Josh Kerbel

Over the last few years a number of dedicated real estate sites, Zillow.com, Trulia.com and Zoocasa.com (What fucking marketing brains thought of these names)  have promised to be the nirvana of local search for real estate agents.

All three of these sites offer real estate agents the ability to deliver targeted local ads to buyers and sellers.  You work the 90210 area code, you can get your pay per click ads seen only in that zip code?

So does anyone want to make a bet that agents are blowing their brains out on another form of advertising?  Anyone………well, lets take a look.

First up, Zillow and a search for homes in the 10003 zip code.  This brings up a local pay per click ad for the lovely Amy Wilder (and I do mean lovely, I think her picture suits her last name………she looks likes like she is……….wait, let’s get back on track.)   Lets find out where her ad takes me…

Ouch, that has to hurt……all that beauty and just a plain Jane website.  No info capture! No attempt to engage!   Ack!!  Amy, you are killing me here…………and not just with that crazed look in your eyes   And while she does have some information capture on the Zillow site, she isn’t really offering anything more than a sly smile and crystal blue eyes.  If this was a bar, I’d be handing my credit card over to her, but it’s not.

Oh Amy, what could have been    Just goes to prove the point, no matter how much of a hottie you are, ya can’t have a cold website

Up next……………..Trulia.com

(I hope Amy has a twitter account)

Just so you know………I fail………a lot.

At what you might ask……..well everything, but in particular, about convincing prospects to take a much more analytical approach to marketing, regardless of how warm and fuzzy a product they think they sell.

I’ll give you an example:

Hi Josh,

Thanks for coming in last Friday. You presented a different marketing concept than our other candidates and really made us question which way we want to hire. We feel that your approach is very analytical and therefore more suited for a “not so fluffy” business. We have decided to hire someone who is more passionate about the blogging and communications with moms , etc.

So, what did I fail at here?

In retrospect, I probably didn’t make it clear enough my “analytic” approach applied to crafting the structure, function,  roll out and analysis of the campaign – deciding on outcomes and measuring against them.  In marketing, fluffy and analytic are not mutually exclusive.  Up front, I  focus more on the structure and execution of a campaign, rather than telling people “how much I love blogging” or “I just love making new friends online and telling them all about the cool things your company is doing” or ” I am such a Twitter addict that I have that fucking bluebird tattooed to my ass” (That real estate is currently occupied by a much more kick ass tattoo at the moment).  If you think this what marketing is about, then my friend, it is better we don’t work together, as I don’t want my name attached to a product that is going to have a good chance of falling flat on its face right out of the gate.

In fact,  when you look at direct marketing, most of the successful campaigns are the ones that hit your emotional pain points, the ones that make you cry on the inside (or outside if you are a total pansy).  Do you think these campaigns got all emotional by chance?  No, they were tested, over and over again until someone got the right amount of emotion in to a marketing message.

Remember that the next time you want to start a marketing campaign.  Is your goal to make people all warm and fuzzy or deliver actual results to your business – cuz if you don’t do it right, they will become mutually exclusive events.

Of course the other option is that they just wanted to pay someone $15 bucks an hour to sit on their asses and stream Tweets about what color shirt they are wearing today………but that’s just a guess.

Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
In my mind and in my car, we can’t rewind we’ve gone to far
- Video Killed The Radio Star – The Buggles

We can argue the whether video killed the radio star or radio made the video star back and forth all day, but the truth remains……….people like to see stuff……..moving stuff………..no, not moving stuff on their food (cuz that’s just gross), but on their screen.  Internet peeps like video.  And with video sharing sites reporting hockey stick silly growth figures, you should like video too.

But when it comes to your sales message and lead generation, you shouldn’t like a pretty picture just for the sake of liking a pretty picture, you should like it because it contributes to your sales message.

The point of this post isn’t to bog you down with silly technical things like sitemaps and indexing, save that for your tech geek…………its to kick off our dive into the benefits for your sales efforts.

