LAST EDITED ON Jan-06-03 AT 02:54 PM (PST)
 
I know this will ruffle some feathers. But to be honest, after 6 years of reading every newsletter, ebook, website I possibly could, I still haven't seen one single "guru" explain what marketing is.

My "formal" marketing education consists of a single class taken at the local community college. My first site was a guide to Las Vegas. I knew if I were to make any money, I'd need a casino to advertise on my site, so I took a "casino marketing class" to get inside the brains of the casino marketing dept, whom I'd be sell to...

Is there anyone out there that feels Las Vegas casinos are not one of the best at marketing?

They make billions and billions of dollars selling "losing".

I know a single marketing class from a community college doesn't make me an expert. But that's my whole point! If I learned the following in a community college course, how come not a single net "marketer" has every mentioned the very basics of marketing?

In my text book, ON PAGE 10-FIRST DAY OF CLASS STUFF!!!, there are four "orientations" businesses take.

1. Operations orientation
2. Products/services orientation
3. Sales orientation
4. Marketing orientation

1. Operations orientation. Basically, management is just looking for a smoooooth operation. Speed and ease of production is what's most important to them.

2. Products/services orientation. Basically, build a better product or offer a better service, and the thinking goes, you'll be successful. There is a big problem with this train of thought however. If no one wants your product, it doesn't matter how good your product is.

For example, you want to make the best "buggy whips" ever known to mankind (womankind). You'll have your buggy whips equipped with a hand warmer and custom grips and a choice of decorator colors.

Sure, you have the best buggy whips in the world, the only problem is, they went out with the horse a carriage! No body wants buggy whips these days...

3. Sales orientation. This is a biggy on the Internet. Basically, just work on your sales pitch and you'll be able to sell ice to Eskimos.

The sales orientation does not take into account what your customer wants or needs. You're just going to try to force your product down their throats.

The sales orientation also doesn't take into consideration the most basic concept of free enterprise: Supply and Demand.

It doesn't matter that 1000 other sites are selling the exact same thing and only 50 people want to buy it, just SELL, SELL, SELL!

4. The Marketing Orientation. Why sell ice to Eskimos? Why not ask Eskimos what they want to buy? Or better yet, observe what they need or want, then create a product to fill their wants/needs.

For example, in the 80's, I read a little article about how Alaskan Eskimos were buying deep freezers. Selling ice to Eskimos? No. Eskimos were using them to keep the food FROM freezing, not TO freeze their food.

Compressor to cool a freezer are expensive. All they needed was something insulated to keep their food from freezing...Just make the insulated box, re name it "Food Thaw" and sell it for less than the freezers since you don't need a compressor.

Assuming that Eskimos were really buying freezers to keep their food from freezing, which product do you think they would have bought?

Real marketing isn't about developing a product or service first. It is about finding wants and needs, considering your competition, the demand for a product and, then and only then, creating a product or service to fills those needs.

Sure, many have created products and sold them successfully without doing any market research. But their product service happened to sell because there was a demand for it.

Sure, sales is an important subset of marketing. But if you think selling alone is enough, I have some buggy whips you may want to buy. You should have no problem reselling them, right?

The most powerful example of marketing on the Internet may be with the search engines. People create sites that either have zero or little demand, or they enter a market that is so over-saturated with competitors, your chances for success are almost zero.

You can not take a sales or product orientation with the search engines. You can not create a product/website first, then force it to get traffic.

You need to find a niche FIRST, then create sites to fill these niches. Every guru tells you to create a product, then market it. This is wrong.

Find the traffic, THEN create the site. Not the other way around. This is marketing in the purest definition.

How do you do this?

One way is to anticipate 2-3 months in advance what people will be searching for. All football season long, Emmit Smith of the Dallas Cowboys was poised to break the all-time rushing record, probably the NFL's most prestigious record.

You can bet for a couple of weeks before he broke the record and a couple of weeks after he broke the record, that there was a high demand for "emmit smith" in the search engines.

Sure, the traffic may have been short lived, but using Dombom's it wouldn't have taken long to create.

Is a major musical group, such as Britney Spears or the Rolling Stones ready to go on tour in a month or two? You can bet "stones tickets" will be a good choice for some free search engine traffic, if they are ready for a tour.

