Interview with Ian Lurie

Written by Daniel Milstein

Ian Lurie is the chief executive officer at Portent, the Internet marketing company he started in 1995. The company’s services include search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and strategic consulting. Ian recently co-published the Web Marketing for Dummies All In One Desk Reference. Ian also has a blog, www.conversationmarketing.com. Here he tells us of the major changes he’s seen in marketing since 1995 and what his biggest struggles were when first starting his business.

I see that you started Internet marketing in 1995. There have obviously been a lot of changes since then and many introductions to new social media platforms. What are some of the largest transitions you’ve had to make or have you seen since you began?

Well, for one thing, I can't do any marketing for clients using Prodigy or CompuServe any more. Some changes are obvious: Everyone's online now; there's a lot more content out there (understatement!); the tools and technology we use to spread content around are infinitely more powerful. If you'd told me in 1995 we'd have millions of hours of video online by 2012, I would've laughed at you and muttered about storage costs. The more subtle changes are the ones that really matter to me though:

- Better analytics. We can now learn a great deal more about how people use our web sites. And, we can layer different tools on top of each other to get an incredibly detailed picture of how social media, search and our web sites interact.

- Better search. A lot of folks outside our community take this for granted. But Google and Yahoo! (and yes, Excite, Alta Vista and other long-dead search tools) made internet marketing possible. Without them, visibility would be nearly impossible. Say what you want about brand favoritism and Google becoming evil - Google is the mass transit system that moves people around the web. Yahoo! was, too, and Bing is now part of the mix. Search technology in general remains crucial to the way we make a living, the same way TV and modern printing made the last revolution in marketing possible.

- Commoditization. When I started, building the web site was the big-bucks proposition. Now, you can build a solid site, even for an enterprise, with standard tools. A lot of the services we used to sell at a premium are just commodities. I think this move towards commoditization is terrible for clients, but they've made the decision, so we've had to roll with it. We put a lot more time into consulting, strategy and training than we used to.

These days, marketing on the Internet is very important. How significant is it to know all of the Internet lingo and coding to successful marketing your company?

I think it's more important that you have some common sense. Don't let the phrase "internet marketing" intimidate you into accepting what is obviously a bad plan. I still shake my head when I see perfectly intelligent business owners trust folks who are clearly rip-off artists, or who are making outrageous promises. Use the exclamation point rule: Every exclamation point on a marketer's home page that's attached to a promise or claim should make you trust them 10% less. So "Rank number 1 now!" plus "We'll get you top position!" plus "We're marketing experts!" should mean you run away screaming.

Do you think some media platforms work better than others when marketing? Why?

I actually think every medium has a strength. The Internet is fantastic at fast iteration, data-driven strategies and massive conversion growth. TV will still reach more people than any other medium. Print lends a great deal of credibility if you do it right. Radio is overlooked but can get you great access. Of course, I favor Internet marketing as the first stop, but I'm biased.

You have a post from awhile back about evaluating a social media “expert,” stating that if you have a meeting with someone who has about 6 months experience in the industry, you should forget them, and two years it’s worth a consideration. Do you think businesses/consultants need to wait that long before they really know what they’re doing? And if they don’t get clients, how will they ever gain that experience?

I have a huge problem with people who have been in social media for 6-12 months hanging out shingles and claiming they're consultants. In my mind, a consultant is someone who's developed unparalleled expertise in a field. That means you work for someone else, in-house or at an agency. You get to the point where you know your discipline inside and out. Then you look at becoming a consultant. This isn't just about you. You're going to do a major disservice to your clients, hurt their businesses, and leave them in very difficult spots if you're irresponsible.  Guys like Chris Brogan, Scott Stratten and, at the risk of being totally egotistical, me, didn't just "pop up on the scene." We put in thousands of hours of work. I don't know Chris and Scott's histories, but I know I worked as a marketing copywriter and tech writer for 3 years, and then started my company strictly as an online copywriter. Then I studied the emerging search engines for several years before adding that to our list of practices. And so on. I'm not saying new people shouldn't enter our industry. They absolutely should. But they have to learn it, not just show up.

What challenges did you face when you began in 1995?

Eating. Seriously, cash flow was a huge problem. I had two credit cards ($7500 total) and a computer. Oh, and a really fast dial up connection. Getting folks to trust me was the other big challenge. When you're 27 and trying to sell someone who's over 35 on marketing via a channel most people consider a fad, it's a little tricky.