What you need to understand is the people search out for videos that help solve their problems (VIDEO IS BECOMING PART OF THE RESEARCH PHASE OF THE PURCHASING PROCESS).  So if you want to be the one they find, you need to be the one who produces the video…..bottom line, have you even considered how your sales process or product translates into video?

If not, you should………

Ted: OK wait. If you guys are really us, what number are we thinking of?
Bill, Ted: 69, dudes.
Bill, Ted: Whoa.
- Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

No dude, it’s not 69……….this is the Internet, oh wait, I guess it could be 69, but if you want more of that stuff you’ll have to find it on some other website.  I’m talking about the most important number when it comes to running your website………… visitor value.

What you need to find out is the average amount of money spent by each visitor to your website.

This is the mantra spouted by lots of people on the Internet and it is wrong.  It is wrong because it completely ignores that you actually have costs associated with running your business.  This is wrong, what you need to determine average amount of net profit per customer.  In fact, what you need to figure out is your net profit per customer before the cost of marketing (marketing is the variable you are experimenting with here).  Otherwise you end up spending too much money on marketing if you just look at top line revenue.  You do not break even by spending as much on advertising as you generate by selling your product (unless, of course your product has zero production and distribution costs).

Let’s put some real numbers to this so you get a better grasp (and I can finish watching Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure).  Say you get 1000 visitors to your site, you have a 2% conversion rate, so you get 20 sales.  These 2o sales produce $10 net profit before marketing per sale (on a $25 product) or $200.  $200 divided by 1000 visitor, so you have a visitor value of $0.20.  This means you can spend up to  20 cents to get a  visitor and still break even.  If you used total revenue to calculate visitor value, you would have gross revenue of $500 and you end up with a visitor value of $0.50.  If you used this number as the maximum you can spend to get a visitor your site, you could end up losing upwards of $0.30 per visitor that comes to your site.

Some would argue that $0.30 is just how you invest in your business, but I would look at it as quickly marketing yourself to broke……

So remember,  its not the average revenue generated by visitors that is important………its the average profit.

He ran out to the lot and climbed into his rig
And drove off without tightening down
It was a terrible thing
To see what remained of the rig that poor Danny was in
- Truck Stop Girl – Little Feat

So say you’ve gone, smashed up your ride and now you need to get some repair work done…..in Tulsa……….cuz dat be where ya live!

Considering you don’t know much about collision repair since you are Doctor of Veterinary medicine and you are pretty sure you can’t fix your car like you can a sick horse,  after the tow truck driver drops you off at home, you perambulate (that means walk) over to the computer and do a quick search for repair shops for collision repair shops in Tulsa…maybe like this………”collision repair tulsa oklahoma”

Now, let’s take a step back for a minute to really get ourselves into the head space of someone who just trashed their car.   In addition to being a big ticket, this is also an non-routine transaction for most people (unless you drive NASCAR on the weekends), so there are going to be lots of questions (costs, insurance, warranty, reliability, resale etc) and trust issues on the part of prospects.  That means it’s an excellent opportunity for companies in the collision repair space to use the Internet to develop some trust by answering some of these questions and get some customer contact information in the process.

If you happen to run a collision shop, think of all the questions you answer with each new customer.  I am willing to bet my last Fram Oil Filter that 70% of customers ask the same questions over and over and over again.  I am also willing to wager that once you answer these questions properly, you find the customers start to trust you a bit……..so let’s see if we can save you some time while pulling in new prospects to your shop.

So looking at the PPC ads, do you see any that might even indicate to prospects that you can help them answer their pre purchase questions (otherwise known as research).  Here are the ads?  Do any make you want to respond.  Remember the Internet is a direct response medium.  Your goal is to get people to respond to you.  To raise their hands and say “Dude, I just trashed my car!!!!”

Well, since we aren’t sitting in a classroom at the moment and no one has developed reliable ESP technology yet (I would probably be in jail already for thought crimes if they had).  How do you tell if someone has raised their hand (I’m actually sitting here naked with both my hands up, but you can’t see).  So how do you do this?……..

…………….

