The quantitative is out of the way, so let’s take a look at the qualitative. The question, simply, was this: Want to add your $.02 about any aspect of online marketing? Here’s the place to do so! Fourteen people did so. Here’s their unedited two bits plus three (though I did remove a few individuals’ names, to protect the innocent):

1. it’s legalized gambling when you play PPC 90% of the time, a crystall ball works just as good as a well-thought out sales forecast/ ROI plan it’s the future, and its the most hokey science ever known to mankind.
2. Despite there are ever increasing numbers of people knowledgeable about online marketing, it’s still such early days and things are changing so rapidly that often times it’s a matter of taking a punt and going with gut feel more than relying on past experience or the so-called experts opinions….that’s why I think it’s such an exciting field because you don’t have too many people yelling at you “I just KNOW that won’t work”….!
3. Very inefficient to buy, place, traffic and optimize campaigns.
4. Blogs, search engine PR and organic search engine optimization combined provide the best mix of non-advertising visibility online.
5. Online marketing is in vogue. It’s neat, and has the POTENTIAL to be creatively persuasive. Because it’s in vogue, and evolving, it may be falling victim to being perceived as a magic bullet for reaching demographic/lifestyle segments otherwise hard to capture. That’s partially true. Online marketing should pay heed to the fact that it’s in a thicket of many, many online choices…far more than any other medium. As such, online marketing should flank other established and effective marketing and marketing communications tactics.
6. Your questions #4 and #5 should be unanswerable to any marketing professional. Every problem has its own parameters and solutions – there is no universal ‘best/worst-bang-for-the-buck’ tactic.
7. the use of this medium, like all other marketing communication mediums, needs to follow the consumers lead
8. I feel that at least on the client side, online marketing is still limited to building a web site with adequate keywords, phrases and meta tags. It is often difficult to get a client to commit to an extended SEO budget outside the development of the site.
9. It’s all still in a growth period and practices, standards, etc. are still being worked out.
10. Viral campaigns seem to be the most effective method of getting a company’s branding and product into the public forum. The underground, below-the-radar feel many of these ads possess add to their allure, thus making them more acceptable to those who download and pass on. I compare a viral ad to a hard-to-find antique or even a VIP pass, its exclusivity gives it a value that is unmatched in modern advertising.
11. Online marketing does best when it is supported by traditional print, etc.
12. I am a HUGE believer in viral marketing… and many of the things you listed as choices in the survey can be tweaked to be part of a viral marketing campaign… so something like online coupons may not be that great… BUT an online coupon with viral components built into both the offer and the delivery mechanism can be extremely effective.
13. Great content + right offer + right time=success. Few are doing it.
14. Online marketing tends towards the over glamourous, over spectacular and style over content.

When I’m looking for smart and interesting conversation about advertising and marketing, I usually find it on the AdRants forum at Soflow. Recently, I found myself wondering: What sort of hands-on experience do marketing professionals in general have with online marketing in particular? What online tactics do marketers feel work, and what tactics suck beans? So I threw something together quickly on SurveyMonkey. Sixty professionals responded. The results, sporting a margin of error of plus or minus 100%, were as follows:

You’ve been professionally involved in marketing / advertising for how many years?
Mean: 10.3 / Median: 9.5 / Mode: 10
(Six respondents clocked more than 25 years each. Those are some serious hash marks.)

You’ve been professionally involved in online marketing for how many years?
Mean: 5.3 / Median: 4.5 / Mode: 0, 1, and 2 (tie)
(Two respondents claimed more than 10 years each. Maybe they cut their teeth online selling sell Prodigy subscriptions.)

What online marketing tactics have you personally set up and implemented? (Do not choose tactics that you’ve had others implement for you.)
72.9% Email Marketing (text)
68.8% Email Marketing (html)
58.3% Banner Ads
52.1% Search Engine Keyword Ads
50.0% Email Newsletter Ads
45.8% SEO Techniques
39.6% Affiliate Marketing
35.4% Online Sweepstakes
33.3% Third-Party Email Lists
33.3% Viral Campaigns
33.3% Blog Writing
29.2% Ad Network Campaigns
27.1% Optimized Press Releases
27.1% Online Coupons
22.9% Rich Media Ads
22.9% Search Engine Banner Ads
12.5% Blog Ads
(Lots of hands-on experience. That’s a good thing. No surprise that email marketing leads the pack. A little surprising that only 1 in 3 folks blog, though, given that Technorati counts nearly 13 million blogs out there; for all the blog hype, those other 2 in 3 should think about getting their hands dirty in this area, if only to see what the fuss is about.)

