The Evolving Internet Marketer

What’s the Font? And Questions that Web Owners Need to Know

Do you like your site’s design but your graphic artist or web designer is no longer available? Now you want to make changes but you have images that use fonts and color schemes and you don’t which fonts or color schemes were used? 

Aside from things like ftp login info, domain registration documentation and all of that stuff, you also should know what the colors and fonts were used in creating your site graphics. It can save a lot of aggravation later.

By the way, a couple of nice tools that will help you solve these mysteries if need be…

To find the name of the fonts used, check out “What the Font”. I used this on a recent client site where we were building a new header for his blog which used the existing site header but needed a new label. 

To figure out the color I use a Firefox addon called Colorzilla - it’s simple and works quite well. 

How to (Not) Get Rich!

Tara Kachaturoff, posting at AndyWibbels.com reminded me that one man’s stupid business idea is another’s gateway to that two story colonial on Easy Street in her post on Creative Business Ideas. In it she references a NicheGeek.com blog post on 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich. It reminded me of an idea for running tights that I conceived for a college marketing class years before running tights started showing up in the stores. But my marketing professor panned the idea so I never pursued it only to be bemused and frustrated because, not only did someone else introduce them and make – no doubt – a fortune but I got a stinkin’ C- on my report. (Fred Smith’s idea for FedEx was also panned by his professor; good for him that he didn’t pay attention.)

Point is take a look at the NicheGeeks list and then think about those crazy ideas you’ve had in the middle of the night or when frustrated by one of life’s little stumbling blocks (anyone po’ed like me by top sheets that are always un-tucking themselves – how about ‘Top Pocket® sheets?’; top sheets with a mattress shaped pocket attached to one end … “Never retuck a top sheet again!” Silly idea? Maybe. My wife thinks so anyway but is her opinion standing in the way of my millions?!

Because often that’s the difference between daily drudgery and financial freedom. We don’t have the guts or gumption to pursue our dreams, our crazy ideas, our ‘Spose® – Sport Hose for Athletes’. We let the lack of imagination of friends, colleagues or relatives dampen our own enthusiasm.

So what to do. For starters, reconsider your list of crazy ideas. Or start one to hold all the ideas and opportunities that occur to you. Write ‘em down. Come back to them in a few days or a few weeks, if an idea still resonates then consider what it will take to take them to the next level. And … take … those … steps! What do you have to lose except your negative net worth?

One Hundred (and Seven) Ways to Get Your Email Blocked

Marketing Profs published an article by Jordan Ayen of SubscriberMail that lists the one hundred sure fire words and phrases guaranteed to get your emails blocked if you use them in your subject line (and often in the body of your posts as well). The seven they reference are George Carlin’s infamous list – I guess they still have legs in email if, increasingly, nowhere else. Funny, huh, that email is so prudish.

Interesting that while Cialis and Levitra made the list, Viagra was not to be found. Hmmm. Spam blockers as market research tool … you know that your product is hitting the skids when it can’t even make the list of top spam terms!

My favorite on the list was, you’ll never guess, online marketing, followed by search engine listings… No wonder I can’t get any of my clients to return my emails!

Common sense advice for email marketers:
Read the list. Post it at your desk or your online copywriter’s desk. And, at the end of the day, never use terms in your subject lines that you would block if you saw them in your email inbox!

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!”

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?

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.

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!

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!

Top 10 Passwords

From PC Magazine, the following is a list of the top ten most commonly used passwords. If your’s is on the list, you might want to consider changing it. These are the digital equivalent of the old house key under the door mat or car key on top of the sun shade…

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. link182
10. (your first name)

I’m very glad they published this list as I was running out of password ideas on my own Anyway, don’t be a #6, change your #1 today if you’ve made the list!

You Don’t Bring Me Flowers … (But it’s 1-800-Flowers Fault!)

1-800-Flowers.com uses email as aggressively as anyone out there when it comes to email marketing. From time to time I use their service to send flowers to friends and family. Of course, once I identified myself as a customer, their efforts redoubled. Nothing wrong with that except when you – in the interest of both customer relations and sales motivation – send your customer a 15% thank you discount good towards their next purchase … AND … it doesn’t work!

I mean, it’s a great strategy. I’d ordered flowers for my niece’s graduation and 1-800-Flowers showed me some love with a discount – no strings attached – for my next purchase. I knew Mom’s Day was coming so I set the coupon aside for use then. As soon as 1-800’s Mom Day’s email solicitations began to pour in I made my move. Ordered pretty flowers; Applied the coupon and voilà – bupkis! So what did I do? Well of course I peevishly canceled my order. I can get what they sell at a lot of places. What they had going was convenience and the warm-fuzzy they’d generated with my previous order. Once they killed the warm-fuzzy, the convenience became irrelevant.

So as a marketer and merchant of whatever you offer you need to keep in mind that good will is a warm-fuzzy. Nurture and feed it and it will nurture and feed your business but if you kill it, you’ll get a Cold-Nasty in it’s place and cold-nasty’s are business killers.