Did you anticipate Wynona Ryder's trial? How about a site with a little bit about her and her movies. Maybe even a "Beetlejuice" poster and an Amazon DVD?

Don't know where to look to spot niches?

1. The National Enquirer. Yep, that's right. Check it out to see of there's a blockbuster movie due out in a few months. Is there a celebrity trial getting ready to take place? Did a celebrity write a best selling book?

2. Kids. This is one thing you must realize if you want to master search engine marketing. Kids are who searches. Kids are the people who click. Take a look at any top 500 searches for the week and see how many probably relate to kids.

With DomBom, you don't need to sell them anything. You just need them to click, and that's what they do. They click.

You don't think there will be a big demand in the search engines for the next Harry Potter movie or book?

Simply, quit trying to force your sites into the engines. Let your keywords choose you. I don't have kids. But I don't care because I'm a marketer. I look for niches regardless of what they are (with regards to normal morals, laws, etc) and try to create sites quickly to fill those niches.

Please don't just "blow this off". This is the most important thing you can learn to exploit the power of DomBoms.

If you are not having success with your current projects in the engines, start over and: Just think kids.

Kurt,

That's getting my wheels spinning.

KIDS. I never thought about that since I figured they don't have credit cards.... but they do have a mouse....

Can you say with dombom if the feeds and amazon are mostly what does the differentiation of unique content throughout site, or for search engines if it's the first few paragraphs as well that one should focus on using headline tags and good optimization techniques and make each page unique .

Is it that the different searchbomb links themselves will create the different 2 and 3 word combos that will create a lot of traffic and the sheer diversity plus infinite mathematical combinations are what generate the traffic?

Also is there a certain number using overture suggestion tool you'd say is the guideline for the naviagational links for the different html dombomb pages (ie don't bother for phrases over 8000 searches a month due to competition??) For instance, if it was a jennifer lopez site, if the navigation links were: jennifer lopez pictures, lopez screensavers, jennifer lopez lyrics - I think that's too competitive still. Would you instead create the dombom html pages more as jennifer lopez calender, jennifer lopez music videos since those are under 1000 searches a month?

PS This also shows what's popularly searched for:

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

Debbie

LAST EDITED ON Nov-15-02 AT 10:07 AM (PST)
 
>KIDS. I never thought about that since I figured they don't
>have credit cards.... but they do have a mouse....

You just need 'em to click. But, while they don't have credit cards, they do strongly influence those that do. Look at the "toon" station. There are some big bucks spent on advertising directed at kids.

>Can you say with dombom if the feeds and amazon are mostly
>what does the differentiation of unique content throughout
>site, or for search engines if it's the first few paragraphs
>as well that one should focus on using headline tags and
>good optimization techniques and make each page unique .

It's all of the above. Plus, the "market" or supply/demand for those keywords. And, the pure numbers. How many pages/words do you have about a certain subject???

>Is it that the different searchbomb links themselves will
>create the different 2 and 3 word combos that will create a
>lot of traffic and the sheer diversity plus infinite
>mathematical combinations are what generate the traffic?

It's the market that creates traffic. I'll be honest...I doubt domboms will be able to get any traffic for gambling related words..Tooooo much savvy competition. I have been in the gambling )las vegas) market for 6 years.

>Also is there a certain number using overture suggestion
>tool you'd say is the guideline for the naviagational links
>for the different html dombomb pages (ie don't bother for
>phrases over 8000 searches a month due to competition??) For
>instance, if it was a jennifer lopez site, if the navigation
>links were: jennifer lopez pictures, lopez screensavers,
>jennifer lopez lyrics - I think that's too competitive
>still. Would you instead create the dombom html pages more
>as jennifer lopez calender, jennifer lopez music videos
>since those are under 1000 searches a month?

"Jennifer Lopez" pages in Google= 706,000
"jennifer lopez" searches on overture= 557,646

"internet marketing" searches on overture: 59827
"ineternet marketing" pages in Google: 3,790,000

Let's see...There's more than 10 times as many searches done for jennifer lopez than for internet marketing.

jennifer lopez has about 10 times the "demand" than does internet marketing.

But, there are 7 times more pages for internet marketing than for jennifer lopez. Jlo has 1/7 the competition of internet marketing.

