26 April 2009
09 April 2009
Good rules of thumb
In part two, we pick up at the point where we have defined our offer. Let go over some things that you should keep in mind when creating an SEO/SMO-friendly campaign. As I have said in previous posts, take a class or two in HTML. If you do, you will be able to create many of the campaign components on your own, without the additional costs of hiring this out.
Here's a logically ordered set of tips.
Creating your campaign pieces
TIP 1: Consider a multi-tiered campaign. If you have a limited budget, you could create an email, custom landing pages, and a news release. With a bit more investment, add a direct-mail piece to the campaign.
TIP 2: Be sure that the design of the landing page matches the design of your email. This creates continuity and ensures the user that they have landed on the correct page. Repeat the offer.
TIP 3: De-dupe your list to ensure each customer only receives the message once.
TIP 4: Include your company name and FULL contact information along with an opt-out process. This is required under the CAN-SPAM Act 2003. Your opt-out doesn't have to be fancy, you can ask that they reply to the email with REMOVE in the subject line.
Writing the message
TIP 1: Use personalization at every opportunity, e.g., "Dear Cyndie, thank you for your purchase of ShadowCaster on 13 March 2007." (if your list is less than 5,000, try an email application such as DirectMail or MaxBulkMailer). Include any bit of customer-centric information that you have in your list. This will make your customer feel as though you know them well. Personalized messaging will dramatically increase your response rate.
TIP 2: Don't use pronouns to refer to your product. Use the full name of the product as many times as possible. If your product is known by nicknames, be sure to use those as well. If your product is referred to by an acronym, be sure the first use is of the full name with the acronym immediately following in parentheses. Mix it up a bit and alternate the use of the acronym and full product name.
TIP 3: Don't mix messages. Choose one message, state it clearly, and state it at least twice; more if possible.
TIP 4: Tell the customer to visit your web site, but be sure that this is directed to a landing page especially for this offer. Do not use generic landing pages and do not send the user to your home page.
TIP 5: Add an expiration. Choose a date no more than 45 days out. This creates the sense of urgency.
TIP 6: Include a testimonial from a valued customer touting how wonderful the product or service is.
TIP 7: Include a phone number where they may ask questions.
TIP 8: Once the components are complete, have someone else dial every phone number, click every link, and complete every form. Nothing will stop a campaign quicker than a broken link.
Measuring your success
TIP 1: Add Google Analytics, or similar click tracking, to your site to provide measurements of the response rates. (You must set up a Google account.)
TIP 2: On the custom landing page provide links to other custom pages. These can be duplicates of existing pages in your web site, but with a unique URL so that you can track the visitor's path through your web site using your analytics software.
TIP 3: If you are using Google Analytics, use the Goal Conversion feature to measure how many visitors actually make a purchase.
Getting more from your campaign
TIP 1: Provide a button to enable the recipient to sign up for your subscriber list, early offer list, or preferred-shopper list. Use a form (if you're not a PHP expert, try EmailMe Form) to request additional information about your customer. Most customers will complete a simple form if you offer something in exchange for the information they provide. This can be as a white paper, freeware, or a demo version of your product, or perhaps a discount of their next purchase.
TIP 2: Notify your social network (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, and blog).
TIP 3: Send a press announcement. Sign up for an account at FreePressReleases.com. Click through and look at some sample announcements and follow their format. It does not have to be fancy, it has to be quotable -- be sure to include the testimonial. News releases are aimed at bloggers, rather than publications, who pick up noteworthy messages to include in their blogs, but it's a free exposure and you want some.
Ok, you're ready; press send!
In part three, we'll take a look at what the measurements tell you so that you may successfully plan the next campaign.
Here's a logically ordered set of tips.
Creating your campaign pieces
TIP 1: Consider a multi-tiered campaign. If you have a limited budget, you could create an email, custom landing pages, and a news release. With a bit more investment, add a direct-mail piece to the campaign.
TIP 2: Be sure that the design of the landing page matches the design of your email. This creates continuity and ensures the user that they have landed on the correct page. Repeat the offer.
TIP 3: De-dupe your list to ensure each customer only receives the message once.
TIP 4: Include your company name and FULL contact information along with an opt-out process. This is required under the CAN-SPAM Act 2003. Your opt-out doesn't have to be fancy, you can ask that they reply to the email with REMOVE in the subject line.
Writing the message
TIP 1: Use personalization at every opportunity, e.g., "Dear Cyndie, thank you for your purchase of ShadowCaster on 13 March 2007." (if your list is less than 5,000, try an email application such as DirectMail or MaxBulkMailer). Include any bit of customer-centric information that you have in your list. This will make your customer feel as though you know them well. Personalized messaging will dramatically increase your response rate.
TIP 2: Don't use pronouns to refer to your product. Use the full name of the product as many times as possible. If your product is known by nicknames, be sure to use those as well. If your product is referred to by an acronym, be sure the first use is of the full name with the acronym immediately following in parentheses. Mix it up a bit and alternate the use of the acronym and full product name.
TIP 3: Don't mix messages. Choose one message, state it clearly, and state it at least twice; more if possible.
TIP 4: Tell the customer to visit your web site, but be sure that this is directed to a landing page especially for this offer. Do not use generic landing pages and do not send the user to your home page.
TIP 5: Add an expiration. Choose a date no more than 45 days out. This creates the sense of urgency.
