A vital piece of know-how that applies to all marketing everywhere:
Don't answer all their questions.
If your advertising or website tells them everything there is to know, why should they bother contacting you? You never get a chance to talk to and close a prospect. They either call up ready to buy, or you never hear from them.
Yes, especially a website should have a lot of information on it. But that information is really there only to satisfy three requirements:
1. So they can be reasonably sure what you are offering is what they are looking for.
2. To provide the back-up for your benefits claims ("features and benefits"), and otherwise build credibility.
3. To save time in sales cycles by providing answers to questions you are having to answer over-and-over.
If you tell the prospect TOO much, you are throwing the baby out with the bath water. The baby in this case being a reach - someone contacting you, by phone or email or a reply card or walking into your store.
In short, there is a point where marketing ends off and sales begins.
There are a couple of exceptions:
An online store includes the sales process as well as the marketing process - so you had better leave no question unanswered (other than "just how delighted AM I going to be with my purchase" or "Exactly how am I going to word my letter of endorsement back to the company").
With retail marketing of products well known to the consumer, there isn't anything much to tell in your advertising other than your price, that you have the product in stock, your address and hours of operation. In this case, the selling has already been done (the consumer is a loyal user of Blando brand fruit juice, the only question is when and where and how much will they buy).
Otherwise, your marketing is always a careful calculation of what to tell and what not to tell the prospective customer.
KISS, being of course, the famous acronym for "Keep It Simple Stupid" - usually a good idea in marketing (except for the "stupid" part).
There are only three things a trade show display can really do:
1. Make people stop and look. That is dependent on having one main graphic that is dramatic and colorful.
2. Let them know if it is something they should look at more closely. That is dependent on a very few words and possibly smaller graphics to tell who you are, what you do, and possibly, why you're different.
3. Keep them busy and interested for a bit so you have time to grab them if you are in the middle of an uninterruptible conversation with someone else. That is dependent on some (Some! Not a whole book!) of additional copy and possibly small graphics to provide more information.
Points 1 and 2 make trade show displays a lot like a billboard, where the rule is one main graphic only and not more than seven words of copy. Why? People driving down the road don't have time to absorb more than that.
It's not much different with trade show displays, but it is a bit different because they aren't moving as fast, and if they stop, they can look more closely and read more.
But point number 3 should never be so extensive as to interfere with the accomplishment of 1 and 2. And 3 should never be so extensive as to answer all their questions. You want to talk to them, and the best way to accomplish that (as in all marketing) is to get them interested but leave them with unanswered questions.
We were presented with an interesting design problem the other day. The company was very well-known and branded nationally on a conservative blue color scheme. There was also some pewter in their logo.
The design was to be for a trade show display. But these must first and foremost grab eyeballs with dramatic colors and images. Reflex blue isn't going to do that. And it made no sense for the company to change their whole color scheme.
This is where the color wheel comes into play. There are other colors that will work with their basic colors and yet be much more vibrant. Done right, you end up with a group of colors that work well together, provide the correct kind of visual effect, look different than the competition and which have the correct emotional associations.
That group of colors is what is called a "color palette." This normally involves one or two main colors and one or more other colors to be used in smaller amounts.
The choice of a suitable color palette for a company or project, is one of the most important steps in marketing.
There are a few considerations that go into purchasing trade show display hardware.
Most common are the "modular pop-up" displays. They've a metal grid that opens up to support the art or collapses to fit in a case for easy transport. They are available in several sizes, the most common are 8 feet high by 10 feet wide to function as a backdrop for a typical 10 foot booth.
Price doesn't always tell the tale. This is an industry where you can pay high prices and get junk. However, it's hard to find a good quality display cheap. There are reliable brands (such as Nimlok), but high price goes along with the name, and it isn't hard to get a quality "no name" display.
Good hardware is durable. Some (including the ones we supply) have a lifetime warranty.
They should set up quickly and easily. The best can be set up in about 2 minutes by one person, including hanging the art.
The should be sturdy, meaning, not wobble but have positive locking mechanisms.
A few options are routine. Lights that can be attached to the top of the display. A hard case for transport and protection. A conversion kit for turning the case into a podium.
Nine times out of ten, that's all there is to the hardware. You can get a lot fancier, and of course, the sky's the limit on price with custom displays.
But the design and production of the art are paramount. A good design can easily make or break a trade show.
Here's the bad news: Many businesses will disappear over the course of this downturn.
Here's the good news: Many businesses will grow over the course of this downturn. Many individuals will become millionaires. Many successful businesses will start up and even come to dominate their industry.
