Archive for February, 2010

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So you own a Website… but are you a good authur & publisher?

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Owning a website puts you into the publishing business via a worldwide distribution system where your authored content gets ‘published’ for all to see.

A website will not be a great business asset unless you can master the challenge of how to author & publish great content. If you are a butcher or baker or candlestick maker – or doctor or lawyer or business chief you are good at your core competency, but not necessarily trained as a copy writer & publisher. How do you create & present great content?  Here are some content & publication best practices to help you:

Each page on your website should have a specific purpose for your business. Think of the purpose of each page as being a discussion topic. Then express your thoughts just like you were telling a prospect you just met about each topic.

So-called landing pages are important pages people ‘land on’ after doing a Google Search; clicking on a link to your site from an ad or referral website; or after typing in a specific URL address for your website. Depending on the personality of the user, you have between 2 and 8 seconds to ‘hook’ the visitor into exploring your website beyond the landing page.

Your Home Page is often the landing page people arrive at. The Home Page content should be like your ”elevator speech” that you use at networking events.

A Home Page has some information that needs to be there and some things that should not be there. The Home Page is not the ‘About Us’ page. The Home Page is not where you put your biography or business history.  Just like a good elevator speech, the home page content should emphasize your company’s value to customers, not all about you. Here is a Home Page check list:

  • Identify the business purpose of your company and its value from a customer’s prospective – what’s in it for them to look around your website?
  • Indicate how your company benefits your customers.  What P_A_I_N issues can you solve for your customers in the website?  Problems / Anxieties / Interests / Needs
  • Define Target Customer Profiles – make it clear who your website is aimed at serving. Target market analysis usually results in identifying 3 to 5 top level customer personas.  Make sure targeted visitors can identify with at least one persona and use that association to funnel them deeper into your website with a contextual hyperlink to an inner web page with a topic specific to that visitor’s core interest.
  • List your Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) – why should a customer do business with you? What do you do that no one else can do or what do you do better than your competition?
  • Provide a call to action and consider an incentive. Calls to action are invitations to do something with a clear pathway resulting in lead nurturing opportunities or a sale – i.e. a phone call, email, subscription form, or online purchase, etc.  An incentive can be something as simple as offering a newsletter, whitepaper, free consultation, or discount offer.  You need to engage & entice visitors into doing something of value to you otherwise why have a website?
  • Always provide easy to find contact information – phone number, contact form link, business address, social network linkages, etc to make it easy for users to contact or find you.

There are a lot of other aspects to becoming a great online publisher, but if you start with the above basics you will be off to a good start. We offer advanced publishing methods called Content Marketing. Contact Me to learn more.

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The Case for Digital Marketing… $134 Vs $332 per lead – which would you pick?

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Most marketing and advertising is done to generate leads with the goal of new customers and increased sales.  Here’s the bottom line.

Average cost of a lead using Outbound Marketing = $332

Average cost of a lead using Inbound Marketing = $134

A lead is a lead. Unless you like spending more than needed to accomplish the same thing, you need to be using Inbound Marketing.

So what is Inbound & Outbound Marketing? 

Traditonal Marketing (Yellow Pages, TV, Newspapers, Radio, Signage, etc) is referred to as Outbound Marketing or Push Marketing.  You formula a message or offer, place it in an ad, and then send it out or push it out to your maketplace. And then you hope you reach people who are in the market for what you are selling. This is also called the spray and pray method.

Digital Marketing is mostly referred to as Inbound Marketing or Pull Marketing. Customers hunt for information about your goods and services when they are most interested.   Then they pull in information from on-demand sources, via especially search engines, which allows them to pull in information from company websites, blogs, social networking sites, social content sharing sites, and news sources.  This gives customers on-demand product information, user & expert reviews, endorsements, and allows comparison shopping all conveniently sourced from their computer screen.

The cost per Inbound Marketing lead is a fraction of Outbound Marketing leads. Don’t take my word for it, here is the cost per lead figures in an eMarketer Report

So Inbound Marketing is what you should be engaged in. Find a Professional Source to show you how to do it effectively – contact me for example!

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You’ve got a great website!… so what? so do your competitors!

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

If you invested a lot of time, sweat, and money into creating a great website, what good is it if it can’t be found among the dozens or maybe even hundreds of competitors’ websites?

Websuccess is often defined by businesses as generating leads and/or sales online. The three keys to websuccess are:

  1. Create a great website
  2. Make your website easier to find than your competitor’s sites
  3. Convert website vistors into customers via what you say and do within your website

A website is useless without visitors and vistors are useless without conversions.

