The Physics - it's all wrong!

That's the thing about internet marketing in 2013 - it's all upside down.

Remember this:

It's easier to hit a big target

A pretty basic fact of life & one we all grew up with and yet, in this world, it's wrong.

Communicate to too broad of an audience and your message gets lost in a sea of irrelevant spam.

It's easier to hit a small target

There's the story of the Facebook engineer who created an ad for her husband's birthday; because she knew so much about him, she was able to make it appear on his page alone - enabling her to use some rather racy and "resonant" language.

Less is most definitely more

By focusing on the few instead of the many you not only improve your message, you can prioritize which communities and networks to focus on.

In today's world, a new satisfied customer with a smart phone and a social media account can do more to market your business than you can.

Of course this approach requires some fore-thought, a strategy, some tactics - hell - that almost sounds like a plan. If you'd like some help developing one for your business, reply to this email and book a session.

Written while listening to Frustration - Music to write a paper or essay to

Sorry kids, size matters!

Oh sure, you've got to know how to use whatever god gave you, but when you're dealing with human beings - bigger is often better.

The big picture

An online auction site recently increased the size of their product images on the page by 30%, and in doing so ended up pushing some of their written content below the fold (and as you probably knew, on many sites fewer than 20% of people bother to scroll down!)

So - what happened?

• 63% increase in visitors bidding
• 329% increase in registrations

Pushing the right button

See the image below - the text and product image is the same on both pages but the right hand one has that huge full width call to action button.

So what happened?

• 135% increase in clickthroughs with the bigger button
• 51% higher earnings per click with the bigger button

So what?

Of course there's no guarantee that these results can be replicated on your site with your business but they're certainly worth investigating.

Websites are not genetically pre-determined, and unlike us humans (Beverly Hills wives aside) they should be continually improved and tested against the latest data

If you'd like to give your website a spring clean and get a bigger bang from your current buck, reply to this email and book a session.

The adverb is not your friend

That's a quote from Stephen King's "On Writing: A Memoir on the Craft." He goes onto say:

"I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops."

I agree, particularly if you're writing for the web.

Stop it!

Every client I work with goes through a process of un-learning what they were taught at school: alliteration added for the sake of it, polysyllabic embellishment, using ten lovingly selected words when just three would do.

Less is more.

David Ogilvy on "How to Write"

I'll leave you with this memo that David Ogilvy sent to the entire agency in 1982, it is great advice:

"The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well.

Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.

Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

David"

If you'd like to get your marketing moving again, reply to this email and book a session.

Vine - the easiest content ever

• 6 second video


• Shot on your phone


• Share to Twitter and Facebook in seconds

• Easiest content ever.

Want to learn how to add this to your content strategy?

Reply to this email and book a session

The fishiness of the Pope situation

It’s all pretty odd isn’t it? The first Pope to resign in 600 years and the conspiracy theories are rife. Was it the gay priest network, the dodgy Vatican bank or perhaps it was just the butler that did him in!?

There’s no way the Vatican can control the information flow and as a result, regardless of what the truth actually is, people are going to end up believing what they see.

What has this got to do with you?

Just like the Pope, your reputation lives online; it is made up of reviews, comments, links and likes and manifests as the 1st page of Google.

In the same way that someone can write a glowing endorsement, a malcontent can publish absolute nonsense about you and if it makes the first page, your business is going to suffer.

Reputation management

I have a new client who has been dogged by a rather nasty individual posting crap about them. They’ve cleaned up most of it but there’s one site that refuses to play ball and it’s the 4th result for this person’s name on Google.

Needless to say the link isn’t exactly flattering and the client reckons it has cost them $100,000 in lost revenue.

Taking your name back

You can’t actually remove damaging content from the search engines but what you can do is replace it with more relevant and popular content that you produce and ultimately bury the bad stuff deep in the search results.

If you have a well established and integrated digital footprint and are pushing new content into it on a regular basis, you should be able to “own” the first page of Google for you and your business.

Start sooner rather than later

Who knows what’s going to happen in the future but it’s always safe to assume that something is going to go wrong. The earlier you set up and attend to your digital reputation, the less likely it is that you will fall victim to something like this.

If you’ve got questions or would just like to get started, reply to this email and book a session.

What are you going to do with this information?

The information

• The creation and addition of new content to your digital footprint is getting even more important if you want to be found online
• As people embrace social media, search engines are giving more and more weight to social signals (shares, number of people talking about, etc.) and “cheap” links are becoming less important
• Google is dead serious about Google+; if you’re not incorporating it into your marketing strategy then you’re missing out

Your options

Ignore it

Easiest one on the list and the route most of you will take.

Do it yourself

Totally doable, it isn’t rocket science; you can Google all of this and come up with a plan, probably.

Thing is it’ll take you a while to educate yourself; what do you ignore, what’s relevant, what information do you trust, etc, etc.

Get some help

You need a plan, a plan that you understand, that you can execute and that will actually impact your bottom line.

Just a few hours a month can get you set up with something that addresses the following:

• What are you going to do
• Where are you going to do it
• How often are you going to do it
• What infrastructure needs to be built in order to achieve it
• What tools can you use to make it easier

How long before your competition starts doing this?

Is it a priority yet?

If you’re finally ready to get rolling, reply to this email and book a session.