Interview with Todd Malicoat

Written by Daniel Milstein

Todd Malicoat is a marketing consultant and Internet entrepreneur with specialization in search engine optimization, social media and traffic acquisition. He has done work in affiliate marketing, ad buying, sales and more. Todd has been quoted in publications such as InfoWorld, NY Post, and Revenue Magazine. In this interview he tells us what kind of mistakes businesses make in creating their websites, what challenges new businesses may face, and other helpful insights. You can visit the site at www.marketmotive.com

When you consult new clients, what initial questions do you ask to get to know their company and their goals?

I have to admit that I’ve only done a limited amount of consulting in the last 18 months or so – I’ve taken time away from it to focus more on my own web properties, and been teaching SEO at MarketMotive.com. That said, I have been doing sales and online marketing consulting for the 7 previous years. When it comes to all things Internet marketing, I think the most important questions that I generally tried to ask in a first meeting were the following.  I love watching Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank ask these same questions:

How do you make money?

What makes you the most money?

What would you like to scale?

What are your plans and resources to scale?

What makes you different than your competitors?

Some of these can be tricky questions to approach with a client without putting them on the defensive, but are absolutely necessary to answer.  Notice that I don’t ask – “what do you want to rank for?”  This is because a CEO’s answer to this will generally be poorly researched, and often just plain wrong. These questions helped enable me to better develop a marketing strategy that may have been missed by the in-house team, or at least provide them with a fresh perspective. It’s very important to ASK lots of questions and collect information before trying to start answering questions in a consulting role.  You should always fully understand the business model before opening your mouth to offer strategic direction. As far as SEO goes, it is very important to know what I call “K.O.B. Analysis” (keyword opposition to benefit analysis.) It is a function of understanding both the competitive nature of a search result (opposition) and the business benefit of ranking for a specific keyword phrase or set of phrases (benefit).  This understanding is really at the heart of creating a solid SEO campaign.

As far as internet marketing goes, I saw your post and noticed you also have some videos about how to make your website better. What are the top three mistakes that companies/businesses/people make when building their site?

Trying to plan an SEO campaign after building the website. This is like trying to bake the sugar in a cake after it’s in the oven. Too much focus on one tactic, whether it’s social media, link building, paid search, or other, it’s important to have diversity in your campaigns.  Being competitive is important, but being overly aggressive techniques can really kill a campaign, and create major setbacks. Balance and diversity in strategy helps to mitigate the risk that comes with using just a single method or tactic heavily. Impeding growth and improvement from lack of education and cooperation. Successful websites require a team.  The team should understand each other and cooperate.  When the team starts struggling for budget and recognition the entire team will fail, and the site won’t get improved, as it should.  I think cross-training online marketers on different disciplines of internet marketing is hugely important to create a strong team that will improve a website’s marketing efforts and results.

What challenges do new businesses face when they begin to market?

We all know the stats.  Most new businesses fail.  Obviously, this doesn’t stop ambitious entrepreneurs (we ALL think we are the exception), but it does make great ones take inventory of why even good companies fail.  Online marketing is the lifeblood of new business, and every new company is trying to control burn rate while they improve growth rate.  When you’re spending your marketing dollars you have to do it wisely. Many new companies don’t understand the competitive online marketing climate.  Everyone and their brother now wants to do lead generation for online education, mortgages, insurance, credit cards, and other similar verticals.  For good reason, these are all very lucrative verticals.  Unfortunately, they have competitors online who have been creating very aggressive campaigns for nearly a decade or more now.  Trying to build a site that competes with the largest sites in this vertical from scratch with even six figure budgets is borderline insanity. The barrier to entry is constantly rising.  There are still plenty of verticals with opportunity, but I think the most important thing a new business owner can do is create a realistic marketing plan based on an accurate portrait of their current marketplace online.  An understanding of the link-related metrics, and social media campaigns currently employed by the top competitors (as well as what these type of campaigns would cost to re-create and improve) is very important in overcoming the most significant business hurdle (making money before you run out of it).

Are there any social networks you prefer to use over others as far as marketing goes? Why?

I’m still an SEO at heart.  I’ll likely focus 2012 efforts on Google plus, and using other networks to continue to improve search rankings now that they are a more important piece of Google’s algorithm.  In my mind, any of the social media channels are primarily a content distribution channel that helps with getting quality link citations.

You’ve been blogging for a number of years now – what changes have you seen in marketing, whether it’s traditional or online media?

