Since the Internet started to go commercial in a big way back around 1997, it has been a rapidly changing medium. In fact, from a marketing viewpoint, easily the fastest changing medium since advertising was in its infancy.

Is that still true?

Look at all that's happened in the last year alone - Twitter, the ascendancy of Facebook, real-time search, Bing, Caffeine (Google's latest major change, now in the works), the popularity of Joomla, etc. etc. etc.

Two years ago we wouldn't have thought of putting video on a website. Now we try to put video on every website we do.

All media eventually become mature. They don't stop changing, they just change more slowly.

The Internet hasn't reached that point.

Sure, there are a lot of things about the Internet that you can count on. What Google is generally looking for. What, fundamentally, makes a website effective or not. Many other things.

But it still takes, and will in the foreseeable future take, a considerable amount of time to stay on top of what's happening online.

I wrote about branding last June. I have more to say.

"Brand" is what people think of your company, product or service. It isn't what YOU say it is. It's what your prospective customers say it is. To a great many people, Wal-Mart stands for low priced decent quality goods and items. Target's cachet is low-priced but better quality.

Branding is everything you do to establish or change that. It's also everything your competition or enemies do in the same vein. Unions for years have been attempting to re-brand Wal-Mart as "the giant company that's unfair to its workers and small businesses." To date they haven't succeeded, at least with most people.

"Brand identity" is everything that REMINDS people of your branding or of your brand.

There is to some degree, a continuous spectrum between branding and brand identity. A logo or color scheme is at one end. No one is going to get much of a concept of UPS, knowing that their color is brown. A logo does very little more than that. Sure, colors and logos should be CONSISTENT with your branding. But trying to lean on them to build a brand is a waste of time.

A slogan or tagline, on the other hand, can contribute to building a brand. Repeat it enough times and people will tend to think it is true. At the same time, it is weak compared to other methods of branding. SHOW people what you want them to think.

Barnum and Bailey Circus has been "The Greatest Show on Earth" for 150 years. But they also tell you the same thing throughout their shows. And the whole approach of their shows is a spectacular. They assume they are the greatest show on earth, as a starting point - not only in what they do but how they present it. And the shows do a great deal to live up to that slogan, which is really a claim and a promise.

Now let's take a contrary example. Verizon has evidently discovered (finally) that people think their customer service is hideously bad. Their answer? A marketing campaign to tell everyone how great their customer service is and how dedicated they are to providing great customer service.

Did they actually CHANGE something, to improve their service?

No.

So that's a campaign doomed to failure.

Ultimately, branding has to be based on truth.

The more truthiness, the better chance it has at success.

One of the buzz words of the last 10 years or so is "Permission Marketing", a concept invented (and title of a book) by Seth Godin. Godin became famous as one of the first people to make the Internet work in the business world.

Published in 1999, his book is interesting in part for what is NOT in it. Google (then still a small upstart) isn't even mentioned in the book.

But his basic idea is timeless and fascinating to me in the way it complements the Long Tail idea. Both are concepts empowered by technology. The Long Tail refers to getting rich selling a small amount to each of a lot of people, of a lot of products and/or in a lot of places.

That wouldn't have been profitable or perhaps not even possible before digital technology. Amazon.com sells millions of titles. It may sell only a handful per year of some of them. Impractical and a money-loser if they had to store them all in a warehouse.

"Permission Marketing" is the idea of taking a prospective customer through a series of small, personalized steps from first contact to sale to loyal customer. Automated responses and customized messages - easy things to do in the digital age - make it possible. This strategy potentially multiplies the effectiveness of your advertising many times over.

Both concepts are worth looking over. Though perfect for large, well-funded start-ups, these strategies can be applied in many smaller businesses too.

For example, do you have a good website, that really introduces your company and products to a visitor, and gives them actions they can take short of purchasing? If you do, your advertising can then primarily sell people on going to your website. Your website takes it from there.

