NON LINEAR INTERNET MARKETING – THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET  

The Information Era is over. First there was the Agrarian Era, then the Industrial Era and now the Information Era.  But no one has noticed that the Information Era has given way to the Internet Era.  In the Information Era, information was king.  Now, there is way too much information.  The key in the Post-Information Era, a.k.a. the Internet Era is Connectivity. 

As you may have noticed, in the Internet Era, things have become quite complicated… especially marketing. How much money do you spend where and when?  Which of the 1000 TV channels should your commercial air on and is anyone actually watching it?  No call lists? No mail lists?  Commercial-free radios such as XM and Sirius are being installed at the factory.  How would you like to be a radio station?  Or worse, how would you like to be a radio station group such as Clear Channel – the largest radio station group in the world? Newspapers?  Forget it.  Try peddling 20% less readership for 25% more cost based on the fact the cost of distribution (gas), the cost of materials (paper/wood) and the cost of personnel has skyrocketed.  As we used to say in Louisiana, “That dog don’t hunt.”  And that giant sucking sound you hear is all the money leaving all of the above for the permission-based world known as the Internet.  

Marketing was invented when manufacturers recognized that if they first discovered what products the public wanted prior to manufacturing those products, they could more easily overcome the traditional caveat vendor relationship between consumer and manufacturer.  However, in the Internet Era, marketing has gone through a dramatic transformation.  Exit advertising strategies based on demographics driving consumers through mass media foisted upon them from every conceivable angle and enter permission-based, fully accountable marketing.   

What? 

The successful marketing formula in the Information Era is simple: Brand + Technology = Marketing. 

Avoiding all the details and arguments about Brand for now, let’s focus on technology.  Technology is down to its lowest common denominator – the Internet. “We are down to one machine – the Internet.  All other machines in the world are hooking up to the Internet, creating one machine,” said Bill Gates of Microsoft.  In other words, it’s the Internet or bust regarding marketing. 

This begs the question, “How?”  How do companies employ the Internet for maximum marketing effect?  This massive thing that, for the first time in the history of the world, has no owner, remains a complex puzzle for most people.  So, let’s simplify. 

The Internet, at its lowest common denominator, is made up of two things: 1) Words and, 2) Math.  There are no pictures on the Internet according to the machines.  The machines see the words that describe what the pictures are so the machines can understand them. 

The math can obviously get very complicated but understanding the numbers behind the math is critical because in a permission-based marketing world, numbers hold the key to success. 

Some numbers – 

Google is indexing 9 billion sites.  Yahoo, in a never-ending competition with Google, is now indexing 12 billion sites.  This means there is a chance for any one search on Google of producing 9 billion matching sites.  Understand? 

And this number is growing by 25% per year.  It’s massive and getting larger.  That’s 6.1 million more every day.  For the first time in the history of the earth, we have an entitity that isn’t owned – the Internet.  And the result is we have created something with infinite possibilities.  It literally has no limitations. 

In the United States there are 200 million people hooked to the Internet.   

They go to the Internet an average of 4 times a day.  This is part of the new “demographic” – Unique Visitor Sessions.  In the U.S. there are 800 million UVS every day to the Internet.  That’s 292 billion UVS per year – U.S. only. 

This requires a paradigm shift for traditional marketing specialists.  Through the technology part of marketing – the Internet – you are no longer marketing initially to a specific demographic because, in a permission-based marketing environment, the demographic is given the power of the option to find you and more importantly, they have the power to begin meaningful interaction.  

So the marketing paradigm is largely dependent on numbers of exposures.  That’s the basis for the math. This is the same as the traditional media world.  Eyeballs = cash.  The Super Bowl had 100 million pairs of eyeballs last year and that cost advertisers such as Budweiser $2.5 million for 30 seconds. They bet that paying this amount would buy their ad up to 100 million “exposures.”  That’s the way traditional media has always worked. 

On the Internet, an exposure is not someone who sees your ad, it’s someone who gives you the permission to show them more than your ad by virtue of the fact they have actively clicked something to take them to your website.  On the Internet – in the permission based marketing world – an exposure means nothing.  We need clicks!  We demand Unique Visitor Sessions (UVS).  And we measure quality of a visitor by average number of page views and/or sales.  Period. 

If you understand the value of someone clicking over to your website as much greater than someone viewing your TV commercial, you’ll probably want to read on.  If you don’t understand that value proposition, save yourself some time.  Go turn on the DVR and watch last night’s CSI commercial-free. 

