After college I found a temporary position at a barcode and data collection distribution and before I knew it, I was a full-time employee running their operations.  Why?  Because I fell in love with the ERP system they installed three months before my arrival.  That and the fact that I was one of the few employees who “got” new their ERP system.  I didn’t just get it, I embraced it with my entire being.  For the next three years I worked 60-80 workweeks and spent much of my time on the applicable.  And while it wasn’t perfect, it helped me manage a national distributor with multiple branches and distribution centers.  Again, I was in love with my job and my ERP software.  To this day I miss the chaos and the challenge of fixing every operational woe with my ERP system.

Flash forward fifteen years and I’ve moved from my first college job through working ten years for an ERP developer and now I run my own Internet marketing company.  The trouble is my love for marketing and ERP rarely seem to connect as much as I would like.    While a VP of marketing at an ERP developer, I myself struggled with managing marketing via my ERP system.  While I lived off my personalized dashboards and workbenches, I used a lot of offline processes to help manage what my beloved ERP software could not.  Don’t get me wrong; I knew exactly where each lead came from, where it was at in our sales process, and how long the sales cycle should take before new business was closed.  I had lead generation and tracking, but I lacked the ability to proactively manage marketing.  Within my ERP software, everything I did for marketing felt reactive, which is not at all, what marketing is supposed to be.

Honestly, I don’t think I’m alone.  While I doubt there are many marketing people reading this blog entry, I know they would concur with me if they did.   And I don’t believe ERP developers have reached the concept of automating marketing enough to work hard at developing strong marketing content for their user community.  They are side tracked with fuel surcharges, customer service needs, and compliance issues.  And really, who listens to marketing people anyway?  We are overhead plain and simple.

Today I received a feed from Web Strategy by Jeremiah.  He was covering CRM software (aka ERP software) and the newer functionality for social media management.  Yes, social media, the new darling of topics on the Internet.  Social media reminds me so much of ERP software, because just like a complicated ERP system, few people get it.  They think you can throw up a Facebook page or Twitter account and call it good.  Not so fast.  Just like an integrated ERP system, your social media accounts are fully integrated with your overall marketing campaign and search engine optimization.  There are rules to follow and there are reasons why you do what you do on Twitter versus Facebook.  Honestly, I think you either get it or you don’t.  I always felt the same about ERP software.  You need to look past your little piece of the ERP pie and you need to look into the entire pie or organization to see how your data input alters another department, process, or users.  Social media is the same.  Your tweet on Twitter will alter other marketing activities.  Good or bad.  The Twitter community is persnickety and they speak differently than Facebook or MySpace.  Make a mistake and you will be ignored or blocked.  Do the same in an ERP application and you’d just lose your program access.

Okay I’m running off track here a bit.  I have to really question the blog entry by Jeremiah, because I truly question if the ERP developers and their programmers get social media and marketing.  I question if they can truly meet the needs of marketing departments and look beyond a simple project plan, marketing budget, or lead-tracking program.  Marketing, and in particular Internet marketing, is like voodoo.  Hard to quantify and difficult to measure results, yet something I believe in.  Okay I don’t believe in voodoo, but I did catch your attention.  I do believe in successful marketing and I do believe in ERP software.

So Jeremiah, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, and Salseforce – do you really get it?  Are you writing software code that your marketing department lives and breathes by or are you writing code that helps your salespeople sell your ERP software?  Ask yourself the question, then ask a marketing person who understands both their functional role and your ERP software. The answer may surprise you.

I already subscribe to Avinash’s very popular blog Occam’s Razor, which provides insightful discussion on Google Analytics and the software’s newest functionality.  I enjoy his blog entries and cannot wait to immerse myself in an entire book of his Internet intelligence.

You can learn more about Avinash and his new book at www.webanalytics20.com.

Last week Google’s Internet marketing Guru Matt Cutts posted a new video in their Webmaster Central Channel on YouTube.  I love these videos because they are short and to the post and without any pitch or longwinded verbiage cluttering the real message.   The video that caught my eye was Matt Cutts’ discussion on Sock Puppet Marketing.   Yes you read that correctly.  Mr. Cutts is talking openly about puppets.

Puppets aside, the discussion was in relation to an individual or company creating fake Internet personas for marketing purposes.  While Matt did not go into how Google would react to such tactics, he did provide a very funny puppet commentary to illustrate the process.  While the entertainment value alone was good, Matt briefly described a real-world scenario where one company was fined over $300,000 for creating fake testimonials on the Internet.  He further talked about why he and Google felt this practice was harmful for all involved.

The short of this video is this – Internet marketing is powerful and effective.  People, companies, and the government now consider Internet marketing in the same ranks of traditional marketing techniques.  If a technique wasn’t legal in traditional marketing, it isn’t legal on the Internet either.  If marketing misrepresents anything, it isn’t marketing.  It is just bad business.

Matt summed this up with stating you should avoid anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see or read.   I struggle with this, because I am a mother and I know different mothers nag about different things.  I would be a larger nagger than most.  So, I would modify his statement to caution against any marketing tactic you have to think twice about.  If you question it, don’t do it.  You’ll be much better off in the end.