Granted, internet marketing is probably worth more per "visitor", and this is an important factor.

Regardless, I'd take my chances with JLo. 10 times more popular and only has 1/7 the number of competiting web pages.

(I'm using round numbers)

As you see, the number of searches performed is not an indication of the competition.

>PS This also shows what's popularly searched for:
>
>http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

This is a real good tool and I should add it to keyword armory. Lycos also has a great tool for helping to spot trends.

I didn't check zeitgeist before I used Wynona as an example...But do you notice how popular she is now? She's number 6 on the "gaining chart" and only has 6,730 competing pages! What a search engine "gimme" for anyone that anticipated her trial a month or two ago.

I'm sure her popularity will be short lived, but if someone had an entertainment type site, putting up some Wynona pages would have been a steal.

PS...Another factor that must be considered is how much you're getting paid per click for a certain search term. You will need to check RevPilot and Sfeed to make sure there's some bids for your phrases.

More "market research tools"

I'll add these to the keyword armory ASAP, but here's a little head start:

http://search.store.yahoo.com/OT?r=1710263142
Yahoo Store: Shows recent purchases made on Yahoo stores. Sampling is random, so it isn't an accurate barometer. However, at least it lets you know of items that have actually been bought/sold. Could give someone an idea or two.

http://50.lycos.com/
Here's a very good resource to anticipate trends.

http://buzz.yahoo.com/
Yahoo also has a section on their "movers". Another exellent way to try to anticipate what searches will be in demand.

http://www.espotting.com/advertisers/register01.asp UK
Similar to Overture Inventory, except for our UK friends across the "pond" to see what interests the "Brits". A direct link doesn't work, so look for the "Keyword Generator" link.

Kurt,

Great post (2 above).

Would you say that the bombfeeds bring in more revenue than the amazon ?? Also, is there a quick way to test 100 words with sf and rp?
Probably not, right?

Here's a few more tools for popular searches. I found it on searchenginewatch

Live Search Displays

AltaVista Real Searches
http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/real_searches

You can see real time searches on the AltaVista web index here, as well as in other areas such as image searching.

Ask Jeeves Peek Through The Keyhole
http://www.askjeeves.com/docs/peek/

Shows top searches at this popular question answering search engine.

MetaCrawler MetaSpy
http://www.metaspy.com/

Choose to see either a filtered or non-filtered sample of top, real-time search terms from this popular meta search service.

Search.com Snoop
http://savvy.search.com/snoop

Shows recent searches on this popular metasearch service.

Kanoodle Search Spy
http://www.kanoodle.com/spy/

Live display of searches on this pay-for-placement search engine.

Galaxy StarGazer
http://www.galaxy.com/info/voyeur.html

Shows top searches on the Galaxy search engine.

Fireball LiveSuche
http://www.fireball.de/voyeur-fireball.fcg

Fireball is one of Germany's major search services. This page lets you see, in German, what people are searching for. Hier können Sie live sehen, was gerade in Fireball gesucht wird.

I find also looking at top sellers on amazon and buy.com is good.

Debbie

LAST EDITED ON Nov-15-02 AT 05:25 PM (PST)
 
Deb...The reason I didn't have your resources is becasue you have to sit and watch them...There is no "accounting".

To be honest, I really believe Amazon's biggest asset is it's words, not the sale of books.

I'll give a real life example of PPC's. For four years on my Las vegas site, I sold hotel rooms through all the major affiliate programs, HRN (now hotels.com), Travelocity, etc.

My combined earnings for all programs was $80-300 per month, depending on the time of year.

About a year ago, I made the switch to pey per click. My average earnings per month for the term "las vegas hotels" is between $250 and $600 per month from clicks.

This does not factor in all the other variations for las vegas hotels, such as "mandalay bay", "las vegas hotel room rates", "mirage hotel rooms", etc.

If you add these together, I probably make three/four times as much using PPC instead of the hotel affilate programs. And this doesn't include that the affiliate programs also had car rentals, air, etc, which I didn't include in the PPC "hotel" numbers.

I no longer sell using the affiliate programs, I just use PPC (although I must still have an affiliate link up somewhere cuz every once in a while, I'll book a room). I'm sure your results will vary, depending on things like which keywords you use, etc.

