LAST EDITED ON Jan-06-03 AT 02:54 PM (PST)
 
I know this will ruffle some feathers. But to be honest, after 6 years of reading every newsletter, ebook, website I possibly could, I still haven't seen one single "guru" explain what marketing is.

My "formal" marketing education consists of a single class taken at the local community college. My first site was a guide to Las Vegas. I knew if I were to make any money, I'd need a casino to advertise on my site, so I took a "casino marketing class" to get inside the brains of the casino marketing dept, whom I'd be sell to...

Is there anyone out there that feels Las Vegas casinos are not one of the best at marketing?

They make billions and billions of dollars selling "losing".

I know a single marketing class from a community college doesn't make me an expert. But that's my whole point! If I learned the following in a community college course, how come not a single net "marketer" has every mentioned the very basics of marketing?

In my text book, ON PAGE 10-FIRST DAY OF CLASS STUFF!!!, there are four "orientations" businesses take.

1. Operations orientation
2. Products/services orientation
3. Sales orientation
4. Marketing orientation

1. Operations orientation. Basically, management is just looking for a smoooooth operation. Speed and ease of production is what's most important to them.

2. Products/services orientation. Basically, build a better product or offer a better service, and the thinking goes, you'll be successful. There is a big problem with this train of thought however. If no one wants your product, it doesn't matter how good your product is.

For example, you want to make the best "buggy whips" ever known to mankind (womankind). You'll have your buggy whips equipped with a hand warmer and custom grips and a choice of decorator colors.

Sure, you have the best buggy whips in the world, the only problem is, they went out with the horse a carriage! No body wants buggy whips these days...

3. Sales orientation. This is a biggy on the Internet. Basically, just work on your sales pitch and you'll be able to sell ice to Eskimos.

The sales orientation does not take into account what your customer wants or needs. You're just going to try to force your product down their throats.

The sales orientation also doesn't take into consideration the most basic concept of free enterprise: Supply and Demand.

It doesn't matter that 1000 other sites are selling the exact same thing and only 50 people want to buy it, just SELL, SELL, SELL!

4. The Marketing Orientation. Why sell ice to Eskimos? Why not ask Eskimos what they want to buy? Or better yet, observe what they need or want, then create a product to fill their wants/needs.

For example, in the 80's, I read a little article about how Alaskan Eskimos were buying deep freezers. Selling ice to Eskimos? No. Eskimos were using them to keep the food FROM freezing, not TO freeze their food.

Compressor to cool a freezer are expensive. All they needed was something insulated to keep their food from freezing...Just make the insulated box, re name it "Food Thaw" and sell it for less than the freezers since you don't need a compressor.

Assuming that Eskimos were really buying freezers to keep their food from freezing, which product do you think they would have bought?

Real marketing isn't about developing a product or service first. It is about finding wants and needs, considering your competition, the demand for a product and, then and only then, creating a product or service to fills those needs.

Sure, many have created products and sold them successfully without doing any market research. But their product service happened to sell because there was a demand for it.

Sure, sales is an important subset of marketing. But if you think selling alone is enough, I have some buggy whips you may want to buy. You should have no problem reselling them, right?

The most powerful example of marketing on the Internet may be with the search engines. People create sites that either have zero or little demand, or they enter a market that is so over-saturated with competitors, your chances for success are almost zero.

You can not take a sales or product orientation with the search engines. You can not create a product/website first, then force it to get traffic.

You need to find a niche FIRST, then create sites to fill these niches. Every guru tells you to create a product, then market it. This is wrong.

Find the traffic, THEN create the site. Not the other way around. This is marketing in the purest definition.

How do you do this?

One way is to anticipate 2-3 months in advance what people will be searching for. All football season long, Emmit Smith of the Dallas Cowboys was poised to break the all-time rushing record, probably the NFL's most prestigious record.

You can bet for a couple of weeks before he broke the record and a couple of weeks after he broke the record, that there was a high demand for "emmit smith" in the search engines.

Sure, the traffic may have been short lived, but using Dombom's it wouldn't have taken long to create.

Is a major musical group, such as Britney Spears or the Rolling Stones ready to go on tour in a month or two? You can bet "stones tickets" will be a good choice for some free search engine traffic, if they are ready for a tour.

Did you anticipate Wynona Ryder's trial? How about a site with a little bit about her and her movies. Maybe even a "Beetlejuice" poster and an Amazon DVD?

Don't know where to look to spot niches?

1. The National Enquirer. Yep, that's right. Check it out to see of there's a blockbuster movie due out in a few months. Is there a celebrity trial getting ready to take place? Did a celebrity write a best selling book?

2. Kids. This is one thing you must realize if you want to master search engine marketing. Kids are who searches. Kids are the people who click. Take a look at any top 500 searches for the week and see how many probably relate to kids.

With DomBom, you don't need to sell them anything. You just need them to click, and that's what they do. They click.

You don't think there will be a big demand in the search engines for the next Harry Potter movie or book?

Simply, quit trying to force your sites into the engines. Let your keywords choose you. I don't have kids. But I don't care because I'm a marketer. I look for niches regardless of what they are (with regards to normal morals, laws, etc) and try to create sites quickly to fill those niches.

Please don't just "blow this off". This is the most important thing you can learn to exploit the power of DomBoms.

If you are not having success with your current projects in the engines, start over and: Just think kids.