Out for a walk this morning. I decided this sign would make a good blog post.
You write it. In the comments...ready, set, go.
May 09, 2011
April 04, 2011
Helping Your Customers
Here's an example of a local business that is helping their customers make the homes look better this spring. The marketing goal is simple. Help people come to some conclusions about what would improve the curb appeal of their home. Most of us become blind to our own faults...and this includes the appearance of our own abodes.
One of my clients, a Portland Roofing Company is simply giving away their curb appeal checklist. You might even want to grab it. They are not even requiring you to "opt-in" to their email list to get it. They'd rather just have you improve the appearance of your home.
Seems like we've been waiting a long time for spring to arrive where I live. Maybe a little work on the house would push it along.
What are you giving to your customers this spring?
March 21, 2011
July 25, 2010
July 07, 2010
Marketing Beyond Advertising: Save enough to pay for airfare and hotel!
Wizard Academy just made an offer on Facebook that is so darn good, I just had to pass it along.
Marketing Beyond Advertising is listed on the Wizard Academy site as a $2,000 2-day course next week on the 15th and 16th of July. Trust me, it's worth every penny too.
Because they are trying to fill a few empty seats, they have announced a call-in price of just $500. With the money you save, you can book airfare, car rental and hotel, easily.
Check out the curriculum and pick up the phone. Call 512-295-5700 and ask for the discount. This is the best deal I've ever seen for a first time visit to Wizard Academy.
May 27, 2010
May 14, 2010
Contextual Linking: Your web site is NOT a strip mall
How stupid would it be to buy or build a giant strip mall and put different departments of your business into each storefront? How stupid would it be to not put the department names on the doors, or not tell the customer service employees inside the store where the other departments were located, instead requiring shoppers to come back to the main (home) storefront to get directions to each department? Can we agree that would be the dumbest way to build a business?
I had someone tell me the story of their web site the other day and they had done a lot of things right. They have a great design, built on a solid platform with all of the proper technical features. They got a domain that perfectly matched their biggest target keyword phrase. They have good traffic from the keyword. They have a ridiculously low bounce rate at around 1%. Unfortunately, they're not converting traffic to leads at more than 1%.
When I looked at the site, they had no contextual links in their copy. Other than the nav bar, there was no way for a visitor to get to any other page on the site once she had read to the bottom of a page. I'm not a huge fan of those big SEO footers, but at least that would have given a visitor another way to click through to different pages. How is this different than my doomed strip mall?
What's a contextual link? Just link on natural phrases in your copy that move people to different pages in your site. When they are skimming and scanning, they'll find the words that interest them and click. Outsiders (web "experts") who look at sites that I've put together often say they have too many links in the copy. Customers who use the same sites to solve a problem praise us for how easy it was to reach their goal. I'm siding with the customer on this one. You can build your strip mall on your own.
NOTE: There are no contextual links in this story. Don't you wish I'd included some as an example? Isn't it boring compared to other posts you've read where the writer linked all over the place? Wouldn't it make sense for me to link to examples of sites I've built? What if I've impressed you with my strip mall metaphor and you want to hire me? I guess you're on your own. You're smart. You'll figure it out, IF YOU HAVE TIME AND PATIENCE.
photo credit: DannyBen
April 21, 2010
Free Reward for having an Awesome Interior
Google is going to start helping you spread the word about your awesome retail experience. They've launched a new service where they'll be essentially tying your Google Local results with photos from inside your store...and they are supplying the photographers!
I've been writing for a long time about the importance of your Personal Experience Factor. Your reward for getting it right is that you may qualify for being one of the first to be featured in this new service from Google.
According to this story from ReadWriteWeb, "The company says the photographs will be taken by professionals trained in low lighting, will be as unobtrusive as possible, will initially be traditional in format and will be stitched together to form panoramas in the future."
So, if your jewelry store promises the largest selection of engagement rings in Winnipeg on your radio ads, perhaps Google will step in and help you offer the proof via Business Photos.
My question: What about service businesses like HVAC, or plumbing or roofing? If you're busy roofing Portland, you probably don't have much of a retail presence. Wouldn't it be great if Google would jump in your service van with you and take some job site photos? Not very likely until after they've been inside every retailer. So, you'd better be doing it yourself. Just saying.
Here's the link to find out more about Google Business Photos.
March 01, 2010
Have you seen a dog-eared Yellow Pages book lately?
Me neither.
My Facebook friend, Ruth, was asking for help researching a presentation she's giving to a bunch of Yellow Page advertisers and it got me thinking about this topic.
It used to be that your Yellow Pages book would get all dog-eared and doodled on in the course of the year. Every single Yellow Page book I've seen in the past couple of years has looked pristine. Shockingly pristine.
What a waste of money...good money by good people that are afraid NOT to advertise in this dead-tree environmental disaster. Millions of books printed, at a huge profit, just to spend a year on your desk in a drawer before heading to a landfill. Of course, that's just my opinion.
If you have a doodled-up, dog-eared Yellow Pages book, please snap a pic and send it my way...just for nostalgia's sake. My kids don't believe that people used to use them for any worthwhile purpose.
February 22, 2010
Be a "Word of Mouth" Enabler
Sometimes delivering a great customer experience through amazing products, architecture or movement just isn't quite enough to trigger the chain reaction of effective Word of Mouth.
Think about the reasons that people might be hesitant to recommend. Perhaps I consider my experience too "private" to talk about...or don't want to share the "secret" of my success. Unless you ask someone for specific advice, you'll seldom hear them bragging about their top-notch dentist, plastic surgeon or medical specialist.
Loss of proximity is another reason Word of Mouth loses it's oomph. If I have an amazing experience on vacation, but don't have an opportunity to share it until I get home weeks later, the magic of the moment has already begun to fade.
If you are truly delivering the goods to your customers, you should work on techniques to help them share their experience in the moment or very soon after.
Even in the late 1800s, the big cruise lines knew how to enable Word of Mouth among the millions of immigrants tucked away in 3rd class. On White Star liners, where even the 3rd class guests were served food by waiters on tables set with linen, the menu cards doubled as postcards that could be sent home to friends and relatives.
I think back on some pretty amazing experiences I've had and not been able to share until well after the moment. A great example is the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. The system in place is a well-oiled machine for getting people rigged up, trained up and moved out into the superstructure to begin the ascent. Before you are back down, the digital photographs of your group have been loaded on monitors in the gift shop waiting for you to purchase them...which we did. On a CD, which sat in our bags until we returned home. Then, it sat on our coffee table for weeks.
Since you are not allowed to bring your own camera, these are the only pictures you can get of your experience and I'm sure that loads of people purchase them. How could they be turned into an instant Word of Mouth marketing tool?
What if the operators made the photos available on a kiosk, where you could just email a lower resolution picture to anyone you wanted, BEFORE you left the building. Yes, they might lose a few CD sales, but they would be enabling their customers to tell others in the excitement of the moment.
In this day of social media, they could take it a few steps further. Since most of their tickets are sold online, they could ask for some sharing details BEFORE people arrive and be ready to post photos and video directly to their Facebook, Myspace or Twitter streams DURING the experience.
What about your business? How could you enable people to tell others while the experience is still fresh?
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