Read the rest of the Blogpreneur Series

So you want to go Viral?

Are you sure you haven’t?

When one person spreads your blog or site to another without your direct involvement, you just went viral. When enough people do it at once, you have an epidemic.

What about those 294 hits from Stumble that got you 3 links to your blog? That is the true viral effect of good blogging; the steady spread of good quality posts that will bring a growing flow of readers, which will bring more hits, more readers, more links. The never ending and creeping exponential growth that builds on itself perpetually. This is true viral marketing.

As soon as you realize what viral marketing really is, you’ll realize that what you probably  associated with it, is merely the sensational viral infection. The Ebola level of viral.

Although the Ebola effect is going to be great for your ego the day it hits, it’s going to hit, and disappear. And the traffic you get is probably not going to be based on what you are really about, but more on one single article. If you can’t keep that level, they won’t be coming back for long. The problem here is that the Ebola level isn’t what the smart blogger wants. A blogger wants something that hits, sticks, and keeps spreading.

You Don’t Want to be Ebola, You Want to Be Herpes

Ebola is sensational, it’s a once off event that is hard - if not impossible - to maintain. And since so many are misinterpreting the true value of the “lesser infection” they are all shooting for the sensationalism. Link Bait headlines that are a stretch at best to fit into the article. Fabricating entire stories the list of tricks is long. And it works sometimes, but even when it does, it doesn’t translate to what you want.

You want to target the right people. 100 targeted visitors are better than 1000 random ones any day. Why? because if they are targeted, chances are that you have something they want to see more of. You will get return visits, and referrals, links and comments. As you get those, you’ll get more readers, more people that can spread you to others. That’s viral marketing!

Ebola levels of Viral Marketing are most commonly achieved by creating something amazing that isn’t necessarily well targeted. It’s often funny, shocking, and widely appealing. Which is why it takes off like it does. People like the advertising, but couldn’t care less about the product. Which means that for you to do it again, you have to repeat the feat that didn’t bring you the right people to begin with.

If you shoot for the lower levels, constantly repeating small successes, you will eventually see your spread increasing. When this happens, your chances of hitting those epidemic levels increase every time you post a good article. It goes back to the one percent rule. It’s always better to slowly progress than to have spikes of traffic that quickly disappear.

Instant Gratification - Or Long Term Success?

If you are looking for an ego boost, then it’s great. If you are looking to grown over the long term. It’s better to aim for solid, repeatable quality. When you can bring one person back over and over, you will eventually get passed on to someone else. Repeat readers like RSS Subscribers are your best bet for achieving this.

A company that got it right never had Diggs front page to rely on, for them it was a matter of getting their name out there one person at a time. Every time that person used their service, it spread a little further. No real fireworks, no goofy guy’s home movie to sell them over YouTube.

You might have heard of Hotmail once or twice yourself. They did it by adding their link to the bottom of every email sent from one of their accounts. One at a time, they spread the word.

If you constantly shoot for the Epidemics, you’ll constantly be disappointed. If you aim for a silent spreading infection that perpetuates with every post you make. You are going to see some amazing results.

(Yes, the title of this post is Viral in itself - I’ll let you know how it went)

Can You Do ONE PERCENT Better?

Slow and steady wins the race, but this is a little mental trick to achieve that faster than you think.

It’s the one percent rule. It works because compounding that 1% makes it incredibly powerful. The one percent mindset breaks down those major goals into very manageable concepts.

Each time you do something, do it with the intention of making it one percent better.

-        Writing a post, make it one percent better than your best post

-        Make it one percent better Keyword targeted

-        Increase your subscriptions with one percent

-        Make your comments on other blogs 1% better, giving you 1% more visitors

-        Make 1% better comments in forums

-        Participate 1% more in Social Media

So how effective is this?
Compounding daily over a year. 1% turns into 3854%

Applied on several levels, that compounding will impact every other level as well, resulting in some pretty serious numbers.

Let’s do the math on this

Start with your best day. On this day let’s assume you made a great post that got you:

200 total hits
2 new RSS subscribers
1 Trackback link

If you work every day on being one percent better, you will have 7,540 NEW readers on your post this time next year. That’s over 7000 NEW readers in that one day one year from today.

Total unique visitors in that one year… hold on. 740,000+

Say that you convert +1% of your new readers into RSS subscriptions every day. Which means that your subscriptions go up 1% (Win some-Lose some)
(My conversion rate is 3.4% so this is actually aiming low.)

That’s a total of 7584 new subscribers in a year.

You will have amassed about 3600 links in that year to your blog.

Now apply that to the value of your blog in terms of:

Pricing for advertising.
Number of clicks you are getting on your ads,
Total value of your blog

And you will see that in a year, your blog could be earning a decent income.

Is This Really Possible?

Well you are reading the proof. This blog has been online now exactly 85 days, and the numbers I am seeing are proving the theory. On average, my stats are up 1.1% per day. Yesterday was the first day my Alexa ranking went under 100,000 (62,215) to be exact. Yes it’s a spike, the average fluctuates. But the average increase holds true.

I’ve had horrific days too, when i couldn’t figure out what the…. happened. It’s all part of the daily grind of running a business

I am convinced that the determined, focused, and driven can make a living doing this. Use the tips and tricks I’ve given in the previous Blogpreneur Posts, and you should be able to make a very decent living without doubt. Just remember that it won’t be tomorrow.

You’ll have great days, and not so great ones. But the sooner you pick your start date, and plot the one percent rule on a chart, the sooner you will be able to focus on what really matters.  - Steady improvement.

Go out there and get your 1% today

Too Much Too Soon

Many monetizing bloggers got stuck in the “I can make a million in 3 days” Thought pattern. They move from there to signing up for everything that promises to send them money and traffic.

They earn a cent here, and a cent there, (maybe even more>) Most of them however, aren’t earning what they could be because they can’t see the forest for the trees. Add insult to injury when you earn a little, you are afraid of losing those many small streams by removing ads. The end result is a blog that looks more like a Hong Kong street than anything.

All that data - No information

What a smart monetizer needs isn’t data - It’s information. Information that will tell them what is, and what isn’t working. Is it better to do A or B. What about B and C, or C and A… or… or… or… you get the point. Most advertising networks will give you loads and loads of data, and in some ways organize it for you. But to get real information, you have to do the work yourself.
You need a way to compare and streamline your advertising, getting the most out of what you can offer. The only way you can really do this, is to test, measure, change, and retest.

When this post was written, I’m using Adsense and Adbrite on this site. Here are three reasons for this combination;

- Adbrite is allowed to be on the same page as Adsense.

- They are similar in both appearance and functionality

- Adbrite also allows me to control pricing to a larger extent, this is interesting both because it can help me tweak the return, but more importantly, it will tell me whether I can do better than the automatic pricing option.

What this gives me is an easy way to compare the two against each other. In addition, wordpress has some great features for handling widgets and sidebar entries, and I’m quickly able to make changes and do test comparisons.

So what should you do when you test ads?