That being said, we Internet marketing consultants know that this request is not necessarily realistic. You cannot predict that a famous person will die or that Twitter will be attached and plan for a huge peak in web searches and resulting traffic around such events. You can however, peak into the future if you pay attention to search trending.

Thanks to Google – yes I know I can’t seem to talk enough about Google these days – this is possible. Google Trends allows you to input one or more search terms and see trending data of these searches. In the example I tried, I entered Internet marketing, search engine optimization, and website promotion to compare the trends. Google Trends quickly gave me a relative rating of these terms based on search volume and rated Internet marketing a 1.0, search engine optimization a .50 and website promotion a .08. This validated what I believed, which was more people search for Internet marketing than they do for website promotion. More importantly it told me that these three terms stay fairly consistent with few dips and spikes in search activity. What I didn’t expect it to tell me was that Nevada was the highest subregion. This I am still contemplating.

While my test didn’t show anything significant, a test of the search term “Christmas decorations” did certainly provide insight and validate my own behavior. In fact, I will use this information come fall to show my husband that I am not insane or outside the norm. If you trend Christmas decorations as a search term, you will see a large spike occurs in late November and not December 24th as my husband would wager. We Americans begin thinking, buying, and decorating around Thanksgiving. It isn’t by chance that the stores start filling the shelves with Christmas décor this early in the season. They have marketing departments and they watch the buying trends of the consumer.

So if you want a peek into the search future of your product or service offering, take a moment to review Google Trends. If you see a decline in search terms over time, there is most likely a reason. Case in point is Web 2.0 and social media. The world was a buzz about Web 2.0 and then it seemed to dip, as social media seemed to rev itself up. Or at least this was my perception. While I not always accurate in my assumptions, I was correct in this assumption and Google Trends validated this for me as July 2009 activity showed social media overtake Web 2.0 in searches. Again validating what I already believed to be the case. I’d share this with my husband as well, but he will certainly ask me why he cares about Web 2.0 or social media. At least with Christmas decorations,our discussion can last more than a nanosecond.

A well-planned Internet marketing campaign will integrate a regular release of press releases, blog entries, and articles. While I would like my clients to release two blog entries and one press release per week, these are very unrealistic expectations for most companies. We therefore find a happy middle ground between what I would like to publish and what is feasible. The trick is to deliver quality contact on a continual basis. Quality contact includes press releases that are about a newsworthy topic and that are without exaggerated sales hype that offer little or no value. Robin touches on this in her article and points out the absurdity in the modern day practice of press releases.

You can read Robin’s entire article on Techcrunch’s website.

If you’ve ever read these offers closely, you will quickly become suspicious. The emails come from gmail accounts without phone numbers or website addresses. They offer promises of first page ranking on Google and website traffic increases beyond your wildest expectations. And all of this is yours for little money and within record time.

Take note my friends, nothing of value comes easy. Your Grandmother was right. Positive results typically come from hard work. And so is the case with website promotion. Can a website refresh and an Internet marketing campaign make a difference? Yes, absolutely. But this difference is a result of a qualified Internet marketing consultant who can a implement proven Internet marketing campaign to work for your company. The consultant should have a real website with a real domain (www.something.com) and be ranked high on Google for keywords associated for their own website.

The bottom line is this – if an Internet marketing consultant cannot promote their own website effectively, they will not be able to do a solid job of promoting your website. If you can find them quickly on Google, then they are most likely a real, live, oxygen breathing consultant who can produce results. If you cannot find them on Google, keep looking for someone else.

From my own firsthand experience, I can tell you, a lot of hard work goes into promoting a website and reaching that coveted page one search ranking of Google. It doesn’t happen overnight and it is not something that just happens. Top search engine ranking requires optimizing each website page and promoting those pages off site via the Internet. While designing a visually pleasing website is important, designing one that can be easily searched and one that is supported by a solid online marketing campaign is critical.

If you ask your new or potential service provider a few questions or listen to the questions he or she asks you, you will quickly see the level of their expertise. A true Internet consultant will begin with your overall marketing objectives, your offering, and your target market. A website designer will ask what you’d like on your website. A quality Internet marketer will create a website that is visually effective and that directly supports all of your marketing efforts.

Your website is an ongoing and never ending campaign. Just like more traditional marketing efforts, you cannot expect to create a campaign and have the campaign manage itself. It will not happen. It needs a solid foundation and constant nurturing to make it a success.

Developing a world class website provides little value if no one finds it. If you are the thought leaders of your industry and you have a brand everyone knows and remembers, this may not be an issue. Visitors will find your website no matter what because they already know who you are and what your company offers. For the rest of us, we need help with the branding and marketing of our company, product, and service offering. This incremental need is where Internet marketing comes to play.

A strong website development firm or traditional marketing company will quickly discuss the necessity of having both a highly optimized website and solid internet marketing campaign. Discussing one without the other is futile.