The SEO industry definitely grew from a cottage industry, to billion-dollar big business.  It was an exciting process watching SEO mature and start entering the mainstream media.  It felt like the Wild West, and lots of fortunes were won and lost in a decade of time.  I still feel like MOST the successful businesses owe a lot of their initial success to very fundamental SEO strategies that were executed effectively in tandem with great products. The other major change is the mindset of the marketer.  There is definitely a rift between the old and new guards of marketing. I think the digital guys are finally starting to win over the older wiley and treacherous “Madmen” types that ran Superbowl ads on television. The new interactive marketer mindset includes both a business perspective as well as a lot of technical prowess.  The power of interactive direct marketing is the ability to track users and customers at a much deeper level.  Great marketers of all ages understand and embrace this fundamental shift that we’ve been so lucky to experience. I think there's a shift from just wanting the right audience (demographic)- to wanting the right audience at the right time (intent). This is now very much a reality with the interactive nature of the web.

Interview with Dave Fleet

Written by Daniel Milstein

Dave Fleet is the vice president of Digital at Edelman, an independent global PR firm, in their Toronto office. He has worked in marketing and communications for large organizations around the world and on his blog, www.DaveFleet.com, he focuses on communications, public relations, social media and marketing. In this interview he tells us how working internationally has been helpful, some advantages of social media, and more.

You have a significant number of social media platforms available for your page viewers to click and learn more about you and your company. Do you enjoy using one over the other, or think that one of them is more useful than others as far as communications and marketing goes?

Personally I enjoy Twitter - for the conversation, for the information it leads me to and for the people it lets me connect with. However, from a business perspective it's not about one tool over the other - it's all about selecting the right tool to connect with the people you want to reach, for the objectives you want to achieve. Each tool has its strengths and weaknesses - Twitter is great for conversation while blogs are great for search optimization, etc - and so from that perspective they're all useful depending on the context.

How important is it to measure or track the traffic on your pages to gauge readership and your reach?

Measurement is critical. If you don't measure, how can you know whether what you're doing is working? It's not just reach - it's what people do once they're on your site. It's conversions; it's bounce rates; it's click paths. There's way more to look at than just reach.

I see in your “About” section that you’ve worked on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. How do you think that experience has helped you gain more insight into marketing/social media/PR, etc.?

I worked in the UK at the very beginning of my career, so my perspective was very different at that point. However, I do think that the exposure to working in a different culture, and experiencing the different cultures in other countries, has been extremely helpful for where I am now.

I liked your simple and effective way to increase creativity by simply carrying a notebook around with you at all times; while it’s so simple, a lot of people may not think to do it. Are there any other very, very simple techniques you can implement into your life to improve, besides carrying a notebook?

For me, effective email management is critical. When you get 200-300 emails every day and you don't manage them effectively, it can be crippling. The days when I do a poor job at managing my inbox, things always go bad. I wrote about my techniques for managing email here: http://davefleet.com/2011/02/5-tips-managing-email-deluge/

You blog post about startups not needing to hire social media experts was great. I liked all of the tips you provided. What do you think is the No. 1 challenge a startup company has right out of the gate?

I'm not a startup expert, but in my opinion it would be focus. With scarce resources you can't be everything to everyone, and you can't hire specialists for everything. So you need to focus on the most important areas for the business, and look to people to step up and help with the other areas.

Interview with Mark Brownlow

Written by Daniel Milstein

Mark Brownlow is the creator of E-mail Marketing Reports, a blog that provides information on improving and understanding e-mail marketing. He is an independent web publisher, writer and journalist. Here he tells us of changes in e-mail marketing over the past few years, how e-mail marketing compares to other social media platforms and much more.

You have a post about “future-proof e-mail marketing.” You provide six principles, but what do you think are some of the most common mistakes businesses make while e-mail marketing?

Three that stand out are:

1. Not selling the sign-up. If you want people to opt-in to get emails from you, give them the opportunity to do so and give them a reason to do so. That sounds self-evident, but you often find sign-up forms tucked away out of sight in website footers. Or limited to a bland statement like "sign-up for our newsletter"...to which the natural response is "why should I?" People need a reason to sign-up for your emails. Tell them how they will benefit: will they get discounts exclusive to email subscribers? Perhaps insight that will help them do their job better? Whatever the benefit, tell people.