TIP 6: Include a testimonial from a valued customer touting how wonderful the product or service is.
TIP 7: Include a phone number where they may ask questions.
TIP 8: Once the components are complete, have someone else dial every phone number, click every link, and complete every form. Nothing will stop a campaign quicker than a broken link.
Measuring your success
TIP 1: Add Google Analytics, or similar click tracking, to your site to provide measurements of the response rates. (You must set up a Google account.)
TIP 2: On the custom landing page provide links to other custom pages. These can be duplicates of existing pages in your web site, but with a unique URL so that you can track the visitor's path through your web site using your analytics software.
TIP 3: If you are using Google Analytics, use the Goal Conversion feature to measure how many visitors actually make a purchase.
Getting more from your campaign
TIP 1: Provide a button to enable the recipient to sign up for your subscriber list, early offer list, or preferred-shopper list. Use a form (if you're not a PHP expert, try EmailMe Form) to request additional information about your customer. Most customers will complete a simple form if you offer something in exchange for the information they provide. This can be as a white paper, freeware, or a demo version of your product, or perhaps a discount of their next purchase.
TIP 2: Notify your social network (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, and blog).
TIP 3: Send a press announcement. Sign up for an account at FreePressReleases.com. Click through and look at some sample announcements and follow their format. It does not have to be fancy, it has to be quotable -- be sure to include the testimonial. News releases are aimed at bloggers, rather than publications, who pick up noteworthy messages to include in their blogs, but it's a free exposure and you want some.
Ok, you're ready; press send!
In part three, we'll take a look at what the measurements tell you so that you may successfully plan the next campaign.
08 April 2009
Implementing your first foray into SEO/SMO
As I've said in earlier posts, everyone can play in the SEO/SMO field. You do not have to be an expert. There may be a lot of efforts you can put in that show limited results, but as long as you exercise a modicum of common sense, there's not much you can do that's truly detrimental.
To begin your foray into SEO/SMO, let's start with creating some accounts. You should sign up for a business account (free) at LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo, Facebook, and, if you are going to create video, at YouTube. While you're at it, stop by Free-Press-Releases.com.
Please take note that I said "business accounts." It is not appropriate to use your personal social-media accounts to promote your business. You need to minimize the possibility of confusion for your customers and limit their exposure into your personal life (remember: it's called private information for a reason). Make sure that your account names are the same as your company name whenever possible. This simple step is a great start to SEO.
With your accounts established, you're ready to approach your first campaign. If you're a small company, I highly recommend that you either learn some HTML or find someone on your staff with a bit of skill in this arena. A Dreamweaver class (Adobe software for creating web sites) will take you a long way in today's marketing landscape. I'm going to assume that you either have the ability, or that you have the ability to find someone who does, and move from there.
Define the offer. Customer-loyalty campaigns are well received, so let's target that. By way of example, we will offer our current customers 60% off their next purchase. This is called a loyalty campaign because you are rewarding current customers for shopping with you.
With our offer in mind, we need to produce the creatives for both the email offer and the landing page. I cheat at every opportunity, and so should you. The goal of this campaign is to generate business and to do that by spending less than $100. Depending upon the components you implement, you could even do it for free.
Here are some of my shortcuts:
BigStockPhoto.com a fast site that enables you to shop for very inexpensive images.
EmailMeForm to easily generate web forms that, when completed by the customer, are sent to your inbox.
TemplateMonster.com a great resource for inexpensive web page and email templates.
DirectMail Pro easy-to-use software for sending out HTML or simple text messages to your customer list. It also offers tag support so that you can personalize the message. If you have data that includes your customers' past purchase information this is ideal, but not required. You'll also benefit from the tracking services they provide so you can tell who received your message, who read your message, and whose system blocked your message.
Using any or all of the above, create your email offer and your landing page, but while you're doing that, keep an eye on the SEO of it all. It's a pretty simple thing to do.
-- I wanted to get this campaign plan into a single post, but it's starting to look a whole lot like a book. Part 2 is forthcoming.
To begin your foray into SEO/SMO, let's start with creating some accounts. You should sign up for a business account (free) at LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo, Facebook, and, if you are going to create video, at YouTube. While you're at it, stop by Free-Press-Releases.com.
Please take note that I said "business accounts." It is not appropriate to use your personal social-media accounts to promote your business. You need to minimize the possibility of confusion for your customers and limit their exposure into your personal life (remember: it's called private information for a reason). Make sure that your account names are the same as your company name whenever possible. This simple step is a great start to SEO.
With your accounts established, you're ready to approach your first campaign. If you're a small company, I highly recommend that you either learn some HTML or find someone on your staff with a bit of skill in this arena. A Dreamweaver class (Adobe software for creating web sites) will take you a long way in today's marketing landscape. I'm going to assume that you either have the ability, or that you have the ability to find someone who does, and move from there.
Define the offer. Customer-loyalty campaigns are well received, so let's target that. By way of example, we will offer our current customers 60% off their next purchase. This is called a loyalty campaign because you are rewarding current customers for shopping with you.
With our offer in mind, we need to produce the creatives for both the email offer and the landing page. I cheat at every opportunity, and so should you. The goal of this campaign is to generate business and to do that by spending less than $100. Depending upon the components you implement, you could even do it for free.
