Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

“Client is always King”
(Except when that’s not profitable)

There’s an interesting thing that occurs in the world of business. A business or consultant being respected/liked/popular/and otherwise showered with sales in the form of cash and cookies despite that they practice the opposite of “customer-first-always.” Plenty of angry or controversial business owners have existed in time, from the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld (who was based on a real person), to that stuck up restaurant down the road, to the hip club that only lets the beautiful in, with no remorse for those turned away. Yet human nature wants what you can’t have. Whether it’s getting on the VIP list or buying a limited edition model that costs a zillion more than it’s worth, human nature hungers for the chase; craves for the affection; longs for recognition. When a business doesn’t offer this first hand, and sometimes even takes the opposite approach, the person doesn’t know how to feel. Bewildered and confused, they find themselves in some way admiring the audacity of the business and wanting to be accepted and on the “VIP list” more than ever. In a way, it’s like otherwise normal adults are reduced to envious teenagers behaving out of a basic need to be accepted and as a result of peer pressure as opposed to common sense.

If you’ve tried polishing the edges of your business and it just isn’t remarkable and growth just isn’t occurring, maybe it’s time to roughen it up a bit, maybe start turning people down, ruffling some feathers, maybe even saying some controversial statements on your blog. As long as it’s authentic, it just may work. Or it may blow up in your face and cost you customers. Only one way to find out.

Looking to make a splash with the launch of your social networking start-up?

Step #1: Get featured on Mashable

“Over the past few months, I’ve had the privilege of meeting many of our readers at our various events around the country. Without a doubt, the number one most frequently asked question at these events has been “how do I get my startup featured on Mashable?” While there is no secret sauce, I thought I’d take this opportunity to remind people what we’re looking for and why we choose to cover some startups and not others.

Your startup should:

• Be a cool product
• Fit into Mashable’s “coverage universe”
• Have not already been covered to death elsewhere
• Submit to our Startup Review series
• Personalize your pitch
• Be concise
• Come to our events

Your startup does NOT have to:

• Be overly complex
• Be venture funded
• Be friends with Mashable staff
• Have a PR firm
• Be a startup at all

Remember, we’re also entrepreneurs, and we want to help great startups get the word out and be successful. We depend on you as much as you depend on us, so please keep your news coming and we hope to see you at an event soon!”

Step #2: Get Featured on SocialNetworkingWatch.com

Send your story to “tips@socialnetworkingwatch.com” and address it to Mark Brooks.

Step #3: Go to the next Social Networking Conference in San Francisco, California

“Q: What is the Social Networking Conference?

As a means of communication, words are incredibly important. In lieu of verbally exchanging words, we use written text to do the bulk of the communication for us online. Any degree of miscommunication can have far reaching consequences (online), so every “i” has to be dotted, every “t” crossed, and every word weighed.

However, good content, like the emperor who needed to put some clothes on, should always strive to look first rate.

Enter typography, whose sole aim is to dress words up so that they look good. Its noble aspirations are simple: to make the reading experience easier, by relegating itself so far into the background that it’s never noticed.

Regardless of how tricky typography on the web can be, it is the responsibility of everyone on a design project (both team members and stakeholders) to bother about a website’s type. After all, if you want me to take the time to read your marketing pitch, or your smashing novel, why should it also be hard for me to read it?

If we’re on the same page so far, then here are some guiding principles on selecting type:

1. Read it- Just because you’re writing a masterpiece on Antiqua doesn’t mean you should write it using Antiqua. Reading the material (to understand it) will provide a better understanding of the copy’s context, and the user’s needs. This in turn translates into subtle changes to the over all look and feel of the website.

2. Know your audience- Blaktur is not the way to go on a pre-school program’s website, so it’s important that you know who your audience will be.

3. What will it look like?- Convention over configuration is not always a bad thing so keep in mind that there are limitations on the available font choices. Here’s another good article on the topic.

4. It’s not the end of the world- At the end of the day, your decision is subjective since there is no “end all” formula. As long as you diligently address the above, the whole time remembering that “it takes five hundred small details to make one favorable impression”, you should be fine.

