Don't Kid Yourself - Very Few Know What We Do (And Even Less Care)
New Tee Vee is an industry site that has an interview with Amanda Congdon (left) - past host and chief protagonist of the successful Rocketboom show (she's been having a ridiculous public spat with founder Andrew Baron for months).Anyhoooo, Amanda mentioned in her interview that:
"Not everyone participated in the media revolution. Gosh, many people I spoke with had never heard of a blog."
Well, duh.
People Don't Know Or Care
The classic mistake I see in marketing is people in whatever industry think that everyone knows and acts how they do. Nothing could be further from the truth.
- The vast, vast majority of people would have no clue what a blog is.
- Or a podcast.
- Or search engine optimization.
- Or a video blog.
- Most would never had heard of Digg.
- Or YouTube.
- Or Wikipedia.
- Or Google AdWords/Adsense/Video.
- Or affiliate marketing.
- And definitely not "social media".
They Have No Bloody Clue!
I'm here to tell you they have no bloody clue! No clue at all.
And that's okay. They don't need to. That's what we are here for (by "we" I mean industry professionals).
But what that means is that sometimes we're stretched to provide the best value we can, because often/usually our clients have no concept of the value we can provide.
And if we ask for decent money to provide the value, the client thinks we're charging too much.
Here's An Example Of Search Engine Optimization
I always use search engine optimization as the best example of that. With one decent search engine ranking with one decent keyword on one decent search engine I can make $100,000 per annum via affiliate commissions.
Then I've made money on pay per click advertising (left).And search engine rankings with our own sites.
Which brings me to my next point.
Expert Internet Marketers Are Getting Harder To Find
After a while, Internet people with some knowledge and experience (like us) are harder to find. And we're harder to find for 1 main reason:
- We can make more money doing this stuff for ourselves
And you can still find decent search engine optimization experts whose business model hasn't yet changed.
But it's getting harder.
Remember, most people don't know enough about the web industry to be able to identify the best value. Which means they have difficulty in understanding the real value of what you might offer.
Which makes your job - if you're in the web industry - just that little bit harder.
Cheers
Brendon
Labels: business marketing
[ comments ]
Package yourself as a results producer and focus how your work will affect the customer's bottom line ... how smart you are has no relevance. That sales results chart has much more, a thousand times more relevance in selling a similar service to a client than all the university degrees, industry awards, etc. one may have acquired.
I got a kick out of the example with Amanda. How interesting that she suddenly realized she wasn't the center of the known universe. We all can, and often do fall into that trap. A good thing to guard against as we push forward into 2007.