The Evolving Internet Marketer

Podcast at Your Peril

You know the old entertainment saying/joke? The one that describes a person has “having a great voice but a face for radio.” The implication is while their voice is show biz quality their looks leave something to be desired.

Well, sometimes that’s the case in podcasting too. Except my twist is, “he has a voice for print.” In other words, his content his brilliant but his audio delivery is sleep inducing at best, painful at worst.

This became ‘painfully’ apparent to me while listening to a audio intro to a new information product offered by an internet copywriting guru. I won’t mention his name because he’s a pretty brilliant guy and I’ve been following his e-newsletter for years.

However, he’s now using Free IQ – which bills itself as The Marketplace for Ideas – to promote his products. Free IQ gives you a place to post an introduction to your product and a media window where you can deliver video or audio content with the capability to sell that or other content from that page. It’s actually a pretty cool idea for all of us infopreneurs. You can sell content, give it away or do both. They host and distribute your free content for free but if you sell it, hosting is free but FreeIQ takes 5% (and CC processing fees) of the selling price.

Anyway, my copywriting guru is using this to sell eReports. Unfortunately, he’s using the audio component to pitch his product and listening to him is actually so painful that I haven’t been able to make it all the way through. I click away.

My point is, if you’re into podcasting or vidcasting, practice. Practice your delivery, your inflection, your breathing, your pacing, your enthusiasm – all of those things that positively or negatively impact your listener or viewer. Don’t just drone into the microphone in your less than Paul Harveyesque voice. Subconsciously or consciously I’m equating the quality of your audio delivery with the quality of your content so when your voice or video delivery drives me away, it’s driving me away from your opportunity to capture me as a customer.

Like the other old joke goes, “Q. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? A. Practice, practice, practice!”

Sell Your Info Products Through FreeIQ

If you have info products you’d like to give away or sell – anything from eBooks to online courses to video and audio – you might want to consider FreeIQ.com (full disclosure: I signed up as an affiliate so this is my affiliate link). They’ll host, stream and distribute your free content for free and they make their money by charging 5% of the sales price (plus credit card processing fees) for the content you sell. They also have a ranking system in place that gives content better positioning depending upon the popularity of that content.

If you’re an infopreneur this may be the place for you to get broader exposure of your ideas and expertise and maybe make a few bucks to boot.

It’s an interesting concept and one you might want to explore. Once on the site, be sure and click on the Learn More link for a thorough explanation of their concept.

What’s the Best Way to Increase Traffic to Your Blog?

Comment on other people’s blogs. Comment at their blog and reference their post using trackbacks on your own blog. (What’s a trackback? Well, according to Wikipedia a track back is a…)

I couldn’t figure out where a recent (enormous) spike in my site’s traffic came from until I looked at my Referrers log. There it was, a ton of referrals from a site I’d made casual mention of in another post. In fact this site wasn’t even the subject of the post but was referenced in support of my main point.

As it happens, the site picked up the trackback and listed my post by title under their “Links to this Post” section. The fact that this site gets many times the traffic of mine coupled with a relatively compelling subject line continues to have a positive residual effect on my site’s traffic.

In other words, not only did I get a spike that day but I continue to get smaller, ‘echo’ spikes, as a result of my original post. And guess what, some of that traffic is sticking…

So look around and see who’s relevant in your space and start exploring how you might expand the dialogue in a way that benefits them as well as you. That’s the spirit of blogging after all.

Guidelines for Effective Blog Commenting

• Be sincere and have something relevant to say. Don’t just comment to create traffic. Comment to further the dialogue. Otherwise you’re just so much comment spam.
• Be specific. If you’re commenting on a fellow bloggers post at their site then write to the topic of the original post don’t just use it as a springboard to launch into your own stuff. If you’re using a trackback to reference their post in yours, make sure that their post is relevant and appropriate to yours. Don’t just throw it in there in the hopes of generating traffic back to your site. This is akin to the keyword stuffing that made keyword tags irrelevant in web development.
• Be polite. Don’t be a jerk – you can disagree with people without resorting to rudeness or invective and your chances of getting noted and responded to increase exponentially as well.

