Internet Marketing Post

SEO Primer

If you own a web site that generates business based on traffic and lead generation, search engine optimzation is your friend. SEO is a combination of strategies and techniques applied to site to enhance its "findability" on the major search engines. HUH? you say? It's all about keywords, content, competitors and consistency. Read on.

Keywords - SEO is discovering the keywords to target on your site based on how your audience talks about you and your products.

Content -Content is the structure i.e. menus and text and images on your site - does it support your search engines goals or detract from them? Too much? Too little? Unengaging? SEO addresses all of that. Links to partners online and offering streams of fresh content will also benefit your site ranking.

Competitors - Are there simple missed opportunities to beat your competitor's search engine rankings? If so, attack them and see your company rise to the top.

Consistency - SEO is about a strategy executed with consistency over time. Your search engine rankings will increase over time if you SEO frm is doing it's job.

Let me know if you have questions on this or if you need help getting your SEO strategy in place and executed. It's something we do and you will have fun seeing your site generate the business you desire.

Our Ukranian Adoption

Dear Family & Friends,

 

We wanted to share an incredible thing happening in our lives and about a special little girl that we have grown to love. Below is Sasha’s story and how you might help bring her home to a family of her very own.

Sasha’s Story

Sasha, is a sweet 7 year old Ukrainian orphan. She is a brown haired, brown eyed sparkly girl with spunk and smiles. Smart and active, Sasha is loved and enjoyed at her orphanage where she has lived all of her life. Sasha had the flu when she was 3 years old and as a result has rheumatoid arthritis and some heart health issues. She needs better and immediate medical care then the orphanage is able to provide for her. We are going to adopt Sasha and bring her to the United States to live with our family. Can you help?

 

If you would like to help with this journey, we need prayer and financial support. We are raising funds through grants and donations. My long time friend Teresa and her friends have a non profit set up for just these type of things. If you want to donate, please make a check out to:

Aloha Fellowship

4742 42nd Ave SW #426

Seattle, WA 98116

If you want to learn more about the ministry that has helped us through the process, or you want to host a Ukrainian orphan this Christmas go to Grace Adoption Ministry. 

Thank you so much for taking the time to think and pray for Sasha and John and Jennifer Norene’s travel to Ukraine in the very near future to get precious Sasha!

How NOT to Overdesign Your Email Blasts

I was thinking today about how simple good email post card design is.There is a simple brilliance to great email marketing post card design, actually. That old adage, "don't over do it", it applies here. Here's why:

Email, like most web mediums is scanned - more read then others, but still scanned. Of course in boxes are deluged these days, including mine, and ever changing email addresses and spam filters are a factor. List maintenance is another post, but don't ignore it, it's crucial. Email that stands out is simple, focused, well designed and brings relevant and useful content to it's recipient.

There are two major types of email marketing, (being very general here but hang in there with me). There is email you mail to an existing customer (my favorite) and email you mail to prospective customers. This post is about the former, the ones who love you already. Existing customers are a hotbed of opportunity for email marketing done right. Now for the "doin it right" part. There are (in general) 2 major formats for email, post card blast and email newsletters, this post is about the former.

Great email postcards with good response go something like this:

1. Use one maybe 2 messages, a strong tag and maybe a sub point. Don't over do the copy. Remember, they are scannnning....and they are in a hurrrrry.

2. Use colors that are the appropriate contrast or style for your audience. Older folks like high contrast, younger folks the more hip colors - check a fashion magazine or their favorite web sites and design within the realm of their ability to read and their liking.

3. Choose imagery carefully. Don't pick images that will limit the design appeal unless you plan to design several versions of the piece. For example if you are targeting men, age 40 and up that play sports, be sure to provide a general enough image to keep both the soccer players and the out doors men engaged. Be sure to vary your photos to include all the beautiful people in the world, within your targeted demographic. This is something you can schedule in over time, certainly not something to worry about in each piece.