Remember – the successful marketing formula in the Internet era is Brand plus Technology and technology is the Internet and the Internet is nothing but math plus words.  Know the math.  Own the words.  The shortcut to the math is available through Search Engines.  Everything that’s typed into Search Engines is available through a variety of sources.  In short, every key-stroke on Google is recorded for use by someone, someplace, somewhere. 

The key is finding that information and then creating an application. That’s what we do at Tops In America. (www.topsinamerica.com).   

Enter Non-Linear Internet Marketing (NLIM).  NLIM is the infinite marketing process of connectivity.  NLIM’s processes utilize all the information from the Search Engines that are run through proprietary algorithms which help determine a predictive-logistic model. 

Know the math.  Own the words.  What most people pursue in regards to “word ownership” on the Internet is “higher Search Engine Rankings,” usually at the hand of well-intended Search Engine Optimization “specialists.”  SEO, as it is called, is a booming, embryonic industry and many people are making a lot of money doing it.  They guarantee that your Search Engine rankings will increase and some are able to guarantee that you will move to the front page of a search based on the “words you want to own” and they very often deliver on their promises.  But the definition of a Search Engine Optimization specialist is someone who has read one more article on the subject than you have. 

What’s never asked is, “How effective is this - really?”  Recently we went to work for what we term a connectivity client.  We applied the principles of NLIM for them exclusively.  This is a laborious, relatively expensive process when done on behalf of one client. Their Unique Visitor Sessions (UVS) per month averaged about 20,000 before we started.  They spent over $4 million per year in traditional media and Internet work to pull those 20,000 UVS.  They were satisfied with their SEO expenditures (about 15% of that total marketing budget), justifying that about 70% or 14,000 of their monthly UVS were coming from the Search Engines.  They had been optimized for “words they wanted to own.”  The SEO expenditure also included all content/development expenses on the website. 

To prove that their SEO was working, one needed simply to type in those words “they wanted to own” which were the words that they optimized their site for, and guess what?  They showed up in the top 3 matches of the 3 major Search Engines every time those optimized words were typed into a Search Engine browser window. 

So, make yourself the CEO of that company.  Your spending 15% of your budget that is factually providing 70% of your UVS to your website and every time you want to type the words your site is optimized for, you show up in the top three matches – the top three unpaid, free matches.  What do you do with your budget? 

Before you spend 100% of your budget in the Search Engine and Internet Content world on everything from pay per click to optimization services, there’s something you might want to know.  The words this company wanted to “own” were rarely typed into the Search Engines – less than 20 times per month.  If your site is optimized properly for word combinations seldom typed into a browser window, you’ll consistently show up first on those unpaid matches.   

So, then, where did all the traffic, the more than 70% of the 20,000 UVS reported to be coming to their site come from if so few people were typing the “words they wanted to own” into the Search Engines? 

It’s critical that you understand the math of this SEO misdirection even though this is just an honest mistake on the behalf of most SEO companies.   

SEO is easy. NLIM is hard.  SEO is inexpensive. NLIM is not.  SEO companies do not understand NLIM.  So, the SEO company says, “We’ll optimize you for x and y and z key words.”  This client was receiving over 20,000 UVS per month.  Over 70%, approximately 14,000 of the 20,000 UVS are accurately reported as originating from Search Engines and now the client can type those exact words into any of those Search Engines and see their listing on the front page of the Search Engine.  In this example, the SEO/Content Development company was not lying.   

What no one ever bothered to do was discover what words – what keystrokes – were actually being typed into the search window on each Search Engine.  And, what we discovered through the NLIM process was over 95% of the 14,000 UVS accurately reported as originating from a Search Engine were the result of people who were already familiar with the company’s name, only they didn’t know the website.  Hence, they were typing derivatives of the company’s name into the Search Engine browser windows… not the key words that the site had been optimized for.  In other words, to put it bluntly, the 15% of their advertising and marketing budget they thought was working extremely well wasn’t working at all. 

Remember - marketing in the permission-based world is brand plus technology.  The above example spoke poorly for the client’s technology half of the marketing success formula but, at the same time, spoke very well for their branding efforts.  They had a technology marketing problem which NLIM fixed in six months by taking a small portion of their overall marketing budget that would have been spent on other things and have produced sales results averaging almost 50% over the prior year’s sales.  At the same time, their UVS has doubled.  The overall budget didn’t increase.  The sales have gone through the roof.  And now the client has a fully functioning Technology strategy along with a successful brand strategy. 

Where did that traffic come from?  It came from the Internet, as highly qualified traffic following words related to the Client and the client’s location utilizing their permission-based option to click and visit the client’s site.  It chose to go there based on the words of that business the client chose to “own” on the Intenet – without coming from a Search Engine. 