Often in life, it’s the little things that make the difference, push the limits, make the sale, or impress and excite. As an example, I stayed this weekend at the beautiful Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel and they did something small that made me really want to come back. We’ve driven across the country over the last few days (2700 miles is no easy task) and we’ve had to travel with my wife and I’s cat. This may seem like no big deal, but during the whole trip it’s been a real challenge to find decent hotels that accept pets and meet our other needs. Loews accepted pets, which was a large reason we chose to stay here over the weekend. Upon checking in and getting settled, we walked down to the beach and came back to find a food and water dish, cat treats, an eating mat, and a small bottle of FIJI water, all for the cat, placed right outside our door! The look on my wife’s face and the pleasure we got out of this small token really says a lot. Loew’s obviously understands that life is in the details and they will have a repeat customer in me.

On the other hand, during our trip we stopped at one gas station in Oklahoma off I-40 where, posted on the men’s bathroom entrance, was a sign, written in a condescending tone, that read, and I quote: “Gentleman, please use the manners you’re mother taught you (hopefully) and have some respect by keeping this bathroom clean for the ladies at this gas station who clean it. If not, your continued messiness will force us to shut down the bathroom.” What made me cringe was the fact that this restroom is on a major interstate and I felt like I was being accused when I had never even set foot in the restroom before nor had any intention of messing it up. All this sign served to do was irritate/annoy and it probably simply encourages inconsiderate visitors to do just what the gas station attendants are lecturing them about. IMO, it’s better to NOT have a bathroom at all then to have one with a large rude sign on the door. It’s the little things, and this little thing can cause resentment and certainly won’t breed return visitors.

MINI Cooper understands that the little things manner. Rather than simply sell a great little car, after your purchase they shower you with gifts and truly fun tools, toys, and information including “secret decoders” for their ads, “sun tattoos” (if you have a convertible MINI), an 8-ball for your antennae, and the list goes on. I’m sure the grand total of freebies given to customers after their purchase doesn’t amount to an arm and a leg, but nonetheless people simply love free, fun surprises and it’s the best way to get people talking about the product/service. With a few dollars worth of freebies on $20-$40k car, the experience goes from good to great and it’s one reason MINI is so viral.

-Rb

A key point often forgot (or simply ignored) by marketers and individuals looking to make a splash in the social media realm is the idea that you need to add value to receive value in the world of web 2.0.   Countless stories can be cited of companies and marketers entering the social media and social networking fray trying to tap into the social sphere, but ignoring the very core reason why the social realm exists.  This reason is so that users can help users.  Collaboration is the cornerstone of community and an analogy for successful open source and collaborative initiatives can be summed down to “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

It’s this principle, though, that’s often overlooked by many.  It goes back to my recent blog post entitled 99% in which I quoted Seth Godin from his new book, Meatball Sundae, in which he wrote: “1 percent of the people are givers. In Wikipedia, for example, about 1 percent of the users create and edit articles.”  Using this logic, there is a huge chunk of social media users who are content to be social media browsers and not contributers.  This is all fine and dandy, but my point in this post is that if you’re striving to market and actually market effectively using the social media realm as your stomping grounds, you simply have to fall in the category of a contributer, otherwise your efforts won’t be nearly as effective, if it all.

What does this mean?  It means that before you start a Facebook advertising campaign, Facebook company profile, and spam a bunch of Facebook users with your marketing message, take a step back (and a deep breath while you’re at it).  Just like with organic search engine optimization, success in social media marketing isn’t usually something that happens overnight.  The efforts that lead up to a particularly viral blog post, a following on Digg, success on YouTube, or getting your Squidoo lens to bring traffic to your website are typically overlooked, but for the sake of my argument, this is a huge mistake.  Using Facebook as an example, before you do what I’ve described above, it’s a better approach to first actually use Facebook for a while on a personal level.  Add friends, make connections, and focus on adding value to the community.  Post relevant and thoughtful notes, actually contribute to groups, and stay in touch regularly with friends.  Once you’ve built a presence and a following as a contributer, you can then begin to phase in your marketing goals.  This is true with nearly any social media marketing campaign.  Before you’re blog is going to work for your business, you need to first focus on writing good content, and a lot of it.  You need to first focus on reading OTHER blogs and posting thoughtful comments and responding to comments you receive.  You get my point: contribution is the effective stepping stone to marketing results.

I’ll pause now on the social media marketing discussion (don’t worry, I’ll be coming back to it regularly in the future). In the meantime, I’d like to highlight one website in particular that could be a valuable tool in your social media toolbox, if you follow my advice above: Squidoo.

