of the first attempt to start this project I had asked some social media luminaries to give their opinions on some marketing techniques and whether they are gaining ground or dying.
As most social media consultants are full of crap and/or have an aversion to real work, I only received a response from Ron. His response has made it to the bottom of the inbox, and as he had the courtesy to respond I cannot let decent content go unused (and Ron – if this is still your opinion you could cross-post to this and skip writing on Thanksgiving day!).
I asked:
Is eMail dying?
1)email is not dying — yet. Email is something that is very popular for
people over a certain age. The younger folks don’t use email. They
text message, instant message, send bulletins, etc. I don’t know what
these folks are going to do when they need to get a job and the job
requires email. Perhaps that’s the only place that they’ll use it.
Or perhaps, they’ll be the catalyst for bringing in the email
replacement technology.
I agree, email is starting to slide from peak profitability, but will be profitable for a long time.
Is corporate blogging on the rise?
2)Blogging = Transparency — and so far, most companies still do not
have the intestinal fortitude for such openness. And it’ll get worse
before it gets better. Just wait for the first lawsuit where
Sarbanes-Oxley is invoked against a blog posting:-)
It’s interesting to me how blogging is growing from smaller companies and working it’s way up. The fewer layers of bureaucracy, the easier it is for blogs to grow. If your company has a culture of red tape, your bloggers can’t grow through the concrete sidewalk.
The growth of marketing departments as publishing companies:
3) Every Organization is a publishing Organization: always has been.
It’s just that the company’s customers became publishers too!
Always has been, but now every company has the infrastructure to spread further than only where trade magazines used to tread.
Online Video:
4)Online Video — The big news this year in Online Video is that
AppleTV, while not a perfect device, is a wormhole hole in the
Cable/Satellite space-time-continuumJ I can now get video podcasts
and YouTube videos into my livingroom. This is a major Crossing The
Chasm requirement.
My head hurts and I feel pity for Network TV execs. Between iTunes, Apple TV, Slingboxes, DVRs, etc. Things are only going to get messier. Can I have Heroes back on iTunes please?
Snack Media:
5) Online Video Attention Span. Back to the younger generation.
These kids have the attention span of a gnat. They want their
content quick and brief. What’s interesting, with YouTube, is that us
older folks may be being retrained. I no longer have the patience to
sit down and watch a 1 hour show”
Feeds:
6) RSS Feeds — Syndicate everything! RSS feeds are just starting to
show up in not traditional publishing areas like corporate websites
who syndicate the MOST OBVIOUS yet LEAST IMPACTFUL piece: their press
releases. More companies will start to experiment with RSS Feeds next
year.
I think this area needs a quantum leap – Feeds alone can’t cross the chasm. Maybe Google Reader will continue to spread. Why’s this stuff not in Office?
Mashups:
7) RSS Feeds + Mashups. The release of Yahoo Pipes, Microsoft Popfly,
and Google Mashup (plus apps from Intel and IBM) offer great
opportunities for companies that are looking to take advantage of the
growth of RSS Feeds. If companies decide to “Syndicate Everything,”
these fledgling tools may become more of a necessity to help filter
the information torrent.
Wow, I’d forgotten all about Pipes. If only there were more hours in the day.
8) SEO isn’t Dying…it’s Already dead! “Black Hat” SEO is dead. Â Never bet against the
House and never bet against Google. Â Their business is predicated on
matching search results to good content. Â Produce good content,
frequently, on a site that stays around for a while and Google will
reward you handsomely.
I think SEO is becoming more respectable as it’s evolving into copywriting.
Thanks Ron!
For the life of me I can’t remember if I first read of it in Covey’s 7 Habits
So many times in life you are working as hard as you can but eventually you start to go off track in regards to your ultimate goal. You are climbing the ladder as fast as you can, faster than the competition, only to realize the ladder is up against the wrong building. This ties into beginning with the end in mind, one of Covey’s habits – you have to start from your ultimate goal and work backwards. Otherwise you might find yourself at the top of the wrong ladder.