Fair Disclosure Note: My las vegas site is a content site and wasn't built using domboms...It had been up for 5 years before I added PPC, so it wasn't the bombs that brought the traffic. I already had the traffic, but converting to a PPC model for revenue definetly worked in this case. Again, your results will vary.

Hi Kurt,
Ok you have me interested actually you have me very interested. To think that I have been spending all my time researching internet marketing & those dreaded ebooks. Now how can I get a crash course ( can you take me by the hand .. ) so I don't have to spend the next month figuring out things.

Regards,
Larry the Irish Kid

how can I get a crash course ( can you take me by the hand
>.. ) so I don't have to spend the next month figuring out
>things.
>
>Regards,
>Larry the Irish Kid

Larry, it's really tough for me to be a personal tutor for everyone...You wil need to have some basic html skills to use the domboms.

I hope you understand...

Kurt,

If the top bids for words from searchbomb are 3 of 4 cents would you say not to go for it? What's a good criterion?

Also, you said featuring the same product as first paragraph of each html isn't a danger if you alter headline and the text of each page but do you think for visitors varying product in first paragraph could be more lucrative?

Do you think holidays are too competitve since those are events one can anticipate more traffic for in advance?

I'm not around kids too much but I found this site and maybe that could clue me into kid culture:

http://www.yahooligans.com

But I'm still not sure how far to go in nicheing to avoid competition ie with Harry Potter- I assume going into 3 or 4 word phrases could work or focusing on Emma Watson (the girl in new movie). Do you use any overture numbers as a guideline to decide if it's impossible or not?

Debbie

In the past, I've made most of my money on clicks that average 4-5 cents per click (or less).

I've found it easier to make money from popular terms that don't pay as much.

My own experiences are not scientific by any means. One of my pet peeves is someone on the web taking their own experiences, then saying "This is how it is for everyone else".

You may be better off going for some of the terms that pay more. Then again, you may be better off going after terms that pay less...

Marketing = testing.

Is it better to have 100 clicks for a penny each, or 1 click for $1?

100 clicks for a penny will take up more server resources, bandwidth, etc., but wil be more consitent revenue. A bad day, and the clicks go down to 75 cents, a good day and they're up to $1.25.

One click for $1 is a lot less stable. It may be here today and gone tomorrow. If your clicks "go down" a little, you have nothing...

Good niches aren't limited to movies, entertainers, kids or special events. There are still plenty of others out there.

I'm just trying to get Bombers to "expand their horizons"...

Try to mix things up. Don't forget about your own personal interests, favorite vacation spots, sports, hpbbies...

Before, I gave the numbers for Jennifer Lopez vs. internet marketing. But there's another factor to consider: Using your own intuition, which webmasters are the most marketing (search engine) savvy? Those that own internet marketing sites or those that own Harry Potter sites?

In general, anything connected with the internet, computers, marketing, sales, business will have a higher degree of internet experience.

This might be known by most bombers, but there are textlink codes on
revenue pilot which are javascript and can also give clues to very popular words. For instance they have under Business:

Search the Web
Business
Incorporate
Bankruptcy
Business Opportunities
Internet Marketing
Home Business
Trademark
Marketing
Insurance Quotes
Franchise

For Beauty the have:

Search the Web
Perfume
Cosmetics
Fragrances
Skin Care
Colognes
Jewelry
Facial Cleanser
Hair Care
Moisturizers
Scrubs
Candles
Shampoo
Lotion

Under Health there is:

Search the Web
Health
Health Insurance
Skin Care
Viagra
Contact Lenses
Weight Loss
Vitamins
Spa
Medical Insurance
Diet
HGH
Dental

**Note** People are evidently more interested in Viagra than in vitamins or diet.

Thanks Deb..That's a good point.

A similar resource is that Alta Vista just added a new feature "Alta Vista Prism" that gives "suggestions" for searches. Enter a search, and AV will display "suggested links". A look at the "Prism: results can give a little insight to popular related phrases.

I just got this in John Alexander's newsletter and thought it was interesting:

For example, instead of just gearing up for a bunch of generalized
sports interests, you might do specific research and come
up with a very focused strategy based on people's true behavior.

Hmmm...for example, if you were selling a product to an audience of
sports lovers and with a little research, how many people are aware
that there is an audience of "Hockey fans" that appear to really
like "poetry" related to hockey?