Here are some of my shortcuts:
BigStockPhoto.com a fast site that enables you to shop for very inexpensive images.
EmailMeForm to easily generate web forms that, when completed by the customer, are sent to your inbox.
TemplateMonster.com a great resource for inexpensive web page and email templates.
DirectMail Pro easy-to-use software for sending out HTML or simple text messages to your customer list. It also offers tag support so that you can personalize the message. If you have data that includes your customers' past purchase information this is ideal, but not required. You'll also benefit from the tracking services they provide so you can tell who received your message, who read your message, and whose system blocked your message.
Using any or all of the above, create your email offer and your landing page, but while you're doing that, keep an eye on the SEO of it all. It's a pretty simple thing to do.
-- I wanted to get this campaign plan into a single post, but it's starting to look a whole lot like a book. Part 2 is forthcoming.
06 April 2009
Net smarts
Nothing less than once a week I see a news program directed at parents or children warning of the dangers of posting private information to the web. We are all reminded that predators come in all forms and that it's fairly easy for them to put two and two together and find your child's school, the mall at which they hang out, or maybe even your home. This electronic trail is easily followed by a predator, but what kind of trail are you leaving and since when is common sense limited to children?
I am a member of a fair number of social networks: Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, Twitter, and Linked In. Admittedly, these networks serve different purposes. For me, MySpace was originally my connection point to my nieces. If I wanted to keep up with their lives, this presented the best opportunities. More than once, however, I was shocked by the pictures they posted or the comments they made and each of those times, I sent them gentle reminders about the permanence of today's ink.
Plaxo and LinkedIn, while based upon the same premise, are entirely different types of networks -- or at least I'd like to think so. Peripherally, it looks as though MySpace students graduated to Facebook, but fortunately my nieces are old enough that the majority of their posts are limited to opinions or the sharing of info that's not quite so alarming. The older adults in my network could take a lesson here.
No longer limited to the younger generation, these forums are fertile ground for displays of poor judgement. I cannot believe how much private content people are posting.
One of my networks includes at least ten postings a day from two men who, for some reason, think that I — a fellow professional in their network — want to know every time they buy a new iTune, pick up their children, or comment on the weather. This is a professional network, designed for the interaction of professionals on a professional level. Frankly, I am shocked.
Private information is called private for a reason.
Despite the marketing messages to the contrary, you — regardless of your age — should not be posting your private information to these forums. These postings live on far beyond the very limited thrill and shock value of sharing that juicy little tidbit with your gal-pals and well into the time when it's downright embarrassing — or worse, detrimental.
What happens when you post your party pics and rants about colleagues and your staff ends up in your network? Think about that content. It may be difficult to impossible to regain a modicum of respect from your colleagues and direct reports when they've just read your last year of postings — especially when you've been blowing off steam about that very same staff.
I am the SEO/SMO advisor to Spider Trainers, LLC. This company is busily defining an entirely new industry — one that became necessary in part due to the posting of private information in a very public forum. Spider Trainers specializes in what they have termed optimized professional visibility (their service mark). Elevating the visibility of a person's professional accomplishments isn't enough, they also have to bury the crap.
Unbelievably, this company is specializing in hiding all the nonsense that CEOs, board members, directors, and industry influencers publish about themselves so that employers, fellow board members, colleagues, and HR professionals don't catch a glimpse of those very unflattering Las Vegas party shots, the rant you posted about your staff, or the messages you've left for your friends and family.
Take a look at the electronic footprint you're leaving. Is this really putting your best foot forward?
19 March 2009
Leveling the playing field
The great thing about the web and electronic marketing is that everyone can play. You do not have to be a multi-million dollar company with a marketing budget to match in order to stay in the game. In fact, I have always believed that small companies have a nimbleness that makes them more adept at marketing and when you combine that with the great opportunities of the web, as a small company you may have more success than the lumbering corporate wheel.
Another benefit of electronic marketing is the correction factor. When I first started ThePowerXChange (not my first company), every bit of marketing we did was print; either a print ad, a print brochure, or a printed direct-mail piece. My nightmare was the campaign-gone-wrong. I remember one mailing we did where I used a stock image that a handful of our customers found objectionable. We were shocked because we thought we had developed a well-planned and artistic piece. I knew though, that if there were ten people who felt compelled to actually write a letter (before the days of email), then there were likely hundreds who were just as offended, and who didn't write. Having just sent out about 50,000 of these, there was simply nothing we could do.
Thankfully, those days are gone. This is not to say that an ill-received campaign doesn't have any staying power simply because it's electronic, but we do have the ability to send out a retraction, change the campaign, improve the offer, or even kill the campaign entirely. In fact, the beauty is that we "can" do that. We can send out four electronic campaigns with essentially the same message -- buy one, get one free, save 50%, get half off, or save $50 -- testing as we go. If we find that one particular approach is returning better results, we can replace the other three with the same messaging.
Having said that, there's also the downfall. If I were to send that same ill-fated, direct-mail piece today, what at the time was less than a dozen outraged customers could easily turn into many thousands. Depending on how offensive the message is, it could be passed through the electronic network like a pregnancy rumor through a junior high. If it really goes badly, you could make headlines... OUCH!