Quick Tutorial on Using Trackbacks

Remember, I’m not an expert, I just play one on the internet so the real gurus may have a better explanation but what I do to create a trackback is simple, I…

…click on the post’s title to make sure that its URL (the permanent link to that specific post) is the one listed in my browser’s address bar (otherwise you may create a link not to a specific post but to the main index page of the blog). Then I…

…copy and paste the URL from the address bar into my blog. Voilà, instant trackback created. Then generally…

…this sends a ‘ping’ (notification) back to the originating blog notifying them that I’ve referenced their post on my site. And some sites, like the one I trackedback, publish these links and the posts they originated in … it’s a big, beautiful circle of blogging life!

And You Thought Airline Pricing was Confusing … Dell Wins the Pricing Prize

Wow! I always knew that you could get different prices for the same or similar configurations at Dell – depending on what part of their site you went in through but this is ridiculous – and fascinating. Read the confessions of a former Dell Sales Manager for insight into the Machiavellian machinations of Dells pricing machine. What I find really interesting is that the route you take, Small Business vs. Home Buyer, makes a difference in whether you get on or off-shore sales and service support. Makes sense since you can generally get a Home machine for a few dollars less and they support the lower price by offering lower cost (to Dell) support.

The question I have is, in the long term, does the increased frustration, anger and buyer dissatisfaction outweigh the few bucks saved in off-shore support?

Who’s Watching Your Podcasts?

The podcast audience is…

• Typically male.
• Typically younger - although half of podcast viewers fall in the 34-54 age range
• Typically well-to-do – 77% have household incomes exceeding $50,000 and 31% report incomes over $100,000.
• Typically well-educated with 47% having a college or graduate degree and another 28% with some college or an associates degree
• Typically internet savvy with those who’ve been online longest more likely to have downloaded a podcast.

Where are They Finding Your Podcasts?

75% of all podcast downloads are through iTunes.

But How Big, Really, is the Market AND are They Worth Pursuing?

As of last August (2006), podcast listeners still accounted for well under 20% of the overall internet audience but one perhaps well worth engaging because, as eMarketer’s James Belcher states:

One of the medium’s strengths is that regular followers are hugely interested in the topic of a given podcast, be it comics or cash management, allowing for a deeper host-listener (and therefore brand) relationship than is possible with a general audience — or a composite picture of one.

So yeah, if a young, affluent, educated and savvy audience is your thing, then maybe you should think about adding podcasting to your mix of communication offerings.

References:
This post was based on information reported by eMarketer who cite a May 2007 news release from comScore and a report on podcasting compiled by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

How NOT to Use Testimonials in Your Marketing Campaign

I was recently emailed an offer to sign up for an expensive ($1,000; 3 month time investment) info product creation program – I won’t mention the name because I have it on good authority that it’s actually a pretty good program.

However, the sloppiness they display in promoting the program, in particular their use of testimonials, left me wondering about the quality and value of the program itself and ultimately dissuaded me from signing up.

Now I know that most people just accept the Wizard at face value and don’t look behind the curtain but I do – it’s my anal side. I noticed that all of the testimonials listed on their long-copy sales letter-type website had URLs listed so instead of reading the testimonials or listening to the audio version, I went instead to the endorser’s web site to see what kind of products they were promoting and get a sense of the success of these folks.

I was a little disturbed to find that…

• One site hadn’t been updated in a couple of years and provided a link to several blog format sites, which hadn’t been updated in from months to years. No products that I could discern amongst the cobwebs.
• The next testimonialist’s site was offering enrollment in several teleclasses. Unfortunately you’d need the old time machine to attend as the most recent session was held last Fall (2006) although you can still register through their online store hookup.In investigating further, I was even less impressed with these…
• A coaching site had a link to a testimonials page that was misleading at best as it offered public domain type quotes supporting coaching in general but with no connection to the services offered by that site’s owner. Odd because their ‘About’ page states, “Hundreds of [company name] clients have learned to succeed even in the most turbulent times.” Don’t mean to be catty but don’t you think a few of the hundreds might be satisfied enough to endorse the services they received? The site itself was pretty polished with pretty good content …
• Another offered his book as “recently published” but an Amazon search revealed a publication date of 2000. He also listed several personal testimonials; none with attribution, not even of the ‘Jed C. in Beverly Hills’ type. No other products and the site looked a bit down-in-the-mouth.
• Ironically, the next endorser listed their upcoming “The Product Factory” inspired course as coming in 2006 so it’s a little overdue, I’d say. Oh, and the ‘free’ product they had for immediate download linked to an expired page.
• The last Testimonial site I looked at did a hard sell for enrolling in their self-improvement program but when I went to enroll, I received an account not found error. Double Yikes!

