Contact Us Now!

Stand in the line of sight. (when marketing)

If you were currently training to go in to battle, to stand in the enemy’s line of sight wouldn’t be sage advice. However, if we’re talking about marketing, being where everyone’s eyes are focused is exactly where you want to be. Marketing, like so many other things, is in a constant state of change. The strategy that is best for today might not be the best strategy for tomorrow. However, formulating a viable, current strategy takes only a little common sense. Just ask yourself one question: where are people’s eyes (and ears) right now? Advertisers are constantly changing their strategies to align with where people are currently tuned in. Is your target in their cars all day? Then advertising on the radio still makes sense for your business. Is your target more likely to tune in to reality TV programming than others? Then place TV ads during those programs. Even if one of these situations is true for your business, today there is a universal truth: people’s eyes (and ears) are tuned in to screens, and we’re not talking about TV screens. People are spending more and more time in front of their computers (both desktops and laptops), smartphones and other mobile devices every day.

Now that it’s been established that what we are talking about here is the fact that people are spending lots of time focused on the various screens that deliver all kinds of multimedia content from the Internet, it is important to go one level deeper. No one would argue that people aren’t tuned in to their screens. If there is any question in your mind, just look up (from checking your messages on your own smartphone) the next time you are at a restaurant. You’ll often see more than half of the restaurant with their faces focused on their own mobile devices. Ask yourself just one more question: when people are glued to their screens where are they spending their time? Are they visiting individual websites? Sometimes. Are they reading blogs, visiting their favorite news sources online and/or researching products and services via search? Even more likely. Are people spending oogles of time on social sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Bingo!

Regarding the time that people are spending on the web’s wide variety of destinations, social sites now hold a monopoly. During any given time period the majority of people now spend more time on Facebook than they do on every other destination they visit on the web combined. We’ve heard the arguments. I don’t want my business on Facebook because Facebook is a place for ‘friends’. Facebook wasn’t meant for businesses. The arguments go on and on. Most businesses have come around at this point but some still need a little advice, or guidance. Think of it like this. You can erect a humongous billboard to promote your business tomorrow, but if the billboard is on a two-lane highway in rural America is it going to get the same response as a billboard located at the intersection of the two busiest highways in the largest metropolitan in the country? Long ago the Internet was dubbed as an information superhighway, but the Internet is actually a massive network of highways. Included in this network are superhighways. Sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are the busiest of these superhighways. Consumers travel these highways daily. If your business wants to be in consumers’ line of sight, put your billboards up along these thoroughfares. But proceed with caution. Social sites were designed for people to be social. It takes precision to market your business and for it to actually help your business. Your business must join the conversation, rather than distract and take away from it. If you’ve tried to promote your business on social sites and you haven’t had positive results, get help from marketing professionals. The most successful brands leave their marketing to the professionals. The only thing that has changed is the channels where they are marketing their brands. Consumers decide this. The rules haven’t changed. Always market where the eyes (and ears) are.

You have a new website? So what.

It seems like an entity that has built several hundred websites would never utter the words that serve as the title for this post. However, we’re serious. Although we would never advise an organization to not have a traditional website on the web, conceiving a fresh, new website is only the tip of the iceberg in a world where people’s appetite for new information has become insatiable.

With Twitter, Facebook, blogs, RSS, and all the other ways we all receive information on the web now, a website can become stagnant in a hurry. Truth is, of all of your entities on the web your website is visited least often. So much time is now spent in all of the previously mentioned places that people go for information now, getting people to your website is a job that takes constant, consistent well…work. And when people finally make it to your prized possession…your new website, if they don’t see something new or different they won’t fall into anything that comes close to resembling a habit to visit your site. In a world saturated with content marketing, content must be updated on all of your web properties with consistency. Your blog should receive regular updates. Your Twitter, Facebook and other social media profiles must constantly provide fresh information. When you stop your traffic stops, too.

