Does Your Internet or Email Advertising Work for You? Are You Sure?

In my practice I work with several professional speakers. A great group of people and fun to work with. There is a website and weekly ezine publication from SpeakerNet News that has been successful in serving the speaking world by offering a forum for speaker provided tips, tricks, hints and advice on everything from how to get the best deals on travel (which they do a lot of) to how to successfully negotiate more full-fee speaking engagements (everybody always wants a deal).

SpeakerNet News goes out every Friday to over 6,000 subscribers and is an advertiser supported ezine. Based on their published ad rates and the number of ads in each issue, I'd say they were doing pretty well for themselves. In looking over the ads themselves, I wonder if the speakers and speaker focused vendors who buy those ads can say the same...

Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that SNN is an effective channel for carrying a vendor's message to this market. What I do doubt is whether most of the advertisers have any more than a vague idea of whether this or any other advertising channel they use is effective or not. What's missing? Of the 11 ads listed I counted only 3 that provided links to pages other than their home page and of the 3 only one was clearly a landing page tied to that particular ad.

What's a landing page, you ask? Dr. Ralph Wilson - a leading Internet marketing expert - defines it as follows:

A landing page is a specific webpage, intended for shoppers who click-through on a particular ad, designed to lead them to complete the transaction.

Simply put, when you place an ad that links back to your web site you should always create a special purpose page to drive people to that's outside your regular website navigation scheme. For example, I decide to advertise my widgets in World Widget News' monthly ezine. In my ad I don't direct prospects to www.tomswidgets.com but rather I build a page that takes them to a link called www.tomswidgets.com/wwn. This way 2 things happen. I can look at my stats package (ask your web host or web master if you don't know how to access this) to find out how many visitors that page got. That way I know how many readers of WWN's ezine were interested enough in my ad to click through to my landing page. It gives me a basic indication of the effectiveness of that publication for delivering leads.

If I go further and create a special offer (or have the right kind of web metrics tracking package in place) keyed to this audience and available only through this page, then I can also track the conversion rate for this ad. E.g., 100 people clicked-through to my WNN landing page and 5 people bought my special offer so I calculate I had a 5% (5/100) conversion rate. This kind of information allows me to judge whether my offer was compelling or not. What happens if I had 500 clicks and no purchases. Either my offer sucked or I had a great ad that delivered the wrong type of traffic. In either case, I now have the information I need to begin making better decisions about where I advertise and what I advertise.

Why search for advertising gold blindly when with a little extra effort you can buy a treasure map!

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

The Words You Use - Speak Your Customer's Language, Not Your Own

Have you ever been in a foreign country and tried to buy something from a clerk who didn't speak your language? It wasn't easy, was it? Particularly if it was a more complex sell; something more than pointing to a piece of Apfelstrüdel (Apple Strudel)in a Patisserie (bakery) with one hand while holding out a handful of Euros in your other. Frustrating, wasn't it.

Why? Because without the seller possessing a knowledge of your language, or you theirs, you can't easily transact. Yet this is what we do all of the time when we communicate with our customers whether via our web site, our email communications or our printed product descriptions.

We try to establish our expertise by using all of those highly specialized words that only professionals in our industry know how to bandy about when all the customer really wants is for you to speak in his or her language about how your product can fill their need -- in language they understand.

The Internet adds another level of confusion to this equation for miscommunication. You see not only do you run the risk of confusing people when they visit your site but we run the risk that they won't even be able to find your site because they use their language to try to find you, not yours. The problem can be made even worse when, in the interest of creating competitive separation, you come up with our own terms.

I have a client who's done this and he's coined a great term to describe his customer's target audience. That's right, not his audience but his customer's audience. The problem, of course, is that while it's a clever term and, when they hear it, his customers get it, the fact is not one of his customers or prospects would ever think to use that term to find him. Why? Well they only learn the term once they've already found him. So any effort or outlay he's invested to publicize this term won't pay any dividends - at least in attracting the people who need his services.

What do you do? Learn your customer's language and translate your industry-speak into customer-speak. Believe me they'll be way more impressed with what you know then by any wad of $10 dollar (Euro) words you shake under their nose.

Oh and if you think this doesn't apply to you because you're a technical guy selling to a technical audience and, gee, you both speak the same language. Consider, who's writing the check. Is it technical guy or is it executive guy who needs to understand what a frapperjappit does and why it costs so much? You might help your and tech guy's cause a whole lot by providing the technical jargon that he relates too and a translation that will help him to convince exec guy that yours is the right solution.

