Marketing and Strategy Consulting
Totally true and spot on:
Google’s Regina Dugan Demos Electronic Tattoos & Ingestible Passwords – Liz Gannes – D11 – AllThingsD: “‘If you want to ensure failure in your innovation, try removing the risks,’ Dugan said. ‘Boredom is the enemy of innovation.’”
Yes, it’s creepy to us. But even creepier is authenticating your digital identity with a flimsy password.
I’ve asked this question of our clients so many times… “What exactly does your brand stand for so that we can do the best job of marketing that meaning to people who need to hear it?”
The answer I frequently get is “um, well, that’s why we hired you.”
Hiring a marketing agency to help you with getting the word out about your products, services, apps or ideas is a great step but should come after your company has a clear identity. We help folks develop brand strategies, but don’t confuse that with marketing and advertising.
Seth has a good first step for every company to take…
Seth’s Blog – “What does your brand stand for?”: Make a list of the differences and the extremes and start with that. A brand that stands for what all brands stand for stands for nothing much.
There are some really great slides and info here… highly recommended:
Business Insider – Here’s An Excellent Presentation About The Rise Of Mobile And The Massive Implications: “Revered Apple analyst Benedict Evans of Enders Analysis is giving a presentation May 29 at the BookExpo America convention in New York.
It’s on the rise of mobile and what it means for the industry.”
Make sure to check out the part on ecosystem growth.
Fascinating…
Google blimps will carry wireless signal across Africa (Wired UK): “Search giant Google is intending to build huge wireless networks across Africa and Asia, using high-altitude balloons and blimps.”
You might have noticed that we do auto-posting of things on the blog here to our @harrelsonagency Twitter account. To do that, we use the awesome WP to Twitter plugin for WordPress:
WordPress › WP to Twitter « WordPress Plugins: “WP to Twitter automatically posts Tweets from WordPress to Twitter using your URL shortening service to provide a link back to your post from Twitter.”
That’s a great free plugin, but the paid version called WP Tweets Pro is even better:
Your PRO Marketing Tool for WordPress and Twitter: WP Tweets PRO: “What can WP Tweets PRO do for you? It takes the great posting capabilities already available to you in the free plug-in and expands them: allowing you to publish to different Twitter accounts for each author; to schedule up to 3 re-posts of your Tweet at an interval of your choice; and, with a delay between publishing and Tweeting, gives you the ability to review your tweets before they go out.”
We’ve been very happy with the ability to post up things and have them go out to individual author tweet streams automagically. Plus, the reposting of tweets is somewhat of a necessary evil in 2013 with the inundation of information.
For $30, that’s awesome.
If you’re on WordPress and looking for an easy to use plugin to help you manage Twitter, this is the one for you.
I got my start in online marketing in 2002 working for an email marketing group in Columbia, SC. I was fresh out of an Ivy League masters program with a degree in ancient religion and literature (and some archaeology experience). Needless to say, that wasn’t a highly valued skill set for a 22 year old just moving to South Carolina.
However, those years I spent with that email marketing (eventually affiliate and search marketing) company were the perfect trial-by-fire for finding my legs in the wider world of performance marketing. I realized some very important things about online marketing in general and email marketing specifically. It was a great education in the various ways of doing agency business in a post 9/11 but pre CAN-SPAM world of glitzy conferences, making lifelong connections and getting deals done with great agility and detail.
Although “the long tail” is a term that has lost much of its 2007 cache, there is still a great amount of truth to the term within the concept of online marketing. I’ve argued to clients and friends over and over that email is (and will continue to be) a very long term prospect of increasing returns over time in a world of short-lived Twitter and Facebook promoted posts as advertising.
The SumAll folks have a great post laying out a similar argument and some nice tips you should read at the end…
Why E-mail Marketing is More Valuable Than Ever – SumAll – Blog: “It’s been a widely held notion that after you’ve sent out your campaign, you have 12 hours to get the most opens you can before your e-mail is lost in inbox limbo. But based on our research, e-mails have a much longer tail than people are aware of. “
Whatever marketing channel you’re using, email is a great compliment and something you should bake in early in your campaigns.
Dr Drang nails it:
Free – All this: “I’m sure you’ve noticed the backlash against free internet services over the past couple of years. Not that there are fewer free services, just that a certain set of people have been arguing that we shouldn’t be using them. Their rallying cry is ‘If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.’ This is considered a deep truth among the anti-free set. It’s certainly true, but it isn’t deep, and I’m not convinced it makes free services bad.”