Even when I looked outside the testimonial sites by googling the program’s name I found sloppiness. One of the top ranking affiliate sites was promoting the program under different terms and with a different price than the master site even though when you click to enroll you get taken to the master site – with its different price and terms. Hmmm.  Maybe the price and conditions changed and the program creators neglected to get the word out or the affiliate was negligent but it’s still sloppy.

While the program may be 1st class and the participants raving fans – even those who don’t “…explode their business…” as its creators claim – why would I invest my time and money in a program that I don’t trust. And I don’t trust them based upon information that they supplied me. It’s like calling a reference for a roofing contractor who tells me that “apart from the leaks, the roof is just fine.” How dumb is that? I have means, I have motivation, I control my schedule, I know lots of people who traffic in information (i.e., I’m a potential referral source) – I’m a perfect prospect but like my Daddy always said, “I was born at night, but not last night!”

So the good word I received from the person who invited me (and a 2 time program participant) was crushed under the ‘testimonials’ provided by the program creators themselves. Ironic, isn’t it.

Here’s the marketing 101 lesson for you:

I learned long ago in Job Hunting 101 to call my references and ask them what they’re going to say about me before I hand them out to Mr. Potential Employer. Same goes here, just because you got a good testimonial in the rosy afterglow of a successful event, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t recheck that testimonial before recycling it for your next round of promotion.

I checked six of the eight testimonial providers sites and all six gave me reasons from minor to major to not spend my money or my time.

Not everyone looks behind the curtain, but when they look behind yours, make sure that the Wizard hasn’t, like Elvis, left the building.

Email Marketing: First Impressions are Everything

Does your email have great graphics, great content and great offers but nobody’s opening it? Maybe it’s because you’re making a lousy first impression.

Here’s some statistics (if I could have done the math, I’d have been a statistician):

49% of all respondents to a MarketingSherpa survey report using preview panes. The little window at the bottom or side of your email software that gives you a sliver of a view of an email’s content.

85% of Business to Business email users use preview (also known as reading) panes.

Why does this matter and how does it effect your email campaigns?

Here are a few graphics to illustrate (I would have been an artist except I can’t draw):

The Bad Preview Pane Example…

As you can see, the preview pane (2) shows no content because the email was constructed with all images and no text and, as with many email clients, images are turned off by default (1). At a minimum they should have used the alt image tag to describe the image content.

The only thing that potentially saves this email is that its subject line, “Do You Know What Great Managers Do” (3) is fairly strong. But if I’m visual and making decisions based on initial look I may decide that clicking the Show Images button is too much trouble particularly when my inbox is full as above. Knowing that this email described a Harvard sponsored seminar from management guru Marcus Buckingham might have positively influenced my open decision but this information is not available because it’s delivered graphically.

The Good Preview Pane Example…

The Mequoda Daily, on the other hand, does almost everything right…

Images are off (2) but the content of the email is clearly described in the preview pane friendly text box (1) that leads their message. Combined with a compelling subject line (3), I have all the information I need to make a positive open decision.

The final image shows what you see with the images on. The descriptive text remains constant and you have a glimpse of what appears to be an attractive title graphic heading the main body content. But the point is this:

1. An attractive graphical layout to your email communications only works if it’s seen and
2. To be seen it has to be opened and being opened is primarily a function of
3. A strong subject line coupled with decisionable information in the 1.5 inches typically allowed for the preview pane. This is particularly important with Business to Business messages where the recipients curiosity is tempered by an often overwhelming volume of email and the desire to actually get productive work done. The preview pane – at 85% usage with this audience – appears to be a key filtering device for making open or delete decisions.

So do yourself a favor, check out how your emails look with images off in the preview pane and examine the strength of your subject lines while you’re at it.