(later)

Okay let's go back to the beginning and start again.

Here's what most people do wrong:
They hold their product or service in their hand and think...
How can I promote or advertise this item or service on the web?

They scan for related keywords and struggle to come up with
something in high demand that relates to what they happen to
hold in their hand (their product or service).

Is this not true? How many people will build a site selling a
product or service and then think about researching keywords
and optimization as a second step. I see it all the time. This
does not mean that we should not search for related keywords
and there are benefits of optimizing by taking a standard
approach.

But here's just one thing you can do as an alternative:

Don't start by building a Web site - start by researching peoples
behavior. Don't hold a product in your hand and then sweat over
how to attract an audience to it. Try the exact opposite approach.
Instead of choosing a product and then hunting to see if there is
a market for it, try hunting for a unique market by examining
people's behavior, then feed a "much needed" product into that
marketplace which you have proven there is a demand for.

Never start by randomly guessing at what people MIGHT be doing.

Compare it to the real world. Most people who are investing in
a business selling a new product are certainly going to research
the need for the product. Why would they spend a year developing
some new product and then just "hope" that people will want it.
It's far better to KNOW what people want and then offer them
something, right?

>Instead of choosing a product and then hunting to see if
>there is
>a market for it, try hunting for a unique market by
>examining
>people's behavior, then feed a "much needed" product into
>that
>marketplace which you have proven there is a demand for.
>
>Never start by randomly guessing at what people MIGHT be
>doing.
>
>Compare it to the real world.

Right

Cotton's Law #1 = "Love your MARKET, not your product..."

I've been preaching this stuff for a coupla years now - It's so cool to find folks that naturally agree!

Y'all are right on the mark here, methinx...

Toodles,

claycotton
site - http://www.claycotton.com
list (nothing special) - mailto:cotton1-2852@autocontactor.com

Clay,

I can't agree more. I really don't understand why this is so profound. Off-line, this is what's being taught and practiced.

The online "experts" say "find something you know or love, create a product, then promote it".

Wrong! Find your customers FIRST. This is why you create a marketing plan.

Sure, create an outline of your product/service, but before you spend tons of time creating a product/website/sales letter/autoresponder, actually go and see if you can find customers first.

Is there demand in the search engines for your relevant keywords?

How much competition?

Ezine advertising? Are you sure there are even relevant ezines to advertise in?

PPC's-Does AdWords/Overture/Findwhat deliver ehough traffic for your words? Overture searches doesn't mean clicks.

How much will clicks cost for you to get traffic. Remember, if you bid in the top 3 on overture, chances are the other sites have auto bidding, and their bids will increase, meaning you need to plan on spending a little more than the current bids to get top spots.

There was a thread on the Warrior's...Do a search for "dentist" and I think it will come up.

Here's a guy that seemed to follow the "typical advice" and wrote an info product on how to market a dentist business online, since he is a dentist.

He followed the typical recipe "to a tee". He wrote about something he knew well, and created a product, then got to step three "promote your product" and found there were no resources to use to "promote".

Couldn't get traffic from the PPC's because of no demand and found there were no targeted newsletters for his niche.

He's obviously an intelligent person...Has a PHD in a medical field. So I'm guessing his problems weren't due to being "dumb". I personally think he followed the "formula" he had read from so many online resources...

Personally, I may have suggested that he create a product about "teeth", since there's a lot more people with teeth than there are dentists.

A couple of ideas:

100 things you should know about your dentist
8 homemade recipes to whiten your teeth.

I think both these products could be marketed to just about any audience...

Clay...You have one of the great "marketing names"! Very memorable...

HI Kurt

I just found this you may find it handy

Keyword Research Tool
The Keyword Research Tool will help you research appropriate words and phrases to include in your webpage's body text to aid in promotion. Simply enter the sort of word of phrase you wish to be found under, and the tool will suggest some additional words and phrases you can think about using.

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-research-tool.shtml

Thanks
Tom

Excellent site !!!
You can now see on more search engines..

Tasari
Internet Marketing Warrior
http://www.bestsecrets.com

Here's another oldie but goodie from the archives.

While a few of the references are dated, the philosphies, concepts and strategies are still valid.