In some ways, it seems like the Internet has been with us forever. It’s easy to forget that in the midst of our increasingly virtual world, your website might be the first – not to mention last and only – point of contact for an interested customer or colleague. A company with a poorly constructed home page, or one that doesn’t accurately reflect their vision, goals, or unique selling propositions, no longer has anywhere to hide… or anyone to hide behind.
In the “old days,” a smiling face at the front counter or a friendly voice on the phone could be enough to seal the deal. Business was all about relationships, and marketing materials, early websites included, were usually secondary to the people you employed. Now, strategies have changed slightly. Relationships still matter, but they are increasingly built from initial online impressions.
That seems obvious when you stop to think about the ways people use the Internet, but it has some heavy implications for your home page design and message. If you’re going to engage someone to interact with you in some way – and what business site isn’t designed to gather leads, sell products, or promote a message? – then it had better convey some key pieces of information, namely: who you are, what you do really well, and how you can help the visitor, direct from the home page.
What’s more, that information needs to be obvious and accessible, regardless of what type of browser or device they’re coming to you from. If your home page isn’t loading correctly, that’s a problem.
A shortcoming in any of these areas is going to result in a miss; the reader is going to surf along and find what they’re looking for on a competitor website. Wasted visitors are the equivalent of wasted time, wasted money, and a potentially large number of wasted future sales.
Social networking is every online marketer’s favorite new toy, and that’s a good thing… mostly. After all, anything that lets you find new customers, improve your search engine positioning, and possibly even spread your message virally is going to be a useful tool. And really, that’s why it’s at the top of so many experts’ “must try” lists for 2010.
It’s that last bit that gets us in trouble.
The second the majority of us brand any idea as something you need to try, there’s a temptation to feel like you… well, need to try it. While that’s the wrong idea to approach to take to any marketing effort, it’s especially true with social networking.
The beauty of working with blogs, as well as sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others, is that they allow for a kind of informal give-and-take. In other words, they let you reach behind the curtain a little bit and engage your customers in a friendlier way.
The quickest way to ruin that is by coming at them with something that's boring – or worse, overtly commercial. And yet, that's exactly what tends to happen once you start to treat social networking like just another item on your "to do" list. Your posts and ideas become more and more stale, until all that's left is a steady stream of fluff that few people would actually take the time to read.
With that in mind, think of social media the right way: as a tool for engaging customers in spreading the word about your company in a semi-personal way. Don't treat it like an ongoing press release or just another piece of business communication – the moment it becomes uninteresting to you, you'll start giving that impression off to the buyers you're trying to attract.
Search engine optimization, like any facet of online marketing, is a little bit harder than it looks. Just when your company has gotten its site to the top of Google for one of your most important keywords, a Malaysian pop star decides to use a similar phrase as the title of her newest album and pushes you back down, or a competitor gets hit with a lawsuit that makes you want to scrub the term as quickly as possible.
In other words, it's not easy and the game is always changing.
For that reason, a lot of businesses get a little bit desperate when it comes to SEO. What starts as a mission to improve online business quickly becomes an obsession with RSS feeds, embedded tags, and long-tail key phrases. And really, there's nothing much that's wrong with that... so long as it doesn't interfere with a core marketing strategy.
There should be a reason you're trying to improve your search engine position, and one that goes a bit deeper than "trying to get more hits." Having some sort of established plan can keep you grounded in moving forward, even in the face of inevitable distractions and setbacks.
There's no way around it: good search engine optimization takes time. Looking for shortcuts, or just moving things around to stay busy, isn't just a waste – it’s counterproductive. That's why it's so important that you have a good idea of where your best clients are coming from, and how you can find more of them through Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
This is a small step, but one that's critically important, because without it you'll find yourself constantly chasing the latest fads and trends. There certainly is a time and place for working the details and staying ahead of the curve, but it's only after you've covered the basics.
Search engine optimization is a complicated topic, and that's why so easy to "miss the forest for the trees," so to speak. Have an online marketing plan, stick to it, and then examine your progress from time to time. It might not be as exciting as frantically updating pages, but it's going to be a lot better for your bottom line in the long term.
As Google continues its well-documented run as the world's most popular search tool (garnering an 85%+ share, according to some estimates), many in the Internet marketing industry are left to wonder whether the recent merging of Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing will allow them to ever catch up… or at least gain some ground among searchers. Or could it be that people really do prefer all Google, all the time?