There is however, a major lesson to be learned in regards to how to be part of the "good news": You need to stay alert and make frequent adjustments.
Two or three years ago in most industries you could confidently plot out a marketing strategy and stick to it knowing you could run it with perhaps minor adjustments for a year or longer.
The sales and marketing environment is now changing so rapidly it it is necessary to review the scene every few weeks.
We have charted five major changes in customer behavior since the start of the year alone. From "things are getting back to normal" to "we're all going to die" to "I've got to do something, anything" to "I'd better hang on to my money" to "we're all going to die!" to "I'd REALLY better watch what I spend."
So: Stay alert and don't give up. There's always a way to deal with the changes. Sure, it's not easy. But what worthwhile thing is?
The real lesson here is designing and building a website and doing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) aren't completely separate tasks. There's an enormous wasted effort if the website developers don't know and understand SEO. In fact, you may have to throw out the entire site construction and start over to get search engine rankings!
It is true that we don't usually start a major SEO project on a website until it's been up online for at least a month or two. There's a couple of reasons for this. One is the sandbox effect. The other is the simple fact that until a site has been up for a while, you won't have enough statistical track on the site to be able to do intelligent SEO.
Nevertheless, when a site is built there are two important targets relating to SEO:
1. The site should be search engine friendly. That means it should be built so that the search engines can find it, will be able to read all the copy, tell what the site is about, and will index the whole site.
2. The site should be SEO friendly. That means the site isn't going to require restructuring or other major changes to get SEO done.
A good example of the difference is sites built using some Content Management Systems (CMS). They are search engine friendly - but impossible to do SEO on. In other words, yes, Google can see and will index the site, but the system doesn't, for example, allow you to set individual title tags for each page.
A website designer who doesn't know SEO is likely to violate one or both of these targets.
Since it takes no more work to do basic SEO on a site, any website designer who doesn't know SEO well enough to deliver that when he designs and builds a site, is ripping off his clients.
With the current economic scene, many businesses of all sizes are shifting in the direction of online marketing. Most other methods of getting new business are decreasingly effective (such as Yellow Pages, direct mail and ads in magazines / newspapers) and often require big budgets to work.
Click ads and other paid online advertising is one route.
Publicity and links to your site are another route.
The third (and most basic program that nearly any company should be doing) includes three or four main key elements which all work together to create traffic to your site and RESULTS (meaning leads, contacts or sales). Links to blog postings on each of these follow:
2. Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Organic SEO
Both of these so people find your site.
3. Controlling what displays on the search results pages so people click on YOUR link. Snippets Google Search Options
4. Fixing "leaks" on your website so it does a better job of handling visitors, so more of them contact you and become new patients. My Website Leaks
This kind of program takes a while (usually at least a month before you seen any results) but that's true of most new business development efforts.
The potential upside for many businesses is large. And the gains persist. Once you get high rankings you tend to keep them. That's different than a Yellow Pages ad or direct mail you have to keep paying for to get any results.
Reviews, like many things, can be forces for good or for evil.
They can be used by competitors or just plain troublemakers to attack your reputation.
Or they can be used by you to help people find you online, and to get an idea of what great service and products you have.
Best you harness them for good.
Thanks to Google, it's now easy to find out how you look in the universe of reviews. Just search on your company, product or service name, then click on "search options" and select "reviews" from the left column. It'll bring up ONLY websites with reviews.
If other things than your company are showing up, just narrow the search using "" quote marks for an exact phrase match, add additional words or use "-" a minus sign for a negative search term (eliminate that from the results).
You'll probably see such as the following:
Google Maps (Local)
Yahoo Local
Switchboard.com
YellowPages.com
SuperPages.com
RealPages.com
All of these are versions of online Yellow Pages. Depending on the business and locale you are in, you may see other sites as well.
Now the trick is to get happy customer / client / patient reviews added to these sites.
Check back from time to time and see how you are looking.
As your online reputation improves, watch your web traffic (and leads) increase!
The latest is something called "WolframAlpha" which is getting massive exposure in the press as the newest thing that is going to render Google obsolete.
Yet it is nothing more than an experimental tool from an academic researcher in Germany. And oh yeah, it doesn't work all that well and is certainly nowhere near ready for primetime.
Meanwhile, Google has rolled out its new search options panel which is the greatest improvement in actual practical search in at least a year.
I've done a study of color recently. Fascinating subject! Did you know people can distinguish something like 10 million different colors? (The full size version of this picture contains 1 million pixels, each little dot a different color.)
There is something very mysterious about the color purple.
It is the color of royalty. It is both sensual and spiritual.
