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Brands of the New Dimension

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:05:48 +0000

Remember the first time you seeing some brand that, despite being shoved into your face, you still loved it?

I clearly remember the impact the first time it happened to me. The day Michael Jordan and Spike Lee, sorry, Mors Blackmon, challenged everything we knew about advertising in the early 90’s TV-30-something-landscape, with a pair of Air Jordan Nike shoes. It was fresh, transcended over the early 90’s and took branding far beyond everything I knew about being unique and attention grabbing. The ad stood above every other commercial just as MJ leaped above every opponent, leaving them all in dismay. It pulled us into Spike’s Lee’s “do the right thing” world, emphasizing black and white, challenging the rules of gravity in TV advertising.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Is it the brand? Is it the brand?

After seeing that commercial for the first time, I was obsessed about trying to re-capture that cool sensation, the excitement that makes you realize that the rules have changed and you are no closer to Kansas than Morris Blackman.

It doesn’t happen every day. I can think of only a few brands that introduced a new dimension to the way we experienced their vibes. Brands like Apple had success even way before the iPhone, Seinfeld is another one, Google search results, and of course the movie Avatar. I call these winners “Brands of the New Dimension.”

Marketers have always tried to decipher the formula for recreating Brands of the New Dimension. The truth is that sightings of such success are so rare that it’s almost impossible to recreate them. When my clients ask me what is the formula for creating a killer Brand of the New Dimension I am tempted to tell them that if I knew, I would be too busy drinking tequila on my private Island to answer their silly questions. But since I am not busy on that Island just yet, I can take a moment to point out some common denominators. And I promise not to use abstract words like “vision” or “creativity”.

Brands of the New Dimenion – What Do They Have in Common?

1. None of the Brands of the New Dimension surrender to the “me too” temptation. Instead, being so much ahead of the curve gives them the leverage to ride the wave all the way until the novelty wears out.

2. A strong business model to follow the brand’s promise must be in place. Otherwise the novelty can easily slam into a brick wall faster than you can say “altavista.”

3. Another common attribute is guts. To come up with something that has never been seen before takes balls (ask Michael Jordan). I can only imagine the creative meetings that took place at Nike during those “30 Something” days and the eyebrow raising and conviction of the gutsy executives entering a new marketing frontier.

Pursuing Brands of the New Dimension is a little like the NASA space race. The huge investment in trying to get far out has many unplanned side benefits for other brands and markets. The new technologies, the new way of looking at things . . . broadens everyone’s horizons and gives us the guts to take our own brands far and beyond.

אפוקוליפסה אחר כך, כל הסיבות להיות אופטימיים במיוחד אם אתם עוסקים בשיווק באינטרנט

admin — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:36:30 +0000

בעוד כל הקולגות מתעשיות נושקות חופרים שוחות, חופרים לי במח ומתכוננים לחורף פיננסי גרעיני, תרשו לי לשתף אתכם באופטימיות הלא זהירה שלי. לפני שאתם רצים לכתוב לי בלדות לנאיבי תרשו לי לקחת אתכם למסע בזמן לשנת 2002. היאוש היה קל יותר באותה תקופה כשירדנו לבית קפה עם שכפ”ץ ולא רק בנתניה כמו היום. כשרוב חברינו התמחו בכיפול כביסה, ספונג’ה ושליחת קורות חיים ופינטזו על 6 פרות שמנות ואחת במקרר פלוס עבודה בחברת חשמל, היו את אלה שהשכילו לנצל את הזמן קצת אחרת

היתה זאת שנת ההתפכחות מתור הבהלה לזהב. בסופו של דבר באמת היו בודדים, מאות או אולי עשרות ש”הביאו את המכה.” אבל את המכה העיקרית בסוף עידן תור הזהב ספגו עיירות המערב שהפכו לעיירות רפאים. תחנות הרכבת, המסבאות, בתי הזונות ואפילו השריף המקומי והשודדים הביטו בהשתהות כיצד רוחות רעות מכסות את עולמם החדש בענני אבק.

