The 14 Ps of Mixed Media Marketing – Part 3

Product
The original 4 Ps of the marketing mix are still applicable today in mixed media marketing. However, we look at Product differently than in the old school of marketing.

The old school of marketing analyses:

• Product innovation, features, upgrades
• Product differentiation, comparison, competitors
• Product variation, lines, flavours, colours

Product was a function of the product development team; the marketers where then responsible for finding a market that would buy it.

Mixed media marketing analyses:

• How a product can solve a market’s problems
• The perception of a product through marketing research
• How the product performs and is received in the market place

The new focus is on the market. Mixed media marketing works in a market place where customers choose to buy your product and are not sold to. This is how your customers purchase today.

The 14 Ps of Mixed Media Marketing – Part 2

Personality
This is part of a review of your company, brand and website. Some of the things that you will need to look at to evaluate your company’s personality are:

• What impressions and feelings does the market have towards your brand? (primary marketing research will tell you this)
• What are the characteristics, qualities and values of your brand and company?
• How are these communicated to the market?

Analysing and developing the personality of your company, brand and website is important in controlling and understanding your marketing mix. You will learn what people think about your company and industry with the goal of developing these ideas into more desirable perceptions of your brand.

It does not make sense to introduce a marketing plan of any type without an understanding of what the market thinks about your brand. With this information, you can focus your strategy on what your company needs to work on, what your market wants and the type of brand personality your market wants to buy from. This is especially important if you are selling online and rely on an ecommerce store.

The 14 Ps of Mixed Media Marketing - Part 1

Your business may be familiar with the 4 Ps of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Focusing on 4 areas of a marketing strategy simply does not do justice to modern mixed media marketing online and offline. We represent this marketing approach in this image. How many square shapes can you see?

9? There are actually 14, so we use the 14 Ps of marketing. This is the unique foundation of mixed media marketing. In our next blog posts we will be introducing these 14 Ps to you. There is no mystery to what each of these Ps mean. It is being able to determine what are the 14 Ps and how each should be implemented into your marketing strategy that is the key to marketing both online and offline effectively. The first P is “Planning”

Planning
This first P is central to marketing. Marketing strategy is about planning based on research. A marketing plan:

• Determines the market and people to target
• Understands the business environment
• Organises the marketing activities
• Distributes the marketing budget
• Monitors the results

The marketing plan is critical to everyone involved in your company. All of your business decisions will be based on it. Keep in-mind that this is a changing document and may need adjusting according to the market’s needs or other unforeseen constraints.

Every component of the marketing strategy must be planned as much as possible. This will show that your business knows what it wants because you have researched the options and made a decision. For example; shopping around for printing or radio time at the time you need to implement a promotion will cost the business more than if it were researched and scheduled ahead of time. And the end result may not be as good because it was rushed. Messages, scheduling, design work and distribution for instance, all need planning.

It takes time to plan. But the marketing and the business will run effectively and efficiently with a good plan when it comes time for it to be implemented.

There are different types of marketing plans depending on what you need to focus on and how performance is measured. Some are very financially detailed, market share oriented or sales focused. When you think about marketing your business, think about planning. As the saying goes: Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Remember, Attractum® is right here to advise your business about its marketing plan. With over 20 years of business development experience we can draw up a comprehensive marketing strategy starting from research, product development, branding and advertising including implementation and monitoring. The full package.

Don’t Be Sucked In

Are you shopping around for Internet marketing services? Don’t be ripped off. Read this article to discover the dirty tricks and appalling approaches to search engine marketing and Google AdWords that so-called experts right here in New Zealand are pushing to you.

In our regular research of SEO services we have uncovered several website marketing companies that practice shockingly deceptive sales pitches with poor results at high cost to their customers. Unfortunately, these customers are none-the-wiser and are so overwhelmed by the concept of Internet marketing that they are easily conned into long-term contracts at extortionate prices because they do not shop around and ask the right questions.

