Keyword Research

I have just read a very good article on keyword research:
http://rapidrollout.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/how-to-do-keyword-research/#more-39

Not just good advice for those setting up businesses on the web but for those setting up (or trying to improve) any type of business to check what are the keywords on competitive and related sites and which ones are most popular. This will help you work out what is important to your audience (unless you have a particular offline audience who are likely to have different interests and concerns, in which case I suggest some telephone research).

But for most people I would recommend reading this.

2009 - it must be time for marketing

It is all too easy to be gloomy with all the stories of recession, redundancies, cuts in budget, firm closing or downsizing and no-one knowing how bad it will get. Well, of course no-one knows how bad it will get, just like no-one knows how long boom times last but you can be pretty sure that both booms and busts come and go, that it can be painful but that most people survive.

So how do you survive?

One good way is to concentrate on the basics of marketing. Marketing budget been cut? Fine, then start from scratch, not with the things that somehow became standard over the good times, even if you cannot be sure of their impact, but with spending more time on the essentials.

Firstly, customer communication - improve it. It does not cost a lot and if you can no longer afford some of the more expensive campaigns, you have more time to talk to them more often, to LISTEN and analyse their answers. Respond to their complaints more quickly and thoroughly, as well as to their ideas. Do more case studies and let all the other customers, as well as prospects, know about the real benefits. Understand the issues they have in the current climate and work out how your solutions can be tweaked to help them.

Secondly, exploit the cheapest forms of prospection. At this time, everyone is forced to re-examine what they do and who supplies them. So go back to ex-customers, previous prospects and see if now is not a good time to get them to think about you and your solutions. Don't forget to ask all your customers who they know who might benefit from your solutions.

As a final point, do not panic and forget the brand attributes that have made you successful. If you focus on quality, do not let it slip in order to cut prices. Instead work and rework all your research, materials, scripts, promotions to make the quality message more and more appealing.

The firms that market well in times of recession are those that will really thrive when conditions become easier.

Combining brands

It is amazing how different brands can combine their appeal to bring compelling offers to customers. The latest example I have seen is Lego Batman game on the iPhone http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Venturebeat/~3/swne3jAFI2g/.

Lego, Batman and iPhone - now there is a combination of admired, attractive brands. But it does make me wonder which customer segment is going to be served by the game they are all involved in. Lego and Batman will appeal primarily to young children up to, maybe 14 years old. But how many of these will also own or have access to an iPhone?

Can combining brands help each of them extend the reach of their core market? Maybe, though in this case, I have my doubts

The End of Exit

I have worked with private equity, venture capital and angels for the last 8 yrs and also helped and advised firms negotiating for investment from them. During this time, one of the most important questions (if not the most important one) from investors has been “What is the exit strategy”.

This forced companies requiring investment to identify major players in their industry who might want to buy them up in a few years if they grew as projected. Since far too often companies do not look at how their industry is structured, to understand who holds the power and what they might do to hinder or help start ups, this analysis was worthwhile in itself. Whether or not it then led to sensible forecasts of who might buy whom in three to five years ahead was another matter.

But the exit question also often led to wild guesses about the possibilities of floats as well as takeovers, given that the companies had no real understanding of the ups and downs of the stock market and of the likelihood that the appetite for mergers or flotations would be strong a few years in the future. Of course, in times of boom and bubble, the forecast was for a dramatic sale or entry on the stock market after only a short time, when conditions were assumed to be the same.

Now that recession is biting and stock markets have plunged, predicting exits looks even more difficult and hard to justify. (Though, ironically, it is probably now that we should be confident that in a few years time, the market will be recovering and exits will be possible. So should we look to change the exit question?

Why not justify an investment based on the profits made and the free cash flow generated? If investors take the risk of investing, for example, £1M for 30% of a company that will grow to £20M sales and £2M profits in 3-5 years with reasonable growth thereafter, they could justify their investment by 15%-20% return on capital plus the ability to sell a profitable company to free up their money but only when the market is favourable again.

The sticking point will be with investors losing their focus on getting back their capital with a good return after only a few years. Venture capitalists depend on a reasonably quick turnaround to be able to return money to their own investors.

But maybe this is the time to focus on longer term investments in the whole market. After all, investing in a company that makes good profits and pays good dividends is investing in a company that can be sold at a good valuation at some stage – it is just a question of avoiding the fixation with when the return will be.

Moreover, the very fact of paying less attention to when the return will come and more to growing profitable businesses actually makes it more likely that an exit opportunity will crop up sooner.

Making Effective Company Ambassadors

Everyone who works for a company is an ambassador for that company. But whether they are a good or bad ambassador depends on them and how you treat them. Treatment of employees is a huge area that I am not going to cover (and, although I have strong views, there are many more qualified people if you are looking for sound advice).

