You can play with dozens of the latest desktops, laptops and netbooks, see every conceivable monitor, satisfy your ZuneHD lust, talk to the experts at the Apple Genius Bar ripoff, play the most popular games and generally leave feeling Microsoft is a bit hipper than when you entered.

Are they eight years behind Apple (first Apple store opening: May 15, 2001)?  To the subset of the 8% of the U.S. population who own an Apple computer who are Apple hardcore fans, absolutely.  To the rest of us, we’ll feel a bit better toward Microsoft than when we entered.

It’s an expensive path to repairing a brand image, but smart all the same (branding as theater).  It’s fun to be in the store.  I want to go back.  Plus I got a cool Bing T-shirt. 

So, late or not, ahead or behind the curve, it doesn’t matter, what is your Microsoft store?  That experience you create for the people you want to attract that makes them feel a bit better about you than they felt before?

By now you’ve heard about GM’s 60-day satisfaction guarantee.  Drive one of the eligible cars for 60 days.  If you aren’t happy return it and get your money back.

More lipstick?

Probably, but they don’t have much choice until they can bring out more fuel-efficient cars.  You know, the type of cars people actually want to buy?  Which gets to the core of GM’s self-inflicted problem:

GM has too many cars people just don’t want to buy; they need to fix this; and it takes years to develop a new car.

You, however, don’t have this problem.  That is, the problem of years required to develop a new product.

Your Product is Central to Your Marketing

While this seems obvious, it isn’t.  Subaru made money in 2008.  Toyota is selling as many Priuses as it can make.  GM and Chrysler are on the edge of extinction.

The difference, class, anyone, anyone?  Subaru and Toyota have cars people want to buy.

Your Product. . .a Pig?

It’s a pig if the needs of your target market have changed and your product hasn’t.

Wait a second you say, I can’t change my product, my product’s my product.  Everything you do is your product.  How you ship, terms, quantity discounts, service, support, it’s all part of your product and all of it can be changed.  It could be as simple as changing what you say about your product.  Are you highlighting quality when you should be talking about a low annual cost of operation?  And it could be a difficult as actually changing your product.

Please, remember, a slick new ad, a cool new brochure is nothing but lipstick if people just don’t want your pig product.

Take context away and what happens?  You need to “turn up the volume.”  Ninety-five little characters suddenly become a joke.  You need a half or full page print ad, you need color, images.  Or you need a celebrity endorser or exotic locale to display your product.  And on and on.

Deliver your message when someone is looking for what you sell — context — and all you need is 95 little characters.  Deliver your message in more of a broadcast medium, a magazine, for example, and you need to work much harder to get someone’s attention.

I believe how you add context to a print ad, for example, or any ad that isn’t a sponsored search ad, is by taking the time to revisit the problem your product solves.  Too many marketers get right into the solution.  Yak, yak, yak!  No context.  No power.

Take at least 60% of the message and devote it to re-connecting the prospect with the problem your product or service solves.  Let them know you understand and feel their pain.  BEFORE you talk about the solution.

It’s not a perfect solution, but it gives power and context to traditional marketing messages.  Try it.

Search marketing beats traditional

advertising. . .

The reason search marketing beats traditional advertising can be summed up in one word: timing.  Search marketing puts your ad in front of someone at the time they are educating themselves (67% of people who search are educating themselves on the query they search on) or shopping (33% of people who search are shopping for the subject of their query).  It’s as simple (and profound) as that.

For decades we marketers have twisted over demographics, taking great pains to place our clients’ ads in publications or shows that best delivered the type of people who buy what we’re selling.  But if you’re selling investment services to people with $500,000 to invest, do you put your ad in MSNBC’s Mad Money, The Wall Street Journal or Scottsdale Magazine?  All reasonable, logical choices in terms of demographics.  All the media just mentioned have a portion of their audience that fits your target.

Or wouldn’t you want to put your ad in a magazine called “I have $500K that I want to invest now?”  Of course you would.  And while that magazine doesn’t exist, this is what search marketing gives you: the ability to get your ad in front of people when they are interested in what you’re selling.  As opposed to traditional advertising that gets your ad in front of people who share similar demographics with your target customer.  Are they in the market for what you sell at that moment?  Some, yes, most, no.

Timing.  It is as important a force for change in marketing and advertising as anything; television, direct mail, the credit card, the Sears catalog.  (For those of you who are “young,” trust me on the Sears catalog, it was a game changer.)

Is search marketing your number one or two lead generation medium?  It should be.

I live in Scottsdale, Arizona.  Nice place.  Not the rust belt.  Lots of people come here year-round to vacation, go to conventions, buy second homes, etc. (i.e., spend money).  I drive down some nice streets to get to my office and see “Bank-Owned” signs on some very nice homes.  Creepy.

I have an active search engine marketing piece of the marketing consulting work I do for small businesses.  I look at traffic on dozens of search queries every week.  Big traffic.  If you believe published numbers, 33% of the people who use search are shopping.  If you think about how you use search, that’s probably a conservative number.

No, I don’t believe there’s a recession on the internet for three reasons-

1. The people searching for things are interested in those things.  Well, duh, right?  Right!  Compare sitting down at your computer and firing up a Google search to going to the mall.  The former is more focused, more intentional.
2. The competition isn’t as fierce on the internet.  I know at first brush that sounds wrong.  After all, you get 3 zillion results when you search on single cup coffee maker.  But two things.  First, people rarely go beyond the first or second page of search results, so there are really only about 20 or so other companies you’re competing against for that buyer.  That might sound like a bunch, more competition than if you are a store.  But consider point two.  Second, if you’re good, you’re competing for 10X or 20X the numbers on the internet versus a store.  You might have 150 people looking at your single cup coffee makers today on your website versus 12 in your store.
3. In my experience search engine marketing dollars are the last to be cut as things slow down.  In fact, all my clients have cut some type of marketing expense.  Only one has cut SEM dollars.  Why?  Again, in my experience, their website is the number one source for leads for 80% of my clients, website leads convert into customers better and they cost less per lead to generate. 

It just makes sense.  Expose yourself to more interested people WHEN they have an interest in what you’re selling and the effects of a slowdown tend not to affect you.  Nope, no recession around here!