What We Found
We have found the trend is for these search engine marketing companies to prey on the naivety of customers. Business owners and even highly reputable groups of business circles in New Zealand are being conned by search marketing companies.

These companies, usually “one-man-band” outfits, show blaring tell-tale signs of poor ethics, deception and rip-off services. Agencies with these attributes are the ones to steer clear of:

• No physical address or landline phone number on the contact page of their website.
• The agency emailed potential clients without prior permission (breaching the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007) and indicating ignorance of Internet law.
• The AdWords Qualified badge does not link to a Google page certifying that individual’s professional status. Some agencies refer customers to this link instead to deceive customers into thinking they are qualified. If they are qualified the badge will link to a page like this.
• The site of the agency has not been optimised. It does not have keywords or descriptive title tags itself. (Check this by right-clicking on the web page and selecting “view page source” [Firefox] or “view source” [Internet Explorer] and view the tag. Check the title tag at the top of the browser window).
• The agency has a complicated fee structure or charges clients by the keyword.
• You may be offered a trial period and must cancel (often in writing) before a certain time or else you are automatically locked into long-term contract at a much higher price.
• The agency has tried to take the form of Google or appear as it is working for Google.
• The agency does not offer other Internet marketing services or offline marketing services to help further promote your business. This indicates they are not familiar with marketing strategy, product development, branding and advertising.

Internet marketing is a process that should be done by marketers; not IT people, developers or web designers. Although all you may want is a great Google ad, experienced marketers can give you better value by advising you on your website, your entire marketing strategy, offline marketing and business processes.

Questions to ask your prospective Internet marketer:

• Are you a qualified Google AdWords Individual? see the unique link on their badge for proof
  
• What is your marketing background?
• What is the marketing experience of those working on my campaign?

When shopping for online marketing services, be vigilant. Become familiar with how online marketing works and what you should be paying for the amount and quality of traffic you are expected to receive. Choosing proper Internet marketers and actual qualified professionals will save you money and give you better results.

It's A Numbers Game

We went to a seminar recently that talked about the return on investment your business can gain through newspaper advertising. The particular newspaper that hosted the seminar has a plausible readership of 49,000 people. Their research claimed that 2% of their readers become spending customers on ads in their paper. So 2% of 49,000 readers equals 980 people. Attendees were then asked to calculate the average customer spend at their business and multiply this by 980 to get an idea of what revenue they could generate from a single newspaper advert! Surprisingly the room buzzed with hope as most of the attendees were amazed at the number of sales they could make by placing a newspaper ad. Newspaper advertising suddenly became small business’ answer to riding the recession.

For those of you playing at home, there are at least 8 things shockingly wrong with this logic:

1. Not all of the readers will see your particular ad
2. Of those who see your ad, not all will need or want your product
3. Where did the 2% purchase rate calculation come from in the first place?
4. Perhaps 2% buy something from the paper but not from every business that advertised
5. The industry type or demand for the product was not considered
6. The size and quality of the ad was not considered a factor in effectiveness
7. In short, attendees left the seminar believing that 2% of the readers will buy from them after they place a newspaper ad.
8. This means that today, many small businesses who received a discounted newspaper ad on this day are turning away hundreds of customers ready to buy!
   

Interestingly, the seminar did not give a single mention to the web or Internet advertising! Of course, this would be a careless thing for a newspaper to do.

If this is meant to be a comparison to Internet marketing, then 2% sounds like a possible rate of enquires caused by a newspaper ad – for a very prominent and well targeted ad. In Internet marketing this could be likened to an ad being clicked for more information. An Internet ad can easily achieve 2% of clicks (CTR) but not all of this 2% will buy. This is what the seminar implied.

It is a numbers game in all types of marketing. But in Internet advertising, your impression numbers can be as small or large as required and your response rate is higher – because it is targeted advertising. Unfortunately, at Attractum® we cannot guarantee or even suggest to you that 2% of your ad impressions will be sales. Not without taking into consideration your product and website. But we can get you 2%, 3% or more in CTR (click-through-rate).

