Jared Banz

Welcome to My Latest Project, Meet Postify!

Posted on April 15, 2012 by jaredsbanz

I have been doing a terrible job of maintaining my blog lately, not because I don’t like to blog, but more because I’ve been very busy with some side projects.

Many of you have asked about the progress of my coloring project. I have not given up on this idea, but have temporarily put it on the backburner. Unfortunately the technology being used for my coloring app is not quite flexible enough to handle many types of different images. I do plan to pick this project back up when I can devote more resources to it.

I am, however, working on a very exciting new project with some other highly talented individuals. We are in the process of creating Postify, a classifieds system for college students.

Currently, many colleges and universities do not have a classifieds system, and if they do, it is not well maintained. As a result, many students are forced to go to sites like Craigslist, a useful tool, but very impersonal and full of scams.

The members of our team thought we could help college students save money by building a quality classifieds website and mobile app. We are very excited to utilize technology and social media to reinvent the way college classifieds are used.

Please check out Postify, and feel free to sign up for email alerts for the latest news and giveaways.

Posted in General Business | Tagged College Classifieds, Postify | Leave a comment

Business Principles from Tim Tebow

Posted on December 9, 2011 by jaredsbanz

Sports figures usually generate a lot of talk and excitement among sports fans, but rarely do you see so many non-sports enthusiasts talk about a NFL quarterback who has mediocre stats and hasn’t even won a total of 10 games. Tebow has been thrust into the spotlight of spotlights as he has received obsessive praise and relentless scrutiny for doing his best to do two things – win games and use his platform as an NFL quarterback to bring God glory.

Today, I was thinking about what differentiates Tebow from so many other quarterbacks, who may have better football IQ and better skills, but still fail to get the job done. While he is only in his second season, Tim Tebow wins games and motivates surrounding players to play to their potential as individuals and as a collective team.

Many of Tebow’s positive characteristics that have made him successful can be applied to business as well. Here are just a few that I thought of. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments section!

Focused – As Tebow says, his goal since the age of six years old was to be a quarterback. When people told him to play another position he maintained that clear focus and look where he is now, playing QB in the NFL. In an interview with Skip Bayless, Tebow said, my priority is not what others say, rather it’s to be a great teammate and get a little better [at quarterback] each day.

How does this relate to business?

When companies are truly committed and focused on doing one thing right, they succeed. When they lose their focus and try to do too many things and please too many people, they sacrifice quality and market-share dominance for their best product. I think of Apple / Steve Jobs when considering a company that has not strayed from their focus. I also think of Google for a company that sometimes loses its focus and produces far too many mediocre products (excluding their search engine, chrome, and gmail).

Leadership – Perhaps the single-most reason why the Broncos are winning games now that they weren’t winning with their former starting QB (Kyle Ortin) is because Tebow is a leader. He works hard in practice and the off-season and sets a high example. He maintains a positive attitude and does not give into the media’s attempt to badmouth John Elway or other critics. He gives credit to teammates and stays teachable and humble. Finally, he is passionate and believes that they will win games. These and other attributes rally his teammates around him, and the wins start piling up.

Once again, how does this relate to business?

Once again, in business, leadership is essential. If you can motivate employees around you by setting an example, working hard, keeping a clear focus and recognizing others, you will have a great team of employees. Tim Tebow certainly is not the most talented quarterback, but he doesn’t have to be.

“In leadership, talent doesn’t mean success, and arrogance kills teamwork. Instead, be humble and recognize the strengths in others.”

Competitive – One other aspect that I will discuss is Tebow’s competitive nature. Many label him as “a competitive force to be reckoned with,” especially in the fourth quarter. Tebow wants to win, and will lay it all on the line for a “W.” He embraces the pressure and plays best when the game is on the line. He is every defensive coordinator’s nightmare when he has the ball down by three points with less than two minutes left.

Once again, in business, the competition is fierce. Even if you sell Mary Kay, you will likely have a million other people trying to do the same thing, making it essential for you to differentiate yourself from others. Unlike government or schools, business is do or die, eat or be eaten, win or lose. You must be always ready for the fourth quarter drive. Will you win or lose by three? If you are passive or tense up under pressure, you’ll not likely succeed (unless of course the government bails you out). If you aren’t on your “A” game and always ready to adapt to ever-changing threats, you will not be around for a long time.

