It’s tempting to stretch the truth because I want to make a good first impression.
But if marketing has a dark side, it’s all of the truth-stretching. Hell, most of us straight-up lie. “You give us $2,000, we’ll perform magic tricks OR teach you some of your own, and all of your problems will be solved!”
Then, inevitably, a bunch of paying customers don’t get what was promised, leaving them a little bit poorer, a little bit angrier, but probably not any closer to growing their business.
It’s a Bitter Pill Festival for everyone who isn’t the Truth Stretcher with a bunch of $2,000 checks to deposit. But even he’s sad. Because he has daddy issues, dysfunctional relationships, and zero satisfied customers.
That’s just awkward. So, we are not going to do that.
Hi! We’re Mosaic eMarketing. An Ohio-based startup digital marketing agency.
The future of commerce in the 21st century is rooted in the most basic of human action: Asking questions and seeking information to solve problems.
We pick up our smartphones and speak into our watches or to Apple’s Siri or to Amazon’s Echo or to Google Voice, or we type queries into our favorite search engines.
We do that because we want answers.
Like finding directions, discovering new restaurants, ordering products, or researching service providers to help us accomplish things.
Thanks to the magic of algorithmic improvements within search companies like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Duck Duck Go, the search engines have gotten awesome at answering our questions quickly and accurately.
The positive trickle-down effects of this cannot be overstated.
Honesty Is No Longer the Practice of the Virtuous Poor, but the Effective and Necessary Weapon of Successful Businesses Online
Potential customers turn to Google and type: “where can I buy guitar strings online?” or “landscapers in Springfield” or “karate classes + Cleveland.”
And because Google is dazzlingly brilliant in 2016, the guitar owner is going to be served with several options for ordering new strings online which can be shipped by tomorrow, as well as with local music shops which might have them in stock.
The Springfield residents will discover several landscape companies, which might even include phone and address listings, hours of operation, and customer reviews.
Clevelanders will surely find a variety of martial arts classes in the city and surrounding suburbs.
The companies showing up in search results are the ones that will be successful in the near and long term.
The companies who do not will struggle, unless they’re an established brand so well known that marketing is unnecessary to reach target customers.
But even Coca-Cola, Apple and Nike spend billions on advertising every year, which we think means staying in front of customers matters even when brands are already successful.
Because of this beautiful fact in modern digital marketing: The companies who tell the truth most effectively, and deliver on their problem-solving promises are the companies that thrive.
This is why I love my job. Because I don’t need to lie to do it well. And neither do you.
What’s the “trick” to online marketing in 2016? Say exactly WHAT you do, WHERE you do it, HOW you do it, and WHY it matters. Then, when people are looking for solutions to problems, and your company’s products and services are solutions, you both find one another, with each party giving and getting exactly what they need.
We view our job as connecting people who need help with the companies that can. And, we’re happy to report, it feels good.
Back when Don Draper was writing killer ads for Kodak and Hershey’s, those companies would pay to have their advertisements run in newspapers and magazines, as well as on radio and television. And to be sure, those advertisements, when executed well, were effective.
Other times, ads weren’t effective.
How’d anyone know? Mostly, they guessed. Maybe they were right sometimes.
Fast forward to 2016.
What’s so cool about digital marketing today, is that we can mostly measure the results of our work. You can see your website traffic increase from improved search rankings. You can measure the increase in sales from pay-per-click advertising. You can test the effectiveness of a subject line in your email marketing campaigns, and discover for yourself how effective content marketing can improve website conversion rates.
In 2016, marketing is less about guessing, and more about scientifically testing and tuning.
The strategic marketing part is art. The data measurement and analysis parts are science.
And it’s our job to blend the art and science of digital marketing to help companies figure out how to reach new customers, engage existing ones, and ultimately improve the effectiveness of their websites.
Our job is to help companies stop guessing.
Do X, because it works. Don’t do Y, because it doesn’t. Here’s the proof.
It’s fun work, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to do it.
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Anyway, welcome to the Mosaic blog, where we want to share things which might be able to help you run your business more effectively.
Digital marketing isn’t magic. It’s not a cure-all. It won’t make you rich overnight, and if executed outside the confines of established best practices, could prove to be a complete waste of time and resources.
But for the right companies trying to reach the right customers in the right ways? With honesty and legitimate solutions to problems?
Digital marketing can change the world. We think it has already.
And that’s the truth.
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