Highly qualified is the key.  It’s highly qualified because of the process of NLIM.  In NLIM, an industry analysis is performed using Search Engine information and other tools of the Internet Marketing world which give a ranking of 1 – 1000 of the most popular words key-stroked into a Search Engine ranked from most popular to least popular.  All of those word-sets lead to the sites of companies in any given category of business, be it homebuilders or chiropractors or chewing gum that are fighting on the Internet to be associated with those same words. 

Next, the NLIM research reveals how many other sites on the Internet are competing for those same words.  At this point, we know how many sites and which sites are optimized to own each set of words. 

A set of algorithms are run to build a predictive-logistic model that provides – given two variables (time and money) – exactly how long it will take to redirect and mine traffic from around the Internet back to the targeted site.  Since there are only math and words on the Internet, word ownership based on math is your only option.  The words automatically qualify the “click-over.”  The viewer, in this particular instance saw (name changed to protect the innocent) “Chiropractor in Houston” and clicked to visit the targeted site.  How much more qualified can you get? 

This is the heart of NLIM. 

Once the Industry Analysis is run and the research is done and the predictive-logistic model is built and the budget and timelines are affixed, NLIM begins a slow, invisible process that lasts for 3 – 4 months, building the connectivity of the client through the Word Trace.^R   Word Trace^R is the post-research methodology of “road-mapping” key words throughout the Internet based on those sites that are interested in the same words our Client is interested in “owning” on the Internet.  Once the Word Trace^R  is completed, the Word Trade^R begins and traffic “re-directs” and traffic “mining” processes ensue. 

Contrast this process with SEO goals of higher Search Engine Rankings (SER).  Remember how large the numbers are.  Just look at the number of matches for any set of key words on any Search Engine. Many times they range into the millions.  Then realize that 93% of all searches end on the front page of a search, which is even more misleading because most of those searches don’t involve a scroll down the page.  So, if you’re not showing up on the first three or four matches of a search, you’re invisible to people looking for you on Search Engines.  That doesn’t even take into account how many or how few times the words are actually searched for on the Internet that your site is optimized to “own.” 

It gets worse. 

The Search Engines, unlike the Internet, are owned.  That means Mr. Google can change the algorithms which are the mathematical equations that determine the matches and rankings of all key words typed into the Search Engine browser.  And Mr. Google can do that regardless of how much money and how much time you’ve spent to “own” key words on Google.  Then, Mr. Google does a thing called a Page Rank Shuffle.   

Mr. Google determines the timing of each Page Rank Shuffle based on the feedback they get from their spiders and go-bots and crawlers.  This feedback, in the form of 1’s and 0’s tells them the intended use for their algorithms has reached a pre-determined critical mass threshold – itself a part of the algorithms – stating one simple fact: it’s time to change the algorithms.  They re-write the algorithms, which is like changing the goal line a player needs to cross to get a touchdown while the ball is in the air on the kick-off – unbeknownst to the player!  The next day, after the Page Rank Shuffle has occurred, various businesses that depend on the Search Engine Ranking to provide their Internet Visibility and consequently – for many of them – is their sole source of revenue, no longer appear on the front page of the search they have worked so hard to appear on. 

They, in a sense, disappear from the Internet.  Only there is no Mr. Google or Mr. Yahoo or Mr. MSN.  Those businesses don’t get to call Mr. Google on the phone and ask politely, “Excuse me.  I spent several hundred thousand dollars on the key words and Search Engine Optimization over the last three years and for the last two years we’ve been number one for the  key words we wanted to “own.”  Could you please tell me what I need to do to show up first again?” 

Not only is there no recourse, there’s no warning.  You lose. Go directly to jail and by the way, all your hotels and houses are gone.  Good luck in figuring out the new rules. 

Why? 

Because Google genuinely wants every set of key words typed into the Search Engine browser to produce quickly the best ten websites for that set of words.  And, since the Internet is so big and since it is growing so fast and since the money being spent to produce a higher SER is so enormous, there is no way the algorithms of two months ago are going to produce the same Top Ten matches as the algorithms of today.  Hence the need for constant change – which the Search Engines call Page Rank Shuffles. 

Enter the demand for NLIM.  But first, a little history is necessary to gain a proper perspective. 

Why did the Dot Com Bust happen? Mark Cuban, youthful owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise walked with $5.7 billion in buyout money from Yahoo for a website, Broadcast.com, that few have ever visited.  Yes, he had some streaming technology Yahoo wanted but it wasn’t worth $5.7 million, much less $5.7 billion.  There were companies that received as much as $5 million during the Dot Com Boom as a part of a Venture Capitalist funding that didn’t even register their URL prior to the funding event.   

