Certainly, not all terms are this expensive but gone are the days where you pay in cents. You can pretty much bet that to compete in your industry you’ll be paying a couple dollars per click at minimum.

Can you afford advertising?

We recently had a client at Jivaldi paying upwards of $32 per click in the law industry, but it’s easy to get over-focused on the cost regardless of what industry you are in. In the end, advertising is all about the return. If you can generate a return on investment, the cost isn’t so painful anymore.

A key take-away point to remember is that you can tackle advertising yourself but 9 times out of 10 businesses do not have the time or resources to do it right. And this is where the agency comes in.

Suzanne Choney, MSNBC (Via WordStream)

Click on the image above or read it and weep (below).

1. Insurance, $54.91
2. Loans, $44.28
3. Mortgage, $47.12
4. Attorney, $47.07
5. Credit, $36.06
6. Lawyer, $42.51
7. Donate, $42.02
8. Degree, $40.61
9. Hosting, $31.91
10. Claim, $45.51
11. Conference Call, $42.05
12. Trading, $33.19
13. Software, $35.29
14. Recovery, $42.03
15. Transfer, $29.86
16. Gas/Electricity, $54.62
17. Classes, $35.04
18. Rehab, $33.59
19. Treatment, $37.18
20. Cord Blood, $27.80

1. Cost = Advertising spend + Volume of work

You and your business partners have probably put in an enormous amount of time and effort into building your website or app. And utilizing good old-fashioned hard work, you may have accomplished a lot with minimal expenses.

So the first thing to understand here is that even though we’d all like to see the project go viral, the reality of the situation is that it will take a while to build up a user base. So if you are looking to build this user base with online marketing there will be costs associated with this.

And while the holy grail of marketing is when users start to share your application or service with their friends – reaching a mystical critical mass where ‘the people’ end up marketing the app for you – the fact of the matter is that you’ll need to work hard (and spend money) to get the first generation of users in your door.

So what does that cost?

Let’s just break it down simply. Here is a list of typical services that digital marketing agencies charge for:

1. Consulting
2. Creative Deliverables
3. Development Deliverables
4. Advertising Fees
5. Retainer

So keep in mind that there are different ways that an agency will get paid so it’s important to choose the right team to ensure that your spend creates a strong ROI. No one wants to spend money for the sake of spending; however, when you select the right agency (one that is well aligned with your goals) you will benefit greatly in the long run. Aside from their hourly or project rates, if there is advertising involved the agency will typically charge either a percentage of your advertising spend (plus any consulting or creative services they provide) or offer a monthly retainer.

It will help both parties if clear objectives are laid out and there is a solid understanding of what needs to be done, what will be charged, and the overall goals of the project. Maintaining focus on key objectives and measuring this performance will allow both sides to determine how the campaign is performing and make ongoing adjustments to the campaign.

2. Offering a Piece of Your Business

Some start-up clients want to offer a ‘piece of the pie’ – or the agency’s work in exchange for profit share. The agency may consider this if they think you are the next Facebook, but in most cases the firm you are speaking with have already been down this road before and will not be open to this scenario. Don’t be discouraged however when they look at your product objectively. They may not be jumping up and down screaming when you ‘reveal’ your product to them but if you have a good product and develop a solid relationship with the agency they will want to perform for you and make you come back for more.

Though you’ve poured your heart and soul into this project, it will come down to business when working with the advertising firm. They naturally will need to turn a profit and the ultimate goal is a win-win situation for both client and agency. There is another payment scenario referred to as, ‘Pay per Performance’, but that is a topic that goes beyond this blog post.

3. Who is the Expert Here?

Most companies will want to know whether the agency has ‘worked within their industry before?’ – and are concerned with how much experience the agency within this industry. Fair enough, but the agency will tend to view this from a different angle. Conversely, they agency will want to know if the company has worked with a marketing firm before and whether they have experience in this regard. This is equally as important to the agency.

The client knows that if the agency is familiar with their industry they won’t have to explain how things work and that this inside knowledge will help them be more effective when reaching out to prospective customers. This is a logical mindset, no doubt. But digital agencies feel that whether they are promoting a person, product, service or idea, the fundamentals of marketing remain the same. So to the agency, the idea and practices involved when promoting a financial product is very similar to, say a clothing line. The important part is knowing who to reach out to (the customer) and getting them to either purchase a product or fill out an interest form. Both sides are correct.

Education goes both ways.

The client needs to bring their expertise to the table as it pertains to their industry while the agency brings their specific knowledge and experience. When these two experiences are efficiently married, good things happen. It is important that both sides defer to the other when it comes to their specific body of knowledge.

4. “Willing to spend, but after we see results!”

