Internet Marketing NYC, Times Square Car Bomb Scare and April Showers: What businesses can learn from panic, news and the changing seasons

Posted by Salem Global on May 4, 2010

Usually I write about sports since that gives me an ear from the most relevant demographic I want to reach for my own marketing. I actually wonder how many women out there are on this email list and read my blog. Usually I only hear from the men. But maybe more women search for NYC website marketing companies than their male counterparts. So maybe I am going about this all wrong. Maybe I need to re-think my own marketing plan. On the panel that I was on two weeks ago we discussed how businesses need to have a 1-year, 3-year and 5-year marketing plan. And in addition, you always need to be modifying and tweaking and testing to see what works. But the truth is that I haven’t been hit with anything interesting regarding sports or the New York Yankees or NY Mets even though baseball season is well under way. March Madness is over (for two months now), I don’t know anyone that follows hockey. I think Football is on hiatus until September… so that leaves me with the news and a joke.

If April showers bring May flowers then what do May Flowers bring? Pilgrims! (My son taught me that one lol!)

Not a joke though is something that I call “seed planting.” In business, we all need to do our own marketing. Marketing should lead directly to sales but there is a time delay in that some marketing programs take longer than others and certainly some sales cycles are longer than others. For instance, if you need milk or bread to feed your family, you go out to the market and pick it up. No marketing necessary. Food and essentials have different cycles than other consumer goods like electronics and cars. Services have different sales cycles completely. No one NEEDS website or Internet marketing, but it CAN help your business expand and grow. Everyone NEEDS food. And even for food and consumer items, there is a major battle between brands that goes on right in front of our eyes that 99.9% of the population does not realize. Coupons in your weekly printed circular and shelf placement are all part of the game. And with the changing seasons, so too, does the marketing change. When you walk into your supermarket, bottled water and watermelon are going to be front and center. More people are outside, going to barbeques and traveling. Grills will now go on sale at your local retailer and watch out for those fans and air conditioning unit sales.

If you want to be a part of the game and /or if you want to go so far as to win it, you have to plant your seeds early. You have to get together with your partners earlier than your competitors. The early bird does indeed catch the worm. The classic case in marketing is Coke vs. Pepsi. Whoever can get more coupons into your hand and get placed on the shelf at eye level or have a whole entire display in your face as you check out is going to win. This relates to each and every business out there. In the service sector, the more your network, the more people you know, the more reach you are going to have. Expert salespeople are able to target their audience and don’t waste as much time as the rest of us talking to the wrong people. In my professional life I network with hundreds of people. On the one hand, business can come from anyone at anytime any where in the US or the online world (and it has, from New York to California to London, India and Tel Aviv.) We all have to find that balance between marketing at the right time to the right people. It’s not easy but when you have an expert on your side it isn’t as challenging.

Ok – back to the news. I find it hard to believe that nine years after 9/11 something like a car bomb can find its way into Times Square in New York City. But my point of bringing it up here today in my writing is that the Internet frenzy that followed the whole story is just incredible. Hopefully you will glean from this that sensational media will always get the spotlight – whether good or bad – positive or negative… Just some quick statistics on the story as it unfolded, I didn’t start counting until now how many stories there are about the “times square bomb scare,” but if you Google these words, you will get a whopping 21,600,000 results. And the search engines now direct us towards those keywords as well. When you start typing into Google and Yahoo the word “times” then “times square” then “bomb,” you will get different suggested potential matches that come up. Before “bomb” you will get:
time square map
times square restaurants
times square shopping
times square address
times square hotels
times square bomb scare
times square bomber
times square church

And in addition to the search engine search, you can do the same thing on YouTube and see what videos come up. What we can learn from this exercise is how to word and prioritize your own website, content, blogs and writings.

Oh – and for you conspiracy theorists out there, I just read on one of these searches how this is all a government trick to take our thoughts off of the oil spill that happened last week – because terrorism trumps environmentalism and global warming…

If you want to know more about conspiracy theories, keyword prioritization and increasing your business in 2010 please call me at 212-993-5828, email raphis@salemglobal.com or check out www.SalemGlobal.com for more information. Lot’s of exciting things are happening this month in terms of networking, lead generation and business development. Let’s talk about it!