Adam Sutton, Reporter for MarketingSherpa.com

MarketingSherpa, a guide to marketing research

Adam Sutton regularly contributes articles to MarketingSherpa’s Business-to-Consumer and Great Minds newsletters. He also writes articles for the SherpaBlog. Sutton began his blogging career in 2007 for us at Mequoda Daily, where he maintained the team’s email newsletter and blog. He also dabbles in personal blogging.

Mequoda – Which CMS (ie: WordPress, Typo) are you using? What do you like about it?
AS – We use WordPress. I find it has a wide range of features without hiding the basics. It’s very easy to click and start a new post.

Mequoda – Are you blogging for your company as part of your job (ie: corporate) or is this a personal passion?
AS – Writing posts for the Sherpa Blog is part of my job and I enjoy it.

Mequoda – Has your blog enhanced your professional reputation? How?
AS – Absolutely. My name, picture, and marketing analysis are available for anyone to find 24 hours a day. If I have an interview scheduled, the person can search for “Adam Sutton MarketingSherpa” or “Adam T. Sutton” and immediately see samples of my work.

Mequoda – How often do you post a new blog?
AS – Generally, once a week.

Mequoda – Who is your target audience?
AS – Mid to executive-level marketers selling to businesses or consumers.

Mequoda – What are you doing to grow your audience and to create customer loyalty?
AS – We supply a steady stream of relevant and useful marketing content that pulls people into the blog. We also link the blog from our Best-of-Weekly email newsletter, which helps drive traffic. Also, the blog is hosted on our website where we feature in-depth marketing case studies and how-to articles. People who come for our articles often browse their way to the blog.

Mequoda – How are you using social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin) to promote your blog? Has that changed the way you blog?
AS – Although it has not changed the way we blog, our team uses Twitter to help spread the word about our blog and other company news. We will mention and link to stronger posts, as well as to other interesting content throughout the internet.

Mequoda – What is your main source of revenue: ads, sponsorships, products sales, donations?
AS – Our company’s revenue comes from our great content. We have several marketing conferences a year, including the MarketingSherpa Email Summit, the largest event in the email industry.

We also have marketing workshops, training, and certification programs, as well as our industry renowned marketing handbooks and benchmark guides. Furthermore, we offer a membership program that gives access to our extensive database of marketing case studies, articles, and research.

Mequoda – Approximately what percentage of your overall revenue comes from product sales vs. advertising/sponsorships or other sources?
AS – Honestly, as a reporter, I am not given that information. My job is to research and describe marketing best practices.

Mequoda – What key metrics do you monitor to analyze the health of your business?
AS – Our editorial team monitors our email newsletter program through host of metrics including open rate, clickthrough rate, time spent, unsubscribe and others. We are strictly concerned with quality and attention, while other business units are more involved in finances.

MarketingSherpa January 2010 Statistics from Compete, KeywordSpy and Yahoo Site Explorer

Mequoda – How many sites have you linked to in the last 30 days?
AS – I would estimate about 12.

Mequoda – What changes have you seen in your market since you began blogging?
AS – In the few short years I’ve blogged, social media–particularly Facebook and Twitter–have become important to anyone trying to connect with an online audience. Blogging is about interacting, and your content is the icebreaker. Social media can be a catalyst for enriching that interaction.

Mequoda – Any interesting experience you’d like to share?
AS – I’ve found that a professional audience rarely posts negative comments. So if you’re afraid of criticism–don’t be. The few negative comments I’ve received helped me tweak and strengthen my craft.

Mequoda – What advice would you give a new blogger?
AS – First: Be committed. A frequently updated blog with comment activity is a huge asset. A blog that hasn’t been updated in a month is a problem.

Second: Be realistic. Realize that every post has to be researched, written, edited, and published. Writing is only part of the work.

Also, have fun. Don’t stress over style and grammar — just keep writing.

Mequoda – What ways are you planning to expand over the next year?
AS – We will be adding more contributors to our blog this year.

Mequoda – Is there anything you’d like to share?
AS – If you’re considering starting a company blog, first experiment with a personal blog. This will help you figure out the basics and understand the time required without doing any damage to your brand.

