As Oreo’s “blackout” Super Bowl tweet shows, it’s important for companies to be agile with their marketing. This is what comes to mind when I hear the term “agile marketing”.
Todd Redmon does a great job breaking down exactly what all goes into “agile marketing”.
“At the core of the methodology is the creation of “user stories”–individual profiles that capture specific customer needs. User stories go beyond basic demographic data and generic segmentation approaches. Customer stories allow marketers to weave a broader narrative and paint a richer picture of who the customer is, what she values, and why.
These user stories serve as a backbone and focal point of future marketing projects by ensuring that team’s strategies and tactics always tie back to customer needs.
So what does execution look like? Once defined in this context, projects are placed in a backlog and are continually prioritized and executed on an accelerated timeline called a “sprint”–usually one to four weeks in length. Sprints are conducted by small cross-functional teams known as “scrum” teams–a rugby term. At this point, the cycle repeats.
The ongoing process is managed by a series of initial planning, daily status, and post-project review meetings, as well as robust KPI and marketing measurement systems, but the key to success in agile marketing is more than well-structured teams and dashboards. Cultural imperatives, including trust, transparency, and a bias toward action, are the ‘grease between the agile gears…’” [Continue Reading]
Jason Acidre shows us how he increased his search traffic by 44% in under a month. It’s amazing how much traffic you can miss out on if you forget to analyze your analytics.
“The core concept of what I did to optimize my blog is quite simple:
Determine variations of search queries that are sending highly qualified traffic to my site (often keyword variations that I haven’t primarily targeted for my existing pages/posts). Optimize the pages/posts to match and be ranked/served on those long-tail searches.
When a page or a blog post has a high user-activity rate from its alternative keywords, it perfectly means that its content is very relevant and useful. This also means that it has high chances of getting more visible on search results for its other long-tail keywords, as your data proves it...” [Continue Reading]
This is a great business model for musicians too, yet so many try to sell their digital downloads when it would be better to just give away the digital downloads for free and use them as a marketing tool.
So where does the money come from if you’re giving away your digital downloads? Vinyl, t-shirts, beer coozies and live shows, that’s where!
The only exception to this would be if you’re already an established act, with millions of fans. In this case, you’d probably be better off selling your digital downloads because you already have the fan base that is ready to buy anything you touch.
Guy Kawasaki made a Facebook update yesterday where he linked to a WordPress Plugin called Viral Lock saying, “Holy kaw, this is a fantastic idea. I may move guykawasaki.com to WordPress just for this.”
It’s hard to tell how serious he is, but judging from his followers comments, I don’t think it would be well received. Let’s face it, people don’t like to endorse content they have not read in its entirety and they don’t like feeling forced to “like” something.
I could see this maybe working for an offer at the bottom of a blog post (i.e. “Tweet this blog post to receive this free gift”). This way they’re tweeting something they’ve just read in it’s entirety in exchange for a free gift versus tweeting an article they’ve only read a teaser for just to access the rest of the article.
What do you think? Is this a tool you can see yourself using?
If you’ve tried this plugin out and have experienced great results, leave a comment because I’d love to hear about it!
Now, just so we’re clear, I’m not defending Frank Kern or any other marketer The Verge names. I’ve never personally purchased any products from Kern or his syndicate, so I can’t speak for the quality of any of their products. For all I know, The Verge is hitting the nail on the head with this “syndicate”.
I personally don’t think the act of marketing your products or services on the Internet makes you a scam artist. As with anything, the “devil is in the details”. You can use marketing as a force for evil or good. It all depends on how you handle it.
Do you take pride in the quality of your product, or is the product just an after thought? Do you make promises you can’t keep in your sales message?
It’s really not difficult to figure out if your business is an ethical one or not. Simply ask yourself, “..is my business something Grandma would be proud of?”
If the answer is no then maybe you should rethink your business and more importantly, your motives.
One thing to keep in mind however is that, no matter how great you think your product or service is, you will not please everybody. You’re only human. In fact if you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody.
It’s inevitable. You will have critics. It’s important to note however that this does not make you a scam artist.
In the video below, Danny Sullivan of Marketing Land, explains the difference between “Internet marketers” and “Internet scammers”.
What is your opinion on the matter? Are all “Internet marketers” scam artists? Leave a comment and let us know!
Hi, my name is Steve Longoria. Thanks for stopping by my site.
I strive to bring you only the freshest, most relevant marketing content from all across The Internet Tubes!
I also enjoy playing the drums, riding my bike, and pretty much anything wrapped in a warm, cripsy tortilla!
