Marketing in Cleveland

by John Eberhard

This article is going to be a bit different than most of my Internet marketing articles. This one is more about economics.

Back in August I traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, where I grew up, to spend a few days visiting with my father who was 92 years old and whose health was failing. In the past few days I visited Cleveland again to pay my final respects.

During the first trip in August I drove around my old stomping grounds - where we lived when I was younger on the east side of Cleveland, and then where we lived when I was in junior high and high school on the west side.

I was struck, particularly on the west side, with how economically depressed the area seemed. The houses still seemed well maintained, but many of the businesses were vacant and the area had the feel of a ghost town. It was starkly different from when I grew up there, and starkly different from where I live now in Los Angeles, which seems more active and vibrant economically.

Of course I know that the U.S. and the world really is in a major recession. So businesses are hurting everywhere. But the west side of Cleveland seemed particularly hard hit.

What caused this major shift, with Cleveland being listed as one of the most economically depressed cities in the U.S.? And what do they need to do to come out of it?

The Third Wave

So now I’m going to get all philosophical and intellectual on you (you’ve been warned). A few years ago I read a book called “The Third Wave” by Alvin Toffler, the author of Future Shock. In the book Toffler discussed what he characterized as the “third wave,” basically the information age or the computer age, with the first wave having been the agricultural age and the second wave being the industrial age.

One of the aspects of the information age which Toffler described was that different countries entered each of these ages at different times. So countries like the U.S. and the UK and other European countries that had entered the industrial age relatively early on, were now leading the way into the information age. And another aspect of this was that previously undeveloped countries were now entering the industrial age.

What I realized from this was that in the 21st century, there would be a sort of division of labor between countries. Previously second or third world countries, as they entered the industrial age, would now become the centers of heavy industry for the world, handling things like steel production. And early industrial countries like the U.S. would now lead the way with information products, like computers and software and high tech.

Following this line of reasoning, you could look at previously heavy industrial areas like Cleveland and Detroit, and where heavy industry had left, you’d be pretty certain that they weren’t going to come back again.

When I was a kid Cleveland had been a heavy steel and auto production town. Many of my friends’ fathers worked in the steel mills. Now those mills are gone. In fact, there is a big shopping mall there where the big steel mill used to be.

Now we could argue about what caused the steel factories to leave, and maybe it was the unions, and I’ve heard people argue that it is bad that we now get most of our steel from Korea. And we could look at how the unions have affected the big U.S. car companies and how they have all been in or close to bankruptcy.

And I’ve heard people argue that it is bad that we now depend on other countries for certain products, and that we as a country need to be self contained and totally self sufficient and produce everything we need.

While I do agree that the U.S. needs to be more energy self sufficient, I do not feel we are ever going to get the toothpaste back in the tube when it comes to heavy industry leaving the United States. Many of these other countries have lower wage levels and it makes sense business wise to have them do the manual labor, industrial type jobs.

So where does that leave the U.S.? And where does that leave Cleveland? And what do businesses in Cleveland need to do to get back to vibrant condition?

Well what Cleveland needs is the same thing that any other city needs. And what businesses in Cleveland need to do is the same as what businesses everywhere need to do:

1. Accept that we are in a new age, an age where the U.S. is and will be dominated by information or technology oriented products and businesses.
2. Innovate new products and services in the information or technology sector. Become the next Steve Jobs in your particular niche.
3. Work hard and deliver good service.
4. Market your better mouse trap aggressively so the world knows about it and can buy it (you were wondering when I was going to mention the word “marketing,” weren’t you?)

I think if we all do that, Cleveland, and the whole U.S., can get things going again and get back to the financial prosperity and vibrancy that we all desire.

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Becoming a Trusted Information Source

by John Eberhard

“Strategy” refers to a plan of action that one follows in business that affects nearly everything you do, and is usually followed over a long period of time. A marketing strategy is a plan of action for marketing a business that one follows over a long period of time.

A very effective marketing strategy that I have employed with numerous companies over the last 10 years has been to make that company into a trusted information source.

What you do to become a trusted information source is to write lots of material that contains helpful information on the topic of your products or services. Then you give it out to people, usually for free.

