Fast Forward Marketing is an accredited member of the Better Business Bureau.

More-or-less continuing from yesterday, there's a whole other area of support for your claims you might call "evidence" rather than "proof."

Probably most basic on that is FEATURES.

Your claims are going to be benefits. "Look younger in 30 days."

If you then describe the features which lead to those benefits, that supports your claim and makes it more believable. "Only Shruk brand facial creme contains 30,000 I.U. of Vitamin E per ounce."

Any relevant, specific facts you can marshal will support and build confidence in your benefits.

It also helps if your claims are as specific as possible. Not "almost double" but "89% improvement."

Prospects are understandably skeptical of claims.

Who hasn't been burned many times buying something that sounded good?

Goes back to ancient times. "Caveat Emptor" the Romans used to say - "Let the buyer beware."

Your marketing HAS TO take this into account. It is often the critical difference between marketing success and failure.

It is about building trust and confidence.

How do you do it?

1. LOOK professional. Look the way you should look, for the business you are in. I am referring to the look of your website, sales materials, everything.

2. Use testimonials to the max, especially video testimonials (see "Testimonials - Good to Best."

3. Get endorsements. As opposed to testimonials, an endorsement is from an authority who carries weight with those you are trying to reach. In some fields, endorsements are huge (books for example).

4. Show meaningful credentials. "BBB Accredited", "Board Certified" and others carry weight with people.

5. Show people you actually exist. Sounds funny, but especially with the Internet, people worry that you are located in Indonesia or are some kind of scam or ....

So show pictures of your building if you have one, a real street address, a non-800 phone number, photos of yourself and staff, etc.

6. Provide case studies, especially ones that match with testimonials with contact information where prospects can actually call and talk to the person. People rarely will, but it is majorly reassuring.

This is important.

Symbols don't have an impact until they've been given a meaning.

So don't count on a logo to hang your hat on. When you are starting out, the best logo means absolutely nothing to people.

You have to create impact with direct visual communication such as photos or illustrations of what you are trying to sell, its features or benefits (happy customers). A logo can have some impact even before it has any meaning, but it isn't going to have much.

Over time, your logo can come to mean something.

It's still a big plus to have graphic elements that stop people so they DO read your headline.

A young Moon edged by The Pleiades (Seven Sisters star cluster). A fine example of asymmetrical design (click on image for original picture and more info):

If you try to be "All Things To Everybody" you'll end up being "Nothing to Nobody."

You have to specialize to mean anything to people, especially when you're starting out.

People want to buy from someone who is an expert in what they are looking for, and experienced with people like them.

If you are spread all over the place, they think you aren't an expert in what they want, and you probably don't know businesses or consumers like them.

To anyone who, like me, grew up on equal doses of Galaxy (Science Fiction) and Popular Science Magazines, the architectural oddity known as Raygun Gothic or Streamline Moderne never seemed strange.

Now, for those who want to explore the great art of this "future that never was", the entire collection of Popular Science is now available online.

It is a peculiarity of marketing that to work well, in most cases, a LOT of different things have to be done right.

It is characteristic of great artists that they take great pains with fine details of their work. The same is true of the commercial art in marketing but it is true of all the other, non-artistic aspects of a marketing effort.

A great ad, for example, may be a complete wow artistically. But is it being run in the right publication? In the right location? Is the headline well-chosen?

One word changed in a headline can make a difference of 40% or more in the response an ad produces.

The Devil is in the Details. Genius is 98% Perspiration and 2% Inspiration. Two hackneyed sayings that are very, very true in marketing.

"Dreamland" at Coney Island, 1905. Stunning architecture, fabulously shot.

From Shorpy, a great site for old photographs.

It's official. Google is shutting down Google.cn.

That URL is now being redirected to Google's uncensored Hong Kong site.

Google's announcement:

'On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered?€”combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger?€”had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn."

High marks to Google for this action which will undoubtedly cost them billions in profit from business in China.

Over the centuries, many private companies have influenced the course of a nation, as often negatively as positively. China has been the adverse effect of such in the past - for example the British East India Company's opium trade, leading to the Opium Wars whereby China's sovereignty was severely compromised.

Now perhaps we'll see - over time - a very positive influence on China from this courageous action.

In reading books on marketing, I'm struck by how often a marketing expert is simply re-writing something earlier marketing greats wrote about.

Current reading is Jay Abraham's "Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got," published in 2000. It's not a bad book, though I found myself fast forwarding through the first couple of chapters which were pretty light-weight.

