Getting people to come back to your site
Dec 31, 2008 Web Marketing
Getting people to come back to your site is something that every company wants and needs. I’ve gone to hundreds of websites while surfing the internet. I realize that 99% of them I do not return to. I can probably list all of the websites I go to on a daily or weekly basis on my fingers and toes. I can say that most people come back because they are members of the site, they know and trust that the site can provide what they need by one press of the button. Now, out of thousands of really good websites why do people only go to a select few and how do businesses keep them coming back?
For four years I’ve worked for companies whose businesses are solely internet based. They ran a monthly special and promoted the heck out of it and numbers always sky rocketed. People love to get a deal and feel like they finally get a break. Sure most online businesses offer “Specials” and “Discounts” but how do customers know about these deals, they’d have to visit the site every day! People just don’t see ads anymore, most of the time they go directly to what they need. They ignore all pop ups and fast moving bright flashy banners that tell them what’s new and what’s on sale. Honestly those banners don’t work for me and I do anything I can to block them from my view, like make my window smaller so I only see content I need to see.
So back to the question of how to get your customers to notice a “Special”, I say you should blast blast blast an email! People give their email out like they give chicken pox when their in kindergarten. Business’s have free access to people’s personal time and email, so make an email blast but make it hot and straight to the point with links that go straight to the deal! Don’t make an email just to your site where the user has to fish for the special. Get them interested, get them to your product, and then get them to buy. I also think a great designer is key to any surviving website, and I’m not just saying this because I am a designer. But without a good designer, a good programmer is useless and vice versa. Oh, not to mention if it’s not a well designed email blast you can be sure it will be deleted and any future blasts will be marked spam and go directly to the junk folder or what I like to do is “unsubscribe” that way they know their email blasts suck. I do keep the creative email blasts and yes I do go back to their website and check out what’s new, I’m a fan of William Sonoma’s and Bebe but that’s my interests. It’s also important for someone who is revisiting a site to see new things, new products, new colors, and most important new content.
Just wrap your head around how many sites you’ve been too, it’s a lot. Now think of the sites you go back to. Now think of why. Is it mostly because of the information they are able to provide you or because USPS is taboo for keeping in touch? You really do expect a lot from any site you visit and it does take a lot of components to make a good site. It takes functionality, accurate information, the product and the follow up. Another good technique for continuing business is the follow up, when you get a new comment on your social page you get an email, when you pay a bill you get an email, when you buy anything you get an email. People are now programmed to receive emails for anything they do on the internet. Wouldn’t it be a great idea for your company to utilize this free program? Slip another sale item in there or if you have really great marketing you can tell what demographic they are from and then place an ad that they would be interested in. The internet is growing so fast that you have to be ahead of what everyone else does and you have to pick up on trends right away. One trend that people will be slowing down on is “going green”, one trend they are picking up on is “change”. I’d like to see more online sites step up and create their own trend and stop following what everyone was doing 4 years ago.
In conclusion there is so much an online business can do to get people to come back to their business but it starts with a great product and a good company behind it. After that, hand it off to someone who knows what they are doing and trust them to make your website work, a website people will continue to visit.
Monitoring your Online Reputation Part 3:Twitter
Sep 30, 2008 Web Marketing
In parts one and two of my online reputation management series, I wrote about a couple of great tools that marketers can utilize to monitor online brand reputation. The two tools I wrote about were Google Alerts and Technorati. Today, I want to discuss a third tool that can yield interesting results, Twitter.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is an interesting social networking platform that allows individuals to communicate short thoughts about activities they are participating in at any given moment. The appeal for most users is that Twitter provides a good way for friends to keep each other up to date with what everyone in the group is doing at any one time. In a way, Twitter is like a mini-blog post, no more than 140 characters in length.
A typical Tweet (what you call it when a user posts to Twitter) may say something like, “On my way to work,” or “At the dentist, can’t wait to get cavities filled.” Of course, the Twitter platform is used many other ways, but this is the basic purpose.