Contact Information

Adam Sutton, Reporter, MarketingSherpa
Adam.Sutton@MarketingSherpa.com
http://www.marketingsherpa.com
http://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com

A story of health, wellness and success

I recently had the opportunity to supply questions to Carl Kravetz, the publisher behind Vida y Salud. The successful website is still in its infancy, but experiencing a tremendous amount of popularity as the largest source of health information and wellness tools in Spanish on the internet.

Mequoda - Please tell us a little background about Vida y Salud’s history.

Carl Kravetz - My wife and business partner, Dr. Aliza Lifshitz (known as la Doctora Aliza), has been the health expert for the Univision Television network for 22 years. She also has a national radio program and writes for the Spanish-language editions of People and Parents magazines. I was in Hispanic advertising for over 20 years, starting two agencies and, ultimately, serving as Chairman of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA).

During the first tech boom, we were approached by an investor group that wanted to give us money to start a Spanish-language health information website, using Dra. Aliza’s reputation as the draw. We did some homework and estimated that it would cost us between $6 and 8 million to build what we envisioned.  Everything would have to be designed and coded from scratch. We also felt that it was premature – that there weren’t enough Spanish-speakers online yet. And, finally, we weren’t thrilled about the idea of giving up control to a group of money men. So we passed. It may be the best decision we ever made, considering the tech bust that followed. Today we would be known as the people who started a Spanish-language health site and failed!

Fast forward to 2008. I was getting burned out on the ad business and wanted to do something that would take advantage of my knowledge, talents and connections. I thought it was time to look at the idea of the website again. The number of Hispanics online had grown dramatically and, with open source software availability, the cost of launching was down to something that we could do ourselves without outside money. I heard about Mequoda from a friend and colleague at Editorial Televisa and enrolled in the 2008 Napa Valley Summit. That made my decision.

We began planning the site and writing content in the fall of 2008. Soft launched on May 11^th, 2009 and went live on June 1^st, 2009 with about 240 posts in a dozen health categories. Today we have nearly 900 posts in 21 health categories. We also publish 12 biweekly email newsletters and one weekly free email newsletter on subjects like diabetes, diet and nutrition, women’s health, sexual health, etc.

Mequoda – Is it true you went from 0 to 300,000 website visitors in under a year? How were you able to achieve this?

Carl Kravetz - Almost. According to Google Analytics, in the last 30 days we have had 285,000 visits and 692,000 pageviews from 254,000 unique users. And we’re only 9 ½ months old. We served our 1,000,000^th unique user last Saturday…

How did we do this? Well, first, let’s not discount luck. We were extremely lucky that no one (like WebMD) entered our chosen space in the 10 years between our first look and our eventual entry. We found an open niche.

Second, we had a brand name. Dra. Aliza is demonstrably the best-known name in Hispanic health.

Third, we focused on developing quality content and adding it daily. And we were very aggressive with keywords and phrases to make sure we could be found. We track in the neighborhood of 3,500 keywords/phrases.

Fourth, we followed the Mequoda system. It never would have occurred to us to do newsletters or free reports on our own.

Fifth, we advertised. We have pay-per-click campaigns on Google search and content networks and on Facebook. We also have links to AOL, People en Español, Meredith Publishing and Univision Radio.

Sixth, we reacted to our metrics. When we realized that much of our traffic was from Latin America and Spain, we embraced it and changed our advertising strategy to encourage even more.

Mequoda - Who is your target audience?

Carl Kravetz - When we started, the target was the U.S. Hispanic market. It is now Spanish-speaking consumers throughout the world. Our users are about 75% female, between the ages of 18-49.

Mequoda - Which CMS (ie: WordPress, Typo, etc.) are you using?

Carl Kravetz - Wordpress with all the Mequoda goodies.

Mequoda - What are you doing to grow your audience and to create customer loyalty?

