Free Products are Online Marketing

freeJohn Battelle has got a series of very good articles on online marketing on his blog. Check them out here and here. A third post is yet to be published.

Both articles are on building brands online. Basically what John is saying is that online advertising works well where you have very strong brands that attract a particular type of user that can then be marketed to. These brands can command higher CPMs that generic publishers, for example. The yet to be solved problem (solution probably to be revelead in his third article) is about the fact that online formats for marketing don’t really work that well, or not as well as online formats (he uses TV ads and magazine ads as examples). An example might be that car ads on TV or in a magazine leave a much bigger impact with the viewer than banner ads do.

Two things came to my mind when I read this.

The first one was that it is logical (and actually obvious) that when you attract a certain type of viewer to a site you can command high CPMs. After all, it simply means that one can target ads better to a more relevent audience. The key problem is that one actually doesn’t know who is looking at what on generic sites, making targeting difficult.

My second thought was that at least one format that works extremly well for advertising online has already been invented. It is called free products. Why do you tink does Google have some 50-100 free products out there? Just for fun? Or because the revenue avalanche is going to hit them via these products? No, the reason is much simpler. It attracts users. Google embeds their brand in their brains every day. They then go out and use Google search. This is a great way to build a brand online.

I believe there are many ways in which publishers, manufacturing, and service companies can build their brand online. One way to do it is via free services. I am sure people will come up with other ways. I think John is right to say that the classic online banner ads won’t do the trick. But look at the bright side: if it was that easy, what would you need great marketers for?

AddThis Social Bookmark Button Subscribe in a Reader Subscribe by Email

Don’t compete with Google where it is strong

Many start-ups are trying to usurp Google, over 1,000 in fact. In my view, most of them are likely to fail, because they don’t really add that much value. Here is why I think that.

Google (and live.com and Yahoo! Search, and ask.com) all fundamentally answer the same question a user has: “Where can I find…” This is very important. With Google, you fundamentally ask the question of “show me the most relevant websites where I can find the following keywords”. The vast majority of search start-ups out there do the same thing, to answer where you can find information. They just try to do it better. Frankly speaking, this is a lost battle. In order to take any significant market share, you would have to do significantly better than Google. That is a very hard thing to do. So, why bother?

I think a much better way of looking at this space is not to address the where question, but a different one. For example: “How do I…” Here, the user doesn’t want to know where to find information on a keyword, but wants an answer to a specific question. For example how to file a tax return. There is one company in this space that is doing well, it is called Mahalo. Jason Calacanis at Mahalo seems sometimes amazed about how much traffic the ‘how to’ pages at Mahalo get. To me, this makes a lot of sense. Human editors are very good at processing slow-moving content where insight is required. ‘How to’ matches that very nicely. Even I started using Mahalo for ‘how to’ questions, it actually works quite well. Have a look at the compete stats to see how much traffic they get overall.

Mahalo

I think there are many other questions search engines can answer. For example, you could ask “How good is X”. For example, I am convinced a review aggregation search engine would do extremely well. I cannot remember how many times I have typed in the name of a product and ‘review’ just to get to all the crap sites out there that list where I can buy stuff, when all I want is to see all the reviews on a product, regardless of where they originate from. How hard can it be to aggregate reviews from some 1,000 leading sites and to display that on a central site with back-links to the original sites? Some start-ups like testseek reevoo or buzzillions are going in this direction, but I think they don’t go far enough.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the “What is…?” question. That has been covered by Wikipedia. Very difficult to compete with that.

I am sure there are many other examples out there that can work. In my mind, when you try to build a new search engine, don’t ask yourself how you can make the where answer better, rather ask what other questions would be really valuable that Google cannot answer.

The best way to compete is to not compete. Particularly not with companies like Microsoft or Google.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button Subscribe in a Reader Subscribe by Email

Cultural Differences in Marketing

My wife recently pointed out to me these two adverts. Both were published in the March 15th-21st edition of the Economist. This advert appeared on page 55:

Asian woman

The advert reads: “From departure to arrival, only dignified services for our dignified guests”

And this advert appeared on page 51:

Goldman Sachs

The advert reads: “Progress has a name. In fact, it now has 10,000 names. Each one representing the goals and aspirations of women in every corner of the world. 10,000 Women is designed to help these individuals make progress in their own lives. […] 10,000 Women will offer women the power of an entrepreneurial and management education. […]” etc

There were so many thoughts that came to my mind when I looked at these two adverts. First was that the Economist seems to accept any advert, even when it is sexist. I am not sure what this means for their moral high ground when reporting on the topic of women discrimination. The second was that it is hilarious that Korean Air publishes an advert like this in a Western magazine. Talking about cultural differences! The third thought was that there may be some concept in publishing where ads with opposing effects that are placed near each other probably cancel each other out. Like these two.

Finally, I though that the stewardesses at Korean Air probably could benefit from being helped by Goldman Sachs‘ 10,000 Women programme.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button Subscribe in a Reader Subscribe by Email