In its recent case study profiling H&R Block, MarketingSherpa revealed a cool idea you might want to test to generate buzz (traffic and ultimately conversions) for your online business:invite people to submit YouTube videos in return for a prize.

In H&R Block’s case, the company invited people to submit 3 minute videos describing how they would use their tax refund.

The winner, as voted by viewers, would win $5,000 and have their video displayed on the home page of the H&R website. The initiative resulted in 130 people submitting entries and the YouTube videos getting more than 1.6 million views. Nice.

Source: Case Study, “H&R Block Gets Big Buzz Through Social Media For Digital Products: How To Test and Pick Channels”, MarketingSherpa, October 30, 2008

If you’re competing against an old, traditional, ‘bricks and mortar’ company online… good news! Chances are you can beat ‘em where it hurts.

Now, not all large corporates are slow, lumbering giants whose success is largely due to ‘legacy advantages’ (ouch!)… so it doesn’t pay to be arrogant. Some large companies are rather switched on and fully capable of decimating you online.

But it’s not uncommon for large companies to suffer from the following weaknesses, all of which you can use to your advantage:

1. They move s-l-o-w-l-y. It doesn’t just take a long time for decisions to be made… it takes a long time for decisions to be agreed to by all the various stakeholders… for a business case to be developed… for the business case to be approved… and then for the idea to be implemented. Weeks, months, years may go by before an initiative actually happens!

2. They over-spend. Show me an a major information technology (IT) initiative (including Internet projects) and chances are it’s gone over budget.

So a decision finally gets through all the stakeholder hoops and it’s time to implement? Now get ready for even more delays as the consultants converge on the company to ‘advise’ on the best way forward… the company and all the IT firms spend weeks, sometimes months negotiating contracts… haphazard progress is made… the scope of the project gets pushed out further and further… and the budget balloons out of control. Which eventually leads to finger pointing… heads rolling… and a period of dramatic cost-cutting!

Big companies also seem to get sucked into buying expensive, sub-par solutions. Did I tell you about the $40,000 email service that doesn’t even have auto-responder functionality? Even worse, some companies insist on building technological solutions themselves… when they just don’t have the skills to do so.

3. They don’t think, leading to sub-optimal decisions. For all the time supposedly spent on making the right decision… precious little seems to be put into actual thinking. It’s not necessarily because big company employees are not capable of thinking… it’s more due to having too little time to think.

One of the major inhibitors of thinking time is the culture of multi-tasking. A typical corporate employee is required to juggle a number of projects at once. Problem is, because they’re constantly flitting from one thing to another, not enough time is devoted to really thinking through a given problem or situation, let alone getting anything done in a timely fashion.

For example, it’s usual for someone to spend a day in meetings - a meeting on one project, a meeting on another project, a meeting on a third project, and so on. Each meeting may go for an hour or so… but how much of that meeting is spent addressing and resolving an issue… and how much is spent dealing with ’surface level’ issues? And that’s if those in the meeting stick to the topic, rather than waste time on side-issues. By the end of the meeting, very little may have been resolved, little thinking has been done… and it’s off to the next meeting.

Now, before I turn this article into (more of) a rant about big companies… let me suggest that these - and other - weaknesses also present terrific opportunities for small, entrepreneurial competitors.

Where a large company moves slow… you can move fast. Where a large company over-spends on sub-par solutions… you can be cost-conscious and find innovative solutions… and where a company multi-tasks its thinking time into oblivion… you can remain focused and think things through to make optimal decisions.

MySpace plans to allow users to upload videos directly to the “MySpace TV” area of its website. MySpace users will also be able to embed movies in member profiles, comments and bulletins.

MySpace will allow video files of up to 512MB in size. This is about half the size allowed by YouTube, and TechCrunch rightly questions whether MySpace’s foray into direct video uploads will offer much competition to YouTube. Based on comScore data, YouTube served more than 5 billion videos in July, while YouTube served just 445 million videos.

Then again, if MySpace views the new feature as more of a value-add or retention tool for its members, allowing members to upload videos directly to the site may well meet the objectives of the initiative.

Source: Don Reisinger, “MySpace Will Allow Direct Uploads, But Is It Too Late?” TechCrunch, September 11, 2008

Finnish blogger Timo Paloheimo, has launched a nifty little service “Google Minus Google” that allows you to search Google without getting results from Google owned websites (e.g. YouTube, Knol, Blogger, etc).

You can try it out here: Google Minus Google

What’s even more interesting to me is how simple, yet effective Timo’s initiative has been in generating publicity for himself. Apparently he attracted 3,000 visitors on introducing the service.

Smart marketing. Now can he make it pay?

Source: Nathania Johnson, “Introducing Google Without All the Google”, Search Engine Watch, August 19, 2008, Google Minus Google

Take it from a recovering perfectionist: being perfect doesn’t always translate into being successful.

Whether it’s a product, a promotion, a newsletter or anything else in your business… spending that extra time or money to make sure it’s absolutely perfect…

…may be a complete and utter waste of your time and resources.

By all means, aim to produce only top quality products. Aim for excellence in your marketing and, in fact, everything you do.

But, trust me, there comes a point where investing any more time, effort or other resources into something, will NOT yield any greater benefits (in terms of sales or otherwise). And there comes a point after that, when further tweaking and refining may actually UNDERMINE your success.

That may be because you end up “over cooking” your product or marketing initiative… because you lose momentum in getting it underway… or for some other reason.