Learn more about the easy to be found part via word of mouth tactics and a thing called Content Marketing.

Download the whitepaper entitled “2010: New Ways to be Found Online”. Download the white paper here 

Listen to the webinar “2010: New Ways to be Found Online“:

If you need help with any of the three keys to websuccess or don’t have the time to attend to the details, seek the help of professionals - give us a try.

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Digital Internet Marketing… what kind of bird are you: chickadee, junco, or cardinal?

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

I installed a new bird feeder to help the neighborhood birds make it through the winter.

bird_chicadee2

I eagerly watched to see which birds would show up.  Before long, a single chickadee dashed in, grabbed a seed and flew off. Soon there was a steady stream of chickadees making an appearance. Chickadees are early adopters, networking, brave birds.

bird_junco2

Some seeds spilled on the ground which drew the attention of Juncos. These birds ignored the bountiful supply of seeds in the feeder and stuck to their nature of foraging on the ground for the scraps. Juncos are set in their ways and will avoid leaving their comfort zone no matter the advantages offered by the feeder.

I put more seeds on the ground for the Juncos. The chickadees adapted. They took seeds from the ground & feeder, whichever offered the best opportunity.

bird_cardinal2

Before long, Cardinals showed up, but stayed in the near by bushes for a long time studying the activities of the other birds around the feeder. The Cardinals eventually nervously joined in the feast alternating between the feeder and ground foraging. Cardinals are mainstream types joining only after other birds proved the safety of the areas around the feeder.

These bird behaviors simulate human behavior. Some people bravely jump on new ideas and products but use a mix of old & new methods as it makes sense – the chickadees. Some people sit back and observe before adopting new things – the Cardinals. And some folks reluctantly, if ever, try ideas that challenge their comfort zone no matter how beneficial – the Juncos.

Conventional Media Media Marketing (Yellow Pages, Newspapers, Magazines, TV, Radio, etc) still provide a source of leads (like foraging on the ground for seeds). Digital Internet Marketing (Search, Social, Mobile, etc) offers a new, bountiful source of leads (like going to the mother load in a bird feeder). 

Smart businesses quickly experiment  with new ideas and integrate the best mix of old and new methods. The Chickadees do that and the Cardinals eventaully do the same. Juncos resist ever changing.

What type of bird are you: Chickadee or Cardinal or Junco?

If you are ready for leads from bird feeder like bounty instead of foraging for your leads, contact me.  We provide Digital Internet Marketing Adoption Options for all types of birds.

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Digital Marketing Tips… wisdom from Lucielle Ball?

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

If you run a business, you have financial goals set for this year. If anything stops you from hitting those goals, it is probably related to not enough sales opportunities.  Are you doing everything possible to get enough leads to keep your business financially healthy?  If not, come December what will you wish you had done differently?  

As you grow older, you’ll find that the only things you regret are the things you didn’t try to do. 

If you pursue all high potential lead generation methods for your business and still miss your financial goals, you will get over that – you did the best you could. But what will haunt you is if you neglected some major source of lead generation opportunities. With the emergence of the Digital Revolution, if you have not adapted to Internet Marketing and Social Media, then you are setting yourself up for regret.

Lucille Ball (1911 – 1989), of course, was a movie and TV star who achieved her greatest success with the TV comedy show, “I Love Lucy” (1951 – 1957).  Lucy is not generally thought of as a source of famous quotes, but she did leave behind some wisdom worth sharing that applies to business leaders of all eras.

My favorite quote from Lucille Ball is: “I would rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.” If Lucy was running a business today, she would use Digital Marketing to see if it worked for her rather than regret  not trying.

Other Lucille Ball quotes include:

  • “I’m not funny. What I am is brave.”  – Lucy understood to be successful, you can’t be afraid to try new things outside your comfort zone. Many businesses fear change and avoid new methods like Digital Marketing.
  • “Ability is of little account without opportunity.” – Lucy knew just being good at what you do does not guarantee success; you must seek opportunities. For businesses, Digital Media is a great source of sales opportunities.
  • “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – Lucy would understand that if your sales goals weren’t being met, you need to do something different to improve the situation, not hope things fix themselves.
  • “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.” – Lucy would not accept ‘I don’t have time’ to add Digital Marketing to my things to do.  Many businesses use the excuse of ‘I don’t have time’  to do the right things which really means they are not prioritizing properly.
  • “In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.”– Lucy would have strived to understand the Digital Revolution and used it to her advanatage. Many businesses think ignorance is bliss.
  • “Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: It’s hard work — and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.” – Lucy would not have left things to chance, she would have pursued all viable opportunities and Digital Media offers huge business opportunities.
  • “One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”- If Lucy’s goals weren’t being met, she would not have been passive – she would have rolled up her sleeves and pursued all her options with enthusiasm.

