Landing Pages and LeBron: What All Marketers Can Learn From This Gaffe
Posted in Landing Pages | 0 Comments 7/8/10
While those of you that know us know that we’re pretty big sports fans, it’s rare that we dive too far into that arena in this blog, where we focus specifically on marketing. With all the news the last couple days about LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and other NBA players and where they may end up playing next season, ClickZ provides a great story on their site about a critical marketing error made by one team – And made by all types of marketers. So even if you aren’t a sports fan and don’t know LeBron from Le Car you should still tune read on. Specifically – Make sure your landing pages are always relevant.
From the article:
As rumors swirled Wednesday that LeBron James was going to sign with the league’s New York franchise, paid ads involving Knicks tickets and the “LeBron James” search term were spotted on Bing:
But it’s already evident that the Knicks’ marketing team has been shooting air balls when it comes to some aspects of its search strategy. The paid ads for “LeBron James,” “Amare Stoudemire,” “Joe Johnson,” “Chris Bosh,” and “Rudy Gay” lead to a landing page that advertises season ticket offers for the since-passed 2009-2010 season.
This is either the most boring – or perhaps the most exciting – blog post I’ve ever written. That’s not for me to decide, I guess it depends on who are you and how you know the Right Source Marketing team.
Long story short, we’re in the fortunate position that we need to bring some new folks onto our team in order to address some new clients and new projects.
For those of you who don’t know, what we do is provide outsourced marketing leadership and teams to growing companies. We’re not a temp agency. We’re not an ad agency. We’re not a consultancy. We provide full-scale marketing solutions to companies that are ready to address marketing in a comprhensive manner. Those solutions come in many shapes and sizes, and we work with companies large and small, but the one thing our clients have in common is this: they recognize the need for marketing strategy and execution coming from one source.
On with the show. While we’re open to hearing from folks at all levels, you’re going to receive extra special attention if you can help fill one of the following roles:
Marketing Manager
This is our most pressing need. I could list 38 different things you’ll need to be involved in, but that would make for a very long blog post. This is a roll-up-your-sleeves, learn it if you don’t know it, adjust on the fly, generalist position. In a given day, you might do the following:
- Set up an email campaign in one of 3-4 email marketing programs.
- Distribute content via social media and social bookmarking sites.
- Write a blog post.
- Update content on 3-4 client websites.
- Write meta tags for SEO purposes.
This is almost definitely a prove it part-time, then get hired full-time type role. Can be located in Baltimore, Northern Virginia or places around those areas.
Marketers, Know Your Audience – Don’t Just Fire the Cannon
Posted in Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing Strategy | 0 Comments 6/24/10
As marketers, we all know it’s important to know your audience, and critically important to know as much as you can about your customers. That’s why it still surprises me when a company you feel you have a relationship with just completely misses it. Yesterday I received a clear example in an email from my local car dealer.
Here’s a small snippet of that message below with some information [substituted] to protect the guilty:
The [brand] Model Year-End Sales Event is happening now at [dealer] and because of your status as a preferred customer, you can now get $1,000** Bonus Savings plus 0%* APR financing and a Free Maintenance Plan.+
Visit the link below to receive your $1,000** Bonus Savings today!
Now, I probably have a deeper relationship with my car dealer than most people. Those of you who know me well enough are probably REALLY sick of me going on and on about how great my Prius is. I lease my vehicle for business, so they know I’m back there every 3 years. And, with a growing family each of those last two times we’ve also swapped our family vehicle for something that can fit the kids and their ever-expanding stuff.
DC’s Digital Capital Week: Search Marketing for Startups
Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 0 Comments 6/15/10
Digital Capital Week, billed as a Washington tech convention, kicked off this past Friday night. While I won’t be able to attend nearly as many sessions or gatherings as I’d like, I am encouraged by what I am hearing about the conference. Over 5000 registered attendees, sold out sessions and interesting networking events are just a few snippets I’ve seen and heard.
In a post just last week, Mike Zirngibl of Ringio (a client of Right Source Marketing) bemoaned the typical DC technology events, which are usually marked by government-focused topics, conservative thinking, and the lack of true technology evangelists. While Digital Capital Week cannot escape some of these elements, it seems that the folks at iStrategyLabs and Shiny Heart Ventures have made every effort to make this a diverse event, offering something for everyone.
One example of Digital Capital Week’s attempt to “break the mold” is Friday’s Digital Garage day, which features some practical sessions for commercial entities, and in particular a few startup-oriented sessions. I will be participating in the Search for Startups session as a panelist, along with Chad Hill (your moderator and search marketer extraordinaire) of HubShout, Daavi Zain of Measured Path, and Zach Girod of Legal River. Based on some of our pre-session prep, this promises to be a session that will be full of energy, different viewpoints and concrete takeaways for the audience. Some of the areas we’ll likely cover include:
- Search Marketing Myths and Realities
- PPC vs. SEO for Startup and Launch
- Search Marketing Measurement and Analysis
- Prioritization of Search Marketing Initiatives
- Outsourcing vs. Insourcing Search Marketing
Marketing Your Startup: Do it Yourself or Done for You?
Posted in Marketing Strategy | 0 Comments 6/9/10
A few days back I heard from a colleague I hadn’t heard from in at least six months. He falls into the serial entrepreneur category, with both the battle scars and medals to show for it. His story is not unlike those of other successful entrepreneurs – sold his company, made some money, got antsy, came up with a new idea, loves it, ready to provide initial funding, build the prototype, and (due to his track record) knows he can get VC money if and when he needs it.
While he is not a marketer by title or trade, he’s very good at it. He understands that for certain types of businesses, marketing drives the entire business model. It’s the lever that determines whether you acquire 500 customers or 5000 customers, or whether you sell the company for $1 mill or $10 mill.
He’s come to me before to help with marketing strategy and execution, and in general to do a BS test on his business ideas. Here he was again, ready to build a marketing machine and asking me for help.
In this case, we’re talking about a startup that – even with a marketing expert on board – recognizes the need to bring in outside help. We work with a few clients that fall into this category as well. They acknowledged the holes in their founding team, and were prepared to hand off the entire marketing function.
In stark contrast to that, we run into plenty of startups that read articles like Startup Marketing: Tactical Tips from the Trenches, Startup Public Relations – Do it Yourself, or even our very own Startup Marketing: 10 Things to Do in Your First 90 Days, and decide to build and execute a marketing strategy on their own.
So that raises the key question: DIY or DFY?
