New Book Features Today's Online Marketing Heroes
Joan Holman - Joan Holman Productions
Greg Hartnett- Best of the Web, Hotel Hotline
Jacob Hawkins -Overstock.com
Mark Oldani -Circuit City Direct
Jeffrey Glueck -Travelocity
Lauren Freedman- the e-tailing group, inc.
Tamara Adlin -adlin, inc.
Steve Rubel- Edelman
Greg Jarboe -SEO-PR
Eric Ward -Link Marketing Consultant
Jordan Gold -Freedom
Heather Lloyd-Martin- SuccessWorks
Chris Baggott- Compendium Software
Ed Shull -NetResults
Brian Lusk -Southwest Airlines
Lee Odden -TopRank Online Marketing
Jill Whalen -High Rankings
Liana Evans -KeyRelevance
Perry Marshall -Perry S. Marshall & Associates
Kevin Lee -Didit
Paul O'Brien -Zvents
Ron Belanger -Yahoo!
David Fischer -Google
Phil Terry -Creative Good
Patrick Duparcq -Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Joan Holman Is A Marketing Consultant (based in Minneapolis, Minnesota) Who Helps Entrepreneurs, Businesses, Organizations & Professionals Improve Their Web Sites & Online and Offline Marketing
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Internet Marketing Consultant Joan Holman Featured in NEW BOOK as One Of Today's Top Online Marketing Experts
Online Marketing Heroes: Interviews with 25 Successful Online Marketing Gurus
MIchael Miller, author / published by Wiley & Sons / 336 pages / released March 2008
Excerpts from Joan Holman Interview - Chapter 1
How has the whole concept of marketing changed with the
advent of the online world?
We are having a convergence of public relations and marketing online. You
are able to bypass gatekeepers. You can go direct to the public now, direct
to the consumer.
It used to be that you'd have to use advertising, you'd
have to use the media, to get your message out. The Internet allows you to
bypass all these people who have been in control before.
If you are creative
and if you understand the medium, or if you have somebody working with
you who does, there are powerful things that you can do for yourself with
marketing-for a fraction of the cost of what it used to take to build a
brand or become a celebrity. It's just amazing, the opportunities that are
there for people who know how to do this.
There are some people who've been
very, very effective with this, like Dane
Cook, the comedian. In the year 2000,
he took $30,000 of his own money and
he launched his web site (www.danecook.com) to further his career. He had been on Comedy Central and he had a
fan base, but he understood the power of the Internet. He became one of
the first celebrities to really harness the Internet to catapult himself to a
much greater degree of success.
He was the first person to get two million
fans on MySpace, listed as his friends.So when he came out with tickets to
his events, and with products-DVDs, CDs-there he was, in instant contact
with a worldwide audience who could come buy his stuff and support
him. Things like that were not possible before we had the Internet.
So if a company already has a web site, what would they look for
in trying to improve that site, with online marketing in mind?
First of all, they should conduct some sort of usability testing. Extensive
usability testing can be very expensive, but you can do some limited or
informal usability testing on a small budget.
You need to get feedback from
your target market and also find out who is coming to your web site and
what is their experience of your web site.
I personally have seen so many web
sites that do not function well for
their target audiences.
I recently
evaluated a web site of a real estate
developer who is building expensive
condos and much of his target
market is an older population. My
recommendation to him, or to anyone
building a web site, is to know
what kinds of computer platforms his prospective buyers are using and
how this impacts the usability of his web site. His home page and much of
the web site was created in Flash-and to view it, you must have the latest
version of Flash. This could be a major problem with an older population, which may not have the latest and greatest technology One solution is to
provide an alternative version of specific web pages, or even the entire web
site, for those people who do not have the most current version of Flash.
According to research from early 2007 by the Pew Internet & American
Life Project, 71 percent of American adults are now online. Internet users
access the web from all kinds of computers, devices, monitors, browsers,
and connection speeds, which impacts how they can view or use any given
web site.
Although high-speed Internet is pervasive in the workplace, Pew
research indicates that as of early 2007, only about half of U.S. adults had
high-speed connections at home. And there's a lot of businesses creating
web sites that try to force their customers and prospective customers to
adapt to the parameters of the web site-instead of saying, "What are these
people working with and how can we make our web site user-friendly for
them?"
These businesses don't have the knowledge of all the technicalities
of the web, the different platforms, and they don't understand what it takes
to create a truly effective and usable web site. They may get a phone call
one day from someone who says, "I can't use your web site." Then the
assumption is made that, well, there's something wrong with that person's
computer, and that just may not be the case.
It just may be that the user is
on a platform that limits the use of the web site. Some people, because of
security issues, won't allow ActiveX or pop-up windows. So they're screening
out a lot of stuff that you want them to view and you may not even be
aware of this.
If you want to be effective, you need to know what's really
going on with your web site and you need to develop a web site that is
usable for your target audience.
How is the Internet changing the whole business of real estate?
According to a 2006 survey by the the National Association of Realtors,
over 80 percent of home buyers now use the Internet to search for a home.
Realtors will tell you that people don't even ask to see a property until
they've seen it online first. They want to see a lot of photographs, and also
a virtual tour. If your photographs are really good, they will draw people to
visit your property. But if your photographs are bad, or if you don't have
photographs, people aren't going to come and visit your property. Most
buyers are doing all their preliminary looking online.
Do you have any general advice for a company wanting to
improve their online presence?
First of all, get feedback. Get honest feedback about your web site, from
the types of people who would be your customers. And be open to criticism
and suggestions.
Finally, get creative. I'll tell you what really sells online, what engages people
online, is humor and human interest. If you have people on staff, have them
share their favorite jokes, favorite web sites, or their favorite humorous
YouTube videos. Have something enjoyable on your web site that makes it
interesting, so somebody can say, you know what, you should go to this web
site because they have this one section that's just hysterical, or remarkable,
or amazing. Something so that people will do some word of mouth about
your web site.
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Search Inside the Book at Amazon.com:
"Online Marketing Heroes: Interviews with 25 Successful Online Marketing Gurus"
FREE DOWNLOAD
Joan Holman "Online Marketing Heroes" interview Includes Advice about Web Site Design, Using Craig's List, Online Press Releases and More
Publisher Comment
This book focuses on today's most successful online marketers, with up-to-date information and advice on current online marketing trends.
It includes 25 interviews with today's top Internet marketers -- email marketers, web marketers, advertising executives, and the like.
The book details the inside story of how these marketing heroes achieved their success, tips and advice on how to be more successful marketing online, and it covers all aspects of online marketing.
From the Jacket
"E-commerce is an evolution. You don't have to get everything right immediately; you can learn from it."
- Lauren Freedman, the e-tailing group, inc.
"Focus on the user, build for the long view, and the money will come."
- Greg Hartnett, Best of the Web, Hotel Hotline
"No matter how much you spent on it, a web site is invisible until somebody links to it."
- Eric Ward, Link Marketing Consultant
"[If] you can get the PR people interacting with the search people, they will discover that there''s lots of things they can do together."
- Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR
Come Talk Shop with the Best --
Suppose you could sit down with 25 of the most successful online marketing pros in the business and just talk shop.
Suppose that included PR people, copywriters, direct marketing gurus, consultants.
Suppose you could get input from the creative cubicle-dwellers as well as executives managing multimillion-dollar marketing firms. You could learn proven skills and techniques that would revolutionize your marketing efforts.
That discussion is packaged in these pages. Whether you''re a veteran marketing professional or a novice entering the field, you can''t afford to miss this wisdom.
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