בשנת 2000 ביקרתי בכנס השנתי של ענקית טלקום בארה”ב שעסקה גם בהוסטינג. הכנס היה מפוצץ והחגיגה היתה בעיצומה. כל מי שחייך קיבל במתנה טישרט. בכנס שנתיים מאוחר יותר רוב באי הכנס ישבו בבית וכיפלו כביסה מלאת לוגואים דהויים. הגיעו אולי חמישית מהאנשים.

בארוחת הבוקר למחרת פגשתי בלקח שמדגים מדוע העוסקים בשיווק אינטרנטי צריכים גם היום להיות אופטימים. ישבה שם אשה בשנות הארבעים לחייה והציגה את עצמה כג’ניפר. להבדיל מרוב המבקרים שטחנו לי את המח עם המילה אר או אי, ג’ניפר עסקה ב . . .מיחזור רהיטים. כמובן שהיתי סקרן לברר מה מעשיה בכנס של חברת הוסטינג. “אה, זה מאוד פשוט, היא אמרה” במיבטא דרומי כבד, “כשהעינינים הכלכליים התחילו להיות מבולגנים, יותר ויותר אנשים התחילו להתעניין באיך למחזר את הרהיטים שלהם בבית במקום לקנות חדשים. בהשקעה של רבע מהכסף העסק שלנו יחדש לך את כל הרהיטים.” “אז למה את כאן בכנס?” הקשתי. ג’ניפר המשיכה ש. . .”פשוט, לפני שנתיים פתחתי אתר שהוא מהר הפך להיות הפורטל המוביל לחידוש רהיטים. יצרתי קשר עם מחדשי רהיטים ונגרים מכל ארה”ב, כאלה יש עשרות אלפים, ובתשלום חודשי של $5 אני רוכשת להם דומיין, בונה להם אתרון מפרסמת אותם בפורטל שלנו.” בשנת 2002 היו לג’ניפר כבר 12,500 אתרים באתר שלה, תעשו לבד את החשבון.

הלקח הראשון הוא די ברור. לקח שכבר נלמד על ידי יצרני יריעות פלסטיק בתקופת מלחמות מפרץ, יצרני בונקרים בפלורידה בתקופת מלחמות מפרצי חזירים ויצרני משמר המיפרץ בתקופות התקרחות. אין כמו משבר הגון כדי לייצר אחלה הזדמנויות. הלקח השני, חשוב לא פחות אבל דורש קצת יותר חזון. אפילו בתקופות קשות אנשים לא יוותרו על תאוותיהם הם פשוט יחפשו את הדרכים הכי יעילות וזמינות להגיע לסיפוקם בין אם זה בית מחודש או צפייה בפורנו. ומי שימצא את הדרך היעילה ביותר לעזור למשווקים של השירותים והמוצרים העונים על הצרכים, ירוויח בגדול

את עיירות הרפאים והרכבות החליפו בסופו של דבר פרברים, דרכים מהירות ותשתיות ADSL. ומכיוון שהמין האנושי לעולם ישאר רעב, סקרן, חרמן וחסר סבלנות, המסע לתור הזהב הבא כבר התחיל ואפשר לחפש אותו בגוגל.

Keyword Research Exposes New Market Niche

admin — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:51:56 +0000

I don’t care whether you have an Internet Marketing budget, whether you SEO’d your site, or your brand is so well-known you don’t need to make any effort to get customers. If you have not done proper keyword research (that would probably be 99% of Israeli companies), then you may be missing one of the easiest entry points to more profits.

Keyword research is not just for SEO. Israel SEO experts don’t always even do keyword research I was recently shocked to learn. But before we go on – What is keyword research? It should be the methodical way that a company determines how potential customer or visitors to their site are searching using the search engines.

Among the many clients I have worked with in Israel, most are under the impression that there is some narrow list of terms that potential customers are using in Search Engine searches. They have a very subjective view of how customers search and most either do not have metrics on their site or have never bothered to look at the keywords that are being used to reach their site. If you have Google analytics (it is free!) or another metrics application installed on your site – you at least have the ability to see when someone reaches your site, how they got there. Take a look – it can be very interesting. But still, it does not tell you how the potential customers that did not end up on your site are searching.

