Content on Your Website is King – Even the Spiders Say So…
Even spiders know that a great looking web site without content is like a spider web without flies.
*from Laugh Parade by Bunny Hoest and John Reiner
Remember the Rule of 7s to Increase Sales and Customer Retention
Sat in on a late night infomercial, er…, webinar from the folks at Infusion CRM. The one nugget I took away from the hour was the Rule of 7s. Most of this stuff is old hat but for many of us we’re still wearing that hat so it bears repeating:
- On average you have to contact a prospect 7 times before they make a purchase. (I’ve seen other statistics that range from 8-11 contacts or impressions).
- 7 out of 10 qualified prospects will not buy from you due to inadequate follow up. (In the case of Trade Show attendees it’s more like 8 out 10 with 20% of tradeshow attendees reporting recieving any follow-up.)
- 7 out of 10 Customers will not buy from you a 2nd time due to poor follow up. (And yet acquiring a new customer can cost 6 to 7 times more than retaining an existing customer.)
Lessons learned from the Rule of 7s?
- Follow-up diligently and frequently with every prospect
- Lavish TLC on your existing customers to make them repeat customers.
And the Winner of the Award for Irony in Web Design Awards Goes to…
Smashing Magazine for naming North x East #26 on their list of Elegant and Visually Appealing Web Designs.
It’s actually a pretty good list so appreciate the irony and the great web designs!
What Tactics Do Online Marketers Use to Market?
May 23rd, 2007 | Comments | Posted in Building Traffic, Email Marketing, Ezines, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Viral Marketing
Online marketers use email marketing more than any other tactic with close to 73% favoring this medium. It’s no surprise that email newsletters (ezines) are the second most popular tactic at 61%. (What’s your most effective online marketing tactic? Vote below…)
Other tactics listed include
- Banner Ads
- Blogs
- Online Promotions
- Social Networking Web site promotions
- SEO
- Viral campaigns
- Podcasts
- etc…
You can see all the online marketing tactics cited and their relative popularity at eMarketer.com.
For those who answer ‘Other’ I invite you to leave a comment about what online marketing tactic you find most effective and, optionally, why. Thanks.
Now Playing at Google Search Results – You
Or you could be if you have your video posted at YouTube.com or affiliated sites and somebody does a search on you or what you offer – product & service-wise.
According to an article in the May 17, 2007 edition of The Denver Post:
…In its latest technological leap, online search leader Google Inc. will begin showing videos on its main results page along with photos, books and other content previously separated into different categories.
Under a new “universal search” approach that Google began rolling out Wednesday afternoon, some requests will produce more than just a series of links and snippets pointing to other websites…
If you’ve been using Google over the last few days you’ve probably already noticed the inclusion of video in search results. Using the example cited in the Post’s story, this is what it looks like:
The upshot … if you have video of yourself or your products that you’d like to show up in Google search then load them to YouTube.com and be sure that they’re tagged with the key words and phrases that you’d like them to appear under. Imagine, search on “Slicer and Dicer” and you may very well get Ron Popeil demonstrating his famous Dial-O-Matic Food Slicer.
If you don’t have video then grab the mini-cam and get shooting. Keep it short and sweet and use humor where you can. People respond to humor and will pass it on to their peer system. So, ready? Okay! Lights … Camera … ACTION!
Frequent Travelers Might Hafta Yapta
Here’s a new service that is sure to appeal to budget and/or frequent travelers. If you’re planning a trip or multiple trips and want to get the best price go to http://www.yapta.com. Enter the trips you want to track and it’s supposed to continually inform you of prices as they’re updated by the airlines. You book the trip once the price has hit a point that’s attractive to you.
They also claim to be able to get you refunds or travel vouchers for trips you’ve already booked where the price has dropped since you purchased the ticket. If you’re planning personal travel or book your engagements as ‘all-inclusive’ this might be a site for you.
I’m filing this post under viral marketing cuz that’s what Yapta will go — viral — if it meets it’s claims.
Close the Loop, Link Your Offline Marketing Efforts with Online Fulfillment
Summer time and I love to barbecue but I gotta tell you, it doesn’t necessarily come natural to me. I’m always freaked that I’ll over or under cook whatever it is that I’ve got on the grill and I’m always pleasantly surprised when something edible results.
That’s why when I was listening to the radio this morning my ears perked up when I heard a guy talking about how to grill the perfect hamburger. As it turns out it was an ad for Weber Grills that ended with an invitation to go to their web site for even more recipes and, hey, while I’m there, I should tune into some of the testimonials from satisfied customers.
