The Four P’s of marketing

About 50 years ago, The Four P’s of Marketing
- Product
- Place
- Price
- Promotion
were coined for describing the product mix.

Applying these Four P’s of Marketing to the Internet / your website will not bring in the expected results:

Product

If your website focuses on your products or services it indicates you create web content about the wrong things.

Besides you and other people in your organization, nobody cares about your products and services.

What your buyers do care about are themselves and a great deal about solving their problems. Getting their problems solved easily, conveniently with a low risk is what most people are looking for.

The best way to market on the Internet is to create valuable information and content for the target market you are trying to reach.
The problem presentation in order to be found and the problem solving are primordial, whereas your products or services are secondary.

Promotion

Promotion usually means advertising or email campaigns that target a market segment over a predefined time span.
However marketing efforts and investments on the Internet take a rather long to get going (especially in Social Media), but are likely to last very long as content on the Internet almost never disappears: search engines have a long memory.

Place

The Internet is the place which is everywhere. Getting found or your content getting found on the Internet is very challenging due to the high competition for attention from all possible other content: news, entertainment, competitors.
Place is not the issue, but getting found is.

Price

The price is likely to be influential on getting found or getting selected.
However the price is not the money but the currency is the content that is getting exchanged for the attention.The better or more valuable the content the more or the longer the attention given by the potential customers.
True Internet success comes from informing, educating and entertaining people in order to make them eager to do business with you.

Content marketing

Content marketing on the Internet is a different beast
The Four P’s of Marketing don’t apply to Internet Marketing as these are changed into:
- Valuable content
- Long lasting
- Getting found
- Content currency

What’s your experience about content on the Internet ?

Zapping TV ads

We all have gotten used to the publicity on TV in between ‘interesting’ shows and during TV series. People have gotten used to waste a lot of time during their daily entertainment time.
And of course many people zap away during these commercial breaks.

Zapping online ads and commercials

People could have the same reaction on the Internet: when a page is loading slowly due to the dreaded commercial or ad (waiting forever for DoubleClick). Then they just need to have multiple browsers open and will be able to zap away to another website. They might come back after
the commercial has played and then they will only look at the content they are interested in.

TV passive – Internet active experience

We all learned to live with TV and the let passively the sequential feed of information and entertainment come to us. Still we make most out of TV by selecting shows and we all zap.

On the Internet we are even more eager to get the content we want immediately – on our demand. Hence our zapping on the Internet will only increase as we use this media and communication channel more actively than television (no couch potatoes). Due to this active use of the Internet, people take less time to zap as they feel they are wasting time quicker than in front of their TV set.

Change slow loading web pages into fast for the business

If your web pages are slow loading, it is likely people will zap away almost instantly.
This has several back lashes:
- Not only your interesting content will not reach your target group
- You search engine results ranking will drop as the time “away” on the website is measured by search engines indicating your website is not interesting
- Google ranking takes into account the speed of loading
- The people who do take time to have the page loaded are or very interested or accidental visitors that you don’t want
- The perception of your company or brand will be negative

Enhance instead of being an annoyance

Online ads and commercials on your website shouldn’t be an annoyance, instead they should enhance the website experience.
Besides loading fast, the online ad or commercial should be targeted to your audience and generate interest by the content. There is always information related to the product that your audience will find interesting – even it are statistics about the use or the market.

Make sure your website loads fast and have interesting ads / commercials are beneficial for your business.

How fast is your website ?
How interesting are the ads or commercials on your website

The Internet presence and website

Most brick-and-mortar companies consider their website and Internet presence is just an addition to their marketing.
However for most of their possible potential customers the website and Internet presence is primordial as they:
- Find: First they need to find the business
- Solve: Then retrieve information related to their problem that needs to be solved
- Trust: build trust by content provided and general Internet presence
- Convince: Getting persuaded to contact the company or to enter the company on the short list

If your website misses on any of these four, your online presence will be wasted and a large part of your potential customers will never address to you or take your company into consideration for purchase, RFI (Request For Information), or RFP (Request For Pricing).
Less interest or leads generated online means less business than your competitors.

Become an Internet expert

As your website and/or Internet presence needs to achieve these challenges you better be or become an Internet expert as you will need the skills and know-how.

