If your keyword is #1 in the Google rankings, you’ll get on average 27.1% of the traffic for that keyword. If your keyword is #2, you get 11% of the traffic for that keyword. This means that you’re 246% better off having a #1 ranking than a #2 ranking.
After a bit of research I discovered that if you are the best at anything i.e #1, it means you get quantum more benefit than being second. Evidently, it is a phenomenon called Zipf’s Law.
As luck would have it, I picked up The Dip by Seth Godin and he had a couple of examples that reinforced Zipf’s Law and my informal research.
Ice Cream
He used the example of ice cream. According to the International Ice Cream Association the Top 10 flavours of ice cream in order are: vanilla, chocolate, butter pecan, strawberry, neapolitan, chocolate chip, french vanilla and cookies ‘n’ cream. Vanilla (#1) got approximately 28% of sales and chocolate (#2) got approximately 8% of sales. The rest got 6% or less. In this instance, being #1 makes you 350% better off than #2.
Box-Office Rankings – August 2006
See the box-office rankings on a particularly bad week at the movies in August 2006 in order: Invincible, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Little Miss Sunshine, Beerfest, World Trade Center, Accepted, Snakes on a Plane, Step Up, Idlewild and Barnyard. Invincible made just over $17-million and Talldega Nights (#2) made approximately $8-million. A 212% difference between #1 and #2.
So, what’s the point I’m making? Simply this. Being the best at what you do in your market matters. Godin says that people don’t have a lot of time and don’t want to take a lot of risks, so they look for the best.
He uses this example. “If you’ve been diagnosed with cancer of the navel, you’re not going to mess around by going to a lot of doctors. You’re going to head straight for the “top guy,” the person who’s ranked the best in the world. Why screw around if you get only one chance?”
So, figure out what you can be best at in your market and dump all the stuff you’re mediocre at. I suppose he is making a case for being the best in your niche market if you can’t be the best in your entire market.
Personal Example
Take the public relations industry for example, it is a multifaceted discipline – media liaison, press releases, events, cocktail parties, reputation management, crisis management, investor relations, internal communication, customer days, family days, stakeholder communication, social media, digital marketing … the list is endless.
Some public relations agencies take that it all on and are brilliant at some things and mediocre at others.
I used to work for the best guy in the crisis management business, communications expert, Brian Gibson. He just took one small piece of the public relations mix (crisis management) and became excellent at it. I don’t know what he’s up to now (it is close on 20 years since I last saw him), but then he was booked solid and was charging fees that some people aren’t even charging now; and getting them.
Look at your industry with fresh eyes and see where you can really shine, what you’re exceptional at and not just mediocre and become #1 in your business. It beats being #2 and battling for the scraps.
Here's an interesting take on the Web that I found this in David Meerman Scott's book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR. It may help you target and tailor your Internet Marketing message a little differently.
Corporate sites are the storefronts on Main Street peddling wares. Craigslist is like the bulletin board at the entrance of the corner store; eBay, a garage sale; Amazon, a bookstore replete with patrons anxious to give you their two cents.
Mainstream media sites like the New York Times online are the newspapers of the city. Chat rooms and forums are the pubs and saloons of the online world.
You've even got the wrong-side-of-the-tracks spots: the Web's adult-entertainment and spam underbelly.
Maybe I'm being alarmist, but based on the way the world is searching, the term "motivational speaker" is being used less and less. I picked this trend up from an interesting tool: Google Insights for Search. With Google Insights you can see what the world is searching for. You can compare search volume patterns
across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.
Use the tool to type in your related keyword and see what it comes up with. I typed in motivational speaker to see what the results would be for South African search:
- The best month ever was January 2006
- It's gone down since then with February 2010 being the next best month (but nowhere near the heights of January 2006)
- August of every year appears to be the best month for "motivational speaker" search. Could it be because of Woman's Day on 9 August? I know when I still owned a speakers agency, I got a lot of requests for woman speakers around July/August for Woman's Day.
- Search in June/July was at an all-time-low. This can only be ascribed to the world cup.
- Johannesburg and the Western Cape are the top searchers for "motivational speaker"
- The world trend is similar to SA. The decline is just not as steep.
South African Search for Motivational Speaker
This slideshare presentation by Rick Allen gives you a brilliant blueprint for your content marketing strategy.
The Business Generator, Jacques de Villiers specialises in marketing, Internet marketing, public relations and sales strategy.
Here’s a simple way to look at Internet marketing for your business.
Internet Marketing SEO Flowchart
Jacques de Villiers is a marketing strategist specialising in Internet marketing, public relations and sales.
I recently redid my website and was afraid I'd lose my rankings. To my surprise, I've done way better than expected. On 12 December 2009 I have four #1 positions for my primary keywords on www.google.co.za. [sales training, marketing, internet marketing, public relations]. I've taken screen shots of the rankings and placed them on this blog for posterity because no one will believe me if I told them. I can barely believe it myself.
Of course, there's always a rider to these things. Even though I have a # 1 ranking, I only get 27% of the click-throughs as a result. In other words, if 100 people a day click on "sales training", I'll only get 27 people clicking onto www.jacquesdevilliers.com. So, the trick is to have many keywords related to your business in #1 postions so that you can get more click throughs.
But, in the meantime, I'll savour my brief online victory.
I’ve just redone my marketing website and was pretty chuffed with the result. I got a call from Adolph Kaestner saying my website was a dog’s breakfast and doing my brand a disservice. “Have you been drinking? Because on my screen it looks beautiful,” I replied somewhat whiningly.
It turns out that my website looked great on Firefox, but didn’t stack up in Explorer. It looked horrible. I checked out a couple of fellow PSASA members websites and found that they also had the same issue. Good on Firefox, not so hot on Explorer. So, go now and check what your website looks like on different browsers if you want to keep your brand integrity.
I’d check out Firefox, Explorer (older and newer versions) and Safari. I’m sure there’s a bunch of others. In terms of font, the best one to use is a san serif one called Verdana. Never use Times on a website. Times is for paper and there’s a reason for that, but we don’t have time for a typography lesson now, do we?
Oh, and check out your website on different size screens. If your website is set up in a smaller area it may look tiny on a big 20” screen. Yup, nobody said this website and branding thing was easy.
Business Generator, Jacques de Villiers is a sales training expert.
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