It is the only "non-spectral color" amongst the major colors of the color wheel. The spectrum (colors of the rainbow) run Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet - we learned the acronym Roy G Biv to remember that when I was growing up, but Indigo and Violet are omitted when it is turned into a color wheel. (Color wheels are used by artists to work out color combinations.)
Of course the spectrum is a line. It is actually a gradient scale of frequencies or wavelengths. Red is the shortest visible light waves (any shorter and you get "infrared" which you can feel as heat but is not visible) and violet the longest (beyond which you get "ultraviolet", again not visible to the human eye).
The color wheel is a circle which raises the question: how do you turn a line into a circle? By connecting the ends in between. And what do you connect them with? Purple,
If you mix red and yellow you get orange, which is in between them on the spectrum and on the color wheel.
If you mix yellow and blue you get green, which is in between them on the spectrum and on the color wheel.
If you mix blue and red you get purple, which is in between them on the color wheel. But there is no "in between" red and blue in the spectrum.
Google, after much testing, has launched a new "seach options" panel, which you can see by clicking on "show options" just below your main search window.
Among the options are time-sensitive (how recently was the page updated?), show images from the page, and longer text.
We feel this is a very significant upgrade of Google's search capabilities and will help continue their dominance in search. More importantly, if you are doing Internet Marketing, it will greatly help searchers sort out the sites they are looking for, before they even visit the site.
For example, a client of ours is a high-end hardwood flooring contractor. If you search for "hardwood flooring Tampa", two of their pages show up in the top ten organic search listings. However, it isn't that easy to distinguish amongst the listings, who is a professional hardwood floor contractor and who is something else.
If you click on the option to show images from the site, most of the others immediately show as being lower-level companies, general flooring contractors (not specializing in hardwood), or directories.
Why is this important? It is one thing to show up in searches. You still need to get the searcher to click selectively on the link to your site, as opposed to others.
This is the equivalent of having your ad in a magazine amongst 9 other ads for competitors. How do you get them to select yours?
I will make two predictions:
1. This will be VERY popular with searchers.
2. It will reward the company with a professional website.
We'll be monitoring statistics over the next weeks to see how this change affects things. It should be gradual (as not everyone will discover or try the new features immediately). I'll report in on it later.
Here's a video from Google explaining the new features:
Google has announced a change in their policy on use of trademarks in Click Ads. It's a liberalization in that there will be more situations where you CAN use someone else's trademark. But there are serious limitations:
Those that won't be able to use brand names include sites that sell counterfeit goods, retailers that primarily sell a competitor's products, advertisers that criticize the trademarked brand and those that do not refer to a landing page with a purchase option.
Nevertheless, there are situations where this will be very useful, as to promote a tradmarked brand that you are selling online.
An issue that comes up repeatedly when a company is considering changing its logo:
What about the expense of redoing everything (shirts, truck signs, business cards, etc. etc.) with the new logo?
That can turn a relatively minor redesign into a major expense.
The answer is two-fold:
1. A logo redesign should rarely be revolutionary. Almost always it should be evolutionary. That means the new logo is recognizably just a new version of the old logo.
You see this very commonly in consumer products. Pepsi's new logo is an example.
Which takes me to the second point.
2. If your new logo is recognizably a version, modernization or upgrade of your current logo, you DON'T have to change everything all at once.
Pepsi for example is not using their new logo everywhere and in everything, at least as yet.
So you do your redesign, and, over time, you get it into use. When the shirts wear out, you replace them with shirts using the new logo. When you need to reprint the brochure, it gets the new logo. And so on.
This is VERY workable and it is critical. Most people are discouraged from needed logo redesigns by this exact issue.
Don't be discouraged. A new logo can be a great upgrade of one's marketing.
In an earlier post, I touched briefly on the subject of categories in regards to branding.
It is a very important point and deserves its own discussion.
Al Reis discusses this at length in his "22 Immutable Laws of Marketing."
The best way by far to brand your product is as the first product in a new category. In other words, you don't tell people you are BETTER than the competition. Basically, you are establishing that there is no competition.
Of course for that to work you have to come up with a new category that your product actually does fit in. And that has to be something that is inherently desirable to your potential customers.
So it can take quite a bit of work to figure that out. But when you do, it can drive your whole marketing effort and cause a huge increase in sales.
Apple branded the iPhone as a new category of cell phone.
The IBM PC, Lite Beer, 7-up (the UnCola), Ben & Jerry's (super-premium ice cream) are all examples of this.
Of course, if you have a rather generic product, if you are a small company with perhaps only vaguely defined competition, you've got your work cut out for you.