Assuming that you have developed a winning campaign -- with careful consideration for the stock imagery -- between your web site, an email to your customers, a press release, a news release, a story on your blog, and perhaps a well-place banner ad or two, you could be racking up the orders in no time at all. If the campaign is going well, with just a few clicks of the mouse, you can extend the offer, expand the range, rent the list of a partner, or even collaborate with a friendly company to create a soft bundle -- and you could make that decision today and have it in place by tomorrow.
Big companies simply cannot respond this quickly. Oh, they have the opportunity alright, but by the time they've held 37 meetings with all the stakeholders about the feasibility, the content, the IT changes, the web-page modifications, and the budgets, you could have already sold and shipped another gross of whatchamacallits.
I like the balance. I don't have the budget, but I don't have the burden either.
Another benefit of electronic marketing is the correction factor. When I first started ThePowerXChange (not my first company), every bit of marketing we did was print; either a print ad, a print brochure, or a printed direct-mail piece. My nightmare was the campaign-gone-wrong. I remember one mailing we did where I used a stock image that a handful of our customers found objectionable. We were shocked because we thought we had developed a well-planned and artistic piece. I knew though, that if there were ten people who felt compelled to actually write a letter (before the days of email), then there were likely hundreds who were just as offended, and who didn't write. Having just sent out about 50,000 of these, there was simply nothing we could do.
Thankfully, those days are gone. This is not to say that an ill-received campaign doesn't have any staying power simply because it's electronic, but we do have the ability to send out a retraction, change the campaign, improve the offer, or even kill the campaign entirely. In fact, the beauty is that we "can" do that. We can send out four electronic campaigns with essentially the same message -- buy one, get one free, save 50%, get half off, or save $50 -- testing as we go. If we find that one particular approach is returning better results, we can replace the other three with the same messaging.
Having said that, there's also the downfall. If I were to send that same ill-fated, direct-mail piece today, what at the time was less than a dozen outraged customers could easily turn into many thousands. Depending on how offensive the message is, it could be passed through the electronic network like a pregnancy rumor through a junior high. If it really goes badly, you could make headlines... OUCH!
Assuming that you have developed a winning campaign -- with careful consideration for the stock imagery -- between your web site, an email to your customers, a press release, a news release, a story on your blog, and perhaps a well-place banner ad or two, you could be racking up the orders in no time at all. If the campaign is going well, with just a few clicks of the mouse, you can extend the offer, expand the range, rent the list of a partner, or even collaborate with a friendly company to create a soft bundle -- and you could make that decision today and have it in place by tomorrow.
Big companies simply cannot respond this quickly. Oh, they have the opportunity alright, but by the time they've held 37 meetings with all the stakeholders about the feasibility, the content, the IT changes, the web-page modifications, and the budgets, you could have already sold and shipped another gross of whatchamacallits.
I like the balance. I don't have the budget, but I don't have the burden either.
16 March 2009
Use Site Maps to Help Your Rankings
One of the easiest things you can do to improve your search rankings is to create a site map. Google and other search engines prefer an XML file but since it's actually a computer-to-computer file type it's not really intended for end-user viewing. If you prefer, you can make an HTML file complete with links for site navigation. Depending upon the layout, your site map might be the easiest way for a visitor to see what you have to offer and how your different products are related.
If you're not up for the task of generating an XML file on your own, check out RAGE's Google Sitemap Automator. It's an extremely easy-to-use application and very inexpensive (under $30). If you are managing multiple sites, as I am, you can create site maps for all of them in just minutes.
Once your site map has been created, Google Sitemap Automator will even publish the generated XML files to search engines such as Google (you must have a webmaster tools log in), Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com. You can also predefine the importance of each page and assign meta data automatically. Most SEO specialists suggest that you submit your site map to search engines at least once a week, but of course, this will depend upon how often you actually make changes to your site.
While you're setting up your Google Webmaster Tools account, spend some time roving the Google options. There are lots of other applications that they offer such as analytics, product base, and site search tools. All of these can be key components to a robust search-engine optimization plan.
Job one of any new feature implementation, is to map out a system for measuring results. In the case of a site map, it's pretty easy to choose a few key words for which you wish to rank well and do a search, recording the page and position rank of each. Create and post your site map and check the same key words for a few days. You should notice an improvement, but if you don't it just means you have more work to do.
I have to admit that a number of the tools I use are made by Google, but that's because they are easy, most are free, and Google provides a better-than-average support network. I encourage most of my clients to at least start with Google and then, if they need more features, graduate to something really expensive later.
The great thing about SEO and SMO is you really can be quite effective and spend very little money. Oh sure, you'll need a budget for placing banner ads and paying designers, that sort of thing, but many, many of the SEO/SMO tricks that I will talk about will be completely free -- except, of course, for your time investment...
15 March 2009
Is a web site enough?
These days it's quite rare to find a company without a web site, and that may be even more true of our industry. Most of us have made a hefty investment in our web site: the design, the content, the graphics, and maybe even in video presentations to keep our customers engaged. In fact, look around and there are probably few customer-facing projects in which you've made such an investment and that nearly every one of your customers has seen. Surely that's enough...
While it's true that web sites can provide your customers with a huge variety of information about your products, web logs -- blogs for short -- are a great complement to those efforts. Blogs provide a level of communication and interactivity that is impossible to achieve with a web site alone.
If your web site is well-rounded, you have service descriptions, product descriptions, trouble shooting FAQs, press release postings, company information, and perhaps a form for requesting contact, but where can your customer actually interact with you, ask a question, or even disagree with you? All of these are basic functions of a blog.
