Web Ink Now

Building inbound marketing assets are not marketing expenses

I get pushback from many entrepreneurs and business owners as well as CMOs in larger businesses about the idea of using inbound marketing because they see the investment in people to create content as a barrier. They say things like: "I cannot find money in my budget to spend $5,000 a month (or whatever the number) on content creation."

When I probe, the vast majority of these decision makers are looking at content creation in the same way as they look at other marketing expenses they currently have such as advertising, trade show booths, spending on agency retainers, and printing brochures.

Building inbound marketing assets

Thinking of your content as an expense like advertising means you always underspend.

For example, if you spend $5,000 in a given month on Google AdWords, the only thing you are buying are the resulting clicks of your ads appearing against the important phrases people search on to find your business. But as soon as you stop paying, your clicks stop too. This is the classic example of a marketing expense.

However, if you spend $5,000 in a given month to hire a freelance journalist to write a bunch of interesting blog posts relating to important phrases people search on to find your business, you will have assets that live on forever that will drive people to your content from the search engines for years to come. The content will have value many years after it has been paid for.

I started writing this blog in 2004. There are posts that I wrote many years ago that rank highly in the search engines for phrases that people search on today such as "brand journalism" "online media room" and many others.

My free ebooks are an even more dramatic example. I've gotten well over a million downloads from these efforts. Every day people download my ebooks, in some cases many years after I have written them because they enter search terms like "viral marketing" and discover my long ago created content.

Those blog posts and ebooks are assets that I own. It's not a marketing expense because the 500 or so links from Google and the other search engines I get each day are free!

It's not just me. Mike Volpe, CMO at HubSpot, looked at HubSpot sales leads from their blog. It turns out that 70% of all blog leads are from older articles and only 30% of the leads came from articles that they wrote that particular month.

In other words HubSpot blog assets that were already "paid for" in the past represented 70% of HubSpot success. Yet the way most people would calculate ROI is to value the smaller 30% of leads against the marketing spend for that month. This method gives false data.

Time to stop thinking of content creation as an expense

Almost all marketers are looking at an investment in content as a short-term expense instead of a long-term asset.

It is time we educate the decision makers that content creation is asset building. I am such a believer in this that I think we should put our blog or YouTube channel onto our balance sheet in the same way that many companies value patents or brands.

How to value your content assets

There are a number of ways we could actually value our content. None are perfect. Here are a few to get you thinking:

Value of a blog post or ebook using AdWords Value Equivalency

I propose one metric, which I coin as AdWords Value Equivalency, which is sort of similar to the traditional PR metric of Advertising Value Equivalency.

The way to calculate this is to figure out how much you would have to pay for the Google AdWords equivalent of a particular search term that you rank highly for in the natural search results because of the content you have created. Then figure out how often that phrase is searched on and calculate a value for a year (or ten years or in perpetuity).

As an example, HubSpot is currently in the #1 position for "marketing software" (nice!!). And there are also a bunch of companies buying ads against this phrase using Google AdWords. I would argue the value of that phrase as a HubSpot asset is the present value of the maximum AdWords price you have to pay times the number of searches (or the number of clicks). You could figure it out such that a keyword like that could potentially be worth millions of dollars over, say, ten years.

Value of a Twitter follower

Here is an arbitrary way that each Twitter follower is valued. Some time ago the mobile phone site PhoneDog sued a former employee when he left the company, alleging that the employee took as many as 17,000 Twitter followers with him when he left. PhoneDog estimated each follower was worth $2.50 and went to court to get the money back.

I know the dollar figure is arbitrary, but take your company's Twitter followers and multiply by $2.50. Again using HubSpot as an example, the asset they have built of 285,000+ @HubSpot twitter followers is theoretically worth more than $700,000.

I'd argue that if HubSpot were to value the company to, say, go public in the coming years that investors would be wise to look at these valuable marketing assets in evaluating the merits of investing in the company.

What about you?

Please add a comment if you are already calculating the value of your marketing assets and let us know how you do it.

Are there any creative types out there who want to build an online tool for my concept of AdWords Value Equivalency?

Disclosure: I am on the HubSpot advisory board and serve as the company’s Marketer in Residence.

World's worst website

I'd like to nominate the English-language edition of the Tokyo 2020 Candidate City website as the worst English-language site in the world. The site is built in support of bringing the 2020 Summer Olympic Games to Tokyo.

Where to start. Well anywhere, really. So let's look at content.