Read the rest for great connections to services such as TiVo. “Free” has taken on a religious sentiment amongst many technologists, marketers and users that simply doesn’t hold up when you look up the numbers (or economies behind them).
Middle school students I talk to frequently point to Instagram, Kik, Snapchat, WhatsApp or (increasingly) Twitter as their preferred social network over Facebook:
Teens, Social Media, and Privacy | Pew Internet & American Life Project: “Focus group discussions with teens show that they have waning enthusiasm for Facebook, disliking the increasing adult presence, people sharing excessively, and stressful ‘drama,’ but they keep using it because participation is an important part of overall teenage socializing.”
While Facebook did (wisely) acquire Instagram last year, the bleeding of usage is significant. Teens and the prized 18-24 demographic will continue to have a presence on Facebook as a namespace, but usage is the key demographic here.
Replacing demographics are much more ephemeral and harder-to-monetize situational networks like Kik or Snapchat.
We’ve been using RightSignature the last few weeks for client docs, contracts, insertion orders etc… really a great service and highly recommend if you need to pass signed docs back and forth in a legal and consistent (and transparent manner):
RightSignature | Sign Documents Online, Electronic Signature, e-Signature: “The easiest, fastest way to get documents
filled out and signed online.”
Agreed:
How Google plans to rule the computing world through Chrome — Tech News and Analysis: “Welcome to Chrome, my desktop today and your desktop of the future.”
I’ve been trying to stay away from my $199 Chromebook and focus on using my $3500 Macbook Pro with a Retina display, but I keep picking up the Chromebook when I need to get things done.
Weird.
Great post that highlights a few of the mistakes that companies make when having to deal with SEO, but this is the highlight:
The SEO Mistakes That Wiped Out 80% of My Organic Traffic: “The best marketing and SEO is done by a committed in-house team that builds real relationships with others in their niche. And if you’re marketing your first site, I strongly recommend doing your own SEO and marketing to learn the ropes and build your experience. If you ever do decide to outsource it in the future – or hire your own in-house team – having the knowledge from doing it yourself will be crucial to properly manage the process.”
We do SEO for many of our clients. They trust us with this very crucial and necessary facet of doing business, or just having a presence, online. However, I’ve had great fun and success working with companies where I ended up teaching an in-house team or person how to manage their own SEO and eventually their affiliate management etc.
In the long run, the web becomes a better place when agency and marketers stop trying to keep an Oz-like curtain up in order to keep the income flowing in. Sure, we have to pay our bills but the clients will come since what we’re offering is good.
It’s much more satisfying to work with a company (large or small) as it learns and grows along with this constantly evolving web. We much prefer those types of clients than the “set it and forget it” types.
Affiliate marketing as a mainstream channel is something we talked about a great deal in 2006 and 2007 when the industry was largely dominated by either email marketing or coupon marketing.
It has been fascinating to watch the combination of social media and content marketing really transform the paradigm of affiliate marketing from faceless high volume publishers to a more transparent stream of traffic and clicks. That’s been a positive development:
Affiliate Marketing Going ‘Mainstream’ Says VigLink CEO Roup: “Roup adds, ‘[Affiliate marketing] has gone from coupons to content. Though coupon sites were dominating up until a few years ago, what you’ve seen since that time is mainstream publishers, who deal in real content are starting to delve into the affiliate world.’ Huffington Post and Wanelo are among the larger media companies using VigLink products today which, he asserts, ‘proves’ that affiliate marketing is less on the fringes than ever.”
More to the point, the idea that the affiliate chain can include compensation beyond the last-click has been a hot button topic for over a decade now. Roup speaks on that as well:
But we suspect that coupon sites intercept a lot of the value that our publishers are creating and that the coupon site gets the credit. At this point, publishers are not compensated for any click other than the last one. We are working to try and understand that more deeply. Ideally, we would like to compute that value and be able to deliver as promised to the publisher. I wouldn’t say we’re there yet. We are doing some fairly detailed experiments with some merchants though.
It’s interesting to see the notion of affiliate marketing becoming both mainstream as well as realizing the pitfalls of having a core publishing center based on coupling. As the economies and scales of affiliates and performance marketing channels continue to evolve in the next few years (with the steady rise of social media and location based advertising), I suspect we’ll see a very real and solvent affiliate space that need not rely on coupons.