Get a Base Line

My suggestion for a new blogger would be to create a simple ad, and stick it in a place where you will keep it for a very long time. This ad will give you your base line. Something to compare other things to while you are testing your options. Keep this there for the first two or three months and do nothing to it. It will earn you a little, probably not much, but that’s not the important part. What you need it for is to compare the overall clicks to the new ads you are testing.
Don’t forget to create a channel for it.

1. Channels

If the ad network you choose allows you to use channels, Use them!
Create channels for every ad you use, in every location you use them.
Say for instance that you are using an ad in one column above the fold (the fold is what is shown on a normal screen without having to scroll down.) Create an easy to understand channel name for it. (rightcolumn_abovefold_image/text_120by160)

2. Time and timing

No ad should be tested for less than a week, it might be that you have a weekend audience that is very different from your weekday reader. Don’t sell yourself short by not testing it for at least one week in every location. I suggest 2 at the bare minimum.

3. Traffic Control

Don’t make the mistake of missing your traffic data, you have to determine not only the amount of earnings, but also compare it with two very important other numbers.
Total number of visitors, and where they came from.

It’s fairly well known that search engine traffic is best for converting to ad clicks. But there are differences on the other approaches as well. This is why click through rate is not a great comparison method. If you get 100 hits a day, and 90 comes from Search Engines, and then all of a sudden get a blast of traffic from a social bookmarking site like Digg or Stumble. Your click through rate will be lower. (Probably much lower.)

If that happens to coincide with testing a new ad placement, the wrong interpretation would be that the new placement didn’t work, When in fact the CTR rate was a result to a different type of visitor. This is why you need to keep an eye on your referrers.

This is why you should never test one ad alone, but always have your baseline to compare it to. There may be changes in your visitor type that you can’t easily see. But a drop in the baseline along with the rest will confirm this to you.

Multivariate Testing

This is a great term, and a lot of people are making great money doing it for you. Google Website Optimizer also allows you to do some of this for free. It means that you use several layouts and test them comparatively. (You can read about it here) However, when you do it that way, you can’t be sure that you are getting the right result since you are not really controlling where the visitors came from.

I also don’t think these systems are great tools for Blogs, it’s much better for websites, and especially websites that are trying to sell something. If you are selling merchandize, then by all means use it to test that page. But the ad-placement on a blog needs your personal attention.

A Little Now, or A Lot More Later

The way of testing ad types and ad placements on a blog is more of a slow and steady progress. I prefer to do it myself than to try and use the automated systems. Slowly and over time, doing it yourself will not only get you the best return, but it will have given you something automatic processes never can understanding and insight.

Test Patterns

Always keep one thing static. You can’t trust the numbers alone, something else might have changed, and will throw off your numbers compared to what you think they should be. Keeping the baseline ad, or something else static to compare against will help you keep your head straight.

1. Test two ads, in two locations, then let them change place. This will tell you if the location or the ad is the important part. Once you have determined which of the two performed best in that spot, move that ad there and leave it there for now.

2. Keep the best performing ad in that location, and move the other one around. This will tell you if the location can be improved. Once you have found the best performing spot. Let them change again. Determine what the result is, and lose the least performing ad and replace it with something else.

3. Test separate colors, For instance, I’m currently testing two separate headline colors on very similar ads. This will help you find the best performing palette with your blog. Keep testing, you might be surprised. Test color variations but keep everything else the same,

Ad Placement Maps

There are several guides and “hot zone” maps showing you how to place ads. And although it’s definitely a place to start, don’t trust it without question. You will be surprised how the general design of a blog, especially how it uses color and images will affect the click through rates. The only way to find out, is to test, and test some more.

I’ve said it before. Blogging for money is a business, treat it as one and you’ll be successful.

Do focused organized testing and allow yourself to take the time to do it right. Be methodical, and you will end up with a better looking blog that gives you better returns as well.

If you are intending to market your business to - or through - media channels, your best friend will be a well designed Media kit.

Media kits (also called Press Kits) help interested parties to find key information about you, your company and your products right when they need it. The easier this information is to obtain, and use, the better your chances are of getting it picked up.
Getting free publicity is never a bad thing.

A Media Kit is Useful For:

1. Spreading the word
Press kits act as a marketing tool to reporters of all kinds. Whether the person is producing materials for a blog or a major newspaper, a well designed press kit will get their attention. If you create a press kit that can get a reporters attention, you will be rewarded with increased exposure. Then it’s up to you to convert that exposure to whatever goal you are pursuing.

2. Attracting Advertisers
A press kit will give a potential advertiser access to the information they are looking for to make a decision. Having the right information in there tells them that you are the sign post they are looking for. Transparency, sells advertising. Don’t skimp on facts and figures.

3. Projecting Authority
Press kits are bragging posts. You can add things here that my may not want to publish in your own publication. How many are referencing you, what is being said about you. Things that might go against the normal rules of modesty can and SHOULD be in a press kit. Projecting authority is the key to bridging into new areas. If you write great blog posts, you might get asked to comment on a TV show. But you have to be able to show why you are the person they want.

Appeal to their Laziness

Remember, you are dealing with people looking for something. If they are looking for something to publish, chances are that they are on a deadline. Make it complete, interesting and do as much of their work for them as you can. You’ll see your press kit appear in places you never thought of. The stressed writer will gladly take well written text from press kits and republish it instead of missing a deadline.

People are inherently lazy; write text in third person that can be reused unaltered. if it gets republished, the sentence "We are a company who builds…" will have to be rewritten. Writing in third person appeals to the laziness inherent in most people. (And to the stressed journalist even more.)

What to Include

A press kit is comprised of three basic elements. (Static, Images, Dynamic)

1. Static Information
Facts about the company, things that don’t change or at least stays relatively fixed. This is where you can put all your background information.

Answer the standard battery of questions:
Whom - What - When - Where - Why - How

Write this information in easy to read, friendly, third person voice. DON’T make it read like a vision statement. A mission or vision statement is almost only republished when someone is writing about mission or visions statements.

The Press Release Trick

The static section should include Press-Releases. You should make a press release or two every month. A steady flow of press releases shows activity, which makes you newsworthy on its own. If you have tree releases spanning the last 18 months, you are not looking very active. Appeal to a publisher by telling them you are a business that is worth taking notice of.

You are also telling them that they better move before someone else gets the all important scoop on the next one. News people HATE being scooped, which works to your advantage.

Awards, recognitions, and references

Show them that you are the authority. Any accolade you have received should be noted and if possible shown in the static section. This is a lemming syndrome. If others think you are noteworthy, the person reading your press kit will think so too. If it’s an ego boost to you, put in in there.

2. Images
Remember that images are often a requirement, Logos, as well as pictures of relevant people and events.

Cover the Bases
Remember the lazy aspect. Don’t make them work to publish your image.

Include several versions of logos, banners and images. It is better for you to have several sizes than have your logo cut and butchered or even worse, skipped, because it doesn’t fit. If they can pick one that fits their available space, you don’t risk losing information because they re-sized your full width banner to a thumbnail.

Several formats

Have Black and White images ready. Some images just don’t look good when converted to B/W so it’s better to have done your own work there as well.