Give up?

You do it by getting someone to give you an email address.  This requires a somewhat inspiring PPC ad.  Look at those ads above?  Do any of them look inspiring?  Do any of them say “Ya, man I know you smashed up your ride.  Here is what you need to know before you get it fixed.”

In fact, if I was writing these ads, here is what I would write:

This ad would then link to a landing page where I would offer the free guide book in exchange for contact information.   This guide book would answer all the typical questions that you usually answer during your first meeting with the client.  This builds trust and saves you time because you have voluntarily educated the prospect before hand.   I would then follow up with the person via email with helpful tips and phone call to find out about the accident.  Obviously, this is a quick conversion set up.  Most people don’t let their cars sit broken for too long, but you get the idea.

So let’s see how our shops in the Tulsa market handle the post click process.  Do any of them attempt to actively capture prospects?  (click to blow up the image)

I’ve thrown the landing pages in to one big collage, but as you can see none of them bother to use their websites to build a relationship….they all just scream……….BUY BUY BUY while people who look at the website just say BYE BYE BYE…. not a single one of them attempts to build a relationship with prospects.  They all just brag about their work, or how long they have been in business.

They all completely ignore the fact that most people have questions that need answering and on the Internet, the best way to turn prospects into customers is by answering questions, not by having your name posted on zillion useless directory sites.

From Cracked.com

9 Most Meaningless Corporate Slogans…..

I couldn’t have said it better myself..

Or maybe these from the Huffington Post

But nothing beats my personal favorite ………

Not advertising, but M.A.R.K.E.T.I.N.G.

Say it with me now children………….marketing

As you all know, the bible had 10 commandments, but since marketing is a little less important, it only deserves 5 and 1/2.

Now place your left hand on your thesaurus and repeat the following 5 and 1/2  points until they have embedded themselves in your cerebral cortex right next to the name of your dog and first true love

1. Highlight the disadvantage of YOUR product.  No one is dumb enough to think your product doesn’t have any flaws or drawbacks.  Every product does….point’em out before your consumer finds out for themselves.  Make sure your customer is not set up for a terminal case of buyer’s remorse blues and you look like honest broker.  Chances are your customer already knows your shortcomings, just like your spouse does.

2. Marketing ain’t literal and unlike the real world, you don’t go to jail for breaking the law……..So:

• EXPERIMENT WITH diFFERENT forms of text
• Play with bullet points
• Add a little color to the mix
  

Do Not Bore Your Prospect To Sleep (But don’t over do it to the point of causing seizures in your readers).

3. Sales is a Burlesque Dance, Not a Hardcore Sex Show.  Do you know the difference?  A good burlesque dancer creates an aura of mystery, spins a web of desire, leaves a little bit to the imagination and makes the crowd want more.  Do you make the crowd want more? Or do you strip it all a way in one swoop like the girls at the local nudie bar.

Stop pounding your prospects with the cold hard facts.  Seduce them. Intrigue them.  Make’ em curious.

4. Love the Silence:  Just cause ya got a lot to say, it doesn’t mean ya gotta cram it to one spot………learn to work the white spaces.  Remember, humans are visual.  We like pretty things.  Look at the premium we put on design and I don’t mean practical Swedish design you can pick up at IKEA.  Look at what separates cheap and expensive products,  it often comes down to design (Rolls Royce vs Toyota…they are both cars aren’t they?!?!).  And on the Internet, design comes down to layout.  Use it appropriately.

5. Find A Pretty Face: Not too long ago, someone once told me I had a face for radio and a voice for the Internet….Unfortunately the Internet is now a multimedia channel……..ACK!!!  So what you need to do, even if you fancy yourself to be quite the looker, is find someone  to pitch your product for you.  Find someone who has an opinion that matters……USE CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS………..A testimonial is the prettiest face your prospect will ever see, regardless of what your Mama tells ya.