Using Twitter for reputation management
Because Twitter has become such an important medium of communication for real people, you can expect to find all types of conversations. You may even notice that Twitter users utilize the platform to talk about consumer issues like restaurants they’ve been to, products they are using, likes and dislikes, etc. For this reason, Twitter is a good resource to monitor what real people are saying about your brand.
Here how you do it:
Start by going to http://search.twitter.com/advanced. This is Twitter’s advanced search tool which allows you to search through each and every public Twitter post.
Using this tool, you can do create specific criteria to search through the millions of Tweets on the network. You can add keyword terms, locations, date ranges and more which will help the search engine to display relevant results. In the previous example, I searched for all occurrences of the term iPhone where the post was written in English in with a negative attitude. Here were the results:
As you can see, there have been several recent Tweets where users wrote about the iPhone in a negative way. You’ll notice that the results are never perfect, but they do give you a good idea about what’s being said. Also notice in the top right hand corner that you can subscribe to an RSS for this particular search query. This makes it easy to keep on top of the conversation without having to come back to Twitter.com all the time.
Well there you go- another free, useful tool that can help help you stay on top of your brand reputation by keeping watch on how real people are talking about you.
Tags: reputation management
Simple Ways to Monitor your Online Reputation: Part 2 – Technorati
Sep 23, 2008 Web Marketing
In part one of my Simple Ways to Monitor your Online Reputation series, I wrote about how you can use Google Alerts to monitor your reputation. Today, I’m going to introduce you to another free tool that will also give you visibility into the blogosphere to see who is writing what about your company.
Using Technorati for Reputation Management
In short, Technorati is a blog search engine. Technorati indexes content from over 1 million blogs in real time. It’s probably the best resource to use when trying to track global blogger conversations. You can use Technorati’s massive database and tools to your advantage by tracking conversation related to your business or industry in just a few simple steps.
Once you’ve started a Technorati account (it’s free), search for your brand name or a specific industry term using the search box provided. Take a look at the results that are returned. Are these results relevant for your business? That is, does Technorati return sample blog posts that people wrote about your company or industry? If not, try searching for your brand name using quotation marks. For example, we would search ”that agency”. Other search options allow you to determine where to search and what levels of authority results have to have. See below:
The goal in this first step is to refine the search results so that the results actually show posts that are at least partially about you. Once you’re happy with the results, click the subscribe button as shown below:
This will allow you to receive an RSS update each time something new about your company comes across Technorati. When subscribing to the RSS feed, you’ll have a choice of several options for receiving the feed. Once you’ve set this up, all you need to do is periodically check your RSS feed for updates. As updates come through, you’ll receive a link that will give you information on the blog posting content about you so you can check it out. Hopefully, most of the updates that you get will be relevant to whatever you’re trying to monitor. Of course, there will always be a little ‘noise’ in the results.
Stay tuned for more tips on managing your online reputation.
Tags: reputation management
Simple Ways to Monitor your Online Reputation: Part 1
Sep 15, 2008 Web Marketing
The increasingly socially-responsive Web has made it more important to continually monitor your business or brand’s reputation online. As your customers, potential customers and the media increasing use the web to talk about and learn more about your business, you need to be proactive in monitoring what’s being said. Knowing how your brand is perceived is critical in improving your product/service and customer relations. On the Web, there are a number of great tools available that can help webmasters gain a view of who’s out there linking to and talking about their website and brand. Google Alerts is just one basic tool that you should be using.
Google Alerts
As you may already know, the Google search bots are constantly running around the internet in search of information to index. You can use this to your advantage by having Google notify you every time it finds something related to your brand or business. The easiest way to do this is to setup a Google Alert. This can be done by creating a free account with Google and clicking on ‘Alerts’.
With Google Alerts, you can setup automated notifications to be sent to your inbox each time Google comes across any given keyword phrase, such as your business name or product(s). When you receive a notification, you’ll also receive a link to the location where your keyword phrase was found. Once you set this up, you’ll receive immediate, daily or weekly notifications which make it easy to review instances where other websites talk about you.