If keeping the content in your portfolio of web properties wasn’t enough, reality is that your mentality for keeping a presence online should be that it isn’t all about you. To really create influence and traffic to your web properties including your website, it’s necessary to leave a trail that leads back to you all over the web. Commenting on others’ blogs, serving as a guest writer on others’ blogs, and commenting on all of the other various profiles that are on the web now serves to cut trails that lead back to your online homes. When you participate in others’ information online, you create awareness that your organization is a living, breathing, vibrant operation that people need to be aware of. In essence, others’ marketing can become your own.

With all that the web has to offer, it’s easy to feel that you are on the right track. But if you’re standing still, you will soon be run over by those who aren’t. Your online strategy must include updating your information constantly. If it isn’t, get help. Your consumers are online, and they are moving at a swift clip. Do everything in your power to keep up!

Need to Market a Niche Product, Special Event or Short Term Campaign? – Try Building a Microsite

Your development team has come up with a new product and you’re thinking of rearranging your website to make room for it.  But you’re not sure.  You’re thinking, “This product doesn’t really fit in with the rest of our product line.”  “It’s untested, why take away valuable cyberspace from products that are proven sellers to sell this product that has a limited life cycle, or that may or may not have an audience.”

No worries. Build a microsite.

Okay, I’ll Bite.  Just What is a Microsite: A microsite is an individual web page that acts as a supplement to the main webpage.  Often the site will have a very specific main landing page that has its own domain or sub-domain name.

Say you’re a company that sells soap products:  detergent, dishwashing liquid, home cleaning products, etc.  Now, you decide you want to sell sponges, a product that goes along with your current products but that isn’t in your normal product line.  You can create a landing page with a name like “[Product Name]SpongesThatReallyComeClean.com that points to your microsite. The microsite is a standalone page that points to your main webpage but is complete within itself; focusing only on one or two products or topics.

Microsites and Niche Marketing Uses: Microsites are often used for special campaigns or for informational purposes.  If you have a limited time offer, like a product that you only sell during certain months or seasons, (like sweet iced tea,summer desserts,holiday items, etc.) you can build a special microsite to market that product, rather than changing your regular website content.

You can also use microsites for news and/or special events.  These sites often have very keyword / domain specific names such as:  [YourCompanyName]HolidayParty2011.com or [TheRealScoopAbout[________].com

Often, microsites are used for niche marketing campaigns.  Niche marketing focuses on one or two products, rather than a whole stable of products.  Microsites allow you to zero in on your target, creating smaller, tailored sites that focus on the specific audience that buy your product.

Most companies still mass market – creating larger campaigns, tailored toward the broadest audience possible, and highlighting their entire product line.  But depending on the type of products you have or where you are in your product’s lifecycle, you may find that a combination of some niche along with mass marketing may work better for you.

Microsites also allow you to fine tune your web marketing to your target audience more efficiently.  Since the landing page and microsite content is specific to that one product, it can let you tailor your campaign to your exact audience.

Microsites – Pros/Cons: It should be mentioned that the practice of using microsites has come under fire from many in marketing.  If done improperly, the microsite can negatively effect the reputation of the main website and subsequently, the brand.  If the site appears overly silly or irrelevant, (as these sites often can with their sometimes strange sub-domain and slapdash marketing tactics) people may ignore the site, leaving you with a loss of profits and a potential black eye to the brand.

But when done properly, microsites can provide access to a highly qualified or engaged audience.  Only prospects who are keenly interested in your particular niche tend to click on your landing pages, meaning the people who do go to your microsites are generally the ones you most want to reach.

Making A Killing With Email Marketing

Email marketing feels so 2005 – what with all the social media sites like Twitter and Facebook – not to mention the mobile technology boom and everything else that’s happened in the last five or six years.  It’s easy to forget just how effective email marketing remains.  For many in sales, it’s the last frontier.  Sure you’ll throw away a postcard or some other direct mailer that comes in your mailbox without a second thought.  But there’s something about that unopened email, just sitting in your box waiting to be opened.  Sure, maybe you’ll delete it after reading it.  But you’ll read it.  And that’s half the battle.