The ladder has many implications. If you can convince your competition to climb the wrong ladder you may not have to climb at a pace that will cost you your marriage, children, whatever.
The holiday break is a great time for a strategy check. If you have not read 7 Habits, that’s the best advice I can give you. Otherwise, stop worrying about the next rung and make sure your ladder is leaning on the right building.
You can check out the latest audio program live from Studio N. The lovely Carin vs. the Cranky old man.
I hope your weekend went well. Welcome to a short week.
It’s friday, you should really take a time out and listen to a podcast. Why don’t you check out what Christopher Penn has to say about Google Android on the latest episode of the world’s finest marketing podcast.
Seth Godin had a good post today stating that Gift Cards are for Chumps. First, I would state that the term “chump” is vastly underutilized, so I’m glad to see it. Second is what I feel is his more important point: Christmas has become a holiday about shopping, not about giving.
I’ve noticed that the purpose behind purchases made with disposable income has changed. I first reached Seth’s point with my own eyes while discussing Christmas gifts with my wife. She was not happy that I have an Amazon wish list of things I really want. She felt that there was no surprise if I got items off my wish list, and that’s when I got the bulb over my head – I said “I’m really not into being surprised, and if I got everything on that list I’d be happy – so really this is about what you want to feel about giving me a gift.” Being a smart husband I left out the logical extension of this arguement – You want to try and surprise me with a great gift I don’t know about, even at the risk of getting me something I don’t want.
The sad thing is that I also realized I do this to myself. One day after buying a DVD at Best Buy I came home and realized I was throwing it on a pile of about a dozen other DVDs I haven’t gotten around to watching yet. Again the bulb lit up – I was not buying the DVD to watch it, I was laying down money for the fantasy of me actually sitting down to have a quiet night of Jet Li goodness. DVDs are no different than lottery tickets, I’m paying for the dream not reality.
So, what’s the Marketing punchline here? One is what I think of as a sad one – the culture of selling crap that nobody REALLY needs has no end in sight. The other is that maybe some people will stand up and do something worthwhile for the holidays rather than buying more crap that will end up in the landfill by the summer.
If you are in the Boston area I highly recommend both the MATCH School and the Franciscan Hospital for Children. Now where’s that Swarovski Crystal I need to wrap for Carin…
Today I spent most of the day on a return flight from San Francisco. I flew out back on Tuesday and was working the QCon show through Friday. We then stayed at the Columbus Motor Inn (ultimate bargain) for the weekend to hang out with my brother and a guy named W. About 10 years ago I lived in Walnut Creek for about a year and I still miss that area. If not for family in the East I would gladly give up the snow here for the hills there.
Carin and I hiked up to Coit Tower, this is much better than driving up there because you get to check out some of the homes in the Historic Telegraph Hill neighborhood, which on a good day I would admit to being perhaps cooler than even Nantucket. We also enjoyed some Tea in the Japanese Garden.
In true new media fashion, I twittered about being in town and Jose shouted back
and we grabbed a beer after work on Friday. Mitch Joel was also in town but I was unable to break away to the Googleplex mid-week.
Two other random things from the weekend: I was struck by the irony that tag sales don’t have tags. I saw many neighborhood sales, but I wasn’t willing to dig through the stuff when I knew I could look it up on eBay or Craig’s List – Lesson 1: Put your Tag Sale stuff on Craig’s list instead of putting up signs around the neighborhood.
Lesson 2: I can’t stop playing Kanye West‘s Good Life (clean version so as not to disturb the neighbors and relatives).
My friend Ron sent over a question asking for clarification on this post from Google – they are doing placement targeting and CPC for placement targeting. What does this mean? Here’s a play by play to get you started.
Back in the dark ages of Google Adwords (like 2 months ago), there were two places to run your ads. You could buy words that would show your ads when people searched for them in Google. In other words – if you bought “Donuts” and somebody searched on Google for “Donuts” your ad would show up on the right side of the Google Search Engine Results Page (or SERP for the hardcore insiders).