Print quality - Which normally is 300 dpi (dots per inch)
Try to include at least two of the following formats: TIFF, GIF, EPS (PDF is becoming more acceptable to most).

Web quality - which normally is 72 dpi
Try to include both JPEG and GIF

List images with a thumbnail and a clear description, and list the file formats available under as download links.

3. Dynamic Information
This is information that appeals to advertisers looking for a website or blog to publish their ads on. Show them everything they want in a simple easy for follow format. And keep it up to date. If possible use things like widgets to show your data in real time.

Hits and visits
How many hits you get on your site per day/week/month. How many customers frequent your location. You can also be even more specific, and tell them Weekday vs. Weekend, Data, I’ve seen that this can swing a publisher that has a specific target audience.

Subscribers
If you have an RSS feed or a mailing list, tell them how many you are reaching. Easiest way to do this is to have a feed widget published that shows your current number of subscriptions. Do not publish that widget however if your readers are low (some say 50, i’d say 100.) It turns away future subscribers to see low RSS Counts. But more on that in another post.

Demographics
Demographics are a huge selling point to advertisers. Get as much info as possible. You can gather information in several ways. A quick sidebar poll for instance is easy to create and a powerful way to get this information. Having it ready for your potential advertiser will increase your sales dramatically.

Display demographic information in charts and numbers. The Visual is a great selling tool.

Previous Advertiser Click through rates
If you’ve had ads before, tell them how many hits they generated.. If you can justify the price you are asking, you’ll get less apprehension from future buyers.

Be specific if you can. Tell them the difference between separate sizes and positions etc

Tell them the Price
If you are selling advertising space, don’t make it a mystery to find out how much. Let them know what you offer, what locations, sizes and prices of each opportunity.

Here is a pricing policy tip, Give them several levels with the second to last made unattractive by the top level.
- Text ad in RSS feed - $79/month
- 120 by 120 Thumbnails in sidebar - $199/month
- Banner $ 299/month
- RSS Feed and Banner $300 per month.

This trick actually increases the sales of the top level. The third option will get no sales, but it makes the top offer look attractive. If you get rid of the "package" top level, less people will buy the $299 banner than would the $300 package. opting for one of the lower levels instead . Always have the "duh" price in there. It might seem silly, but it has proven very effective.

Actual Factual

Don’t subject a publisher to hype. If you make a claim, make it a truthful one. They will not be very pleased with you if they publish something that turns out to be false. These people are spreading your name and increasing your notoriety, don’t make them regret it.

If you sell advertising space based on inflated numbers, you are guilty of false advertising yourself. You sell advertising more if you already have advertising there. So losing advertisers because they didn’t get what they expected will slow down your future sales as well when your ad slots are sitting empty.

Give them everything they need

If you are looking to get noticed, try to have everything that a publisher might want in one easy to access location. This includes the text, images, facts and figures etc. Make this accessible in one single file. A .zip or .rar file is online publishing standard. Again, appeal to their laziness. Give them what they want prepackaged, and ready to go.

They will want a quick fact sheet of information that includes:
- Name of Company and or Publication
- Contact information
- Exact URL
- Submission Deadlines
- Payment and Ordering information

Tell Them the Copyrights

Give clear instructions what they can publish, what they can change. And what they have to either keep as is, or request permission before changing. This is a common concern for someone looking to republish information, and if they can’t get it quick enough. They might skip you for someone that has it clearly listed.

Make it Easy to Find

Don’t hide your press kit in a link under "about" or "contact", give it its own link prominently displayed.
PRESS - PRESS KIT - MEDIA KIT work very well as link names. Whatever you choose, Just make sure that people don’t have to look around to find it. Although many hide it in the footer, if you want to sell ads, your better off putting it in the header.

Don’t Lose Out

A well designed media kit resolves the major problem of time. If it is available when needed, you don’t have to worry about missing an opportunity because you couldn’t take a call or answer an email in time.

Most bloggers will agree that rather than signing up for the ad networks, actually doing the work yourself, contacting the advertisers and selling your real estate is more powerful as a money earner. It’s obvious; no one else is taking a percentage of the price. The downside is that now you have to figure out how to get these advertisers.

So how do you attract someone when you are just starting out?

You need to build your blog to a certain extent in order for it to be attractive, if you have 12 visitors a month, No one is going to want to pay much for space. So the trick would be to boost your numbers first. Advertisers are paying for exposure. You’ll have to figure out how to get those numbers before you will be interesting to most.

Always consider having a media kit on your site for advertisers to look at. It increases the conversion rate for every attempt you’ll make on selling a slot. Media Kits are complete information packages about you, your blog, its demographics, and its current statistical data.

You should always have a page set up for advertisers to look at regardless of whether you have a media kit or not. The page should contain the sales and payment information for instance. I suggest putting a price chart on there as well. Let them know from the start what they are buying and for how much.

But there is more that you can do than just having a media kit, tricks that you can apply that are powerful, simple, and most of all effective.

Start by setting yourself up right. Make some space for your ads, Find the placements you want to sell and create the areas for it. You really need to have something before you can sell it. Find out the most common Banner sizes; pick the ones you think will fit well with your current layout. Don’t just slap oversized ads on your blog, it looks unprofessional and it will cost you sales.

Now, you can consider the “your ad here” blank ad space linked to your information page. But I would not recommend that in case you don’t have other ads up already. It looks unattractive to an advertiser to be the only one buying the spot. If no one else is, why should they? Never have just that space on your blog, it tells people that no one wants to advertise there.
Instead of the blank space, use The “You’re Losing Business” trick

Find a company that advertises on blogs like yours, and simply copy the ad to your spot. If you choose wisely, they normally won’t mind the extra exposure, and you’ll appear to have advertisers.
Pick wisely, because you are going to use the ad to sell it to other people in the same industry. Showing them that their competitor is getting exposure and that they can either “buy them out” or get a spot next to it.

As soon as you have sold some other spaces, you can contact the company you gave free publicity to, and show them the data. How many hits you generated etc., and ask them if they are willing to continue the exposure. Don’t forget to tell them what competitors of theirs you are branding at this time.

Advertise yourself or your Friends

If you feel uncomfortable with that, just create ads for other sites that you or friends own. Anything is really better than nothing. Again, no one wants to be the first. It’s always better to appear to be popular in a popularity game.

A third option, and perhaps the most ethical is to contact the companies that you feel make a good target for your advertising, and offer them a free trial. Once that trial is about to run out. Contact them and try to sell them on continuing based on the numbers you have already produced.

Either way you want to do it, remember that before you have substantial numbers. You won’t be getting much income. Once that happens, advertising sales can be one of the most rewarding ways to build a steady income.

How to Price

Determining how much you should charge for ad space is the hard part. A very simple way to determine this is to Use AdSense “channels” to help you out.

If you want to sell a 125×125 spot. Put an AdSense button there assigned to a specific channel and see what it generates. Then I would suggest a decent starting point would be to add 25% to that income for a fixed ad. In other words, if your AdSense earned you $1 dollar in a given day, then sell it for $1.25, and do a little simple math.
Week = $1.25 x 7 = $8.75 - sell it for $9 per week.