Oftentimes, the client is seeking an agency after they’ve already built their site or application. After much work, they realize that they need traffic and users. Yet, the client is very hesitant to spend advertising dollars when they don’t know what the return will be. This mindset is perfectly understandable, but it won’t necessarily fly within the advertising world.

The first thing to understand here is that the process of driving traffic, leads and conversions is not a linear process. Think of an Internet advertising and marketing strategy as a fluid and dynamic game that changes constantly. The ability to make adjustments during the campaign is crucial. As the agency moves forward, the results will tend to get better over time, building and creating success. The company hiring the agency needs to understand that traction could take a few months. For example, Facebook advertising could be very effective, or not. PPC could yield positive results while display advertising falls flat (or vise versa).

It is during this period of time where the company (and agency) becomes more familiar with the target demographic, the competition, what it will cost to get the traffic and most importantly, how much it will take to convert the traffic. This takes time to understand and is typically why agencies will offer a test campaign.

The beauty of online advertising is that in many cases you can turn it on or off at any time. This is both a blessing and a curse. Turn it off too soon and you won’t have the data needed to make adjustments, learn patterns or tweak the campaign. So if the company is spending $xxxxx dollars the first month and bows out because of a mediocre performance in the first month, they could be missing out considerably on a natural rise in performance from fine-tuning that the agency can provide.

Understanding consumer behavior within a given market takes time and this is what we refer to as an absorption process for both the client and agency. Necessary adjustments, testing (a/b) and ability to course-correct throughout a campaign is crucial to performance. This means, that the client will need to be patient and watch closely for improving results even though they may not see the ROI they are looking for the first month. This is why test campaigns are set up to monitor performance so the client doesn’t feel locked in to a long term contract.

If the company is expecting to sell tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product each month, a clear understanding and realistic ROI will need to be established. In other words, if you are trying to sell $30k of product each month, you may want to reconsider that budget of $1000/month you’ve been thinking about.

5. Preparation and natural project evolution

The project requirements, direction and scope will change over time. You can count on that. With this comes fluctuation in what you will need to spend to get the product out the door and market it. It can be difficult for an agency to forecast expenses until they have a clear understanding of what the finished product will be, especially if we are involved in the creative or development process.

Agencies will often field questions like, “We have a website and an iPad app that we want to build. How much will this cost?”. The agency then asks the client for a project overview document or detailed outline and they are told that nothing is on paper yet.

Do take the time to put your ideas down on paper even if they are in a bullet point format.

Not having any documentation or plan in writing is a red flag for an agency because it tells them that the client isn’t yet ready to hire an agency. It is important that the client has a clear understanding of who the app is for, how it will be built, the value that it brings to the consumer, the target market, how to get the user to keep coming back, the competition..etc. The agency can certainly provide consulting services as well to help create this project game plan, but it is important that some general information is provided to help the agency familiarize themselves with the project.

6. Function vs. Design

If the user needs instructions on how to use your app or website, it may need to be rebuilt. And while the site and or application doesn’t need to win any design awards, it needs to be intuitive and easy on the eyes. Design is way too often overlooked – cast off as being an unnecessary ‘bells and whistle’ approach to a good app.

Handing a poorly designed website or product off to an agency and then asking them to advertise and market it will put the agency in a bad position. They may be reluctant to tell the client that it needs to be redesigned. And even if they do, the client will simply think that they are trying to add $ to the project.

Beautiful, usable or both?

MySpace had the social networking world at its finger tips, and yet it was an utter mess from the start (both design and usability) which played a key role in its demise. Facebook on the other hand isn’t exactly beautifu, but it is usable. And Apple products?…well they seem to get it right all of the time. Beauty + Design + Usability = Apple products.

It’s not that a website or app has to be beautiful to be usable, but if it lacks in design and usability then it will be very challenging to keep people using it – even if we’ve gotten them to install it or try it out. This is an all-to-common scenario for businesses and start-ups that are entering into a new arena. They may have a good product and a market that has a need for said product, but they can’t get people to use and adopt it. And this is exactly the point where engineers (albeit reluctantly) must hand off their product to designers and usability experts.

Underneath the face of the application there are two very important attributes to design. They are User Interface (or GUI) as well as the User Experience (UX) – both of which are close in relationship to design. To an agency, the lines between design, development and user experience are very narrow. All must be working harmoniously together. Agencies will expect this and hence their push towards a good design. Remember the point above though, if you ask a marketing agency to advertise a poorly designed product it can make them look like the bad guys when they come back and suggest that you should re-think the structure, layout or look and feel of the app. So just remember, the agency wants the product to do well. Be sure and let them have their say.