How about Vision:
"Tokyo 2020 will bring together dynamic innovation and global inspiration. It will unite the power of the Games with the unique values of the Japanese people and the excitement of a city that sets global trends. It will be a unique celebration that will help reinforce and renew the Olympic Values for the new generation. And will contribute to more young people, worldwide, sharing the dreams, hopes and benefits of sport."

Huh? WTF?

This is about as gobbledygook as any paragraph I have ever read. And I've read a lot of bad ones over the years. We've got weasel words like the number one most over-used phrase in English language marketing: "innovation". Then there’s "global inspiration," "unique values" plus other world-class, cutting-edge, mission-critical nonsense. These phrases are so overused to have become meaningless.

A fun test of superlative-laden content like this is to substitute a competitor. So how about substituting into the paragraph above for Istanbul 2020 with the words "Istanbul / Turkish" or Madrid 2020 with "Madrid / Spanish." If the paragraph still makes sense with the competitor city substituted, then vision has failed.

Buyer personas... Or not.

While I could poke at additional content aspects of this terrible site that make it stink so much, I'll stop. Because what it really comes down to is the typical mistake of not understanding buyers.

I lived in Japan for seven years and my wife is Japanese. What we've seen so often is Japanese organizations that enter the global markets by simply translating the content they created for the local Japan marketplace. That's likely what happened here.

And it's too bad, really. Because Tokyo would make an excellent host city. But I fear the candidacy is doomed because of this rotten site.

For an example of missing the buyer persona, consider the use of animated characters that are so big in Japanese marketing. The people who made this site assumed that everyone in the world is attracted to anime so they carried it over to English too: All-Time Cartoon Hero Doraemon Joins Tokyo 2020 as Special Ambassador. Well not everyone is into the same stuff as the average eleven-year-old.

Who should be the buyer persona for this site? I'd argue the 115 voting members of the International Olympic Committee who choose the location of the 2020 games are the most important buyer persona. I'd have a tough time believing that this site reaches those people effectively.

When your organization goes global

While it is easy to sneer at this site and other crap-filled sites like it, imagine what happens when *you* simply translate *your* materials into the local languages of countries whose markets you enter. It is likely a similar thing happens to your site in the eyes of the local market if you translate your content.

To really globalize, you need local content creators who understand the local buyer personas and create content especially for them.

Voting for the Olympic host city takes place on September 7, 2013, as I write this a little more than 4 months away. There is still time to fix this site and increase Tokyo's chances.

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UPDATE May 2, 2013 - I am not a consultant (I write books and deliver speeches around the world. I have no interest in trying to generate consulting business from this blog post. I am simply pointing it out so we can all learn from it.

Do not delete your content because it should live forever

UPDATE - March 30, 2013 - Air New Zealand tweeted a clarification to us which I have saved as a screen shot pasted below.

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As I was working on a writing project this week, I went to back to take a look at a YouTube video that I talked about on my blog in an August 2010 post titled Awesome Air New Zealand All Blacks rugby safety video. I've mentioned the Air New Zealand - Crazy About Rugby - Safety Video in one of my books and in talks around the world. Remarkably, this had been an airline safety video (you know, how to buckle your seatbelt) with over one million YouTube views!

Even more remarkably, it seems Air New Zealand has removed the video because it is now marked as private. What a lost opportunity for Air New Zealand.

Do not delete your content

Much of your web content should live forever. This video would have continued to rack up views, make people laugh, and serve to humanize Air New Zealand forever. But now it is gone. In reviewing the Air New Zealand YouTube channel, which was created on May 31, 2006 and has 24 million total views, it seems that all videos older than 3 years have been removed. Why in the world would they do that?

I frequently witness this silliness with conference organizers who have one URL for their annual conference and each year delete the prior year's content and replace it with new. Don't do this!

The media in your industry, speakers, bloggers, and exhibiters all link to the conference site and if the content is deleted as soon as the conference ends those links break.

A well-organized conference site is an important historical artifact that provides valuable information many years later. Who spoke that year? What panel discussions were held? What companies sponsored the event? People want to know that your conference has thrived for over a decade. Rather than use one conferenceURL why not make it conferenceURL/2013 and then next year make it conferenceURL/2014? The homepage can then point to the current year's conference.

The SEO benefit of many links

Your Search Engine Marketing benefits from multiple pages with many inbound links. Cultivate your content with care and it will serve as a marketing asset for years to come.

UPDATE: Here is what Air New Zealand said about the deleted video.