What You Can Expect to Find
Most of the time, businesses are shocked to see the frequency and types of places that there brand name appears. Expect to find bloggers, customer review websites and press releases that mention your brand. While Google won’t find anywhere near every occurrence of your alert, you will get a taster of what’s out there.
What You’ll Learn:
* If you’re trying to get the buzz out about your brand or a new product, you’ll get a feel for how successful your campaigns have been by seeing who’s talking about it based on how many places Google finds it.
* If you’re monitoring customer reaction toward a new product, you may see reviews and blog posts written about it.
* If you find no mention of your brand or products, you may want to consider a stronger online marketing campaign.
Tags: reputation management
Social Media Marketing
Jun 30, 2008 Web Marketing
Social media marketing is the new frontier in marketing for many businesses, large or small. There has never been a better way to reach a mass audience, already engaged and ready to receive information.
The larger social media sites—MySpace or Facebook—are primarily populated by younger people with a bit more disposable income to spend on various products or services. However, in addition to these social media powerhouses, there are a number of smaller sites out there, catering to this same audience. Many businesses are taking advantage of the unfettered access to this audience by taking on a new form of advertising.
Social media marketing throws out the old rules of marketing in the forms of print advertising or billboards and instead, utilizes the Web to reach an audience. Think of it like this, for the more traditional forms of advertising, media outlets and cable channels displayed adverts that were not interactive during news programming or other shows similar to a news format. The major difference in social media marketing is that the user controls it. And it targets the people looking for your product or service and avoids those who are not.
Blogs have also become more popular in the social media marketing realm because they often develop a dedicate readership and you can often integrate advertising content into the general topic of the blog, getting your message out on a subconscious level. Blogs allow you to reach a segmented audience who is already interested in your topic; it’s simply up to you to tout your service or product to close the deal.
Social media marketing allows businesses to think outside the box when it comes to reaching their customers. Taking advantage of these online options can not only enhance your existing business, but also allow you an opportunity to reach a new audience you may not have otherwise had access to without the benefits of social media marketing.
Tags: social media marketing
Google Ad Planner
Jun 25, 2008 Web Marketing
Search engine giant Google seems to be constantly coming up with ways to make surfing the Net a better experience for everyone. Consumers can find just about anything with the entry of a simple keyword and businesses, no matter what product or service they offer, can use the multitude of Google’s advertising and promotions-based programs to deliver more eyeballs to their Web site. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the company’s latest venture, Google Ad Planner, is anticipated to be a huge success.
This invitation-only media planning tool essentially helps advertisers connect with publishers of other Web sites. The gist of the program is that an advertiser can enter demographics and Web sites that are associated in some way with the audience they are trying to target and then the Google Ad Planner tool will give information on the Web sites that the target audience is most likely to visit. What’s even better is that you can then get even more detail on the demographics and search information for a specific site. Google Ad planner will even give you aggregate stats on the sites you choose to add to your media plan. I think the very best part is that Google will return sites in your search that are not even a part of the Google advertising base. So there is no bias in this program; it really does operate with the user’s need in mind. However, you can filter through the sites that carry Google AdSense, if that information is important to you for the sites you are trying to target.
It is important to note that the Google Ad planner program does not give advertisers an opportunity to get in touch with Web site operators or content owners directly; that is still something you have to do on your own. Additionally, there is not an opportunity at this time for Web site operators to get involved in a brokerage system of sorts through this program.
This program is definitely designed with media planners in mind and can definitely be useful for business-minded professionals for whom marketing is a top priority.
Tags: google
How to Increase your Website’s Conversion Rates
Jun 9, 2008 Web Marketing
Do you find that people are coming to your site but not doing anything while they are there? It can often be difficult to understand why your conversion rate is low. People are obviously interested in what you are offering because they have clicked on your ad, so why aren’t they going through with a purchase? Below I will discuss 9 tips that Michael Mattis at the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog claims will improve your conversion rates.
1. “Connect the search experience to the landing page experience”
This means you should use the same keywords on your ad as on your landing page. If your ad says that you are offering web design service then make sure your landing page isn’t selling graphic design services. The person that clicks on your ad is going to want to see that thing when he arrives on your landing page.
