In a recent Google advertising blog, Google points to research which plainly shows that a large percentage of your Customers use a search engine to find you and find out about you before the make the big purchase.  OK you knew that right? But what does that mean to your brand?

It means that SEO (search engine optimization) is so very important for your brand and for your success.  When was the last time you bought a product with out doing a quick little search? OK maybe if you’re buying a Twinkie and a Coke Zero you might fore go the search but products and service of any price consequence starts with a search more times than not.

Customers are even conducting searchs on their smart phones while in the store.  They search for reviews, information and even price points.  Advertising still has the ability to put your brand voice in the consumers ear but what use to be the whole battle (getting presence of mind) is now only the entry fee into the sales game.  The battle continues into the world wide web and getting your brand/product/service search engine optimized.
Can your customers find your easily?   Or are they finding your competitors more easily?  Scary scary.

Check out this video that walks you through the SEO  tools Spyfu.com, Hittail.com.  (They are paid services and I have no connection with either place.) They will help you figure out your own SEO and reveal a bit of what your competitors are doing.  It rocks pretty hard.  It’s less geek speak but it cuts off mid sentence but it is worth the view.  Check it out and then dive in to your SEO and enjoy the ride.

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It use to be that advertising was considered the comedian who was the opening act for the Rolling Stones. Nobody wanted to hear that guy. They wanted the Stones or Green Day or LAFMO. The point is, advertising was the opening act as we waited for the super star. Things have changed. Now there are a billion opening acts. A billion bad comedians vying for your attention. All screaming buy me, buy me, buy me. It gives us all a big headache and our only defense is to tune out and ignore every comedian we can.

We must entertain to be heard.

Two things need to happen.

First Agencies/Account people stop letting your clients do crappy stuff and then, through all kinds of media paid and un, try and get them into my head. It’s irresponsible and you are polluting my world with bad work that does your client no good. Stop it!

Second, marketing people stop thinking that more is better. More facts about your product/service, more price points, more products, more information, more reasons to buy. Quit thinking you don’t have to be entertaining or creative.  You are not only wasting your money but people will hate you for putting crappy stuff into their spaces (heads, ears, eyes, social media living rooms etc.)

Do something that is smart or cleaver or beautiful or yes even conceptual. Something other than a carton of eggs with a big logo and a line that says BUY EGGS. Don’t be afraid to do great ideas. Don’t spoon feed your consumers they are big boys and girls and will resent you for the insult to their intelligences. Be Creative as you sell your products, tell stories, make me laugh, cry or just be in awe. You have to both entertain and sell.  One with out the other is a waste of time and pollutes our little world with dirty smoggy Badvertising.

Stop it. Be creative.

We all know that to communicate with people you have to talk to them where they live, not where you hope they live. That’s why mobile marketing is growing so rapidly because people live with their smart phones. Not with their TVs or their radios or not with the things people use to read called magazines.

The numbers are staggering. Check out this graphic and great article by the folks @ mashable http://ht.ly/4muG2 Great way to present things. Look at the numbers in the graphic below and you decide if this is The Now.

But as always just because you can find people and talk to those people, doesn’t mean you should. You must have something to say, that they (the consumer) want to hear. Be helpful. Other wise you are just another stalker in the digital realm. Not that fun to be one or to be stalked by one… Be careful out there. And leave me alone Canadian Pharmacy  haha

Social media is your company’s brand face on the web, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Youtube, etc. but the questions is who is running this important face of your company? For many companies it’s the person with the least amount of brand experience, the least busy, the least costly individuals. This means interns or the guy in the mail room, the receptionist or worse. Social Media is not so cheap when you do it wrong. It can cost you a huge price. Customer. image, even the future engagements.
Pay attention to who is skippering the social media ship. Yes everyone can help but someone has to be in charge and someone has to pay attention. Someone who understands your brand and the new media. So better to have someone who knows who you are, telling people who you are.  Right?

This can be as simple as having everything go through one person. One voice is a good thing. Don’t rely on a cheap monkey to to the heavy Social Media Brand lifting, it’s counter productive, possibly damaging to the brand and annoying to the monkey…

OK we all know the saying that content is King but it has to be a couple of other things too. It has to play the part of Court Jester and Concierge. I know odd coupling but if it fails to entertain us we will never notice it. If it fails to help us we will be annoyed by it.

TV content can (depending on the brand) still get away with being just the Court Jester. TV has to be interesting and entertaining. The Super Bowl is coming up and that is the mecca (supposedly) of entertaining content. The Super Bowl ads I did a few years back were just that, entertaining. They created a buzz around E-Trade, this was the strategy and it worked. E-Trade is one of the old school .com’s that is still around and still pretty strong. People talked about those ads, they competed with Budweiser, and with Bud they topped the USA Today polls. They were great Court Jesters.

Web content on the other hand still needs to be entertaining but it has to solve problems and be helpful as well. What I’m looking for on the web is sometimes different than what I want on my flat screen. I get annoyed by purely informational ads and boring content that appear on my screen while I’m cruisin the web. They had better be helpful, cool or entertaining and not too sales driven or I get pissed at the brand itself.

Just because you want to say it to the consumer does not mean they want to hear it. The days of talking at the consumer has been dead for a while now. You learn that lesson or you go out of business.

So let’s modify the statement. Content must be interesting, entertaining and helpful to be King.
Content must be part Court Jester and part Concierge.

We all know what happen to unhelpful Concierge and unfunny Court Jesters. One gets no tips while the other loses his head.

Neither is good for us marketing advertising folk.

Good luck.