Prying the torch from the dead hands of old marketing

Today, there is freedom in marketing. No longer is the loudspeaker of the media controlled by a select few. As a result, so much more can be gained than ever before, all with fewer resources and less risk. The playing field has been officially leveled—and not a minute too soon.

Old Marketing is dead

Why? Our culture and means of information exchange have changed so much, so quickly from traditional conventions that have been used for so long. Today’s business must completely reshape and retool its approach to effectively market itself. The Old Marketing company—ingrained in these old systems for so long—simply cannot keep up with a culture that has transformed itselfBefore these drastic changes, our lifestyles and culture were based on a handful of media. Television, print, and radio were the anchors of mass information exchange and business promotion. If you owned a business or were charged with growing a company through marketing, then you were shackled to dealing with media and promotional entities such as television commercials, newspapers and the Yellow Pages. These industries are dying because they are being replaced by new systems. Remember the days of paying $2,500 a month for a lousy local, black and yellow ad in the Yellow Pages? Or tens of thousands of dollars for a local television ad, locked-in with a long-term contract and little measurables? That age is gone. The Old Marketing company—ingrained in these old systems for so long—simply cannot keep up with a culture that has transformed itself with the advent of the Internet and modern systems of communication. As a result, old, slow and expensive marketing companies are dying right along with those old systems. The ones that haven’t died yet are in a panic. They are scrambling to restructure business models, personnel, objectives and the sales pitches in order to reassure their clients that they now can pull off the new marketing ways.

The dirty little secret

In fact, this “scrambling to catch up” is a hushed truth among all marketing agencies. Marketing itself is not going to admit its own flaws in its business—that would be certain death. Agencies instead claim that they’ve been there all along. Nothing could be further from the truth. Need proof? This is easily evidenced by the marketing industry’s own publications and associations. Articles are rampant on how marketing agencies need to change to stay alive. On any given day there are a multitude of seminars for marketing firms to attend with subjects like, “leveraging web technology,” “selling SEO to your clients,” and “understanding social media,” as if these issues were still on the horizon waiting to be realized.

Marketing sold its soul long ago

The Internet may have been the axe, but it actually didn’t take the dynamic of the rule-changing Internet to bring the marketing industry to its knees. They sold out long ago. Marketing agencies have been on the gravy train for a very long time. This is what happens when media and information systems are few, with few in control. A few deals made here and there with the few controlling mass-media, local media, even the Yellow Pages—all with enough middle men in place to get their cut—eventually makes an industry so fat that it won’t forgo those systems, even when the walls are torn down. Bottom line: the money’s just too easy when you’ve got that kind of control. Marketing agencies employed tactics to pull clients in and lock them in. They knew the middle-men in all of the processes of print, television and radio. They knew who to kickback to. They even employ “media buyers”—a term that, as the years tick by, becomes more and more indicative of an era long gone. Can you believe a person—or even an entire department—employed in the position of “media buyer”? What were originally “creative agencies” became agencies only good at selling themselves to their clientsEven then, marketing's problems were deeper. What were originally “creative agencies” who served to shape, grow and represent the spirit of their clients brand, evolved into companies who simply became greedy—good at only selling themselves to their clients, but no longer about the work of their clients. Don’t believe me? Let’s talk about Leo Burnett. Leo Burnett Inc. is one of the most renowned agencies in the world. They earned their reputation serving one key philosophy: that nothing could replace the marketing firm’s charge of “being the spirit of the client’s brand.” Coupled with a firm understanding of what it took for each client to get and keep their customers, Leo Burnett was also known for the quality of their creative work and eventually earned the responsibility of brands like Kellogg's and McDonalds. Founder Leo Burnett recognized that the industry was in danger of selling its soul out long ago. One of his famous speeches, “When to Take My Name Off the Door”, delivered on December 1, 1967, was based on that very fear: He knew where the industry was going. And sure enough, it’s there—probably worse than he thought it could be.

What's the right way?