Starting at the Beginning: The most important part of your email or newsletter:  a good, no, make that great subject line.  It’s what makes you want to throw caution to the wind and click on that new email even though you really should be on your way to work or to the gym.  It should be engaging, relevant to your audience, and get to the point quickly.  (Before they decide they don’t really want to open your email after all and move on to the next email.)

Keep Your Email List Current: Don’t let your contact list get stale.  Having an old email list is as bad as trying to cold call from the Yellow Pages.  (Okay, maybe not that bad, but it’s bad.)  There are several things you can do to keep that mailing list evergreen.

1. Set up your website so users have to enter their contact information before accessing certain parts of the site.
2. Offer special content like tech papers, buyers guides, etc.  Make sure they sign up for these free offers.
3. Run contests and special promotions.  The prize can be as simple as a logoed company T-shirt or a discount off of a product.  People like winning things and they’ll give you their name and contact info for the opportunity to do so.
4. Offer a free subscription newsletter.
5. Build an opt-in email list.  You can do this using a variety of services including your web host company,various DIY programs,or you can purchase these from email list providers.  Opt-in lists are better because they are generally qualified buyers; people who have agreed to join your list because they are interested in your product or a similar product.
6. Use email addresses mined from Twitter, Facebook, blogs.  (You are doing those things – uh, right?

Speaking of Newsletters: When done well, they are an excellent way of getting your message across to new customers and retaining/reactivating old ones.  You can use your newsletters to launch new products, for upsells/reselling, strengthen your brand.  Newsletters can be used for special announcements and for general PR.

There are special programs out there that will help you with your newsletter campaigns, newsletter design, mailing, etc.  Once again, you can usually go to your web hosts for assistance, or go the DIY route – though as your newsletter audience grows in size the self-mailing approach can become unwieldy – fast.  Also, using outside services gives you access to valuable web analytics.

Content: There’s not much to say, other than it should be fabulous. If you’re not going to put the effort into creating a great newsletter don’t bother.  You may be able to get readers to open it once, but they won’t again unless it has content that’s relevant or interesting.  You don’t have to have a newsletter centered wholly on your company.  Matter of fact, it’s probably better if you don’t.  Instead write on a topic relevant to your industry; then hit them with a softer sell.   Some companies strictly do information and humor/entertainment content, without any product to sell.  They instead rely on advertising and affiliate money.

Whatever you do, make sure it’s worth your readers’ attention, otherwise next time they may hit “delete” instead of “open”.

Test Your Product: You test your products and services, why wouldn’t you test your emails?  Do A/B testing by sending one version of your email to one group; another version to another to see what works best. You can also try delivering your email on different days to see on which days your emails get opened up more.  Again having some type of web analytics service will help you measure these results.

Using Tech To Grow Your Business

You’ve been running your business the same way for years. Sales are stagnant.  Leads are drying up. Feeling stuck? Here are some easy steps you can take to get technology on your side.

Using Content to Generate Leads: Why pay money for lead lists when you can generate your own for free? Run a gardening site? How about posting a “12 Ways to Make Your Red Peppers Pop” article? Have a home improvement site, then “The 5 Things You Should (But Don’t) Know About Home Repair” will fit right in. Regularly offering FREE content such as short articles, white papers, case studies, even contests, giveaways and surveys are an inexpensive way business owners can generate leads. Make sure to use the appropriate keywords for your website SEO. People interested in your content will gladly input business/personal contact information in your order form, so make sure you design it to collect all the demographic data you need. Then sit back and watch the leads roll in.

Company Blog: It’s fast, simple, and sometimes even fun. Keep customers and prospects engaged by posting general information, humorous or entertainment content, company event, etc. Some businesses use their blog as their primary website,by adding e-Commerce tools. Many use it as an add-on to their regular,providing valuable consumer information and content.

