21 Web Marketing PR and Branding Strategies: Sparkah’s Unabridged Dictionary of Tactics

It’s a Long, Long, Way from Their Toilet-Side Magazine Rack to Your “Buy-Now” Button

Ironically,  Heavy drinking doesn’t happen when your efforts fail. You drink to excess when you run out of hope. If your ideas fail but you still have a bucket of ideas left to test, you keep going with a smile. Here’s a fresh bucket for Internet Marketing Strategies that Work.

The following list is a collection of the most effective and ingenious marketing pr ideas used by the most successful companies on earth. It’s all in one place. And the following is what we do for our clients.

The Prep Work: Branding
No. Branding has nothing to do with marketing but without it, your marketing is worthless. So let’s get the basics checked off. And never under estimate the value of branding. Major Fortune 500s get this wrong.

Answer this, Quick: What do you do?

If you can’t instantly express what you do, how is anyone else going to remember you for what you do? Let’s say you do know what you do. What is it? Go on, say it out loud or in your mind. Makes no difference. Now, when someone else thinks of that word, do they think of you?

What do you think of when you hear “luxury car?”

Now, think of all the other luxury cars that didn’t come to mind. That is a branding problem–not a marketing problem. This time, think of a body wash. I personally think of Dove. I never buy Dove. But that’s what I think of. So if my (imaginary) wife (my cell: 310 598 1606) tells me to get body wash, guess which one I’ll pick up. Nope. In spite of the extraordinary success of another brand, you will not pick up the Red bottle. This is why: How Weiden+Kennedy Screwed Up Marketing and Branding

So, these are the most underused and overlooked opportunities for branding you in the minds of your market:

1. Business Card
Does your card say what you do? Specifically? Are you Dr. Williams or are you Dr. Williams, Pediatrician? Are you Acme Windows or are you Acme Winterproof Windows? Are you Stella’s Bakery or are you Stella’s Cupcakes?

Brand yourself in a niche that’s narrow enough for you to dominate. Then, broaden your branding.

2. Signage
Nobody is going to give you business because of your pretty logo. People are going to give you business because of what it says you do underneath.

3. Packaging
Say the exact same thing from #1 and #2 on all your packaging. Judging by my bachelor friends’ homes, you’ll be branding their kitchen counter tops, night stand, and living room floor with your packaging for days at a time. You can’t ask for better product placement.

4. Collateral 

Again, say the same thing you did in all your letterhead, envelopes, brochures, and any other hand outs. For the rest of the top 10 Branding Opportunities You’d Never Think Of… http://journik.posterous.com/branding-hidden-opportunities-to-brand-yourse

One Quick Note On PR aka Public Relations

PR: Pull media stunts like selling abused super models in “women to go.”

PR is like more like Judo than Boxing. You can’t attack from the front. You’ve got to create a unique angle. You’ve got to give journalist, TV news programming directors, and editors, something newsworthy. I’m constantly surprised at how often smart CEO’s think their products and services are news worthy. Sorry. Unless your product is the iPhone 7, it’s not newsworthy. Incremental improvements in technology don’t make the news. You’ve got to do something truly revolutionary to be of interest to the general public.

If your product or service is not intrinsically revolutionary, like the Organization Against Sex Trafficing, then instead of try to make your company news worthy, make something your company DOES newsworthy. Create a ruckus. We do that pretty well.

Finally, Aggressive Marketing

OK, let’s get to the main course. All your prep work from above is done. If you, like most companies are only marketing yourself through two or three mediums, you’ve leaving a lot of money on the table. No. That’s just not the right analogy. What you’re really doing is leaving a drop dead gorgeous human being naked in bed with just a hand shake.

If you’re paying for advertising, stop. It’s the most expensive way to market. Here are all of the ways the most successful internet entrepreneurs do it:

1. Adwords: DO NOT USE
Adwords build little no brand awareness or value on impression. Most of the clicks you get will be accidental. When was the last time you clicked on a Google adwords ad intentionally?

The only reason you’d use adwords is to create a CTR and sales conversion benchmark. If you organic and pr work can’t outperform your adwords conversion rates, your marketing director should be put out of their misery.

