Amazon.com has been optimized for browsing. At a broad level, there are just two ways that people interact with web content: They search and they browse. Most organizations optimize sites for searching, which helps people answer their questions but doesn't encourage them to browse. But people also want a site to tell them something they didn't think to ask. The marketers at Amazon understand that when people browse the site, they may have a general idea of what they want (in my case, perhaps a book for my daughter about surfing) but not the particular title. So if I start with a search on Amazon for the phrase “surfing for beginners,” I get 99 titles in the search results. With this list as a starting point, I shift into browse mode, which is where Amazon excels. Each title has a customer ranking where I instantly see how other customers rated the book. I see reader-generated reviews, together with reviews from other media. I can see “Customers who bought this item also bought” lists and also rankings of “What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?” I can poke around the contents of the book itself. After I purchase the perfect book for my daughter (The Girl's Guide to Surfing), I might get an email from Amazon weeks or months later, suggesting, based on this purchase, another book that I might find useful. This is brilliant stuff.
The site is designed to work for a major and often-ignored audience: people who do their own research and consider a decision over a period of time before making a commitment. Smart marketers, like the folks at Amazon and Cervélo, unlike those at the Big Three automakers we saw in Chapter 1, know that the most effective web strategies anticipate needs and provide content to meet them, even before people know to ask.
Marketing on the web is not about generic banner ads designed to trick people with neon color or wacky movement. It is about understanding the keywords and phrases that our buyers are using, and creating the content that they seek.
The new rules are just as important for public relations. In fact, I think that online content in all of its forms is causing a convergence of marketing and PR that does not really exist offline. When your buyer is on the web browsing for something, content is content in all of its manifestations. And in an interconnected web world, content drives action.
I often hear people claim that online content such as blogs, photos, and infographics doesn't work as a marketing strategy for traditional bricks-and-mortar industries. But I've always disagreed. Great content brands an organization as a trusted resource and calls people to action – to buy, subscribe, apply, or donate. And great content means that interested people return again and again. As a result, the organization succeeds, achieving goals such as adding revenue, building traffic, gaining donations, or generating sales leads.
For instance, The Concrete Network12 provides information about residential concrete products and services and helps buyers and sellers connect with each other. The company targets consumers and builders who might want to plan and build a concrete patio, pool deck, or driveway – this audience makes up the business-to-consumer (B2C) component of The Concrete Network – as well as the concrete contractors who make up the business-to-business (B2B) component. The Concrete Network's Find a Contractor13 service links homeowners and builders who need a project done with contractors who specialize in several dozen different services located in hundreds of metropolitan areas in the United States, Canada, and Australia. The company's web content drives business for The Concrete Network. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, web content sells concrete! (You can't get any more bricks-and-mortar than, well, mortar.)
“The new rules of PR are that anybody who wants to be the leader has to have news coming out,” says Jim Peterson, president of The Concrete Network. The company's ongoing marketing and PR program includes a series of articles on the site; free online catalogs for categories such as countertops, pool decks, patios, and driveways; and photo galleries for potential customers to check out what is available. As a result of all of the terrific content, The Concrete Network gets more than 10 times the traffic of any other site in the concrete industry, according to Peterson. An important component of the site's content is the beautiful photos drawn from “Earth's largest collection of decorative concrete photos.” For example, there are dozens of photos of just concrete patios.14
As president of The Concrete Network, Peterson is that rare executive who understands the power of content marketing, search engine optimization, and images to reach buyers directly and drive business. What is his advice to other company presidents and CEOs? “Every business has information that can contribute to the education of the marketplace. You need to ask yourself, ‘How can I get that information out there?’ You have to have a bit longer view and have a sense of how your business will be better down the line. For example, we created an entire series of buyer guides, because we knew that they would be valuable to the market. You need to think about how it will benefit your business and then commit to it, understanding that nothing is an overnight thing.”
Peterson also suggests getting help from an expert to get started with a program. “Don't sit there and leave this [as] just a part of your list of good intentions,” he says. “Businesses will live or die on original content. If you are creating truly useful content for customers, you're going to be seen in a great light and with a great spirit – you're setting the table for new business. But the vast majority of businesses don't seem to care. At The Concrete Network, we're on a mission. Get down to the essence of what your product solves and write good stories about that and publish them online.”
You've got to love it. If content sells concrete, content can sell what you have to offer, too!
In PR, it's not about clip books. It's about reaching our buyers.
I was vice president of marketing and PR for two publicly traded companies, and I've done it the old way. It doesn't work anymore. But the new rules do work – really well.
Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars per month on a media relations program that tries to convince a handful of reporters at select magazines, newspapers, and TV stations to cover us, we should be targeting the plugged-in bloggers, online news sites, micropublications, public speakers, analysts, and consultants who reach the targeted audiences who are looking for what we have to offer. Better yet, we no longer even need to wait for someone with a media voice to write about us at all. With social media, we communicate directly with our audience, bypassing the media filter completely. We have the power to create our own media brand in the niche of our own choosing. It's about being found on Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and niche content sites. Instead of writing press releases only when we have big news – releases that reach just a handful of journalists – we should be using techniques like newsjacking that highlight our expert ideas and stories. You will learn about newsjacking in Chapter 21.
To succeed in long-tail marketing and PR, we need to adopt different criteria for success. In the book world, everyone used to say, “If I can only get on Oprah, I'll be a success.” Sure, I would have liked to be on The Oprah Winfrey Show, too. But instead of focusing countless (and probably fruitless) hours on a potential blockbuster of a TV appearance, wouldn't it be a better strategy to have lots of people reviewing your book in smaller publications that reach the specific audiences who buy books like yours? Oprah was a long shot, but right now bloggers would love to hear from you. Oprah ignored 100 books a day, but bloggers run to their mailboxes to see what interesting things might be in there. Sure, it would be great to have your business profiled in Fortune or the Financial Times. But instead of putting all of your public relations efforts into a mention in the major business press, wouldn't it be better to get dozens of the most influential bloggers and analysts to tell your story directly to the niche markets that are looking for what you have to offer?
If