What is it now? The 6th slap from Google? Whoa, Sergey and Larry have been messing in the sandbox again. Now, to prove that you are worthy of their “advertising opportunity”, pay-per-click bids start around $5 a click (ouch) if you are unproven, new market, new campaign. There is a way to reduce that with a ramp-down bidding in a few days, but for those who don’t know about it, it could cost aplenty.

Gone are the cheap keywords for the uninitiated. Gone is the cheap long-tail? And if you cram your site campaign with hundreds of keywords, you are going to be judged by Sergey and Larry (without trial, without jury of your peers) as a SPAMMER. And then you pay. What is going on is that they want you to do the inverted pyramid. Remember the time when you crammed your campaign with 200+ keywords and then narrowed down to the few keywords that make money. Not any more. Now you start with a few and slooowly grow the list. Inverted pyramid.

What’s new to me is that the structure of your campaign is as critical as your landing pages. Top-down pyramid. Start with the campaign account keywords, step down to geotargeting per state, then step down to city specific. And as you are doing this, you are stepping down the levels of the pyramid.

We’re exploring sensible alternatives to Google. You see, the reality is that you don’t need a huge list of people. You can do some really serious business with 25,000 people. And postal drops in large urban areas give you more than that albeit not with precise targeting. There are ways …

From the Desk of John Kumpunen

67% of the nearly 2 billion internet users don’t sprachen English but are 4 times more likely to purchase when the presentation is in their native tongue. It is the fastest growing segment of internet users, expected to make the bulk of 2 billion by 2010.

Internet videos can be done in any language = We shoot the video in a way that allows changing the voice-over track easily to French, German, Spanish, Swedish … whatever language you need — inexpensively. You can create an extremely cost-effective and personal selling environment regardless whether you sell to Korea, Russia, Italy or the Netherlands.

KRIN.com = Our in-house capabilities include more than you can say in one breath: Web sites, blog sites for selling (like this), sales video production, internet radio, iPod content, search engine marketing, organic SEM, copywriting, trade press ads, illustrations, design, layout, photography, videography, audio editing, animation, websites, focus groups, surveys, webinars, set-up and maintenance of pay-per-click campaigns, case histories for trade press, and trade-show design and sales support. To get started, please fill out this preliminary no-obligation Contact Form.

From the Desk of John Kumpunen

We so easily get caught up with the internet-guru stories that we forget where the real growth and the real spectacular achievements are. It’s not in killer copy, platinum circles, it’s not setting up the website and writing a hundred articles. It is far more fundamental than that. It’s thinking big. If you have to worry about your copy, drop the product. If you have to juggle headlines, drop the product — it will never, ever make you rich.

And the guys we all should pay attention to are the real movers and shakers.

G.F. who grew a $200M company to $31 billion
M.U. who took a $10M company to $10 billion.
T.W. who sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion
S.S. a billionaire who runs Fastweb with over a billion in sales
C.A. a billionaire who runs Bodog
K.T. a construction worker who sold to Teleglobe for $3.5 billion
P.F. who sold to Adidas for $3.8 billion
D.D. who sold to Ellison for $10 billion
T.W. a billionaire drop out who built Gateway
A.M. who sold to Infinity for $8.7 billion
Newegg that went from zero to billion in 4 years

Now, THAT’s a class act. No nickel and diming there.

From the Desk of John Kumpunen

You can’t build an airline flying solo these days.

Many small business owners stall their growth by fearing delegation. They want to have their ego-fingers in every pot. They are frightened by joint ventures. Some are so distrustful of partners that they’d rather own 100% of a $1M company than 33% of $100M company. Do the math. Yet studies after studies show that the fastest growing companies are created by 2-3 partners who have clearly defined separate roles in the business.

The Izzy Asper’s (the late Canadian TV/media mogul) rule of thumb for growing a business is: It takes 5 times the effort and 3 times longer than you think.

It takes 9 kisses to turn a frog into a prince these days. This is where we can help you. We have over 217+ ways to market your products and services. We will kiss the frogs for you.