Start reasonably low, Its better to undersell your opposition and make a little less, than getting nothing. Instead of worrying about if you could be making more, remember that before your first sale, you were making nothing. Take your time, build you business with good planning, one step at a time. You’ll be better off in the long run.

Digger wrote very good article on how to calculate your prices once you get your feet wet. Where you’ll also learn a lot about how to calculate long term discounts. A strongly suggested read.
Check it out here. A Calculator For Properly Pricing Your BlogAds And Sponsorships

A little planning. Some basic preparation, and good old fashioned hard work can turn a blog into a money maker. How much? That is really up to you and your determination.

Some ways are easier than others; some will earn you more money than others. But in the long run, it’s all about building a solid brand and a good base of readers before you will see much return.

1. Advertising Networks
Advertising networks such as AdSense, Adready, etc. is the most common way of monetizing.
It’s Important to realize that most ad networks don’t work very well until you have search engine traffic. People who arrive from other sources don’t click as much as you’d think. However, a few cents can always be made on page impressions alone. Never a bad idea, but not the goldmine its painted out to be.

It’s easy to sign up, it’s easy to implement, and in most cases, it’s problem free. It is however not a great way to make a lot of money unless you have serious amounts of good search engine traffic.

2. Direct Selling Ads
You can sell Ad-Space to companies direct. This is not that hard to do, but it does require you to do a little more work on your own. You also need to monitor the ads, adding and removing as contracts expire. Your price and revenue will depend on both your traffic, and your negotiating skills.

3. E-Books
If you have quality material to sell, then you can write an e-book and sell it through your website. You can also upload e-books for sale to Amazon. The E-book is the most common gateway to serious diversified monetization. It is also a powerful traffic builder if used right.

4. Print Books
If you are a blogger, you might have it in your to write a full book for print.
Print on demand, Google, Amazon and other services have great ways to market print books alongside your own blog. A book has the additional benefit of being a perpetual money earner. Once it’s out there, you can reap the benefits for a very long time.

5. Merchandise
You have a blog? Maybe there is a market for some t-shirts, posters, Coffee Mugs or other ideas. Cafepress has made it very easy to make merchandize with zero cost. You can of course do it the traditional way too. Which gives you better profit per item, but has the problem of finding a manufacturer of your products, stock and shipping.

If you are already producing something, you can of course add a web shop to the blog. But that’s really not about blogging. That’s more a traditional e-business approach.

6. Affiliate Marketing
Some businesses will make you their sales person. Either by just advertising, or by actually doing the sales work for them and earning a commission (see point 7.) This is one of the most popular ways of monetizing, but it has also become a bit of a scourge of the blogging world. Be careful since this can damage your brand.

7. Build your own Amazon (or other) shop
Amazon allows you to advertize a specific product. You can choose the exact ad you want to show. This can allow you to make a product review, and advertise the sale through Amazon. Doing this tastefully can actually be a very good way to earn a living, I’ve seen some very sophisticated applications of this approach.

8. Member Services
Provide a subscription based part of the website that gives access to VIP information, services etc. If you are trying this one, make sure that the value given is worth the investment. Or you will get plenty of bad reviews written about you and your service.

9. Consulting / Coaching
If you are a specialist, or have a business where you can give advice, you can leverage that by giving either online advice or channeling customers to your real world business. This works especially well for Consultants and Personal Coaches, but designers, programmers, and other computer oriented blogs can make good money this way too.

10. Paid Posts
There are plenty of companies out there that will pay you to make a post on your blog. You’ll need some traffic and basic notoriety before this becomes an option. Be careful! You might lose credibility if you do not disclose that you are making a paid post. There are enough bloggers out there that get the same offers as you do. Your readers will know what’s real and whats been paid for sooner or later.

11. Links
Another common offer is to get paid for links from your page. This only becomes viable once you have a decent pagerank, and since this is frowned upon by Google, you might get that pagerank taken away. Not something I’d advice on doing.

12. Sell it
Blogs are being sold all the time, once you have designed your blog and brought it up to speed, there might be a market to sell it. However, building a blog and traffic etc just to sell it rarely is a very effective way to spend your time. If you are a great blogger, that has all the tricks of Traffic building down. Then you might be the person to have this as a goal. Otherwise, time/value is just not there.

Blogging for a living is not as easy as many advertisers out there might want you to believe. But it is possible for those with drive, determination and a firm grasp on the difference between leveraging, and selling their brand name down the tube.

Good Luck!

The New Marketing Channels

Read the previous Entries:

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

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So the market has changed, there is no denying that fact any longer. Now the question is how do we adapt and break in to this new marketplace? Since the traditional avenues of direct marketing, commercials, advertising etc. are drying up, we need to find the openings that have been created instead.

These new openings revolve around word of mouth, this is the new hard currency of marketing and the reason so many traditional dinosaur marketers have problems adapting. Word of mouth is hard to measure, largely uncontrollable, and almost impossible to buy without running the risk of being exposed as a "cheater." Hence, it is every traditional marketers and CEO’s nightmare. What can’t be exactly measured, reported and controlled with a spreadsheet tends to be ignored. This is fine; those who adapt will just have more business when the rest keel over.

Advertising Is Dead, Long Live Advertising

The basic rules of advertising have not really changed. AIDAS (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, Satisfaction,) still holds true. The major change that social media has added, is Confirmation . Instead of having a single place in the chain, confirmation is now the center of the customer’s decision making process. Although the confirmation part is integral, it can be skipped. It can also occur between each step of the chain, multiple times if necessary. This is why the hard sell doesn’t work anymore either. The customer is demanding the right to abort any decision process to return to the confirmation part. More often than not, a hard sell approach will trigger this apprehension and drive the customer to verify with their network.

To avoid hype, people are looking to their networks to find someone who knows and is willing to talk. These experts can be anyone with the forum and will to voice their opinion. These networks are multilayered, a friend might not know the answer, but knows a blog that discusses the topic. This is considered more reliable than the corporate website.

The initial reach and market penetration is not happening through traditional mass advertising, but through targeted lifestyle and spokesperson advertising. In order to reach the new target audience, the powerful marketers of tomorrow will be on an increasing level people with some notoriety in a specific field. Being famous is no longer enough to create interest - context is.

The use of celebrities has become synonymous with major brand advertising, and as such, it carries little or no reference trustworthiness. Whereas smaller artists, athletes, bloggers, and other micro-celebrities are beginning to carry more weight because they are often seen as independent and with a higher degree of integrity and honesty.

What is important to notice is that the impact value of celebrities is diminishing, whereas the group specific role-model is increasing. Group specific in this case means anyone can represent you, as long as they are contextual. You can notice this in that celebrity endorsements have declined compared to just a couple of years ago.

No One Cares What Tiger Woods Drinks

The consumer is looking for contextual endorsements; a golf club is a great promotion for Tiger, IF he plays it himself. Or he can explain why this is a great club for an amateur and use his expertise to project believability. But he can’t sell Pepsi or any other drink very well anymore. Especially if he isn’t seen drinking it on the course. We see it more and more, celebrity advertising for non contextual products is dropping fast.