2. Print ads: DO NOT USE
Don’t. The only exception to this rule is if you can lower the bar of conversion from sale to a Facebook “Like” or an IPhone browse. Nobody will tear out your ad, take it home, unfold it from their pocket, turn on the computer, and type in WWW.BLANKer.com. What they might do is, given enough incentive, use their android or iphone to surf to your site. Once there, you’ve got to make it so easy to connect that you’ll sit there a week later wondering why nobody has connected.

You’d also be amazed how broke poor bloggers and reporters are

3. PR: USE DIFFERENTLY
This, I like. But once you’re in the news, you’ve got to stay in the news. Keep pulling media stunts like selling abused super models in “women to go.” Rawk the boat.

This is how to launch PR stunts. … After all, we are in page one of Google under “top publicist” and “top pr firms nyc.”

4. Blog
People read insightful posts that either entertain, educate, save time, ummm… here’s how to build a blog that will drive you business

5. Close each blog post with a call to action
Strike while the iron is hot. The moment you’ve got a reader impressed with you, the moment their blood pressure jumps and their imagination soars, use that momentum and get them to take action that will build your relationship. To chat with me about your own marketing push, answer these probing diagnostic questions at http://sparkah.com/marketing.php before moving to #6.

6. See #5

7. Send out promotional crap: SWAG
Make it useful–like a stress ball that doesn’t bounce or a lanyard (perfect for the executive’s latch-key kid). This part, I’m going to flesh out. It’s big. I’ve produced swag that’s produced $273 per $1 spent. And it’s fun. If you want a sneak peak into the swag category, just “Like” my facebook page: Marketing and Branding Secrets Facebook Page

There are thousands of emails and names. That’s a lot

8. Twitter bio
Does your Twitter bio have a call to action? People routinely go to the super market and forget why they got there. Remind them to click the follow button. If you are on twitter, follow me at http://twitter.com/sparkah before moving to #9.

9. See #5 then #8

10. Take a blogger or reporter out to lunch
You’d be amazed how much press and Google love you can get for just $8 (hamburger) and another $27 bucks in margaritas. You’d also be amazed how broke poor bloggers and reporters are. You’ll get big street cred for under $35.

11. Start a competing blog
No, but seriously, rather then promote blogger obesity and substance addiction, pay college kids $20 a blog post that captures the attention of readers in your market demographic. @Problogger pays $25 for pros to, well, blog.

This is a little tricky. If you’re a caterer, don’t blog about catering. Nobody cares. If you blog about recipes. You’ll empower your competition–the house wife/husband/partner (not necessarily in that order). Instead, blog about a topic that will intersect like a giant inverse venn diagram and blog about hipster parties. DJs will read it and refer you. Party planners will read it and hire you. Jealous socialites will throw parties and hire you just to be featured in your blog.

If you’re not a caterer, let’s talk about how to create that intersection point. You’ll need to build a huge database of your potential customers much more aggressively that you would by just talking about yourself.

12. Support charities
Find a charity that can help you help them. Support them and let the relationships you build support you to support them even more.

13. Become an activist
Pick a cause. You’ll make friends and customers you wouldn’t have access to in any other way. You’ll build unusual rapport. You’ll get the allegiance of the most passionate people on earth. When it’s time, ask them for a favor. See #6 in our Viral Marketing Strategies.

Team Up With Your Competitors — But in San Diego, San Francisco, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Miami. Share the marketing work. Create an Alliance. Hire a Devious Marketing Firm.

14. Whisper in Forums
Post in relevant discussion forums asking for help. Don’t spam. Don’t astro turf. It’s actually FTC illegal. Just humbly ask for suggestions and options about your product and leave a link. Rapidly, your Google traffic will spike. And you’ll walk away with valuable public sentiment.

This is probably the most difficult and yet, most important thing we do. If you want to know why, lets talk. 310 598 1606.