It's a much more comfortable series of steps for many people, rather than going straight from ad to telephone.

We've documented a good website doubling the number of new patients a Doctor was getting. This is Permission Marketing at work.

I've often commented on how rapidly things change on the Internet.

This animation is just another example. It shows the changes in browser usage over the last 8 years (statistics don't accurately represent usage across the entire Internet, this is for one website whose users heavily slant towards Firefox):

It's one of the well-known facts of marketing that it usually takes repetition to get your message across.

The first time your ad runs or the postcard arrives, it probably doesn't even get noticed. Maybe the third or the ninth time it does.

That's important two ways. It tells you a "one-shot" ad campaign is almost certainly doomed to failure. So you need to plan for the long haul.

And it tells you that one of the points that needs to be settled is size of mailing or distribution of ad or marketing pieces, versus frequency of repetition.

In short, if you have a limited budget, is it better to get the same message in front of people more often, or to get it in front of more people?

Rosser Reeves in "Reality in Advertising" claims it is always better to reach more people. That may have been more true in 1960 than it is now (when the constant marketing barrage is incessant). But it has never been wholly true. That by the way, is probably the biggest error in what may be the best book on marketing ever written.

And there is no certain way to estimate in advance the optimum frequency versus reach ratio.

This is one more reason to test and measure. FIND OUT what the optimum frequency is to maximize the return on your marketing dollar.

Nature and ancient man join to create a stunning design (click on image for larger picture and more info):

There is a long tradition of copywriting going back to at least P.T. Barnum in the mid-19th century and certainly Claude Hopkins around the turn of the century (1900 that is, not 2000).

Certainly by the time this classic Underwood portable was manufactured in 1933, copywriting was a well developed mixture of art and science, as it is and should be today.

Sure, language has changed. but puffery (what I call "throwaway language") is still puffery and most that's where most ad copy falls - whether Superbowl ad or small business website. Still one sometimes sees (or hears) copy that sings.

It starts with a well-developed understanding of what it's like to stand in the shoes of the people you are trying to sell to.

(Yes, this typewriter is mine. A real beauty, and fully functional.)

Way back in the prehistoric days of 1960, Rosser Reeves wrote a book "Reality in Advertising" about what he learned in decades of running ad agencies.

In this book he introduced the term "U.S.P." or Unique Selling Proposition. In 1960, the idea was somewhat controversial. It has become an accepted, famous concept in marketing, though one rarely understood or well-used. Besides developing the concept, he described the three ways you can create, as well as pitfalls in creating a U.S.P.

When it has been well used, it has been responsible for some of the most successful campaigns in marketing history.

But there is a lot more to Rosser Reeves than that. What hardly anyone knows is what led to his development of the U.S.P. concept.

He took Claude Hopkins "test and measure" to a whole other level.

First of all, he broke down response into three key elements, each of which were itself measurable: Penetration, Usage Pull, and Life Expectancy.

Penetration is simply what percentage of the target market remember your product?

Usage Pull is how your campaign changes the percentage of them who actually USE the product. A bad campaign can actually reduce market share.

Finally, Life Expectancy is how Penetration and Usage Pull change over time after a campaign ends.

What it took to measure these and to see the change over time, was extensive surveying, repeated periodically. With the resources of a large ad agency, he was able to do exactly that, and, over time, to discover common elements of successful campaigns. And from that, we get the U.S.P.

In addition, he established a Copy Lab to test whether consumers got out of an ad, the U.S.P. he intended them to.

In the end, he pleaded, as did Claude Hopkins before him and Sergio Zyman since, to treat marketing as a science, not an art, and to take opinion out of it.

If more marketers paid attention to what he said, there would be a lot less wasted marketing out there. That his book is currently out-of-print tells you the lack.

A good start in understanding marketing is understanding definitions of key terms.

Advertising and marketing aren't the same thing.

Advertising is only a part of marketing. Marketing includes everything from conceiving of the product, through packaging, distribution, advertising, sales materials, etc. Any step in the process of getting a product (or service) to market and into the hands of a purchaser for their hard-earned money.

