The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing, & Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly

Chapter 20. Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is remarkable because, unlike almost every other form of marketing, it does not rely on the interruption technique. Think again for a moment about what I've called "old-rules" marketing and its interruption-based advertising techniques. As I've discussed in previous chapters, the old rules required you to interrupt TV viewers and hope they weren't already flipping to another channel; or to interrupt people as they sorted through the mail and hope your message wouldn't go into the junk-mail pile; or to interrupt magazine readers and hope they would pause at your stinky pull-out perfume sample. These days, ads are everywhere—on signs along the highway, on the sides of supermarket carts, in elevators. These interruptions are not only annoying for consumers (and harmful to a brand if overdone); they are also increasingly ineffective.

Now think about how you use search engines. Unlike nontargeted, interruption-based advertising, the information that appears in search engines after you've typed in a phrase is content you actually want to see. You're actually looking for it. This should be a marketer's dream-come-true.

Here's something very important to consider: This entire book is about search engine marketing. Please pause to reflect on that. If you followed the New Rules of Marketing and PR as outlined in these pages, you will have built a fantastic search engine marketing program! You started with your buyer personas, then ...