Internet Marketing and Digital Media Strategy Sydney Australia

We're in a pub (yes having a beer by Mel) and the guy playing guitar in the corner looks a bit like a cross between Danny Devito, Aggro the muppet and Mark Knoffler - he's singing a pretty good cover version of Dire Straits "Money for Nothing (and chicks for free)".  I'm sure the words he's singing aren't quite right but that's a different story. 

After his set, "Barney Dawson" (we learn), comes over and joins us at our table.

We chat, Barney tells us he's been playing guitar and singing for over forty of his forty-five years, that he'd been a child superstar, recorded albums, starred in films, travelled the country but was now back doing what he loved most - getting face to face with real people like us, just him and his guitar.

By the way did we have any song requests? He knows thousands of songs and he finds gigs are much better when the audience is involved.  "Today, entertainment is an interactive two way conversation with your audience" he says.  It's interesting how this very much the same as digital brand marketing through social media, that you can no longer jam your message down your audiences throat.  

"How about ACDC's 'its a long way to the top" my mate Franklyn asks.

"No problem" the reply, ...and somewhat apologetically, Barney asks if we can shout him a beer - he's left his wallet at home and there is some confusion over the publican and his manager not running the normal bands drinks rider at the bar" 

"Sure", the good old sales A.I.D.A. process in action:  Attention - Interest - Desire - Action / transaction.  Thankfully he didn't pull out the overused old chestnut sales closer "only two spots left" or I'd get up and go now.  

Anyway, call me a sucker but I'm always happy to pay a little bit more for good service and special attention, especially if it helps differentiate from a mediocre experience - the fundamental principle here is that nothing is for free, everything costs in some way - whether that's time, money, resources or even lost opportunities, you get what you pay for.  

The most important element is delivery - if I'm paying (or you're paying more), we had all better get better "stuff" for the extra outlay!

Comparison ROI of Free Press Release Services

My mate Franklyn's company has a press release going out today.  Several years ago I did a comparison of FREE web Press Release services. The end result back then, you got what you paid for - but for the sake of testing we'll do in all again.  I suppose the other question to ask is how relevant is a press release in this blogging, twitter and social media age?  Anyway, more on that later.

1st step is a Google Search on Press Release Services to see what services are out there = 354,000,000 results - yeow!

We try "Best Free Press Release Services" = 242,000,000 results - OK, there's lots of noise.

I'll pick 10, the first three Adwords; the first three SEO listings; and four more through more research.  

The following sheet will be updated as we go.

It's interesting I post the first release on PRWEB and PR9.net and within a couple of hours an email from http://www.mymediainfo.com/ allowing me 10 Free Searches of their media contact database.   I'll try it later and post an update.  I'm keen to see the comparison of results.

We'll also see what comes in via twitter and Facebook and we'll begin building a database of influential bloggers and tweeters. 

Random Acts Of Kindness #RAOK

The bar is packed and buzzing, Barney's kicking up a storm, even Magnificent Mel the barmaid digital strategist is struggling to keep up.  You can see she's not getting time to take the bottle bins out the back.  In a random act of kindness we give her a hand - it's funny how good it makes you feel helping others with no catch involved.  There's a lesson somewhere there for marketers.

We party on, one beer has become a few, Barney belts out an ACDC melody of hits, Franklyn is stoked and buys him another beer.  Good service is often rewarded.

You see nothing's for free, everything costs in some way - time, money, resources, lost opportunities BUT it's the investment and return that matters most - and that's not always measured in $$$$.

S*x Sells - Setting the Scene

The room is very dark that you can only sense it's small size by the steamy confined heat and the short re-verb of the pulsating sounding background beat.

Each beat the sound gets louder.

Through the dark a single light beam shines cutting through the dense smoke. A body lies near naked - a voluptuous and scantily clad woman.

Camera cuts to a man, he's all green, standing over the body.

He pours liquid, much like maple syrup, over her body - she awakens and screams with delight.

The camera zooms onto the jug label - "Create Compelling Content" scrawled across its bright label.

Cut to green man taking a photo with his new Smartphone.

The man laughs loudly and smiles devilishly (even though he doesn't have a mouth) - he looks for a pocket to put his phone but he doesn't have one - fade to black -

title card - "capture the moment".

"Cut", the camera pulls back wide to capture the whole studio. Chisolm explodes!

Note: Reminder to self - need to add something so that potential clients understand this is a marketing vehicle to promote products or services using brand ambassadors. The key to all of this is developing characters and stories that resonate with your audience.

Reflection

OK - maybe the ad concept above is not going to work for most (any) potential client but that ad is not designed for everyone - that's the key message - as guru Seth says "it's about products for customers not customers for products". We explore characters and ambassador authority.

Developing Characters

We finished shooting the last few CLIVE clips this week - Sales guy Ernie Cash, CEO Franklin Un and Creative Director Chisolm Van Schwizer. We'll have the very short, professional corporate CLIVE clip and then a background behind the scenes video where you learn a bit more about the team. As Ernie says "it's people and stories that sell" and Franklyns swear jar rises quickly - I'm not sure how well this will go?

Filming, Scripting and Creativity

We look at the draft edits - they're amazing - you just couldn't write those sort of dynamics quickly (I don't think). Chisolm tells me the sytle is called "Dogma" - yep - I'm sure there is some academic out there who will tell me what the term is for what we've done - the approach we've taken. My thoughts are that by doing we learn - by sharing we understand. There's a continuous cycle here somewhere.

Roll out

I'm still playing with ideas on how to roll the whole new site - the phased roll out gives us the ability to easily add layers more layers and elements as we go. As you know the web is not the big bang media launch but a long tail customer and fan engagement strategy. Don't get me wrong we still need to develop some promotion element at the front end to get word spreading faster. Ideas take a while to cystalise.

Be unique - mass marketing is for mass producers and audiences.

Following are a few quick thoughts on brand engagement.

1. Understand the audience - the who/ what, when, where, how much and why?
2. Insure clients understand that in this digital media and communications age, online social media customers are now firmly at the power centre of the buying Universe - empower your audience with knowledge and tools - be open. For example, who are your "influencers (experts, role models etc), sneezers (people who advocate) and flamers (people who critic) and how do you connect? What channels are they in?
3. That Brands/ Services need to provide a unique sales proposition and create a compelling story/ experience that engage and resonates with their audience(s) - both in short term attraction and longer term relationships. This can be online, offline or a combination of the two "inline". 
4. Create desire and value viewer attention - develop and create short, high quality, very creative advertising and marketing collateral that viewers trust to share, interact (comments, likes, blogs) etc, purchase and recommend.
5. In summary much of the advertising and marketing principles we've all learnt are still the same  - the only difference now is scalability (niche), the technology, the heavily fragmented, flattened non value layers of middlemen and the integration and importance of customer service and experience into our brand engagement programs.

"There are approximately 70 words to a 30 second script.

On websites you've an average 12.5 seconds to get attention and engage your new visitors - that's 28 words!

At Maxys, we can help you increase your website effectiveness.

Browse around and Contact Us."