5 1/2……….A logical person would have just said 6 (Is there really such a thing as a logical person anyways?)………Stick People In The Eye With Odd Numbers.  Why? Part of human conditioning.  The human brain likes things it can break down in to itsy bitsy bites of information and it does it FAST.  Odd numbers take a bit of time to analyze……..your prospect needs to spend some time actually thinking about your pitch before they store it away in their wet file (that’s brain for the uninitiated).

So there you go………6, I mean 5, I mean 6, OK 5 and half commandments of marketing.  Now go forth and spread the gospel.

Have you ever played around with the Google adwords traffic estimator?

I was doing it today and I noticed something weird

I was trying to find out the approximate price of a keyword and the position it would bring…..no big deal

I get the following info – bidding $3.21, my average CPC is $2.15 and my position is 7 – see the image

Now I drop my bid to 2.15, average CPC falls to 1.21 and the estimated position goes up to # 4???

Any thoughts?  Does this make any sense?

Now don’t be sad
‘Cause two out of three ain’t bad
Now don’t be sad (Cause)
‘Cause two out of three ain’t bad

-Meatloaf – Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad

Two out of Three Ain’t So Bad, but how about Two out of Eight?   That is pretty bad, but that is just how many online marketing agencies attempting to serve the Toronto market actually demonstrate their own competencies in PPC marketing strategies with their own PPC ad campaign……..

Shall we waste some more time on this subject?  Well, obviously you think so, because you are reading this post……..

The best way to tell if your online marketing agency is worth the money is to examine how you found them in the first place or if they were a word of mouth referral, you should take a look at how they use the Internet to find themselves  new clients.

Let’s do a specific search for something like…………….online marketing agency toronto

This brings up something that looks like this:

Let’s dissect some of the PPC ads……start by thinking, if I am looking to for an online marketing agency, I’m looking for a solution to a marketing problem I am having.  So what I want to see is an ad that is written so it speaks to my problem – personally, I have become really attached to the whole Problem – Benefits – Features type of ad.  Let’s get a little deeper and look to see if any of the ads do this

And now the ones on the side:

Its pretty safe to say that most of these ads don’t really follow the whole problem-benefit-solution model.  But what is more important here is how they handle the post click process.  They have my attention, now lets see what they do with it.  And behind link #1…..

Crappy PPC ad not withstanding, this page isn’t too bad. I would make sure the information capture fields were a little higher.  Now on to link #2 from Mindshape.  Well they have the info capture set up, but  they seem to want to do a few things with this page.  At least its not bowing down at the alter of blatant self indulgence.  They are set up to pull in leads with this page, just like the guys behind link #1………these guys have a clue.

I threw the rest of the ads in to a little poster.  Most of them are fails.   The one I am most surprised about here is PAGE ZERO…….considering they claim to have written the book on paid search, you would think they would know not to just throw PPC traffic a their home page.  Andrew, the owner of the company, has been around the net for ages.  Someone may want to give him a spanking for this poor set up.

So, 8 ads and 2 passes………from people who are supposed to be experts on this area. Um, ouch?

I think the Old Spice guy may have fallen off his horse after seeing his year over year sales numbers:

But sales of the featured product—Red Zone After Hours Body Wash—aren’t necessarily tracking with that consumer appeal: In the 52 weeks ended June 13, sales of the brand have dropped 7 percent according to SymphonyIRI. (That amount excludes those rung up at Walmart.) P&G execs were not available to comment.” This, from Brandweek via Stephen Denny

Social media types across the Internet must be plotzing at this news………..you mean someone is holding social media accountable?  Ack you can’t!?!  You don’t get it!!!  It’s all about the brand!!!!

This isn’t the first “Oh wait, maybe this isn’t doing what we thought it was doing for the whole social media thingy?”  Even media types are starting to wake up to this fact –   B to B marketers still looking for return on tweets

I’m not saying that social media promotion is a waste of time if it drives a company’s bottom line, but throwing money at a social media campaign for the sake of throwing money at a social media campaign is kinda like banging your head against the wall because it feels good.

But I guess this all part of human nature, after all, how much money did companies invest in the Internet to find out that direct marketing actually works?