15. Build a forum
A forum saves your sales, support, and executive team gobs of time. Most people will google before looking for your customer service number at 9pm at night. An extra bonus is that you can use your own forum for google link building and advertising your own products. Win-win. If you need a forum built, talk to us at http://sparkah.com/websites.php

16. Vertical (regional) partnerships
If you own a maternity boutique in LA, why market to the billions around world when you only have access to about 100,000 prospects. Keep marketing to the world. Instead, get partner maternity boutique owners in San Diego, San Francisco, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Miami, etc to share the marketing work and stop leaving money on the table (or that gorgeous being in bed).

17. Horizontal partnerships
(Get your mind out of the gutter). If you sell salt, and are pouring money into marketing salt, get yourself a partner who sells pepper. You’ll cut your marketing costs and labor in half while bumping your profits substantially. Here’s how to find and contact Twitter users by industry, job description and location

One of our clients sells $300 shower curtains: http://kontextur.com. We contacted 100′s of top avant-guard furniture designers for them. Now, they are working with http://uhuru.com and http://www.richbrilliantwilling.com on co-marketing and sharing their contact databases.

18. Youtube
Instead of just posting customer support answers in your forum, vault the stakes. Use Youtube. This is How to Build A Massive Youtube Subscriber Base. One of our Youtube accounts got 21,000 subscriptions in 3 months.

And here’s why you should even use Youtube for Customer Support.

19. Retail partners
This is probably the most frightening for you web types. But it’s a gold mine. Let’s say you are a travel agency. Let’s say you are a travel blogger. Or let’s just say you sell those 2oz travel size thingies. When’s the last time you thumbed through a guest book at a quaint B and B? There are hundreds if not thousands of emails and names. That’s a lot. Now, Imagine you got a B and B from every major city on earth to get you their guest book in exchange for sending them guests.

Let’s say you’re a Dentist. How many “Likes” do you think you’d get on your Dental Office Facebook Page? How many Facebook “Likes” would you get if you left a small netbook in every candy shop in town? And you set the home page to your “I Love JawBreakers” Facebook page? All the kids would check facebook while dripping purple everlasting gob stopper saliva into your keyboard.

20. Facebook Ads: DO NOT USE
If you’ve come this far, you’ve already gotten the sense that we are adamantly against the use of paid ads. Why pay to rent some else’s realestate when you can just create your own blog, forum, and social network (yes. we do that for our clients)?

But here’s the real why you should NOT use facebook ads.

20B. Facebook Pages: USE USE USE!
If you’re still using email or phone or even mail to stay in front of your customers, stop. How many minutes a month do you spend going through your mail? The average Facebook user spends 7 HOURS A MONTH going through Facebook. People in their teens to 30′s spend an average of 29 HOURS A MONTH IN FACEBOOK. They keep it on and online all day long during work.

Use Facebook to do you marketing. This is how: Advanced Facebook Marketing Strategies.

21. Google SEO
Actually, SEO and SEM are both dead. They worked fine when Altavista, Excite, and Infoseek were big. Now, Google makes sure SEO will get your site BLACKLISTED. So, here’s how to get to page one of Google straight from our Google SEO Expert.

BONUS: Organic Facebook Growth
Do you know the maximum number of Facebook friends you can add per day? Do you know how Facebook decides who to show your status update to? Do you know how many friends you have to add to get facebook to BLACKLIST you? Before you know these figures, you’re not ready to do any organic facebook marketing (this is what we do).

DOUBLE BONUS. The 37 Death Traps In Social Media Marketing
So you might be thinking that if you have a couple interns execute on this list, you’ll have a thriving online business. Before you sign a lease on that commercial space, this is the list of 37 Death Traps in Social Media Marketing that will cripple you. Don’t try this at home. While we’ve listed out 21 Points on WHAT to do, We’re going to have to produce another blog/whitepaper that explains HOW to do it. To get a link to that follow-up sequel… just click “LIKE” below.

So? What do you do?

While you do what you do best, bolt on a precision team of experts who will carry you out into your marketplace. That’s what we do best. Call us at 310 598 1606 or 347 767 6775 or just email us via our comprehensive marketing checklist: http://sparkah.com/marketing.php

Let’s get you into high orbit. We carry rocket fuel.