Tag Archives: Strategy

Boomers Go Online to Stay In Touch

March 5, 2010 – 2:00 pm

As I’ve posted on this blog about two years ago, social networking sites are not just for young people. According to a new report on this subject by eMarketer, baby boomers check out social media sites as they’ve always been good communicators, as proven by their presence at sit-ins, protests and demonstrations in the 1960s.

About 47 percent of online boomers maintain a profile on at least one social network, according to several sources. Their contacts include family, friends and co-workers of all ages. Burst Media reported that 47.5 percent of online boomer respondents had a social network profile in June 2009. Last September, Deloitte found 46 percent of boomer respondents said they maintained a social network profile. Both comScore and Anderson Analytics data show that Facebook is the favourite social network for boomers.

And the numbers keep growing. While millennials’ use of social profile remained fairly steady, boomers’ social network presence has actually grown since a 2007 survey, when only 30 percent said they maintained a profile on a social network. Boomers are expanding their networking efforts to include both online and offline connections. They will be interested in online marketing messages that help them build on their connections and make new friends.

By Lina Ko | Posted in Alberta Business | Also tagged | Comments Off

Early Adopters and the Mass Market

February 26, 2010 – 2:00 pm

A well-established principle of marketing says that a small group of early adopters can spur mass-market acceptance of a new product. But how do early adopters react when its brand is accepted by the mass market? And do mass markets react the same way that early adopters do to the same brand? Marketers assume that dominating the first market (early adopters) will also help them dominate the second market (mass market).

Wharton marketing professors David Reibstein and John Zhang have explored the topic and say that a company could experience a backlash as early adopters move on to other new products. An example is Porsche, a successful brand for sports car enthusiasts. The brand saw a decline in sports car sales after it entered the SUV mass market. The backlash was significant.

In fact, as The New York Times points out, teenagers would rather text their friends a message rather than post it on Twitter. Instead, Twitter has been embraced by an older demographic. Twitter’s success has shattered a widely held belief that young people lead the way to popularizing innovations. The brand has proved that an offering can take off in a different demographic than you expect and become very popular. Twitter is defying the traditional model.

So why do marketers assume that success with early adopters will lead to quick adoption by the mass market? The “early adopter” concept is flawed because they aren’t always a good indicator of the growth potential of a brand nor do they have an extended Customer Lifetime Value. Most early adopters move on to the next big thing and may not be loyal to brands.

What is more important is to identify your most profitable potential customers. These profitable customers will eventually be the core of your growth strategy and profitability. The important indicator is the rate of adoption – the relative speed with which the most profitable consumers adopt an innovation. Success depends on an organization’s ability to build and maintain loyal and valued customer relationships. Therefore, it is essential to build refined strategies for customers based on their value to the organization. The best marketing strategies pursue long-term relationships with profitable customers.

Two questions for you: (1) Who is your most profitable customer? (2) What is their lifetime value to your organization?

Please email me for our “View from the Top” series on best practices in customer satisfaction strategies.

By Merril Mascarenhas | Posted in Alberta Business | Also tagged , , | Comments Off

Thought Leadership Marketing: A New Marketing Field?

February 16, 2010 – 2:00 pm

I recently joined a LinkedIn discussion group called Thought Leadership Salon, where the latest discussion focused on the definition of Thought Leadership Marketing (TLM).

The discussion linked to a WebWire article written by Gartner (an information technology research company). Gartner defines TLM as: the giving — for free or at a nominal charge — of information or advice that a client will value so as to create awareness of the outcome that a company’s product or service can deliver, in order to position and differentiate that offering and stimulate demand for it.

Their VP elaborated: “The principle of TLM is simple enough: You give away a little valuable intellectual property to establish your potential usefulness to the client, in the expectation that the client will use your expertise and services. Its essence is to show, rather than tell what a company can do, and to do so in a way that positions and differentiates that company’s offering for the chosen target audience”.

The article went on to give some interesting B2B examples, and of course, to link to their own thought leadership, a Gartner report called “Marketing Essentials: How to Use Thought Leadership Marketing for IT Services Providers”.

While I am not sure that the definition above is not a bit too narrow (I would argue that thought leadership is about more than sharing whitepapers, just like PR is about more than press releases), I am certainly interested that thought leadership is being considered an “organized discipline” of marketing.

