Getting the basics right makes a big difference. Caring about what you do and taking pride in your marketing efforts is a foundational element of marketing your business.

Even if your credentials are solid and you can point to results, phoning in your marketing materials is a sure-fire way to damage your credibility.

Case in point: the screenshot below, the home page of a consulting firm, is a credibility killer. Relying heavily on academic credentials to make a case for the value of their services, this firm blows it straight out of the gate when it comes to their Web presence.

The tagline is a disaster. The misspelling of “quantitative” stands in opposition to any credibility gained by touting the partners’ academic credentials from “top research universities;” and the 21st century spin is as generic as the ACME products in old Road Runner cartoons.

This isn’t a case where a professional needed to be brought in; though it’s a do-it-yourself job. It’s an example of a business that apparently finds little value in articulating  how they create value for others and thinks little of attending to the basics, like proofreading critical copy.

(A side note: the dominating stock photography fails to support the content; it’s irrelevant to the copy and distracts with more questions than it answers. Is that the Guggenheim? Are those corporate guys cutting a deal in an arboretum?)

The resulting message is subtle but unnerving: we’re a generic firm that doesn’t care.

It’s a hard truth: if you don’t care enough to pay attention to the fundamentals of your efforts, your marketing and your business will likely, perhaps deservedly, fail.

I’d finally come to the breaking point.

It was 5 a.m. I was waiting for the coffee to finish brewing as I fired up Thunderbird to check my e-mail spam. There was a message from The One.

He’s the guy I learned the most from. His models are the ones I’m most likely to re-interpret, since His influence has so shaped my thinking. He breathed life into my professional development as I stood trembling and adrift on the stoop of middle-age. My Guru – My One.

Selfish, incompetent bastard!

This dude can drop a broken link like nobody’s business. He’s famous for the size of his e-mail list. He has tremendous reach and is known for the high quality of his newsletters — they have driven his business for years and made him a wealthy man. And-he-never-gets-it-right.

He blasts three e-mails to his list when one would do: “Oops broken link!” “Sorry-broken link, here’s the correct one!”

This has been going on for years.

As I’ve blossomed as a marketer, I’ve moved farther and farther away from Him; though I’ve always had a huge well of goodwill for all He’s given me – I thought a limitless one.

But those broken links have really been pissing me off. The thought of unsubscribing from His list, once unimaginable, had crossed my mind more than once.

Waiting for the coffee to brew, I read the subject line:  “Corrected Link for Publishing Teleclass.” Instead of deleting, I opened it, ready to scroll to the bottom and click the unsubscribe link.  All those cursory “sorry-wrong link!” excuses month after month! How about a little respect for your bread and butter? The years of negligence, it verged on contempt!

Hi,

You’d think this wouldn’t happen anymore, but unfortunately it does…

I heard the sadness. It reminded me of the way I felt lighting up again and again during all those years I spent trying to quit smoking before it finally took.

Fair enough – I’ll stay subscribed.

For now.

There’s something about the terms “digital agency” and “creative agency” that attracts the sad refugees and wannabes of the old push media model. These wolves, often self-proclaimed creative-types, are re-packaging last century’s failed old-media branding and design fads in a shiny new digital box and re-selling it at a premium.

Don’t let them get in the way of your message.

When it comes to marketing online, relevance counts. Giving a shit about what your customer cares about and caring about it too counts. Approaching your market from a humble perspective of giving service counts. It’s quite lucrative as well.

So why the bright new shiny, the hyped iphone app? Why the designs that scream “look at me,” rather than designs that stage our expectations like a theater set? The most generous explanation is confusion: our confusion over what’s effective, what works.

If you’re going to reach people you have to give up the fantasy that they’re going to be impressed with you. You need to make them impressed with themselves. Or their choices. Or beliefs. You need to focus on what they care about – their problems, their struggles, the way they see themselves.

The truth about new media is that it’s not about the technology or the device. It sure as hell isn’t about the design. It’s about us using the tools available to us to assist our customers the way they wish to be assisted – at their convenience, on their terms.

So when the new media wolf calls at your door promising to build you a “rich, interactive brand experience” to push at some unsuspecting person trying to get something done online – be careful. It may get downloaded or viewed, it may even get a “wow,” but it isn’t going to build your business unless it does something far beyond capturing your interest.

(Don’t get me wrong, gaining interest is very, very important. But it’s the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to marketing your business online. Treat it as such.)

When you’ve mined and refined your value proposition, when you’ve developed a core marketing message that is persuasive, compelling, and effective – then you’re ready for a pretty package to wrap it all up in. A package that complements your message, not distracts from it or, as is all to common, substitutes for it.

One of the perils of search marketing is that, if done effectively, it’s somewhat easy to become complacent. Sales or leads are flowing and further optimizing a campaign begins to feel like more of a luxury than an absolute necessity.

Having become all too familiar with this worldview, I recently spent a couple of days in Houston, TX attending the advanced (301 & 302) AdWords Seminars for Success sponsored by Google. My goal? To learn some advanced techniques and tactics that would breath new life into my AdWords campaigns.

