Google Marketing 1/3
Everything I Needed to Know About Marketing I Learned From Google
1. Relevancy rules
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Apple develops the sense to help people interact with what they feel passionate about. (Steve Hall, advertising professor at the University of Illinois)
Not mixed, but filtered.
Apple doesn't have customers, it has fans.
You must keep in mind what your company's filter is.
Everything is about relevancy.
To be relevant, you have to show how you're going to help people solve problems or make decisions.
2. Borrow the wisdom of the crowd
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Leveraging the wisdom of the crowd only produces strong results when you have checks and balances in place to prevent abuse. Seth Godin says "the crowd is really just a mob." The best marketing doesn't move the crowd. It creates a platform where people can do what they've chosen to do by leading them.
Rather than the crowd, focus on the tribe—people who are "connected, care about something, and are going somewhere."
"When smart people come together, they become quite smart; all they need is a leader. That is exactly the role marketers have to play in this crowd-surrounded ecosystem."
Leadership, platform development.
This isn't about making the crowd work for you. It's about finding wisdom in the crowd and handing them tools to improve your brand.
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The days of going around telling customers and prospects what your brand means are over. Now you have to gather people so they can tell you what your brand means. And you need to listen and respond wisely. That's what a platform can do.
You have to break your brand down into core assets and let consumers reassemble them in ways meaningful to them. Of course, you can't anticipate every need and taste of every single customer and prospect. But you can anticipate the basic needs. For Google it was 'decision-making,' for Apple it was 'coolness,' for Doritos it was 'self-expression.'
Just as quality mattered more than quantity in page links, size isn't always what matters when building a platform. As Godin says, "A tribe, big or small, means a group connected to each other, to a leader, and to an idea."
How can your brand become a platform? Find your tribe and lead them.
As mentioned, the key is connecting to the passion points of customers and prospects. (People, by nature, don't want help from others.) They just want to help themselves. You have to find ways for them to help themselves.
That's what a platform needs. That's what it means to leverage the wisdom of the crowd.
Bob Garfield explained this as practicing "listenomics." In his book he defined it as "the art and science of nurturing relationships with individuals in a connected and increasingly open environment."
Nobody listens. (Marketers) can keep blabbering to enthusiasts as they always have, but the problem is those enthusiasts don't listen to what you say. They listen to what other people are saying about you.
Still, they become a vast free marketing channel, and on social network sites they carry more trust and influence than your ads ever did. On top of loyalty, passion, and affinity, you can also easily tap into their accumulated knowledge, imagination, and judgment.
If you don't try to use all this, you're just an idiot.
p.50
The ways people express themselves are many:
hairstyles, poetry, cars, art, music, tattoos, fashion, and many more.
Each of these categories has a 'tribe.' In Seth Godin's words, "people who are connected, care, and are heading somewhere." They just need a leader.
p.56
Unless you're Steve Jobs, Rachel Zoe, or Calvin Klein, your role isn't to be the trendsetter. Your role is to be the enabler. The most you can hope for is to provide a platform that helps everyone become the "one thing" they want to be.
3. Make it dumb-simple
How did Google become a verb? Simple.
Because there's almost no ambiguity. Google means search.
It seems easy now, but in 1998 it was a whole new concept. The most popular websites back then looked like messy newspapers covered page by page with content and ads.
It's unclear what you're supposed to do on these sites. Sure, you can read articles, see ads, and communicate with friends. There's one common goal: these sites want you to stay. Maybe not on a specific page, but definitely somewhere within the site.
(Compare with Google. Google doesn't want you to stay on its site. It wants you to leave. What better reminder of that than a giant empty box sitting alone in the middle of a blank page?)
Good marketing needs a simple signal that gets customers and prospects to do something. This is called a USP (Unique Selling Proposition).
Use your mom or someone like her as a litmus test.
Can your mom explain what your company does? Not to you, but to her friends.
When your mom sees your company's ad or website, can she tell exactly what you want the consumer to do for the company? Can mom actually do it? If not, it isn't simple enough.
Consumers often need guidance, but almost always want to feel like they're making the decision themselves. — Michelle Pribbe
Focus and simplicity can lead to broad acceptance. — Sean Finnegan
Mom Litmus Test Application
Describe your company in 800 characters.
Reduce to 140 characters and get feedback via Twitter.
Now cut to 95 characters (Google AdWords).
/ 25 for title, 35 per line of ad copy (max two lines).
Test against the world's largest focus group—Google searchers.
Rotate several versions of the message and check which gets the highest click rate.
Then take that message and refine things like titles and calls to action.
This time, don't rely on click rate alone—also watch what people do on your website.
Even if your website doesn't yet reinforce the messaging, if your promise is one your company can keep, searchers will notice and act on it. If lots of visitors come once and never return, your message still has a problem.
Once the message is right, it's time to get the website right.
Try tools like Google Website Optimizer and Google Analytics.
Your homepage should display a clear call to action and have a site structure people can easily understand. In other words, links and headers should be about your customers, not your company.
For example, use terms like "home improvement company" or "home improvement products" rather than "about us" or "product info."
4. Mindset matters
Hotchkiss calls Google a great "food patch (meta patch)" because "Google has done a wonderful job of being easy to use, providing hints—through the form of links—that 'smell' of where the best information is, and organizing that information."
So what mindset should you focus on to reach people? The commercial mindset—the mindset of being in "buy mode," not just watching ads. Google ads are good because they reach people in a commercial mindset.
** Newspapers—passive information delivery
VS Ads—relevant information—leads to consumption
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Switching into buy mode
Google searchers aren't always in buy mode. Most of the time they're looking for something fun, looking for information, or browsing. But when a search triggers the intent to buy, Google becomes the platform for making the best choice.