But the real reason for this post is to actually point out the benefits of keyword research beyond the obvious SEO needs for keyword research. You can find new niche markets that you may have never realized are out there. It worked for one of our clients in the parental controls market. As we conducted our methodical keyword research (BTW – if your SEO consultant does not do keyword research, find another), we were focused on children and families and creating a safe Internet environment. But during the research, we ran into adult related issues. For example, one of the categories that parental control web filters usually block is gambling. And yes, teenagers are susceptible to online gambling. But moreso, there is a huge, worldwide problem among adults – compulsive gambling – and it has been further exacerbated over the years by the 24/7 inconspicuous availability of Internet gambling and online betting. So during our research, we started to actually get into the heads of this potential audience — the compulsive gamblers themselves and the relatives and loved ones who are trying to help them. For example, search “gambling website blocker“, like one recent searcher who purchased the software, and our client comes up – number one on Google as of today! Not only that, but there is a specific landing page that we created to address this niche market’s concerns. A compulsive gambler can not resist the temptation that the many betting sites and online casinos are offering. The landing page specifically addresses the problem gambler and his loved ones. And the product provides real help to this audience by blocking out all gambling related content. Believe it or not, until we did the keyword research, the client never thought about this market.

Free Internet Marketing Therapy – Our Freemium

admin — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:00:46 +0000

Sometimes, we feel like we are providing therapy to our clients — and thus sprouted the idea of offering Internet Marketing Therapy. So many times marketing managers or marcom directors, particularly in Israel, come to us with this overwhelmed look on their faces — where should I start? SEO, PPC, corporate blogs, integrate some Web 2.0 applications . . .? It’s understandable why they are overwhelmed. There is tremendous pressure and real need to succeed online. All of the tactics mentioned are terrific tools and everyone is talking about them. But they are just tactics – they are not strategies. Implementing a corporate blog could be a wonderful idea. But it will be much more wonderful when it is part of an overall strategy and not just a piecemeal tactic to make some noise, boost traffic a bit and show the boss that something is happening.

Offering a FREE Internet Marketing Therapy session came from spending a lot of time on working on some Freemium concepts with clients recently. If you are confident in your product or service, you’ve got nothing to lose by offering a significant taste of it for free. And you can be sure that we intend to make that 15 minute session as worthwhile as possible. I am just a little curious if we can eventually do in Israel what some of our peers in the US are doing, particularly those with a search engine optimization focus — they charge $150 for a 15 minute call and one leading company is charging $1,000/hour for on-site consulting! Wow. But I must say that those same companies are also giving absolutely fantastic information and tools away for free - the Freemium idea again. 99% of their audience are using only their free stuff. But that 1% who are paying the premium price are enough to support them nicely.

Our Debut Video . . . Coming Soon

admin — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:07:11 +0000

So Dror bought the digital video camera and a nice tripod and we are in the movie-making business. Well, not exactly, but we have the basics and are wasting no time in getting started. Since we want to start churning out videos that will provide valuable information to our audience and will help promote WebWhile as a company, we are not considering bringing in a professional film crew. We envision creating one or two videos each week – doing it with a professional production company would not only be costly, it would require dedicating too much time to something that, after all, we are offering to you for free.

Today was the first shoot. Most of our time was spent finding the best lighting – or more accurately, the least bad lighting. We quickly discovered that we need to invest in some portable lighting. Dror looked good, made a nice clip and now we are off to the editing room. We already know we need to invest in a microphone, some more PC memory to handle the editing and special effects, etc. And step by step, we will get there. For now, we will share the details of our journey with you. After all, if you are one of our clients, we may be planning to send you down the same path. But we will first experience the bumps and twists for you. Trust me, this is all going to be worth (web) while — Internet Marketing without video capability will soon be considered like bread without butter – dry, boring and only acceptable when you are really, really hungry.