This requires learning, time for learning and exercise for trial and failures.
Take your time to invest well in your knowledge and experience in order to let your business benefit from it as the presence on the Internet and website have become primordial.

How much of an expert on website and Internet presence are you ?

High bounce rates are bad

All webmasters and Internet marketers detest bounces as all their efforts of SEO, SEM, online and offline marketing lead to just a bounce. The higher the bounce rate the higher their personal failure as they become obsessed with bounce rates.
We all are convinced that high bounce rates are bad. Which is true compare to people visiting multiple pages, but not all bounces are that bad.

Bouncing is not that bad

However a bounce is better than nothing: not finding your website is even worse as you didn’t catch their attention at all.

Three types of bounces can be defined:
- Visitors that bounce after finding the information required quickly
- Visitors that bounce after reading a large part of the page
- Visitors that bounce almost instantly

The quick
Those that enter your website and found the searched information have quickly and happily left your page, but they do have a positive feeling about your website. A positive feeling will make them remember your website, brand name or even what your product is for.

The readers
Those that have read your page have at least found information relevant to what they were looking for. Unfortunately they didn’t stay on your website to investigate more about your company or solutions. However they sure will remember your brand and the solution you provide.

The immediate
The immediate bouncers have at least seen a glimpse of your website as they had to decide stay or leave. They might even remember your company name or products as they had to make their decision to leave or not.

In most cases something like an impression or a feeling will remain: it will stick in their memory for a longer time. Just make sure the memory and the website experience is positive by short page load times and a pleasing usable layout.

Branding bouncing actions

Two actions for brand naming:
- On every page you should indicate what the company or product is all about or the problem it solves. Then the chance exist the bouncing visitors at least remember your brand name and relate it to the solution or problem it solves.
- In the website description visible in the search results it should clearly state brand name and the purpose of solution you provide as after returning to the search engine page it is likely they will read the description of the last clicked link before scanning the rest of the search page for interesting links.

Of course high bounce rates should be decreased by all means. However bounces are not all that bad and at least they have found your page.

What kind of bounces has your website ?

Pre-roll online commercial

We all have experienced ‘Pre-roll’ online advertising that keeps you waiting for the selected video you want to see and you can’t skip: you have to sit through the ad.

On the Internet when advertisers are using TV commercials as ‘Pre-roll’ online video commercials it is as bad as the early TV commercials that had someone reading the radio commercial in front of a camera.
Online commercials need to add on the interactivity of the Internet.

TV is a broadcast medium with no interaction or feedback.
Online video brings the advantage of interaction which allows for interaction or feedback.

Interactive video is required on the Internet

As long as this interaction is not integrated into the commercial it is ‘old school’: even ridiculous as the spoken radio commercials in front of a camera.
Almost a waste of money as it is:
- Not using the features and functions of the Internet media channel as should be
- Treating your potential customers almost as incapable
Still your audience can just use the back button if they are fed up with your online commercial.

Interactive video

The new format on the Internet needs to be interactive video.
You can achieve interactive video by:
- Text overlay: additional information
- Image overlay: additional information
- Chapters: allowing to skip a section or to jump to another section of the video
- Tagging: tagged items or objects with a link to another website
- Forms: insert a form in order to gather data from viewers
- Voting: giving the viewer the chance to vote and express his opinion
- Contest: a contest will drive people to click on links or tags in the video
Most of this can be achieved with Youtube Annotations. As the technology is available then why not use it ?

Of course it will demand more time, effort and money to develop an interactive commercial.
However an interactive online commercial will create a longer lasting impact and a more positive image and awareness of your products – also in B2B.
If executed professionally your video might even go viral.

Will you still use ‘Pre-roll’ commercial or boldly opt for the interactive video ?

Some websites have massive traffic – some have very little traffic although they haven been doing their best for years.

Sticking to one tactic to attract traffic
The company marketer has stuck with one method (like article marketing) which he has mastered and might have been very successful once, but no longer so due to addressing the same group of people over and over again.

Multiple methods and tactics are needed. Try not to depend on just one source of traffic.

Never depend solely on paid traffic either, there are always fools who don’t know what they’re doing and/or have more money to spend than you do.

Jumping tactics
Jumping from one tactic to another without waiting long enough to measure the effect.
You need to take time to measure in order to get significant results. Less measurements = less accurate results.