I think Lucielle Ball was a pretty smart gal – That’s why “I Love Lucy”. 

Are you clinging to traditional media marketing to achieve your busines goals or using everything available including Digital Media Marketing?  Need help with the Digital Revolution from professionals?  Contact me and I’ll help you follow Lucy’s advice.

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LinkedIn: Networking and Lead Generation Tool

Thursday, February 18th, 2010 
LinkedIn is one of the most important Business Social Networking websites.


Since its inception, LinkedIn has grown to include more than 55 million users in 200 countries world-wide. This is no accident. LinkedIn is based on the principle that every person is connected to one another by no more than six degrees of separation from everybody else. In other words, individuals can connect with one another simply by utilizing their network of contacts. And this is where LinkedIn can help business owners and their employees. The website keeps track of who knows whom and provides a means to connect people based on professional expertise, needs, and interests.

Join us at a WSI webinar entitled:
LinkedIn: Networking and Lead Generation Tool

Thursday, February 25, 2010 – 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST – Register here Webinar over – an archived recording is available by Clicking here

And Download the whitepaper! to study before the webinar –

NOTE: the forms will ask who provided the invitation: in the ‘WSI Consultant’ field enter Gary Smith

See you there!

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Internet Marketing – It’s not about Technology; it’s about Psychology…

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

If you want to engage in Internet Marketing, then you must understand the art and science of online publishing and advertising.  It’s not about technology; it’s about psychology.

“Advertising is the art of getting people to buy things they may or may not know they need with money they don’t want to part with”.  That statement predates the Internet by a number of decades, yet it is as true today as it was back then.

A bit cynical? Perhaps, but let us not forget that in the Internet world people rarely stumble across a website without actively searching for something. They are at a website because they have a PAIN – Problem, Anxiety, Interest, or Need. If you have what they are looking for, your job is to help them find it and sell it to them.

Step 1 = Have a website with the correct design, structure, and content
Step 2 = Get lots of targeted traffic to the website’s landing page(s)
Step 3 = Convert website visitors into customers via funneling visitors to action steps from the landing page(s)
A website is useless without traffic and traffic is useless without conversions.

A big problem with the conversion step (the close) is that many business websites are so ill conceived and poorly constructed that they are little more than monuments to their owners. The problem starts with poorly done landing pages and ineffective content within the website. The solution is to develop effective landing pages and website content.

Why are effective Landing Pages essential?  A Landing page is where visitors land after clicking on an email link, a search engine result, a banner ad, or manually typing in a specific advertised address.

Let’s make something clear; people do not read on the Internet… they scan! They see headlines, images and bullet points. Depending on the personality type of your visitor, you have between 2 and 8 seconds to convince them to stay on your website and delve deeper into it. They click in… take a quick peak… and click out if they aren’t convinced you have what they want. Those are the condition in which business is conducted on the Internet.

Making use of the above tidbits of knowledge is a little more complex.

Learn the details in this whitepaper: Landing Page Design – Common Mistakes and Tested Techniques

Or if you prefer a webinar format, here is the archived presentation of Landing Page Design – Common Mistakes and Tested Techniques

If you want the services of a company that has been there and done that, contact me.

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Digital Marketing Tips… 100 and counting

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

100

This blog now has 100 Digital Marketing posts archived since it started 5 months ago. It’s time for a ‘keep it simple’ review of Digital Marketing principles.

The Internet provides the opportunity for everyone, everywhere to become a publisher to a world audience. The Internet is an information distribution network and marketing engine that surpasses the capabilities of any other mass publication system and offers the lowest cost for delivery.

Internet Publication Methods and Marketing Tactics Include:

Websites – Modern websites are built with an administration friendly Content Management System (CMS) wrapped inside a graphics design – the technical and design elements.  But a business website’s value is determined by its targeted traffic volume and content effectiveness – does it attract sufficient visitors and convert visitors into some form of customer? A website without traffic is useless and traffic is useless without conversions.


Search Marketing – There are millions of web pages competing within each online marketplace. Getting your share of targeted traffic requires the use of Search Marketing (SEO & PPC) – SEO is the elephant of Internet Marketing.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) – Networking, WOM, display ads, publications, and SEO enhancement make SMM the new must-do.