Some website providers such as BlueSpot Web will provide blog content in addition to their other services. Others simply provide templates and the user does there rest.  And of course, there are a variety of web-based sites you can go to that provide free or inexpensive templates. Regardless of which method you use, blogging is a highly effective, inexpensive way to provide additional customer value.

Social Networking: We’ve already discussed blogging, now the rest of the social arena: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and more. Many sites cater to their own unique audience, providing businesses with an opportunity to reach various market segments. Research and figure out which sites are best for your needs and get social!

E-commerce Tools: Revamping your bare bones website to handle e-commerce is easier than ever. Your website can be transformed to offer shopping carts, provide real-time online customer service, process and accept credit card/ACH and more.  Web providers such as BlueSpot Web will set this up for you as part of your web package or you can use a variety of other services and providers.

Affiliate Marketing: Another way to use tech to grow your business is through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing lets you make money simply by providing links from your site to others. Have an arts and crafts business, how about providing links to booksellers like Amazon that offer books on the topic? There are a variety of affiliate programs out there so shop carefully to find the ones that work best for your business.

Using Webinars to Drive Viewers to Your Website

Webinars are a cost-efficient way to distribute valuable information to customers and prospects without ever leaving the boardroom.  It’s also a great way to promote your business and set-up your executives/moderators as experts in your field.  For many, webinars initially were seen as a way to save money – saving set-up, travel and other costs associated with speaking engagements.  But over the years, webinars have been embraced as a powerful marketing tool.  Whether you decide to pre-tape or have a live event, here are some key tips to producing an effective webinar.

Start with a Compelling Topic: Webinars are now so ubiquitous; you really have to have a great topic or speaker to stand out.  Don’t do a webinar just for the sake of having an event.  You’ll quickly alienate viewers if you put on webinars that are poorly executed or lack useful information.  Think carefully about the topics you plan to speak on and how they relate to your customers.  You might even consider doing a series of webinars, all connected around a common topic to keep viewers coming back for more.

Equipment: Use high quality video and audio equipment.  That doesn’t necessary mean you have to buy new equipment.  Before buying anything new, test the equipment that you have – if you haven’t done webinars in the past.  Do practice runs of your webinar using your current equipment, recording the results to ensure you have the technical quality that you need.  Most current business systems should offer the audio and visual quality that you need.

Registration: Send out invites and require that participants sign up to view your webinar.  Not only is this a great way to capture new names for your mailing list, it is essential to know how many guests will be viewing to determine if your website has the necessary bandwidth.  You can always post a copy of your webinar online later for open viewing, perhaps a month or two (or longer) after the event.

Practice: Even if your equipment is great, you should still practice, practice,practice.  Not only to get your delivery right but to correct any timing problems you may run into.  Also,this gives you ample opportunity to determine how any visual tools you’ll be using, such as PowerPoint presentations, will look on the screen.

Software: There’s now a choice of several software programs available, as well as third-party web services such as GoToMeeting.com to create your webinar.

Interactive: Consider whether you want to have a question and answer period during or after your presentation.  If you decide to do a Q & A session, make sure you set a time limit and calculate this into your running time. 

Top Tech and Social Media Headlines of the Week – Feb 3. 2011

Google took the wraps off Android 3.0 Honeycomb today. The new Google mobile operating system shows off a redesigned interface for tablets, high-performance graphics, and web access to the Android Market. The new system is expected to heat up the competition in the tablet market. The tablet redesign clearly takes advantage of the added screen space. Android 3.0 is designed for both tablets and smart phones. A slew of Android tablets are expected to hit store shelves this year, and Google is expected to talk a lot about how devices running Google’s new mobile OS can take on the iPad.