The first version of this was the company newsletter, where conventional wisdom said that you were supposed to make it 2/3 helpful information and 1/3 sales oriented copy. The idea was that the helpful information drew in the reader and then he would see your ads or other sales information.

Today one writes articles with helpful information on your topic (not sales pitches) and then put those articles into newsletters, on blogs, on article directory web sites, or in free reports or “white papers.”

Why Use This Strategy?

Many companies are following this strategy today. For those who are not, the question arises as to why you would want to devote time and money to such a strategy, because it is after all a pretty major commitment to follow such a strategy over a long period of time.

The reason you would to follow this strategy is to establish trust with prospects. This is vital to do today, especially over the Internet and especially in situations where the prospect has never heard of you before. The idea is that you are presenting information which the prospect can see is valid and true, and which he finds valuable. From this he concludes that you know what you are talking about regarding the topic at hand, which is the topic of your business and your products or services, and he feels more comfortable buying your products or services.

I have observed that this strategy has emerged in a major way in business over the last 10 years or so, and many businesses are following it. I myself have been following this strategy with my own company, writing an article a week and sending it out in my own newsletter and putting it on blogs, and this has been the most successful element of my own marketing strategy. I have also followed the strategy successfully with quite a few of my clients, either with my company writing the articles or taking the articles the client has written and sending them out.

I think that the strategy works especially well with companies like mine that are in the “information business,” but it also works equally well with companies such as home improvement, health care, skin care, the arts, technology, education, law, apparel, consulting and many others.

If you are not already following the “trusted information source” strategy, I recommend that you talk to a marketing consultant and discuss the merits of this strategy. There are various degrees to which you could get into this strategy too. You don’t have to write an article a week like I and some of my other clients do. You could write an article and put out a newsletter and blog post once a month, or even once a quarter. But especially if you have a blog, after a while of doing this you will build up a substantial body of work, that will do wonders for your credibility with new prospects.

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More on Google Maps

by John Eberhard

Google Maps, also called Google Places, has significantly changed the landscape for local oriented searches on Google.

It used to be that you would search for something on Google, and you would get two kinds of results: one was called “organic” results, which appeared in the wider left hand column, and the other was called “sponsored search results,” which meant pay per click advertising with Google AdWords paid ads, which were located in the narrow right hand column and in the first three positions on the left hand side.

Now with Google Maps/Places, when Google figures out that you are doing a search that is local in nature, they will add a map in the upper part of the right hand column, and a series of listings marked with an orange balloon in the left column.

If you search for “pizza restaurant” from the Los Angeles area where I am, you will see this:

Note if you scroll down the page a bit you will see a total of 7 Google Maps listings, and for each it shows a star rating, the number of reviews on Google, the restaurant web address, the street address and phone. If you click on the name of the restaurant it takes you to their web site. If you click on the number of reviews it takes you to the Google Places page.

So the key to remember here is that if you have a local oriented business that serves one local area, and you have a Google Maps/Places listing, you could automatically have your Places listing on page one of the Google results. And getting onto page one of the regular Google organic results is not quite that easy.

So it would seem that all you have to do is put up a Google Maps/Places listing and you would automatically be on page one, right? Well when I started working with Google Maps/Places listings I thought it was basically that easy. I soon learned it isn’t.

The problem is that in some industries it is so competitive that just putting a listing up isn’t enough. You have to do other things to push your listing up to the top. For instance, I learned first hand that dentists and computer repair companies are both so competitive that your listing could potentially not appear until page 10 or later.

I soon learned that it is vital to have:
1. Lots of customer reviews
2. Listings on other similar sites such as Yahoo Maps, Bing Maps, Yelp, Hotfrog.com and other sites. Google sees these listings and if you have a lot of them it will push your listing up higher.

You will notice that whatever local oriented search you do, that for the most part the company that is in the number one slot will have lots of reviews, in most cases the most of any of the listings.

So I learned that this is a maintenance program where you have to do things every month to work towards that number one slot and then to maintain it once you get up there.

But once you get to number one the rewards are great.

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