Carl Kravetz – I’ve already mentioned the newsletters and free reports. We also do community service events. We gave away over 2,400 flu shots at clinics and retailers in partnership with the Clorox Company. We donated a library of Spanish-language books to a Hispanic charter school in East Los Angeles in partnership with Transitions Optical. We have started a foundation that will give medical and nursing school scholarships to Latino students. We are partnering with the Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic to broaden our content. In response to user comments, we are opening a healthy recipe and meal plan section of our Diet and Nutrition channel in partnership with General Mills.

Mequoda - How are you using social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin) to promote for the site?

Carl Kravetz – We have “Follow us on Twitter” and “Become a fan on Facebook” buttons on all our pages.  We tweet links to every new story on Twitter and post them on Facebook. We let followers know where they can meet Dra. Aliza in person, and about our flu shot and other health clinics. We also have a modest Spanish-language ad campaign on Facebook which has netted 11 million impressions and 3,800 clicks.

Mequoda – What is your main source of revenue: ads, sponsor, products sales, donations?

Carl Kravetz – Our main source of revenue is sponsorship. We sell full- or half- channel sponsorships. Sponsors to date have included Procter & Gamble, Clorox, Crest, Transitions Optical, General Electric and Rodan & Fields cosmetics.  General Mills, Ford and Tylenol are scheduled.

Mequoda – What is your main source of referrals?

Carl Kravetz - Hands down, Google – both search and pay-per-click.

Mequoda - What key metrics do you monitor to analyze the health of your business?

Carl Kravetz - Total pageviews, U.S. pageviews, unique users, newsletter subscriptions, # of outside links, Google visibility and sponsorship dollars.

Mequoda – Do you link to other sites? If so, how many have you linked to in the last 30 days?

Carl Kravetz - We currently have about 1,600 live links. We regularly link to AOL, Ser Padres (Parents, in Spanish). We are about to take over the diseases and conditions section of AOL Latino’s health page (Powered by VidaySalud.com). We have a new content/link partnership with Que Rica Vida, General Mills’ web initiative. We are beginning to take off with Spanish-speaking bloggers.

Mequoda - What changes have you seen in your market since Vida y Salud started?
Carl Kravetz - A number of the large Spanish-language portals are beefing up their health content.  Fortunately, most of them are talking to us about partnering. Hispanic web access and broadband penetration continue to increase.

Mequoda – What advice would you give a new publisher?

Carl Kravetz - Put 90% of your energy on developing unique, high-quality content that makes a difference in peoples’ lives.

Be very clear on your business model. If your target is willing to pay for content, don’t be afraid to charge for it. If it isn’t, find a unique way to build bridges between them and potential sponsors. Ad sales alone are not enough.

If you’re targeting consumers, consider an aggressive AdWord presence, but watch your cost-per-click like a hawk!

Mequoda – What is your digital publishing strategy for 2010?

Carl Kravetz - We will continue to grow quality content  — both originally developed and through partnerships with Harvard, Mayo Clinic, etc. We will look to add similar content partners. We will develop new content channels in partnership with sponsors (would love to build Asthma & Allergies, Healthy World/Environmental Health, Digestive Health). We will add diet plans for Diabetes, Heart Health and Weight Loss. We will launch a monthly “Ask Dra. Aliza” online event (beginning with live chat, maybe going audio or video later). We will grow our capability to provide health content/links to others. In partnership with several medical boards/associations, we will launch a physician outreach program with info products that they can use with their Spanish-speaking patients.

Mequoda - What digital initiatives do you believe are critical for your future success?

Carl Kravetz – Our users want to be able to ask questions and get answers. We need to find a way to deliver on this need without practicing medicine on line. We also need to become a resource for physicians to communicate better with their Latino patients. We will need to create online and mobile tools to improve the doctor/patient dialogue.

Mequoda - What changes do you think will occur in the online publishing industry within the next 5 years?

Carl Kravetz - Continuing growth at the expense of print. More integration of text and video. New profit models. More pay-for-content. Some kind of quality rating methodology (from Google?) to distinguish between high- and low-value content. More demanding advertisers. Better metrics. A better mobile experience.

Mequoda – Any interesting business experience you’d like to share?

Carl Kravetz – The last year and a half has been the most interesting business experience of my life!