Sometimes you need to "re-brand" a product or company.
We had a client whose business had so evolved that the company name no longer described what they did. It was inhibiting sales because people would go "Oh, they're just a ______" and they'd never even get a chance to prove they could do the job.
Most of the time re-branding is a mistake and destructive.
Recently five top consumer brands re-branded themselves in an effort to deal with dropping sales. One of the five cost the company 20% of their sales before they went back to their old packaging.
When you see ads that say "Guaranteed Page 1 Google in 15 Minutes!!!!! Not click ads!!!!!" you know to keep your hand on your wallet. Ads like that should carry mandatory notices "Danger. Thief at work."
It takes time to improve search engine rankings because Google and other search engines don't revisit and re-index your page instantly when a change is made. Google does keep speeding up their cycle. Currently they take about three weeks to completely re-index the average website.
And It typically takes several rounds of changes to get all the way there. It takes a while to get inbound links working for you. Plus the "sandbox effect" can delay the full effect of your SEO.
However, that doesn't mean results can't start appearing rapidly.
I've been tracking rankings for a new SEO client of ours. After the initial round of changes, many search terms had risen in the rankings after 17 days and further improved after a total of 26 days. We've seen similar results in other cases.
One reason is Google doesn't re-index a whole site all at once; they may visit one page one day and another the next. As soon as they've visited a page, any rankings for that page are updated.
Another point is that if you are looking for a most immediate "bang for your buck" on search engine rankings, you strategize what changes are easiest to make with the biggest result.
That doesn't change the fact that SEO is more of a marathon than a sprint. More than once we've seen it take a year to get a site to the top on nationally competitive search terms. Results usually come much faster for localized searches.
So you can get good results within days, but plan on many months work, if you are planning to get to the top of all your important search terms.
Here's another subject I've talked lots about without ever devoting a whole posting to it.
"Inbound links" means links from someone else's website to yours.
These are extremely important to your search engine rankings. IF someone links to you AND their website is considered important by the search engine AND the link says the same things about your site that yours does.
That's three big ifs.
1. Someone links to you. Some sites collect inbound links without working at it. We've a client with hundreds of them. They are in a niche market (classic Lincoln automobiles) with a very loyal and interested following and after over 20 years in business, are extremely well known.
Most businesses starting out aren't in that position. So you have to work to get links to your site.
You work at it bit by bit over time. Seeking out sites, blogs, directories, portals that would be interested in linking to you and getting them to add a link.
2. Their website is considered important by the search engines. The most valuable links are from sites with high Page Rank or so-called "trusted sites" such as educational institutions and major media sites.
Any inbound link is good. But links from these kinds of sites can rapidly make an enormous difference in your rankings.
3. Links say the same things about your site that your site says about it. To make this clear, if your site is about Florida condo rental, and you've optimized the site for "Florida condo rentals" and related search terms, then the best links are ones where the so-called "anchor text" or adjacent text says "Florida condo rentals." "Anchor text" is the words which if you click on them take someone to your site.
You don't always have that much control over how the links read, but again, even if it just has the URL or name of the site, that is much better than nothing.
Even a small number of less-than-ideal links can make a big difference in your rankings.
Of course, inbound links can also generate traffic to your site, but in most situation, the biggest upside is from improving your rankings and generating valuable traffic that way.
Here's another topic of importance I've somehow never blogged about.
This is the subject of short, punchy phrases used in branding a company, in quickly communicating something you want the public to know about your company or product or service.
Let me start by defining these two terms the way I use them, since they are mostly used interchangeably. I use them differently because there are two different things that need to be accomplished.
I use "tagline" to mean a short phrase, not necessarily memorable, that summarizes what you do. Usually it is attached to a logo.
You don't see this very often.
And yet it is often necessary. If you don't tell people what you do or sell, are they supposed to guess? Or do you leave them wondering for a while? Many company names don't answer the question. What does "CSX" do?
Yet that is the FIRST question people ask.
When someone goes to a website, they arrive with a series of questions. The first question is, does this company or website offer what I'm looking for?
Does this website sell reproductions of early 20th century door hardware?
Can I find out here how many pounds to a kilogram?
Is this a source for information on rheumatoid arthritis?
The first thing they want to know is NOT that you are "family friendly" or "trusted by all mankind." Trusted for what?
When I use the word "slogan" I'm referring to the second type of branding phrase.
Slogans are supposed to be memorable and they need to position the company or product. If people remember only one thing about your ad, it is supposed to be the slogan:
The Un-Cola
We Try Harde.
When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight
For the people
I believe keeping these two concepts in mind can greatly improve most companies' marketing.
