Marketing Trenches

I was speaking with a few colleagues the other day about the different benefits of social media as a whole, and blogging in particular.  The folks in the room had varying levels of social media involvement, from no involvement at all to heavy involvement.  Each of us discussed what we hope to get out of social media, why we blog or might consider it, and how businesses can benefit from blogging.  The discussion went on for some time, covering the wide ranging benefits from SEO opportunities to more frequent customer touch points and everything in between.  After a while, it quieted down a bit and somebody asked me if they had missed anything on the list.

Skip the First Meeting

While our blog serves many purposes, one of them I hadn’t heard mentioned by the group was one of the things that I find most useful.  Having a well planned blog and social media presence, with what we hope is interesting and insightful content, allows us to Skip the First Meeting.

So what do I mean when I say Skip the First Meeting?  Unfortunately, despite how well you may try to vet things ahead of time, inevitably in our business you run into an opportunity that 5 minutes into that first meeting, after you’ve sniffed each other and gotten a bit more of a sense of your businesses –  you both know isn’t a fit.  You don’t think alike, you don’t value the same things, really whatever those components may be.  Of course generally by this time somebody has ordered food, or driven out of their way, or fired up a PowerPoint or laser lights show, or something else entirely, and it’s too late to do anything but spend the next 45-60 minutes or more there despite you each knowing this isn’t going to work out.

Now, we often head this meeting off at the pass.  We’ll send a contact or prospect a link to our blog ahead of time, and also encourage them to connect with and follow us on social networks, and ask them to read through these pieces ahead of time before scheduling that first get together.  By doing this, we make much more efficient use of their time and ours.  We try to convey the idea here that we want to be involved in strategy and planning and believe in taking a holistic view of marketing, and that shines through in our posts.

When we discover the poor fit, we each save ourselves the time of an unproductive meeting where we just won’t be a fit for each other (although sometimes we do miss those laser light shows).  And just as importantly, for those that could be a fit, we’ve fast forwarded over the glossy part of the first meeting and are digging right into the important and meaningful parts that are usually saved for a second meeting.

So while there are probably 100s of reasons to blog and to get involved in social media, if it works for your business you may want to try to Skip the First Meeting.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow @willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

Seth Godin blogged Friday on Things to Ask Before You Redo Your Website, and like most of his posts it was enlightening and made you think.  Seth provides just under 25 bullet points on the difficult and most important questions you have to ask before you redo your website.  While it’s a great post, I do have a small difference of opinion on one part.

The questions are right on track, with the focus on the strategy of the website vs. the technology.  Too many folks go wrong right out of the gates by making their first website conversation about the technology requirements or having the website look JUST LIKE a website they like, vs. the strategy and business objectives.  Once those are in place, the other items can fall out of that next.

So I think the approach and the questions are right on, and taking the time to do this is the right first step.  However, there is one place where I differ slightly with Seth.  Many companies will be able to ask and answer these questions themselves.  In my experience though, many more need additional outside assistance to help them step through this process.  In many organizations there is still a deer in the headlights look as we start talking about the web.  In the best ones they realize this and bring the right folks onto their team to help to navigate this.  A client recently described themselves to me as “They don’t know what they don’t know” when it comes to the web, and I think that is often an accurate assessment.  While these questions should serve as the starting point for redoing your website, I think it’s just as critical to make sure you can provide the right answers – or get somebody on the team that can help you get there.

If you tried to plan a new home from the ground up without an architect, I’m sure there are things you would miss.  Making sure you have the right plan in place out of the gates is the only real way to succeed in your website project.  Understanding what is important and what doesn’t need to be a focus right up front is critical.

After all, as Seth closes, everything is not an option.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow Will on Twitter for more commentary like this.

So you’ve gone ahead and set up a blog for your company.  Or maybe you are just starting to think about it but aren’t sure what to do – or whether you should even have a blog.  No matter which of these camps you fall into, it’s critical to your success that you don’t just create a blog, you nurture it.  While an exhaustive list here could be a few hundred tactical points, these are the big keys that will help you to be more successful with your blog:

1). Start with a Strategy

This sounds incredibly obvious but amazingly isn’t usually the case.  Most blogs fall down because there is no strategy in place on how and when to communicate, what you want to say, who you are trying to reach, and all the other crucial elements.  All too often, businesses start a blog without a well-defined strategy and it all falls apart from there.  Make sure you have a plan in place for what you will discuss (more below) how frequently (at least enough to keep your audience’s interest) and that you have the time and people to write well.

2). Write What You Know, And Please — Don’t Sell, Educate

One of the basic tenets of writing has always been to write what you know.  Hand in hand with that, on your blog make sure you aren’t just pushing a sales agenda.  Use the blog as a forum to educate visitors on your area of expertise rather than a hard sell pushing your company.  Nobody wants to go to a cocktail party and listen to someone talk about themselves the whole time, and nobody wants to read your blog if it’s just a hard sell for your company.  Instead, be interesting and educate your visitors.

