My main playground for trialling these sites is our beauty product shop.

As you can see from the pie chart below, I am now attracting most of my sales through brand specific feeder websites.

I am also becoming more aggressive (defensive) with the salon on a local strategy with a foray into geographical reference sites. The first one is this site for a beauty salon in Blackwater.

Specificity is essential (and sometimes hard) with this approach, but in terms of creating a legacy for sustinable marketing, I still believe it’s money well spent.

Anyway, I came across a great Blog post by Scot of Birddog about a B2B ‘entrepreneur’ dismissing social marketing online and I had to laugh. Not only at Scot’s engaging writing style (I like it a lot – even the tone and the fruity language), but at the idiocy of an entrepreneur for dismissing certain routes of marketing that have evolved, thanks to the web.

Okay, so social media marketing is new, it’s different. And, a lot of people (especially marketers and business owners) are struggling with the concept that you can’t shout any more. It’s not a new concept though. Seth Godin’s been talking about Permission Marketing for ten years now and I am sure there were people before that. Interruption marketing and advertising just doesn’t deliver what it used to.

I can only guess that the same people who have problems with the evolution now are similar to the people who had problems when TV came along?

Technology – The Game Changer

Technology has changed so much about interaction and business in general. Ask my mum, and she’ll tell you how bad that is: That ‘we don’t interact with each other like we used to’. I tell her how I had a conversation with someone in Canada today via video conferencing and how I have actually done business on the ‘waste of time’ that Twitter and Facebook is.

Every business needs to adapt to technology especially as people have more control than ever to do things themselves. Ask my Accountant.

Marketing What?

In defence of the Entrepreneur in the post, I can only guess that he must have been in the meeting because he is successful with, or without, marketing. Some people get along just fine without actively creating marketing campaigns and brands, so who am I to question?

Twist that on it’s head and this is where social marketing becomes a bit of a ball-ache for me in terms of activity – There must a business model behind the marketing.

Many CEOs and Entrepreneurs (and I used the term lightly) on Twitter are typing in their bedrooms creating small revenues if they are lucky – it’s kind of obvious. The more someone shouts about their entrepreneurial prowess, the more I tend to doubt them. They are marketing when they have nothing of value to sell. What’s more, it’s in a very crowded and noisy space – ‘Social’ media marketing is becoming like interruption marketing – an advertising medium. With one exception – the punter can switch you off in a click.

We all need to start somewhere, I know that myself, But, to leverage social marketing to actually grow revenue (and I’m not talking about some get rich quick scheme that has worked for one person and doesn’t for everyone else that ‘buys’ into it) – that is the trick. To market and to sell your business proposition without pissing people off – it’s a fine balance.

[As I am writing this, my email has pinged to tell me Adstand is now following me on Twitter - thanks for backing up my argument and no I won't be following you back.]

Yes, it gives you the chance to engage with your customers and promote your offering. But…

1. Does it lead to any real business? Maybe, but compared to effort?
2. You can not beat the personal touch. Pick up the phone! Arrange a lunch with a client.

Take Twitter. It’s a great platform that is incredibly enabling. But, it’s so enabling that it’s full of people with an agenda. What’s more, how engaging can you really be with 140 characters? What about collecting followers too? Surely that’s just vanity.

I won’t stop using tools like Twitter, but you only need to look at the fickle way in which Facebook is being dropped to notice a pattern here, especially when it comes to sustainable marketing channels.

It’s worth pointing out that B2C may get value from a platform like Facebook… I know I do. But, the only number worth that you can measure relates to engagement and how can you measure that on your P&L?

Get involved, don’t waste too much time and get from it what you do. But, in the words of NWA, don’t believe the hype!

It makes sense, builds trust and creates relationships. Believe me, I am on board.

But.

As much as these guys say that the old rules won’t and don’t work, I can’t help  thinking that it’s restricting thinking – especially at a time when [arguably] small businesses need to be more aggressive with sales.

Yes, there is the ethical debate, and I agree wholeheartedly with privacy, etc. but I also see companies selling data lists, and Direct Mail (electronic and otherwise) still being appropriated in my direction from harvested lists.

So. I thought I’d experiment.

A couple of years ago we bought a database of companies in Hampshire for £150 and it’s been kicking around. What would happen if I just sent a blanket email to the database selling a small business web design proposition?

Is this even spam in the very grey world of email marketing ethics where business is concerned?

I managed to get 4,862 addresses together from the database and sent out a plain text email, stating where the data had come from and what the proposition was (see email text below). These are the results (so far):

• 907 bounces
• 184 unsubscribes
• 6 spam complaints
• 2 sarcastic email replies

Here’s the important stats:

• 100 click-throughs to the landing page (2.06% click through rate)
  
• 7 direct sales leads (7% from landing page / 0.14% from total sent)
  

That’s not a great result in terms of numbers… or is it?

The total cost for the excercise was approx £188, or just less than £27 per lead for a sales prices of roughly £2-3,000. The whole task took approx 3 hours and if we convert one of the seven leads (even on the lower estimation of £2k), you are looking at an ROI of over 900%.