Conclusion

Those are just a few business principles of many that could be derived from Tim Tebow. I have a lot of respect for the guy and have enjoyed seeing him win football games. There are many other leadership and business qualities that he has, but I’ll let you comment on those below.

As always, thanks for reading!

Posted in General Business | Tagged business principles, featured, tebow, tim tebow | Leave a comment

Project: Decolorize

Posted on November 22, 2011 by jaredsbanz

Welcome! Most likely you have come from the ”Decolorizer” or a social media outlet, and I am glad you are here. This blog provides a little background on my most recent idea, and it also shows my vision for this project. If you haven’t already created your own coloring page, do so now!

Origin of the Idea:

At my work, we did a summer long fundraising event for a nonprofit called Crayons to Classrooms. At the conclusion of the fundraiser, representatives from Crayons to Classrooms came and shared their vision and excitement to provide all kids in Dayton with a new box of crayons and other school supplies on their first day of school.

I was impressed by their passion and compassion, and instantly had a random idea on how I could potentially help out. My idea was to have a website that would allow users to upload photo albums from the computer and Facebook, where users could then create their own personalized coloring book.

Originally, I thought that this idea would be mainly geared towards families and grandparents with younger kids, but more recently, I have discovered that peoples’ desire to color does not necessarily end in third grade. Just because we grow up and have to pay bills, rent and insurance, does not mean we can’t enjoy simple things like coloring.

Action Steps:

In order to test the waters of this idea and to minimize risk and financial loss, I decided to break up this idea into different stages. The first stage is to have friends, family and visitors try the tool for free in exchange for their recommendations and suggestions.

Then, depending on the feedback, I will move onto stage 2, where a site would be built to sell these coloring books and other coloring products.

Also, you may be wondering how this ties in with Crayons to Classrooms. I’d like to work out a solution where school supplies would be sent to kids in need with each coloring book sold. I’d also like to provide teachers with free coloring supplies, so that they can do fun things like have Christmas coloring contests with pictures from their classroom.

What’s in it For You?

Join the fun!

If you are reading this blog, you are the “early birds” to this idea, and I hope you find it special. If you haven’t already tried out the “decolorizer,” please check it out. Also, be sure to leave your honest comments and suggestions, so I can know how to make improvements. Join others like the picture and have fun coloring!!!

Important Links:

Finally, I’d like to give a special thanks to Dan Jewett, the programmer who created this app. He has been great to work with, and I hope to work more in the future with him. I also want to thank the many people who gave me great advice on how to proceed, and last but not least, I would like to thank you for visiting!

Posted in General Business | Tagged #decolorize, colorize, crayons to classrooms, featured | Leave a comment

Why Guest Blogging Is Important for Online Marketers

Posted on November 6, 2011 by jaredsbanz

Back in the early days of SEO, on-page SEO dominated the top results in Google. As a result, SEO’s and black hats easily manipulated results with over-optimization tactics like cloaking and keyword stuffing. To combat these unfriendly results for the users, Google made external links have much higher importance in their ranking algorithm. As expected, black hats adapted to this and used cheap articles, syndicated and spun content, and link farms to once again manipulate results. In reaction to junky content and excessive link farms, Google penalized these sites and with algorithmic updates like the infamous “Panda update” of 2011. This update greatly devalued junk article sites like Ezinearticles, and provided much more value to quality sites like good, engaging blogs, which contain quality unique followers and are popular among social networks.

Guest blogging has always been and will continue to be a primary method for online marketers for building SEO and online visibility, both for its link building capabilities and for its social media potential.

Photo credit: tnarik (Creative Commons)

Here are three reasons why guest blogging should be a primary tool in every online marketer’s toolbox.

Link Building: Even though link building has lost some of its importance, it is still hugely important for SEO and ranking. Writing optimized guest blogs with optimized anchor texts is still highly beneficial as it still is a major part of Google’s ranking algorithm. To forsake link building and guest blogging altogether would be a serious mistake.

Amplification: Quality blogs have a large amount of dedicated followers. If you are able to guest post for these types of blogs, you will gain a tremendous amount of exposure that would not otherwise be possible. For example, I wrote a guest post about social media at bloggodown and had almost 80 people tweet the article along with over 30 LinkedIn shares. I hardly have 80 Twitter followers, so getting 80 people to tweet about an article was a major feat for me! Additionally, with more and more importance being given to social signals in Google and Bing’s search algorithms, blogs with a highly engaged audience is like gold.

