August 16th, 2008 by Steve Thomas
Some of the team for The Net Impact is headed to the airport now. Six of us responsible for client’s accounts are attending the Search Engine Strategy Conference in San Jose. In my many years of sales and marketing management, I have never seen an industry where knowledge, and at that “current knowledge”, is as much the currency of the business as it is in search engine marketing. Here, you’d better learn or you’d better go do something else. In prior lives an entire team of mine has attended trade shows to purchase or sell goods for the next season. In this business we are investing in what it will take to “purchase” knowledge. And really not just knowledge but literally “disposable knowledge”. What we gain from our exposure to other firms and new technologies may have a lasting shelf life, or it could all be worthless in six months.
The hardest aspect of our business to explain to others is this issue of meeting and competing on the web only at the most current level of knowledge and capablility. The “constantly temporary” or ever-changing aspect of this business means that staying the same means falling behind. We have several customers who after reaching serp page one have seen their rank under attack by competitors who have copied our approach or found an equally strong way to battle back. What I love about our team is the, “Bring it on!” attitude they take on when that happens.
That’s really the addictive aspect of this business. It is a constant competition where you can look at your results every day (if not every second)! You succeed through effort, skill and “current” knowledge. So here’s to San Jose. May there be lot’s of intriguing information that generates new ideas and helps us better drive more business for our clients. Even if we can throw most of what we learn away in six months.
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August 14th, 2008 by Steve Thomas
Today’s marketing challenges require unique teams of people working together in a way that would have been seen as heresy just a few years ago. To effectively drive a brand or push for more market share, more and more firms are seeing the need for experts from various marketing disciplines to join forces and accomplish their mission through collaboration.
TNI just minutes ago finished a very interactive conference call with a team of people put together for the express purpose of winning a large multimedia marketing project. On the call were creative, business development and brand strategy specialists from a major national marketing agency, two industry experts acting as consultants and two representatives from our firm, The Net Impact. The agency team has their most important role of creating the pitch, coordinating materials and planning all of the off-line events and media placement. The industry experts bring to the table what their name implies. The Net Impact was on the call not only because we had worked successfully in the past to support the agency’s efforts, but also because the prospective clients wants to make 2009 the “Year of the Internet” for their marketing push.
To address this challenge, our online marketing team created a strategy to share with the group encompassing SEO, PPC, optimized press releases, advertorials for online media, email-newsletter campaigns and social marketing all founded upon a web analytics approach that could demonstrate ROI. We heard from the agency that “measurability” is going to be a key factor for this client. How perfect for the web! This client is more than a thousand miles away from our St. Louis home yet we will be as close to their statistics and performance as if we were in their office. More importantly, our motto of “transparent results” means that the client and our partners in this collaboration will equally be able to measure web results 24/7/365. You have to be confident in you ability to allow the entire team to grade your performance.
It’s exciting to be part of a campaign with other experts each sharing their main area of skill and experience in such a manner. “Collaboration for a win,” where the client benefits and the various players contribute their efforts to the plan is clearly superior to the “Let one firm do it all” approach that most represents the past. Indeed, why more clients don’t demand that each aspect of their campaign is managed by a recognized authority in that arena is a mystery. Getting the win for the client is what counts.
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