Traditional marketing companies identify that their own competition is no longer their peers in the same market, but the budding, New Marketing company that is web-based from the ground up. Why? They’re faster, smarter and more experienced in today’s systems. They also don’t have the burdens of expenses and bloat that Old Marketing firms have. They can turn on a dime. They move quickly. The New Marketing company that is web-based from the ground up is faster, smarter and more experienced in today’s systems.Today, successful marketing begins with the knowledge and experience to create exposure, build awareness, harness interest, and position business and all supporting systems within today’s web universe. Your marketing firm needs to understand why things work they way they do, and how people and prospects come to know and trust a brand in today’s world. Also, today’s New Marketing company is one that hasn’t forsaken the principles that are timeless, but is one that takes advantage of all that’s afforded in today’s business world to shave off unnecessary expenses.

• OUT: are deals with a select few in a position of control. IN: is the reality of true, choice-based media, entertainment and communications via the Internet and the technologies that are used by choice because they offer more and make better sense.
• OUT: are expensive payments to old, big, slow agencies—all carpet bombing to grow your business. IN: are fresh and nimble development firms who know how to surgically target the necessary areas to build a brand, position it and construct a network around today’s communication systems to promote and grow business.
• OUT: are paying for enormous overhead expenses in big buildings, expensive furniture, and lavish offices. IN: are virtual and hybrid marketing firms that work fast and don’t pass on the bloat of unnecessary expenses to their clients.
• OUT: are working through layers of costly production managers, account executives, supervisors and managers before you get to the real people that do the work. IN: is the successful marketing company that establishes access to key architects and creative producers who are integral in the ideas, concepts and the details essential for success.

So, as traditional marketing firms continue to pass on the overhead of their expensive offices, furniture, lifestyles and worst of all, the cost associated in how to figure out this "Internet thing," the New Marketing company has an inherent understanding of what works and what doesn’t in today’s culture. They are still marketers, founded in the purpose-driven goals of growing a business—however, the New Marketing firm, knows how today’s business is grown and built.

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SPF for Your Website: Three Simple Steps to Protect Your Online Presence

As the days get longer and the mercury rises, we’re reminded yet again of the importance of remaining vigilant when it comes to applying sunscreen to protect ourselves from summer’s damaging rays. It’s a simple yet necessary precaution that if neglected has both short-term consequences – the painful agony of sunburn – and long-term ramifications – skin damage and increased risk of skin cancer. The same holds true for our websites. If we are not proactive in taking the necessary precautions to keep our online presence safe, problems will inevitably arise. Here are three simple measures you can take to apply SPF to your website that will safeguard the integrity not only of your brand’s online presence but its reputation as well:

(S)ecure your site against SQL injections.

Websites that feature data-driven applications can be vulnerable to attacks known as SQL injections, whereby malicious code is added to an entry field, then run and executed. These attacks exploit security vulnerabilities in problematic code, attacking your site’s database and performing any number of actions, from adding unapproved content to your public-facing site to allowing the hacker to download your entire database. This is a prime example of why rigorous testing is absolutely critical prior to launch. If your site is already up and running, consult with your web team to make sure that it has undergone thorough testing and is protected against such hacks. If you want to take additional precautionary measures, there are also security companies that specialize in detecting these types of website and database vulnerabilities, and they can provide you with a security audit.

(P)rotect your domain name.