Customer Service Equals Marketing and Sales

Another long post so here’s what my key points are:

1. Customer service should be the most effective marketing and sales tool in your tool box – guaranteed, you lose business when it’s not.
2. In most cases, some revenue trumps no revenue. Again, in most cases.
3. Stuff happens. So when it does, and your customers are adversely affected, express your concern, act quickly to minimize the impact and make amends as necessary – even if the stuff that happened was beyond your control. A simple, “I’m sorry,” can be the most effective strategy.

Seattle Hotels Miss the (Service) Mark 

Seen this metric around? … Research reveals that it costs between 7 and 11 times as much to attract a new customer as to retain an existing one. The managers of two Seattle area hotels need to be reminded of this…

My family and I spent several days in Seattle for my daughter’s graduation from Seattle Pacific University. Great school, great education and hopefully, now, great job! And by the way, THANK YOU, Kait, for getting it done (and done well) in 4 years.

For the first part of our visit we stayed at the Bellevue Downtown Courtyard by Marriott. It’s a great hotel, friendly service, convenient access, lots of amenities – I’d definitely recommend it. So why does the manager (assistant manager in this case) need a lesson in Customer Service = Sales & Marketing? Read on…

Although I didn’t realize it when I made my reservation I’d lucked into a great promotional weekend rate – I just thought the rates were lower than those in Seattle due to its location in Bellevue. I’d only booked the hotel for 3 days of a 5 day stay but our experience was so positive that I decided to extend my stay for 2 more days. I told the assistant manager we’d like to stay a couple extra nights and asked what the additional cost would be. Over twice what we’d paid! Wow! That’s when I discovered we’d had a great promotional rate. That’s when the manager could have stepped in, made another sale and cemented our loyalty to their property.

I quickly informed her that the price was a little too steep and we’d be checking out after all. But the fact is if she’d merely stated, “I guess you didn’t realize you’d had such a great rate but since you’re already here, why don’t I split the difference between what you paid and what our regular rate is; would that work for you?” Maybe it was split the difference, maybe a healthy percentage discount but the fact is that the hotel wasn’t full by a long shot and here was a chance to earn 2 nights additional revenue rather than leave a room sit empty.

Our little missed revenue opportunity doesn’t amount to much as far as the hotel’s overall profitability goes but when you begin to aggregate all of these missed opportunities and the opportunity cost associated with leaving the last impression a not so positive impression then, over time, it is significant. So remember, 75% of the potential revenue is a much larger number than 0% of potential revenue and great impressions of extraordinary service pay extraordinary dividends.

Our second, less than impressive, hotel customer service shortfall came when we moved into the Paramount Hotel in downtown Seattle. The hotel is only 11 years old but it’s definitely showing a bit of wear around the edges although overall the property was nice and our room adequate. So what nits can we pick…

• The staff was less than warm and fuzzy starting with the front desk clerk who threatened us with a $200 fine and required us to sign a document agreeing to the fine should we smoke in our hotel room – we don’t smoke so it wasn’t an issue but the aggressive approach was very off-putting.
• Who charges for internet these days? $10 a day seems a bit excessive considering that the Marriott we’d just left not only offered free connectivity but access to several free workstations with complimentary printers in the lobby.
• The water was lukewarm, not hot, in our hotel room and drizzled from the sink spigot but blasted from the shower nozzle.
• The hotel was downtown so we expected to pay for parking but they never bothered to explain that there would be a parking charge – $25/day to be exact. Not horrible but guys, disclose please.

But the biggest nit of all and the one that lost them my business and recommendation for the future was going to work out the next morning and returning very sweaty and very smelly and very ready to take a hot shower only to find that the hot water was completely gone. I called the front desk, no answer. Hung up, called back. 20 rings later the valet station picked up. I explained the situation. He very hurriedly said he’d transfer me. He sounded uncomfortable and harried as if he’d been handling a lot of these calls. I got the front desk and they informed me that the boiler had blown up and I could expect at minimum a 2 hour wait.