Also noteworthy here is that the reason for the non-celebrity advertising being more prevalent is not the ineffectiveness of the celebrity as such, but the ineffectiveness of TV advertising as a whole. There is simply a need to cut the production cost of TV and print campaigns to balance the reduced conversion rates that they are seeing.

This is where the micro-celebrity comes in. People are looking to the smaller more focused person, one that by default places a lot on the line with his or her word. These are the real marketers of the future.

A blogger promoting a product can have a higher impact value than a Tiger Woods promotion. Unless it is something that Mr. Woods uses on the course and thereby places his own reputation and success on the line with. Since very few people believe that Tiger actually drives a Buick, his endorsement of the vehicles they produce has been reduced, we have seen most car manufacturers move away from the celebrity endorsement to market to what the customer needs are, which currently is price and mileage. Mr. Woods’ contract with Buick expires in ‘09; I for one would be surprised if it was extended past that point.

Blessed are the Geeks

Traditionally, a marketing campaign would find their target market, and then find the middle segment -the large part of the curve - that consisted of normal users. Early adapters and latecomers were ignored as this market was the small portion of the fringe. And it was thought that early adopters would simply respond faster to traditional advertising.

As I discussed in Part 1, the middle of the road are no longer interested in hearing about your product. They have become exceptionally good at ignoring marketing messages. To get traction now, you need the people with the highest propensity to look for, and be excited by, new items.

All of a sudden, we have arrived at the evolution. Now, previously ignored market segments of earliest adopters, The Geeks , are ruling the earth. By reaching them, catering to their specific needs and wants, - which in most cases is extensive and factual information - you will create the necessary buzz around your product or service. And only through them will you be able to properly penetrate the social media networks to get enough spread. These geeks are key players in certain areas, and often have large followings of people who listen to what they say.

The early adopter is a decision maker based on two primary criteria. They want remarkable products, and they need plenty of information. In order to reach them, this information has to be available for them to become excited. What is important to recognize is that the early adopter will sell a new product before they have seen it. Your advertising can’t just sell on spin anymore; it has to sell on fact. Your word of mouth reach through these networks is the spin.

Watch Out For the Fake Geek

Although the Geeks have already passed along the social media craze well into the mid range of "normal targetable consumers." They are also the ones that pioneer the new social media sites. When a social media site becomes packed with dinosaur marketers spamming everybody, the geeks leave. When they do leave they take with them much of the credibility of that particular channel to the next evolution in social media,

To the dinosaur marketer, the obvious solution is to create a "fake geek." jumping on new forums to spread your message, but this doesn’t work well either. The "real geeks" will search and destroy any such effort, only when the onslaught is too big will they give up protecting their realm and move on to the next one. You can never maintain spam and early adopters in the same network for long. You can stay there and spam with once the early adopters have left, but your conversion rates will drop instantly when this is the norm.

A Shilling Backlash

The "shill" - a person that is paid to act like an unaffiliated customer endorsing a product, is perhaps the worst idea possible to work within this realm. It is considered one of the worst types of dishonest spam, and people are becoming VERY good at spotting this. As soon as a shill is suspected, the community will immediately paint the company out to be dishonest and underhanded. A real, honest endorsement from a customer is gold, to get caught manufacturing these is equal to suicide in most cases.

When approaching the marketplace as it looks today, honesty and disclosure have become watchwords. The customer is too smart to accept anything less than ethical marketing. They will force ethics by actively de-railing and exposing any attempts they spot to circumvent the rules of the new social networks. In the new marketplace you need to be both remarkable, and forthcoming, or you will fail on reaching the target audience.

Going Viral - Not What it Looks Like

The magic word today is Viral. The holy grail of social marketing is to find that one pearl that will spread itself like wildfire. And many companies are making a decent profit on promising viral marketing. This is an area to watch, and watch carefully. In many ways, it does not convert like you would expect. If used to spread a message that isn’t true, or leaves the customer feeling cheated, you will hear about it.

Viral marketing requires that the advertising itself is noteworthy, not the product. This creates a disconnect between what advertising is accomplishing, and what marketing should be doing. Viral marketing is so powerful that it can be intoxicating in itself. But the effect of a great viral campaign to promote a so-so product is disappointing in many ways. You’ll get noticed, which can be great for the ego, but if you’re not living up to the expectations. It won’t be good for business.

You could theoretically create something like "Poo-Perfume - He’ll never forget your scent ", and through a funny video ad blast the viral campaign wide open. You have the two parts of a successful viral campaign, the outlandish product and a funny advertisement that would be noteworthy by itself. But apart from gag stores, no one would buy your particular scent. These viral campaigns are excellent for brand building and to keep your name in front of a potential customer. However, the product has to deliver quality that matches the hype, or you are selling Poo-Perfume to everyone that thinks they bought Chanel.

The viral campaign is great for Branding, and to keep an already recognized name in front of customers. It may however not provide many sales. In order for the viral campaign to function, it has to provide an interest that can be converted into action, and that can only be done if the rest of the solutions are in place. Many of the viral campaigns you see out there miss this goal by a mile. The ad is watched millions and millions of times on YouTube, but conversion are average at best.

Since the viral spread is so powerful, if your product or service fails to meet expectations when the customers flock to find you, your negative effect can kill you as quickly as the viral boosted you to begin with. Remember that the social networks are as powerful in bringing bad products down as they are blasting a great idea into orbit.

It’s Your Call - Evolve, Or Perish

You can and must prepare to handle the new expectations of the marketplace. Social media has changed the behavior of your customer. The technical evolution of cell phones with IM, Email, Twitter and everything else connected into one persons pocket has left zero room for error. Every customer has to be treated like The editor of the New York Times, because quite frankly, their reach can be just as big.

Passing On a Sale Is Long Term Profit

Your name, brand, and business are on the line every time you try. Since you don’t know how many readers follow this particular customer. Your only bet is to apply good old fashioned business sense. It’s better to talk a customer out of a sale that isn’t what they want than to have him or her talk 400 people out of making a purchase later.

Quality Is Your Only Hope

Without it you will be left without remedy when someone is displeased. Your best bet is to fix a problem as they occur. If your business model is based on sub standard products, you can’t do this. The amount of complaints will take the profit right out of any venture. And the lack of remedy will be noticed, discussed and taken apart in public forums that you have no real control over. If you lack a direct relationship between your promise, and your delivery you won’t last long.

You can’t adopt old techniques to new media.

The key trait of any dinosaur is to attempt to fit old into new. Remember that the new media networks were created so that traditional marketing can be avoided. The only way to get old style messages into new media is to change the delivery method, which means you are trying to mass advertise without admitting that you are. We know by now that bring sneaky, underhanded, or dishonest is not the way to build relationships.

With Their Permission

Your customer is not willing to be accosted by marketing and hard sales anymore. Ask permission, don’t do it in a clandestine way either. Tell them what you want, and accept that the ones that are interested enough to give you permission to contact them are your best targeted audience to begin with. Anything less than a customer’s express permission is spam. Just because it is legal does not make it welcome.