I also hoped for some much needed motivation. The more I’ve explored sponsored search the more I’ve found myself bogged down under mounds of data that all to often have kept me from making the hard decisions needed to make my campaigns more effective.

Overall, I came away from the seminars much more informed and decisive. I also came away with a renewed appreciation of how effective, and yes, fun, sponsored search can be.

Day 1′s morning session was an intensive review of AdWords best practices. It’s a great confidence builder to re-discover the foundations and remember how much you already know .

I also got up to speed on dynamic keyword insertion, a technique I’ve slightly frowned upon in the past. I gained an appreciation not only for it’s responsible use but it’s ease of use as well (which is probably directly correlated with the overuse of keyword insertion.)

Speaking of overlooking, I’ve never once dipped my toe into the content network. I’d come to think of it as a resource drain and akin to *gasp!* traditional advertising. I gained a new perspective on how to keep ad relevance high (a must for any search marketing junkie) and returns positive. Some truly advanced geo-targeting techniques brought day 1 to a close.

Day 2 began with bid strategies and improving ROI. There was a five minute period in which I learned a technique or two that easily justified the entire cost of the conference. An overview of account organization followed, an area in which I sorely need to attend to. I’ll have to unlearn some habits and re-think my approach in this area. As usual, strategy and long-term vision is key.

The afternoon session began with an intensive look at testing, one of my passions. I got some much needed clarity on some metrics to attend to, as I’ve always struggled with where to focus my decision making process: on click-through-rate, conversion rate, revenue…?

A high level view of AdWords Reports and Google Analytics brought the seminar to a close with more great actionable insights.

All in all, I found the Seminars for Success to be highly informative and very economical, considering most conferences are $1000+ nowadays with often questionable value. Brad Geddes, the seminar leader, really knows his stuff and is a highly skilled presenter. I’d recommend any AdWords enthusiast read his blog regularly.

Bottom line: I came away from the seminar jazzed about AdWords whereas a couple days before I’d been burned out. It’s easy to get confused and overwhelmed with AdWords campaign optimization, but I’m much clearer now about where to focus my attention and resources.

The value of the AdWords Seminars for Success greatly exceeded the cost. I’d recommend it to anyone ready to take their paid search campaigns to the next level.

I spent a good chunk of my time this past week at the Houston AdWords Seminar for Success training program. It was refreshing to hear stories of how many small businesses, mainly mom-and-pops, had taken advantage of search marketing during the recession. The consensus seemed to be that search was among the best performing channels in keeping the attendees’ businesses afloat.

I was stunned at how many participants were actively looking for  SEO firms, though. By actively looking, I mean yelling out during breaks “If you’re an SEO company I want to talk to you!”

Since I’m working in-house now, I kept myself out of this game; but the future consultant in me did more than a little eavesdropping between the SEO companies attending the seminar and the SMBs scouting for business cards. What did I learn?

SEO is still a haven for the misinformed and confused (and those are the service providers!)

It amazes me how many SEO providers read an outdated book or two, come up with some cookie-cutter techniques (or some hyped software), and call themselves professionals.

Though it’s been posted for a couple weeks, Ian Lurie’s 10 questions to evaluate an SEO is pretty spot-on. It reminds me in spirit of Jill Whalen’s classic The Evolution of a Search Marketer.

If you’re looking for an SEO, do the hard work of educating yourself about search and find someone you trust with your best interests, since no reputable SEO will guarantee their results. Start by looking for an SEO that’s bright, curious, conversion-oriented, and meets Ian’s criteria.

Caring about usability implies empathy, right?

In the face of overwhelming evidence that real people struggle online, pretentious geeks prove they don’t get it yet again.

It’s unconscionable how many web professionals, front-end designers and developers alike, treat coding for the web like some precious voodoo rather than what it is -  a means of assisting real users in getting stuff done online.

Explaining away usability problems, particularly as a fault of your users, is unacceptable. The comments to the stories above are revealing – a lot of supposed pros don’t give a damn. I’d suggest using it to your advantage.

No wonder venture capitalists are so hard to get a hold of

Among the tsunami of conjecture and stupidity following the announcement of the iPad was this nugget from ReadWriteWeb:

Imagine never having to give a bland elevator pitch ever again. If an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist find themselves in the proverbial elevator ride, a VC will be pretty impressed by the startup that can pitch and demo their business in a matter of seconds while on-the-go.

The point of the elevator pitch is to succinctly express one’s unique value proposition; to pique interest, to provoke a response of “tell me more.” If you can’t verbally express your value proposition to gain the privilege of another’s attention, why in the hell would one think they’ve earned the right to harass another with an impromptu presentation?

The ability to communicate value succinctly is a prerequisite for attention and interest in the real world. Fantasy presentations with hypothetical devices are for the deluded. This discussion of the iPad is more realistic than the scenario above.

Got trust?