Call me an arse. Refute my understanding of “the first rule of marketing” as someone stated. But you can not knock the actual result. Brand damage? Maybe a tiny drop in a very large ocean that will soon be washed away. It’s not as if I will continue doing this to the same data – but that would be another experiment in itself, so never say never.

In my many years of using e-mail for marketing I have come to understand that even when you do things ‘right’, someone somewhere will say you are doing it wrong. I still get spam complaints from subscribe only list recipients, so go figure individual logic if you can.

My big learning from this email experiment

Never say something won’t work, however smart you think you may be. And, those old forms of advertising and marketing that people say no longer work… does they really not work anymore? In any given situation? At any given time?

Email Transcript:

So why do so few marketing based organisations get the web? PR agencies, design agencies, marketing agencies. There are some agencies that are VERY good at digital but it amazes me that it’s not all of them.

Perhaps it seems like too much hard work? Perhaps it’s I.T. not marketing? Perhaps, it is actually all three… and so much more.

Birth Of The Smaller Agency

What’s happened though, while the traditional companies continue to do what they always did and despite the results getting weaker and weaker, a hungrier generation has appeared. I am now 37 and old enough to be their fathers – some of them anyway – and fair play to them.

It’s time for round two of web / marketing / design agencies and they could be as small as one employee, working from their back bedroom. (The Escape started under my staircase at home).

They get ‘it‘. They understand and leverage Twitter. They can build websites in hours – not weeks. They make it look good and get the online PR in overdrive with a few well placed clicks. They can market themselves, sell, collaborate and deliver.

What’s more, they are pissing all over the sluggish old-school agencies with account mangers still thumbing through their rolladex trying to pull in a few favours.

Welcome to the new web. Should established agencies be scared of them? Damn right!

The web will continue to change (state the bleedin’ obvious Craig) and it’s a case of testing theories sooner rather than later to compete or succeed online. So here are my personal top web predictions for 2009:

Localisation of search

I am already noticing the localisation of search. For instance, I have a Google application on my iPhone that delivers search results based on my actual location via GPS.

It makes sense. Apart from buying product online, we all tend to work with local companies when suppliers are not scarce and perhaps with cost cutting in businesses, coupled with travel being so expensive and the weak pound, why not do business with the company around the corner?

The biggest problem / challenge / opportunity for many businesses is that there websites are not set up to be local. We localised The Escape website early in 2008 to be focused on Basingstoke and have seen a massive growth in local business to the tune of approx £50-70k for the year, without losing any business from father afield. If anything our presence is becoming higher in other local towns, such as Andover, Reading, Winchester and Southampton – more than enough work to keep us busy there.

So, as far as localisation goes, I guess it’s a case of the refining of content (where applicable) or the creation of some geographically niche micro sites.

Social influence will become even more important

If you don’t engage with your audience, you better watch out. Social influence will continue to grow as tools becoming slicker at ‘passing it on’. Whether ‘it’ is good word-of-mouth or bad – people will be better placed to talk about you.

As well as the usual suspects, such as Facebook, Twitter (still growing fast) and Blogs, Google is also becoming more social with search data in the shape of Searchwiki.

This makes it even more important to impress people with your web presence. No longer will you be able to wing it – there’s just too much choice for your customers online now. It comes down to whether they tell you, or just go somewhere else and tell all their friends.

I will be testing Twitter more, to try to deliver actual business. I will also be utilizing video more through You Tube and turning  some Facebook groups into Facebook Pages, as well as ascertaining actual viability of platforms such as Squidoo.

Rapid growth of open source

I was brought up on a diet of Microsoft and ASP for the past few years but what with the need for rapid deployment coupled with a need to cut costs, I can imagine more and more commercial organisations moving over to open source during 2009.

I know I will be pushing very hard at The Escape for PHP based static solutions, with WordPress for news/updates. Or, even WordPress for scaled-down content-managed solutions.

I will also be pushing more and more of my starter websites through applications such as WordPress (to generate quick content) until they are deserving of a makeover (design and functionality).

Video has come of age

Talking of You Tube, video is now of age. There is no better way to engage people online than by using video in an effective way. I spoke to Daryll, an NLP friend, last week about this on – guess what – video. You can see the video about engaging people online here.

Focusing resources

Finally (one for me especially) is the need to focus on the projects that have legs. Marketing and spending time / budget on web projects is all about return on investment. In the same way that businesses need to trim costs for 2009, I need (and I guess some of you may too) to reduce the burden on certain projects that are not delivering.

This isn’t just a ‘me’ thing though. I can imagine a lot of big brands, although ready to plough their money into online, will be doing so dilligently… at least they should be.

Summary

2009 should see a consolidation of sorts online, with many companies looking to leverage what they have. On the flip side, many companies will dissappear or scale back greatly due to the current global economic situation. The winners, as ever, will be those organizations that are the most flexible and quick off the mark in delivering. So, here we are on the 1st January so, on your marks, get set…. GO.