The reason marketing includes conception of product is because you can't sell ice to Eskimos or buggy whips to anyone. We see this every day, people come to us with a product or service they want to sell. The first questions should be "Does anyone want this? Can they be gotten to want it with an advertising budget we can afford? Will enough of them pay a high enough price that enables you to sell it at a profit?"

An amazing number of business are started where the answer to all three questions is a resounding "NO!"

Every great marketing guru writes at length about the importance of market research.

But there is no aspect of marketing that is inherently more expensive, or that takes longer.

What is the small businessman to do, If you can't afford upwards of $10,000 and minimally a couple of months?

First of all, if you're marketing is working, or the company is doing alright, there is no urgency. You can take the time.

Secondly, unless you are dealing with a brand new business or product line, you already have a lot of the information needed, available already within your company. Interviews with salesman as to what prospects are looking for, what closes people, demographics of customers and the like are tremendously valuable.

The bottom line though is in the long run, you need to work out a way to get complete, real, in-depth market research done. This can be the difference between doing okay and doing great.

The key phrase in this is "long run". Think of market research a long term project. Keep nibbling away at it as possible. You'll get there.

A tribute to anyone who has ever been up against an art deadline.

The principle "Keep It Simple" very much applies to marketing.

The principle is most violated by trying to get over too many concepts or messages. They have 12 things they want to make sure people know in their Yellow Pages ad. They end up not getting any of them across.

Just ask yourself, of the campaigns you remember, what do you remember about them? One fact, one image, one slogan.

Volvo: safe Swedish made cars.
Crest: approved by the American Dental Association.
iPhone: there's an app for that.

That doesn't mean you can't cover a lot of points to support your main point. But there needs to be a single focus or main point or at best you dilute your efforts.

A word to the wise....

Claude Hopkins invented it. Devoted an entire book to it, "Scientific Advertising", 1923.

Rosser Reeves, famous as the inventor of the "Unique Selling Proposition", talks about it at length, how to do it and why it is crucial, in "Reality in Advertising", 1960.

David Ogilvy heavily promoted it as essential to success, in "Ogilvy on Advertising", 1983.

Sergio Zyman considers it so lost and so essential it is one of the two main themes in his book "The End of Marketing As We Know It", 1999.

SO WHY DON"T MORE MARKETERS DO THEIR HOMEWORK, RESEARCH, SURVEYS, TEST AND MEASURE?

Beats me.

In the broadest sense, everything someone can spend their money on is competition. Money spent on your product or service is money that ISN'T being spent on something else. So it has to be appealing enough, needed enough or made to appear so, to win that horse race.

More narrowly, you're competing for attention against all other marketing, at least in that medium (that magazine, or on that store shelf, or in that trade show).

Finally, of course, you have your direct competitors. Other toy stores. Other accountants in your area. Other digital thermostats. Other charities.

In developing, testing and fine-tuning strategy, campaigns and marketing items, the wise marketer familiarizes himself with each of these echelons of competition. He knows that to succeed, he needs to be different, different in a positive way, but not so different as to be off-putting.

This applies to all marketing of anything, anywhere.

Time Lapse photography of the sun over an entire year.

"If you went outside at exactly the same time every day and took a picture that included the Sun, how would the Sun appear to move? With great planning and effort, such a series of images can be taken. The figure-8 path the Sun follows over the course of a year is called an analemma."

(This one includes a total eclipse.)

Went to the Addy Gallery last night. Addy's are the ad industry awards. Gallery night is like opening night at an art gallery (and in fact it was at the R.K.Bailey Studios at University of Tampa). But the exhibits are some of the submissions for the local (Tampa Bay) Addys.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Once again, most of the best work was done by students. They turned out some posters that were completely ready for prime-time.