Networking: Building relationships with other blog owners can be very beneficial. Most likely they are an expert in your given industry, and it is very likely that you both can learn from one another. When guest blogging, you are providing them with free, quality content, which never hurts. Finally, bloggers are typically highly connected with other bloggers and experts in your field, and can likely put you in contact with more valuable connections.

Conclusion

When seeking out guest bloggers, it is important that you have credibility in the area that you would like to blog about. For example, if you know nothing about the Nikon D3100 SLR Digital Camera, don’t ask a highly niche blog owner if you can blog about this camera’s various lens kits for shooting portrait photography. Stick to what you are good, respect the blogger and do your homework on the blog in which you’d like to write on.

Feedback

I have talked about only a couple of reasons for why marketers should be guest blogging. I would like to hear your thoughts on guest blogging. Do you have any success stories from guest blogging? Maybe you have found guest blogging to be a waste of time and would disagree with me on this post. Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts on guest blogging.

*Photo credit: tnarik (Creative Commons)

Posted in Online Marketing, search engine optimization | Tagged featured, Guest Blogging, Online Marketing, SEO | Leave a comment

Using RSS to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities

Posted on October 27, 2011 by jaredsbanz

Finding quality links for SEO without paying for them is one of the greatest challenges in the SEO industry. Everyone has their own tricks of the trade to find quality leads, and here is one of my personal favorites to finding good guest blogging opportunities. I also must say that this technique is not original with me. SEO expert, Anne Smarty and the company Distilled have both blogged about this technique and offer a large array of quality marketing material.

The following technique is an excellent way to save a ton of time by learning where you competition is finding guest blogging opportunities and organizing those links in your RSS reader.

Step One: Head over to Google’s blog search. Then type the following text into the search bar. Please note that you will need to know the name(s) of at least one existing blogger within your industry.

Step Two: Upon finding a promising guest blogger with decent search results, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the hyperlink highlighted below to add the query into your Google Reader. You can also click the RSS button to add the feed to another type of RSS reader.

Step Three: Continue to follow the directions to add the query to your reader. I’ve set up an example for this blog, which can be seen below. Once you add this feed to your reader, you’ll get updates for every time the guest blogger you are tracking writes a guest post that gets pick up with the above query.

Conclusion: This technique is just one of hundreds to find creative solutions for building quality links. I personally enjoy this one because once you find one good blogger within your niche who occasionally guest blogs, it instantly opens the door to many more opportunities as their posts on various blogs will introduce you to many more bloggers within your niche. Set up alerts for the other bloggers and contact them if you think you can write a good post for them. Also, engage with them on their blog and provide quality feedback. This will help them improve their blog, but it will also develop the relationship with them.

If you are looking for guest blogging opportunities, I encourage you to try this method. Also, feel free to experiment with different queries to capture better results. The above example gives good results, but it doesn’t capture everything. I’m planning on writing post in the near future on good search queries to find guest blogging opportunities, so stay tuned!

What creative techniques have you used to open the door for guest blogging?

Posted in search engine optimization | Tagged featured, Guest Blogging, RSS for Blogging | Leave a comment

On-Page SEO Basics That Every Marketer Should Know

Posted on May 27, 2011 by jaredsbanz

SEO is a topic that can be very confusing for many people. The internet is filled with plenty of “experts” who all have a unique formula to get you ranking #1 in Google in three days or less, money back guaranteed. While there are plenty of scam artists providing their two cents, there are also plenty or true experts sharing a wealth of information free of charge.

That said, there is often a lot of confusion among business owners and marketers about what SEO practices really work and what practices are – like Harold Camping’s End of the World predictions – RIDICULOUS!

In order to combat the confusion, I am going to start blogging about basic and intermediate SEO best practices. Without further adieu, let me start by explaining about on-page SEO.

What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO refers strictly to changes that you can make to your website. Typically on-page changes are very straightforward and easy for people to do without any technical knowledge, provided that you have a content management system (i.e. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal).

Historically speaking, on-page SEO had a significant impact on keyword rankings; however, search engines soon developed more complex algorithms that are not so easy to manipulate. From my experience and research, I have found that on-page SEO accounts for a loose estimate of 25% of keyword ranking factors, while other off-page factors (link building and social media) account for about 75% of ranking factors.

With that very brief introduction about what on-page SEO is, let me discuss some of the key elements for on-page SEO.