Though you may not have ever considered a blog, there are lots of companies today who have foregone the traditional web site and only provide a blog. This may not be the best path for you, but one thing is sure: you would not be worse off with a blog, you could only benefit.
If you'd like to tour a few blogs to understand the possibilities, try Technorati, one of the better blog search engines. It's easy to search and find topics in which you are interested. Once you've bookmarked a four or five, visit them regularly and jump right in with comments on those stories that have commenting enabled. It won't take you long to decide that you're ready to strike out on your own.
This blog is powered by Google and if you're new to the concept of blogging, it's a good place to get your feet wet. Navigate to Blogger and register. You'll find lots of help files and FAQs in case you need assistance in getting up and running.
Once you have your blog rolling, be sure that you include links from your web site to the blog and in the blog back to your web site. You'll also want to send an email out to your customers and let them know that you now have a place where the can contribute, comment, complain, or search for more help; a place where you can post video and audio help files, instructional how-tos, or demonstrations. As your customers begin to contribute, you can mine the content for great customer quotes or become immediately alerted to a customer problem -- before they begin to complain to other customers.
The commenting feature can even be monitored. If you are concerned that some comments could be detrimental, turn on the monitoring and review comments before allowing them to be visible to followers. Don't be overly concerned about customers posting a complaint. This is usually a fairly harmless method to blowing off steam and your timely responses show all followers that you care when your customers have a problem and that you're showing the issue the utmost consideration.
As customers post comments, you can even go back and edit your original posting, modifying it to accommodate the comments. For instance, if you receive multiple comments that request more information, you can edit the posting to include additional resources, links, or product descriptions that are posted on your web site.
With your web site and blog firmly entrenched in bidirectional promotion, you'll get the added benefit of improved validity and relevancy rankings for both forums.
When I consult with companies on this topic, there's never any question that this is a good idea -- everyone agrees that it is -- the problem only comes when we discuss the commitment needed to keep blog content up to date, relevant, and changing. Unlike a web page where you can make the investment up front and tend to it only as your product line or service offerings undergo a change, a blog will only be successful if you contribute -- regularly.
While it's true that web sites can provide your customers with a huge variety of information about your products, web logs -- blogs for short -- are a great complement to those efforts. Blogs provide a level of communication and interactivity that is impossible to achieve with a web site alone.
If your web site is well-rounded, you have service descriptions, product descriptions, trouble shooting FAQs, press release postings, company information, and perhaps a form for requesting contact, but where can your customer actually interact with you, ask a question, or even disagree with you? All of these are basic functions of a blog.
Though you may not have ever considered a blog, there are lots of companies today who have foregone the traditional web site and only provide a blog. This may not be the best path for you, but one thing is sure: you would not be worse off with a blog, you could only benefit.
If you'd like to tour a few blogs to understand the possibilities, try Technorati, one of the better blog search engines. It's easy to search and find topics in which you are interested. Once you've bookmarked a four or five, visit them regularly and jump right in with comments on those stories that have commenting enabled. It won't take you long to decide that you're ready to strike out on your own.
This blog is powered by Google and if you're new to the concept of blogging, it's a good place to get your feet wet. Navigate to Blogger and register. You'll find lots of help files and FAQs in case you need assistance in getting up and running.
Once you have your blog rolling, be sure that you include links from your web site to the blog and in the blog back to your web site. You'll also want to send an email out to your customers and let them know that you now have a place where the can contribute, comment, complain, or search for more help; a place where you can post video and audio help files, instructional how-tos, or demonstrations. As your customers begin to contribute, you can mine the content for great customer quotes or become immediately alerted to a customer problem -- before they begin to complain to other customers.
The commenting feature can even be monitored. If you are concerned that some comments could be detrimental, turn on the monitoring and review comments before allowing them to be visible to followers. Don't be overly concerned about customers posting a complaint. This is usually a fairly harmless method to blowing off steam and your timely responses show all followers that you care when your customers have a problem and that you're showing the issue the utmost consideration.
As customers post comments, you can even go back and edit your original posting, modifying it to accommodate the comments. For instance, if you receive multiple comments that request more information, you can edit the posting to include additional resources, links, or product descriptions that are posted on your web site.
With your web site and blog firmly entrenched in bidirectional promotion, you'll get the added benefit of improved validity and relevancy rankings for both forums.
When I consult with companies on this topic, there's never any question that this is a good idea -- everyone agrees that it is -- the problem only comes when we discuss the commitment needed to keep blog content up to date, relevant, and changing. Unlike a web page where you can make the investment up front and tend to it only as your product line or service offerings undergo a change, a blog will only be successful if you contribute -- regularly.
I don't really expect that you as the CEO, CIO, or even GM have time to post to a blog every day, but it would benefit you greatly to post to it regularly -- or even every now and then. Assign someone on your staff to tend to the daily postings, but the higher up the corporate ladder you stand, the more customers appreciate hearing from you. Your customers have built a dependency on your company's products or services and this blog can be an easy-to-use forum where you can post relevant and timely information. Hearing from c-level leaders will create good will and build relationships.
So, let's review: easy to set up, easy to contribute, builds search-engine recognition, provides easy forum for bidrectional communication with customers, and fosters good will. How can you possibly go wrong?
