Posted by Commie B on July 14, 2011 at 10:42 pm
I’m personally not a big fan of PPC advertising online, unless you can really hone in on your audience. Facebook and LinkedIn provide you this, but the statistics leave much to be desired. With time, though, one of the big things with advertising businesses like Google Adwords, AdBrite and others is behaviour based advertising.
Whilst is may sound like behaviour based advertising is a great idea – well, it’s really a blackhole that will suck your advertising budget why. But first, for those who don’t know, let me explain what this is.
Behaviour (or behavior in the US) Based Advertising
So you’re browsing the internet and you come across something you like, or click on a certain link or ad and land on a website which may be of interest to you. A cookie gets generated and stored on your machine. Now, until you clear your browser history and delete this business or company knows you visited their site, and each time you land on a site that uses a network that these guys advertise with, you’ll see their ad – over and over again. Confused. Here’s a scenario:
You visit website X to see a product. You don’t buy it and you leave the site. Then you come land on Asifism.com, which has Google Adwords ads on it. If website X advertises with Google Adwords, you’ll see a website X ad on Asifism.com any other website that uses Google Adwords until you clear your cookies.
So, what’s the problem? Well, this may be great because marketing experts (also known as morons, sometimes) claim that it takes 3-5 times for someone to see your ad or message before they will act on it. It’s a bit like suggesting an idea to a visitor again an again until it becomes acceptable. So, if you sell a web app that may have been of interest to someone, and you float your ad to them long enough, they may just come and sign up. And this is where the problem begins.
The Problem
I’ve recently been trying out a bunch of CRM applications. I personally think MS Dynamics CRM is great, but it’s quite comprehensive and a tad bit costly, especially if you start piling up some users. So, I researched a whole bunch of these CRMs at work and decided I’ll sign up for a couple of them. But I didn’t sign up on the same machine I browsed the websites with. I signed up using another PC. Now I spend 8 hours a day doing various things on the internet and keep seeing ads for a CRM application for which I’m running on a free trial. I conveniently click on the add and end up on their website. If, after 15 days, I decide I don’t want to use their service, they’ve probably paid at least $2-3 each time I clicked on the add and got zero business out of it.
So why do businesses do it?
Probably because they don’t realise that this really is not that brilliant a marketing tactic.
I’ve received repeated mail and invites from marketing experts who’re going train you on how to use this to your benefit – don’t buy their baloney. Ultimately, as the advertiser, you can’t do much to stop me from seeing your ad once the ad network picks up that cookie and starts displaying your ad. In fact, if I am a competitor and know that you are using behaviour based advertising, well, I can run out your PPC daily allowance rather quickly.
Advertising on Facebook, for instance, is just as risky. The same person can see your ad 10 times and come visit your site 10 times and not sign up. Or, they could keep clicking on the ad and coming to your site to log-in to their account. Until these kind of, well, holes in the system can be addressed, I recommend staying away from behaviour based advertising.
Besides, PPC is not for everyone. More businesses now probably shutdown because of how much money they spend on Google Adwords than make a killing. It’s not 2001 anymore!
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Posted by Commie B on June 12, 2010 at 5:57 pm
Those of you who are big social media fanatics and live in the world of one man entrepreneurs are probably well versed with social media and all the nonsensical talk that goes along with it. Until now, I had been quite patient, putting up with all the crap that we all get fed by social media experts who serious overrate their own value.
As business has taken off over the years and I’m no more flying solo, I’ve taken the time of to personally indulge in some of the ‘so called’ marketing and contact enhancing techniques that so many businesses swear by. Now I started my business in London online – I got my first client because of social media and the millions of online marketing tools out there, and for years I have been hearing these online marketing, SEO and Social Media Consultants talk shit. Frankly, now I’m a little bored of it.
A couple of weeks ago I attended a networking event in Central London. As with many networking events across this wonderfully pathetic city (see this article for more details), you’re expected to give your 40 or 60 second pitch summarizing your business and then you’re supposed to listen to 20 more people and pretend to really care. Then we had this social media and online ‘guru’ tell us about how you can and must use online marketing to enhance your presence and gain market share. He, like the many others, talked about how he had made a living doing this and why all the others should do it. Like the billions of such experts available today, he charges you a set fee to manage your social media presence initially and TRAIN you on how to do it – then you’re on your own. At this point, I didn’t say anything. I’m not one to bash technology, but I will take a shot at any salesman 7 days a week.
A few days later, on one of the business forums in London, another such online specialist had posted a message asking what complaint business owners primarily had with online media – why they struggled to manage their social media presence and campaigns. That’s a ridiculously pathetic question, and every person who sets up a business doing this get rich quick stuff needs to be shot dead. They’re a bunch of lying morons and should not be given a dime.
Now let me tell you why you should not talk to these experts. First rule of thumb is those who can’t do, teach. So if someone is willing to teach you for £1,000 how twitter and facebook work and how you should go by getting followers and fans, tell them to fuck themselves. You don’t need 1000 twitter followers to run a business, and if it was this effective having 5,000 facebook fans, this person would actually be doing real business with all these fans and followers rather than preaching how to gain a following. The same applies to general sales and marketing consultants too. Here’s how you get a good expert or consultant – ask him to generate a sale for you and take a big percentage. If he’s that good, he’ll accept. If he wants to take money to teach you so you can continue to get rich on your own, he’s an asshole, not an educator.
So, back to social media. Let me tell you a little secret about this industry – besides all the lying scammers that promote it, trying to market in social media is like a drop in the ocean. If you’re going to do this, you have to make it count. If you’re a small business with real work to do, don’t bother much with it. If you’ve got time, sure, but if you don’t leave it be.
