How do you know if you are lucky? Are you lucky if you land
a big account? Are you lucky that you received a promotion? Do you create your
own luck?
Luck is all perception. Earlier this evening I was recapping
the search industry landscape with a friend of mine who works at another SEM
Firm. We both happened to be talking about a few of the accounts we are working
on, when I mentioned a meeting I had recently with a major company that spends
$50k monthly on search. His reaction of “Wow, you would be lucky to land that
account,” caught me off guard, but reminded me of a story I heard Mark Cuban
tell once. When Mark sold his first company back in 1990, MicroSolutions, for
$6mm, everyone always told him how lucky he was to sell the company at the
right time. He said no one ever mentioned that they knew he had worked day and
night without ever taking a vacation to build MicroSolutions from the ground up
in order to have the opportunity to sell it. I thought of that story tonight because I
guess I was disappointed that someone was already trying to associate landing a
major new account as luck. What they don’t know is how I hard I have worked
in order to stay top of mind for this account over the past few months. What my
friend didn’t realize is how I have sought out articles I know my contacts
would be interested in reading regarding paid search and their industry, then emailing
those articles to them to ensure they knew I was thinking of their business.
What nobody realized is how I stayed in touch monitoring their current
campaigns and offering any tips / advice / positive remarks to them about what
they were doing online. Now I am in position to hopefully land the account and
everyone will say “Wow, I wish I was that lucky.”
Well, I’m here to tell you. You are that lucky. Luck is what
you make it. You can create your own luck. Trust me, but more importantly trust
the story Mark Cuban told. Put the effort in and sooner rather than later, you’ll
find yourself in one of those “lucky” situations.
Everywhere we turn right now
people are facing challenges in looking for a new job. Charlie O’Donnell
of Path101 has written a few great posts about
how to look for a job in this economy on his personal blog www.ThisIsGoingToBeBig.com where he does a great job of breaking
down the basics of a job search in this article How to Get a Job
in 2009 . Companies
are hiring you and your reputation. That’s it. If you are not managing
your public persona and following the steps Charlie has layed out then
you are behind the eight ball and the clock is ticking. What are you
waiting for? If you are not doing everything you can to leverage your
reputation as someone who “gets it”, then it will be a long struggle
of applying to job postings on Monster, Careerbuilder, TheLadders, and
other job sites where millions of others are doing the same thing. A
friend recently interviewed with a PR company here in Cleveland, OH,
where 120 people have applied for the same position in just two weeks..
That’s right 120 people applied for the position in two weeks. That
is serious competition. Its time to focus on a few things to stand out
from the crowd and improve your job hunt and your personal network.
After Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging, you need to be using the social book
marking site, Delicious. How can Delicious help you get a job? Well,
let me explain how to properly leverage it.
A few things before we get
started. First, you need to be on Delicious yourself, so sign up already!
Next, we need to find people who use Delicious frequently, so we can
start to follow them. Take a look at the blogs you read, most will have
links to their delicious accounts, so start following them. Then ask
the people in your LinkedIn network, your personal network, people on
Twitter, who you should be following and paying attention too. Research the companies you want to work for and find people at these companies in positions you are interested in. Reach
out to them and ask them if they are using delicious at all. Let them
know you are interested in learning from them if they are. I am sure
they would be flattered and glad to have you as a follower.
Okay, so now you have signed
up and found people on Delicious at companies you are interested in
working for, how can you leverage this? It’s simple.
Say I am about to graduate
in the spring and I really want to work at Nike in their marketing department
and I am following a person in that department on Delicious. Next, I
want to start paying attention to what the person is reading. I want
click and read every article the person has saved and tagged with marketing
or advertising in their account. I would pay special attention to the
notes field under each tagged article. The notes are written by the
user and are extremely important. The notes will tell me how the person
feels about the article and key points to pay attention to. I will also
start to learn where they are getting their info and who they deem worthwhile
to read. I would start to pay attention to these sources as well.
Next, after reading thru most
of the articles I will begin to develop a feel for the strategy of Nike’s
marketing efforts and this person in particular. For example, if I noticed
a lot articles relating to marketing products on the web, specific examples
of past campaigns, notes about how great certain social media strategies
are for consumer products, etc I would reach out to this person with
articles I have read that relate to their thinking and tag them for
that person’s inbox. Then, I would send an email to the person asking
to speak further about why they like a particular web strategy more
than another. Now the dialogue is open. I am adding value to them by
providing relevant articles they may have missed and I am learning about
the inner workings of their strategy. Over the time of this dialogue,
the person at Nike will say “Wow, this kid gets it” This person
took the time to do some research about our strategy, has proven they
can add value / be a strategic thinker / and most importantly established
a relationship.