Squidoo is a website that was pioneered by marketing guru Seth Godin as a social platform for easily creating pages on any topic imaginable and enjoying the benefits of a strong community and the inheritance of great PageRank.  Squidoo does a good job describing itself: “Squidoo is an incredibly easy platform that allows you to build a lens, all by yourself, in less than five minutes. Don’t build a lens instead of your website. Build a lens to help your website.”

Squidoo is great because it’s super quick to get a “lens” started and constructed with social media and search engines in mind.  If you’re a pet shop, you can easily create a comprehensive lens on, say, raising a lesser-known species of turtle or perhaps starting an aquarium.  With a multitude of widgets to choose from, you can add content, plug-in RSS feeds, showcase photos via Flickr, highlight products via Amazon, or present videos via YouTube.  What’s more, you can easily categorize and tag your lens before subsequently submitting to social bookmarking sites and joining Squidoo groups.

All of this means you can drive traffic to your website, earn money on ads (or donate the money to charity), build credibility, build online brand/name presence, and provide individuals, including your prospects, with valuable information at a time when they’re looking for it, a time when your help can make an impression.

Before you think it’s too good to be true, remind yourself that your initial goal is narrow: to focus on contributing and adding value.  Squidoo is merely a platform for adding worthy content and fresh (or different, or witty, or more useful) information to the web.  The web may be cluttered and crowded, but one thing is true: value has a way of floating to the top.

So head on over to Squidoo and let this lens help you get started.  Need an example of an informative lens? We recently build this lens on finding and choosing a web design company.  Still need more assistance?  Check out their FAQ and forum!

From Seth Godin:

• How to title stuff
• The truth about word of mouth

Social Media/Blog Marketing

• Networking on several social sites
• Link Bait Articles
• How Companies Blog
• Corporate Blogging Resources
• Flickr for Marketing, PR, and Online Demos
• Tweeterboard (Top 100)
• 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations
• What Works/Doesn’t Work in Online Marketing
• The Many Forms of Web Marketing for the 2007 Web
• Guerrilla Marketing Ideas for Your Website
• How To Encourage clients to Engage in Social Media
• 8 Simple Rules For Social Media Marketing in Business to Business Markets
• Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the necessary art and science of positioning your website as relevant in the eyes of search engines. Often overlooked because of the time it takes to get results, SEO can be a very valuable marketing tool if used properly.

The following tools cover several SEO aspects that most websites require and are perfect for search engine optimizers, search engine buffs in general, or the overachieving website owner willing to take the extra step to make their site that much better.

• SEO Analyzer
  Grades your website’s search engine optimization level by analyzing download time, semantic structure, use of table elements, etc…
• Link Value
  This link value tool can help you decide if a link is worth paying for by calculating the link value per month of a given website.
• Another great tool from Link Vendor: Outbound Links
• Keyword Density
  To determine a website’s theme and relevant terms, one of the factors search engines consider is keyword density. This tool will help you balance your website’s keyword density by mimicking search engine spider behavior and returning a table of density values for key terms.
• Keyword Cloud “is a visual depiction of keywords used on a website, keywords having higher density are depicted in larger fonts. “
• KwMap
  Simply put: “A Keyword Map for the Whole Internet”
• Keyword Difficulty
  Great tool to analyze the competition you’re up against for particular a search term by analyzing “how difficult it will be to rank for a particular term.”
• Title & Meta Tags Generator
  Instantly create the meta tags you need for your website. This tool will also generate title tags, description, abstract, keyword, and robot meta tags (more info here).
• One great way to get your website noticed, is to submit to directories. Last time I did a search for “online directory,” Google returned 70,000,000 results. Clearly managing all those directory submissions is a pain (i.e, a slightly necessary pain). Enter the Directory Submission Manager, which removes the pain of “directory management”, while helping you monitor and track your directory submissions.
• Advanced Google Searches
  Very useful Google tool that will analyze, pages indexed by Google, pages with a specified keyword (in title, URL, file, etc..), keyword definitions and synonyms, and _many_ more.

Want more?

Here you go then:

• 30+ SEO Tools
• 136 SEO Tools
• Free Search Engine Optimization Tools from SEOBook

-FTK

It’s the easiest yet hardest way to have success in business. It’s called “authenticity.”

In an age of spam, advertising inundation, and fast food, our senses are being vied for seemingly every minute of everyday. In order to get through the junk, businesses oftentimes resort to the quick and easy way of dealing with the problem by simply making it bigger with more clutter and more junk! Instead of the hard approach of doing something remarkable, most do something adequate and simply make it appear to be remarkable. The bad news is, this rarely works and when it does it works for only so long. It’s true: lies often have a way of getting found out!