It is so easy to talk about trust and credibility; yet individuals and companies still struggle with the most basic elements of honesty and transparency. Case in point: Staples, 1-800-Flowers, and Orbitz. Go get ‘em Cuomo.

While we’re at it, John Moore has some tough love for Starbucks. The coffee giant is patting itself on the back for incorporating feedback from its customers. Not so quick…

Enough with the negative, already

There are those who resist change, and those who thrive with change. Far from dead, the music industry is entering an exciting new era; one in which musicians have more control over their destiny than ever. Lady Gaga gets it. Let’s all shut up and dance .

Here are a few items that caught my attention during the past week:

Royal Caribbean is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, they are donating money and resources (including delivering mass quantities of relief supplies) to the cause of the victims. On the other hand, their ships dock as normal on the Haitian peninsula of Labadee. Can you deliver relief to suffering earthquake victims while your customers enjoy the luxury of the cruise experience?

Royal Caribbean is doing a deft job of communicating under difficult circumstances, and the discussion at Amy Mengel’s blog is worth a read.

What if search marketing continued its spectacular growth and nobody noticed?

The incessant chattering about social media tools and tactics continues unabated as we march into 2010. Lost in the din are little nuggets like this that point to the continued growth of the search market. The fact that most SMBs have failed to understand the nature and promise of search marketing en route to being distracted by the bright shiny of social is not lost on me. Don’t let it be lost on you — relevance never loses it’s beauty.

Sticky and sweet

Every time I’m convinced it’s near impossible to create and monetize a niche blog, a site comes along and reminds me how ridiculous that kind of thinking is. This week’s case study: Waffleizer. ‘Nuff said.

Get legal, get a bank account, yet going

Lots of people, myself included, whine about how difficult it is to start a business. Actually, the steps are not that hard, it’s the motivation and follow-through to move from thinking about it to doing it that’s a pain in the ass. Up for a bit of motivation to move your venture from fantasy to reality?

“We need to drive people to our website.”

Truth is, you really can’t drive people to do anything short of using coercion, as shitty a long-term business model as you can imagine.

All successful businesses are founded on the principal of solving a problem. They fulfill a demand. People with needs don’t need to be driven to do anything. They are looking for (or at least wondering how) to rid themselves of their problem.

So if people aren’t flocking to your site/store/door, you may have a problem that goes far beyond market demand, or say, SEO.

It’s probably your attitude. Remember: it’s the customer experience that signs the checks.

As humans we’re hard-wired to think about ourselves and our own needs, much as we’d like to think otherwise. For a marketer, empathy is the core skill that allows us to think of our prospects first, to see through their eyes. Constantly ask yourselves whose needs, whose perspective, you are writing to. Empathy is like a muscle. You have to use it to develop it. Care – give a damn about what you do and the value you deliver.

People just don’t feel right when the message isn’t about them; isn’t focused on their best interests. They may not think it, but they feel it. It’s a trust thing.

A great many messages blow up right here, straight out of the gate. It’s so common that if you are able to fight this most human of tendencies to put yourself first (implicitly as well as explicitly) in your messages, you’ll likely have a leg up on your competition straight away.

The hype around social media is really deafening out there, isn’t it? Print and television media seem to have an affinity for spinning the social story, meaning that for those who learn about the online world from traditional media, the Web has largely been reduced to Twitter and Facebook.

Unfortunately, that group includes a lot of decision makers who are getting worried they’re getting left behind by their competitors with 372 Facebook Fans.

For the vast majority of small and medium sized businesses, the ROI of social is minimal at best. Given the many businesses that are still just coming online, social is an afterthought to the core work of building and iterating your online strategy.

Or we can put it this way: it’s the proverbial cherry on the cake of your online strategy– dessert so to speak.

Don’t let it get in the way.

That being said, when it’s appropriate to build a social media presence, make sure it’s enlivened with a solid strategy. Have a purpose, measurable goals, and a way to measure the success or failure of those goals before you blow life into your Twitter account.

Here’s a couple minutes of very wise talk by some bright people who are trying to figure all of this out (courtesy of MediaShift):

The entire video is excellent, one of the more intelligent and rational discussions of social media I’ve seen. I strongly encourage you to view it when you have twenty minutes or so if you are considering whether to build a social media presence:

Remember your rebellious years: don’t trust authority!

Don’t be duped. Even some very bright people are going about parroting the phrase “thought leadership.” No one knows what the hell it means. It’s a vacuous construct and it’s intellectually lazy.

Ain’t nobody got nothin’ figured out baby – none of our modern gurus: surely not Seth, certainly not Scoble, (not even!) Barack.

Struggle, try, fail, succeed, learn – in your marketing, in your life. We’re all learning every day. Re-imagining old principals and playing with new constructs and the latest app that lets us yap back and forth.

Be inspired by others, but think for yourself.

It takes just a few seconds to struggle for the words, the real words, the right words. Trite phrases like “thought leadership” don’t invite struggle or reflective thought, and they shave off just a wee bit of that good old-fashioned human dignity.

Remember – buzz phrases generally suck. Thought Leadership? Just say no!

Cripes.