Perfect Information

Sometimes it can be downright frustrating when your company has a unique and valuable product or service to offer. No, that wasn't a typo. I'm talking about when there is a missing "something" - a missing link between what you sell and a potential customer. In a textbook-perfect world, all of us would act like perfectly rational and economical robots. All of your customers would have perfect information. They'd take the time to find, process and really understand what your company offers and what your competitors offer. Of course, this isn't the case and it never will be. Perfectly rational automatons would not drive a Hummer. They also wouldn't buy a Prius on credit, getting themselves into huge debt in the process, all because it's "good on gas". You get the idea.

But most of us really try to weigh our options so that we can make responsible purchases - at least most of the time. We'd be broke if we didn't. So if you've tailored your services to fit the exact needs of a specific kind of customer, it's pretty reasonable to assume that they are looking for you too, right? But if these excited and ready customers can't find you online or if they don't feel good about what they see, the connection is lost. You're left wondering why you're not getting bites even when you know you're selling something great. Your customers are left wondering why it's so hard to just find what they want. Enter online marketing.

Most people have a really hard time giving an elevator pitch for online marketing. Don't even think about checking out the Wikipedia page, which really just says a whole lot of nothing. And once you're done reading through the collection of buzzwords and assorted hype (who do you think edited that entry?), you're prompted to go check out variations of the term such as: digital marketing, interactive advertising, online identity management, social media optimization and more. Everyone from the mom and pop diner down the street to the 2008 presidential candidates are using online marketing to reach out to new people. The online marketing industry moves tens of billions of dollars around every year. But what does this all mean?

Here's what it doesn't mean. It's not about interrupting users with pop up ads, voiceovers or even slick animations that have to run their 15 second course before you can actually read the content of the web site that you're on. It's not about trying to trick people into arriving at your web site; they'll just leave immediately (and never come back). It doesn't mean trying to get your web site in as many random places as possible online. It doesn't mean spamming social networks. In short, stuffing your brand down the throats of people who aren't looking for you right now is an old school tactic that just doesn't work anymore. Web savvy consumers are positively numb to that kind of disrespectful and annoying marketing. Darn.

On the way to work this morning, I vaguely recall being pummeled with ads on the sides of busses, on billboards, on the radio, on cars and even on the t-shirts of pedestrians. I honestly don't remember what any of them said. I didn't need that information. I wasn't looking for it. I didn't care about it. Those advertisers shouldn't have been worried about me - I was frantically driving to work, talking on the phone and spilling coffee on my shirt at the same time. Instead, they should have been thinking about someone who has set aside some of their extremely valuable time to do some research. Once I got to the office, I searched for "˜how to remove coffee stains from shirts' and various permutations of the query. Not a single detergent company has made an effort to drop perfect information in front of me. Was that a Tide ad painted on the side of that bus"¦or was it a Starbucks ad? I can't remember. All I know is that right now I can't find what I'm searching for. Earlier, I said that most people can't quickly sum up online marketing. I can. Online marketing is the race to deliver the perfect information to the perfect customer at the perfect point in time. Of course, strategies will vary depending on your company, your audience and your goals. But online marketing can really be defined as succinctly as that.

I really like this shirt. If I had been able to easily find a product that could get out this coffee stain, I probably would have bought it. The advertisers missed their chance. My phone is ringing, the rest of my day is booked up (I can't spend all day thinking about this coffee stain) and it just so happens that the Gap has just dropped some perfect information in front of me. This very shirt is now on sale for half the price that it was when I bought it in the first place. Guess which company is going to get my money?