On a budget or without a photographer, try these sites for reasonable and beautiful work:

www.corbis.com, www.dreamstime.com, www.gettyimages.com, www.istock.com.

Lastly, give your deep divers, or those that want to read more or better yet buy from you, a place to go. Include links to your web site with relevant content to that postcard's message. Specifically designed landing pages are not required, but definitely test landing pages vs deep dives on your web site. And do more of what works. (remember, simply brilliant.)

So, simple but relevant content, stand out imagery that your audience can relate to and links for deep diving.

Have fun, and send along samples if you want to brag on how great your post cards are. Cheers!

Email's Position in the Market - Real Life Thoughts

 

I called a business I frequented years ago today to ask them to please remove me from their email marketing list. The response I got was enlightening. Here is what I learned:

1. New adapters to online media often start with email marketing. Some would say email marketing is on the way out due to social media's onset. Not true. Online techies and long timers often usher out intellectually what the market is still adapting to. So as far as the salon goes, they have been emailing for a couple years now and still don't understand CAN SPAM or how to manage their email marketing agency.

2. New adapters in email marketing often times do not hire agencies or individuals that manage their email marketing deliverability carefully. This was the ninth time or more that I had asked to be removed from their list via email. There was not an unsubscribe link on the email and I had received 2 emails from them that day!

3. New adaptors to email marketing are at legal risk due to their lack of understanding. The woman that took my call repeatedly said "we have nothing to do with that" as if they did not control who was subscribed or unsubscribed from her company's list. (!) As a courtesty, I explained CANSPAM requires they remove me from their list within 14 days and she said "you are the one that gave us your email address."Scary misunderstanding of the legal risk their company is in emailing cluelessly.

4. Opportunity abounds for solid email marketing companies to help these type of clients. Educating them on the importance of list integrity alone would provide a valuable service.

Had any of these conversations lately? Do share.

Solid SEO is Still Solid SEO

It almost seems boring to write a post about how something that has been around for a while hasn't changed that much. In the world of advertising and media, things that don't change seem a bit dry, but reality wins and so goes SEO. SEO, solid SEO that works i.e. drives quality traffic and brand boosting, requires strategy, time, thoughtful integration and that evil dark thing called "hard work". Having optimized many sites by now and being someone who is always looking for the latest, greatest improvement of web methodology for my own curiosity sake and the value of my client's...I have come to the boring conclusion that solid seo, is still solid seo, and requires, like I said, strategy, time, thoughtful integration and just plain hard work, over time. Yes, to make it worse, it takes lots of time, and the first couple of months sometimes don't yield any results. Yes, you read that right. From the client side you will not be able to control Google, Yahoo, consumer interest or the weather. Frightening, but true.

I asked an old colleague of mine yesterday, and incidentally, a brilliant SEO guy, what, after 2 years since we chatted about it, he sees as the top 5 SEO tactics. In other words, what is SEO to you?  Again, not a surprising response, but the answer is still, excellent site architecture, a planned and executed keyword and content strategy and lots of relationshiop building i.e. links. Also on the list is developing and executing a plan to keep your content fresh and inviting to visitors and search engines. It is mind boggling to many in the SEO industry that there are still sites being built today that take zero consideration for SEO. Since the onset of SEO in the mid 90's the means to gain visitors to your site has evolved and SEO techniques have rested on these 5 principles (they vary based on authors, but here is my take):

Excellent Architecture
Domain names that make sense,clean code, lack of search engine crawler obstruction, H1 and other tags and maintaining that "cleanness", all matter.

Keyword Strategy
Tuning into what your customers call your product, not what your sales team or marketers think your customers call your product is crucial. Focus groups and cross company brainstorms sessions work for this. Supplement this research with the many free research tools available (Google's for one) and you are off to a great start.

Content Strategy
What are the topics most interesting to your audience? What information compels your audience to buy from you? What are the key brand statements that need to be integrated into your content? What  Calls to Action work on direct mail and TV. That gets you started on a content strategy - test, test and test.