However, what does that look like?
I forgot how cheesy the “success guy” at the end of the CJ signup process was until I walked a new client through the process today. Reminds me of a certain success kid…
vs
My favorite line from my favorite episode of Dr Who:
Doctor Who “The Impossible Astronaut” (Episode 6.1) | Planet Claire Quotes: “The Doctor: Mr. President. That child just told you every you need to know, but you weren’t listening. Never mind, though, ’cause the answer’s yes. I’ll take the case. Fellas, the guns? Really? I just walked into the highest security office in the United States, parked a big blue box on the rug. You think you can just shoot me?”
You’d think there would be … I don’t know … a disclosure near and/or at the top of a post on a blog such as MarketingLand clarifying the author’s intended purpose (or at least job) here:
Managing The Migration To A New Affiliate Network: “The topic of affiliate network migration is at the top of the agenda for a lot of advertisers these days. Whether a transition is driven by the urgency around the closing of the Google Affiliate Network, or you’ve bandied about the idea of switching networks for some time, moving to a new network requires thoughtful, strategic planning. Otherwise, you may find yourself hopping across different networks while you disrupt your brand, sales and publisher relationships.”
Kinda scummy, Scott.
No doubt…
Dear Class of ’13: You’ve been scammed – Brett Arends’s ROI – MarketWatch: “Move over, Illuminati. Stand down, Wall Street. Area 51? Pah. It’s nothing.
The biggest conspiracy of all? The College-Industrial Complex.”
Great cautionary tale for these early days of cloud computing and new forms of marketing/advertising…
Dumped! by Google : The Last Word On Nothing: “I returned to the Google fold with eyes wide open to my responsibilities as a user. In relationship terms, I am no longer monogamous. I store my data on other servers maintained by providers like Evernote, Dropbox, and WordPress, and the cloud is my standby, not my steady. I’ve swapped convenience for control: I back up my email and what I care about most on physical hard drives.
I’m also back in touch with my first love—spiral notebooks. Unlike Google, they will never come close to containing the world’s information, so no one but me will ever want to access them. And to encrypt my data, I just rely on my handwriting.”
Again, be like the fox.
We’re looking for a great intern or two (or three) to help us out with day-to-day operations of Harrelson Agency, Harrelson Press, Harrelson Racing, Harrelson Autos and/or Thinking.FM.
It’s a fun role for a young person to fill either in our Columbia, SC offices or even virtually if they’re tech savvy enough. Plus, you’ll gain incredible experience and have some great references and lines on your resume for the future.
Here’s the formal announcement but feel free to email sam@harrelson.co for more details or if you have any questions…
“Harrelson Agency and Harrelson Press are offering a joint summer internship for high school or college students interested in design, publishing, and where those two fields intersect. The internship period will run for six weeks beginning July 8, 2013. The pay will be a stipend of $500.
Interns are expected to maintain a professional attitude and work schedule, which includes working remotely, meeting with clients, and individual weekly progress meetings. The internship will include website coding, copyediting, e-book design, and other related services.
Interested applicants should submit a 500-750 word bio and/or a link to your blog or Twitter profile to merianna@harrelson.co for consideration.
Let’s get started!
Sam Harrelson and Merianna Neely”
We’re looking for a great intern or two (or three) to help us out with day-to-day operations of Harrelson Agency, Harrelson Press, Harrelson Racing, Harrelson Autos and/or Thinking.FM. Specifically, we’d like to find folks interested in learning about indy marketing agencies or programming or copy-editing or podcasting or SEO or any combination of those.
It’s a fun role for a young person to fill either in our Columbia, SC offices or virtually (we use FaceTime, Skype, HipChat, Basecamp, Google Apps as backbones) if they’re tech savvy enough.
Here’s the formal announcement but feel free to email sam@harrelson.co for more details or if you have any questions…
“Harrelson Agency and Harrelson Press are offering a joint summer internship for high school or college students interested in design, publishing, and where those two fields intersect. The internship period will run for six weeks beginning July 8, 2013. The pay will be a stipend of $500.
Interns are expected to maintain a professional attitude and work schedule, which includes working remotely, meeting with clients, and individual weekly progress meetings. The internship will include website coding, copy-editing, e-book design, and other related services.
Interested applicants should submit a 500-750 word bio and/or a link to your blog or Twitter profile to merianna@harrelson.co for consideration.
Let’s get started!