7. Getting traffic, new users & keeping them.

This is probably the most common of all oversights that we see. Despite having seen the movie the ‘The Social Network’ and realizing the vast potential of the web, you’ll need to work hard to get users unless you have a lot of money to throw at this. Furthermore, you’ll need users that ‘continue’ to use your application. So you may want to devote some time to this strategy before you spend a lot of money building the app.

• To gain visibility you’ll need traffic.
• To gain market share, you’ll need users.
• To gain loyalty you need users to adopt your app.
• To make money, these users will need to tell their friends about it.

Outside of getting users to ‘try’ your app, the toughest part of all comes next. You’ll need them to *adopt* the service, application or tool that you have built. Having lots of initial users are great, but until they use your product on a regular basis and start telling their friends about it can be tough going and many months of work will be needed. It can take up to two years or more to acquire enough users to gain steam. Don’t let this discourage you – it’s just that it takes some time.

Yes, I realize that in some cases the store might have to pay for certain transactions and not the other (but this begs the question, ‘why ask the question in the first place?’). There are also consumers that will freak out about typing in their pin # for their debit card and would prefer to validate their identity with the person behind the counter checking their ID. Still, this strikes me as a great example (albeit a small one) of a non-digital study in user experience.

Here’s some random thoughts that come to mind:

• My guess is that more than 50% of people don’t care (i.e. ‘ just swipe the darn card’ mentality)
• This question, to me, gets annoying after a while.
• The store would be better served by instead asking something customer service oriented. (How’s your day going?)
• People don’t like to think during a routine purchase.
• Neither do consumers like to fiddle with non-standard buttons, touch pads, little plastic pointers, finger or no finger, green button or ‘yes’ button.
• By just swiping the customer’s card and not asking, the store is simplifying the purchase.
• At the end of a Starbucks purchase, I’m relieved that it was so quick and painless.

I guess that what I’m ultimately getting at here is that little things count. And I know that Starbucks spends a LOT of time focusing on these little things. Speaking of which, have a look at Starbucks’ customer-focused idea site: mystarbucksidea.force.com. Another small customer-service gem is how they personalize the process of selling a coffee – where they call you out by first name when your drink is ready.

Anyway, I think Starbucks has it right. And I think this applies to all things online or offline. That is, if we don’t need to ask a question, don’t. If we don’t need to add that page or section, don’t. If we don’t need to add a graphic…don’t.

Just ‘swipe the card’ and instead focus on customer service.

My six year-old was quite disappointed when he wasn’t selected to learn the ways of the Force at the Jedi Training Academy at Disney’s Tomorrowland. I didn’t realize until our 2nd attempt that day, that kids will start lining up a half-hour early so they can be closest to the stage when the Jedi come walking out and seek that eager young soul that is ‘strong with the Force’. I didn’t realize at the time that this Jedi adventure would be a learning experience for my son as well as a fundamental marketing lesson for me.

On his first attempt, Evan stood in the second row haphazardly waving his hand, hoping that the Jedi Master who was choosing the young Padawans would look his way and just appreciate him for the simple fact that he was there. He wasn’t chosen, left the stage area upset, and I had to pull him aside and explain to him a few of life’s little lessons while other young Padawans were learning to yield light sabers against Vader or Maul.

I pulled him over and said, “Look son, sometimes in life you do have to stand out if you want something. You can’t be in the back row if you want to get picked” A frown on his face, he continued to growl at me as if he’d been condemned to the Spice Mines of Kessel, “You’re going to have to find a way to get that Jedi up there to notice you!”

What was I saying?!! Was I telling my kid to be a pushy, win-at-all-costs young competitor – teaching him that unless he pushes all others aside, he’s not going to win the prize? I felt the pull of both trying to be a responsible parent versus that overbearing, Great-Santini like character who wants his son to win at all costs. But as much as my advice went against my natural inclination to just say, ‘well, maybe next time kid,’ I started believing  my own advice the more I thought about it.

Just a minute or so later as we watched the ‘chosen’ Padawans fighting their way to glory with their new light-sabers, my wife, who was standing nearby, started talking to a woman with a huge smile on her face. This woman was  hoping that her son would get picked and it turned out that he had. She went on to explain that they had made the long journey to Disneyland for a few years and each visit, her son had not been picked as a Padawan. So instead of wanting to go 0-4, she came up with a plan. At the hotel in Disneyland she had her boy construct a sign out of cardboard they found. What did the sign say? Simple. “Pick me!”

Her son did get picked and was now fighting Lord Vader in a pitched saber battle to save the Rebellion.

This re-affirmed the comments that I had just made to my son. I leaned over to my son again, told him that the next show was in a couple of hours, and that we should take this time to enjoy a ride and come back after. So we hit up Pirates of the Caribbean, hung out with ’Captain’ Jack Sparrow in the greatest ride ever built, danced through the dreary night of a harbor bombarded and listened to the eerie echo of the voice that repeated:

“Deead meeen teeellll noooo taaaaaleess”. What a ride!

