I’ve been listening to my latest download from Audible.com: Why Business People Speak Like Idiots by Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway and Jon Warshawsky. Admittedly, I chose it because I loved the title and it got great reviews. And I tend to like things that explore “thinking differently” - likely a tendency leftover from my creative, Mac addict days.

Just part way into it, I was thinking it was really going to be more about daily communication, email, voicemail, sales meetings and the like. While it’s that, it’s so much more. It’s really about EVERYTHING we communicate with, including our marketing. The “simple is better” approach is very similar to strategies we employ with search engine marketing and optimization.

While we know one of the core components of marketing is to develop and deliver those unique messages to address a customers “wants and needs,” sometimes in that effort to be “unique” we miss the part about serving the customers needs, getting lost in words that we think they should hear. You know them: cutting edge, feature rich, enterprise class…

Example: click here for a search in Google for the above terms. 12,700 RESULTS ARE RETURNED. Wow! And that’s using “quotes” around the terms to ensure we are getting the actual phrases. That’s a lot of business BS!

In an effort to stand out, make their stuff sound great, these companies - and note, they are BIG companies in those results - they have simply become one of about 13,000 indexed items in Google.

So “think different” should really be “think simple.”

Visit the Fight the bull site and blog.
Technorati tags: business jargon, search engine marketing, internet marketing, Marketing

We saw it happen with The Apprentice and Yahoo!, as well as others. Traditional, or offline, marketing is coming up with closer ties to it’s Internet brethren, the Search Engines, to creating a marketing and branding bond that will be hard to forget for any of the parties.

In an episode of Martha Stewart’s Apprentice encouraged us to type “apprentice salad dressing” into Yahoo! for the reward of recipes and the ability to purchase the “limited edition” TV show-inspired concoction. And people did. While the Martha show itself did not fare well, Wish-Bone and Yahoo! got their fair share of attention.

Now NBC has taken a similar route with the forthcoming Winter Olympics. Can’t see those hot events on TV (What, you don’t have TIVO?), then click on over to Google and type in “NBC Olympics.” At the top of the page, typically reserved for the top PPC ads or organic listings, is a highlighted entry labeled “In collaboration with NBC Olympics.” Viewers are then treated to quick access to event clips and information.

Just a few weeks ago, Pontiac ran a commercial spot that told viewers, “Don’t take our word for it, Google ‘Pontiac’ and discover for yourself,” inferring that Google has the clout and credibility to help you decide what car is the best. And quite frankly, it can.

I’m sure you can each come up with examples of the very same scenarios illustrated above. This approach is going to be used more and more on TV, and has been done in print for some time. It’s all about the immediate gratification and instant measurability the Internet provides, as well as playing off the amazing branding that Google has already established. These calls to action are designed to keep the brand accessible to the viewer, as well as infer some affiliation to those that have extreme brand power.

And it works!

Read more about it:
GM says “Google Pontiac”
Google Top Brand for 2005
Technorati Tags: internet marketing, google pontiac, olympics, branding

Reports are spreading rapidly across the Internet since this weekend when Google engineer Matt Cutts announced in his blog that the German website of BMW, the luxury carmaker, has been removed from Google’s search results as part of the web company’s crack down those that intentionally try to “force” their site to the top of search results by employing techniques that Google and other search engine’s publicly frown upon. We all call it “spam” or “black hat techniques.” Ultimately, no matter what label it’s given, the bottomline is that you will get cut from search results, particularly those of the top search engines Google.

The site was found by Google to have been delivering a page loaded with keywords to the Google spider (”Googlebot”), but presenting viewers with a totally different page. This technique is often called “cloaking” or “redirecting”. Unscrupulous optimization firms typically will try this technique as it give the ability to add tons of content without affecting site design or marketing message. They’ll use programming, such as JavaScript, to control the delivery of one page to a search engine spider, and their non-optimized page to a viewer.

While this sounds like a nice, clean way to serve both search engines and viewers, it’s not. Deceptive marketing practices, such as this, are designed to do just that: deceive. If the content you are presenting is not appropriate for a viewer, it is not appropriate for a search engine.

This certainly isn’t the first time - or last - that this has happened. Apparently a Ricoh site is on the block for a similar tactic. Consider this situation similar to that of Martha Stewart’s “time away.” Using their ability to soak in the media, Google spreads the word to ensure that we all walk the straight and narrow; as a reminder that they are watching.

Bad news is better than no news, they say, and it is likely the German BMW site is getting far more traffic than they do on any other given day. Worse news is that it’s likely a large majority of the viewers aren’t even “just browsing” for a new Beemer. Their just looking at what all the fuss is about. In Martha’s case, she gained a whole new flock of fans.

The reality of it all is that smart Internet marketing means using the tools we now have available to help us better define our prospects needs and desires. Smart Internet marketing uses the talents and skills of marketing, design, advertising, copywriting and programming professionals to accurately deliver messages to customers with a need. Smart Internet marketing means success for marketers and viewers.

Read more about it…
BMW falls foul of Google ‘web spam’ rules (Financial Times)
Google Boots BMW For Web Spam (MediaPost)
Google hands BMW its ‘death sentence’ (Electric News)
Beating the Google search: a brief history (UK Times Online)
bmw google spam (Technorati Tag)