Did I go to their site? You bet! This is called ‘closing the loop‘. It’s when you tie a piece of offline marketing to an online fulfillment mechanism allowing you to track with a great degree of accuracy the outcome of that marketing effort. Its ROI. It’s the same approach infomercials use when they flash an 800 number on screen and exhort you to call now … except without the pesky sales pitch.
What’s great about this approach is that it works on multiple levels. Even if I didn’t go to their site, I was still captured by the ad because it was giving me something of value and interest to me. It then went on to entice me to take further action – go to their website – with an offer of further value. It would be kind of like a TV commercial doing such a great job of promoting a product that you agree to watch another commercial (Oh yeah, that’s what Apple’s doing with their current TV campaign). It’s a beautiful thing. Finally, by tying a hard to measure marketing medium – the radio ad – to an easy to measure marketing medium – a website – Weber is able to better quantify the impact of their marketing. And, after all, don’t most of us wonder if we’re just pumping our promotional dollars into a bottomless pit?
The only thing Weber didn’t do right, in my opinion, was tie their radio promotion to a campaign specific landing page. If they’d done this they’d have injected an even greater level of granularity to their campaign results. On the recipe page though they do another thing right … offering a recipe of the week email newsletter. Again, they’re capturing prospects with value enabling them to continue to expose them to their message – Buy a Weber Grill – in a way that prospects welcome rather than run from.
Think about your business. How can you ‘close the loop’ in your marketing and advertising campaigns. When you do, remember, “Value begets Value.”
Don’t Overlook the Obvious When Designing Your Websites (Or Boneheaded Design Mistake #424)
Just a quick rant to be filed under the heading, “Stupid Web Tricks”…
So I find a WordPress theme that I kind of like but it doesn’t implement correctly and I click over to the designer’s site to see if I can get some help. Heck, I’m even willing to pay for the help. I mean, I am potentially a customer!
BUT
Even though they represent themselves as professional web designers – which I presume means they’re available for hire – they don’t have a contact page, there’s not a phone number, email address, physical address or contact form … in fact the only way to contact them is by leaving a comment on one of their blog posts!!!
Maybe that’s how they qualify prospects … make ‘em work for it. Frankly, I think they’re violating Web Law #1 – and the Law of Business in general…
Make it easy for someone who wants to do business with you to actually do business with you!
50% x :30 Can Spell Missed Opportunity on Your Home Page
Quoted in an article on “How to Make Your Web Site Sing” in the New York Times, Jakob Nielsen described the fickle nature of web visitors. According to studies conducted …
… by Mr. Nielsen’s company, the Nielsen Norman Group, an Internet design firm in Fremont, Calif., show that only 50 percent of Web visitors scroll down the screen to see what lies below the visible part on their PC monitor.
In addition, Nielsen maintains that you have 30 seconds to make an impression because that’s how long a visitor spends reviewing the typical home page.
In my view, they’ll give you that much time if you make a good first impression. You probably have less than 10 seconds to make that impression and another 20 or so to compel them to take action – other than hit the back button, that is!
My advice? If it’s essential content, keep it ‘above the fold’ and make sure to give your website visitors the best first impression you can. Let ‘em know where they are, what you do and what to do next with enough ‘why to do it’ thrown in to compel them to action.
Integrate Your Blog Into Your Website for the Most Search Engine Juice
May 21st, 2007 | Comments | Posted in Blogging, Building Traffic, Developing Content, Search Engine Optimization
Search engines love content yet some of the best content that you, as a blogger, are generating may not be benefiting your primary website. I’m talking to all of you bloggers who have hosted (ex. yourblog.wordpress.com; yourblog.blogspot.com) as opposed to self-hosted blogs (www.yoursite.com/blog). Sure, you might have a link to your blog from your primary site but, as I’ve often seen, your blog may not present a well-integrated path back to your main website. This, I believe, is a mistake. Your elsewhere-hosted site may be generating thousands of visits but those visitors may be missing all of the other good stuff that’s available at your main site.
I can easily illustrate this with my own site… Of the thousands of visits I receive a month, over 80% of these enter through my blog posts. A significant number of these visitors make their way to my other, non-blog content pages – if I had my blog hosted elsewhere I’d be losing all of that search engine juice.
I can’t tell you how many businesses I run into with perfectly good websites who drive people away from their site to their elsewhere hosted blog – or never drive people to that site if the visit originates at the blog.
So move your blog home and put out the welcome mat for the new visitors you’re sure to reach.
(PS – be sure to leave a note at the old blog telling your old visitors where to find you and include links to your new feeds for those who subscribe via RSS or email. In fact, generate several posts to that effect over a few week span after you move to insure you minimize subscriber loss.)