Highly Important On-page Factors:

Page Title:

Perhaps the most important on-page factor for SEO is the page title. It is essential that the targeted keywords are placed in the page title. Additionally, it should be noted that the page title should be no longer than 66 characters long because search engines oftentimes do not reference characters after that. Also, it is a good practice for small and medium-sized businesses to include their geographical location and their brand name.

If you want to see the page title, you can look at the source code, or page titles are usually displayed in the top of the internet browser that you are using.

Canonicalization:

Another very common mistake comes from multiple versions of the same exact webpage. For example, if you type into your browser http://www.example.com and type http://example.com and both aliases exist independent of each other, you likely have a canonicalization problem. There are multiple ways to fix this problem.

First, you can do a 301 redirect to only allow one alias, or you can put in a rel=canonical tag to tell search engines what page to index. If you do not do either of these things, search engines will only index one version of the page, and your off-page SEO efforts will be diluted.

This is a very brief and probably poorly communicated point, so maybe I will write another blog post to explain this in more detail.

Keyword Usage:

As you can imagine, appropriate keyword usage is essential. It is important to use the targeted phrases about 4-5 times. Don’t get ridiculous though and just continually repeat the same key phrases. If you do that, you will have frustrated readers and upset robots. Google and other search engines will likely punish your site if you practice keyword stuffing.

As a good rule of thumb, consider your readers before your SEO optimization.

URL Structuring:

The manner in which your URLs are structured is very important for SEO. It is best have static urls with many strings or sublevels. Try to avoid having dynamic urls, and make sure that you do not have more than four sublevels. Additionally, use keywords appropriately within the URL structure.

Good URL Structure: http://www.example.com/puma-shoes
Bad URL Structure: http://www.example.com/brand.php?object?type?shva=puma

Most content management systems have a setting for “clean urls,” so make sure that you properly enable this if you are using a common CMS.

Important On-Page Factors:

Image Description Tag (ALT Text):

ALT texts are a great place to target strategic keywords for your page. According to research done by SEOmoz, Alt texts correlate surprisingly well with rankings. Once again, you do not need to know HTML to put these in if you have a CMS, just make sure you fill in the proper form when adding images to your WordPress or Drupal site.

Site Load Speed:

This topic is a little more technical, and I will not go into much detail on it now. Basically, you do not want your website to take forever to load. Make sure your files are properly compressed, avoid coding errors, and steer clear of excessive flash to maintain optimal site speed.

Number of Links:

While not a huge factor, the amount of links on your webpage plays a small part in SEO rankings. If you run a smaller site, you should keep the amount of links to under 100 per page.

Conclusion:

If you are still reading, I am impressed! J. My preparation time for this post was very brief, so I apologize for the many grammar mistakes. I will likely be adding and editing this post much further and will be writing posts to explain some of these on-page factors much further.

In the meantime, I would like to know your comments and questions. Please feel free to leave feedback in the section below or shoot me an email. Thanks!

*Thumbnail Photo credit: toprankonlinemarketing (Creative Commons)

Posted in search engine optimization | Tagged Link Building, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Basics | Leave a comment

New Job at LexisNexis!

Posted on May 13, 2011 by jaredsbanz

It has been way to long since my last blog post. I find that the hardest part of blogging is not having the ideas for a blog, but rather being consistent in putting them down on paper.

The last few weeks have been quite crazy for me, as I have been transitioning between two jobs. On May 2, I started my new job at LexisNexis as a Sales Commissions Analyst. Basically, I will be in charge of paying about 400 different sales reps their commissions. While this may sound like a simple job, it is much more complicated and detailed than you might imagine. On top of that, sales reps can get a little touchy when it comes to their money, so staying on top of things is essential.

LexisNexis Corporate is a much different environment than my former job as an SEO specialist for a small company. No longer can I roll out of bed and work in my pajamas from home. I actually have to look presentable and drive to our corporate office of about 3,000 employees. While there are advantages of working in a small company, there are also many advantages for working in a large company. (i.e. Vacation time, salary, discounts, sand volleyball at lunch etc.).

Here are a few observations that I had after my first week from working in a corporate office.

Email signatures are often longer than the actual email.
Words like “high level” are used almost as frequently as “um” and “like.”
Humor from television shows like “The Office” suddenly hits much closer to home.
Taking the stairs instead of the elevator actually is a viable way to lose a few calories.
The amount of paper that is printed is unbelievable.
Meetings and emails consume so much time!
Cafeteria food is cafeteria food. (In all honesty though, it’s not bad if you don’t mind paying for it.
The available online resources and training is astounding – If only I could find them.
Job functions are clearly defined with little variance. (I could be wrong about this one, but that is my initial consensus.)