Link Strategy
I say "relationship building" instead of "Link building" because there are rumblings that Google is also eyeing your use of sloppy, meaningless mutual links. (SEO buyers beware, you should not be paying for this sloppiness) Sometimes links are mutual (like networking relationships) and sometimes they are not. Your site needs to reflect that. Enough said.

Change Cycles
So, SEO tactics may not have changed drastically, but the need to change and add to a web site on a regular basis, keep it dynamic, not static, has not changed. You would not let your TV or direct mail copy go untested, what has your web site not changed for a year? Quarterly, monthly and weekly, even daily schedules are in order for your site. It needs and editorial calendar just like any effective advertising medium.

A planning document with each of the above elements gives you a great launching pad for this effort. Whether you outsource the SEO effort or keep it in house, measure action -> results on a weekly  basis.  Actions that don't work, need to be changed, strategies that fail, rewritten, and on it goes.

The good news is that a well executed SEO plan can yield fantastic results, great brand exposure, clicks and sales from targeted traffic. The time and work yields results and is worth the effort. And so it goes, solid SEO, is still solid SEO.

Guerilla Market Research: Discover Your Prospects on a Budget

Who drives the marketing messaging in your company, really? The engineers? The marketing people? The CEO? The company mascot? The web master? Hopefully your answer to all of the above is "no" and many of you are answering, "our prospects, our market research methods, our online media results". So what's wrong with the technical writers deciding what to call a product?

I find over and over again that companies, especially small and medium size ones, drive their messages and venue approach to their prospects based on who they are and not on their targeted market. We are all better off asking  "Are our prospects watching TV?" "Reading online content?" "Blogging?" "Where are they found?" "What language do they speak these days?" "Do you use that language?" "Are we in their venue?" Or are they trying to find usand once they do they don't understand the language we are using to reach them?

No one has extra market research dollars sitting around these days, so here are some simple steps to take to get to the prospects you are after in their language and in their venue.

1. Online media results. Paid search, web site clicks, banner clicks etc. Which clicks turn to sale? What was the verbiage of the ad that got the click? Or the image? Paid search ad testing is a gold mind for new messages that work in other media t ypes.

2. Talk to your prospects. Have you called back the people who called you last week and didn't buy? Find out why they didn't or who they bought from? Did your process turn them off? Was your web site too confusing? These are all valuable questions to have answered.

3. Surveys Survey Monkey is inexpensive and easy to use. Use it to create simple surveys that survey your prospects and clients on their opinion of your brand and work. Be ready for he honesty the written word brings and put what they say to work for you.

4. Use social media to casually survey your prospects. Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites can provide a wealth of detailed insight into your customers wants and desires, irritations and even feature requests for your product!

Do you have a Twitter account yet? Think it is a waste of microchatting? Thank again. Search on Twittersearch for your brand name and industry terms. What are people saying on those topics? Once you have a Twitter account, search people to find your typical prospects. Follow a few of them for a week. What are they talking about?

 

Are your prospects runners? chocolate lovers? vacation takers? Fan a few of those types of pages on Facebook and observe and participate in the discussions. Where are their passions and motivations? Are they spending according to those online and in retail outlets? Yes.

There are many other means of surveying your prospects interests - these are a few low cost methods to get you thinking their direction, and have a little fun with social media outlets while you are at it. Have fun!

Marketing to Women in Social Media

Marketing to Women in Social Media

Shared via AddThis

Launching Email Marketing: List Building or Acquistion

Upon program launch, every email marketer faces the decision as to how they will acquire or build an email list of recipients. A solid email marketing strategy includes a thoughtful creative strategy based on your target market, and an equally thought out list acquisition or building strategy. Lets talk about what each is and when to choose which - list  approach that is.

Build a List Organically.
It is best to build a list of loyal, opted in email recipients, one by one via your online campaigns like search marketing, web site sign ups, blogs and other social media efforts. Also, take advantage of the many traditional media opportunities to collect addresses,  like direct mail lead cards, trade show booth sign ups and retail location POS collection.