It’s common sense that you must pay to acquire the domain name where your business will reside online. However, it’s important to remember that you have to continue to pay in order to retain the rights to use that domain name. Essentially, when you purchase your domain name, you’re not buying it outright. Rather, you’re renting that name for a specified period of time. Most registrars (Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Register.com, etc.) allow you to secure a name for anywhere from 12 months to 99 years. If you allow your registration to lapse, however, the domain name becomes available for purchase again and is open to the public for anyone to acquire. Bear in mind that there are actually companies that profit handsomely from business owners who neglect their domain registrations. They monitor domains that are nearing expiration, taking ownership of them the moment they become available. If you have the misfortune of having your domain acquired by one of these companies, usually you can negotiate having ownership transferred back to you, but it will cost you dearly. Unfortunately, while this is a shady practice, it is not illegal. If you allow your domain name to expire, it is fair game for anyone to register it – including these types of companies. Before your domain name expires, your registrar will likely send you many notices prompting you to renew. I start getting domain name renewal notices six months or more before the scheduled expiration date, and as that date gets closer, the notices start coming more and more frequently. Still, despite this barrage of email notifications, there are still many companies that are unaware that their expiration date is approaching, and they either lose their domain name altogether or are forced to pay a king’s ransom to get it back. Often when this situation occurs, it is because the person who initially completed the registration process for the domain name is no longer with the company, and therefore the email address they used to register the name is no longer valid, so the multitude of email notices go unreceived. The company innocently thinks they are protected until one day they stop receiving emails (yes, your email is tied into your domain name), or a customer mentions that they tried to go to the site, and it was simply gone. Even though there is a grace period after a domain has lapsed that allows you to reclaim your ownership before it becomes open to the public, the lapse isn’t always discovered in time to take advantage of this safety net. To prevent this, it is critically important to keep the contact information for your domain registration up to date. Either contact your registrar directly or speak with your web team to make sure you know when each of the domain names you own needs to be renewed, and double-check to ensure that the contact information for your account is valid.

(F)ortify your forms.

Web forms are a staple of doing business online. In fact, rare is the site that doesn’t include a form of some sort that allows the user to input information to be transmitted to the site’s owner, whether its purpose is to make a contact inquiry, sign up for a mailing list, complete a purchase, apply for employment, etc. As anyone who has a form on their site can attest, however, not all submissions received via these forms are legitimate. This is called robot spam, which is created by spammers who write programs that send out spambots to indiscriminately fill out any and all different types of forms on the Web, looking for entryways to expose a site’s security vulnerabilities (see SQL injections above). If you find your inbox filling up with indecipherable junk submissions, it’s these bots who are to blame. To combat these spambots, you can install a CAPTCHA system on your form, which generates an image with a random combination of numbers and letters that the user must enter in order to submit the form. The spambots can't interpret these CAPTCHA images, so therefore they can’t complete the process of sending the form. While there is legitimate debate as to whether or not CAPTCHA is the most effective way to prevent bogus submissions, it still remains the most popular solution for web form security. However, the reason it’s important to block these bots goes beyond eliminating the annoyance of a cluttered inbox. A few months ago, my company decided to remove the CAPTCHA requirement from our contact form. We knew we would get a flood of spam submissions, but we decided we could deal with a little extra hassle on our end in exchange for reducing the inconvenience to legitimate users of having to interpret those squiggly letters in order to simply get in touch with us. As expected, the amount of spam we received increased dramatically, but it was still manageable. Then, all of a sudden, we stopped receiving any submissions at all. We also began seeing some of our emails to other people bounce back. What we discovered was that our web domain (which is where our emails originate from) had been blacklisted as spam by Microsoft (which is what powers our email platform). Apparently, all the bogus submissions from our website (which resides on our domain) to our email caused Microsoft to identify us as spammers. This is because our form submissions came from an email address associated with our own domain name (many web forms are configured this way). Obviously, we were not the ones generating the spam, but this strange series of coincidences conspired to get us blacklisted! Fortunately, it was an easy process to get our domain removed from the blacklist, and we quickly re-installed the CAPTCHA system on our contact form, but we certainly learned an important lesson about security and spambots along the way. If you allow those bogus entries to make it through, there is a risk that you, too, could find yourself blacklisted and unable to send email to some of your most important contacts.

Seize the day and stay safe.

Since summer is vacation season for many of us, business tends to slow down slightly as our clients and colleagues enjoy much-deserved time off. That makes this the perfect time to seize the opportunity to apply these S-P-F practices today to ensure that your online presence is well protected all year long.

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