I’m looking for joint venture deals, partner marketing, sales opportunities where we combine your strengths with ours. A win-win scenario.

What’s in it for you? Same as me. Hard work. Pain. Negotiating. Sweat. Long nights. Computer crashes. Making deals. Talking to guys like you and me around the world. It involves sharing ideas and expertise through emails, it involves finding people to translate marketing materials to top ten languages of the internet, it involves becoming a shareholder / partner, it may involve going public, it involves learning to produce stuff that can be sold over and over and over and over again. Go big or go home.

We form joint ventures and marketing partnerships with inventors, industrial designers, manufacturers, existing businesses, and creators of intellectual property to create internet business units that seek out, leverage, scale, and respond to worldwide demand. Click to read more…

If you are serious about selling to the global village, let’s talk 1-800-535-4999 or email me john[at]krin.com

From the Desk of John Kumpunen

Marketing in a world of excess

Do we really need 437 different mp3 players … or 20,000 brands of beer? We’re now in a crisis of overproduction. Too many products competing for consumer attention. What does that mean to a small business owner trying to make a living selling stuff to people?

Assume that they don’t need it.
Assume they don’t even want it.
Assume they don’t like your Sales&Marketing.
Assume they have 100 other better MoneyHoles.
Assume they have already met the Salesman in white shoes.
Assume they like a TV commercial if it’s funny but will not remember the product.
Assume they spend a fleeting second scanning newspaper ads.
Assume they don’t Trust you.
Assume they may never even learn to Like you.
Assume they may not even have the money for it.
Now, how are you going to pull off your AIDA? Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

It will take new type of marketing thinking.

From the Desk of John Kumpunen

Upcoming post

The concept of USP = unique selling proposition needs to be revisited. It has had its ride through the decades from 1940s when Rosser Reeves introduced it, but how limiting is it? Does it make sense outside of industrial buying process where a shortlist of manufacturers are compared feature for feature? Or is it just bullshit that became an urban legend and survives because people just can’t think outside of the box?

What did you buy recently because of perceived USP? Honestly, I can’t think of any other than a vegetable coctail that tastes better than the other stuff I have tried. But the manufacturer doesn’t advertise it as “tastes better than the other competing brands” because it wouldn’t make sense.

Maybe we need to come up with something parallel — like PSP = Personal SOLD Positioning, PBT = Personal Buying Trigger because, I have a feeling, most of our purchases are not based on USP. No kidding.

I think we should move closer to Elmer Wheeler’s concept of Tested Selling Sentence than USP. Gotta think about this one.

From the Desk of John Kumpunen

Upcoming post

From fads to impulse buying to frenzy — what makes people go crazy … ready to kill each other over an Elmo doll? Why do fads happen? Are the lemmings at their worst when they think they can’t have it? And what happens to the mentality after this nuclear-fart marketing frenzy is over?

A 911 call captured what happened next:

“He told me he had a loaded gun on him and he’d have no problem shooting me,” the man tells a 911 operator. “What it was an issue over this stupid Tickle Me Elmo freaking doll.”

From the Desk of John Kumpunen:

In a VillageEconomy, there was no need for marketing. There was the blacksmith, the seamstress, the storekeeper. It was a closed loop, everybody knew everybody and everybody gave their business to one another.

And before long, the affluent CityEconomy was full of all kinds of products. But excess is not success. Too many products fighting for the consumer attention. We’re now in a crisis of overproduction and choking from excess. Somebody counted 437 different mp3 players. And 20,000 brands of beer? Do we really need that many brands of beer (since 15% of us Homer Simpsons drink 85% of all the beer)?

Michael Masterson’s ETR reported that 95% of books out there sell fewer than 100 copies. I had no idea. A recent guest on Coast to Coast openly confessed he had written 165 books. Shocking. Like Stephen King. How about just ONE really good book? Thankfully, Steve Jobs spaces the new iPods at least 4-6 months apart! Four-month planned obsolescence I can take LOL.

Go to read the rest of the story …