Search tied to Marketing as a Cycle, Not a Timeline

You have to be found first in order to even hope to engage with your audience. This makes search results really, really important.

Search and the Learning Cycle
When people search on a term or phrase they are active in the learning cycle making visibility and page rankings all the more important to educating our citizens.  Searchers also favor organic listings over paid ones. The objective of the Earthsayers.tv Oil over Water video was part of an organic search strategy.  Here is a moment in time on Google search to illustrate the point.  That's the EarthSayers' video pressed between two (paid) ads by Chevron.

Think of it as a race to the top for attention.

Search and the Buying Cycle
The same holds true for selling products as searchers are active in the buying cycle. In this case below, the SolarBag by Puralytics shows up in the context of clean drinking water linked to EarthSayers' journey to Ecuador as part of their Ambassador program.  Barry Heidt of EarthSayers partnered with Puralytics and carried the SolarBag to Ecuador in an EarthSayers' campaign to advance the indigenous voices of sustainability and our objective to develop a sister site, wisdomkeepers.tv.

Search is being Overlooked in favor of...
The day-to-day of search, which is what EarthSayers focuses on (it was conceived as a tactic for a search strategy to increase sustainability awareness)  is being overlooked in favor of 'get seen quick' schemes of contests, social media buzz fests, liking us clicks and the pièce de résistance of YouTube world, going viral.

Not Meeting Objectives
The result of this approach is like getting on a high speed train that makes local stops and, as a result, doesn't get you to your destination on time. Moreover, instead of paying for one ticket, the offer is twenty-five tickets, one per stop, pay as you go and at a discounted rate, making everyone feel like they are getting such a deal, when in the end you pay more for less.  And all that getting on and off in terms of staff time!

More importantly, in terms of sustainability, we are not achieving important objectives around basic needs of our people such as clean drinking water, energy and nourishing food, not to mention, the requirement of Mother Earth to reduce global warming or else.

Making it Work

Marketing must be viewed as a cycle, rather as a train line with a series of  stops and starts, ins and outs.  View what you are doing to be visible and to engage as an ongoing, consistent marketing cycle that uses frequency and persistency more effectively by integrating a multitude of touch points seamlessly and tied to your search strategy.

This is why marketing execs make the big bucks and in an environment characterized kindly as "transformational." One study noted just 18 percent of CMO's rated their digital marketing performance as excellent or good and that's after a considerable amount of inexpensive, often times "free" social media (in and out) campaigns.

Advice
Start practicing marketing based on a search strategy and integrating touch points (tactics such as contests and other social media favorites) with a view of time as a circle, rather than one long time line.  Use Prezi rather than Powerpoint to lay out your marketing landscape and use circles, rather than straight lines on an open, unstructured playing field. 

Think of your customers with the same view and use social media to join hands around your commitment to a sustainable future.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Digital Savvy, April 11, 2013, Cleveland, Ohio.

P.S. For more information on the EarthSayers' Ambassador program to bring technology solutions for water and energy challenges to community leaders having the greatest need, and mostly among indigenous peoples, call me at 415-377-1835.