Striking Balance

admin — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:24:56 +0000

Sales Message, Layout, Design, User Experience, Search Engine Visibility, Credibility . . . All of these elements and more must be taken into consideration when building your online presence! But it is very rare, even on today’s “mature” Internet, to find many sites that even begin to approach succeeding to reach this balance. And you may be surprised that i am saying this but, it actually is due to a lack of trying. That’s right — all those marketing directors, Marcom experts, VPs of Business Development . . . None of them are even trying to reach this balance because they simply are not aware of how important it is for their businesses. They still don’t recognize the value and the importance of establishing the right online position for their organizations. But that is good news — because it’s not because it is too hard to achieve this balance. It merely involves getting focused and making the effort. And anyone reading this has the ability to get there.

Beware of the Small Head (Rosh Katan)

admin — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:45:20 +0000

When clients come to us about “SEO” I find that many of these companies are not there yet. They want to be number 1 on Google and to see their site traffic skyrocket. But often they forget about the basics – about building a compelling experience for their visitors, about ensuring that they capture some footprint and about using their Internet presence to truly conduct business. Recently, we had a client who launched a beautiful site a few months ago and was disappointed that he did not get inundated with new leads. People told him, “ You need to SEO your site.” He ended up calling us, among many other vendors. But before we jumped into the optimization, we explained that we must first look under the hood and find out what is going on – on his site, in his business, in his market and among his competitors. We looked at his overall goals and at the opportunities that exist for expanding his business internationally via a strong online position. Now, his CMS is being overhauled to align with his needs, his target audience is being well defined to ensure the site provides them with a compelling experience and his site will be positioned to maximize exposure to relevant traffic. Further, we opened this non-hi-tech business man’s eyes to the realm of opportunities for his traditional brick and mortar business on the Internet.
When I see what goes on with many SEO companies, I am reminded of a bad experience I had in a home renovation many years ago. I had a window leaking in my house. I called a window company which was only too happy to replace my window. But that did not solve the leak. An engineer later found that the wall above the window was the problem. When we complained to the window guy that he should not have replaced the window if he was not sure it was the cause of the leak, he told us, “YOU told me that your window was leaking so I replaced your window. You did not ask me to figure out why your window was leaking.”This “Rosh Katan” attitude is abundant in the website industry and it bothers me. A very small, niche technology company came to me complaining that they don’t get any leads from their site. On their own, they had already decided to redo their site. But not much thought was put into it. By the time I met them, they were already developing a concept for the new site – but when I met them for my first briefing, they defined about 20 different markets that they were seeking to penetrate. Then they told me they want to be at the top of Google for all those markets. And of course they want to do this on the tiniest of budgets. The “Rosh Katan” approach would be to just let them progress and then optimize the pages they deliver. But instead, they left the meeting with a very good understanding of the need to focus — the SEO briefing I gave them was like a business 101 seminar. Just like it would not be fruitful for a small, developing technology company to try to rank highly for 20 different markets, it’s not smart for them to try to penetrate 20 different markets. They need to start by first focusing on what they do best and to resits the temptation to go in a new direction everytime they get a phonecall about some potential application for their technology. They already have products for 1 market and are starting in 2 additional sectors. We calmed things down and brought focus to their overall business outlook. I do wish they had a bigger budget so that they could start truly marketing online and build a solid sales channel. But that will come – if their technology is really as good as they say it is.

What do we do?

admin — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:05:58 +0000

Lately, I’ve been talking to a lot of potential clients that know they need to be well established online, but have absolutely no idea what that entails (lately, our high search engine ranking for particular terms is generating some great leads, especially in Israel!). So I’ve been doing some basic educating. It’s good to remind ourselves every once in a while that no matter what business we are in, we are immersed inside — and people that are not living in that world on a daily basis – understandably don’t know exactly what goes on there and why. So in talking to “lay” people, carefully explain things in terms they can understand. Even the most seasoned business people, I have found, are not familiar with basic Internet marketing concepts. Anyway, here is what I wrote to a recent lead and it seemed to help him “get it”.