Anyway, I am very thankful to have a job at Lexis and am very excited about the possibilities! When things slow down a bit, I expect to blog more about SEO, marketing, and social media. Thanks for reading.

Thumbnail Photo credit: Amani Hasan (Creative Commons)

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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Posted on February 4, 2011 by jaredsbanz

What is up with this blog post title?!

This past week has been very interesting if you stay up to date with online marketing and search engine optimization. Basically, Google created their own version of a sting operation (“Bing Sting”) and accused Bing of cheating because Bing uses click data from Google to help index and rank website in Bing.

The title of this post is based off gibberish that Google created and as they tweaked their algorithm to catch Bing’s shady algorithm. They used other extraneous search queries as well in operation: “Make a fool of Bing”. To see more about this, you can read the original story written by Danny Sullivan.

While this would make a great blog post in and of itself, I want to focus on another piece of news in the search industry, which happened earlier this week. Farsight 2011 was a search panel composed of Matt Cutts (Google), Harry Shum (Bing), and Rich Skrenta (Blekko). The discussion primarily talked about problems / challenges facing major search engines, and talked about the future of the search.

DOMINANT THEMES OF THE PANEL:

Google and Bing Controversy (Slightly heated debate occurred between Matt Cutts and Harry Shum about the recent hullabaloo.)

The problem of spam results in search
The new approach of Blekko
The problem of spam results in search
The future of search

HOW THE CONVERSATION WENT:

Google (opening): “Bing, we caught you red handed! You are cheating!”

Bing (lame rebuttal): “We aren’t cheating; we are just using user intelligence. How can you have a problem with that?”

Google (flabbergasted): “What do you mean, you are not cheating?!”

Bing (turning tables): “Um, we are not cheating… Speaking of spam, Google, YOU are the cause for spam. Start doing something about it and stop being so greedy with Adsense.”

Blekko (innocently): “We have a proven model to get rid of spam. We will limit web content to 10 pages per category. You will only be able to write on a topic if you have a PHD in that given area.”

Google (record player): “We are always trying to improve the quality of results, and as a result we have passed on opportunities to make more money with advertisements.”

Bing (worth a try): “Google, let’s work together. Give us your algorithm, and we can work together to create the perfect algorithm to rid the world of spam and all evil.”

Blekko (chiming in): “Guess What? We Already Have!”

Moderator (smirkingly): “This is a monopoly, and I hope none of you exist in five year.” Hahaha

Bing: “I agree, Google is the reason we have spam, but I hope they give us their algorithm.”

Conclusion:

I expect Google to continue to crack down on spam. It will always exist for Google, but they will try to minimize it. Don’t expect Google to go to the lengths of Blekko as tons of revenue would be lost from a decline in Adsense.

Bing will continue to spend money on their TV commercials and subtle television show appearances where suddenly “Bing it” becomes the norm, knocking Google off of its domination of the search engines. Also, look for Bing to invest more money in their background images. Rumor has it that they are going 3-D!

Blekko will continue gaining market share from all of the participating PHD’s who are into crowd-sourcing. Who know’s what their revenue modeling will consist of, but at least they won’t lose money through all of their advertising. Cough…Cough… (Bing)

If you would like to see the full version of the panel, you can find it and Matt Cutts’ take on it on Matt’s blog.

*Thumbnail Photo credit: Wikipedia (Creative Commons)

Posted in search engine optimization | Tagged Bing vs Google, SEO, SEO Trends | Leave a comment

A Near Marketing Disaster

Posted on October 22, 2011 by jaredsbanz

Photo Credit: stupid.fotos (Creative Commons)

The other day, I was talking to a specialist for a small nonprofit organization. Without going into much detail, this organization provides specialized education for individuals looking to go into full-time missions in some capacity. Like most nonprofit organizations, this nonprofit has limited funds and is usually on a very tight budget.

In my conversation with this marketer, they told me about a potential game-changing opportunity that could really help them out. This organization was approached by PBS and some other TV stations to do have a three to four minute promotional video that would air on PBS, The History Channel and other similar stations. This station estimated that the viewership for this extended commercial would be about 60 million. There was only one catch… It would cost them a mere TWENTY THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS!!

My jaw about dropped when I heard the amount of money that this television station was asking for, just to have 3-4 minutes of airtime. I was even more surprised that this organization was seriously thinking about how they could scrape together the funds to make it work.