The two big elements of developing an effective marketing piece are 1. concept; 2. execution. Many of the student submissions made it on both points. My favorite was a poster for the Clearwater Jazz Holiday. Unusual and very effective use of color, great composition - everything tied together and said GREAT JAZZ.

The Good.

I can't say the same about the professional (agency) submissions.

Most of them, it's true, were well executed. That is to say, considerable talent went into the artistic elements - color scheme, arrangement of elements, etc. There was lots of eye catching work.

That wasn't true of all of them. There was one series of ad submissions which was so bad, it could have been turned out by an amateur using Publisher. I dunno, maybe it was. Someone's brother-in-law working as an in-house agency. I can't imagine any agency putting their name on work that bad. There were quite a few others that were seriously flawed from a design standpoint.

The Ugly.

But even the majority of submissions on display, once you got past the "ooh" and the "ah" of them, you look at what is the message they are getting across, really?

One campaign with lots of submissions was for the first hot sauce created by prison inmates. Really. And that was the whole point of the campaign. So let me get this straight.... I'm supposed to rush right out and buy this hot sauce because it was designed by felons?

The Bad.

Probably it'll win Best of Show and I'll have egg on my face.

Here's an unforgettable rendition of Mona Lisa. Click on the image to see how it was done.

(Hint: That's 3,604 cups of coffee.)

Here's a perfect example of how industrial design doesn't have to be horrible. This is in fact, one of the few things artful and enduring to come out of Communist East Germany: East German Walk / Don't Walk Symbols:

I probably shouldn't tell you this. Giving away secrets.

If you want to show up high on the search engines, your website has to be large enough. The bigger a website, the more important it is to Google.

There are fields where your website needs to be thousands of pages to rank on page one with Google.

But how do you know how large your site needs to be? It's easy.

1. Do a search for a few key search terms.

2. Find the top ranking competitor sites, a few for each search term.

3. Type "site:{name of the domain} - like site:www.fastf.com (no spaces) - into a Google search box. This will tell you how many pages Google has in its index for that site. Do this for each competitor site.

You'll quickly see the pattern.

There's lots more to it than this, of course.

But no matter what else you do, if you don't know what size your site needs to be, you're not going to get there.

You're welcome.

It sometimes escapes copy writers and designers that a big part of marketing is telling people what to think.

That was something P.T. Barnum knew and knew well.

Knowing that, the trick is then deciding WHAT you want them to think and working out how to say it so it will be accepted or believed.

This isn't always difficult. Here's a simple, obvious example that is regularly violated.

Many websites have galleries of images, showing off the company's work. How often I've seen it that they have no captions or explanations. Pictures of kitchens. What am I looking at? What are the counter tops made of? Is this especially good work? Expensive, cheap or in between? Which style fits with what kind of decor or house?

Tell them what to think.

(This, by the way, is the entire story behind the dominance of oddball, hideous and boring work in Modern Art. A few Opinion Leaders tell everyone else what to think about some disgusting piece of idiocy. "A masterpiece!" says the Art Professor. And so a cow's skull under glass sells for $250,000.)

My current reading is "Twenty Ads That Shook The World," the first chapter of which is about P.T.Barnum. Coincidentally, I went to the circus last night. Barnum never said "There's a sucker born every minute" but he DID invent the slogan "The Greatest Show on Earth".

More than 150 years later, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey is still using that slogan and still following the successful actions established by probably the greatest self-promoter in American history. Almost every second of their show last night was a tribute to Barnum's genius, right down to the midget, now called "Nano."

Their use of technology is totally 21st century (I've never seen the likes of the projection screens they used), but the high-wire acts, elephants, big cat tamer, even the clowns with brooms warming up the crowd - they've been doing it that way and it's been working since 1850.

Great, great entertainment. It's a SHOW people come for, and they deliver. And they deliver by promoting everything they do in their marketing, in the lead-up to the acts and in the acts themselves.

Barnum these days is associated with deception and overly-hyped advertising. But he invented many advertising techniques now standard or long-since worn out. The farewell tour, limited edition, once-in-a-lifetime offers, all Barnum inventions.

