Fellow DMA and Search Engine Marketing Council member and friend Mike Moran recently asked if I’d be interested in doing a podcast series on Internet marketing and of course I jumped at the chance. Mike has previously shared an article here on “Why Search Marketing is So Hard“.
There are 8 podcasts in the series and they cover a range of internet marketing and new media marketing topics applicable to any business that’s trying to understand online marketing. For most of the podcasts, we use Mike’s books, “Search Engine Marketing Inc” written with Bill Hunt and Mike’s new book, “Do It Wrong Quickly” as starting points for discussing a range of topics related to how internet marketing is changing and what organizations can do to take advantage.
The first two podcasts are published now:
- Reaching breakthrough results with internet marketing
- Using the internet to reach your target audiences
Subsequent shows will be posted at InformIT. The podcasts were produced in conjunction with IBMPressBooks.com.
I thought they turned out pretty well. We were able to discuss many of the issues organizations, large and small, are facing when it comes to incorporating new marketing strategies. It’s better to try something new, test it and measure to see what works and what doesn’t instead of over analyzing things in a attempt to make them perfect the first time.
Marketing initiatives are rarely “perfect” the first time no matter how many focus groups, interdepartmental collaborations and corporate marketing mucky muck is endured. The philosophy of knowing you’re likely to be “wrong” (as in not perfect) the first time and a process that pays attention to analysis, adjustment and re-implementation allows innovative ideas to hit the ground more quickly and effectively than the negotiated, politicized scenarios with stakeholders and paralysis by analysis that is often what many companies call “marketing”.
This approach bodes well for staying on top of current search marketing tactics since the SEM environment is in a constant state of change. The constant updates made by search engines, the evolution of web 2.0 web sites and consumer behavior combined with the overall dynamic nature of the internet is what makes internet marketing such a tough nut to crack for many companies.
Adjusting marketing philosophy to allow a persistent state of testing and adjustment, knowing your efforts have every chance of failing the first time is what successful internet marketing pros have been practicing for the past 10-15 years. In contrast, marketers who achieve a certain level of SEO or PPC knowledge expecting those tactics to hold true indefinitely find out how quickly “best practices” can become outdated.
With this in mind, Mike’s books (SEM Inc and Do it Wrong Quickly) compliment each other nicely and I’d highly recommend checking them out at Mike’s web site or the direct links above.