There ARE situations where being anything less than perfect is completely unacceptable. As a lawyer I would never dream of giving a client “imperfect” legal advice. And I wouldn’t want a surgeon to be anything less than a perfectionist either.

So how do you work out when you SHOULD aim for perfection and when EXCELLENCE will suffice?

When faced with that question, I suggest you ask yourself these four questions:

1. Would anything less than “perfect” be acceptable by most people’s standards?

• If not, aim for perfection.
• If so, consider Question 2.

2. Does getting it perfect improve the result in a substantial way?

• If so, aim for perfection.
• If not, consider Question 3.

3. Does being perfect improve the result in a small, but noticeable way?

• If so, aim for perfection.
• If not, consider Question 4.

4. Is getting it perfect necessary to satisfy some internal need?

• If yes, and the matter is NEITHER time-sensitive nor resource-intensive… then PERHAPS aim for perfection. But it would probably be BETTER if to trained yourself NOT to get it perfect. On the other hand, it’s very unlikely that an aspect of your business is neither time-sensitive nor resource-intensive (whether such resources are money, people or simply your energy or attention).
• If no, then…

FORGET ABOUT GETTING IT PERFECT AND JUST GET IT DONE!

Yahoo is planning to introduce the Internet to people’s television sets by means of its newly-announced “Widget Channel”.

The Widget Channel will be a platform for widget developers, enabling them to create widgets to display on TV screens in JavaScript, XML, HTML and Flash.

Yahoo will establish a directory of widgets and has already signed up Blockbuster, CBS, CinemaNow, Disney-ABC, eBay, Joost, MTV, Samsung, Toshiba, Twitter and Comcast for the initiative.

Comcast plans to test the Widget Channel framework in the first half of 2009.

Source: Frederic Lardinois, “Yahoo Wants to Bring the Internet to Your Living Room”, Read Write Web, August 20, 2008

Yesterday, Amazon.com pre-launched a new online store selling streaming movies and TV shows, called Amazon Video on Demand.

Unlike other online video services such as Apple iTunes which require you to download and save video content, users of the Amazon service will be able to stream - i.e. start watching - any of the 40,000 movies and television programs immediately after ordering them. Released to a limited group of Amazon customers for now, the service will be rolled out to all customers later during the summer.

Amazon also plans to deliver this content direct to televisions. In the first iteration of this initiative, Amazon Video On Demand will be available via the Sony Bravia Internet Video link, a $300 tower-shaped device that funnels web video directly to Sony high-definition televisions.

Video on demand is here folks. First downloadable video, now streaming video. Say goodbye to your local video store.

Source: Brad Stone, “Amazon Plans an Online Store for Movies and TV Shows”, The New York Times, July 17, 2008

Who’s afraid of Google?

Microsoft buys Powerset (and is apparently still interested in buying Yahoo).

And now, in what appears to be another admission that it can’t beat Google on its own, Yahoo has decided to share its search technology and data centers with other companies. Known as “Boss” - or “build your own search service” - the strategy is aimed at letting other companies build on Yahoo’s technology in return for allowing Yahoo to sell advertising on those new search engines.

Yahoo has admitted that the new strategy could cannibalize its own search business, but believes that the initiative is more likely to erode Google’s much larger share of the search market. At least two start-up companies - Me.dium and Hakia - have already signed up to use Yahoo’s search technology.

Source: Miguel Helft, “Yahoo Is Inviting Partners to Build on Its Search Power”, The New York Times, July 10, 2008

As a recovering perfectionist, let me wholeheartedly stress that, in many cases, you’re better off getting started with a given marketing initiative… rather than  waiting for all the research to be done, all the analysis to be complete, and everyone to be consulted.

While I also believe that some research, analysis and consultation is often necessary – you know, better to “look before you leap” to cite another cliché – once the evidence is overwhelming, it’s crucial to get underway for a number of reasons.

Possibly the most important reason for starting as soon as possible is to quickly get REAL answers about whether or not your marketing initiative will work.

No research study - and no-one’s expert opinion - beats actual market results. Assuming you have the ability to measure the results of your initiative (which is mandatory) you will soon see what is working and what isn’t, and what needs to be dumped, changed or further tested.

Which means delaying an initiative in order to gather more opinions about what will and won’t work is typically a colossal waste of time and resources. By all means begin your initiative based on some reasonable assumptions. For example, it’s reasonable to expect that an offer based on what’s popular according to search engine keyword analysis will be effective. But don’t delay it in order to conduct focus groups on whether or not your offer is likely to appeal to prospects. The opinions of a handful of focus groups (of six or so people each) are no match for the actual conversion data you’ll get from testing the offer in the marketplace.

Another reason why speed beats perfection is that it usually ensures that you actually do implement! So many worthwhile projects – including entire businesses – fail to get off the ground because they become mired in analysis paralysis… an endless loop of “stake holder” consultation… or the need for everything to be  exactly right. After a certain point, the longer the delay, the more others - and even you - will likely question the whole idea, and the greater the chance that it will be canned.

Thirdly, when you tend to introduce new initiatives only after a long, protracted process, you effectively perpetuate the idea that things must take a long time and a lot of effort before they can be implemented. Further, the pain associated with introducing a new initiative is likely to deter you from implementing further new initiatives. Not good when your business future likely relies on product and marketing innovation.

Meanwhile, long delays cause you to miss out on the power of momentum. Getting things going and seeing results quickly – good or bad – is empowering. It sends a message – both to yourself and others - that you CAN implement quickly… which, in turn, makes it easier to implement other things quickly.