For more information, visit Vida y Salud, Vida y Salud on Facebook, and Vida y Salud on Twitter.

Using the power of free content to build internet business models that work

The key to making money online as a publisher is giving away free content with a clear path to at least one source of revenue. In his latest book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Chris Anderson lists 50 free business models that work, with examples of each. Since Chris is a publishing guy, many are publishing related. Let me explain a couple…

The easiest way to use free to make money online

The simplest is the sponsored website. The publisher posts great free content, Google sends tons of free traffic, sponsors pay to be associated with the website, and the sponsor’s customers pay a few pennies more each time they buy the sponsor’s product to pay for the cost of publishing the website. In this case millions of product buyers pay for the content accessed by a far smaller group of website users. It all mixes together as the sponsor pays to build their brand by sponsoring everything from websites to Super Bowl commercials.  The media mix is so complex that there is very little direct connection between the extra pennies consumers pay for the products they buy and the money an individual online publisher gets from a given sponsor to run their website. The pennies do add up as a kind of media tax.

Last year the average American consumer spent more than $1,000 for the products and services they bought to pay for all the free content marketers, producers and publishers gave them for free. So, there really is no such thing as a free lunch. In every economic system, somebody pays.

Other internet business models powered by free content

Before you get too excited, let me remind you that more than 50% of online advertising is sucked up by Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN.

About.com, which is the 18^th largest website in America, uses this sponsor-driven Internet Business Model exclusively and only generates about $150M in annual revenue. It falls off pretty quickly from there. My private equity friends are fond of saying that “The Internet excels at turning advertising dollars into advertising dimes.” The Internet is the most disruptive communication medium ever conceived because it uses bits, not atoms, to make, store and deliver information.

Hope for content marketers, producers and publishers

Now before you get too depressed, let me remind you that some publishers spend more on advertising to sell their information products, than they generate from sponsors. If fact, many special-interest publishers traditionally spend 30 to 50% of their total expense budget on advertising (often called direct marketing) and generate zero percent of their revenue budget from advertising in any form. These publishers are in a position to benefit dramatically from an economic force (the Internet) that is turning advertising dollars into advertising dimes.

Harnessing the Power of Free Content:
The free to premium model

Mequoda Group is just such an organization. It is a user-driven membership organization that derives 100-percent of its revenue from end users. We spend virtually no money on advertising and instead spend about $300K a year creating and giving away free content and free software. The $300K is mostly spent on the time and labor (atoms) of the talented managers, writers, designers and developers who run the Mequoda Daily Network. Hosting and broadcasting (bits) is a small percentage of our budget and getting smaller as costs continue to drive towards zero. We make money selling premium content and services to a small percentage of the 21,000 Mequoda Basic Members who spend nothing to access our free content and software.

In 2009, less than four-percent of Basic Members upgraded to some form of premium membership and spent money with us. Over time and with the aide of our membership retention efforts, we expect the percentage to creep towards 10 percent. Other publishers report premium participation as high as 20 to 25 percent and still others do fine at less than one percent. The Free to Premium or Freemium Internet Business Model is very flexible. How publishers build their free base, and the many ways to monetize that base, are numerous and ever growing.

Integrated thinking or the power of the pyramid

We have refined our business model and pyramid over and over in the six years since Mequoda Group was founded (we celebrated our sixth birthday on January 31^st, 2010). Today it looks like this from the top down:

Gold Members get one-to-one consulting, support, managed hosting and email broadcasting services and pay $1,200 to $2,700 monthly for their Gold Membership Retainer plus consumables as used. This is a continuity revenue stream for Mequoda Group.

Summit Delegates attend our live face-to-face events where they interact with Mequoda Group’s Advisory Board, Officers, Staff and fellow Members. Cost varies depending on Membership status and number of days and average $1,200 per event. This is also a continuity revenue stream for Mequoda Group as Members make the Summit part of their annual training budget.

Pro Members get access to all live webinars, encore access to all past programs, free software and email Q&A support from the Mequoda Research Team about all things Mequoda. Cost is $297 per year and is a continuity revenue stream. Individuals can also buy access to single events and programs on CD. More about Pro.