Insensitive Newsjacking leads to social media firestorm

My friend Jim Stewart who is CEO of a Melbourne digital marketing firm, points us to an example of inappropriate newsjacking.

Recently, Australia has been hit with devastating bushfires. The damage has been especially great in Tasmania. People's property has been destroyed and many are homeless.

Into the disaster jumped SellItOnline saying they would donate electric generators to the victims of the Tasmanian bushfires in return for people who "like" the SellItOnline Facebook page. The company received backlash from many of its 1,500 fans, who accused the company of taking advantage of the catastrophe. This led to people writing about the insensitivity which led to discussion on social networks. The post has since been deleted.

We learned from the Hurricane Sandy newsjacking attempts that negative stories are very dangerous to attempt to newsjack. This example is in poor taste because the company was attempting to use the disaster to gain Facebook "likes". Had they just donated generators to the victims, they might have gotten some positive buzz.

Newsjacking is a powerful tool. But the potential to backfire is large when the story is a negative one.

Image: au.news.yahoo.com

What converging mainstream and social media means for marketing and PR

Too many people are still hung up with outdated artificial demarcations between "mainstream media" and "social media", arguing that one is more legitimate. This leads to flawed marketing and PR strategic decisions.

This is especially true of many (but not all) public relations agencies whose reps do their clients a disservice by focusing on one form of media over another.

Nonsense. The distinctions have nearly disappeared. You've got to eliminate your prejudice.

Whenever this subject pops up, I'm prompted to ask some questions:

- What is a blog?
- What is an online news site like Huffington Post?
- What is it when a print newspaper like the New York Times or a television network like the BBC publishes an online news site?
- What is it when readers can post comments to on an online story from a magazine?
- What about when a reporter for the BBC maintains a blog?
- What are the Twitter feeds of New York Times reporters?

Guess what? It's all just real time media!

The Huffington Post is a technically a blog. It is written on the Blogger platform so there is no difference technically when I write for the Huffington Post or when I write on Web Ink Now, my personal blog.

The Huffington Post is a blog, but is one of the most important news sites on the Web with a recent Alexa ranking as I write this of 77, making it in the top 100 of all sites of any kind in the world.

The Huffington Post is a blog, but won the Pulitzer Prize in the category of national reporting for senior military correspondent David Wood's 10-part series about wounded veterans, Beyond the Battlefield.

The BBC is mainstream media, but readers can comment on stories (and thousands do).

The New Yorker is a magazine, but people can share links to stories within the site using widgets for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, and Tumblr.

What the blurring of mainstream media and social media means for your business

When your buyers search Google or another search engine for information related to your business, they don't really care if the top results come from a "news site" like the BBC, a "blog" like the Huffington Post, or your own content rich Web site. So you need to eliminate the bias.

When buyers ask a question on social media they are happy when someone sends a valuable link to information on the web. They don't scrutinize what’s recommended to them and dismiss the blog content and only read the remainder. They're happy for something that educates and entertains.

The best marketing and PR strategies must include creating your own content, including text, video, and images. It should also include strategies for getting noticed by important voices so they write about you, which comes back to the content you create.

photo credit: DanAllison via photopin cc

SEC action against Netflix CEO over Facebook post is completely wrong

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is considering taking action against Netflix and its CEO Reed Hastings because of a Facebook post.

The agency says that the update to Hastings' 200,000+ subscribers where he said "members had enjoyed over 1 billion hours in June" violated the SEC Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) rule.

The SEC is charged with making securities trading fair and since Netflix is a publicly traded company, the SEC has oversight. RegFD is the SEC rule that says when a company discloses something of material importance (something that might affect the stock price) that the information needs to be sent to everybody at once.

According to the SEC: "Regulation FD provides that when an issuer discloses material nonpublic information to certain individuals or entities—generally, securities market professionals, such as stock analysts, or holders of the issuer's securities who may well trade on the basis of the information—the issuer must make public disclosure of that information."

The SEC is completely wrong

The issue is not with Netflix. It is with the dinosaurs at the SEC. This is not a stock story. It is a real-time communications story.

The post that Hastings sent out was to his Facebook PUBLIC followers list which currently numbers 245,000 people. Anybody can subscribe to the list and anybody can access the content at any time without subscribing. I do not subscribe and it took me less than five seconds to access it – go to Facebook and type 'Reed Hastings' in the search bar. Bingo.