2. Neglecting the basics. The media, bloggers and vendors get carried away with all the new tools and tactics available to email marketers. But even the most advanced campaigns need to be built on solid foundations, and these can get lost in all the excitement about what's new. This means first ticking the boxes on basic issues, like sending a welcome message to people who just signed-up, or ensuring your emails read and display properly, even if the images within are suppressed at the recipient's end (as they usually are).

3. Forgetting the "other" impacts of email. We tend to focus very much on the immediate, direct response to email, largely because it's normally pretty good. So we look at how many people clicked on a link and then bought or took some other action right that minute. With time, we've learned that email is also incredibly powerful at supporting long-term response, loyalty and action elsewhere. Not every email needs to get an immediate online sale: think also how it might build the customer relationship, nurture a lead along the sales cycle or get people to attend events, buy offline, share content with their social network, etc.

How important is it to track your numbers/traffic/e-mail responses while you're trying to gauge the reach of your product/service?

Numbers are obviously very important, but a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they tell you so much about where you might be going right or wrong with your emails. So you can, for example, look through responses to past emails and identify the elements that drive success (subject lines, offers, etc.). There are traps for the unwary though. In particular, there's a temptation in email to focus on one or two "intermediate" numbers, like the size of your address list or the number of clicks an email gets. All of these intermediate numbers are important, but your efforts do need to be judged by the end goal...typically sales or downloads or similar. Curiously, it's the important numbers that are sometimes ignored when we spend too much time obsessing over the mechanics of email. Nor do the numbers tell you everything. For example, a lot of people will get a marketing email and then type in the sender's web address by hand or do a related search at Google: an email response that is not normally picked up in campaign reports.

How do you think e-mail marketing fits in with other social media marketing platforms like blogs, Facebook, etc?

For a long while there was a big debate about which was better, but now we're finally understanding that it's not an either/or situation. Social media and social networks have their particular characteristics and are suited to particular business goals. Ditto email. As always, it's "just" a question of finding the right tool for the right job. For example, email is very good for driving conversions, social for driving conversations. And the two can work together, if that makes sense for your business. So you can use social networks to grow your email list, for example by embedding the sign-up form in your Facebook page or mentioning email content to your Twitter followers. Or you can use email to drive social success, for example by encouraging subscribers to share email content with their friends, followers and connections. You might promote Facebook competitions by email or simply ask subscribers to follow/like you. Or you can share content between social and email, for example by distributing blog posts by email, or using email content as a starting point for a discussion at Facebook. Social marketing has enormous potential, but people should not let that cloud the benefits of email marketing. After all, just about everyone online has email and the competition for attention in the average inbox pales into significance beside the chaos of, for example, a stream of Twitter messages.

Your “14 predictions for email marketing in 2031” is certainly entertaining, but do you feel that one day emailing and marketing may reach this point?

You know, I have difficulty making real predictions just for the rest of this year. The joy and challenge of marketing and selling online is adjusting to the ever-changing dynamics. But I do believe there will always be a place for those who deliver value to their customers (whether through email or elsewhere). We can certainly say there will be and more competition for attention online. While creativity, innovation, humor and a host of other things can grab attention in the short-term, long-term it's the value you offer with your products, services and web presence that builds lasting online success. On the other hand, by 2031 we might all be slaves to our smartphones and tablets, who'll make the marketing and purchasing decisions for us.

How have you seen e-mail marketing change over the past eight years or so since you’ve started your blog?

It's changed and also stayed the same. There's still a lot of people sending fairly basic, regular newsletter-type emails out. That's not a criticism - they do so because it works. And then there are those who have taken advantage of the huge array of tools that appeared over the last decade to send email where the content, sending times, offers etc. might be customized according to subscriber data or to the subscriber's individual behavior. In the last couple of years, there's been a positive trend toward automated campaigns. For example, when an email is sent to a customer who placed items in an online shopping cart, but didn't complete the transaction. Those kind of campaigns do extraordinarily well. I've seen examples where you're getting 200 times the costs in new revenue. In the next year or two, I expect the impact of mobile devices to grow. We're moving from one-device email (basically a desktop computer) to multiple-device email, where people are chopping and changing between their phone, tablet, laptop and/or computer. That has implications for what your email should look like, but I'm curious how mobile also affects subscriber behavior. The way people use email surely changes when it's accessible everywhere and at any time. The industry has certainly become more self-confident and there's now wider recognition that email is more than "just" a workhorse for pulling people back to websites or giving a quick sales lift. It's become a broader discipline, recognized as a versatile tool able to support a range of sales and marketing goals.