It turns out, the question is flawed. That's because there is already a strong second-place search engine, and one that's doing just great – YouTube.
While it's true that most people wouldn't classify YouTube is a search engine, and it might not technically count as one, the lines begin to blur a bit as you take a step back. After all, with more than one billion hits a day, it's obvious that people are turning to its short videos to find and learn, and they're doing it far more often than they are turning to non-Google search engines.
This highlights an important fact for online marketers: if you aren't getting your message out on YouTube, then you're missing a big piece of the market share. It isn't all cats jumping through hoops or lonely kids acting out movie scripts; any company can produce a video that has the potential to go "viral," or at least enhance their marketing message by adding a new format.
YouTube isn't a new phenomenon anymore, but it is one that lots of companies are just beginning to take advantage of. In future articles, we'll take a look at some ways you can use YouTube to increase sales. For now, though, just ask yourself this: with billions of people tuning in every week, why are they finding your business?
Marketing is all about results. One of the quickest ways to destroy the profitability of your campaigns, whether they are online or off-line, is to keep feeding a process that isn't making any money. Managers and business owners have to be ruthless in cutting off ads and promotions that aren't working – or even those that aren't working well enough to justify the costs.
Sometimes, though, the desire to be efficient can cause us to give up just a little bit too soon, especially when the conventional wisdom is that some tactic or idea is "dead." Since everyone knows it doesn't work, why keep putting time and money into it?
I think that's what's happened to e-mail marketing. Even though there are plenty of businesses still working profitable campaigns, many companies have given up on it for fear of the impression that they're spamming their customers. The reality, however, is that they are missing out on sales and profits that they could get with just a little bit of effort.
Here are four ways to make your e-mail campaigns work:
Start with the right list. To have a successful e-mail campaign, you need working addresses of people who want to hear from you. The best way to get those is from your existing customers or prospects. Have them opt in to receive some small promotional item or coupon – you’ll end up with a list that's both valid and interested in what you sell.
Keep things to the point. Don't send long e-mails with complicated ideas. If you can't communicate everything you need to a few hundred words or less, save part of it for the next message. It's better to have people interested in reading small bits at a time than it is to go straight into their trash folder.
Be consistent… not annoying. Few companies can get away with sending an e-mail newsletter every day, or even every week. It might take some trial and error, but try to find out how often your customers want to hear from you and then stick to that schedule.
Track and optimize. It's not enough to send out e-mails and hope for the best. Use state-of-the-art tracking software to find out which links, products, articles your customers are clicking on responding to. Then, you can use that information to optimize your future marketing messages and make them even more profitable.
Just a few years ago, websites with Flash introductions were the latest-and-greatest thing, and for good reason: they just looked so cutting-edge. If visitors couldn’t figure out how cool your company was from the flowing animation and sound… well, that was between them and Internet Explorer 4.
Recently though, having a Flash intro has become the web equivalent of sporting a Britney Spears world tour tee shirt: a little bit annoying, and a sign that you’re not really keeping up with what’s going on in the world. Here are a few reasons to ditch your site’s animated and outdated opening:
It’s no longer impressive. Flash isn’t a new thing, so it’s not going to impress your clients or colleagues. There was a time when people genuinely thought they were cool, but now they’re just in the way of the information they’re trying to find.
It’s annoying. How many people do you know who actually watch these things, much less leave the sound on? The answer you’re looking for is zero. No one has enough time in the day to finish the things they actually need to accomplish, so don’t think they’re going to waste it watching your opening shots.
It’s bad for usability. Flash intros are almost unique amongst web features for the way it’s completely cosmetic. It doesn’t help anyone find, do, or buy anything. That isn’t to say there aren’t great places to use Flash on your site – because there definitely are – but a 15 second opening isn’t helping your visitors.
It’s costing you money. Beyond eating small amounts of bandwidth and bigger chunks of your customers’ patience, Flash intros cost you money because they can reduce the amount of time your visitors are willing to spend on your site. By hiding your content behind a screen of video and sound, they make it harder for the people who are searching for your product or service to find you… and that’s never good for the bottom line.
Flash intros were a cool idea once, but that time has come and gone. If you’re serious about building a business website, ditch the annoying openings and introduce your visitors to a quality home page.
“And Then There Was Salsa” from Frito Lay Dips on Vimeo.
To fully appreciate it you need to watch it here.