Any journalist or securities analyst who has any brains at all would be following what Hastings is saying on his public Facebook posts.

Here's the important point -- by posting to Facebook, Hastings is getting the news out fairly to anyone who wants to see it.

The SEC considers press releases to be the acceptable way to comply with RegFD.

Press releases are fine, but in 2012 saying that only press releases qualify for fair disclosure is like saying the only way to watch movies is in a theater. In fact, when I looked for press releases from Netflix it took me much longer than five seconds to find the relevant pages.

Time to re-think fair disclosure

There is no question, based on my extensive previous experiences - 1) working in the real-time news business for a decade; 2) as head of corporate communications for two public companies and 3) as VP marketing for Fair Disclosure Financial Network - that the SEC is wrong.

The SEC needs to develop new rules on what disclosure is in our world of instant communications.

If anyone from the SEC reads this, I'd be happy to come down to Washington and educate you on the new tools of real-time communications. But since this is not a press release, I doubt we'll hear from the lawyers down in D.C.

When newsjacking is in poor form and can damage your brand

UPDATE October 30, 2012 at 10:20

Mike Volpe, HubSpot CMO, apologized for the tone of the original post in an update to it now called Is Newsjacking Hurricane Sandy Right or Wrong?

The original HubSpot post sparked a very important discussion which was continued here and in Mike's update. We needed to get these issues out in the open. Getting the pros and cons of newsjacking out there is incredibly valuable.

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ORIGINAL POST

I love the HubSpot blog. Normally, I agree with what they have to say and I frequently tweet links and leave comments. I am an advisor to the company and wrote Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead with HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan, so I have deep ties to the company.

HubSpot got this one wrong: 5 Hurricane Sandy Newsjacks From Marketers.

Having written the book Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage I feel I need to jump in here and offer my take.

When newsjacking is in poor form and can damage your brand

According to early news reports (I'm writing this early in the morning after the storm hit), Hurricane Sandy has caused $20 billion in economic damage and at least 15 people have lost their lives. A million people have been under orders to evacuate their homes and 7 million people are without power.

This is not the sort of story to promote cosmetics and fashion, two ideas on the HubSpot post.

These sorts of frivolous newsjacking ideas give the concept of newsjacking (and marketers in general) a bad name because it is a blatant attempt to exploit a tragedy.

Newsjacking is a powerful tool, but you risk unleashing the power in a negative manner that can seriously harm your brand if you exploit something in poor taste like a major storm. Kenneth Cole learned this lesson the hard way when he attempted to newsjack the revolution in Egypt.

You need a legitimate tie to the story

To be successful, attempts at newsjacking must have a legitimate tie to the story, especially when the story is about a disaster, death, or any other negative. The examples in the HubSpot blog post about marketers relating fashion and cosmetics to Hurricane Sandy are in the Kenneth Cole category.

The HubSpot post also references a tweet by Sears pointing to supplies they sell that could be useful in the storm’s aftermath such as generators. This is an example of a legitimate tie and something that is valuable.

Sears would really nail it if they offered a real-time store search feature so consumers could find out if their local store had supplies such as batteries and generators. I could see that being picked up in the media and benefiting Sears.

Newsjacking

I'm thrilled that the ideas in my Newsjacking book have become popular with marketers. As an author, that's the ultimate – having others take your idea and run with it. But newsjacking is tricky. We’ve got to work together to show not only the positive side, but the potential pitfalls as well.

When crappy interruption marketing harms a brand

Just because you have my email addresses, it doesn't mean you should email me your marketing message.

Just because you have my phone numbers, it doesn't mean you should call me with your sales pitch.

Just because we're connected on LinkedIn, it doesn't mean you can add me to your email list.

Just because I follow you on Twitter, it doesn't mean you can try to sell me something via Direct Message.

Intrusive, interruption-based marketing techniques frequently do much more harm than good. The creation of a "campaign" can piss people off so badly, that it can actually cause business to fall. It would have been better to do nothing.

Scott Brown's Intrusive Robocalls Will Hand Massachusetts US Senate Seat to Elizabeth Warren

I just published a piece in Huffington Post Scott Brown's Intrusive Robocalls Will Hand Election to Elizabeth Warren. I talk about how Warren will win the US Senate race in Massachusetts because voters like me are fed up with being interrupted at home by robocalls pimping Brown. At my home number, we've received quite a few recorded ads from Brown support groups including the Massachusetts Republican Party. So far, we have received no calls from Warren support groups.

