In the class I teach at Georgetown, we often talk about how difficult marketing is in the modern day. That’s because it’s non-stop and there are an endless number of optimizations you can make. It always reminds me of the line in the film, The Untouchables, where Sean Connery’s character Malone asks Kevin Costner’s character, Elliott Ness: “What are you prepared to do (in order to get gangster Al Capone)?” To which Costner’s Elliott Ness says: “Everything within the law.” The final word, of course, is Malone’s, who asks again: “And then what are you prepared to do?”

In other words, in an era when different companies have the tools and the specialized knowledge to focus on optimization and improvements, it may not be enough to just do what everyone else does. Here are a few examples in different areas of marketing.

Example I: A Law Firm That Goes Beyond the Norm with SEO

To give you an example, we recently came across a law firm’s website that provides immigration legal services here in the Washington, D.C. area. One of the best practices here (especially for law firms or other companies that cover a specific geographic area) is to create pages specifically geared toward a particular locality to show up high in search results. So, you figure, this firm would create a page for the surrounding Washington, D.C., area, right? Yes, for sure they did that. But they also created unique, non-duplicated landing pages for:

• • Arlington, VA
  • Alexandria, VA
  • Annandale, VA
  • Fairfax, VA
  • Bethesda, MD

And several more neighborhoods in and around the D.C. area. Why would they do that? Because individuals searching for an “immigration lawyer near me” would want a lawyer that specifically was located near them. Creating pages for someone searching from Arlington, VA would mean that their page would show up higher in search results, allowing them to get more visibility above another firm that may have done just a “D.C. page” if a firm did that at all.

That takes effort. And it takes a willingness to do the things necessary to show up higher in search.

Example II: A Non-Profit That Invests in Doing It Right in Social

We support a number of businesses in social media and with that comes the responsibility to try to make every post we do “great,” in the sense of making sure each one is:

• • Designed professionally
  • Meets the strategic goals of what we’re trying to accomplish
  • And, most of all, engages customers with the brand

But those are basically table stakes when it comes to publishing on any social platform. For example, we know of a non-profit that implements a lot of best practices when it comes to social. What do they do? For starters they invest in:

• • Acquiring great visual assets and investing in a digital asset management system (DAM) that helps them organize and store media assets.
  • Posting multiple times per day.
  • Serving to both educate audiences and become the authority in that particular space.
  • Doing lots of videos.

On the latter point, for example, this non-profit we know does a lot of video for both content posts and ads. (In our experience, we’ve found that the performance of video posts is 2X that of static images or just text when it comes to engagement.) This is particularly important on the ads side, yet, we still see many other companies put together more straightforward static visuals for Facebook or other mediums. Why? Much of that is because it takes time to do a video well versus a static creative. That’s perfectly fine, and maybe those static creatives will work well too, but if you’re competing against a company or organization that you know goes to the wall when it comes to social promotion – either by the type of content they produce or by the frequency – how will your marketing stand up to those same audiences? Again, it’s a question of what you’re willing to do.

Example III: A Matching Service That Automates and Personalizes Emails

Like everything else, consumers respond better the more you personalize something for them. For example, we recently analyzed a company that matches actors with casting opportunities. For the purposes of our research, we posed as a typical actor who wanted to submit for a casting opportunity. What we found was that the company did an excellent job in several areas of email:

• • They followed up after we didn’t finish our profile and pay for the paid subscription (an abandoned cart email)
  • They sent us messages (several per day) about both new casting opportunities and ones that were unique and local to us after we filled in the profile.
  • Based on our experience level, they sent us opportunities for additional education and other ways to bring us back to their website.
  • Given the number of subscribers – they have (more than 600,000) – they did a great job automating emails to us, yet, at the same time, personalizing them with our name or location

While all that may seem like overkill to some, what all their efforts amounted to was that they stayed in front of us continuously from a marketing perspective. So, if another actor asked us where they should post their credentials to get roles, we certainly would think of this company first before others. All those little things above add up, in other words, but again, it’s what that company is willing to do to stay top of mind.

Example IV: A Retailer that Reinforces Security in E-Commerce

A lot has been made recently about the risks of fraud and the security of data when it comes to making purchases or even creating an account on a website. So, you might think a lot of retailers, in particular, would want to reinforce the security of transactions on their websites, right? But the truth, sadly is that few do. One company we know of, though, does it extremely well, even perhaps taking it to extremes. Outside of the obvious – using https:// instead of http:// (which all sites should do by now), it also:

• • Reinforces its data security by using the word “secure” in its URL for their cart and checkout process. Indeed, this company uses https://secure.[domain-name].com on all the final pages of the purchase.
  • Uses lock icons on every step after the cart page along with language that reinforces “Your data is secure.”
  • Reinforces and messages about PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance with credit card storage.

We understand that this may seem like a small thing to focus on (and often a lot of work to make happen), but it’s those little things you do that help boost the trustworthiness of your site and will ultimately pay off in the end. If you compete in the same space, are you willing to do that as well?

Conclusion

Those are just 4 examples of the ways different companies “go to the wall” when it comes to marketing their businesses. There are literally endless other examples as well in every area of marketing. And look, we get it, the point of this isn’t to fill you with dread. No one has unlimited time to do it all. But it’s worth asking yourself if you really want to market your business, what are you willing to do, in order to do well? If you can’t do it yourself, that’s OK. Make sure you hire a firm that can do all the fundamentals and is willing to go to the wall for you. In a hyper-competitive world, it’s the one way you’ll not only survive, but thrive.

If you need help with any type of marketing, contact us today for a free consultation. Our mission to is to help you excel at digital marketing.