Are your B2B marketing departments consciously using TLM in your marketing plans?

Elizabeth Harvey, Manager of Councils and Self Regulatory Programs at Canadian Marketing Association

By Elizabeth Harvey at CMA | Posted in Alberta Business | Comments Off

Why LinkedIn will be your best business social networking friend?

February 2, 2010 – 12:00 am

When I was first introduced to LinkedIn it was a natural extension of what I was already doing daily in the Calgary small business community. I still remember sitting at the Starbucks along with my good friend Craig Elias back around 2002/2003 and him helping me understand LinkedIn and what it was about.
My goal [...]

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SEO – Search Engine Optimization Basics

January 29, 2010 – 2:00 pm

Do you want to get first page on Google? If you have a web page or blog, you likely already are first page for some searches. With a bit of SEO, you can gain first page on more searches. And its simple.

The first and most obvious step is think about what words or phrases you want to be first page on.

Once you have that list, determine how many people are searching for those terms. To check how popular a search is you will need a tool. I use Wordtracker (there is a free online version). The higher the number, the more popular the search.

No point in trying to optimize for a word or phrase that is rarely searched. There is also no point in trying to optimize for a word that is too popular because getting a high ranking there will be almost impossible. So this is a “just right thing”. You want to optimize for words that you have a good chance of ranking for. I suggest choosing 10-20 words and phrases.

Think about “long tail”

Think about how people will search. People often search with a question. EG where do I find X? Or where do I find Y in Canada. The longer the string, the less competition you will have for it so the easier you will get ranked.

So make the list of phrases you want to “own” and ones that are realistic to “own”.

Now it is simple. Just put these words and phrases in your titles, picture descriptions, videos and in your text. The titles are the most important. That is why a blog called “Vegetable Lentil Soup Recipes” will get good Google juice on all 4 words. So searching “vegetable soup” will get first page. Or “lentil soup recipes” or “vegetable lentil recipes” etc.

Yes you want to repeat your words and phrases often in the text. This said – write naturally. Never let SEO be a substitute for good content.

So you do this and you still are not first page. That is because you do not have enough credibility with Google. You need another free tool to check this. I use a free Firefox plugin called searchstatus. It gives me both the PageRank and the Alexa rating of any web page. Higher PageRank numbers are better. High credibility is your ultimate goal as that is what gets you ranked first and Alexa tells you traffic (a lower number is better)

My blog (www.jimestill.com) has a pagerank of 5 and Alexa of 493,052 (meaning it is the 493,052th most popular site in the Internet). CMA blog has a pagerank of 4 and an Alexa of 587,900. This means if I SEO on the same phrase as CMA blog, google will list me before CMA Blog.

How do you increase your PageRank?

It is all about quality inbound links. You want people with a high credibility (PageRank 4+) to link to you – eg Globe and Mail would be great. More is better and link rank is almost logarithmic so a PageRank of 6 is worth 10 times one of 5 etc.

The best inbound links are contextual. So someone blogging and saying I heard time management guru Jim Estill speak and hot linking from “Time management guru” is great for me. Second best, hot link to “Jim Estill”. Third is just having a link on a blogroll without any context or a link to click here.

You get a higher rank if you update your content regularly. That is why having a blog on your site is a good way to increase your ranking.

Moderate cross linking within your own material will also increase your rank and clarify for google what it is that you do.

3 ways to get links to your site:

1 – Ask politely. You might not always get a link but it never hurts to ask.

2 – Comment on other relevant blogs (and have your PageRank on so you ignore low PageRank and high alexa). Note that most comments in themselves do not constitute a link. But being out there gets people to look at you. You need people to look at your stuff for them to be inspired to link to it.

3 – Have good material. People link to quality. But of course they have to see it so promote your content

4 – Have your URL on all your print material, cards, letterhead, email sig file etc.

5 – Write guest articles and blogs in the right (high traffic) places (check the pagerank and Alexa).

6 – Contribute to other sites. EG write reviews on Amazon, join the conversations.

And a word of warning. Never play games (like buying links).

In the end it is about having good quality material. And being out there so people look at your material. People link to quality without you asking as long as they know about it.

Jim Estill

By Jim Estill | Posted in Alberta Business | Also tagged | Comments Off