2. “Integrate your landing page into your site”
As always all the pages on your site should be consistent and this includes your landing page. If your landing page is different from the rest of your site it could appear unprofessional and this could worry people and prevent them from buying your products.
3. “Gain their trust”
Of course many people are still skeptical about buying online due to a fear of fraud. This anxiety may be keeping people from purchasing on your site. A way to overcome this is to use third party security providers and make sure that their icons are displayed where they are easy to see.
4. “Offer tips and suggestions”
A good way to get consumers to buy your product is to give them examples of what they can do with it. This can be anything from providing food recipes to or explaining 30 ways to use VoIP. The object is to let the customer envision what they can do with your product. This is also a good opportunity to introduce another one of your products. You can put more than one of your products in a recipe or explain how your shampoo works even better with the conditioner that goes with it; but be very careful not to push it.
5. “Stay on target”
This one is similar to number 1. If your ad is for great red wine make sure your landing page is not full of different types of reds, whites, roses and champagnes. People clicked on your ad because it said red wine, so this must be what they like. Of course nothing prevents you from having links to other pages but don’t try to sell everything at once.
6. “Cut the clutter”
This is pretty similar to the tip above. Keep it simple. A page that is too cluttered or generic seems unprofessional. Additionally you are allowing people to get lost and that is the last thing you want. You want to keep their attention focused. If they stop thinking about what they want they will just go back to what they were doing.
7. “Ban your bling”
Somehow people have been lead to believe that if they had a lot of sound and animation on their page people would pay more attention. Today these things are synonymous with low quality and low reliability. Plus animation and sound are just plain distracting; remember you are trying to keep people focused. Make sure your page is simple and professional. People will judge your webpage by its design.
8. “Give them something to do”
It is a good idea to be a little interactive. This is especially important when you are selling big ticket purchases. Examples of this are 360-degree tours and photo-galleries. Extra information will help your consumers feel more reassured and reduce cognitive dissonance.
9. “Write right”
The language you use is important. Try to be concise and get straight to the point. And try to include some persuasive messages.
Tags: conversion rates
Social Media Marketing Exposed
Jun 6, 2008 Web Marketing
Tangible and the intangible—something you can feel, smell and taste versus a concept or an idea—it’s the crux of some tired and drawn out debates. One I can name off the top of my head—religion—has probably claimed a few more lives than social media; but the question still remains, is it more engaging than the traditional mediums?
Well, yes and no…
What Bob Hoffman misunderstands in ‘A Cranky, Skeptical Loudmouth Looks at Social Media Marketing‘ is that the Internet was never really intended to retire traditional medias but, instead, act as another weapon to the marketing arsenal as a whole.
Where Television and Radio and Print advertisements drop the baton, Social Media Marketing picks it back up and delivers, regardless of location or socioeconomic status.
“[television]. You interact with the medium all the time. You change the channel. You turn the volume up and down. You lighten and darken the picture. But you don’t think of it as an interactive medium because you can’t interact with the content,” says Hoffman.
Fair enough, but local stations aside, a cable subscription costs money and is certainly not portable. Internet access may come with a price, but public libraries, and the wildfire that is free WiFi have made it nearly impossible not to use and experience the Internet whether at work, school, or home.
“So the best hope for the web as a truly interactive marketing medium is the conversation, i.e. social marketing. I am sure there are wonderful examples of marketers building valuable and profitable social networks… For every success you post, I can post a hundred failures. Let’s make that a thousand.”
A thousand, in case that startled some, is a just a random number the ill-formed toss around for dramatic effect. If I had to assume, “success” in this case is defined strictly as conversion, a sale, and only the sale. Social Media Marketing, on the other hand, is a different animal. Where television ads are given 30 to 60 seconds to sell you on a product or an idea, the Internet has no such time-restriction, and social media serves as its salesman, fleshing out and closing the sale.
Social Media Marketing accomplishes 2 goals—other than working towards a ROI—that other mediums do not.