Everyone mistook the Dot Com world at the latter part of the 20^th century as Real Estate.  People saw the potential of the Internet.  They saw its power.  They saw that it would become “the” machine.  So “they” invested… in locations.  And “they” were wrong. 

The Internet at that point defaulted to content. After all, if it wasn’t about location, what else was there?  The theory was “make the site engaging.”  We invented HTML, flash, java script and a number of things to create interest on the part of each UVS.  We began to measure the time on the site as a metric for interest level.  Meanwhile, something very powerful was happening to the Internet by the Internet. 

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of the Board of Newscorp, which owns all the FOX media properties grossing over $23 billion a year in revenues, in his address to shareholders this past October 21, 2005 had this to say about the Internet of today: 

”The media industry is one that, in my more than 50 years working in it, has evolved in ways people could never have imagined. With that in mind, and at a time when our financial position is stronger than ever, we have turned our attention in recent months back to the Internet. It is an area of the media industry we simply can’t ignore, and indeed has become our greatest single area of focus over the past year. Why the urgency? Because the Internet is the fastest growing advertising market. It has the fastest growing audience. More importantly, broadband proliferation is at last real, meaning the opportunity is now to grow exponentially...” 

By now, you should have heard of the MYSPACE phenomena.  MYSPACE.COM is a 2 year old company that, as near as we could tell, did close to $20 million in revenues in their second year before Newscorp bought them out.  MYSPACE.COM, for those who haven’t heard is a website for communicating to other “friends” based on interests and/or locations.  When MYSPACE.COM was bought my Newscorp, MYSPACE.COM had over 30 million accounts signed up.  Rupert Murdoch, arguably the smartest man in media said, “Let’s give this 29 year-old kid a check for $580 million so we can own his website. 

The kid, named Tom, said, “Sure.” 

Have you ever heard of a 29 multiple of gross revenues during a buy-out?  Why did this happen? 

In asking this question also ask why the Dot Com Bust happened.  In asking the same question of two totally unrelated incidents separated by 7 years of Internet maturity, the answer is surprisingly the same.  What the Dot Com Bust didn’t have, MYSPACE.COM discovered. And that is this – the Internet grew up. 

Rupert Murdoch knows it.  Read again what he had to say.  Paraphrasing, what he really said was, “What we thought was there back then (Dot Com Bust) is there now. And if we don’t move now, we’ll never catch up.” 

What was he talking about?  

Connecitvity.  Connectivity is what people have envisioned all along.  And while all the light has been focused on Search Engines such as Google, which now has a market cap of more than $130 billion just 8 years after a Stanford student wrote a program to tell him what was on his university website, no one even noticed that the Internet had grown a back half which has at its core, hyper-connectivity.  So much so that MYSPACE.COM can go from an idea to 30 million accounts (now 72 million) and a $580 million buyout inside of two years – AND YOU NEVER SAW IT ON A SEARCH ENGINE!  The Dot Com Bust happened because there was zero connectivity.  MYSPACE and others like it are happening because of connectivity. 

That’s why NLIM says, “Who cares about Search Engine rankings!  They’re unpredictable at best and carry large odds against success anyway.”  Out of the 800 million UVS that visit the Internet each day in the United States, less than 25% go to or through a Search Engine.  The back half of the Internet, which is highly connected without the Search Engine world is actually the back three-quarters of the Internet.  Based on connectivity, it possesses more than ¾ of the 800 million UVS per day to the Internet in the United States – all of those UVS that do not go to or through a Search Engine. 

And NLIM is the proprietary language of connectivity our company, Tops In America.com, uses to mine and re-direct traffic from across the Internet utilizing our proprietary Word Trace and Word Trade methodologies.  The best part of which is that we eventually win the Search Engine Ranking war because the one behavior the Search Engines are set up to reward in the first place is, guess what?  Connectivity.  The more connectivity your site has, the higher your Search Engine Rankings soar, independent of the coming Page Rank Shuffles which are necessitated by SEO short-cuts and big money that buys its way to the front page. 

The beauty of the Internet is that it is based entirely on its own math.  Knowing the math is the key.  Then, and only then do you have a chance to “own” the words.   

But there’s a nifty little secret regarding the words of the Internet as well.  There are only two types of words on the Internet – category words and territory words. A category might be “Realtor.”  A territory would be “San Diego.”  One can look for a Realtor in San Diego on a Search Engine.  So key words are based on categories and/or territories depending on what the SEO specialist determines the client should move to “own.”   