13 March 2009
Putting up road signs for your digital highway
First, welcome to those of you from my LinkedIn network. I'm glad you're here and hope that you will take a moment to register and follow my blog -- even if it's just out of curiosity.
What should you expect here? Ideas...lots of ideas.... I want to introduce you to all sorts of marketing, promotion, social media, search-engine optimization, personalized URLs, and more that can help you promote your business.
There came a time in my business when I had to learn how to promote my company better, or risk the loss of it all. That time may be now for you; or maybe you just want to have someone from your industry explain to you the tools of the electronic age.
Let me start with a basic. It's not necessarily lesson one, but it's definitely a great foundation. We'll assume that you already have a web site. I think that's a fair assumption since many of you are members of my LinkedIn network and if not, you are, after all, in the business of software for publishing...
Today you can buy anything on the web. Literally. There was a town in Arizona posted for sale on the web. I don't really know whether or not it was sold because it was listed on the web, but I certainly learned about it because it was on the web. I think most of us will agree that Obama was elected largely due to his grassroots, social media, and general web marketing. Four years ago, I couldn't have picked him out of a crowd, and probably neither could have you. So if you can sell a town and you can elect a president, selling your extensible technology ought to be a walk in the park; right?
Theoretically, every customer with any type of problem in which you specialize in solving is a few keystrokes away from finding you. That's mostly true. Think about your product for a moment. ... What are your key phrases? Your talking points? Your elevator pitch? Ok, now imagine that I am your candidate customer but there's a problem. I don't know your key phrases. I haven't heard your talking points. I've never shared an elevator with you. See the disconnect? I have a problem. I can describe it. You have a solution. You can describe it. I speak in problem language. You speak in solution language. I haven't yet learned your language, but you do speak mine. Sort of.
This is where search engines can help, but they don't work alone. You have to coax them.
Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, DogPile, and others all have what are called spiders or robots. These are applications that run around the web and index the content of pages. While they're at it, they evaluate the page content's relevancy. Search engines are successful only when they return relevant pages at a find request. If I type in variable-data publishing, and the search engine returns pages about dentists, I will not be a happy searcher and I will try a different search engine. The better the results -- the more relevant the pages -- the more I will come to rely on their product. Since they charge fees for premium ads, their revenue is dependent upon me using their service and seeing those ads.
There are many things to consider when you are trying to create content that search engines will find relevant, and it is not a documented, exact science. What's more, they all index in their own proprietary manner. Just about the time you make it to page one of Google's results for variable-data publishing, someone -- your competitor probably -- comes along and bumps you out of the top spot or maybe completely off page one. What do they know that you don't know? Maybe nothing. It might have been luck of the draw that day, but probably not. They are probably, likely even, more relevant -- or at least appear to be.
While getting up close and personal with these spiders is probably not how you want to spend your day, you can certainly have casual conversations with them. Job one, of course, is to launch a web site or a blog, and job two is to make sure your content is relevant, speaks to the customer, uses phrases they understand (and not just your proprietary phrases for addressing their issue). You can use meta tags and site maps to help the spiders index the right pages and to identify key phrases, but without content to back up the claims of your meta tags, you are not going to make it to page one of those results.
Stop now and check out your home page. What did you find? Did you solve my problem on your home page?
Hold on. Let me ask you again. Did you solve my problem on your home page?
I just visited ten of your web sites. Out of those ten, I found a clear message on one home page. That means that nine out of ten of you have beautiful home pages with links to your products, your store, your partners, your resellers, your locations, alternate languages, engaging Flash, and one of you actually got me to stop and read because you solved my problem.
You can fix that.
In the span of one or two sentences, describe my problem to me in my problem language and solve my problem in your solution language. When you do that, you are creating relevancy between those types of problems and your solution. Now a search spider is going to get it. (I know you are dying to know what one site solved my problem, so here you go http://www.stibosystems.com.)
As a sidebar: resist the urge to solve my problem in a graphic. Solve it in text, make it searchable, and don't be afraid to solve it more than once. I'm fine with you solving my problem three or four times on your home page. It's okay, sometimes I don't get it right away. Maybe you want to approach it from different angles. Then, not only are you solving my problem, but I also get that you have lots of ways to solve it. Now I really like your home page.
So having said all this, is my advice specific to the business of selling extensible technology? Absolutely not. Most of the lessons I've learned and the messages I share have been learned by thousands, if not millions, of others and extolled on millions of listeners. I'm simply telling them again because I've been here with you for the last 20 years and hope that my perspective -- a perspective you share as part of the same industry -- will be helpful to you in finding your way in this electronic age.
What should you expect here? Ideas...lots of ideas.... I want to introduce you to all sorts of marketing, promotion, social media, search-engine optimization, personalized URLs, and more that can help you promote your business.
There came a time in my business when I had to learn how to promote my company better, or risk the loss of it all. That time may be now for you; or maybe you just want to have someone from your industry explain to you the tools of the electronic age.
Let me start with a basic. It's not necessarily lesson one, but it's definitely a great foundation. We'll assume that you already have a web site. I think that's a fair assumption since many of you are members of my LinkedIn network and if not, you are, after all, in the business of software for publishing...
