Showing posts with label Internet marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet marketing. Show all posts

Thursday, March 11, 2010

What Internet Marketing and Golf Have in Common

If you play golf, you probably know that there are more instructional gadgets, trinkets, books and equipment fads in the game than probably any other sport. Every year, a plethora of new things hit the market that we feel compelled to buy to solve our game’s ills, and every year, we line up to buy them having never really focused on the one thing that will improve our game: our golf swing.

Like golf, the Internet is never at a loss for new technologies, trends, or fads on which we feel compelled to keep up. From search optimization to e-commerce and email marketing to social media channels, video syndication and analytics, we can go mad trying to understand and stay current with the latest “must dos.” But none of that stuff means doodly-squat if the foundation of our Internet marketing, our base website, is fundamentally unhealthy.

Since so much rides on it, the most important thing we can do to make sure all the other things we do to market our businesses on the Web work, is to conduct--or contract for--an unbiased and sober assessment of our base website. Such an assessment should focus first on the site itself:

  • Is it properly constructed for our business purpose, our audience and to fare well on the search engines?
  • Is it aesthetically pleasing and in concert with our other branding and sales materials?
  • Is the site modern, logically arranged and intuitive or does it look dated, feel confusing and feature functional inefficiencies?
  • Where is the site hosted?
  • Who owns and administers the associated domains?
  • Do we know all the associated costs and what we’re really being charged for?
  • Is it equipped with the up-to-date tracking code and, if so, do we really know what the tracking data is telling us?

Only after taking a hard look inward, and committing to the fundamental repairs this process may reveal, should our evaluation turn its gaze to the other components of our Internet marketing effort.

In the end, Internet marketing is a lot like golf. We get so bombarded with the latest and greatest equipment, instruction and gadgets that we forget to address the fundamental flaws in our base golf swing. Bushels of dollars later, we still slice nine out of ten shots into the weeds. When it comes to Internet marketing, look inward first. Absent a fundamentally sound website, all the Internet marketing trends, gadgets and fads will only accentuate its flaws and put us smack dab in the Internet marketing weeds.

Also, if you like short stories, please be sure to visit my other blog at shortstoryisland.wordpress.com
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The Internet Marketing Analytics Gap - Part 2 The Importance of an Interpreter

Taking the language analogy a step further, if you plan to visit a foreign country and don’t know or plan to learn the language, it is ideal to have an interpreter by your side. You would expect such an interpreter to be fluent in both your language and that of the host country. He or she would be able to discern the subtle differences in linguistics, inflection and body language and would often need to adapt what you want to say and mean to how the receiver needs to hear and understand it and vice versa. Without such a companion, a visit to a foreign land is marked by confusion, meaningless babble, blank stares and lots of wrong turns.

Let’s face it, for many companies, the Web is such a foreign country. They got into their respective businesses--their native land--because of their know-how, their passion, their interest in leaving their mark on the world, a desire to deliver some highly valued human necessity, not because they had interest in marketing, website development, search engine optimization, social networking or website performance analysis.

Given economic conditions and the rapidity with which the marketing world is changing, a thoroughly experienced Internet marketing expert who knows both the language of your industry and that of the Internet is critical to the survival of your business. And though some feathers might get ruffled with this statement, don’t assume your Marketing, IT department or advertising agency is the answer. Many, if they are being completely honest, would admit that Internet marketing and the associated analytical performance evaluation falls outside of their area of experience and expertise. In fact, the good ones would invite such an addition to your marketing team. We have enjoyed several such instances in which the combination of strengths among various marketing disciplines has produced a much better result for our clients.

Traveling the Internet superhighway without a navigator is an easily avoided mistake. Watch for our next installment coming soon.

Also, if you like short stories, please be sure to visit my other blog at shortstoryisland.wordpress.com




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