But most of the book while nicely written, and with good examples and specifics, is nothing new if you've read Claude Hopkins "Scientific Advertising" (1923) and Seth Godin's Permission Marketing (1999).

As I'm fond of saying, the subject of marketing DOES have a history.

The Milky Way and Zodiacal Light. Click through to the original for a larger image and explanation.

Welcome, Spring!

A client forwarded an email with this subject line. This was from a well-known local online marketing company.

The email is full of statements that are either false, not new, or deceptive, like these:

Google "Caffeine" is their most significant application change since 2006.

True but very misleading, since "Caffeine" is a rewrite of their software for better efficiency and is not supposed to majorly affect rankings.

Faster sites will show up higher in search results and slower sites will find it harder to rank.

False. This was a rumor that Google has specifically stated is untrue.

Fresh Content - If a site does not have this, it is perceived as out-of-date or abandoned.

Misleading. This mainly affects how often Google returns to your site to adjust rankings, not what are your rankings.

Quality Links - in and out - are a must. And they Must be Relevant.

Per Google, inbound links are at most 20% of your ranking, so that is seriously an exaggeration. Outbound links are almost irrelevant.

Real-time results for Integrated Social Media content will have prime position on search pages - similar to a live RSS feed as seen on social sites such as Twitter.

Many social media sites are now being picked up in real-time by Google. In most categories they don't have any advantage over other websites. If you're looking for a plumber, why would a Tweet be more important than a plumber's website?

Relevant Content Rules, as always.

Well they got that much right.

So if a reputable company with a big name can put out such misinformation, no question about it, when it comes to Internet Marketing: Let the Buyer Beware.

Is it an amoeba? No, it's a nebula, many light years across. Follow the link for the spectacular details....

I thought I'd say this again since it keeps coming up.

There are certain techniques which once upon a time could shoot up your rankings very rapidly but which involve tricking Google. They violate Google's rules and will crash your rankings and possibly get your site completely blacklisted by Google.

These are called "black hat SEO" as opposed to "white hat SEO" which works with what Google is trying to do and follows their rules.

One of these tricks is to put a lot of keywords at the bottom of the page, possibly repeated multiple times, in the same color as the background so that they are invisible to the person visiting the website.

That was a very popular technique 4 or 5 years ago. Now it's a quick route to ranking disaster.

Don't do it.

There's a lot more to Internet Marketing than just SEO (Search Engine Optimization for high Google rankings).

This short video explains why "Internet Marketing" more accurately describes what we do:

The Death or Redefinition of SEO

You should be very familiar with the concept of a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and have an effective USP worked out for your company, product or service.

Many times a good risk reversal" strategy can form the basis of a USP. "Risk reversal" means you take the risk of purchase away from the purchaser and put it on yourself. One of the most famous examples ever was Domino Pizza's promise that they would deliver your pizza in 30 minutes or less, or it would be free.

We do this with our two main services, website design and Internet Marketing. Our website design proposals offer unlimited versions or revisions on the site look, at no extra charge. No one else does that, so it is a big differentiation point. People love it because it takes risk off of them.

Our Internet Marketing programs are month-to-month, no commitment period required, which is unusual in this industry. Again, risk is minimized because if they aren't happy, or they suddenly can't afford it, they can just stop.

With both of these we promote them heavily in talking to proposals, in our letters and proposals.

And in both cases we can afford to do what we are saying.

With websites we have a development process that is almost certain to hit a home run with the client. With Internet Marketing, we have a scope of work and a system designed to get visible results, fast. So that has to be part of it.

Think about how you might apply this principle in your business.

There were more U.S. visits to Facebook than to Google last week.

Two points:

1. This shows the power of Facebook.

2. That doesn't mean drop all your efforts with Google and go Facebook 24/7 with your marketing.

People searching on Google are looking for something.

Visitors to Facebook are hooking up with their friends.

Get it?

I ate Chinese the other day and this was my fortune cookie.

Generally I hate the ones that give you advice. I want to know I'll meet a tall, dark handsome woman and fall in love on Tuesday the 29th of February.

But in this case, it Speaks Truth:

Not a bad thought, for when contemplating your marketing program.

The general formula of marketing AIDCA has as its final step, "Ask for Action."

A website - or any marketing item - will be much more successful if it asks for action and makes it easy for a prospect to do so.

Many people believe it is crass, rude, unethical or ineffective to say "buy now", "call today", or even enclose a return self-addressed envelope or offer incentives for immediate purchase. People make fund of TV direct marketing commercials "but's that's not all" as they offer you even one more extra if you call in the next 10 minutes.