Dozens of small business were undeniably deceived on this day - but they will find that out the hard way when they don’t get anywhere near 980 phone calls or even 980 extra website visits let alone 980 sales as a result of their brilliant newspaper ad!

Search is a Tiny Fraction of Internet Marketing

There is so much more to the Internet Marketing than Google Search.

Every well marketed website should have achieved the front result page of a relevant keyword search. This is a benchmark for businesses that are taking their website seriously. A high ranking could be achieved either:

• By being ranked in the top 10 natural/organic listings of relevant keywords through search engine optimisation.


• Or with a Google AdWords search engine marketing campaign.

But being listed highly on both of these will only give you a fraction of your potential online advertising coverage. These search result pages make up only about 5% of the pages on the Internet and users spend even less than 5% of their time on these pages. People spend most of their time on actual websites.

To be accessible in the remaining 95% of the time when your customers are not searching, you must advertise on other websites.

With Google AdWords we can place your ad on other websites that are part of the Google Content Network. This includes popular websites such as YouTube, About.com, HowStuffWorks; local news websites such as nzherald and 3News; blogs and the websites of other businesses. These sites have signed up to Google’s AdSense program allowing Google to place ads on their site. The sites have been checked for content to ensure the placement of your ad is relevant.

Our Attractum ads are displayed on Google Content Network sites that have content about search engine marketing or optimisation because that is what the ad and our website is about.

Above: Our ad on a popular web page about search engine marketing (About.com)

Potential visitors that have missed your site on search pages have the opportunity to get to your site via other related web pages; perhaps even competitor pages.

You are missing out on much more valuable traffic by limiting your advertising and optimisation to search result pages.

Contact us today. Ask us to get your ads on more relevant places on the web. When you work with Attractum you will be working with a qualified Google Advertising Professional. We guarantee you more business. And as always, we will not work with any of your competitors.

Advertising on Other Websites

If you are relying on your website traffic to come from listings on search engines either through optimisation or pay-per-click advertising, you are missing out!

Only 5% of the pages on the Internet are search engine results! According to search engine giant Google, Internet users spend even less than 5% of their browsing time on search result pages. What does this mean if your website is only promoted on search engines? It means you are getting a small fraction of the possible traffic to your site and are limiting your exposure to when people are searching.

Over 70% of the Internet’s web pages are open for advertising! These are large websites, some are dynamically generated, and many enjoy high traffic volumes. They are the most popular sites on the web where people spend most of their time – potentially being exposed to your message.

Reflect on your own web browsing habits. How long do you spend on search engine pages? Don’t you find a site that is relevant to your search and spend time on it? Perhaps you do a few more searches to find what else the Internet has?

While you are in these websites you pay a lot of attention to the content. You are looking for special offers and other related links that may help you. While on the net you might even check your webmail, message some friends or relatives on Facebook and check news stories that you are interested in. All of these places can be linked to your site with targeted advertising!

You spend much more time and attention on other sites than on search pages. Search pages are an important starting point, but that is just the start! If someone doesn’t click on your AdWords ad here or on your optimised high ranking link then you have missed out on that customer. Advertising on other sites means you can still reach your market via the sites they visit day-to-day.

Advertising on other websites means you can drive traffic from all over the web. At Attractum™ we drive relevant traffic to your site from the best known sites in the world and those less-known sites with niche interests. Whatever your particular audience is, we drive targeted traffic to your site.

Sites that are related to, or attract the same audience as yours are the best to advertise on. Advertising costs money; so target your advertising placements to relevant sites with the same audience to your site. This will help ensure that those viewing your ad will have greater interest in your product.

If you want more business, talk to us at Attractum™. We can advertise your business more efficiently on other websites.

It is cost-efficient marketing that drives the right traffic because it is highly targeted.