Marketing musings

Ignore the new wave of online marketing techniques at your peril.

We are going to turn the corner in this column from monthly observations and ruminations about a sundry of topics from tomatoes to Twitter, to a bimonthly column about marketing. After working for magazines for the first five years of my career, I then sallied forth into public relations and then marketing communications and have now spent (gulp) more than a decade helping businesses large and small to get butts in seats and cash registers ringing. This world has changed a lot in just that time, and it doesn’t take a marketing genius to know that much of that change has taken place online—and that’s where we’ll focus much of our attention. Since digital media and experiences are critical to my client’s success, I’ve delved deeply into the world and am doing my best to stay current and informed.

At the dawn of online marketing (which shockingly was not much more than a decade ago), all you needed was a simple Web site with a menu, directions and some contact info. While you don’t need to have a site with bells, whistles and whizbang, your site is now essentially your business card. It’s the first impression that most customers have of your business and therefore, it had better be a good one. Springing for a professional designer (and there are a lot that are good and reasonably priced) might be one of the wisest decisions you can make. The site should be useful rather than cool (although if you can combine both, good for you). In addition to having a well-designed, informational Web site, the content that’s on that site plays a role in your online marketing plan.

But let’s face it, your Web site is just the door to the house now. There’s so much more to online marketing than that. For years, it was relatively straightforward to get the word out about your business: you did events inside your restaurant or in partnership with nonprofits, other businesses and so on; you bought space in local newspapers, magazines, or on the radio; got the word out about new menu items, chef changes or other items of note through local food reporters on your own or via a PR person. Now, you do all of those things, but there’s a new, fast-moving layer online. Information and applications for your “smart phone” serve as an algorithmic top-of-mind opportunity at the touch of a key.

And, speaking of algorithms, there’s search engine marketing where people try to elbow one another out for top spots in both sponsored locations and the covetable and mysterious organic search positions. There are bloggers—both those who are in touch with you to confirm the info they post and those who aren’t—who can dish on back-of-the-house changes long before they land in print (not to mention share trials and tribulations with their followers). The rule of 10 (if one person has a bad experience they’ll tell ten others) has been toppled by Twitter, blogs, and Facebook. Now it’s more like the rule of 10,000. If information is power, then the consumer is in the driver’s seat.

All of these things have complicated the role of marketing at the same time that it’s expanded opportunity for those with the chutzpah and dedication to take the time to make it happen—or at least dabble well. I’m hoping that I can help you take one bite of the online elephant at a time, by covering what’s what in this changing world, from search engine marketing tactics to the newest trends in display advertising, the best ways to maximize the value of e-mail newsletters and many other tactics in depth, since they’re some of the dozens of choices you’re faced with when it comes to online marketing. I’ll speak to experts, pull from my own experience with clients and chat with those who are doing things well locally.