Sam Harrelson and Merianna Neely”
Google’s announcements at its IO conference this week remind me of my favorite poem…
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
In a world of anticipatory “search”, be like the fox indeed.
I love my Epson XP-400. I picked mine up at Best Buy but you can find them on Amazon (linked) for about the same price of $70.
It’s not a fantastic picture printer, but for crisp documents or archives or tickets etc, it’s all I need for my home office and our Harrelson Corps office.
The biggest benefit is that for $70, we can print straight from an iPad or iPhone just by connecting the printer to the wifi network in the office. It’s magical to print a document or contract from your iPhone in five seconds.
Secondly, with the printer’s support for Google Cloud Print (takes about 2 mins to setup), you can print any Google Doc (from a laptop or device) from anywhere in the world as long as you’re logged in to a Google account or domain (harrelson.co in our case). That’s awesome.
We don’t print a ton of things at Harrelson Corps, but having the ability just to tap a button on the iPad and make it happen makes me feel like I’m finally living in the future.
Highly suggest.
I’ll post later on why I love my Merkur razor, but this is the greatest tip I’ve ever read on how to get the soap part of using a razor like this just right (found deep in the Amazon reviews of my next brush)…
Amazon.com: Parker Safety Razor 100% Silvertip Badger Bristle Shaving Brush (Chrome Handle) and Free Shaving Brush Stand: Health & Personal Care: “Everyone has his own method, but if you’re new to this game, here’s mine: Fill half the basin of your sink with the hottest water you can get out of the tap, and place a mug full of this water in the basin. (this allows the mug itself to heat up, which will keep the lather warmer longer.) Let the mug and the brush soak in this water for about two minutes. Squeeze most of the water out of the brush, and swirl your brush in some shaving soap, 4-5 rotations, like you’re mixing with a paint brush. No need to overdo it. Then empty most of the hot water out of the mug, saving just enough water to coat the bottom of the mug, and work up a warm, thick lather in the mug, adding water as needed. Then come back and write a review of the best shave of your life.”
Shaving snobbery is one of my little joys in life. The process takes way too much time in the morning and is expensive upfront but the joy it brings to my life and my pocketbook (do you know how much those Gillette blades really cost??) make me happy before work.
Not totally on-board with everything here (by 2020 we won’t be tapping things to enable NFC connections nor will companies be texting us when we already have their app installed on our device or wearable), but this is an thought-provoking overview of just how much the web and coming improvements in consumer technology and IT infrastructure (more agile databases in the cloud etc) will change marketing itself in the next decade:
The coming era of ‘on-demand’ marketing | McKinsey & Company: “What’s next? Deploying tools that rapidly assemble databases of every customer contact with a brand, companies will need to push every customer-facing function to work together and form an integrated view of consumer decision journeys. With longitudinal pictures of customers’ touches and their outcomes, companies can model total costs per action, find the most effective decision-journey patterns, and spot points of leakage. As more contacts become digitized—and they will—the data will gradually get easier to create.”
Mobile is the linchpin of the user experience in 2015-2025, but we can’t forget wearables, such as Google Glass, and how much those will impact marketing as well.
Still hurts:
My Aunt Lib died this past Fall and while we were preparing for her funeral at her home, I happened upon my Uncle Herbert’s old wallet in a closet. I had to take a peek inside and found this piece of blue paper folded up…
It was his autobiography.
I wish I had known more of this story when he was alive…
Here is the transcription with a few links that I’ve thrown in for my own benefit:
====
Uncle Herbert’s Autobiography
Born in Florence 1920 one block from American Bakery. Worked on farm. Worked Tyler Veener Mill, Roofing Co. Atlantic Coast Line Railroad at Station and in round house. Fueled first diesel train that came into Florence.
Joined Navy March 1942. Went to Newport Rhode Island Boot Camp then to Chicago Navy Pier Aviation Mechanical School about 10 months.
Then to Phila for Catapult School, then west coast waiting for ship corridor.
On ship went to Honolulu. Changed ships then to Marshall and Gilbert Islands in combat their. Liscomb Bay sunk. Then over Equator and then to invade Guam and Saipan. Typhoon on way 3 days.
To states for discharge after war. Started working at Koppers Wood Preserving after layed off at R.R. then back in Navy 1950 for 18 months Korea War on USS Saipan.
Then back to Koppers Co.
Heart attack in 1978. Retired 1980. 5 operation and 3 heart attacks one of them bypass.
Built 2 houses.