P.T.Barnum was a man who knew that people buy the sizzle, not the steak. And despite his deteriorated reputation, he largely delivered, left people satisfied, and got rich and famous. In his time his was probably the most well known name on Earth.

Most businessmen should be pleased to do one tenth as well.

In doing marketing, one of the Big Things is knowing what is important and what is not.

For example, in direct mail, the mailing list is the single most important thing. You can do everything else right and have a lousy campaign if you are mailing to the wrong people.

In websites, navigation is hugely important. In most industries, testimonials are hugely important in your website, brochures and sales materials.

In e-commerce, getting traffic to the website is the crucial point that makes or breaks an online store. The store can be beautiful, you can have the greatest items in the world, store functionality can be fine-tuned, but if no one makes it to the website, that means nothing.

To authors and artists, publicity is king. Marketing is mostly a matter of distribution; once you're on Oprah, people need to be able to find your books and to be easily able to buy them.

What's important in marketing your products or services? It's worth thinking about.

In the world of small business, PR (Public Relations) and Marketing often get mobbed up, thought of as the same thing. Chiropractic offices often have PR assistants whose duties are more marketing than PR.

It's been said that PR sows the field, Marketing reaps. True enough but let's clarify. Public Relations includes all the actions to create and manage your reputation. But there are really two types of PR - corporate and product.

Corporate PR is all about the image of your company, having friends in high places, that kind of thing. Businesses promoting how green (environmentally friendly) they are, for example. That really doesn't do much to create sales. It just helps ensure no one is going to legislate your company out of existence, believe attacks on you in the papers, or raid your offices on a rumor.

Product PR is all about creating the kind of image that makes people want to buy. That of course very much includes publicity like Madonna wearing your T-shirt or being interviewed by Bill O'Reilly in a friendly fashion if you're an author.

Then marketing can come up behind that and make sure your product is easily available, use advertising to let people know where they can buy it, help crank up the word-of-mouth, and so on.

Al Ries wrote a great article on this back in the 70's called "Positioning in PR." In short, the ideal campaign strategy is run PR for a while, first. THEN do your marketing launch while you keep the publicity machine cranking away.

Notice that movie studios regularly pursue that strategy with their real blockbusters. You start hearing about the movie even one or two years before its release, long long before any advertising starts on it. If the buzz builds on it, that guarantees distribution (opening in lots of theaters). The advertising when it kicks in then finds millions of people saying to themselves "I've heard about that. It sounds good. Think I'll go see it."

By the way, movies had their best year ever in 2009 despite the economic downturn. So maybe there's a lesson to be learned.

The same principle can be applied in many many other industries.

Big Agency Hi-Jinks are a never-ending source of amusement to me.

Here's from an article in Ad Age:

For more than 20 years I made ads. One out of 50 probably ever made it out of the agency. Maybe one out of 500 ever made it on the air.

And again:

During my career I survived some 14 rounds of layoffs, downturns in the industry and the economy, takeover threats, IPOs, 16 creative directors, 13 CEOs, the demise of one great agency and the ongoing collapse of another.

Is that any surprise, with stats like those?

Sheesh!

This information has moved to http://www.fastf.com/knowledge/intuit-websites.htm

Not to beat a subject to death, but this is the start of a new decade. And things have sure changed. Nowhere is this more dramatically evident than data, 2000, versus data, now.

To cite a few examples:

--Percentage of U.S. households with a broadband connection in 2000: 6.3%

--Percentage of U.S. households with a broadband connection in 2008: 63%

--Number of e-mails sent per day in 2000: 12 billion

--Number of e-mails sent per day in 2009: 247 billion

The list goes on.

The moral of the story (all my stories have morals)? If you are still operating the way you did 10 years ago, you are WAY out of date - and probably missing the boat.

A Very Happy, Best New Year's Ever to You and Yours (click image for bigger pic).