Moreover everything takes time on the Internet as people really aren’t waiting for you or your message.

Automated services
There are many services that can bring traffic: they show effects at first use but on the long run their system can decrease in efficiency.
Using too many of these automated web services which will replicate your original content over an over again, will result in a lower SERP (Search Engine Results Page) as your content will seem like duplicated content.

If you trick the search engines somehow, they will catch on sooner or later. And if your tricks don’t survive a manual inspection, you might get reported by your competitors.

Old content
The older your content becomes the less important is is regarded by search engines. Only when you keep getting new inbound links, and people still frequently click on your links in the serps then you’ll keep a good score on search result pages.

Probably inspired by Twitter’s popularity, fresh content is the driving force these days.

Not indexed pages
Most website have only half of their content indexed by the search engines. Unindexed content will not show up in searches and not generate traffic.

For a start create internal links between all of your pages. Not just one link on each page, but multiple links to multiple pages on each page. Make sure you have a well interlinked site. If this doesn’t seem easy, consider if such a multi-column link footer would help. They don’t interfere with your content, and people almost expect them to be there these days.

Next, try to obtain more external links. Preferably of high-authority sites. Easier said than done. According to the search engines, more external links pointing to your site = a more important and interesting site = more pages of your site will get crawled = more of your pages in the serps.

Additionally create a site map page to please the search engines: submit your xml site map to Google (WebMasterTools), Bing and Yahoo .

External links
Internal links are easy to achieve and a first step to increase your ranking. However the real challenge is in external links (backlinks or inbound links): other sites linking to yours.

This is the hard work:
- Having really interesting content, rising above the internet noise
- Persuading the others to link to you. Easier when you have interesting or remarkable content.
- Various tactics, like commenting on blogs. Often hard not to regard this as a form of spamming.
- Participating in linkwheels or buying links: frowned upon.

It’s often said by ‘SEO Experts’ (beware, a lot of these people are the modern variant of snake oil peddlers) that forged links to your site could result in a penalty from the search engines.
We seriously doubt this though. If an external, off-site factor could result in a penalty, surely lots of people would use this to bring penalties to their competitor’s sites.

Don’t think of content as only text on a webpage. Content can be anything: movies, screencasts, audiobooks, tools, games, photo’s, cartoons,…

Domain age
The older the domain the more weight it obtains in any search result.
Apparently old means trustworthy.
Moreover older content is likely to have more links than new content.
If the links don’t increase though, the content is regarded as outdated or stale which might have an averse effect.

Don’t depend on only one source of traffic. Key is having content interesting, remarkable or useful enough to get others to link to you.

Video killed the radio star is the famous clip from The Buggles in the eighties. That was only the radio star.

The Internet has killed many other businesses:
- The Music Industry: people download music instead of buying CD’s
- The Newspapers: online news, Twitter and Facebook
- The Adult Live Entertainment: easier and more convenient to get adult entertainment online
- The Local Travel Agencies: online booking flights and hotels
- The small specialized shops: wider range of products offered at a lower price
- The Movie Industry: trying to survive on 3D movies as people watch downloaded movies at home
- The Video Rental Shops: download a video instead of renting one

Many other businesses have been negatively affected by the Internet.
Many businesses have tried to fight the internet without success.

They took the credit for your second symphony
re-written by machine and new technology
and now I understand the problems you can see

The Internet is going to kill or reduce many other businesses:
- HR / Employee search by Job boards
- Headhunters by LinkedIn
- Ticket Sales: online tickets are so much more convenient, fast and have bargain offerings
- Nutrition – weight loss: online diet and weight loss – keeping track of calories
- Lotteries: it is only a matter of time for legislation to change then people just play lottery online
- Gambling: more and more people gamble online without being limited by social control
- Gaming: instead of buying a game people will play online instead
- Consulting: ever more information and advice can be found online competing with consulting
- Lawyers: the first line questions are funneled through online law services – specialized: online divorce
- Notary: online registrations, online company formations

In the late 90’s there was a popular saying: ‘Make yourself obsolete before your competitor does‘.
Maybe the 21st century version should be: ‘Make yourself obsolete before the internet does’.

Until now the LEADSExplorer web service consisted of providing visiting data and identification of visitors by company name.
The main complaint we got from our customers or ex-customers was: great data and information but we want to do something with it.

