How Hitchhiking Made Me a Better Marketer

This post was originally published in Fast Company. Not that I’m bragging. Much.

The van driver rolled down his window and called me over. “I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up earlier–the ladies in the back wouldn’t let me.”

“That’s OK. I wouldn’t pick me up, either.” The ladies smiling, grateful to be let off the hook.

“No, I hate to pass by without helping, since I did so much hiking in my day.”

Here in South Africa, my family and I are getting used to relying on the kindness of strangers. With no car (yet), no contacts, and frequently no clue, we’ve gone from reluctantly accepting assistance to actively sticking our thumbs out, soliciting it.

Particularly when it comes to transportation. We’re about two miles up a mountain from the nearest mini-mart, and three-hour shopping trips for a cartoon of eggs, two onions, and a Cadbury Turkish Delight are getting old.

So I’ve taken to thumbing it as soon as I hear the infrequent rumble of a vehicle engine behind me. And in so doing, I’ve discovered a few things about human nature that make me a smarter marketer.
Cliffhanger? Keep reading…

What your marketing can learn from a pooping sloth

My latest Fast Company article (and hopefully not my last, given the title and subject matter) has just been published.

I hope you’ll check it out, and leave a comment, question, kudo, or criticism.

Read: What Your Marketing Can Learn From a Pooping Sloth.

Howie Jacobson slapped for online “Hate Speech”

I recently uploaded a video on how to add a custom site search form to a website to a bunch of video sharing sites. It was accepted by most of them, except for www.revver.com. Here’s the email I got explaining why:

OK, I know you’re curious. So here’s the video (on youtube, whose standards are obviously more lax and permissive than revver). If you can figure out what’s so offensive, please let me know.

If you can stand my “nasty” content, you should check out the entire series of Look Over My Shoulder (LOMS) AdWords Video Tutorials. Learn more here…

PPC – SEO Cagematch

I was thumbing through Website magazine the other day when I saw an article that had me floored. Someone had asked a bunch of search marketing professionals what they’d do if they were forced to choose between search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC).

Even more incredibly, they had actually gotten a bunch of people to answer the question (77% opted for SEO). Poor 23% PPC (sniff).

The question makes about as much sense as asking what’s more important about a car, the steering wheel or the accelerator.

Even though I wrote the book about AdWords, I recognize that both have their place in a successful online marketing strategy. (To be fair, the Website magazine article offered interested stats and did end up with a nuanced view of the topic – I’m just picking on them to make a point.)

Let’s compare:

Organic (SEO) traffic is free and can be plentiful. AdWords traffic costs money and can be hard to come by. Score one for SEO.

Organic traffic is more credible than paid ads (at least, judging by searchers’ behavior). Score two for SEO.

Organic traffic can last a lot longer than AdWords traffic, where any idiot with a big checkbook and no understanding of ROI can outbid you and kick you off the first page. Score three for SEO.

PPC traffic used to be more predictable – your organic listings might disappear overnight like dinghies in the Bermuda Triangle when Google tweaked their algorithm, but AdWords was steady and consistent. Until summer 2006, when they started playing with Quality Score and threw the PPC world into an SEO-like tizzy. So no advantage there.

So why is AdWords so great then? Why do I view it as important as SEO? For three reasons:
Cliffhanger? Keep reading…