Especially in search, being a good marketer means understanding the prospect's plans and stepping in to help realize them.
Pixazza: When did Leo learn to stick his tongue out? -> Where did he get that cute shirt Leo is wearing? (photo business ecosystem)
They built a platform with rewards and deployed experts.
(The Examiner uses writers and bloggers in various cities to create diverse niches: small business, green business, business startup, women and business, internet business Examiner, etc.)
This goes beyond citizen journalism. They get paid based on the size of enthusiasts they create.
Plant the seeds of commerce
AOL (America Online) entered the content farming business—content democratization business—through Seed.com. Simply put, Seed recruits freelance writers to create content on topics AOL chooses, and shares a portion of ad revenue generated by that content.
5. Stay where the audience is
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The same goes for marketers.
Opening a store or setting up a company homepage and expecting people to show up on their own is not only arrogant but rude.
The point is that unless it's a ghost-built baseball field, it doesn't work the "build it and they will come" way.
The key is to build your brand where people are. Don't ask people to stop what they're doing or leave where they are to find you. Break your brand down so it can be used wherever people happen to be. Figure out where people are talking about your brand or product, and plant seeds there. (Google has made its brand usable everywhere.)
** Product development and utilization for writing tools, free newspapers, ACC.
A distinctive feature of Obama's campaign was that participants joined voluntarily as "individuals." They never said someone made them climb the ladder. They also didn't confess that their decisions were influenced by anyone. They just said:
"Well, you know, it was just 'really easy' to participate."
By being where the audience was, the campaign gave them a feeling of being in voluntary control.
Nobody wants to feel like they were made to buy something because of your marketing. They want to feel they made the purchase purely on their own decision.
** Isn't this the same for developers?
The only way to raise supporters' levels and help them climb the ladder is to campaign in the audience's territory and send messages matched to their level.
One reason people love Facebook is that it lets them directly organize and control communication with friends, and it opens doors to meeting new friends.
Same goes for brands. Facebook lets people encounter brands and learn about them in their own way.
Building a presence inside Facebook doesn't just make contact with customers—it empowers them. And each contact creates the Facebook juice people crave: the news feed that acts as a peer-to-peer recommendation engine.
6. Don't interrupt
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When consumers encounter TV, radio, or print, they slip into passive mode. These are one-way, broadly-broadcast platforms. Here, the consumer's mind is in entertainment and information mode. They just turn on the TV because they're bored.
The web flips consumers into active mode. The web is a platform that works in a two-way, bounded space. Sure, entertainment and information are here too, but commerce is included at the same time.
Why do you Google? Because you're looking for something. Where else is there a better opportunity for marketers to send a message?
What matters to marketers most isn't which site I visit, but when and how. I mostly visit specific sites only when I have a specific desire.
When I go to Google or use that little search box in the browser (or a portal), I'm in 'neutral' mode. In other words, I'm there to 'transition.'
Transition from entertainment to commerce. Or the reverse.
The key is being in the moment when marketing communication can be accepted. (Don't forget it's only for a very brief time. According to the Online Publishers Association, in 2009 people averaged less than an hour of search per month. That's only 5% of total online time.)
According to OPA, of total time spent online, over 40% went to content, 27% to communication, 13% to commerce, and 13% to community.
The marketer's dilemma is that reaching people in this environment means 'you have no choice but to interrupt them.'
"There are many good things you can do with the time given. Choose carefully." — John Battelle (founder of Wired)
"Brands aren't won by shouting louder."
(John Raz)
p.120
Time is driven by need.
Gord Hotchkiss studied vast amounts of online user experience.
Golden triangle (on a page, the user's eye moves from top-left to bottom-right, then shifts to the visible left margin area), alignment of intent (describes the modern moment as a "just-in-time information economy").
As online information has become ubiquitous and web search makes information retrieval instant, the way we collect information has shifted from 'destination' to 'just-in-time.'
What does that mean for marketers?
Hotchkiss argues, "The just-in-time information economy has implanted intent in online users' minds, dramatically boosting attention to ads."
You have to plant intent in customers' and prospects' minds. "When you focus customers on one goal, their response to ads changes dramatically. A customer with intent is mentally primed to pour attention only on items close to that goal. Anything that doesn't match intent ends up suffering the pain of 'indifference.'"
(A person hooked on a Mac or a fixie won't even glance at a Samsung or a generic bike.)
Hotchkiss's eye-tracking research explains why users claim not to have seen an ad even after directly looking at it on a web page. But when the ad matches intent, interaction happens in a totally different way—even for a small text message.
**Related: the gorilla effect
When something isn't of interest or falls outside a certain range of vision, the information isn't perceived even if seen.
Draw a target.
At its center, write a problem your product or service can solve. Then write the time and place where someone with this problem is likely to think about it. (So writing 'web search' isn't appropriate. Write what they're searching for. Rather than 'travel,' write how they travel and where they go.) If any of these items would interrupt users or have no relevance to the brand, remove that item. What remains is what you should focus on most before adding other things to the marketing mix (4Ps).
7. Play the role of content
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Rand Fishkin, founder of SEOmoz, says "Great products and great content alone aren't enough." "You need a hook that attracts people. To make people use links, you need corresponding incentives. If you can't create such hooks, or don't give reasons worth sharing your content, you'll lose the competition to someone who can."
Fishkin gives this example: "Even if I write an article about the world's greatest restaurant in Venice, Italy, I won't automatically rank first in searches for the keyword 'Venice restaurant.'"
"But if I create badges for the top 50 restaurants in Venice, embed them on each restaurant's website, and link back to my site where the article lives, they're motivated to link to my site. Google will then reward me with search ranking accordingly."