Facebook launched a new ad unit called “Sponsored Stories” that turns Page updates, as well as Places checkins, Likes, and application activity by users into advertisements. Sponsored Stories will initially be available through Facebook’s managed brand advertising services for display on the home page and profile, and in the coming weeks it will become part of the self-serve performance advertising tool for display across the site. Sponsored Stories will allow advertisers to augment viral buzz by giving greater distribution and visibility to posts that endorse their organization or business. Facebook has been testing the ad unit for a few months and says it has resulted in brand lift and increased engagement, ad recall, and likeliness to be recommended to friends for the organizations that tried it.

When the government in Egypt took away people’s ability to access the Internet, Google and Twitter joined forces to ensure they still had a way to get online. In light of the Egyptian government shutting down first Twitter and then the entire Internet within the country, Google and Twitter developed a speak-to-tweet service. Announced on the Official Google Blog Monday, this new technology will allow anyone to access tweets with just a voice connection – which many Egyptians still have. Rising to the occasion, this new technology was created by engineers at Twitter, Google and Google’s recently acquired SpeakNow over a weekend.

Web Design – The Art of Color

Because you want your website to make a great first impression, it is best to plan the colors that your site will be using. This is not only for a visual but it is the most significant design property. The colors used appeal to the subconscious mind as well as create different moods.

Not only is the color scheme for the background of your website important but the colors in the pictures you include in your website are crucial as well. More often then not some websites choose to use one or two colors but with different variations to offer a visually appealing website that does not hurt the eyes.

That being said, using smaller amounts of this type of color harmonization can also draw attention to different areas that you want your website to draw eyes to. The easiest thing to do is to choose some flexibility within your color scheme.

Another useful tip is to make sure that the colors you are selecting for your website match or harmonize with the background image. If you have too many contrasting colors, however, the overall design will become uncomfortable and you therefore do not want to overpower your website with too many colors that are all over the place.

By selecting colors that will flow you will be creating a harmony in your website that will be visually appealing to the eyes and will draw in more views.

Competitors could be luring away your customers. Here’s how.

The days of the phone book are behind us. Today, 86% of consumers use the Internet to find local businesses. As consumer behavior evolves in regard to how they are finding the goods and services they desire to purchase, the Internet is evolving right along with them. One of the most recent evolutions that you should pay close attention to is Google Places. Reality is, if you do not claim your page, someone else just might.

Now when a consumer searches for your business online using Google, one of the first things they see is a map showing the Google Places page for your business. If you haven’t claimed your Google Places listing, a competitor could be using your page to lure business away from you. How does this happen? When a local competitor has a similar name and location, it’s possible for them to claim your business listing and direct all web traffic from this free Google tool to their website, and ultimately to their business. This is the equivalent of running an ad in the Yellow Pages promoting your business with their phone number on it (back when phone books were still being used for for what they were intended, of course).

Although it isn’t likely that a competitor will claim your Google Places page, it is entirely possible. If a competitor claims your listing, they can link it to their website. The lesson here is to make sure that you claim your Google Places listing as well as all of your profiles on other local online directories. Not only does this allow you to make sure no one is luring customers away from your business, but it also gives you the opportunity to share information like hours of operation, photos, videos, and more with consumers who are searching for your business online.

Remember that you should think of your web presence as a network of web properties that link to and utilize your website as the hub. Your local profiles including your Google Places page are an important part of this network for your business. For more information on this topic, please email us.

Top Tech and Social Media Headlines of the Week – Nov. 11, 2010

Ask.com gives up on search business: The well-known and once dominant search engine, Ask.com, announced Tuesday that it had decided to end its fight in the search business. It was fourth in market share in the U.S. behind Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Google to provide free Internet this holiday season on AirTran, Delta and Virgin America: Between Nov. 20 and Jan. 2, passengers will receive free Wi-Fi on their domestic flights. This is the second year in a row that Google has teamed up with airlines to provide free Internet over the holidays.

Twitter claimed its HQ on Twitter Places: Although Twitter Places was announced months ago, the social media company “claimed” its office this week, causing a stir on the Internet. No one else is able to claim places, but it’s almost a sure thing that businesses will be able to claim places in the future.