Two hours later, we made our way back to Tomorrowland and I had my Padawan-hopeful sit up front just behind the red line that was painted on the stage floor. We were there early, waiting…watching. Soon after, Stormtroopers blazed out of some back room and the game was on. They were followed by Maul himself: evil, menacing, and yet stopping to give me a quick smile.

The Jedi’s came running out and talked a little about the Force and how ‘it is an energy field created by all living things,’ and that ‘it surrounds us and binds us together.’  The Jedi Master then defined the light saber, as not being ‘as clumsy or random as a blaster, [but] an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.’  At one point, the  Jedi Master made a joke and no one laughed.  He then repeated the joke and with a wave of his hand said, “You will all find this joke funny…”  That was enough to make me laugh. Good stuff and not so subtle reinforcement of his message–don’t we all wish it was that easy?

Anyway, the time came where he started picking kids. “You there in the red shirt.” “That young boy there with the Star Wars shirt on.” (Note for aspiring Padawan parents: it seems your odds to be picked as a Padawan increase exponentially if you have proven your worth by purchasing and wearing officially licensed merchandise.) “And you there Miss, in the pink shoes.”  He made one last sweep over to my boy’s corner where Evan was gallantly waving his hand at the most feverish pace I’d ever seen. He stood on his toes as tall as he could and with all his spirit and might, he did his absolute best to capture the attention of the sole determiner of fate. Could my son try any harder? Could he reach any higher? Could he wave his hand faster? Could he say ‘Oh, oh, oh, ew, ew, ew..pick meeee’ any better?

Blam! “You there, the eager one, in the skeleton gloves and long-sleeved blue shirt.”

He got picked. Immediately after the Jedi said, “Thank you but we have all the trainees that we need for this session. Do not be discouraged but support your fellow Padawans on their journey to become a Jedi.” He had been picked, for the love of Jar Jar’s death…he had been picked!

My boy went on to let go of his conscious self and act on instinct. He learned to ‘unlearn what he had learned.’ Okay, enough of the quotes– he did end up fighting Maul and won (perhaps Mr. Maul may have been going only 75% but who’s counting?).

In retrospect, I think we both learned a lesson that day. And that is, sometimes we do have to be out front and grabbing the attention of those whom we are trying to reach. That doesn’t mean we have to step on others, do something that brings shame or offend others, or create a Superbowl commercial-esque type of campaign every time we want to say something, but it does mean that we have to be noticed sometimes, and by the right people.

This notion is echoed by Simon Cowell on American Idol. He occasionally makes the comment that some people are forgettable during their audition despite the fact they can sing well. On the other hand, some people get their 15 minutes simply because they got noticed..and were memorable.

So, in trying to grab someone’s attention,  win a new client, get a job…etc., we should never underestimate the power of simply getting noticed.  Once we are in, well… then it is all about results.

“Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth.”

— Mark Twain

Produced by Scofield Editorial, Inc.

Casting Agency: Artistic Enterprises
Casting Director: Michelle Moore

I don’t know what it is (actually I think I do know what it is) but people tend to think that because they have a great application, product or service, that people will start magically start using it.  If it were this easy, everyone would be doing it.

The problem with this thought process (if you build it, they will com) is that the human mind has a tough time contemplating the vastness of the Internet.  More specifically, how to draw people in from the ‘chaos’ to your website – and then get them to do what you want them to.

Easier said than done.

Anyway, this is a video that speaks about the concept of ‘Tribes’.  While Seth is speaking about a more general concept of creating ideas and connecting people via good leadership with the final goal being an overall movement, I think this thought process very much applies to businesses of all sizes whether they are pushing products, destinations or services.  There are also some very direct parallels with the Internet, websites and online services.  Seth Godin asks the following questions within the video:

• Who are you upsetting?
• Who are you connecting?
• Who are you leading?

He mentions that unless you are upsetting someone, you aren’t challenging the status quo. You have to be connecting people with an interest in your product or service and then build a small culture around this. Additionally, people want to feel ‘missed’ when they don’t show up. Should you find a way to give them this opportunity to feel missed when they aren’t using your online service, you unearth a powerful force.

Tribe leaders, Seth points out, have similar traits as they first realize that they can’t do it themselves, rather, they need to connect to people with similar interests.

• Challenge the status quo
• They create a culture (a secret handshake)
• Connect people (make people feel missed when they don’t show up)
• Commit (commit to the cause)

The idea of Seth Godin’s Tribes is a fairly broad topic but certainly applicable for your next big online venture!