What is "The Cloud"?

In a recent blog post I mentioned that the American Marketing Association was hosting a seminar that focused on the various aspects of marketing in "the cloud"-the amorphous Internet being that's coming to monopolize the modern view on Internet marketing. Since that day it's come to my attention how many people really have no idea what "the cloud" is, even though they spend half their lives buried in it.

In fact, if trends keep continuing the way they have "The Cloud" may become a life force of its own. But what is "The Cloud"?

When I was digging around on the web for a simple way to explain what is, to be perfectly honest, an unexplainable but easily understood concept I realized that if you didn't "get" the Cloud, you weren't going to GET the Cloud! This definition, as proposed by Phil Whainewright, came as close as I've ever seen a definition come to being clear and comprehensible:

"Once your software becomes a service in the cloud, it opens up the potential to link it up with other services that are out there. For many vendors and users this is still a barely dawning realization, but it's of fundamental importance. In many ways, the Internet cloud is one great global SOA — still very rudimentary in many ways, but flexible enough to accommodate different levels of sophistication, and evolving fast." - Phil Whainewright

In other words, "The Cloud" represents a global joining of all of the data, software and other service you're ever going to need. The ultimate global network. A living, breathing entity that's slowly going to reshape the way we think of (and do) business-and, in time, the way we as marketers view the marketing profession and commerce as a whole.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you're not riding the Cloud when the time comes you're going to be left behind.

Developing a Marketing Plan That Will Crush Your Competition

When you're playing in the field of big business there are two groups of people you have to worry about: The people who are buying from you (your customers) and the people who would like them to stop buying from you (your competition). Since marketing involves not only emphasizing the value proposition of your products and services but also differentiating what your company has to offer from similar prospects laid forward by your competition, it pays to develop a marketing plan that's designed to do both as efficiently as possible.

The major mistake most marketers make, especially ones that are new to the game, is looking too closely at the marketing techniques used by their competition. If the competition has launched a TV ad, they think they should do it too. If their competitors have a price war going, they think they need to take part. Your competition is only one piece of a very big puzzle, however, and shouldn't be used as the framework on which your entire marketing plan is based.

If you really want to crush your competition, take time to find out what, exactly, your customers want. The competition focused approach doesn't take into account the fact that your competition could be spending too much money or targeting the wrong group of consumers-and really, do you want your profits to pay for their mistakes? Consumer needs change more slowly than your competition, allowing you to get your feet under you before making major changes to your marketing approach, and by listening to your consumers you know you're taking the right approach to helping your business grow.

Take, for example, the case of Amazon.com. Believing that the best way to jump ahead of their competition was to advertise on TV, Amazon's CEO launched a wide marketing campaign only to pull it off shortly after when he realized it wasn't working. Instead, the company started offering free shipping. They weren't campaigning the same way their competition was, but by giving their consumers what they wanted this "dark horse" managed to continue to dominate the E-tail industry.

It pays to listen to your consumers instead of trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Microsoft is Putting the "Bing" Back in Big Business

Hold the press, ladies and gentlemen: Microsoft's newest attempt to monopolize the digital industry has hit the airwaves with the quiet unveiling of Bing.com, Microsoft's own new search engine. Featuring scenic atmospheres, easy to read links and, most importantly, a search query box designed to help surfers quickly locate the web resources they're looking for.

For consumers this forces a moment of decision: Do they abandon search engine favorite Google, currently outranking every other search engine on the web by leaps and bounds, in favor of Microsoft Corp.'s new brainchild? While Bing.com doesn't feature the same fun gadgets (such as the ever popular joke of the day and ready access to the day's news headlines and weather) that Google does via iGoogle Bing does offer an easy to surf menu of images, videos, shopping, news, maps and travel sites designed to help them take a bite out of Google's market share.

May the best corporate giant win. In the meantime, the launch of Bing.com signifies new opportunity for savvy netrepreneurs.

Like Google, Bing.com features a sponsored list of pay-per-click ads designed to help businesses rapidly catch the eye of websurfers who might be interested in their business. Microsoft being what it is businesses can expect curiosity seekers to swing by and pay Bing.com a visit. Since Bing is a fairly new service its marketing attraction hasn't yet spawned its own collection of webinars, books and multi-media features, which means now is the time for small businesses to get their foot in the door and take advantage of lighter competition.

Will Bing replace Google? That remains to be seen. In the meantime, this new creature feature from one of the industry's most well known names is opening new doors to marketers that haven't been available before and may not be again. Since you're working on a pay per click basis you always retain the option to pull out of the game if you find that Bing isn't yielding the results you'd like to see for your marketing budget, which means there's no reason for savvy marketers not to take advantage of what may be the new next big thing in Internet marketing.

Basic Internet Marketing Techniques

There's nothing more powerful than marketing when it comes to the growth, expansion and, ultimately, the success of your business. The ability of your marketing team to take advantage not only of traditional marketing techniques, such as television and radio advertising and print ads, as well as new strategies opened up by the widespread availability of Internet marketing strongly impacts your ability to get the most marketing bang for your buck and reap maximum profits for minimum effort.

There are three basic principles of Internet advertising you need to understand. The first, and probably the most widely publicized, is SEO marketing. SEO, search engine optimization, is among the most crucial of basic Internet marketing techniques. Over 99% of Internet users use a search engine to find goods and services when they go online. Of those web surfers, very few of them are actually willing to read beyond the first two or three pages of results.

If you want to get those web surfers to your site, you have to get your site on those first few pages, and to do that you have to use search engine optimization techniques.

The second principle of Internet marketing is pay per click marketing. If you've studied up on Internet marketing techniques you've already heard of Google AdWords. Pay per click ads are ads that you place on high traffic sites. Rather than paying a flat fee for their run time, however, you pay the carrier each time someone strolls by and clicks. Since Internet surfers can randomly click on those hundreds of time a day without ever buying a thing it's important to properly target those ads to make sure that they're getting to the people you want to see them.

The final, and most cost effective, method of Internet marketing is social media. Facebook, MySpace, blogs, forums, Yahoo! answers, emails…all of these provide you with an invaluable access to hundreds of members of your target market, and because most of them are freely accessible marketing using these tools doesn't cost you a thing.

Internet marketing opens the doors to hundreds of cost effective marketing strategies, and once you've mastered the art of properly utilizing them you're going to love the change you see in your business.


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