Mad Men’s next season starts this weekend and a lot of people are very excited about it. To prepare for the premiere, I collected some of my favorite Mad Men internet marketing quotes…

“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”
Don Draper

Don is such a SEO whiz. Every good company should be monitoring what people are saying about them, their products and services. You can use search engines, Google Alerts or a variety of social media monitoring tools to see what people have to say about you. If you don’t like what people are saying, change their perception or the conversation with your own content.

I have a colleague who’s company was under attack by a no name angry blogger. The claim was against my colleague’s company’s pricing. Instead of a counter attack, calling the blogger out for baseless claims or getting angry my colleague took the time to write a post and update his FAQ section with a more complete pricing breakdown. No matter how awful this person went about the attack, they obviously had a question or concern and maybe if they did other people did too. The angry blogger disappeared right after that. An angry retaliation would have made my colleague look worse. The high road got questions answered, new site content and was a great conversation starter for future customers.

“Have you been drinking?”
“The whole country is drinking!”
Trudy and Pete Campbell

My mother always said ‘If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?’ Just because everyone else is using a social media site, writing about a particular topic or buying the new iPad, doesn’t mean you need to as well. Any time you are making decisions about marketing your business or using new tools, you need to make sure they are in line with your business goals. Sure, everyone is writing about Pinterest, but will that help you sell more software? Stick to your message, your goals and to what you are good at. When everyone else is done with the new thing, they will have wasted time and energy and you will have stayed on course.

“But that’s life. One minute you’re on top of the world,
the next minute some secretary’s running you over with a lawnmower.”
Joan Harris

Especially when you work in technology or the internet, there seems to be no ‘sit back and relax’ phase. The Internet and technology are changing at all times. Whether you finally got that top spot in Google or reached that goal, someone else will be coming up behind you and the game will change. There is not a ‘set it and forget it’ recipe for internet marketing. The results may not be as messy as a secretary running you over with a lawnmower but they can be serious. Content marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing and paid search advertising are continuing efforts. To be successful you need to be in them for the long haul, not just long enough for the shininess to wear off.

“So, Mr. Draper, you haven’t had a physical in quite some time.”
“Yeah. I eat a lot of apples.”
Don Draper and his Doctor

Measure. Measure. Measure. For all of your internet marketing efforts, you should have goals and ways to measure your successes in place. Make sure those goals and your data points are aligned with your business goals. Measuring and reporting on how many Facebook fans you have really has little to no meaning. How many people come to your website from Facebook and become customers would be much more powerful information.

“Am I to entertain your ballad of dissatisfaction, or has something actually happened?
Because I am at work, dear.”
Lane Pryce

I am guilty of having Tweetdeck open all day on one of my screens. Do I NEED that constant flow of information to do my job? Probably not. What I have done is created some power lists in my account of really smart people, local people and a few searches that are important to me. I don’t need to read about every person’s complaint about the latest thing or pictures of what everyone is having for lunch. Turn off the distractions. Find a few sources to aggregate information for you and check those regularly (but not all day).

Is email your distraction? I know a lot of people that have found whole hours in their day by only checking email a few times a day instead of all day, every day.

Make a note of your biggest work distractions and see what you can do to alleviate them. The internet will always have content, tweets and updates – you will never be able to keep up with all of it.

“You want some respect? Go out there and get it for yourself.”
Don Draper

Many people I talk to are obsessed with what their competitors are doing. They want to do a Facebook contest because their competitor did, they want a YouTube music video because their competitors have one, they want to rank for a search term because their competitors do etc. In content marketing of any kind, original content will get you the links, tweets, rankings etc. that you want. Copying usually does little more than clutter the playing field.

Keep your eyes and thoughts on what you can do for you. Knowing what your competitors are up to is good but obsessing and copying won’t get you too far. Want coverage in your local paper or trade publication? Want more website visitors? Facebook fans? Search rankings? Then figure out how you are going to go out and get them. Don’t waste your energy on pouting because someone else got them.

“Listen, Pete, I need you to go get a cardboard box. Put your things in it. Okay?”
Don Draper

If a campaign you are trying, an agency you are using, a tool you are testing et. al, isn’t working – stop using it. In internet marketing, you start with assumptions, then you test if those will work. You can make adjustments for a awhile but then you need to decide if something is not working and stop doing it. The phrase ‘but we have always done it this way’ does not apply online. As I said before, the landscape is always changing.

Who knew Mad Men knew so much about internet marketing! Enjoy the premiere this weekend!

Mad Men photo: AMC
Mad Men quotes from Extra and Mad Men fan forum