Most regular readers know that I'm a big NFL fan, and tonight's Monday Night Football match-up had an incredible storyline. The Arizona Cardinals, perennial losers, were on the verge of crushing the most dominant team in the league, the Chicago Bears, when... well, if you wanted to read about football, you'd be somewhere else, so I won't bore you with the details, suffice to say that I'm fairly sure they could have won simply by falling on the ball at every snap in the last 6 minutes and only through combinations of massive bad luck and poor execution did they lose.
The analogy here is with so many web properties who are using the Cardinals' playbook as their defining web strategy. Many of the leaders in retail, media, B2B services, manufacturing, consulting and dozens of other practices don't see the web for what it is - the PRIMARY sales & marketing channel for the foreseeable future.
The evidence in 2006 is overwhelming - Internet penetration and broadband adoption have reached maturity in the US, and the global market remains untapped. Nearly every large-ticket consumer purchase is influenced by bloggers or web research or search engines (in many cases, all three). The younger generations are already being named after the websites they visit (just as my generation was named for the TV networks we watched). The writing is on the wall, and I'm preaching to the choir. The people who read this blog are, almost universally, individuals who could draw the same conclusions I've outlined; some of you could have almost certainly done it more elegantly (and with less reliance on the Bears defense).
So what are the missing strategies? What puzzle pieces and roadblocks exist, mentally and structurally, that prevent otherwise-intelligent businesses from making wise Internet marketing decisions?
- Disbelief at the Executive Level
When the chief decision makers ignore the obvious, there's little the rest of the company can do. Oftentimes, it's tough to cast blame on these folks - they've built the business from the ground up, or managed successfully through economic strife, tough competition and a changing marketplace. But when I hear phrases like, "the Internet is not an area we need to focus on," I see the vultures circling.
_ - Failed History with Internet Marketing
Sometimes the failure is in-house, but a lot of the people I talk to on the phone have had severe trouble with SEO/M firms and ad agencies or marketing companies claiming to have the answer. Bad experiences in the past pull away from one of the most critical elements of any business relationship - trust.
_ - Success with Existing Channels
Falling back into what's comfortable, what's worked in the past and what you're good at can make for a good storyline, but the last 100 years of capitalist business models have taught us that it makes for awful balance sheets. If you're a company who's great at door-to-door sales, you can transition those skills to new mediums, but you can't keep ringing doorbells, hoping that American women will eventually turn back into housewives.
_ - The Mentality of "Good Enough"
Not every business has a failing web strategy, but when this year's web conversions don't look better than last years and 100 million new customers are online, you need to realize that someone else is eating your lunch.
I know that I'm spoiled sometimes because I don't deal with these issues on a regular basis (anymore), but when I did, I know that I didn't always have good responses to this type of pushback. Thus, you can answer this question better than I can - How do you break down these barriers to reach decision-makers and build a web strategy in-house or convince a client that they need your services?
I nearly over-looked this post because of the football at the start - but it's a good rant and one I can whole-heartedly relate to.
Here in the UK the internet and broadband penetration are still maturing than matured, so we're maybe a couple of years behind the embracing of the internet that has become more common stateside.
Which means, in my opinion, the issues are even more acute.
I mean, seriously, a lot of companies running maybe a few hundred k in turnover still leave it to "their mate Dave down the pub" to develop and build website - their online presence in the biggest marketplace on earth.
So there's the initial ignorance about the internet, let along proper ways of tackling the technical, marketing, and branding challenges.
Mention SEO to the "enlightened" businesses in the UK and you'll get told "Oh, yes, you mean meta tags?".
So whatever your frustrations as a net evangelist in the USA, just be thankful you're not doing it in the UK - it sometimes really does feel like "Dr Livingston, I presume?" over here. :)
I'm not so sure the US you envision is the same as experienced here, though I wish. There are still just as many who are living in a pre-2000 version of the web and who are excited to know that the guy they just hired to do (insert anything as far removed from web development and SEO as you could possibly find) is also a web designer/SEO professional, etc.
Rand, sometimes I feel the same way Leinhart felt on Monday night. I'm a rookie, the game is on my shoulders, and no matter how good I play, the game is lost. Trying to get upper-level management types is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I feel one way to help convince dis-belivers is to find a web - savvy competitor, and show your prospect how the competition has embraced the web and how they will prevail if action by your prospect isn't made. If they see a large competitor using SEO or other techniques, they may want to play catch up with a campaign of their own.
Trust - too many of my own clients have been burnt in the past when they have had SEO supposedly carried by third parties who have promised them the Earth.
I've found by building my business up based on trust and integrity it has helped reap big rewards farther down the road with newer and bigger clients.
I've also lost out on projects in the past as I have not promised results in 14 days etc etc, instead advising an SEM plan carried out over 3 to 6 months. The client wanted it immediately though refused to invest in PPC whilst they waited.
Some are so desperate they ignore the warning signs (accepting any old dross as fact) and then wonder why they got ripped off (and they're likely the first people to go bad mouthing the SEM industry).
Nice post, Rand, but being a Limey I've never understood American football (I barely "get" UK soccer"!), sorry to hear your team lost though!
Daz
As an in-house online marketer at a F500 company, I can honestly say that we've been frustrated with all four of those short-sighted strategies. Over time, we overcame them by dealing head on with the underlying issues of risk aversion. Our company is very data driven and analytical so we built solid strategies revolving around testing, course-correcting and testing again. Positive results are undeniable and go a long way towards building credibility and trust. Negative results were examined and back-up plans were implemented. The numbers speak for themselves, and we did our due diligence to make sure every test was set up to provide the right types of data necessary to make informed decisions. Even today, we re-test everything we think we know to make sure our findings still hold.
Unfortunately, some people with the strongest objections had to be moved out of the way. We're still experimenting with a lot of different approaches and tweaking our existing programs. That's the beauty of online marketing - there's no such thing as "set it and forget it."