If you want to build a remarkable company, sell an awesome service, create an amazing product, or simply get the word out about your offering, you need to “get real.” Stop looking for shortcuts or incorporating misleading ad copy or trying to reach your audience by simply using a bigger megaphone. Stop marketing your products or services as better than they actually are and stop backing policies only designed to “look good” and not designed to actually help your customers.

Get real by fully standing behind what you provide. Get real by doing the legwork it takes to actually provide more real value to your customers. Get real by not thinking “how can I increase revenue” or “how can I make customer service cheaper” and thinking instead “how can I be the absolute best in my niche” and “how can I improve the lives of my customers.” Instead of resorting to typical advertising or spamming your audience, why not try and start a two-way conversation with your audience? Why not do work that is so good that people simply have no choice but to talk about it?

I’m not going to say it’s easy, because usually it’s not. Being authentic and building an authentic business that adds value and communicates that value in a real way is no easy chore. But the payoff? The payoff is worth it and I’m not simply talking in terms of revenue or profit or an IPO. I’m talking about going to sleep every night knowing that you and your business is making an impact on people’s lives. Chances are, the money will come if it’s not first and foremost what you’re after.

If you’re still lacking in motivation, check out Seth Godin’s books The Purple Cow and All Marketers Are Liars for a nice shot of adrenaline.

-RB

• Privacy Policy (creating a well thought out privacy policy is integral to giving your visitors/customers peace of mind when sharing their private information with you)
• Portfolio/Catalog (whether you’re selling products or services, people love to see tangible examples of what you have done and can do)
• Testimonials (let your previous customers do the selling and your current prospects will be reassured like nothing else)
• Case Studies (case studies are the next step above testimonials and are great ways of showing your prospects well-documented evidence of your aptitude from an unbiased source)
• Business Memberships/Associations (nothing can improve your impression quite like a BBB seal, Verisign logo, or professional association)
• Credible Content (content isn’t only beneficial for search engine optimization… it also shows your prospects if you know your stuff)
• Contact Information (it’s simple: don’t hide your contact information and people will feel more comfortable knowing you aren’t hiding in cyberspace)
• Stats & Sources (whenever and whatever you quote, cite the source; nothing creates comfort like researched and documented statistics)
• Prompt & Courteous Responses (don’t work hard getting a prospect to contact you only to leave them hanging on the other line!)

-RB

There is a popular phrase that goes “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” This phrase certainly is applicable to many things in life, but more than ever in the world of marketing, it just doesn’t ring true.

Your business or organization can have the best story in town and can literally be invaluable by fulfilling a need in a remarkable way, but if the story or experience is hidden inside of your “company book” and not showcased on the “cover”, many prospects will be lost or won’t fully realize just how remarkable you really are and why they should care.

There are many moments during the customer acquisition process where prospects get tangible experiences that help them form ideas and conclusions about your company or product. Let’s face it, we’re all strapped for time and therefore we each go by the little experiences to form our judgments. Some of these things that help prospects form judgments are: websites, brick’n’mortar store design, proposals, product packaging, the tone of the customer service rep on the line, a thank you card, etc…

Now, the goal is not to design a fake or inaccurate “cover” that misrepresents your company or attempts to grab customers who will subsequently be disappointed when they find out the “book” (your company or product) is not nearly as exciting or doesn’t match the cover. Just like with any New York Times Bestseller, the cover needs to represent the story while grabbing attention and helping the prospect form a judgment about the story. To really have impact and traction, though, when the book is purchased the story much match the cover. In this case, a complete customer experience has occurred and the customer gets an authentic experience while not having to deal with disappointment.

Now, to shoot off on a rabbit trail, here’s a small package I received from American Express. American Express does a fantastic job of creating covers that match stories, as evidenced by the following pictures:

What normally arrives in a small white envelope from a Plain State arrived in a sleek box. Upon opening the package, I couldn’t help feeling twangs of excitement and pride about my new credit card. Even after already deciding to sign up for the card, this unconventional product packaging for a credit card “sealed the deal” and because AMEX is generally authentic (their story matches their covers), it worked and it worked well.

The point here is that each and every day in the life of your business or organization, your prospects are seeing a myriad of “covers” to your “book.” Take the time to create covers that are compelling and authentic, at various stages of the customer acquisition process, and prejudice can shift from a bad behavior to a good one.

-Robby