Fast forward some time and
a job is open at Nike in their marketing department. Now, you not only
have a connection within the company that you have exchanged dialogue
with, but you have demonstrated you are someone who “gets it” You
have added value over the weeks / months of staying current on their
strategy, providing links with relevant articles, and digging deep into
their thought process. They know if you were brought on board, the training
would be minimal and that you are a go getter already. They have had
dialogue with you. They probably read your blog. Hopefully they have
spoken to you on the phone already. And the best part is, all of this
is done well before you even applied. I am willing to bet if you do
this your chances of gaining an interview at any company will go up
10x.
I just listened to a great lecture by Thomas Friedman called The World is Flat 3.0 I stumbled upon a fantastic site today Academic Earth The site is really sweet. Any subject matter you are interested in has a lecture on this site by some of the top scholars out there. Feel like gaining a new perspective on the current financial crisis, why not learn directly from Steve Schwazman, Blackrock's CEO. I can't think of anywhere else where I can take part in some of the same courses / lectures that are going on at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and learn from some of the smartest people around for free. Pretty cool if you ask me.
I have been thinking the last few days. State Farm is running a fantastic TV campaign with Lebron James. Have you seen these ads yet? Garage and Cleveland Browns. I think this partnership is great between the two parties because of the brilliance of the commercials. The ads highlight Lebron’s fun, youthful, outgoing personality and are done in a very creative,memorable way. The ads are making an impact. People are talking about these spots. The internet is buzzing about them, people are talking around the water cooler about them (especially in Cleveland), I have received a few emails with links to watch the videos, all because the ads are funny, creative, and contain the best player in the NBA. Kudos to State Farm for this partnership.
Lebron is benefiting just as much as State Farm because he is allowing the public to see the side of him that is away from the basketball court. The creativity of the ads along with Lebron’s personality and mass appeal are what are making these ads memorable and getting people to extend the conversation past the 30 second spot. Making LBJ that much more appealing as a spokesman ala Michael Jordan to other companies looking to connect to the youth market. Marketing Lebron as a wide receiver for the Browns….Brilliant! Lebron doing the Kid N Play Dance in a Garage…Great concept again…Both spots are very well done and very creative.
However, there is a missed opportunity here for State Farm and it’s a big one. Where is the search advertising component? How many Cleveland Browns fans are on the internet every day? Could you start a search campaign directing football and Browns fans to watch the Wide Receiver commercial directly on StateFarm.com? How many people search daily for information on Lebron? What if you put a few text ads in front of people looking for the latest info on Lebron to entice them to watch the latest LBJ commercial on StateFarm.com? State Farm is missing out on a massive opportunity to extend their reach to the individuals on the internet and generate more views of these spots. I went into Google’s Adwords this morning to test my theory. Using just 4 keywords of Lebron, Lebron James,Cleveland Cavaliers, and Cleveland Browns, State Farm is missing out on an estimated 800 visits to their website each day. Now extend this search campaign out to contain more words and you begin notice the impact of what State Farm is missing out on.
The spots are getting people to talk about ads. But the conversation is happening on the internet. How do I know because when I first saw the garage spot, I googled it and expected to see a text ad from State Farm directing me to their website to re-watch the spot. But, it never appeared. Instead I was directed to other blog posts and YouTube which were talking about the spot. The Garage Spot has 37,055 plays on State Farm’s channel, while the Cleveland Browns spot has 23,995 plays to date on the channel. These plays do not even account for viewings that have occurred directly on other websites or that other users have uploaded. What if State Farm was directing people to their site to watch the ads online? The additional cost to run the ad only occurs if someone clicks the text ad. They don’t have to buy additional air time on TV. They extend their brand, extend the life the campaign, reach more people directly, and increase the awareness of their company, all pretty positive things for State Farm if you ask me. Plus what if after I watched the ad online State Farm had a special offer targeted at me to take advantage of while I was on their site watching the spots?
Now do you see why it’s so important to have a search advertising strategy in place for your company?
Charlie O'Donnell, Co-Founder of Path 101 moderated a fantastic discussion with Josh Stylman, Co-Founder of Reprise Media. The discussion centered around the industry of search marketing and what it takes to be a success in this field. If you have an interest in search marketing in the slightest bit, I highly recommend listening to this program available on demand.
Charlie will be doing a weekly series with industry veterans on his BlogTalkRadio program every Thursday at 2pm. Tune in each week to gain industry knowledge from some very well known individuals in their fields.
Comes down to experience, when it should come down to credibility.
With so many out of work right now and in a few months a whole new crop of
talented college seniors ready to take on the world and enter the workforce.
The question becomes, how do I get a job that says I need 5 years experience
when I only have 2 years experience. Or better yet, you just graduated, maybe
you have a great internship or two that puts a solid name on your resume but
you don’t have any real experience. Where do you start? Doesn’t everyone say at
some point “Well if no one is going to hire me, then how can I get the
experience I need?”
How about starting a blog? What if you wanted to get into
advertising and you started blogging about trends you see occurring in the
advertising space. Then you went out and started reading all the industry blogs
you could find and keeping up to date with what industry insiders are talking
about. But, on top of just reading the posts, you left a few comments with your
thoughts and maybe, just maybe, you linked back to your blog for more analysis.