3). Make Your Blog Accessible

This really spans a variety of items on your page.  On your page, make it easy to search by having items such as a prominent search box, categories, tags, easily sorted archives and clean design and navigation  – it’s really surprising how often that basic is missed!  If visitors can’t figure out what to do on your blog because your design is screaming at them then your content is nearly worthless.

4). Make It Easy for Visitors to Interact and Share

The whole idea of a blog as a social vehicle is to be, well, social right?  So, make it easy for visitors to do just that by providing easy access to tools that let them share your post with their networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Technorati, social bookmarking etc.), post comments, and contact the authors.  Link to other interesting blogs in your blogroll so your visitors get even more value out of your blog.

5). Let People Know You Are Out There

Again, this covers a number of items.  On the simple side, make sure you are submitting your blog to search engines, relevant directories, industry specialty sites, providing visitors an easy to use RSS feed, and promoting it on your website and in email.  Additionally, consider utilizing your online and offline networks to make folks aware of your blog and latest posts.  Share a new post if you are on Twitter, but also tell people at your networking meeting if it is relevant.  Add a blog app to LinkedIn (such as the WordPress app if you are using WordPress) but don’t be afraid to mention and send a link to a relevant post to a client or prospect.

While there are hundreds of additional tips to enhance your blog, make sure you are first nurturing your blog with these 5 easy keys.

Have other key steps you would like to add?  Add it to the comments below.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  Follow Will on Twitter for more commentary like this.

In Tuesday’s 5 Marketing Misconceptions That Need to Change post, Will covered some of the misguided statements we hear from clients.  If I only had a nickel for every time we hear those types of statements….

In the spirit of fairness, I am determined to defend the marketers who make these types of statements.  Here’s what Will left out - often times these misguided comments originate from an agency, consultant or service provider that the company has put its trust in.  So let’s look for some warning signs. 

If you hear your agency, consultant or service provider make any of these five statements, consider running.

1.) Hi, I’m Mike from XXX National Directory/Search/Ad Network Company, and I am a Marketing Consultant with the company.  I am here to help you build your marketing plan.

RUN! FAST! Nothing against these folks (really), but selling Yellow Pages or even a “boxed” pay-per-click solution does not make you a marketing consultant.  It makes you someone that is trying to sell Yellow Pages or a “boxed” pay-per-click solution.  There’s nothing wrong with selling.  God knows we all do it in some form or fashion, but please don’t try to mislead people by calling yourself a marketing consultant.

Clarification: If you are in fact interesting in purchasing what essentially amounts to an advertising package, by all means engage with these folks.  Just don’t expect to get any marketing strategy advice out of them.

2.) If you choose us for your SEO project, we can guarantee multiple top 10 rankings on your targeted keywords.

I thought these people had gone away, but it appears they’re back in full force.  And I can’t blame clients for listening.  When someone tells you they can guarantee results, it’s hard to ignore.

That being said, let’s all say this together:  SEO is not a quick fix, set it and forget it solution for driving traffic .  The best SEO strategies I’ve seen involve a long-term commitment to the creation of relevant content, building that content in multiple formats, and finding multiple distribution channels for that content.

I am guessing there are companies that make an SEO guarantee and do follow through on it.  I am also guessing that those guarantees are made on keywords like “patent attorneys that also handle divorce cases in reston virginia”.

3.) You really can’t afford to wait on addressing social media.  We should build out your presence on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter right away.

Stop.  Please.  We all realize that social media is important, even though it’s getting a bit crowded.  Like anything else though, you shouldn’t build anything if it doesn’t fit into a more strategic plan. 

Some of these groups will bait you with the promise of thousands of Twitter followers, Facebook friends, or LinkedIn connections overnight.  Great.  Go ahead and recruit thousands of followers, all of whom could care less about your message.  They’re following you because they’re trolling for followers as well.  And the followers/friends/connections you do want?  You’ll turn them off quick with the hundreds of meaningless updates you’ll have to post to accumulate all the meaningless followers.

Build a social media strategy.  Make sure it ties back to your overall marketing strategy.  Then join, listen, learn, and eventually execute.  It’s that simple.

And one more thing, and I know this will be painful for some “social media gurus” to hear.  Social media is NOT a necessity, nor is it necessarily effective, for every business and business category.

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These are infamous words, generally spoken by infamous people.  Or at least people that are about to become infamous.

There are literally hundreds of ways organizations arrive at the decision that they need to build a new website.  Sometimes the decision is simply dictated from the CEO.  Sometimes the decision is driven by a change in ownership or control.  Sometimes the decision is driven by the poor performance and usability of the current website.  For the point I am trying to make here, the driving factor of the decision doesn’t matter.

What does matter is the mistake that at least 20% of small and medium businesses make: I call it the “All I need is a web designer” mistake.

Really? No, I mean really?