Okay, stuff happens but how did they take an unfortunate situation and turn it into this blogging diatribe? They didn’t say, “We’re sorry for the inconvenience.” “We’re sorry that you have to take a freezing cold shower or that you have to go to your appointment sweaty and smelling and doused in aftershave to mask the aroma.” All they said was boiler blew, 2 plus hours to fix. So while they fixed the mechanical problem they totally ignored the customer relationship problem. What could they have done:

1. Apologize.
2. Offer some sort of accommodation for the inconvenience like a free cocktail in the restaurant or a free dessert. Nothing huge, just something.
3. Got on the horn to one of the local health clubs and arranged to make their locker room facilities available at no charge to hotel guests.
4. Used their fancy phone system to alert all the guests that the hot water was out and that they were working diligently to minimize the inconvenience and, oh yeah, they were very sorry. If I’d known that I wasn’t going to be able to shower, I probably wouldn’t have worked out. At the very least they could have put a sign in the workout facility stating that the hot water was out.

Mainly they could have acted like they cared about the comfort and convenience of their customers.

Even the Pointy Haired Boss is Blogging!

Corporate execs; are you listening?

Deepen the Connection between You and Your Customer

This is a long post so I’ll cut to the chase by offering you the marketing action points upfront that are derived from the story that follows…

1. Think outside the box by offering variations on your products and services that get your potential and existing customers to say, “Wow!”
2. Listen. Give your customers the ability to provide input and feedback on the products and services you offer to them.
3. Respond. Let your customers know you heard them and if you implement their ideas and suggestions, give them a hearty thanks and an invite to be the first to offer feedback on the new and improved ______.
4. Involve. Use web technology to turn your visitors ordinary browsing into an extraordinary experience. Consider Google’s new Street View that turns a simple search for an address into a 360° visual tour or iVillage’s virtual makeover tool that allows you to try out different hair styles, makeup combinations and the like on a virtual model of you.

How Famous Made Me Feel That Way
Do you make your customers feel special, as though their input and opinion count for something? If you don’t you’re missing the boat and you’re missing the opportunity to create that special bond we all want with our customers — the bond of loyalty.

Famous Smoke Shop created that bond with me a few months back when they really made me feel valued as a customer. Not always an easy trick to pull off in the online world.

Famous sells cigars on the internet and they do a rather good job of it. They stay in touch with their customers and offer a great selection ranging from good to exceptional values.

I recently made the decision to smoke fewer but better cigars. With 2 kids in college and a wife who’s just completed her 2nd Masters (showoff) I don’t have a lot of discretionary income to spend on the kind of sticks I’d like to smoke. Accordingly, I appreciate sites like Famous that offer premium cigars at often less than premium pricing.

I was therefore excited when Famous began offering a new Create-A-Sampler feature that allows you to build your own sampler pack of 5 different cigars … for the price of 4 (bonus!). Samplers have been around forever with the idea being that you get a chance to try different kinds of cigars without investing huge jack in the process but you are generally limited to selecting pre-configured samplers from a specific brand (5 different styles of Partagas for exampe). Famous is thinking outside the (cigar) box by providing customers the ability to customize their samplers; you can select 5 different cigars from as many as 5 different brands plus they price it a 5 for the price of 4 – a reward for your sense of adventure!

The upshot is that Famous creates a personal relationship with customers while creating an opportunity to expand their business by broadening those customer’s product buying horizons.

Famous really cemented their relationship with me after I sent an email praising their new system while suggesting that they could improve it by providing links to reviews of the cigars available. This way, a less-than-expert buyer like me would have a guide to make a more informed decision. It would be a smart move for Famous as well by insuring a better customer experience; a guy who likes mild cigars wouldn’t inadvertently pick-out a super bold smoke that would kill his taste buds for 2 weeks and vice-versa.

The cool thing is that they listened. I got an almost immediate response from, Arthur Zaretsky, the President of Famous Smoke Shop, that said that it was a great idea and he was directing his ‘web wizards’ to put this review feature in place. Then I got a follow up email from their web master, Chad Kercher, who invited me to try out the new system and provide my feedback.

To sum it up…

Famous thought outside the box with their Create-A-Sampler program which involves the customer at a deeper level than merely offering standard, pre-packaged selections and they listened and responded to customer feedback to give that customer a sense of recognition while more deeply investing him in his relationship to Famous.

What can you do to deepen your connection to your customers?