New Year - New Marketing Process

• Once in a while I read an article that inspires new thought... this is definitely one to share!
  

• 5 Ways to Market Your Business Smarter, Faster, and Cheaper

  By Donna Fenn
  
• Don’t be a product pusher. “You should shift your mindset away from marketing your product and toward being a trusted resource,” says Siteman Garland. A great example of that, he says, is HubSpot, a company that sells software to small business, but whose website focuses heavily on providing its customer demographic with free resources. “They have a blog that has information on generating leads online and Internet marketing,” says Siteman Garland. “And there’s a weekly TV show where they go over marketing headlines for the week. They’re not saying, ‘how awesome is own software?’ They’re showing you that they’re a trusted resource.”

• Humanize your Web presence. “Be a human being online and not a company,” says Siteman Garland. “People like to do business with people they know, like and trust. There has to be a human behind a brand.” So allow your personality to shine through on your website and allow your employees to have a presence there as well. For instance, Meathead Movers, a San Luis Obispo, CA moving company that employs student athletes, features employees on its website and allows customers to choose their own moving team.

• Be a digital schmoozer. “One of the arts we’re overlooking on line is being able to make small talk,” says Siteman Garland. ”I’ve interview 200 plus people who do this successfully and for them, the Web is like a small town where you know the butcher on the corner. The people who build up the most responsive followings on line are connecting with people on a one to one basis that goes beyond business. Business is becoming much more personal.” So ahead and talk about your dog and your kids online, but set your boundaries and stick to them.

• Merge your digital and real world connections. Online and offline should not be two separate worlds, says Siteman Garland. “The best online networking happens offline,” he notes. “Companies are always thinking about big conferences. But I like to throw small events, like a dinner - you get a restaurant, invite 20 people and organize the discussion around a theme. It gets people away from the computer and it’s a relationship builder. “Take pictures, pull out your Flip and make a short video, and then post your content on Facebook and tweet about the event the next day.

• Cozy up to bloggers. “You should focus on building genuine relationships with bloggers and content creators in your niche,” says Siteman Garland. “That doesn’t mean spamming them with press releases. The secret sauce is start helping them.” The result: Verlee got her clients some nice media exposure and was herself a guest on The Rise to the Top because she invested time in relationship building.

What are your smarter, faster, cheaper, tricks for marketing your company? Share them with your fellow entrepreneurs.

The "KEY" to KEYWORDS...

Ensure that your content contains enough keywords! Having too many
will turn off readers; having too few will hurt your search engine
rankings. Achieve the right balance (with the right words) by using
the Keyword Density Checker:

http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php

This tool provides a visual representation of the keywords on your
site, with more common words showing up in larger fonts. The Keyword
Density Checker also gives an exact count of how often words appear,
and presents their density as a percentage. Use this information to
guide your campaign to search engine success.

Keep on Promoting!

Have you ever heard the saying, "I know that I waste half of my advertising budget. The problem is I don't know which half!" It is this very philosophy that is prompting me to strongly inform you... advertising doesn't work!

Let me show you why:

• There is no way to track effectiveness (or ineffectiveness)
• It's impersonal
• The target audience is too large
• It's costly to redo or improve
• There is no call to action

What surprises me is the number of small business owners that save their marketing dollars just to waste them on ineffective advertising. Then, they complain because nothing is working and they don't have any customers. I know what you're thinking, "Isn't advertising and marketing the same thing?" Well, not really. Let me explain the differences.

Advertising includes: commercials, billboards, radio, and newspapers.

Marketing includes: emails, letters, postcards, and fax.

So how is follow-up marketing better than advertising?

• You can track response rates
• You can quickly change campaigns that aren't working
• You can specifically target your audience
• It leads prospects to an immediate sell

If you really want to attract more customers, you will learn to market and leave the advertising to those gazillion dollar companies.

Contact me to find out more!

10 Website Pitfalls.

You definitely want a professional, efficient, and effective site, to your visitors it doesn’t matter how cool or pretty a web site looks, if they find it impractical and worthless they will head to your competitor’s site, which is just a click away.

Avoid this website pitfalls....

1. Flash intros interesting? (maybe) the first time you visit a site. Avoid using
   flash because surveys show 80 percent of visitors hate them and they hurt your search
   engine optimization efforts.
   
2. Animated GIFs and scrolling text what a major distraction, especially when they are
   overused. Unless an animated GIF or scrolling text complements the information on
   your page, don.t use them.
   
3. Distorted pictures is the number one dead give-a-way your site was not created professionally. Use a cropping tool to evenly distribute the image dimension or use an image gallery that will automatically crop the images for you during upload.
   
4. Free Advertising is how you spell frustrating and annoying. You run the risk of loosing high dollars to an ad that will probably only generate a few pennies.
   
5. Outdated content and broken links these are very unprofessional and shows lack of
   commitment. Use automatic tools to keep you content fresh.
   
6. Under construction pages how completely unnecessary and they will cause you to lose business. Create a basic page listing your contact address, phone number, email and why not add a short paragraph about your products or services.
   
7. Keep it Simple confusing and a confused mind always says no. Limit your menu choices between 5 and 7 and make sure your navigation appears in the same spot on every page.
   
8. Information Overload can overwhelm the visitor because no one wants to read a
   dissertation. Make your web site about your visitor by providing them with essential
   information like the benefits of doing business with you.
   