Listen.  Perhaps you just want a brochure site.  Static.  You don’t care about driving “new” traffic.  You don’t care about using the site as a lead generator or customer acquisition tool.  You don’t care about using the site to become a thought leader in your industry.  That’s cool – go find a designer – there are thousands of great ones out there, some of whom we work with on a regular basis.

But if you’re interested in making your website a complete, living, breathing, fluid marketing vehicle, then please don’t say things like the following:

“We don’t need any help with our messaging.  We’ve got that down pat. “

Really? No, I mean really? Strangely enough, the companies that usually say that are the ones that DO have their messaging down pat.  Down pat in the CEO’s head.  And only his head.  And the messaging is in his/her head equates to 10 pages of messaging if you could extract it.

“Don’t worry about the copy.  We have all kinds of brochures, and if the information isn’t there we can always use all the copy on the current site.”

Really? No, I mean really? Brochures aren’t websites.  And if you don’t have any formal messaging plan, then that copy that resides on your site probably doesn’t make any sense.

“Not sure that SEO matters to us.  All of our customers come through referrals, and that seems to work out pretty well.”

Really? No, I mean really? That’s probably one of the reasons why your business isn’t growing.  You’re maintaining a business, not growing it.  If you’re good with that, then forget the SEO.  It will probably drive all kinds of new leads into the business, and you’ll have to figure out how to deal with these new leads instead of always handling “warm” leads.  Who would want to deal with that problem, after all?

This brings us back to my favorite:

“All I need is a web designer.”

Yup.  And when I build my next house, I’ll just get someone to paint the outside real nice.  Plumbing doesn’t matter.  Working appliances don’t matter.  Electricity? Who needs it.  Just make it look nice on the outside and we’re good to go.

I encounter a lot of franchisor and franchisee websites in my daily life, both as a consumer and businessperson.  While some franchise systems have figured how important it is to build a well-branded, easy to navigate, action-oriented site, the vast majority still miss the mark. 

Here are a few “dos” for the consumer audience:

• Make the homepage simple.  Layout should be clean.  Information should be limited to what is most important to the consumer.  Page should load lightning fast.
• Allow the consumer to find the closest location, or for that matter any location, from anywhere in the site.  That, in addition to gathering information, is the most common reason for the consumer’s visit to the franchise website.
• Provide more than just address information for each location.  Add local coupons.  Add a picture of the store so the consumer can identify landmarks.  Add easy ways to get in touch with the local store, like store-specific emails, phone numbers or even click-to-call functionality.

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Had a discussion with a professional services firm today regarding a problem they’re experiencing.  The problem revolves around a very simple yet often overlooked page on the typical company website - the contact form.  This company recently redesigned their website, and while site traffic has been rising, their lead volume from these site contact forms has been declining.  As a matter of fact, the numbers from their web analytics package were pretty staggering - in the last month alone, 476 page views of the contact page, and only 3 form submissions.

While we looked under a bunch of rocks to rule out other problems, one look at the contact page told me everything I needed to know.  Here are the problems, and the prescribed medication:

Problem #1: The page is waaaay too crowded.  Lots of links, lots of imagery, lots of reasons to leave.

Solution #1: Treat someone sitting on your contact page like someone sitting at your cash register ready to make a purchase, except in this case remove the Snickers bars, the US Weekly and the Chapstick display.  Remove all clutter other than the essentials.

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Raise your hand if your website redesign or relaunch has been delayed due to website copy modifications, or specifically the idea that 2-3 members of your senior management team need to review site copy before it goes live. 

Based on experience, I am certain there are a bunch of you with your hands raised.  4 of every 5 website projects I’ve been involved in veer off track due to delays in the copy approval/revision process, not necessarily the copywriting process (although the initial copywriting phase is a delay candidate as well).

Why so many cooks in the kitchen, you might ask?  From what I can gather, the reasons are fairly simple.  In a mid-size organization, a Director or Manager level employee “owns” the website project, and may even have a webmaster or marketing manager as a “co-owner”.  Then you insert 1-3 members of the senior management team, all of whom (rightfully so) hold a stake in the success of the website.  Those members of the senior management team may be involved in the early phases of the website revamp process - they want to sign off on final design, general site structure, etc.  But what they REALLY want to get involved in is the copywriting of the website, or at least the critique of copywriting piece of the website.

Right or wrong (and senior management getting involved in copywriting is not necessarily a bad thing), here’s why senior management wants to get involved, and why it always causes delays:

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We hear this all too often from companies.  They’ve engaged a web design/development firm to build a shiny new website, complete with all kinds of spectacular functionality, and yet the concept of search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t addressed until the site is in some type of beta phase, ready to launch.

While the recommendation is always to address SEO during the earliest stages of a website redesign project, the “I forgot about SEO” camp can relax a bit.  Assuming the has been structured correctly from a design/coding standpoint, you will still be able to handle SEO appropriately prior to site launch and in a more comprehensive manner post-launch.  So let’s discuss the simplest things you can do during these later stages…

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