The idea of spending money on annoying people seems like a good idea to traditional marketers. They buy a list, prepare a script, and reach out to "prospects".

Are these robocalls interruptions supposed to good? It just pisses me off. And I'm not the only one. Other Massachusetts residents I speak with are also fed up.

People hate sales calls. Some three quarters of Americans have signed up for the National Do Not Call Registry which does not currently apply to political organizations. This is something Shaun Dakin is fighting to change with his 300,000 person strong National Political Do Not Contact Registry.

If three quarters of Americans signed up to say "no" to sales calls, why the heck would a campaign think making a sales call is a good thing?

Crappy marketing

I see examples of this behavior all the time. Today I was added to an email list that I have no interest in. The person said, "Hello David Meerman. Since we're connected on LinkedIn I thought I'd let you know..." Bang! We are not connected anymore, pal. And hey, you don't even know my name. You blew it by interrupting me with an unwanted message.

If someone sends me an unwanted sales pitch via Twitter Direct Message, I immediately unfollow. Gone, Buh Bye.

Just because you've got passengers confined in a metal tube for a few hours on a plane, doesn’t mean USAir should wake me up from a nap to pimp their damned credit cards.

I don't go to my local mall food court as much as I used to because the owner, Simon Property Group installed a television system that loudly advertises stuff to everyone as they are seated and trying to eat.

You don't have permission

Marketers need to understand that ownership of an email address or phone number or being followed on Twitter is not permission to intrude with a sales message. This behavior does more harm than good. You’d be better off doing nothing.

Note: This is a marketing blog, not a political blog. I am commenting on Scott Brown’s marketing (or rather that of groups affiliated with him), not about the candidate himself.

Porter Airlines email marketing trains customers to wait for a sale fare

Last month I travelled to Toronto to speak at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference and flew via Porter Airlines from Boston.

The Porter Airlines flight and service was excellent. I particularly loved flying into Toronto City Airport, which is located on an island right downtown. The travel time from the airport to downtown is significantly less than from the main international airport located outside Toronto.

I'd definitely fly Porter Airlines again. But, next time I would only book a fare that was on sale.

After I booked, I signed up for their email offers. I expected to be educated about Porter and the destinations they fly. I was not.

Instead, on a regular basis, all they’ve been sending me are fare sales. I must have gotten a dozen offers in the several months I've been on their email list.

It sort of annoyed me that I paid more for my flight than I should have. I couldn't switch because the fare sale emails say: "New bookings only".

I get what they are doing. They want to fill seats and it is a lazy marketers drug to run sales on a regular basis. It sort of reminds me of how some companies use Groupon, which I wrote about in this post: The dark side of Groupon.

Offering frequent fare sales trains customers to wait for a better price on Porter Airlines. It also annoys customers like me who (stupidly) paid too much.

Porter Airlines can do email marketing better

I keep waiting to see emails from Porter Airlines talking about their other destinations. Why not tell me about Moncton? Maybe I'd like to go but I don't know anything about it. Or maybe Porter could provide ideas on why I should return to Toronto with my family. Or they could introduce their people "This is Captain Smith." But they don't do anything like this. It's all about the sale.

Your email marketing should be used to build a long-term relationship with your customers. You should educate and entertain them.

There's a lot more to email marketing than pimping a sale price.

The pay phone business and looking to your future

This morning I noticed this headline New York starts turning payphones into free Wi-fi hotspots. I thought it was cool so I tweeted it at 2:51 am EDT. Very quickly more than twenty people retweeted and added their comments. It seems the idea of turning the old pay phone infrastructure into a modern use interested many people.

Looking to the future

The idea of reusing old infrastructure got me thinking. In my town, there is a bike and jogging path called Minuteman Bikeway. The old train line from the Western suburbs to the center of Boston was converted to a new rails-to-trails use. Like the old pay phones converted to wi-fi hotspots, old railway rights of way are now re-used to become wonderful exercise spots.

Clinging to the past

But think about how many organizations cling to outdated technology and business models.

Also near where I live is the old Polaroid facility in Waltham, MA. A few days ago I shot this photo of the site, a sad visual reminder of what happens to once great companies that cling to old technology.

Polaroid was the leader in instant photography but missed the digital instant photography revolution and on October 11, 2001, Polaroid Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Polaroid brand name - purchased as part of the reorganization - lives on, but the once great company does not. It didn't have to be that way had management looked over the horizon.

What about your business?

Are you looking to what’s new? Or living upon past successes?