•It can reach a broad to extremely defined demographic regardless of location.
•In comparison to traditional marketing platforms, it has a less demanding initial investment.
While my heart will always be with traditional media—print advertising in particular—my mind presides in social media marketing; it’s still relatively new and consistently expanding, and offers new and highly-interactive outlets to reach an audience.
At the end of the day, I believe Mr. Hoffman and both factions-traditional and new media—are invaluable and have a lot to teach one another.
Tags: social media marketing
You Must Adopt a Social Media Strategy
Mar 3, 2008 Web Marketing
Do you remember that old campy saying, Go big, or go home? Of course you do. It’s usually tossed around when the last few seconds are waning away from the clock and the score is tied. “It’s either go, big or go home,” someone will say. Well, that same logic applies to Web 2.0. You either go all out to make it work or it’s not worth doing.
The successful social media campaign is similar to raising a lion cub. If you don’t put forth the time and finesse, it will grow up to maul you in your sleep. But if you make all the right moves, you’re left with a loyal marketing tool that that, instead, ravages your competition.
So why do you need a presence in social media? Well, let me explain…
As you may have guessed, social media is not a large carnivorous cat. It may harbor some similar qualities, but I believe it is much more approachable.
Social media gives you a voice. A website will always remain the face of your brand on the web, but this is Web 2.0, the current state of the internet, and that is simply not enough. To reach your target demographic, you have to be willing to step beyond your existing level of interaction. This means becoming an active voice of authority in your respective community, rebuilding your reputation, and sharing, sharing, sharing.
Succeeding on today’s web is sharing on the web; broadcasting information across the various medias. If you aren’t sharing something, you’re losing relevance and cred.
Social media is also about making and maintaining connections. Blogs, social networks, and, yes, even media sharing are all ripe for monetizing and reciprocating traffic. And the brilliance behind it, what is truly unique, is that a successful campaign does not necessarily depend on a linking scheme. It’s about who you know and what you know. If you’re influential in your field, people will link to you, traffic will pump through your channels; all of this without offering any incentive other than valuable information.
Do these concepts sound vague to the level of daunting? That’s because, in reality, they are, and they require a carefully planed and executed strategy to make them work.
But what about viral media? Well, media won’t go viral if it’s not contagious.
The fact is, unless you are serious about social media and tapping into this demographic-cornucopia, then you need not bother with it. You have to be intent on rising to its forefront. It’s either go big, or go home.
Tags: social media marketing
Podcasting Makes You Human
Feb 5, 2008 Web Marketing
eMarketer, in a study released last month, estimated that 18.5 million Americans have downloaded a podcast at least once. Furthermore, in 2007, there was an active podcast audience (those who downloaded an average of one or more a week) of 6.5 million Americans. These numbers answer the tired, lingering question, “is anyone listening?” and raises a new one, “is anyone listening to you?”"
I have to admit, I, too, was skeptical at first. The years I spent in radio broadcasting turned me callous to a format that can become so easily saturated with rehashed content and insipid advertising. But unlike radio, whose goal is to reach the broadest of demographics, successful podcasts target specific topics or genres, making it easier for a person to listen to exactly what they want, instead of having to sift through the slush.
In previous posts, I’ve talked about how imperative it is to connect to your audience on an emotional level. The web is already a very sterile and impersonal environment. By podcasting, you introduce a human element to your content; it is conversational and much easier to digest.
What is feeding the growth of podcasting? The same process by which downloading music and movies became relevant; greater awareness, no to low cost, portable media players and, returning to what i talked about earlier, it’s easier to process; it puts a voice, a face, a personality to content.
2008 is expected to see those 6.5 million weekly listeners increase to 8. By 2012, the active audience should hit 25 million, with advertisers investing close to $450 million.
My advice? Look into this podcasting “fad”, consider starting one of your own and work towards building a listener base with clever, refreshing content. They are all preemptive steps to take—sort of like investing in a CD—that, if executed properly, are guaranteed return.
Tags: podcasting