  • Social Networks = personal & business brand building via value added activities leading to WOM leads & referrals + display advertising opportunities
  • Content Sharing =  examples include: YouTube, Photobucket, Squidoo, Articles & News Release portals, WIKIs, and Flickr among many other similar websites. It’s like having your own globally broadcast newspapers, scrap books, and TV stations – for free.
  • Blogs = a global publication system for a personal diary, editorial page, and article & news postings.
  • Syndication = includes things like: RSS feeds, Social Bookmarking, and the occasional spontaneous Viral affect
  • Real Time Communications = includes things like Twitter, a Facebook wall, text messaging, chat rooms, and web-conferencing

Display Ads - Graphic and/or text ads with links to your website in high traffic single websites or syndicated across a spectrum of high traffic sites frequented by your target customers.

Email – Ubiquitous email is still the lowest cost business mass communication tool with applications for nurturing existing clients or lead generation – just don’t engage in spamming.

Conversion Architecture – AKA Persuasion Architecture = The art and science of getting visitors to your online properties to actually do something of value for your business: buy, subscribe: contact you, provide endorsements & referrals, etc

Mobile – Do all of the above in miniature in the palm of your customer’s hand.

Analytics – Nearly everything in the digital world is measurable. Monitoring what is actually happening allows determination of your ROI and where to engage in continuous improvement activity.

To be successful online, some mix of the above is necessary. If you need help or don’t have the time to deal with the details, contact me for professional Digital Marketing services

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How to Pick an SEO Supplier?… Answer = carefully

Monday, February 15th, 2010

seo-keyword-ranking-toolbox

If you have followed previous blog posts, by now you understand that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can increase your company’s profits.  You should also realize that SEO is a time intensive, knowledge based  process in an arena where the rules are always changing.  Digital Internet Marketing via Search Marketing is a rewarding, but challenging activity.

Fortunately, you can hire someone to do SEO for you, but the question is… which SEO company should you trust? Here’s what to look for when hiring a professional SEO company.

  1. Request a portfolio of top ranking sites
    Ask for screenshots of rankings for their existing customers as well as testimonials from clients. You should also find out how long they have been in business.
  2. Be wary of the one man team
    Ask yourself what if a one-man-band company becomes unavailable, how would that impact you? Along with multiple SEO experts, SEO companies should have specialists in at least 2 other areas, site development & copy writing. Your search marketing supplier should also have paid search (PPC) expertise to compliment SEO organic results.
  3. What are their ethical standards?
    Since SEO can bring a lot of business to a company, it can be tempting to try to “trick” the search engines with unethical techniques. These techniques, often referred to as “black hat”, may work for a short period but can actually get an entire website banned from the search engines!
  4. Be suspicious of money back guarantees
    Since no SEO company controls the search engines, no SEO firm can ethically guarantee a specific ranking for a specific keyword phrase on a particular search engine
  5. Will they make site architecture recommendations?
    There are many fundamental web development techniques that need to be applied to the website to ensure the search engine can “read” and index the site properly. Your SEO company should assess your current technology and provide recommendations to enhance it or offer turn-key website preparation services.  Better SEO firms will offer up-front consultations including a website SEO Discovery Report of some kind. This should include analysis of the opportunities in the market, current challenges with the existing site, and recommendations to enhance its search engine friendliness
  6. Understand the pricing structure
    Unless you gamble with SEO from an unproven source, you should not expect rock bottom prices. If the SEO fees are well below market value, you should not expect reliable results or the company to be around for long.
  7. Understand the company’s methodology
    Firstly, do they have a methodology? Is it consistent? If so, does it make sense or have they outlined it in Greek? They don’t need to give you the exact specifics, but if they say the way they optimize is proprietary – run! SEO is part art and part science; the science part should be process driven. And reliable SEO methods should include a continuous monthly improvement plan to compliment the initial SEO set-up – Search Engine ranking criteria continuously evolves so your SEO provider needs to keep your SEO approach up-to-date.

My company, WSI, has a highly qualified team of SEO experts – contact me for a consultation.

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Want To Vs Got To, what an amazing difference, like say… Digital Media Vs the Census

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

The USA is about to try to get everyone, from the heads of households to the homeless, to fill out a census form in the hope of counting the 310,000,000ish residents in the USA.  There are about 105,000,000 resident households and who knows how many people living outside of a traditional home environment.

To get the census job done, the government is hiring an army of census takers, spending millions on TV ads including during the Super Bowl, and mailing forms to every known residence.  And yet the government is sure they will not be able to reach everyone. And they fear that some will get the message and refuse to cooperate.

It is very difficult to focus millions of people all on the same task. The government can lecture and cajole and try to convince people it is in their best interest to cooperate, but getting huge numbers of people to conform to a dictated activity is a monumental task.