You will need to evangelize the value of email addresses in some corporate environments where often physical addresses are still the sought after consumer data.

Acquiring a List
Shortly said, acquired lists can be expensive and you don't always get a quality list. The list seach requires time and research, so choose carefully and talk to list holder references, get 3 bids, you know the drill.

Also, some email senders  will not even accept most acquired lists. So know your sender's list policies before you decide your list route. The reason is "you never really know what you are going to get". The addresses on many acquired lists are old, include non-opted in names, and sometimes come with no proof of opt in at all. The best thing to do if you have the budget to acquire a list is to get the seller to scrub it for you, or scrub it like crazy once you have it. And this means sending a "resubscribe" invite to the subscribers to make double sure (thus "double opted in") that they still want to hear from your company. This may shrink a list but a small and mighty list (mighty = high responding) is much better then an expensive to mail to large list.

A Note about Deliverability
A positive deliverability reputaion is paramount to ongoing success in email marketing. Deliverability is risky game, even when you know exactly who you are mailing to. Consider that you have once chance to gain a good reputation with ISPs and if you blow that chance getting black listed is not fun and even always possible to recover from. So, waiting a few months to build your own organically grown list, and spending that time, instead of the dollars acquiring a list that you may not know much about is often the safer route.

Whichever route you travel, you are sure to enjoy great cross sell, branding and offer results with email marketing. For a free copy of our list qualifying questions, email us.

Follow me on Twitter

So the hottest social media tool right now is Twitter. So that is what they say. The growth rate is quite impressive.

So. After much ado, and experimenting, "tweeting" and "retweeting", "deleting", "following", and "unfollowing" - I have a Twitter community that is valid and valuable to my business. I network with others doing what I do, meet potential new clients, exchange services. It is also just a fun part of my day to share newsworthy items, read the same and stay connected to folks across the globe.

Recommend as a must for your brand stability, not yet, think necessary for your marketing team to monitor your competitors and the thoughts of your target audiences, absolutely. (I even hired a cartoonist to lighten up my profile page, take a look) Look for more from "her" later.

So tell me,  I know you have an opinion, what do you think of all the tweeting?

This Post's Header Credit - and check out Siah's free Twitter buttons while you are there. 

6 Reasons to Keep or Start Your Email Newsletter

                                    

While rumors of social media threatening email marketing bounce around the web, email  done right, marches on producing leads and loyalty from consumers. Here is where the loyalty comes from and also why you should keep or start your email newsletter. 

1. Email newsletters deliver value add content to an otherwise offer badgered audience. In the "it's all about them" web economy it is crucial to deliver content useful to your audience and completely not focused on your company or its products and services, offers, coupons, you get the picture. For value ad content ideas, sign up for few of your competitors email newsletters and see how good they are at focusing on the needs of their customers, and downplaying their own interests. 

2. Email newsletters are a great environment for offers. (see #1, and then read #2) Your offers should not be the focus of a email newsletter. But, you can test new offers tastefully within and email newsletters. The targeted content of email newsletters offers opportunities to present new offers, in a non pushy manner - right there amongst content that is valuable to your customer.

3. Email newsletters succeed at establishing your company as an expert in your industry. Your customers may buy Widget X from you but do they think of you for expert advice and industry trend information? Email newsletters enable you to build trust and credibility with your existing customers. 

4. Email newsletters are a great vehicile for promoting your key partnerships - interviews with key executives, featured new products and other company tidbits about your partners will educate your customer and help your partner companies. 

5. Last but not least, email newsletters produce great fresh content for your web site - they are easily hosted on your site for revisiting and SEO purposes. 

6. Email newsletters are great viral marketing tools - in other words, if they are well done your readers will forward them to friends and family, file or bookmark for future reference, share on social media networks. 