Today you can buy anything on the web. Literally. There was a town in Arizona posted for sale on the web. I don't really know whether or not it was sold because it was listed on the web, but I certainly learned about it because it was on the web. I think most of us will agree that Obama was elected largely due to his grassroots, social media, and general web marketing. Four years ago, I couldn't have picked him out of a crowd, and probably neither could have you. So if you can sell a town and you can elect a president, selling your extensible technology ought to be a walk in the park; right?
Theoretically, every customer with any type of problem in which you specialize in solving is a few keystrokes away from finding you. That's mostly true. Think about your product for a moment. ... What are your key phrases? Your talking points? Your elevator pitch? Ok, now imagine that I am your candidate customer but there's a problem. I don't know your key phrases. I haven't heard your talking points. I've never shared an elevator with you. See the disconnect? I have a problem. I can describe it. You have a solution. You can describe it. I speak in problem language. You speak in solution language. I haven't yet learned your language, but you do speak mine. Sort of.
This is where search engines can help, but they don't work alone. You have to coax them.
Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, DogPile, and others all have what are called spiders or robots. These are applications that run around the web and index the content of pages. While they're at it, they evaluate the page content's relevancy. Search engines are successful only when they return relevant pages at a find request. If I type in variable-data publishing, and the search engine returns pages about dentists, I will not be a happy searcher and I will try a different search engine. The better the results -- the more relevant the pages -- the more I will come to rely on their product. Since they charge fees for premium ads, their revenue is dependent upon me using their service and seeing those ads.
There are many things to consider when you are trying to create content that search engines will find relevant, and it is not a documented, exact science. What's more, they all index in their own proprietary manner. Just about the time you make it to page one of Google's results for variable-data publishing, someone -- your competitor probably -- comes along and bumps you out of the top spot or maybe completely off page one. What do they know that you don't know? Maybe nothing. It might have been luck of the draw that day, but probably not. They are probably, likely even, more relevant -- or at least appear to be.
While getting up close and personal with these spiders is probably not how you want to spend your day, you can certainly have casual conversations with them. Job one, of course, is to launch a web site or a blog, and job two is to make sure your content is relevant, speaks to the customer, uses phrases they understand (and not just your proprietary phrases for addressing their issue). You can use meta tags and site maps to help the spiders index the right pages and to identify key phrases, but without content to back up the claims of your meta tags, you are not going to make it to page one of those results.
Stop now and check out your home page. What did you find? Did you solve my problem on your home page?
Hold on. Let me ask you again. Did you solve my problem on your home page?
I just visited ten of your web sites. Out of those ten, I found a clear message on one home page. That means that nine out of ten of you have beautiful home pages with links to your products, your store, your partners, your resellers, your locations, alternate languages, engaging Flash, and one of you actually got me to stop and read because you solved my problem.
You can fix that.
In the span of one or two sentences, describe my problem to me in my problem language and solve my problem in your solution language. When you do that, you are creating relevancy between those types of problems and your solution. Now a search spider is going to get it. (I know you are dying to know what one site solved my problem, so here you go http://www.stibosystems.com.)
As a sidebar: resist the urge to solve my problem in a graphic. Solve it in text, make it searchable, and don't be afraid to solve it more than once. I'm fine with you solving my problem three or four times on your home page. It's okay, sometimes I don't get it right away. Maybe you want to approach it from different angles. Then, not only are you solving my problem, but I also get that you have lots of ways to solve it. Now I really like your home page.
So having said all this, is my advice specific to the business of selling extensible technology? Absolutely not. Most of the lessons I've learned and the messages I share have been learned by thousands, if not millions, of others and extolled on millions of listeners. I'm simply telling them again because I've been here with you for the last 20 years and hope that my perspective -- a perspective you share as part of the same industry -- will be helpful to you in finding your way in this electronic age.
12 March 2009
Are extensions still a million-dollar industry?
In 1995, I started ThePowerXChange. This was after four years as a corporate trainer where I often also functioned as a reseller of QuarkXPress XTensions to my training customers. In the last 17 or so years, I've made millions of dollars selling extensions (collectively XTensions, Plug-ins, Add-ons, Add-ins, and so on), but it begs the question: Are there still millions to be made? Of course there are, but the way you sell, promote, and even deliver them is different. That is the catalyst for this blog.
We have different challenges today than the early days and many of those challenges come in the form of messaging vehicles. At ThePowerXChange, I feel as though we've tried everything, and believe me, we've had lots of failures, but we obviously had lots of successes, too. I would like to think that despite the number of failures, I at least came away a bit smarter.
In the pages of this blog I will share with you some of our tried-and-true messaging vehicles, but more importantly I will share with you the results of our new forays into the world of social-media optimization (SMO) and search-engine optimization (SEO), and how -- or whether -- you can use it to sell your software technology. These are methods that are common to many industries, but I will tell you about them as they apply to us; those of us in the business of software for publishing.
Before 9/11, at ThePowerXChange, we were just motoring along and enjoying reasonable success and growth. Our big campaigns before this pivotal period were what we called PUNs (product-upgrade notices). It was a form of variable-data printing -- when very few companies even knew what that was. We used Xdata and QuarkXPress to customize postcards to our customers telling them when a product they had purchased had been revisioned. They were hugely successful. Depending upon the product, we would see 80% of the customers purchase the upgrade. Our customers loved that the postcard contained all of their purchase history, the product name, the version -- all the things that are taken for granted today with any variable-data job.