9. Music or Voice is a major annoyance because everyone has different tastes. If
   there’s not a compelling reason to add music, don’t. If it is a voice you are using program it so it only happens on request, or upon initial visit.
   
10. Hit counters are truly useless because they only track one element of site statistics. Try
    sophisticated, easy to understand and free analytics tools that are hidden to your visitors. If you are having 1 visitor or 1 million your visitor only cares if you have what they want.

THE BALANCE: Design & Functionality

Today at WebWise we will examine balancing design with functionality and some of the trade offs you must consider when designing your website. Consider what components would clearly define a website as "professionally" done? Simply spending thousands of dollars on web design won’t guarantee success. Never underestimate the importance of simply making sure it loads quickly and employs a straightforward navigation system. Your visitors must also feel that the time spent at your site worth their while, there is nothing that accomplishes this better then content. All this is easily said, however; establishing it in a website could be a challenge. This article will help you determine the required balance and ways that it can be achieved.

DESIGN
Your visitor's first impression will be the determination of whether or not you're going to make a sale. A professional website should be visually appealing, well organized, easy to navigate and load quickly. How can that be done?

The one mistake commonly made is the "busy" web design factor. Which means including things that have flashy appeal or a novelty value as in Marquis, status bars, blinking, spinning, animated gifs, and cartoons in an attempt to replace structured content. These are memory intensive and will increase you page loading time. Instead of going in for the "busy" design features, make your site attractive and user-friendly by combining strong content, with a good layout.

Strong content, must include the use of effective sales copy. Your words are the entire foundation of your business. Most business failures are the result of ineffective copy. Whether it is your website, sales letters or advertisements, your words play a major role in determining your success. When writing your website copy, try using the following formula:
A -Attention - Use a powerful headline that demands attentionI -Interest - Intrigue interest and create curiosityD -Detail - Provide details about your product or serviceA -Action - Call for action

Good layout means considering how each of your pages will flow. How will you maintain a balance between links, graphics, fonts and text. Only use graphics that express what your site is about and compliment your text. Use fonts, which are compatible across the many computing platforms. It is recommended that you use these standard fonts Arial, Courier, Terminal, Comic Sans and Times New Roman. Using stylized fonts can replace graphics or create a great title. Although pictures say a thousand words they can’t replace well-written copy. Graphics and pictures should only compliment your site. Graphic and picture intensive sites usually load slowly and the customer has left the site before they even see the content.
When choosing colours, graphics, tables and banners remember that many monitors can only accommodate a resolution of either 640x480 or 800x600 pixels. Exceeding these factors horizontally will require that users scroll to the right. Scrolling is both inconvenient and distracting.

FUNCTIONALITY
Organize web pages so that users can quickly scan pages and get a feel for content. Your users don't want to read the entire page to find what they are looking for. Keep it clear and simple. When you can, use bulleted lists and menus instead of burying useful information in text.
Create pages that are a suitable length. For the most part, more than 3 scrolling screens, is too long. Similarly, links that lead to a new page containing only a sentence or two of text frustrate users. Try to aim somewhere between a few paragraphs and a few screens. When considering how to break up information, factor in the issue of printing. Is the document something users may want to print out?

Think carefully about your hypertext links. Put yourself in the user's shoes and imagine where you would want to go next from any given idea in your pages - then link up with those places. Try to integrate links into your text, rather than breaking up the flow of ideas. For example, avoid writing "for information about dogs, click here". Instead make dogs the hypertext link. Also, avoid excessive linking. Too many links on a page will distract the user. Make sure that your links are contextually appropriate and don't link to a URL more than once on the same page.

Have your site designed with multiple platforms and multiple browsers in mind. A page that looks great in Netscape may not look so great in Internet Explorer. Similarly, Netscape for the Macintosh renders pages differently than Netscape for the PC. Finally, remember that some browse the Web in a text-only environment and cannot view graphics or tables.
Do your best to accommodate all users and check your web pages on the several different browsers and platforms. Specifically, check your pages on a Macintosh, a PC running Windows 95/98/NT and a PC running Windows 3.1. This is the minimum compatibility requirement.
Lastly but importantly, check your pages regularly to be sure that all information is current. Be very conscientious about looking for "broken links". Remember that web sites move and disappear every minute, and users will tire quickly if your web site points to outdated links or contains dated content.

For further information or assistance with website design and functionality email Sherry or call 344-6889.

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It is free to join - and - who knows where this directory is going to go!

7 Web Marketing Strategy Essentials

Setting Goals and Objectives for the Web
What goals and objectives have you planned for your Web business? We offer a few suggestions.

Strategic Marketing Options
There are only three! We'll help you choose the BEST one for you.

Web Site Positioning
How will your Web site fit into the current marketplace. Can you find your NICHE?

Building Customer Trust
An evaluation of your customer and how to build trust in YOU and the products and services you sell.

S.W.O.T. Analysis
If you already have an online business, this analysis will help you evaluate it.
If not, use this information to AVOID costly mistakes.

Competitive Intelligence
A useful checklist to help evaluate the competition.

Action Plan
Here are some important points to keep in mind about putting your marketing strategies into action.

This is an upcoming seminar I will be hosting, if you are interested in attending or would like to receive the "online" version please contact me.