When They Want It

Google is the key to many businesses success, being on page one there means that anyone that finds you. Should have been looking for what you have. This is why it’s a bad idea for you to have non-contextual search words on your webpage. It brings visitors that are looking for something else. Since they aren’t interested in what you have to tell them, you are wasting their time. Not a good place to start a relationship.

Customers Relations Spread

Your relationships with your customers will spread - Negative and positive experiences alike. Focus on the customer experience, and forget about the short term profit margin. You don’t like to be nickel and dimed, neither does your customer. The difference between the dinosaur age and today, is that your customer through social media and technology has a way of sharing this experience with everyone they know before they have reached their car.

The Market Is Not Yours to Take - But It Is Yours To Lose

You can’t blast your message out there until you reach enough people. There aren’t enough people interested to make it worth your effort. You can’t buy, get, or cheat your way successfully for long in the modern market. The customer is in control, and you are along for the ride.

They will not trust what you say, what your advertisements say, or what celebrities on TV say about you. They trust their networks, and their own experience. When you have their trust, you become part of that network, and they sell you to the rest of the world. Break that trust, and you just fired your best salesman.

Dinosaurs May Be a Dying Breed, But a Live One Can Still Kill You

Pay close attention to any idea that carries the traits of a Dinosaur Marketer. Anytime it sounds like they are about to break the cardinal rules of maintaining a good customer relationship as I’ve expressed here, they are liable to bring you into extinction with them.

You can’t really blame them; this evolution has shook up much of what was true in the past. Change is painful, hard and for some almost impossible when their entire world is built around providing a service that is no longer cost effective. Just be prepared to protect yourself and your company, because a dinosaur marketer isn’t willing or capable of doing it for you.

You can still read The Blogpreneur 1

So you are still convinced that you want to try your hand at the business of blogging for money? Good for you, determination and drive are the most important aspects of any business venture. You’ll need plenty of both to be a successful blogpreneur.

Now, remember what was said In Part 1. This IS a business, and you should treat it as such. Like any other business the better prepared you are before getting into it, the sooner you will see the results. Although learning on the job is a popular way to go with blogging, there are very few bloggers who can’t write a post called “what I wish I knew before I started blogging.”
This list is a combination of things I wish I had known and common problems I’ve observed.

1. Patience
It takes time, and you won’t see much return early on. It is however possible to succeed with hard work and staying power. If you don’t love the idea of working on this for months - maybe even years - before you start showing any real income. Do yourself a favor and spend the time doing other things. You’ll be less frustrated and just by walking down the street you have a better chance of picking up cents than a bad blog will.

2. Set Yourself Up For Success From The Beginning
Don’t try the “let’s see what happens” approach, remember this is a business, and businesses do better with good planning and preparation. Research everything, make a plan and research it again.

Frustration and disillusion are the two major killers of the blogpreneur. Be your own worst critic before you start and you’ll do a lot better once you get going. By doing your legwork early, you’ll produce a better blog and see less setbacks. Trust me, you’ll see enough of them as it is.

3. Get Self Hosted
Get your domain name, it’s not expensive, get your design worked out, do all the legwork before you get half way and have to make changes, redirecting your blog etc. It’s worth the $6 a month to get self hosted right away. If only to avoid future problems.

Although you can be successful on hosted blogs like Blogger etc., most professional bloggers choose the freedom of self hosting. You have much better control over anything from your layout to your content. I also think that you also have better control over your statistics than most free services offer. And good stats are key to understanding what your customers are doing.

4. Read Your Competition
The more you read, the better you will get at understanding why the big ones are constantly hitting it big. It’s not just their size, it’s the fact that they have tapped into what people want to read. Read their posts and read the comments that are left there. The number of comments are a decent indicator of the overall popularity of a post. So pay close attention to the posts with many comments.
Make sure that you don’t ignore the lessons they are teaching with every post they put out there. The giants are where they are because they know this game better than you do.

Never steal posts; it’s just bad business to get a bad name in the blogging world. It will make success a whole lot harder in the long run. That being said, when you read others posts that you like or maybe disagree with. Posting your own thoughts and linking back to their post is perfectly acceptable. Again, treat this like a real business. Approach it with integrity; it might not be as easy as cheating and stealing. But it’s the only way to last long enough to actually make a profit.

The more you read, the easier you will have to find topics you want to write about as well. Think of it this way. Whenever you see a photo from a famous author’s home, you will see books, lots and lots of books. And I bet you that the RSS readers of most A-list bloggers looks like the library of congress.

5. Make Blogging Friends
There are lots of blogging networks out there. BlogCatalog is a good example. Start by joining one or more of these communities, participate in the discussions. You will be able to pick up a ton of great advice before you have to learn through your own mistakes.

Treating blogging as a business means that you need to network. Set time aside everyday to participate in some kind of forum or other area. You will save time, frustration and money listening to the ones that have been doing this for a while.

6. Write For Your Readers, Not For The Money
Sure, you want to make money, but the second you forget that you have to get and keep readers, you will lose them and your potential earnings with them. Great writing on interesting topics brings people. And people are what is going to bring you money.

You will see the phrase “content is king” enough times to want to choke the person that coined it with their underwear. It’s a cliché, but like every cliché it became one because it’s true. If your writing isn’t great, chances are that you won’t get very far.

7. Forget About The 3 Million Dollar First Month
Forget about the 20 dollar first month too.
You probably won’t make money in the beginning, at least not to any great extent. The reason why so many quit early on is because they are writing their hearts out and getting close to nothing in return. Few readers, no money, little recognition are the trademarks of a new blog. Add to that the mistake of thinking that in 9 articles will be able to retire, and the disillusion is complete. (The reason for all those abandoned blogs I mentioned)

Blogging is hard and harsh. Unless you are prepared to stick with it, you have absolutely no chance of getting anywhere. Check out any of the great sites. And you will see that they have hundreds of articles. A basic reason they are here now is that they made it past the initial hump when things weren’t going so well.

8. Don’t Promote Something You Don’t Have
When you are new, write and write some more, tweak your layout, get it looking right. Each time someone visits a brand new, mostly empty blog, you may be losing a potential future reader because they don’t find anything worth coming back for. Get a good 10 - 15 posts online before you even consider hardcore promotion.

Use this early time to have friends look it over, tell you what they think, give you feedback on your writing and everything else. This is your product development. The sooner you get it right, the better off you’ll be.

9. Promote Others Before You Promote Yourself
While you are still new, use the time wisely to build good relationship and networks on the social media sites. Reddit , Technorati , Stumble , Digg , etc. Building a strong network of people who can help you drive traffic later will get you much better results than starting too soon. And doing it yourself is not very effective.

By actively participating in these networks without excessive self promoting, you will build a strong base for when you need the leverage.

10. Learn Basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
There are a ton of books, blogs and sites out there, and your competition is reading them. You should too. Learn enough to understand what works, and what is absolutely essential. The best earning websites are often the ones with page one listings on Google. There are no two ways around this. You won’t need to be the best SEO guru in the world right off the bat. But stay on top of this as well. The rules of this marketplace changes every time Google rewrites their algorithm, and you’ll have to adapt with it.