If you had limited resources for online marketing, where would you focus those resources? (Respondents were asked to choose only three.)
53.2% Search Engine Keyword Ads
34.0% SEO Techniques
29.8% Email Marketing (html)
25.5% Viral Campaigns
21.3% Affiliate Marketing
21.3% Blog Writing
17.0% Optimized Press Releases
14.9% Blog Ads
10.6% Email Marketing (text)
8.5% Rich Media Ads
8.5% Third-Party Email Lists
6.4% Email Newsletter Ads
6.4% Ad Network Campaigns
6.4% Banner Ads
4.3% Search Engine Banner Ads
4.3% Online Coupons
4.3% Online Sweepstakes
(Keyword ads are tops, of course. Duh. Interesting that SEO came in second.)

If you had unlimited resources for online marketing, which three tactics would you still avoid? (Respondents were asked to choose only three.)
44.7% Banner Ads
38.3% Online Sweepstakes
34.0% Third Party Email Lists
23.4% Search Engine Banner Ads
21.3% Blog Ads
21.3% Optimized Press Releases
17.0% Viral Campaigns
14.9% Email Newsletter Ads
12.8% Blog Writing
10.6% Affiliate Marketing
10.6% Email Marketing (text)
10.6% Search Engine Keyword Ads
10.6% Ad Network Campaigns
10.6% Online Coupons
6.4% Rich Media Ads
2.1% SEO Techniques
2.1% Email Marketing (html)
(Not exactly a 180-degree view of the previous question; maybe 175 degrees. Interesting that not many would steer clear of rich media, given its greater expense and Marketing Sherpa’s “Email Marketing Metrics Guide 2005” characterization as delivering disappointing results.)

This post is already far longer than I ever intended any individual LOHAD post to ever be, so I’ll save the qualitative wisdom for tomorrow: 14 respondents adding their open-ended $.02 worth.

It was recently asked on Soflow’s AdRants forum, "Who is your favorite person in advertising?" My answer, without hesitation: P.T. Barnum .

He had an ingenious mind, a sense of style, knew how to build something out of nothing, invented some of the stuff still being done today, and above all: understood his audience and human nature. Here’s my favorite Barnum story, from the Irving Wallace biography, "The Fabulous Showman ." It has to do with how Barnum built traffic for his museum in New York City:

One day a plump beggar came by for a handout. Instead, Barnum offered him a job at a dollar and a half a day. He handed the puzzled beggar five ordinary bricks. "Now," said Barnum, "go and lay a brick on the sidewalk at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street; another close by the Museum; a third diagonally across the way … put down the fourth on the sidewalk in front of St. Paul’s Church, opposite; then, with the fifth brick in hand, take up a rapid march from one point to the other, making the circuit, exchanging your brick at every point, and say nothing to anyone. … [A]t the end of every hour by St. Paul’s clock show this ticket at the Museum door; enter, walking solemnly through every hall in the building; pass out, and resume your work."

The beggar moved off with his five bricks, and began his idiot’s play. Within half an hour, more than five hundred curious people were following him. In an hour, the crowd had doubled. When the brick-toting pied piper entered the Museum, dozens bought tickets to follow him. This continued throughout the day for several days, and Barnum’s business showed a satisfying increase.

Talk about buzz marketing!

Takeaway for marketers: Ask yourself: "What’s my brick?"

“A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible — indeed, inevitable — the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody.”
—Arthur C. Clarke

Buzz marketing. Viral marketing. Word of mouth marketing. Everyone wants in. Dave Balter does a pretty good job of drawing the distinctions, but let’s talk about facilitation, not distinction.

There are two ways you can facilitate buzz/viral/wom online: (1) give your satisfied audience the tools to spread the word on your behalf, and (2) pay them (in cash or fabulous prizes) to talk about you.

Seeing as (1) is harder to achieve (well, at least the “satisfied audience” part), some marketers are focusing on (2). BzzAgent is probably the best-known of these faciliators. But in the rush to spread the marketing message, does anyone think about the overall societal effects of this marketing technique?

William Gibson does in “Pattern Recognition.” Magda, a minor character, is something of a BzzAgent for various products. Early in the novel, she explains and reflects on her job to the central character, Cayce Pollard:

“I’ll be out on my own, with friends, say, not working, and I’ll meet someone and we’ll be talking, and they’ll mention something. Something they like. A film. A designer. And something in me stops. … I’m devaluing something. In others. In myself. And I’m starting to distrust the most casual exchange.”

One more time: “And I’m starting to distrust the most casual exchange.”

How long before the general public starts to recognize the pattern of paid buzzers and starts to distrust even the most casual exchange between company and customer?

Takeaway for marketers: If you’re providing a quality product at a fair price, do you really need to pay someone to say something nice about you?