You can have a visceral dislike for this kind of promotion, but the fact is, it works. And it doesn't really get people to buy who didn't want to, it just helps get them past their natural sales resistance.

The effectiveness of a website can be markedly increased by providing multiple calls to action such as information requests, newsletter sign-ups and the like.

Of course it can be overdone. But it's FAR more common to under-do it.

A word to the wise.

The big three maintain their near total domination of the search market with 65.5%, 16.8%, and 11.5% respectively of US searches per comScore.

Read the whole article.

In case you think anything on the Internet is forever....

Internet Archeologists Find Ruins of Friendster Civilization.

This information has been moved to http://www.fastf.com/knowledge/industry-website-copy-cats.htm

I've said this many times in many ways. It bears repeating because, other than the very definition and purpose of marketing, there is no more important principle in marketing.

For successful marketing, you have to put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customers.

Look at things from where they sit. If you were them, what would you look at, what would you read, what would you believe?

What are your hopes, worries, concerns, dreams, problems?

What would reach you through the daily clutter of 3000 advertising messages, in the midst of already overwhelming demands on your time, in spite of all the past track of being burned on something that looked great?

What would make you stop and despite everything, say, "I'm going to check this out."

Answering that is the key to successful marketing.

Lacking that, even a huge marketing budget is no guarantee of success.

I've restrained myself till now. I give up.

It's rant time.

We didn't win any Addy's this year, not even for our own website.

Now why is that?

Actual people, the clients and prospective clients you know, LOVE our website.

I get comments like "I didn't know there was anyone that good in Tampa Bay." I mean people just gush.

We get calls from people who have already decided, before talking to us, that we are doing their website.

The menu system of the website is unique without being confusing. The branding is impeccable.

Then there's the stats. The conversion ratio of our website - the percentage of visitors who then contact us - is so high I hesitate to say it as unbelievable.

So then, what's wrong with our website as far as the judges are concerned? There's really only one answer. It fails to satisfy some arbitrary, and I might add, FADDISH standard of creativity.

Phooey.

Oh, we'll keep submitting for awards. They give great credibility with a lot of people. But the real award - and the best judge - is the positive effects for our clients, and the testimonials they write about our work and results.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

Green may be the most varied and versatile of colors.

From an ethereal pale translucent green, to nauseating "puke green", to lush Emerald Green - you can say almost anything with green.

It's the color of growth, health, of vegetables and moldy bread.

And it's the color of money. And shallow water.

"Turning green" can mean you're envious, sea sick, becoming environmentally conscious.

And don't forget Green Eggs and Ham.

What can Green do for You?

Since its start, the great innovation of Google was "Page Rank" - a way of measuring a website's importance by what other sites linked to it.

Over the years other factors have increased in importance - and it was never the all-encompassing factor many thought it to be - to a point where best estimates are it is now about 20% of what goes into search engine rankings.

And here's the latest in confirmation of that, from Peter Norvig, Google's Director of Research.

As described in Web Pro News,

Norvig said at SMX today that PageRank is still one thing that is "overhyped," and that Google never felt that it was such a big factor. They have always looked at all available data, combining every available signal and trying to figure out the best way to combine them.

Got it?

Pushing the amount of negative space as a design technique.

A Life magazine cover by Cole Phillips, from 1910, and, I might add, simply a stunning work of art:

The battle has raged on for many decades: Creativity versus Metrics

Can you measure the results of marketing? Should you?

One would think this would be settled by now. How can anyone reasonably argue that the use of statistics to measure the effectiveness of marketing is a bad thing?

And yet, people still write and publish articles to that effect.

Why Metrics Are Killing Creativity in Advertising

From Newsweek, 1995, an assessment of the Internet and its future.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

So how cloudy is YOUR crystal ball?

This is easily the best article I've ever seen on how Google works and how it evolves:

It possesses the seemingly magical ability to interpret searchers' requests no matter how awkward or misspelled. Google refers to that ability as search quality, and for years the company has closely guarded the process by which it delivers such accurate results.

How important is truth in advertising?

That's a controversial subject.

That if you tell the truth you can't get people's attention and you'll never get the business.

Now I'm not opposed to idealizing things or putting your best foot forward.

I'm violently opposed to lying, deception or trickery.

So far as I'm concerned someone who says you have to do that is just advertising their own incompetence.

It takes marketing skill to effectively promote what you have to sell.

If your product isn't good enough to be truthful about, you need to improve your product.

Don't you agree?