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Writing for the Web; Internet Users Don't Read, They Scan

I was recently reminded of a study that Jakob Nielsen published several years ago on how browsers view web pages. Nielsen, long considered to be the leading guru of web usability, found that only 16% of visitors read a page word-for-word while 79% only scan the content.

What are the implications for your site? If you want to make it relevant to your visitors you should make it scannable through the effective use of:

• Meaningful Headings & Sub-headings(not cute or clever ones)
• Highlighted keywords (these can include hypertext links, bolding, italics or color variations)
• Bulleted or numbered lists
• A single idea per paragraph
• An inverted pyramid style that starts with the conclusion first
• 50% of the words that you would use in a similar paper document
  excerpted from How Users Read on the Web by Jakob Nielsen
  

Keep in mind that reading from a computer monitor is 25% slower than reading from a paper document and that visitors are often more task oriented and deadline driven (at least for business use) when accessing the web.

So use less, say more and you must not only understand the objectives of your web visitors but honor those objectives as well.

Thanks for reading...

Oh yeah, here's a great Free resource provided by Sun Microsystems and based on Mr. Nielsen's work.

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Browser Wars II: Firefox vs. IE

I'll admit it. I'm a huge Firefox fan. Me and about 100,000,000 other downloaders of this browser built the way a browser should be built. The small footprint, ease of use, tabbed browsing and incredibly customizable functionality via extensions and the like are just a few of the compelling reasons to make the switch.

And even if you don't switch, make sure your site is Firefox compliant which only means that it is built to existing and accepted web (not Microsoft) standards. Why? Because according to MarketingSherpa, up to 35% of your site visitors might just be Firefox users - the younger and edgier your demographics, the more likely they'll be Firefox devotees. MarketingSherpa reports that 20% of their traffic is using Firefox while another leading internet guru, Armand Morin, reports that over 17% of his traffic is arriving via the tabbed interface of the Fox.

Don't risk alienating or driving away 10 - 30% of your visitor (and potential customer) base because your site shows poorly in Firefox. How poorly you ask? Well here's a full size screen capture of the site of one of our vendors, captured from the latest version of Firefox...

Viewed in Firefox 1.5 at 1280x800 pixels resolution.

That's right! The incredibly shrinking site... Shows fine in IE. Becomes Lilliputian in Firefox. Don't let this happen to your site. Check it out today and pay particular attention to your forms, flash and navigational functionality then have your web guy make the necessary adjustments to show well in all popular browsers but particularly Microsoft's Internet Explorer (the 500 lb. gorilla) and the nimble, up & coming Firefox (becoming firmly entrenched at #2 with a bullet!). After all that 10-30% might be the ones ready to do business with you today ... except they can't.

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Where to Spend Your Search Dollars? Paid or Organic?

According to a study released last fall by search marketing authority, iProspect, investing in organic, or natural, search may be the most prudent use of your search marketing dollars. By a better than 3 to 1 margin marketers surveyed stated that organic search optimization led to a higher ROI than did paid search (e.g., pay-per-click ads on Yahoo! and Google). Be aware that these were marketers who participated in both paid & organic search optimization efforts and were able to track the results from both efforts. In point of fact, iProspect's study determined that half of all marketers can't tell which effort produces the better results.

An interesting bit of related research muddies the organic vs. paid search debate even further... Among the findings of Pew Internet and American Life they discovered that almost two-thirds of Internet users who have used search engines are unaware that sites have paid and unpaid results. I presume that these people clicked on whatever listing, paid search or organic results, that appealed to them most.

What should you do? My advice...do both. But as your efforts from organic search optimization begin to bear fruit, back off your paid search investment and position it more as a strategy to implement when introducing new products or services or researching the pulling power of new key words and phrases. Whatever you do, track your results. Without measurement you'll have little clue as to what works and what doesn't so take the time to put a basic tracking strategy in place. You'll be glad you did.

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

When Should You Launch Your Email Newsletter or Campaign?

EmailLabs reports that 51% of marketing-oriented email is sent between 8am and noon. More email is sent Tuesday but Wednesday earns the highest open rates, averaging close to 23%. Why? Probably because subscribers are catching up.

What's this mean to your email campaigns? It gives you a place to start. Try testing different days and times for your communications and see if there is a significant difference based on when you send. Do a simple test where, for example, you mail half your list on Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. and the other half, Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. Track the results and, if meaningful, make changes to your launch schedule.

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com