After 9/11, it was a whole, new world. Had anyone told me that my company would be affected by a bombing on the eastern seaboard, I would have calmly explained to them how little they know about my business. As it turns out, I would have been wrong -- completely wrong.
For the eight months after 9/11, our phone simply did not ring. We had a shopping cart site, and the cart remained empty. Out of sheer boredom, we started contacting our customers and asked them how we could help and we ended up developing a nice little niche business that while it generated no income, created more good will than I could have bought with a truckload of money.
We had a fair number of customers in the region of the twin towers in NYC and many of them had been booted from their offices due to the quarantine. These companies were also without their software and computers so we researched, wrote letters, and re-delivered their entire library; including their major apps from Quark, Adobe, Meta, and Macromedia. The great thing is, once everyone got back to work, they remembered us and many are still our customers today.
At the same time we started researching shopping-cart software and how to drive traffic. My support manager took over the shopping cart research and together we settled on Searchfit. The benefit to this proprietary solution was that they created static web pages for each product. This increased the number of relevant pages at our site and moved us up the search-engine rankings quickly. I took on the electronic marketing and started email campaigns, click-thru advertising, co-op eMarketing, link exchanges, and more. I read everything in could get my hands on about how to take advantage of the very inexpensive or free marketing available through the web.
Nearly eight years later we still spend nearly all of our marketing budget on search-engine placement and figuring out how to best employ these new and some not-so-new tools to promote the extensible-technology market. We have launched all new SMO campaigns that include LinkedIn, Plaxo, Yahoo, Google, Revver, YouTube, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, GoogleBase, Google Analytics, Google Search, Google AdSense, Amazon, Flickr, BlipTV, MeFeedia, RSS, link exchange, click-thru ads, banner ads, affiliates program, co-op eMarketing and announcements with our partners, and news and press releases.
So here, on the pages of my blog, I will tell you about what we've done, what we're doing, and where we're headed. I'll try to give you ideas about projects you can implement and maybe we'll find ways to work together to benefit you and your market. At the very least, you'll come away with a sense that we share your pain. If you're like me, it will make you feel better to know that you are not alone.
We have different challenges today than the early days and many of those challenges come in the form of messaging vehicles. At ThePowerXChange, I feel as though we've tried everything, and believe me, we've had lots of failures, but we obviously had lots of successes, too. I would like to think that despite the number of failures, I at least came away a bit smarter.
In the pages of this blog I will share with you some of our tried-and-true messaging vehicles, but more importantly I will share with you the results of our new forays into the world of social-media optimization (SMO) and search-engine optimization (SEO), and how -- or whether -- you can use it to sell your software technology. These are methods that are common to many industries, but I will tell you about them as they apply to us; those of us in the business of software for publishing.
Before 9/11, at ThePowerXChange, we were just motoring along and enjoying reasonable success and growth. Our big campaigns before this pivotal period were what we called PUNs (product-upgrade notices). It was a form of variable-data printing -- when very few companies even knew what that was. We used Xdata and QuarkXPress to customize postcards to our customers telling them when a product they had purchased had been revisioned. They were hugely successful. Depending upon the product, we would see 80% of the customers purchase the upgrade. Our customers loved that the postcard contained all of their purchase history, the product name, the version -- all the things that are taken for granted today with any variable-data job.
After 9/11, it was a whole, new world. Had anyone told me that my company would be affected by a bombing on the eastern seaboard, I would have calmly explained to them how little they know about my business. As it turns out, I would have been wrong -- completely wrong.
For the eight months after 9/11, our phone simply did not ring. We had a shopping cart site, and the cart remained empty. Out of sheer boredom, we started contacting our customers and asked them how we could help and we ended up developing a nice little niche business that while it generated no income, created more good will than I could have bought with a truckload of money.
We had a fair number of customers in the region of the twin towers in NYC and many of them had been booted from their offices due to the quarantine. These companies were also without their software and computers so we researched, wrote letters, and re-delivered their entire library; including their major apps from Quark, Adobe, Meta, and Macromedia. The great thing is, once everyone got back to work, they remembered us and many are still our customers today.
At the same time we started researching shopping-cart software and how to drive traffic. My support manager took over the shopping cart research and together we settled on Searchfit. The benefit to this proprietary solution was that they created static web pages for each product. This increased the number of relevant pages at our site and moved us up the search-engine rankings quickly. I took on the electronic marketing and started email campaigns, click-thru advertising, co-op eMarketing, link exchanges, and more. I read everything in could get my hands on about how to take advantage of the very inexpensive or free marketing available through the web.
Nearly eight years later we still spend nearly all of our marketing budget on search-engine placement and figuring out how to best employ these new and some not-so-new tools to promote the extensible-technology market. We have launched all new SMO campaigns that include LinkedIn, Plaxo, Yahoo, Google, Revver, YouTube, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, GoogleBase, Google Analytics, Google Search, Google AdSense, Amazon, Flickr, BlipTV, MeFeedia, RSS, link exchange, click-thru ads, banner ads, affiliates program, co-op eMarketing and announcements with our partners, and news and press releases.
So here, on the pages of my blog, I will tell you about what we've done, what we're doing, and where we're headed. I'll try to give you ideas about projects you can implement and maybe we'll find ways to work together to benefit you and your market. At the very least, you'll come away with a sense that we share your pain. If you're like me, it will make you feel better to know that you are not alone.
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