Revenue Journal®

A lot of entrepreneurs obsess over their search engine marketing and Adwords campaigns, to make sure that they are within view when someone goes searching for their type of product. Nothing wrong with that, but given the bandwidth of the typical business owner, there's a tendency to focus on lead generation at the expense of conversion.

It took a while before the Web really changed the way people bought things, but it has happened. Now people go to the Web first and research the heck out of a subject before they buy.

They scrutinize, analyze, and agonize. They Google and re-Google, fine-tuning their search term until they start getting the desired results. They know exactly what they want and they keep searching until they finally find it, then compare their options, read the reviews, and consider the price and the functions. Once they are satisfied they have found the right product and are comfortable with the company selling it, they place an order.

I'm sorry to say that, over and over, I am finding business owners struggling to make sales because their marketers - in-house or outside - are trying to use yesterday's marketing and selling methods on today's buyers, who have definitely moved on.

Buyers have specific questions. If you're not giving them specific answers, you're not going to capture those sales. All technology aside, this is the biggest difference between "old" marketing thinking and "new" marketing thinking.

The best way to illustrate this is with an example.

The people you hire can make a big difference to your revenue growth. That's why I help CEOs find and hire the best people for each position. I've been building a marketing and sales team for one of my clients for the past few years. The people we have found are making a difference. The company's revenues are way up. The marketing and selling efforts are bearing fruit.

All of the people we've brought in are contributing. The webmaster/IT guy is technically brilliant, as well as productive and pleasant. The head of marketing loves marketing online, has a great sense of the big picture, and understands how to optimize marketing and tracking efforts. The head of sales has been working with each salesperson to improve their outgoing efforts - and has set up programs to consistently interact with existing customers, at just the right time in their buying process. Sales to new customers has increased along with sales to existing customers.

One of the most satisfying hires is the data-oriented person we brought into marketing.

I recently interviewed Greg Jarboe, one of the founders of SEO-PR, a company that has established itself as one of the market leaders in the field of search engine optimization using public relations techniques. I've known Greg for many years; back when my husband and I were in Silicon Valley running a high-tech marketing agency in the 80's, Greg was director of communications for the then high-flying Ziff-Davis.

Greg has always been urbane and prophetic, so he's fun to interview. But he's also learned a thing or two about optimized PR. Here's what he had to say.

PR in general:

At the highest level, marketing has changed radically in the last 10 years, and most parts of the marketing mix are aware of it. It seems the PR people became aware of it last. They knew the world changed, but they didn't know how, because they didn't have a good system of measurement. If you're measuring clips, you're measuring outputs, but not outcomes. How many clips do I need to make a sale? That's the real question. Otherwise, you have to resort to "ad equivalency" measurements.

It's finally becoming clear to everyone that marketing is not about relationships. Customers don't want relationships with sellers. Instead, they want to be able to find a product or service, get their questions answered, and make a purchase - without being forced into a "relationship." No one wants the local car dealer showing up for dinner. It was sellers who wanted a relationship, as if they could somehow magically make a customer loyal for life.

"Marriages" don't happen in the world of commerce. In real marriages - the romantic, lifetime kind - the partners stick it out through thick and thin. Commercial "relationships" are really one-night stands. One partner provides the goods, and the other partner pays the money. If the provider of the money isn't satisfied with the goods, he'll go find another partner.

If not relationships, what is marketing about?