Blogging from the Server Side

Suppose you're running a business that purveys a product or service. More often so than not, you're on a continuous quest to find new customers. Sure, the economists in the ivory tower will tell you all about the efficiency of markets in connecting supply with demand, but in real life, connecting with potential buyers is easier said than done.

It's becoming clearer that the mass marketing of decades past doesn't pay like it used to. Just look at the crumbling advertising revenue of newspapers and radio stations for cases-in-point. No one seemes to agree totally what is most likely to work in the future.

Up until the economic downturn a couple years ago, online advertising seemeed to be showing great promise. Pay-per-click (PPC) ad budgets swelled, with Google's fortunes rising with that tide. Things have pulled back some with the recession, and there is plenty of speculation on whether the boom can be restored with economic recovery.

The fiercely competitive world of online advertising is driving major players to develop better ways of targeting advertising to customers. Search engines and online advertising services alike rely on the collection of web surfers' browsing histories to infer what kinds of things these people may be interested in buying.

The practice of analyzing and targeting advertising, part statistics and part tea leaf reading, is referred to as behavioral targeting, and it's not without its critics. Indeed, eWeek is running a story on how a coalition of consumer and internet groups is holding a conference call on Sep. 1 to call the growing use of behavioral targeting into question.

As a business looking to get your message out to customers, this should give you good reason to pause. Sure, you can spend lots of money gathering or buying user data, and then throw another chunk of change making sense of the data, and then allocate another round of funds to execute on that analysis. Is all of this effort worth it if you wind up alienating your customers? Or worse yet, draw the wrong conclusions about them and recommend totally inappropriate things?

If this seems like much ado about nothing, try mapping the customer experience in the brick and mortar world. In most cases, customers like a human touch. Do the people at this store know what they're selling? Will they listen to me to figure out whether they can meet my needs? Do I like the people I'm going to be doing business with? You can probably picture what this dynamic is like when shopping at a business you are very loyal to.

Now suppose you're shopping at a different store and you notice that there's an employee following you everywhere you go. At first you may think he's suspicious of you stealing someting. You don't get the warm and fuzzies with such an adversarial stance.

Now suppose when you leave the store that employee shadows you everywhere you shop as well, always trying to stay out of view and scribbling notes at every chance. Now you're just annoyed and probably ready to confront the shadower.

How do you think you'd respond if the guy told you that not only would he not show you what information he had gathered but also said he was entitled to do so by virtue of the fact that you set foot in his store?

Can I get a show of hands on whether you would visit this store ever again? Yep, that's right, there's not many of you expressing your approval. The few of you who do probably have bought into the behavioral targeting belief system hook, line, and sinker. :-)

So what do you do? Instead of stalking your customers around the net, why not let the power of search bring customers directly to you? This is where blog marketing comes in.

Frequent posts, relevant to what you're doing, will elevate your visibility in search results.
When people show up on your blog and see ample examples of how you meet customers' needs, they're more likely to believe you know what you're talking about.
The comment forms give them a chance to be heard, so they know that you are willing to listen.
If you do a good job of demonstrating that there are real, and motivated, people on your team, they're more likely to like you as a company.

This isn't to say that you can't use analytics tools as people visit your blog. Indeed, we advocate accurate measurement as a means of learning what works with your customers. It's OK to note what messages convert. Just don't follow your customers out the door if they decide to bounce.