But there is one thing you can do make yourself and others into better ambassadors, and that is to ensure that you have clear and consistent messages about what the company does. You may say "Well, that is obvious. Everyone knows we are estate agents ... or website designers ... or garden ornament producers". But a simple label is just the starting point. What can you say that makes you stand out from the competition and be memorable?

You should be able to describe your company in two or three sentences in a way that is free of jargon (the person you are talking to may know nothing of your industry), clear and simple to remember and describes how you help your customers ("we have thirty years experience of specialising in ... ", "we are the only local firm to offer worldwide distribution...", "our products are so reliable they have lifetime guarantees..."). Find something that makes your firm stand out.

If the person or people you are talking to are interested in what you say, make sure you have a story or example to back it up. Stories are memorable.

Now are you confident that everyone who works in the company has this same message? Well, test it out by asking them. They do not need to use exactly the same words, but the key points must be the same.

Why is all this important? Because any planned or even chance meeting that you or any of your colleagues have, may turn out to be with someone who might be a customer, or a supplier or someone with the skills you need in your business - or just someone who may remember what you said and pass it on to someone else.

Making everyone into ambassadors is one of the cheapest forms of marketing. You may think it will reach too few people to be important, but think of all the interactions that you and others have each day. Think too of the customers, prospects, suppliers and others who talk to different people in your company and of ensuring that they get the right impression from everyone.

"Viral marketing" is a modern buzzphrase more associated with use of web marketing techniques. But consistent, enthusiastic mentions of your company by word of mouth can themselves be "viral".

First mover advantage

First mover advantage is exactly that -an advantage that needs to be exploited, not a right to succeed. It may well not be enough to repeat the same tactics that gave you the advantage, since the competition may be anticipating that or the market may now take that for granted and look for something else. You have to keep on innovating.

In a game of tennis, if you reach advantage, the game is yours to win. But if you play the next point in a predictable way, your opponent may well anticipate you and find the shots to claw back your advantage.

Companies that are first to market can go on to dominate - look at eBay in online auctions - but they have to continue to innovate and anticipate the next trends or they risk disappearing (remember the spreadsheet programs of Visicalc, then Supercalc then Lotus).

Of course, there may be disadvantages in being first mover as well - the latest technology may have unforseen problems or it make take longer than expected to sell a new solution to a sceptical market. But the first mover is best placed to understand and react to these issues - as long as they are constantly examining their operations in order to improve them and using feedback from the market to adapt.

Something for nothing

Internet users expect more and more services for free : apart from basic free access to information, we already have free music downloads (initially illegal but more and more sites are offering legal versions), free software (especially cloud computing services), free video, free telephony via IP and so on.

There are free ISPs so users do not have to pay for connection, free wifi access in many places (though you may need to buy a cappuccino which may be quite expensive) and there have even been free PC offers in the past, though they were not successful.

While some of these free services are provided by people who are keen to share their great programming skills and gain some kudos (freeware software for example), the majority is paid for by advertising.

But how long can advertising continue to pay for the increasing range of free services for an increasing number of users?

Online global advertising spend is currently $40 billion annually. This sum provides $40 annually to pay for the free online services of 1 billion Internet users.

It is not much to pay for our consumption of more and more music, video, software, storage and other services.

Maybe the rise of the phone will change the model. People are used to paying for phone services. But on the other hand, the emergence of flat rate data tariffs and competition between mobile operators is likely to limit this source of finance.

What will happen if we wake up one day and find that there is no longer the money to pay for the free services we have grown so used to?

New marketing paradigm

There is a lot talked about a new marketing paradigm - a new way of interacting with customers and prospects in this 21st century world.

What is the same and what is different between the old style and the new style marketing ?

What is the same
- find out what the market needs and the extent (value) of their current pain
- check what the competition offer and how/where you can beat them consistently
- develop the product/service/packaging to meet their needs and relieve the pain
- communicate so that prospects come to you (or at least are receptive to your approach)

What is different
- prospects are less influenced by supposed authorities (whether it be consumers trusting professionals less or companies being more questioning of established suppliers)
- on the other hand, prospects look to what is new in the market, and feedback from other users (e.g. via forums and blogs)
- new technology allows communications to be faster (e.g. eletronic publishing, photo messaging), from more sources (e.g. blogs, auctions) and to be more personalised (e.g. online interest groups, web search)

So the changes are more to do with the way we marketers can market rather than altering what we are trying to do. I will give some thoughts on the ways the tools have changed in a later blog.

Sales and marketing ecosystems

Interesting to note the differences between some successful ecosystems - Apple with its iPOD services does the hardware, software and services themselves, though it licenses the music, making it a very closed system. Seems to be working against the competitors, both from consumer companies and from mobile phone companies.

i-Mode succeeded in Japan because DoCoMo drove the standards for data presentation, transfer and usage on mobile phones but allowed lots of companies to contribute (content,games etc). Whereas in Europe, the mobile data ecosystem has not been encouraged to flourish in the same way.