Also, those that arrive from a search engine are more likely to click ads than those that arrive from other sources. Since they are already searching for something, and the ads on your page are likely to be as relevant as your own page.

And for goodness sake, avoid that black hat temptation like the plague. A lot of your work will be for nothing if you get banned. It might be tempting to take that shortcut to the Google first page, but it will bite you in the rear eventually.

11. Patience
Yes I said that before, but it seems to be in such short supply among new bloggers I thought I’d mention it twice.

12. Write 20 Timeless Posts Before You Even Think About Launching
Writers block is something that happens to everyone, and can kill a new blog very quickly. If you have a set of posts that you can drop on the days that you have gotten completely stuck, you will be able to maintain your blog. Also remember that you will get sick, stuck in an emergency or have something else go wrong that will stop your writing. Having a backup is never a bad idea.

This is also a great way to ensure that you have enough to say about your topic to actually have a blog on it. If you can’t come up with 20 posts when it’s fresh, you’ll probably have trouble coming up with it later too. Making them timeless means that you can use one whenever you need it, any other blog post is to be treated like perishable goods.

When you do use one, try to write a replacement for it so that you never run out of posts.

13. Think of the next step (Yes I know this is a list of 12, but 11 doesn’t really count)

Always think one step further, what is the next level of your blog. Is it a book? Webcast? Vlog? The options are out there to keep innovating yourself. Keeping up with trends lets you stay on - if not ahead - of the curve and keep your blog fresh and inviting. Also thinking to the next step of what you can offer your readers is the best way to make sure you are leveraging the earning potential. Just go slow and produce quality, remember that value in your offer is everything to maintaining a good relationship.

Remember, as a business, the blog is like any other, you need to meet your customers’ expectations in order to get return business.

Blogging as a business is probably one of the lowest cost enterprises you can attempt, but with that comes the hoards of others who have the same idea. You have to be able to both stand up over the crowd as well as outlast most of them before your investment will give you a lasting and significant return.

The Blogpreneur-3 will focus on the monetizing itself. Ads, products and services you can use to earn an income. Don’t forget to subscribe to get the remainder of this series.

So you started a blog to get rich? You saw all the promises, heard all the great ways to monetize and you jumped right in expecting to see your bank account ticking away like the Energizer Bunny. You were going to sleep ‘til noon and write a post every three weeks between the champagne brunches in your ocean sized pool and your dates with the supermodel-twins. And then take the private jet to your Hawaii beach home for a nice late dinner. Right?

What? It didn’t work? The hell you say! You’ve made 9 cents on AdSense since you started 12 days ago and you are wondering what part of blogging school you slept through? You want to know why your new Mercedes isn’t sitting in the driveway already. Why is that moldy slip-n’-slide still sitting where your pool was supposed to be by now?  Why haven’t you gotten a single call from the bank asking what they should do with all the money that’s piling up?

Well, let me clue you in to the real secret here. If you want to make money doing it, blogging is a business . And like every other business ever invented, it takes time, effort, energy, and creativity to get anywhere. It also takes money (Professional blogging is cheap - not free.)

Top 6 Reasons You Aren’t Making Money

1. You are New

The blogs making it big have been at this for a long time.People like Darren Rowse at ProBlogger for instance are indeed professional bloggers. They make a very decent living. But in no way is it a matter of sitting back and doing nothing.  Darren is a smart businessman, with great writing skills who works very hard at providing the best blog about blogging he can. (Along with some other blogs that he also publishes.) And he has been at this since 2002 - that’s six years of building his brand. Until you have six years under the belt, comparing yourself to him is a bad idea.

True, some people might blast off in a week or two, hitting it big right away, that happens in all businesses. Just don’t count on it being you. It is not the norm.  Most of those claiming to have done it have remarkably little proof of the fact. Some blurred out AdSense screenshots maybe.  They are however very eager to sell you their super duper secrets in a $19.95 e-book. You do the math.

2.      Competition is Fierce

Blogging is often marketed as a way for anyone, to make a Billion in 9 minutes. This means that there are going to be thousands and thousands of people thinking that this is their new way to freedom.  This is why small blogs are getting so little attention. There is a dime a dozen of them and most disappear within weeks, maybe months.

The problem for a new blogger is that many of these abandoned blogs sit there indefinitely, and when you are new, you are still competing with them since they have about the same amount of content. So not only are you competing with other bloggers, you are competing with bloggers that have already given up. and they are outperforming you on Google too… The unfairness of it all!

3. You are Blogging for the Wrong Reasons

Blogging with the intent of making money is becoming less and less possible. Blogs designed for this purpose try to hide it, but more often than not fail miserably. The intent shines through clearly, and people don’t like wasting time going to sites that offer nothing. If your only intent is to earn money, you probably won’t.

4. You Forgot the Other 90%

AdSense is the dominant “gateway-drug” of monetizing a blog. But advertising isn’t the only way you can make money. Most of the big time bloggers have created products that they sell for revenue. E-books, Print books, T-shirts, seminars, consulting, there are 1001 ways to leverage your blog.

Hold on for a second and consider that. They produced something they are selling? Doesn’t that sounds remarkably like a…. a…. Business?  Oh the horror! It IS a business after all.

Just remember to produce something that has VALUE! Before you go and sell it, this is a social media, and people will let you and the world know if they think you scammed them.

5. You are Overdoing it

If your blog has enough ads on it to choke a supercomputer, you will create sensory overload, and they will probably leave your site before it even finishes loading. Or if it does load, they surely will bounce on by as soon as the headache appears.

6. You Picked a Niche That 18 Million Other Bloggers Picked Before You

Your niche is making money, so you can welcome yourself to the largest blogging niche there is. It’s the same nice as every other blogger who started with the thought “I want to make a million sleeping in everyday.”

Since this is your objective, forget what you claim your blog is about. If making money was your idea, then you’re in that niche. And that niche is drying up fast. Long gone are the days where any old blog was considered newsworthy and cool. Welcome to the real world of grit your teeth and write blogging.

You can be a professional blogger, it’s just not going to be as easy as that $19.95 e-book said it was.

Blogging for a living sure beats a lot of other jobs, just don’t fool yourself into thinking that it’s any less work. It is a business; being successful requires the same amount of determination and drive as any other business. Oh, and work, lots and lots of work.

Now start writing already. Mercedes is not in the business of trading samples for product reviews.

If this article didn’t depress you, make sure you subscribe to get the second part. “How to get your blogging business off to a good start.”

Parts One and Two Are still available, Please remember to Subscribe to get the last part.

Your New Marketing Approach - Claiming to Care is not Enough

Customer Centricity has been a catch-phrase for a while now. Many businesses still fail to understand what this is really about. It is not the practice of kissing your customers derriere, nor is it about gathering metric data to ensure that you know the size and color underwear they prefer. To be customer centric means you are in the business of being a real solution to their problems. A real solution that exists at their leisure, the price they want, and most importantly, that meets or exceeds their expectations. It is imperative, because customer centricity is the only real approach that ensures positive feedback. Positive feedback is the name of the game for your future success.