You know, you started participating in the conversation that is going on
everyday online about very topic that interests you as a career path.
Soon, over time, you are going to build up readers,
contacts, insights, and best of all, experience in the very field you want to
work in without ever having a job. How many hiring managers would love to hire
someone who has a year or two of insightful posts about the job and position
before they even start? I am guessing more than a few.
What if you decided to do a couple case studies on a few
brands or ad campaigns that you liked or disliked? Say you pretended you were in
charge and figured out what you would change about a campaign, what impact that
change would have on the bottom line. Would it mean increased sales? Lower
customer acquisition cost? A boost to the company's website traffic?
So you want to get started in finance? Instead of following
the market passively and CNBC watching all
day, blog about it. Start a portfolio online. Track it. Make it public. Write
about your trading strategy. Enter in the CNBC Portfolio contest
and blog about the trades you make and why you made them. Apple just released
their earnings report? Great news! Provide your take and insight into the past
quarter by reviewing their earnings statement and provide your analysis as to
what you believe is going to happen to the stock moving forward.
What happens is once you start participating in the
conversation you start to make a name
for yourself as someone who “gets it” and an “Up and comer.” No matter what
industry you want to work in or you currently work in, by blogging and participating
in the conversation you are going to gain valuable experience, contacts,
insights into your profession, and you will learn how to market a product (your
blog and yourself) Now, when you apply for that high profile marketing job, or
finance job, you can direct people to your blog along with your resume to truly
stand out and gain a leg up.
When done properly you begin to gain credibility. Which I
think in a lot of cases counts for far more than experience.
Be proactive. Become active in your career ahead of time and
take charge. Who knows maybe you won’t even need to apply. Maybe an industry
insider decides to offer you a position after reading thru your insightful
posts. Don’t believe me? Union Square
Ventures has hired employeesin the past who have done exactly what I
described.
Google has been given a lot of
credit over the years for their implementation of their 20% time rule for
engineers at the company. If you are like me, you have heard all about it over
the years and how great it is, and how forward thinking Google is for having
this rule. But in case you haven’t, the basics of the program are to allow
their engineers one day a week to work on something that may or may not be in
their job descriptions. Whether the engineer wants to develop a new product,
fix a bug in another program, the time is theirs to use as they see fit.
What if your company gave you 20
hours a month to use how you see fit.Or
heck even 4 hours a month. What would you do? How would you manage that time?
What would you work on? Have you thought of something that may help your
company in some way that you secretly wish you had time to work on? Would
working on this project help you receive the next promotion quicker? Would you
read a book related to your industry in hopes to learn something new? Would you
try to network with other members of your industry? Or heck, would you work on
developing your own business? The possibilities are nearly endless to me.
Tell me, how do you plan to use
your lunch hour this week?
Most days we all take an hour or
so to eat lunch. Most of the time we head out to a restaurant with the same
people and relax for a bit. What if, this is a big what if, instead of doing
that 5 days a week, you decided that one day a week you would brown bag your
lunch and work on a project that you found entertaining and beneficial. That
would be four hours a month at least that you were able to utilize Google’s 20%
Time rule at your own company. Would it be worth it to you to try this out for
a few months to work on that project you have always wanted to see your company
do? Would it help you personally or professionally in any way? I guess, there
is only one way to find out.
Staying within your expertise is a way to increase your
chances of success in business. For example if I am a Dentist, my expertise is
teeth. Be it the ability to whiten teeth, straighten teeth, etc, a dentist is a
pro in his field. What about a financial advisor, again that person is a pro in
their field. They live and breath stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and have years
of experience advising clients on how to meet their financial goals and
planning for those events. The experience and advice of a pro in their field is
invaluable. Think about it this way, would you trust the advice your financial
advisor gives you on the proper way to repair a chipped tooth, would you want
him to fix it for you if he offered? Same with the dentist, would you put your
nest egg into a tip you received while you were sitting in your dentist’s chair
for a routine cleaning?
The point is stick with what you know and you will have
success. Certainly I am biased, but I have a hard time understanding why many
business owners feel they can have the same success at their search engine
marketing campaigns as company that does SEM for a living. SEM is highly
complex and time consuming, while Adwords has made it very easy for the average
person to set up and run a campaign, which may be okay depending on the goals
of your campaign, but if you are a business and your goal is to generate a
positive ROI, isn’t it better off left to the professionals.
Think about what is entailed in an average campaign. If you
are running your own campaign now, have you thought about yield scenarios for
each bid position across the major search engines. If your campaign is 200
words with 5 separate bid positions, that’s 5 to the 200th power
calculations that you need to consider. Now take those same calculations and
start applying them to every search engine, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com, do you
know which words are generating a positive ROI in which position, at which time
of day, on which search engine? If not, then isn’t your search campaign better
off left to the professionals? If you want to get the most ROI possible and
best your competition, then I certainly I would consider seeking out a company
to discuss SEM with them.
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