One of the unique traits of WebWhile is that we have a rich experience in both international marketing AND ecommerce/online marketing. So our clients enjoy our ability to take a more holistic approach to their business. When you called, you asked if we do SEO. And I hesitated when I answered. Not because I don’t do SEO, but because I don’t tend to take on projects where someone wants JUST SEO – because there are very few sites out there that are doing everything “right” and just need some SEO to improve their ranking and than watch the business magically grow. You already know that “Build it and they will come” is not true on today’s crowded Internet. But now you also know, since putting your site up and even spending some cash on Google Adwords, that when they do come, that is still not enough – you want them to be compelled to take the next step (whatever we would decide that step should be).
So here is the general scope of what I think you need to do - and we are capable of doing for you – to get things moving for your business online:

Market and competitor overview – what is going on in your market online? Competition, potential customer profile, how can your customers be reached . . .
Keyword Research – The first phase of SEO is to conduct keyword research. This is to determine what terms your target audience uses to find companies/service /opportunities like yours. General terms generate an abundance of varied results and are difficult to rank well for. Furthermore, it is unlikely that your target audience uses general terminology to search for products like yours. On the other hand, the terminology that potential customers may use to search for your products, is likely very varied and not always obvious, even to you.
With the above information in hand, we would then start looking at your site and determine how it needs to be structured, types of content and design concept in order to provide the visitor with a more compelling and credible experience – to generate as many leads as possible. An important issue that needs to be addressed, for example, is that you need to get into the head of each customer profile to deliver the right content to drive him towards converting. For a customer involved in marketing medical care in Israel, for example– beyond explaining his services, he needs to convey to potential North American customers that the Israeli health care system is modern and trustworthy. So some of the content needs to be directed to the patient that is searching for the type of care this client is offering but may know nothing about the country.

Web Filter Affiliate Partner Payments Go Out Today

admin — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:48:06 +0000

You know that business is good when you can smile while you are writing checks. While we are still in a beta phase, the first payments are going out today for the Optenet PC Web Filter affiliate program. We have found some terrific partners to work with. The nature of the product naturally leads us to a good group of people – people who want to help others, who are concerned about the problems that Internet access has introduced to our lives . . . Anyway, it’s a pleasure to send out commission checks – and to do so even earlier than what we are committed to do. Thank you to our first Optenet PC affiliate partners!

How to tell the advertising strength & potential of a website

admin — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 10:46:28 +0000

In the pre–multimedia Internet era, it was was easy- you just looked at page views, unique visits and demographics. But all of that is changing now . . . and at lightning speed. Read how Internet TV and web 2.0 applications are reshuffling the rules of engagement.

Presenting your site’s activity to advertising agencies, partners, investors or sponsors is becoming tricky. It seems that the new Web 2.0 type of applications together with the heavy usage of Internet TV and Flash multimedia have completely changed the rules of the game. No one really knows exactly how to cope with the new standards. Actually that seems to be the problem, there are no suitable standards. In the old Internet days, the number of visitors coming to a website indicated, almost linearly, the opportunity for an advertiser or a marketer to engage with potential customers. Click through rates (CTR) multiplied nicely with conversation rates which made ROI easy to optimize, even to “mathematically challenged” marketers. Then came Web 2.0 with Ajax applications that introduced usability changes and eliminated page refreshes. As the distance between TV and Internet narrows as well, calculating advertising power has become quite tricky. The latest Nielson report suggested that measuring website performance should more heavily rely on time spent on site measurements. However, the popularity of tab browsing seriously discounts their logic. Some attempts are made today to count relevancy browsing, attention span crossed together with demographics and behavioral data. It seems, however, that until we place a WiFi chip in each web user brain, ambiguity will continue to rule!
From what I have been observing lately, the growth of CPA demonstrates, more then anything else going on, the acknowledgment of site owners that that getting traffic to convert is more art than science. Tab browsing makes CPM incompetent. We know how many people came to a website, but we don’t really know how long they stay or if they actually even noticed our ads. There is no standard, — in television they measure ranking and even account for channel zapping and bathroom breaks. Many advertisers don’t care anymore about using traffic to measure exposure that could have been merely “tabbed under”. But advertisers will be very happy to share profits with affiliates and CPA if they end up bringing business.

But how do you deliver CPA traffic from a video stream? Now, we start to see new technologies arising to handle the challenge. I personally like videoegg’s implementation. But there is no leading standard . . . yet.