Yesterday I went along to the Sydney Adobe Refresh convention at Darling Harbour in the city. As I really love the latest technologies I thought it would be cool to take half a day off work at see what’s happening in the Adobe world. For the past couple of years I’ve spent most of my time in search marketing and have sort of lost touch with web design and development and boy was I going to get the biggest buzz at the convention.

People who turned up to the convention were the typical developer who wants to use the technology to build applications including myself. John Chow recently blogged about making money with Facebook apps and how developers generally don’t have any idea of how to make money with them, so I made sure I went there with a view of how to monetize and possibly bring some cutting edge technology to any of my projects including this blog.

One thing that really sparked my interest was the advertising overlays over video playback. Right now advertising is either added to the beginning or the end of a movie reel and most people including me really find that annoying. Well this new technology using Adobe AMP (Adobe Media Player) lets you push content to the Media Player using RSS technology pretty much the same way we use RSS now in RSS text readers like Google Reader but instead of adding the advertising to the start and end of the video, you can have it overlayed during the advertising playback and can be integrated so that it just pops up with nice transitions to prompt the user to interact which I think is better and not as obtrusive.

So right now this might not be practical for full implementation due to bandwidth limitations for online video advertising but as bandwidth capacity grows, our blogs may possibly become vlogs where we can record our posts and include our advertising in the video feed. The RSS feed also allow you to include custom skins for your posts and look and feel of your brand as well as statistical information on advertising performance and there is even some DRM (Digital Rights Management) built in if you need it.

There were alot of other really cool technologies at Adobe Refresh that could be used to spread your marketing message and will be easier to implement as the technology gets better and more practical. After going to the conference, I have to say I’m pretty excited about the future possibilities of internet marketing.

Ever wonder what it takes to build a strong brand and get your message across to your target audience? Why is it that some brands become household names whilst other disappear by the wayside or are content with being average and mediocre.The secret to effective marketing and building your brand is consistency!

Firstly you need to develop a marketing strategy and then implement it and once you have set the marketing plan in motion, you must keep it going or you won’t see the results. Lots of people start marketing their brand, product, or service and then only after a month don’t see the results and start wondering if it’s working and pull out of their marketing thinking it is a waste of money but this is not the correct approach.

Marketing rarely provides short term benefits but if you are willing to push through the beginning you will see the results start to flow. The reason you must continue your marketing efforts is because that’s what it takes to get your message into peoples heads.  Remember that we are all constantly targeting with advertising everyday and we learn to filter the majority of it out but if you continually market then you will start to make an impression on your audience and your brand becomes familiar to them. People go where they feel secure, and what they know, and what is familiar to them. That’s why McDonalds does so well because it’s easier to go there when your on a trip than trying to find another takeaway that you don’t know will be any good. Better to stick with the devil you know than the one you don’t.

If people don’t know who you are, then they are unlikely to do business with you.  Another reason to be consistent in your marketing efforts is because if you don’t your competitors will. Who ever gives in to their marketing efforts is set come second to those that continue to market their brand. To continue marketing you need to allocate an affordable amount of your operating revenue to market your brand, an amount that you can afford to continue with. Set practical budgets for your marketing and build it as your profits grow. This will bring long term growth and profits and from that you can continue to allocate a percentage so that over time your marketing budget grows and you will develop a strong brand and longer reach to your audience.

Understand that everybody in any business needs to market and those that don’t are most likely to be left behind. Stay consistent in your marketing and prepare to continue for the long term to see the rewards and stay ahead of the competition.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was sitting at the local car wash watching the guys who clean the clients cars do their job. As I was watching them, I was thinking about what they were doing, what image the car wash was projecting to me as a customer, and what I felt and thought about what I was seeing.

The main thing that really stood out to me was not what they were doing, but what they weren’t doing! A guy was wiping the hood of the car but he was careless going over the same areas that were easy to reach and not bothering with the other harder to reach part of the car. There was no consistency between the staff uniforms which made it look like a cheap operation, and when I when I was driving away after they had finished, I saw that they have done a sloppy job of cleaning parts of the window and interior.

Here is another story…

A company emailed me today with the launching of their services as copywriters that know how to write to sell. I read the email which basically said how they they understood my business needs and how they would integrate their services seamlessly etc, more marketing pitch that nobody really believes. Sounded to me like they needed someone to help them with their marketing!

At the footer of the email was a banner with their contact details, web address etc. I went to click on their website link only to find it wasn’t a link at all but part of the banner image! Surely they couldn’t do any worse! So I open my browser and type in their web site address as any determined customer desperate to buy their services would do, and what do you think I find…. Website Coming Soon! Unfortunately not soon enough!

Unfortunately we’ve all been guilty of doing similar things and it’s not doing the little things that can break your marketing efforts. As consumers we are constantly bombarded with marketing from all angles so it’s important to do those little thing and get it right. Little things matter because that’s the difference between you and your competitors, and if your doing it and they aren’t you win!

Do the little things and start watching the transformation of your business from average to remarkable.

If you are in the search engine marketing game, I’ll bet you’ve heard that line from clients hundreds of times and if your like me, your SICK of it!

Google, Google, Google! This seems to be what the majority of business people think they need to succeed in their business model. Hey, I’m slightly anti-Google but that’s because those OO’s in Google just stare at me for hours most days of the week. In Australia we get a lot of search marketing success stories from the USA which Australians then expect Google search to provide the never ending traffic and leads from being ranked number one for a competitive search term.

The main issue here is that Australia has a population of 20 million people in a land area of 7617930 km² compared to the USA with 301 million people in a land area of 9161923 km². You do the math! Australia’s population is spread around the coastline with the middle of Australia collecting dust! So with only 20 million people over such a vast land area you need to keep your marketing more focussed as not many people are going to drive 4 days across Australia to buy a coffee with muffins if that’s your business is marketing.

Google is no silver bullet and it won’t be the reason your business succeeds however if combined with the rest of your marketing strategy, it can be a huge bonus to your marketing plan. From my experience, businesses who have built a strong brand tend to have better results in search marketing.

If you want to be number one on Google, build a brand and market that brand. Do this consistently and you will start to see results whether it’s search marketing or traditional off line marketing or a combination of both.