However, if one dominates the words of a category, because of the Internet’s connectivity, one automatically wins all the territories in the Search Engine world.  Which is why, when you type in Realtor in San Diego into a Search Engine browser, you are hard-pressed to find a Realtor from San Diego on the front page of the search – because so many other companies are doing so much to make sure they turn up everywhere the word “Realtor” (the category) is searched that it makes appearance on the front page nearly impossible for the local Realtor eventually necessitating a change in the algorithms which does nothing more than re-start the same process under new rules which the businesses playing the SEO game are obligated to re-discover in order to make for themselves new piles of cash. 

Tops In America leverages the math of the Internet.  Tops In America knows the words of each category of business in more than 200 categories of business.  Tops In America connects each Client-Member into a powerfully branded Top Ten Network based on connectivity.  Each Client-Member receives more marketing materials from print ads and Internet banners to radio and television spots ready for customization than they could possibly do on their own. Each Client-Member of TIA receives their own activity page to measure up-to-the-minute traffic reports due to Tops In America branding and NLIM technology.  Each Client-Member is part of an exclusive club – an American Top Ten list.  They get the right to promote themselves as one of Tops In America’s Top Ten Chiropractors or Realtors or any one of more than 150 categories in whatever territory they buy into. 

And much, much, more including the right to participate in the national contest sponsored by national companies such as Home Depot or Vogue Magazine or any one of a slew of national brands, depending on the category of business.  They get all the materials necessary to help them drive their own customers/patients/clients and prospects to vote for them.  Whether or not they ever receive a vote in the contest, they make the impression on their customers and prospects that they at least think themselves worthy of Top Whatever In America and that alone separates them from the other CPA’s or landscapers or burger joints. 

The consumer wins because they get more Top Tens in more categories in more places on TOPS than anywhere else in the world except the Search Engines. Only, when the consumer looks for the Realtor in San Diego on TOPS as opposed to GOOGLE, they get ten Realtors in San Diego with websites, streamed video and descriptions.  A simple click on the Realtor of choice and the process is over. 

How do we determine the number one through ten in each of the more than 200 categories in every state and more than 150 cities? We don’t. The computer does.  Every three days the list rotates.  Number two becomes number one.  Number one becomes number ten and so on.  The result is that every month, every single Top Ten Member appears in all ten positions 

The catch? It costs $299 a month one year at a time for membership and it takes 6 months of work behind the scenes to hook each Member into the Tops Network to begin to see and feel the effects of TOPS’ technology. However, the Member’s branding including everything they need to brand themselves as Tops In America starts working for them the minute they sign up.  This includes next year’s Super Bowl 41 spot from Miami! 

It’s called Partnership Marketing in the real world.  Have you ever flown on Southwest Airlines or just about any national airline?  Have you ever noticed the Top Ten Steakhouses ad?  Did you know it was an ad?  Did you know it’s a paid ad?  It is.   

That’s Partnership Marketing.  Ten steakhouses pitch in, thanks to some enterprising media person, to buy one-tenth of an ad they could otherwise ill-afford in order to “mine and redirect” traffic – aka passengers - from each plane who read that magazine and see that ad and coincidentally happen to be traveling to that city in which that steakhouse is located.  

It’s the same principles people like Ray Kroc, Rich DeVoss and Mary Kay Ash applied when they started McDonalds, Amway and Mary Kay cosmetics, respectively.  The economies of scale of the group are far more advantageous than the economies of scale of the individual.  It’s those same economies of scale that make it impossible for a hamburger shop on the other side of town to afford any advertising whatsoever.  However, when you collect 5000 hamburger shops together, including a hamburger shop on the other side of town and you brand it with Golden Arches, you can afford three spots on the Super Bowl at $2.5 million each for 30 seconds. 

Now you see why we say Tops In America is a Unique Internet Media Company.  We sell memberships to Members in order to give them both brand and technology advantages they could never afford on their own.  We then market each Top Ten throughout the Internet using NLIM processes such as Word Trace and Word Trade.   

We give each Member the tools to control perception.  In the real world, the perception is the reality and you’re either moving to control perception or you’re being controlled. There is no middle ground between the two.  The Wall Street Journal estimates that nearly 4 in 5 stories reported as news are in fact actually an opinion spun by someone wanting the viewers or readers to accept a specific viewpoint of reality as their own. 

And since all Top Ten lists are subjective and usually done for money – either directly or indirectly – Tops In America says, “Let’s be honest. We’re out to create perception and we believe consumers are already trained to think in Top Tens.  So why not give it to them the way they want it in the first place?!” 

A great brand.  A great technology – sufficiently leveraged to create win-win scenarios for all involved.  What’s next? Can you say leveraged advertising?  No? Oh… you will.  You will.