So tighten your existing email newsletters with relevant "all about them" content, bright imagery and clear brand messaging. Make sure you include a means to share the content, and a forward to a friend button. Email newsletters done right can build your customer's loyalty and build the value and size of y our email list. 

10 Reasons Ignoring Usability is a Bad Idea

Time and attention. Aren't we all fighting for more of that for our web sites, our landing pages, our blogs, our Twitter profiles for goodness sake. Time and attention. What keeps a web site visitor giving you more of their time and attention?

My viewpoint on this subject was formed based on the almost 4 years thinking about busy senior caregivers and seniors and how they use the web, and how they don't use the web. Where they click and where they won't. Serving the fast growing senior on line market forces you through some web design filters for sure. Filters in regards to color, contrast, information volume, content, use of keywords, form ease of use, and many more. What applies for attracting and keeping the attention of a senior audience is not so far from what you need to provide for any busy, option hunting web audience. Here are the reasons you can't ignore what they think of your site's ease of use - or usability factor:

1. People are in a hurry, much of the time on the web. They are scanning and hunting for a product or information right for them.  If you have not considered how easy it is (or not) to find the key pieces of information your site exists for (hottest products, key solutions, etc.) your users are most likely not spending much time hunting, and are onto the next site.

2. Based on age and health of your visitor, your site may or may not be easy to see or read. Color contrast relevant to the age and tastes of your audience is important. Are they young and looking for trendy use of color, older and needing high contrast? Researching and wanting color simplicity?

3. information is power, if it is organized in an easy to use fashion. Who cares if your firm holds the golden key to all of your visitor's business problems if it is buried beyond 3 flash files and 4 irrelevant topic categories? Think about the need of you audience and organize information so the most important content is available first and easily.

4. If you ain't asking, I ain't responding. Does your site ask people to respond to your offers and products in the right places? You may have "had them at hello" but do they know where to click now to buy or learn more? Is it obvious where to buy your product.

5. Consumers will drop everything and leave the store if the cart process is difficult or frustrating. I spent hours trying to convince a client that all the marketing in the world would not make his cart easy to use. You have brought them to the party - are they bailing out early because the shopping process is hard to use or too cluttered?

6. There are places visitors are looking first and you need to know where they are. Heat mapping technology evolved to help companies figure out where their visitors were looking on their web pages - are your strongest calls to action well placed and gripping? If you don't want to spend the dollars on heat mapping ask 5 coworkers at lunch to tell you where their eye goes on your top 5 web pages. if the represent your audience types, listen. 

7. Lead and they will follow. Good usability practices lead your audiences to where they need to go to get what they want to buy from you. Is it obvious where you are leading your audience segments? Are 20 somethings' paths as clear as the 35 and older women's? All of your key audience segments should have several clear paths to follow. Are you leading?

8. You must stand out in your field on line. Okay, in other words, your site must look better, function better and close sales or share information better then your top 3 competitors. Does it? What are they doing wrong or poorly that you could do better? Color? Organization? Audience targeting? Are they using fancy technology but have horrible content or visa versa? There are your opportunities.

9. Deploying good usability practices is a wise use of budget. (and those are precious few these days for some) So. Don't waste money on a poorly organized, visually unappealing site. Take the time to know and target your top 3 audience segments with great paths, visuals and information they will use. Use at least an A and B version of your site or even some of the key pages, observe the clicks and make changes before you go live with a redesign. Your designer may have thought it looked great but its the clicks that count, so don't ignore them when redesigning your site.

10. Last but not least, good usability practices increase site stickiness, call to action response, completed contact us forms and phone calls. For most, this is at least part of why they have a site at all - to increase revenues.

One meeting with the right people in attendance, to review your site and list the biggest usability opportunities on your site, and then taking action to test those suggestions, could increase the conversion of your site traffic by 20% or more. Brainstorm, make a list, assign the changes and test a couple of them at a time. If you know your audience as well as you think you, you will be amazed at the results.