Basic Members gain full access to the website including email update options, the White Paper Library and the ability to comment on our posts. Basic Membership is free.

37 Mequoda Systems & Counting

Since 2004, we have built or helped build 37 Mequoda Systems that leverage the power of Free to make millions of dollars on the Internet. Giving away free content works well when you have a plan to make money with a media pyramid that has a clear path to the gold.

And how it may better the marketing industry’s reputation

I am not cut out for traditional sales. I gave it a try once, and somehow it just didn’t feel right to me. Maybe it was the products that were involved or the environment I was in, but my first experience in it chased me away, and I could never imagine returning.

In fact, I have concluded that I won’t return to traditional sales because I have found something better.

Content Marketing

Content marketing was an interest of mine before I knew its name.

This is the case because content marketing is based off the creation and sharing of content. In the case of the Mequoda Group, the content is educational. We strive to help publishers better understand the constantly evolving internet landscape.

Content marketing seems so fundamental to me. As a child I recall being taught by parents and teachers to “play nice and share”. What could be nicer than sharing and freely distributing valued and usable information?

Yet, why isn’t content marketing practiced by more marketing professionals?

I have a few theories…

First, the concept is still fairly new. Many content marketers will use multiple mediums to share their content and some of those mediums are still evolving. Articles, white papers, podcasts and video pieces are just a few of the methods used. With the evolution in digital media going on, many ways of sharing these types of media is still just catching on.

Secondly, I feel people fear change. The old (and tired) ways of marketing have been around for years. Minor changes may have occurred throughout this time, but the overall structure of these marketing campaigns has remained. It can be hard for companies to invest money in an emerging method of promotion if they don’t have any idea of the outcome.

Lastly, not all companies know how to create, compile, repurpose and share content, or have the time and manpower to do so.

Can content marketing better the reputation of marketers?

Let’s be honest, consumers don’t always love marketing professionals. Although, I feel the mistrust behind those feelings have been created by the old rules of marketing.

Maybe content marketing will change the opinion of consumers as they consistently open their email and receive completely free information that interests them.

I unfortunately can’t see the future, so I don’t know how content marketing will affect society. I do however know how popular free products are, so maybe as an industry we are heading in the right direction.

What are your thoughts on content marketing, or the current way marketing is viewed in general? Where do we stand as professionals and how can we better our reputations and give consumers more value?

I recommend halting on the in-your-face approach of screaming at consumers to “buy my product”. How about you?

For more on content marketing be sure to attend our Content Marketing 2010 webinar on April 13th at 12:30 ET.

Last chance to sign up for our Twitter for Publishers 2010 webinar

Sign up for our Twitter for Publishers 2010 webinar now

Twitter may be the ultimate in word-of-mouth marketing right now.

Whether you’re new to Twitter, still exploring if and how it can benefit your business, or have been tweeting for years, you will definitely want to get the best possible results for all of your hard work. This Twitter for Publishers 2010 webinar will leave you with a huge amount of information pertaining to your Twitter strategies.

What Twitter can do for you

‘Free’ is always a desirable promotion and Twitter can help it spread like wildfire. Use attractive headlines as if you were writing for email marketing, and tweet it to your followers. Your message may be passed to thousands, or even millions, of people before the day is over.

Within the 90-minutes of our Twitter for Publishers 2010 webinar we will give you insight on how to do this plus:

-How to get more exposure for your events
-Information on tools and applications used to track your traffic, clicks and sales
-Case studies of publishers who are successfully using Twitter and have turned it into their main source of traffic
-How to use Twitter as a tool for customer service, lead generation, or marketing
-Potential guidelines for company Tweeting
-How to properly use Twitter lingo
-How to get people to click on your links
-How to balance your Twitter usage
-Ways to build a massive following on Twitter
-How to utilize 140 characters for selling products

Don’t miss out on these valuable and tested ways of using Twitter. If you do not know the information held within this webinar then you are basically leaving money on the table. Sign up for Twitter for Publishers 2010 right now and grab hold of all that extra traffic, and potential revenue, that’s there for the taking.