While $23,000 dollars is a lot of money, that is just a drop in the bucket for many television commercials, so why was I so flabbergasted with this specific case?

60 million viewers sounds awesome, but it is a very skewed number. Because of the nature of this organization, the target audience is an extremely small niche. There are not even 60 million people in the United States who would want to attend this institution of higher learning. I suspect that 99.999% of these 60 million viewers would be annoyed by this extended commercial and would either mute the TV or more likely change the channel.
With such a broad television audience, the ROI would be very difficult to track. Unless this nonprofit used a special TV promotion code or landing page, it would be nearly impossible to figure out a return or loss on the investment.
Finally, $23,000 is a lot of money to recoup, and with such tight finances, this could be devastating to the given nonprofit.

I am not saying that I am against all forms of television commercials, although I’m not a big fan. I am saying that you should be wary about the channels you use to communicate and promote your products. Know where your audience is, and know what channels they are using to make their purchasing decisions. Don’t accept the lie that in order to be successful in, you must spend a lot of money on promotion. You can do a lot on a low budget. My advice for this nonprofit was to spend more time during college recruiting trips on campuses who had similar ideologies, conduct Facebook ads for those colleges, and work on their SEO to attract new potential leads.

*As a side note, I’m not against all television commercials for marketing efforts. I just think they require a lot of work, excellent strategy and implementation, and usually a lot of money. If you have used them and found them to produce a high ROI, I’d love to hear from you!

Posted in Marketing | Tagged Marketing Case Study, Marketing Disaster | Leave a comment

Good Profit vs Bad Profit

Posted on October 14, 2011 by jaredsbanz

Photo Credit: Muffet (Creative Commons)

Unless you happen to be GM or a struggling bank, your business must be profitable in order to succeed, but is all profit equal? I would argue that it is relatively easy for a business to be profitable in the short term, but much more difficult to establish a healthy business that increases its bottom line year after year.

There are two types of profit.

First, you can increase your sales at the expense of your customers and at the expense of your reputation. If you somehow rope a customer in, but offer a mediocre to bad product / service, you will not succeed in the long run. Also, if you feel the need to lock in a long contract agreement with your customers because out of fear you know that given the opportunity to bolt, your customer would, you will not succeed in the long run. This type of profit is very selfish and near-sighted and is not sustainable for the business.

The second king of profit is a win-win for the you and your customers. If after making the sale, you meet or exceed your customer’s expectations with the product / service that you deliver, you will enjoy great success. Happy customers will refer more leads – just ask Apple.

Questions:

Why do your customers come to you and what is their alternative?
What is the level of satisfaction that you provide your customers and how do you exceed expectations?
Do you know that lifetime value of your customers?

Posted in General Business | Tagged General Business, Good Profit | Leave a comment

Marketing is Not Advertising

Posted on October 10, 2011 by jaredsbanz

Photo credit: Beige Alert (Creative Commons)

One of my major pet peeves is when people assume that because I enjoy marketing, that I enjoy studying / creating commercials and obnoxious billboard ads. When watching TV with friends, I’ll get questions like, “How is that commercial going to get people to buy that product? or “Why in the world would company X spend millions of dollars on that dumb commercial?” My friends often think that marketing and advertising are synonymous, and as a result question the value of marketing, due to the high number of stupid, mind numbing commercials on TV.

If you cannot already tell, I cannot stand most commercials and most advertisements make me want to vomit. The problem is that while commercials and advertisements are a part of marketing, they only encompass a small percentage of what marketing is about. So what is marketing if it’s not TV commercials? Here Wikipedia’s definition.

The action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.

Notice that according to this definition, that advertising is only a subset of marketing, and is not marketing as a whole. The truth is that there are many different types of marketing techniques (SEO, Social Media, Viral Marketing, Adwords, Email Marketing, Billboards, TV and Radio Commercials, etc.), each of which should be rooted in customer research.

Marketing than is a much more holistic practice than just throwing together a couple TV commercials. It involves research of customer perceived needs and is coupled with marketing strategy to clearly communicate the right messages across the correct mediums. Good marketing shows a clear ROI, which drives smart business decisions. Not all mediums are equal, and in a later post, I’ll discuss why I think that digital marketing is superior to traditional forms of marketing.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on marketing? Do you agree / disagree with the above view on marketing?

Posted in Marketing | Tagged Advertising, Small Business Marketing | Leave a comment