This is grossly simplified, there are a lot of things that go into whose ad shows up and where on the page, and there’s a bidding process along with a determination of the quality (read – spamminess) of your ad.
The next step was to provide this same functionality to websites other than Google – and thus was born adsense (keep in mind I am not a Google historian, I have no idea about these timelines really, I have a tough time remembering breakfast, never mind when this stuff rolled out. For a great history of Google check out John Batelle’s “The Search
Adsense allows other websites to run the same ads that show up on the Google SERP. For example if you scroll to the bottom of this page you will see a bunch of google ads, some of them may even include “Donut” “SERP” or “Help with Google Adwords”. For having Adsense on your site Google pays you. I’ve had it running for a year and I think I’ve made 72 cents or something. I don’t care because I did it to learn, but there are people who live comfortably just doing lots of this.
Once Adsense went live, Adwords users had the opportunity to have their ads run outside of the Google site (don’t worry if you are getting confused, I’ve been running with this for about 3 years now and I still have a hard time keeping Adwords and Adsense straight).
Just to make things interesting the payment model was changed. For ads that showed up on Google SERPs the advertiser was charged each time an ad was clicked – cost per click, or CPC. For ads showing up outside the Google SERPs you would pay per impression (each time the ad appeared whether it was clicked or not). This is the model is common in the newspaper and magazine industry, and is called cost per thousand, or CPM for those of you with Latin skills ( N.B. – just to get more Latin on your ass – once in a great while you will still see MM around being used for Million, that’s a thousand thousand to your homeboy Caecilius).
Hell, where was I… You’ll notice that sales guys love CPM because if you are selling ads it gets expensive quick and it doesn’t matter how much the ads suck or how much readers ignore them. As a result there are many Marketeers that see this as wasted spending.
Originally you would only vote yes or no on sites beyond Google, this could cause problems if your ads show up on sites you don’t want them to – such as an Army recruiting ad showing up on the website for the San Francisco Gay Pride parade… etc. Eventually the functionality was added to include/exclude certain websites (URLs). I haven’t played around much deeper than that, I’m not sure how good the tools are out there to determine where you want to be.
With this latest announcement you get more granularity, you don’t just have to show up on the Daily Planet, you can choose just the Daily Planet Sports Page. They’ve also added CPC pricing to make it easier for people to test it without blowing their budget. There’s some huge opportunity here, every Pizza shop should lock down all the searches in a 5 mile radius for Pizza, same for Funeral Homes, Florists, anybody whose business is Geo targeted.
Hopefully that answer gets you on track, for more commentary on Google check out this week’s Marketing Over Coffee, and feel free to send any additional follow up questions, or request for clarification on the above.
For more information this link to the Adsense blog can then lead you to their help center and learning center, both great resources.
This weekend, after the pulse pounding Michael Bay-esque software development conference, my dear wife dragged me off to the mall for some shopping (as in – she shops, I sit around and do nothing). Luckily I had a secret weapon in my arsenal. I had received a postcard earlier in the week from American Express telling me about their new members lounge at the Natick Collection (the new X-tra snooty name for what we used to call “The Natick Mall” or worse yet, just “The Mall”).
Some direct marketing actually got through to me – go figure. The lounge is very cool. 
It reminds me of the clubs at the airport that keep out the dirty cake-eating civilians, to create an oasis of peace and quiet for the business traveller.
I was greeted at the door and my card was run through a handheld scanner. This granted me access to the inner sanctum. It’s a room about the size of the average store in the mall, brown leather seats sort of like restaurant booths, 3 drink stations with water, lemonade and one of those multi-coffee, latte, chai, hot chocolate machines.
They wrap gifts for free and have their own bathroom. Only 2 things bothered me, one was the lack of wireless service, but they do have 3 Macs connected to the web. The other was that I can’t believe that there are people who can complain about the types of coffee offered in the machine. Here’s a great new service, all kinds of free stuff and a great place to hide, and some people can still find stuff to bitch about.
Screw them, the staff here is friendly even to those dolts. My time is up, the boss called. Shopping’s done.