Reach your customers early in their buying cycle
As of today the web service allows you to take action towards your visiting companies by helping you to contact your visiting companies more easily and conveniently.
An email sent to interested visiting companies is likely to get more attention as the timing is right and the subject is known by the pages visited or the search terms used.

On the home page the users will find a list of the latest visiting companies that never have visited before. The ‘Interest’ column indicates graphically their visit intensity.

Browse visiting companies
Browse and click one of the companies. Then a pane with more information opens with company website, business information, geographical location, visit data and visited pages in order to qualify the company.

Find contacts and their email addresses
If the company interesting enough then contacts and email addresses can be retrieved from different sources on the Internet.

Using the ‘prepare email’ link will open a popup asking to:
- Paste the email address found
- Select the email content from a number of emails
These emails have previously been created and can be edited on the spot by clicking on ‘create / edit email templates’.

Prepare and select email
By clicking ‘Prepare Email’ the email client (Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird,…) will open in order to allow further editing or personalization of the email and add the senders’ signature.

The actual sending will be done from the email server of the user.

Benefit
Sending an email to an interested company takes out two of the tree uncertainties of email marketing:
- Content is matching their interest
- Timing : the message is timely
This is likely to enhance the interest in products or services.

Saving data and events for future use
Every email sent will save the company, the contact person with his email address to the SALESTractor CRM, including the email.

Additionally an event is created in the communication log which will appear in the activity charts that plot the visits of one company and the communications with this company.

We are proud to bring more features for the same price.
Get a 30 day free trial to experience yourself getting more leads generated from your website.

On Quora a question is asked: Which is better to work for, Google or Facebook?.
The answer to this question made the conclusion:
Google tends to value technology. Things are often done because they are technically hard or impressive. On most projects, the engineers make the calls.

Facebook values products and user experience, and designers tend to have a much larger impact.

This comparison forgets one company: Amazon – the bookstore, the Kindle system and Amazon Web Services.
Amazon has a diversified profitable business model selling products, services and values useful technology, whereas:
- Google is still a one trick pony: Adwords which they copied from Bill Gross from Idealab (Overture Services, Inc. – formerly Goto.com) who turned the idea and concept of keywords from Scott Banister into a business.

- Facebook has many people using the service but still it is uncertain if their business model is sustainable. The first sign of decay is apparent as teen move away from using Facebook.

Will Google come up with a new profitable business? Not just another Beta service with no business or another vehicle to sell Adwords?
Even Adam Rifkin of GigaOM declares that Google has no game !
Will Facebook be wiped out by the next social media or gaming portal, like what happened to MySpace?

Amazon generates profits from a growing number of successful multiple product lines like the Kindle and AWS.
AWS is even into Social Gaming as it provides the hosting that powers six to eight of the top ten Facebook games  like Zynga, Playfish and Playdom.

So who is the major force on the Internet ?
Amazon because it has different sustainable business and is able to reinvent itself on a regular basis with additional profitable businesses.

How sustainable is your business ?
Does your business have a back-up plan or alternative business ready to be executed ?

The 40 hours week of work:
We (employees) probably work 40 hours a week – less all the coffee breaks and chit chat.
We do many things and have multiple experiences during this work week (even boring time consuming meetings).
To be fair: the commuting time to work needs to be added to these 40 hours.

During these 40 business hours we do our work, run the business and gain our income.

The 40 hours weekend:
A weekend lasts a little over 60 hours: from Friday 5 pm to Monday 7pm.
The 3 nights of sleep are consuming about 18 to 21 hours.
This making the amount of time available during a weekend about the same as the entire work week: 40 hours.

During this free time we spend most of our disposable income (or what’s left over after mortgage and utility bills).

Work vs weekend
Seems we have as much time to earn or income as we have time to spend our money.

So what did you do during:
- Last work week ?
- Last weekend ?
Anything significant ? Or just wasting time ?

People have a lot of time to themselves but seem to be more active or effective during business hours.
Make sure you spend your spare-time efficiently and well.
Life is too short to waste your time.

Remarks:
- Many entrepreneurs work almost the entire week by combining the two: working more than the 40 hours.
- The Internet and online businesses are active 24 / 7.