I’ve recently setup a personal twitter account on http://twitter.com/cynicalhoot. Our corporate accounts only have under 100 followers each, and although we’ve got very little business from them, they’re there because as a business you’re judged by all this rubbish – because of all the scamming morons and the low IQ individuals who generally tend to fall for their scams. Think about it, twitter experts say you’ve got to make your posts count, you’ve got care about the people who follow you. Frankly, I don’t think most of these people have more than 3 friends in life they really care about, and if you delude yourself by thinking that 1,000 people actually care about what you say and they’re gullible enough to believe you actually care about them by following them on twitter, well, stop reading and go on wasting your life. Just because you have 1000 followers does not mean they all read what you tweet; they certainly don’t give a toss. It’s just a good way to get your ego boosted. A major part of the twitter following is you scratch my back and I will scratch yours. Follow me and I’ll follow you. Then you’ve got these morons who will literally spam twitter with posts. Well, guess what, those of us who have work to do don’t really want to read your shit. So fuck off and don’t tell me what your plans are for tonight!
Now, for all those twitter success stories. Out of the hundreds of millions of people who use twitter, there have only been a few successes. The truth is, it is really not worth the effort for most small businesses. Yes, it’s a channel you must keep open as it’s just another source that could get you business, but you’ll be much better off trying to understand a target market and go after them. If you tweet prospects, how seriously do you think they’ll actually treat you? If you disagree, good for you. Just don’t preach the social media religion to me, and don’t make it out to be what it’s not in public, or I’ll call you out.
I’ll leave LinkedIn out of this discussion. It’s actually an OK tool and as long as it doesn’t turn into an eAcademy, I’ll feel safe using it. Facebook is OK for business. Again, it’s not something you should spend your life on UNLESS you sell consumer products. If you sell B2B products, social media is just another way of getting some brand recognition, like getting your logo printed on t shirts or coffee cups. The chances of that converting to cash in the near future are slim – very slim.
So, if you really want to use social media networks to get business, research your market, find the people who need what you sell, define your unique selling points and know WHY they should buy from you, and then initiate contact with them. People always buy from people because they get something worth getting. Nobody who knows anything about twitter or facebook will buy from you just because you have thousands of fans and followers. Almost everyone who’s willing to kiss ass can accumulate followers – that doesn’t mean they’re good at running their business or doing good work. Just like talk, social media is free, so there’s way too much noise in this industry.
Ignore it and confront the liars.
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Posted by Commie B on May 31, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Over the last few days I’ve had the whole boycott facebook thing turn up everywhere I see over a dozen times. Because of this whole draw Muhammad thing, some countries even blocked access to the social networking site for a few days. I’ve seen some rather interesting discussions about why people shouldn’t boycott facebook and why the Danish or Swedish or who ever the hell started this rubbish should or should not draw facebook. Whilst I will be the first one to concede that in none of these discussions any of my pro Islamic friends was able to explain WHY people shouldn’t draw Prophet Muhammad, I found one remark from a pro drawing person to be quite interesting. He stated that “the appearance of Muhammad as they draw it is a matter of historic fact and should not be ommitted from history.” The absolute incompetence of this statement, along with the failure of those who vehemently oppose the idea to explain why the prophet should not be drawn, have resulted in this article.
Let’s get some history right. The last time European artists decided to draw religious history, they drew Christ. Somehow, whether this is sheer incompetence or the shame that would be bestowed upon the then ‘white’ europeans, Christ turned up really white with blue eyes and blond hair. To this day, the entire Christian world deludes itself with this appearance of Christ, with few of them knowing where he was actually born. In case you’re wondering: Christ was born in what is now Palestine – yes, those middle eastern terrorists. So these artists who plan on drawing Muhammad this time around certainly have no authority when it comes to drawing a religious figure. If European drawings of the 21st century were to depict history the way it truly were, then they today would be drawing and painting Christ (and I hope I’m forgiven for saying this) of the same colour, skin tone and features as terrorists that they today show on TV as suicide bombers. That’s an accurate depiction, one that would bring shame to any decent Christian.
Now that we’ve clarified the skill and drawing abilities of these artists, let’s have a chat about why Muslims in general oppose the idea of drawing Prophet Muhammad. You see, human beings in general have the tendency to idolize things. It was because of idolatory (of the pharaonic form) that Judaism was revealed. It was for the same reason that Christianity and the Islam were brought to the people. Trouble is, when Muslims try to explain this, they refer to ‘Shirk’ – and none of our non-arabic speaking reason loving friends in the west understand that term. Put simply, the reason why you shouldn’t have any illustrations of Prophet Muhammad is because people may actually start to worship him instead of God – something that many Muslims believe the Christian world is guilty of in the case of Christ. Perhaps if Christ was never painted (no matter how inaccurately), there wouldn’t be the concept of a son of God – we certainly wouldn’t know what face to associate with him. The entire premise of Islam sits on the Oneness of God and worshipping or idolizing any other human being (including Prophets Muhammad and Christ) is a sin. The fact that you create an illustration of Muhammad increases the chances of him being idolized. Therefore, it was decided (perhaps by early caliphs – and this is history I’m not really familiar with) that no physical images or portraits of the prophet would be kept. All these Muslims are asking is that you respect this and don’t promote the potential idolizaton.
The modern intellectual would argue with that – they do with everything. Argument, after all, is a sign of intelligence in the 21st century. Perhaps that’s why the world is on the verge of destruction – the intellectual deficiencies of western leaders and philosophers is only taking the west towards the dark ages again as Arab nations are picking up speed. I’ll bet that got your intellectual temper flowing – see if I care.
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