DaveLindberg.net

In the local news today, an analysis of Vermont Governor James Douglas’ plan to develop and market a Vermont-branded standard for evaluating carbon offsets. Among the wealth of political opinions and posturing, a comment by “free-market advocate” John McLaughry caught my eye.

After expressing his strong skepticism on the carbon credit program — “I can’t get very excited about it. I think the whole thing is a giant scam” — he then advocates promoting the program based on Vermont’s reputation for environmental responsibility.

“It is trading on Vermont’s green reputation. Any way you can market that to a customer who will pay a premium for it, so much the better.”

Ouch. Regardless of your political stance, that’s a dangerous take on marketing.

Brands and products that fail to deliver real value to their customers are doomed in any market. It’s enough of a challenge to create success with a product that you’re completely behind, one that offers value and innovation. Driving success from a product you believe to be inadequate is a fool’s mission in any market.

And if you’re fortunate enough to have a successful brand, you’ve inherited a responsibility to maintain its integrity. This responsibility extends to your stakeholders, vendors, employees and your customers.

The State of Vermont has been fairly consistent over the years in its understanding of the value a positive brand image can have on the regional economy, although the resulting creative efforts have been less reliable. As the state’s Department of Tourism explains in How to Use the Vermont Brand,

The brand exists solely in the minds of consumers and it encompasses their overall perceptions and attitudes of Vermont.

I’m not going to offer an opinion on the validity of the Governor’s carbon credit proposal. But let’s be clear: there’s no room for disingenuous marketing strategies that seek to tarnish the authenticity and reliability that add to the Vermont brand.

Alan Rimm-Kaufmann was generous enough to post a recap of his clients’ year-over-year Pay Per Click performance for 2007 vs 2006. Some useful online-retail benchmarks here, including click-throughs [dropping], CPCs [on the rise], conversion rates and ACS [Ad Cost of Sales] ratios. Fun to compare your own results against these soft numbers.

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With all the news and research going into the development of marketing techniques for web 2.0, it’s kinda scary to find experts who are still having trouble figuring out what to do with the social web. In a recent article, eMarketer.com points out the influence that apparel sites have on social users, but bemoans the apparent lack of influence that social sites have on apparel purchasers.

The article, Marketing Apparel on Social Networks, cites research from comScore that “heavy U.S. visitors to social networking sites are significantly more likely than average to visit leisure-oriented retail site categories, such as music, jewelry/luxury goods/accessories, consumer electronics and apparel.”

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The social bookmark explosion continues. Not just for storing and organizing your favorite sites: bloggers, marketers and SEOs have take to social bookmarking as a way to build backlinks, PageRank and SERP standing.

Ajaxflakes just published a new list of over 300 social bookmarking sites, “all tested and live”. Although the categorization is a tad murky [should I look in “niche”. “special”, or “misc.”], there’s a lot of good content to sift through. Each listing includes the site’s PR and a brief overview. A few of the niche bookmark sites I use are missing here, but there’s a whole lot more to explore.

Finding the sites is one thing, using them effectively is another. more »

The way you define success also defines your strategy and your actions. Case in point: I’m just coming off of a month-long experiment in internet marketing web 2.0 style. Mike Mindell ran a brief article in a WordTracker email about his involvement in the 30 Day Challenge, an online course in web marketing given by Ed Dale and friends. The object of the game was to learn a slew of new marketing techniques; the “challenge” was to earn ten dollars online in a month. more »