Yet if people decide on their own to do something, amazing things can happen in large numbers. People doing their own thing for their own reasons don’t need to be herded into taking action.

Suppose you were given the task of getting a group about the size of Mexico or Japan to do some simple task at least once per month, every month?   That would be a daunting task even with the resources available to governments., like taking a census every month.

But in December 2009, a group of people about the size of all USA households or the total population of Mexico or Japan, without any pressure, all did the same thing. They visited Facebook. That’s unique visitors - total visits are over 1 billion per month.

And then there are other groups of people in similar tens of millions who monthly voluntarily visit YouTube, MySpace, and LinkedIn and similar social media websites.  

And in January the core number of search engine inquiries  exceeded 15 billion – 15,000,000,000. That’s about 1.5 times the population of the USA (every man, woman, and child) doing a search EVERY DAY of EVERY MONTH.

And all of that activity was totally voluntary. No government cajoling or mandates. No army of enforcers or millions spent on TV ads. Why? Because people by the tens of millions find Search Engine inquiries and Social Media interactions to be highly valuable activities.

And I find that amazing!  And if your business is not engaged in this phenomenon, then I find that amazing also – and tragic for your business.

My company helps businesses flourish in the digital world, contact me to learn how.

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What’s the future of Social Media for your Biz?… that’s up to you

Friday, February 12th, 2010

I have devoted many of my blog posts to the topic of the business use of Social Media as have many, many other online publications. For example, eMarketer is a source for unbiased research and trend analysis on digital marketing & media.

In a recent eMarketer article entitled, What is the Future of Social Media?, the author said, “In the few short years that social media has been a marketing vehicle, it has already had an enormous effect on the way companies do business.”

I agree with the above statement if one word was added – …an enormous effect on the way smart companies do business.  Some companies have adapted and are enjoying enormous benefits from Social Media Marketing. But many companies are not able or willing to keep pace with the rapid rate of change that the digital revolution has created.  Some don’t get it while others get it but are having trouble adapting to it.

The basic principles are easy to understand, Learn how here. The devil is in the details.

eMarketer has published a series of articles about Social Media.

If you are not one of the ‘smart businesses’ that has adopted Social Media Marketing, what are you waiting for? If you need help or lack the time to deal with the details, contact us, we are a Social Media Adoption Agency.

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Is online Social Networking ‘fake networking’?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

I was recently asked if in-person networking was better than online social networking (in SocNets).  And, isn’t SocNet networking ‘fake networking’? And a follow-up question was: “Is it better to network with people you know or with new contacts?”

Business networking simply means connecting with people to share information with the goal of establishing mutual trust & respect resulting in sharing leads or endorsements.

Networking success doesn’t so much depend on where you network and with who (in-person or online with friends or strangers). Success depends more on how good you are at it. One type of networking isn’t real and the other fake, but online networking takes different skill sets than in-person networking and with both methods you need to work at it harder with strangers than with friends.

When networking doesn’t produce the desired results it’s usually from:
1) the parties don’t take the time and effort to establish & maintain a feeling of mutual trust & respect and/or
2) both parties are more interested in getting leads than providing leads.
Those things can happen in-person or online.

If you have ever gone to a Chamber networking event you probably observed different behaviors.  Some folks stay mostly in a cluster of old acquaintances chatting among themselves – mostly getting caught up with the latest news. And some folks are actively circulating in an attempt to make new contacts. Both types are networking – make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.

Within both types (cling to friends or circulators) you probably also noticed different motivations.  Some folks are there for mostly the social aspects. Some are there to ‘hunt’ for sales opportunities or alliances.  And some are attending to search for a provider of something they need – buyers. All attendees have a mix of motivations (socializing, selling, buying). But the buying aspect is usually a minority percentage. So in-person networking is mostly made up of friendly chat and salesmanship.

Online networking is similar.  Posts are a mix of useful information and friendly banter along with a lot of attempts at selling aimed at a minority of buyers. One difference with online networking is that it is easier to superficially connect with new people via mass invites – a type of ‘numbers game’ approach of quantity rather than quality of connections.

With either in-person or online networking, in the end success comes down to are you willing to give and take or just take?  You must be able to build a mutually beneficial, trusting  relationship with people who are interested in getting and giving leads or endorsements.  

Luck plays a roll, but mostly it takes some time and work.  Sincere effort determines networking success or failure, not where you practice it or if it is with buddies or new connections.

Guidance is available for online networking methods and best practices – contact me for more information. And here is a Social Media Best Pracitces Article

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