The marketing world is changing. It used to be that accountability was a little known concept and the big ad agencies got fat on their 15% agency discounts.
That is and has been changing to such a degree that Al Ries, one of the greatest marketing minds of the modern era, is pushing back. His latest article in Ad Age complains that marketers are putting too much emphasis on the numbers.
I take his point. There will always be a large element of creativity and artistic sense to marketing.
That doesn't mean it's a bad thing that the trend continues towards metrics (statistics) as a measure of marketing effectiveness.
For too long, marketing companies and ad agencies could get away with smoke and mirrors and claims that their results CAN'T be measured.
One way or another, a marketing company should be able to demonstrate that what they are doing is effective and worthwhile.
A while ago, in a post about picking website URLs, I said your URL shouldn't be a generic description of what you do. I gave the examples "Yahoo" or "Google" is better than "searchengine.com".
Why is that and how far does that principle apply?
It applies widely.
If your name is descriptive of an existing category of products or services, you minimize the chance of establishing a brand or even having anyone remember your name. Your name is already owned by the category and probably by a particular brand in that category!
To take this to an extreme, imagine GM coming out with a new small car called "The Small Car."
Actually.... Do you remember a car called the GLC (Great Little Car)?
I didn't think so.
There actually was such a car. I can't remember who made it. And I just tried searching to find out and found nothing except pages about Hondas, Mazdas, etc.
See the point?
Now one of the important considerations in this is "existing category of products or services."
So Google and Yahoo - since there already was such a thing as a search engine - were smart to name their services as they did. And all the search engines with descriptive names like "searchsite" and "sitesearch" and whatever.... are nowhere.
On the other hand, when IBM came out with the PC, there was barely such a thing as a personal computer. Do note however that IBM doesn't even make PCs any more.
I recently did a study of color. Fascinating subject.
One thing I learned was that a vital concept in design has so thoroughly disappeared the word doesn't even exist anymore.
"Color Depth" refers to the fact that objects can appear closer or farther because of their color. Cool colors such as blue and gray tend to look farther away. Warm colors like orange and red tend to look closer.
But the term "Color Depth" has come to refer to how many different colors your monitor or software can display (number of color bits to be technical).
A design, painting or photograph where the "other" color depth is badly handled will tend to look flat, primitive or cartoonish.
Actually, in my study, I found that the last time this was routinely well-handled was in the great Renaissance Masters, such as Raphael.
Here's one great way to do video. You've probably seen them. You go to a website and a figure walks onto your screen and starts talking - usually the owner of the business or a pretty model.
It's one of the hottest pieces of technology for websites because it's an instant grabber. It's interesting and more alive than anything you usually find on a website.
Of course it doesn't always make sense for every website. But what you probably don't know is that it is neither difficult nor very expensive to do.
The hardest part is shooting the video. It has to be done in front of a "green screen" so the background can be subtracted out. If the person moves around at all, it needs to be planned out where exactly the person is going to walk when the video is shot so it ends up with the desired effect on the screen.
One reason this has to be well-planned: You can't have any clickable links on that part of the screen the person walks through. At least they won't be clickable while the person is on the screen, even if you can see a link.
It also needs to be well scripted. And if it is the owner or president or someone else not used to being on camera, they need to be drilled to relax! There's nothing worse than someone looking uncomfortable on screen.
If that makes it seem difficult, it's not, and the effect on your website can be outstanding.
I've mentioned viral marketing but I haven't really talked about it.
Three weeks ago, Susan Boyle was an unknown, middle-aged Scots homemaker.
Her video on YouTube has now been seen 64 million times.
How did this happen?
FIrst, she was on TV on "Britain's Got Talent."
Someone put the video of her performance on YouTube.
People were excited and started telling each other about her and sending the link to the video.
Now, what do you think that is worth to Susan Boyle and anyone wanting to use her to market something? Millions? Tens of Millions?
This example contains all the essential elements of viral marketing:
1. You have to START with something that people are going to get excited and tell each other about. No matter what you do, if you don't have something that is going to create a buzz, it's not going to buy you any beans.
That's what viral marketing is - viral meaning spreading in the same way a virus does, person-to-person, and like a virus, one infected person can become millions. This is the plus side of what computer viruses are the negative - the incredible power of the Internet to rapidly disseminate something.
2. You have to jump start awareness of that something. This is usually done through publicity. TV or radio or magazines or newspapers pick it up for the same reason - it's cool, it's fun, it's bizarre, it's exciting.
3. You have to have a way it can be easily spread by email or twitter or Facebook, etc. That usually means a link to a video or website.