Your customer is re-learning the habit of asking people for opinions before making a decision. This is becoming the norm for most transactions. Your current customers will be talking to your future customers. You can no longer make overstated promises. Your customer is too smart, and has the benefit of learning from your past customers.

Referrals and positive word of mouth are the two major drivers of business in the new marketplace. Either can only be achieved by positive customer experiences. The end result of the social media revolution is that the marketing of today and the future will focus on completely different areas than it has been in the past. Advertising and catchy sales pitches are already taking a distant second place to the power of customer recommendations.

Marketing Today - One Step at a Time

As discussed in part one and two. The customer wants to be in control of the information they are exposed to. This creates a set of problems for reaching out with new products or ideas. In the past, advertising was the key issue here. You would blast advertising until you got a market penetration and then streamline it for effectiveness. Today, since you are not welcome to do this, you are looking at a slightly slower start phase; the return is that the products that are successful will see rapid growth as they reach critical mass on the word of mouth level. To get there, you have to relinquish some of the control to the customer; they will decide when your input is welcome.

Stages of Marketing

In order to cater to the new buyer behavior, you have to build your marketing on several levels. It is not enough to market to drive a sale. Marketing now occurs in stages, success demands that these stages are created appropriately to meet customer expectation at each level. Catering to their needs for where they are in the decision making process. Each one of these stages has to allow for customer feedback, talking TO the customer is not enough, you have to be prepared to communicate WITH them.

I will skip over the steps of product development, packaging etc. for now, and move to the relationship focus in the information and sale stages. Getting the right product to the market however follows the same principle. Listen to what the customer wants first, and try to solve that problem with your product. Any other way will be less than successful as consumers get smarter. You are rarely welcome to tell them what their problem is, instead they want to inform you about the solution they want first.

Staging marketing for customer relations means being prepared to receive the customer as they become increasingly interested and by growing the relationship on all levels, propel that interest closer toward the sale. The key concept here is that each contact should be receptive, not intrusive. Provide useful information about the product or service. Only at a late stage will the pitch be successful. If you try to drive the hard sell too soon, you will begin to see a lot more lost sales than you have in the past.

There is no set number of stages required; some products and services will require more customer steps to reach a position where they are ready to make a purchase. Propelling the customer too fast may still close a sale, but it will be detrimental to return business. The key is to allow the customer to progress through the information, and interest phase much at their own pace. If you are prepared to care for the customer needs and wants at each of the steps in their decision making process. Your bottom line will show the results.

The customer will not follow the old chain of decision making. Since additional information, customer reviews, and opinions are so easily acquired; many chose to step away from a decision until they have sought advice. This means that a sale can be aborted at a late stage, but reassume when they have found answers to their questions and concerns. Each time the customer feels that they are missing information; the new buyer behavior is to back away and look for that information. You will see this happen less if your advertising and sales approach is one of full disclosure. The more you disclose up front, the less the customer will seek information elsewhere.

Accepting this new behavior is important. The normal old-school sales process is to "not let them leave." This may have been a good approach before. But today, it is merely another high pressure tactic, and is not the best way to becoming a preferred provider of solutions. Once the customer has the information they want, the sale will be very quick. Before they get there, pressure tactics will sour the relationship.

Social Media Brand Management

Word of mouth, often in forms of social media, can affect your company and product severely, often faster than you will be able to realize something has happened. Keeping a good birds-eye view of your brand name is important, and should be on every marketing and PR department’s priority list. Good reviews and bad alike should be noted, these are prime sources of customer feedback, and is both a cost effective marketing research tool as well as a marketing opportunity if managed correctly.

There are several schools of thought on how to deal with negative word of mouth. Most of them are bad ideas simply because they forget the initial point of view. This is customer centric relationship management. As with any other customer argument, you stand to lose more the longer you let it continue.

Attack
Thankfully, not the most common approach, but it happens nonetheless, Often done through anonymous accounts and other slightly underhanded approaches. Posting ridiculing, and or scathing remarks about the original poster. Be aware that this will be seen through in most cases, giving you even more bad publicity. And the blogging world is very good at finding out the facts behind these apparently anonymous accounts.

This can also be done with a lawsuit. - Unless this is your only option, DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!

You may win the lawsuit, but you have just branded yourself as Goliath, and you’ll have 100 supporters of David making your life a living hell before you know it. Your only hope here is a Pyrrhic victory. In other words, you lose either way.
In most cases, it will have the opposite effect in that it gives your original antagonist more publicity, and you will get a lot less business.

Ignore
Also a bad idea, but not as bad as attacking, ignoring it can make the situation escalate out of control very quickly. Someone took time out to rattle your cage, and if you don’t react, they will rattle it harder. Ignoring might be an option for the occasional blip on the radar. Not every hiccup needs to be addressed; in fact, you really shouldn’t address anything too small. Not everyone will like your product, don’t try to correct every opinion. But keep an eye on it - you may be looking at the tip of an iceberg.

Defend
Go on the defensive; explain why the customer that wrote or said something bad about your company or product is wrong.
Bad idea! The customer has every right to his or her own opinion. And you defending your position tells everyone else that you are uninterested in actually catering to their needs and wants.
People don’t like it when you tell them they are wrong to feel anything. And they will make you pay for it. Antagonize a dissatisfied customer and you will lose business rapidly. Always remember that you are dealing with people who will assume that your interests are opposed to theirs when you enter a public discussion or forum to defend your case.

Discuss and Remedy
Remember the basics here? Customer relation is what it’s all about. The best damage control attempts I’ve seen are the ones taking the approach to fix whatever problem occurred. By doing this, you are accomplishing three things.

1. If the person complaining is not interested in resolving the problem, they will become the bad party very quickly. So the original complainer will lose credibility if they refuse to accept your honest attempts to correct the problem.

2. If your honest intention is to find a resolution, the public forum is actually working for you. You will show everyone that reads that you ARE taking your customer relationships seriously, which is actually good publicity.
3. If the person stating the problem has no real reason to be dissatisfied, airing it out in public will prove this point as well. Your best effort to find the problem will reveal that there isn’t one to begin with.

Bringing it all Together

The marketing evolution has brought customer centricity into the spotlight. You have to approach every aspect of your business with the intention of improving the customer experience. That experience will rely on the simple concepts of honesty, integrity, and respect.

Your business can only survive for an extended period of time if your positives are greater than your negatives. Every time you fail to deliver on your promises, you are creating negative word of mouth. Fail to correct for it in time, and the market will bring a power to bear that no marketing budget in the world can correct for.

Refrain yourself from driving your sale hard, if anything, guide the customer to the point where they feel that they have made an informed decision. If you allow this, they will sell your business and product for you. Pushing and pulling might create a sale, but will have much less chance of getting good references. It will however be the best reason of you being at the receiving end of negative word of mouth.

By all means, use the power of social networks to address problems that are being raised. But do so with the humble approach of accepting the existence of a problem. Never forget that you stand to lose more by trying to protect your position than you do protecting the relationship.

Take care of your customers; the new marketplace will reward you when their references take care of you in return.
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