Archive for the 'Internet Marketing' Category
Why Niche Marketing? Because Me Myself and I Matter
I often times see businesses kick off their online presence by trying to go after the mainstay giants. A local chain of bookstores would come out with a website and go after Amazon and Chapters because they think that since their web pages are prettier, people will flock like a bunch of banks on a government bailout. I previously wrote about the importance of niches for search engine optimization and marketing in general, but today I want to explore a different angle.
When visiting a website, you often times see personalized gimmicks being used to get your attention. If you are from Montreal, for example, you could see an ad about something going on in the city, but the ad is on a Brazilian travel agency website. Your location got traced and the ad got spiced up to make you feel special. Google’s massive pay-per-click money pit is based on such personalization, which is niche marketing at its best.
People want to feel special and unique, but if your marketing strategy is to go after the general public, then you miss the boat. For example, Microsoft releases multiple versions of Windows for a reason. One is basic, one is for business, one is professional (whatever that means), another one is for entertainment and media, etc. They could have just made one Windows that encompasses all of these, and it would have worked just fine, but they wanted to make the business people feel special by giving them “their own” version, and the same applies to people who use their computers for games and movies, and so on.
Niche marketing captures this concept. Here is an example from the user point of view. If you are looking for an apartment for rent, you would go to a site such as apartment.com, start digging for your hometown, and go through the ads. The problem with that is when you start, you are treated like a sand grain on the beach. However, if you visit a local website with apartment listings only for your city, you feel a little warmer inside.
If I am planning on releasing an apartment listings website, I would be better releasing a number of them, each for a different city, and focus my marketing on the different geographic niches, rather than releasing one countrywide generic site and going after apartment.com and other big name mainstays.
You see this phenomenon everywhere you look. Car dealerships let you customize your car to make it “you”, grocery shops are stacked with variety like never before (see if you can count the number of chip flavors out there), and so on. The fact of the matter is if you go generic, you will flame out unless you have an established brand name (Coke?).
If you focus on niches, you increase your “special” factor and along with it your marketing effectiveness.
No commentsHow to Write Good Copy for Your Website
With the recent news that directory submissions of a website are now pointless for SEO, it is more important than ever to focus on your content. This means that you need to keep your visitors intrigued with what’s written on you web pages, but to do that you must understand what is good copy and what isn’t.
The ability to write good copy comes from the understanding of the way we humans look at what’s in front of us. The best way to demonstrate this is with an example. Suppose you write up a nice looking paragraph that starts off as follows:
According to various scientific sources, dinosaurs died due to a meteor striking our planet some 65 million years ago.
And on it went. However, a visitor of your website sees the following:
According to various scientific sources, dinosaurs died …?
Why? Because they are only willing to spend a couple of seconds to read the first few words and make the decision on spending the next five minutes reading the rest or moving on to something more interesting. There is no way you can make a sound decision from the given excerpt whether the text is worth reading or not, but we as people trust our instinct for better or for worst.
Simply observe your own behavior. Have you ever started reading something, didn’t have the time to read the whole thing, but decided to do it anyway, as if your eyes were a fly on fresh cow manure? Just couldn’t let it go. Case in point: the first 5 or 6 words of every paragraph matter, so invest a good amount of time in them.
Another helpful self-study would be to monitor how you go through a newspaper. Do you read everything to try and find something you like? I don’t think so. Heck, we are so lazy we barely read the title, instead focusing on a few words in it to make the decision on spending our next five minutes. Case in point: write up some good headings for your content, and make them a little catchy and intriguing. It doesn’t have to be “SHE’S PREGNANT!” tabloid magazine style, but them folks are onto something.
The next tip to keep in mind is to write short paragraphs. Long paragraphs tend to appear as pains in rear to read, so people stay away. Organize your text into segments of 200 words or less, and the whole thing will appear easier to get through. Now, coincidentally, onto the next paragraph.
This is an obvious one, but a small mishap can cost you big time. If you guessed spelling, congrats. One spelling mistake can “kill the vibe” of the reader. You are focused and into whatever you are reading, and suddenly you come across a misspelled worrd, you snap back to reality. You check out the word to make sure you didn’t just imagine the fault, but it’s there. The author loses credibility in your eyes and the remainder of the text will be heavily scrutinized instead of being consumed for knowledge. Never stop editing your content, even after it is released into the wild, and yes, I misspelled on purpose. If you didn’t pick it up, never mind.
The final important point I want to make is you should know your reader. If your website is for rocket scientists, you can go nuts with the technical jargon and fancy wordings, but if your readers aren’t as linguistically gifted, adjust your copy accordingly. This aspect in itself can be split into a list of topics, but I won’t get into 6th grade English class.
However, here are a few basic tips. Keep your sentences short, but don’t overdo it. Your text will suck. People won’t like it. It will sound choppy. Read it out loud. You should be able to tell if you went over the line as I just did.
You can use little tricks to give emphasis to important points. You can really show the importance of something or other in your website copy. I can’t come up with any from the top of my head right now.
Try to stay away from the “we are awesome” way of writing. People hate being presented with promo blabbering, so keep it straight. The people making up television ads don’t get it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.
And to finish with the cherry on top of the icing on the cake, since we are writing copy for a website, we want people to find it on Google, right? If you want search engine traffic to come your way, focus on niches. I recently posted a simple tutorial on how to find your keyword niche. Go through it, find some keywords that match your topic and are weak on search engine rankings competition, and incorporate them into your copy. Make sure that your incorporations make sense, otherwise it’s pointless. Always write knowing that the copy is for website visitors whom you are trying to convince to at least return for a second visit. Class dismissed.
1 commentWhy CNN is #1
I am usually well informed in terms of what’s going on in the world. Each morning while I multitask with breakfast, email checking, making up the day’s schedule, and packing, I flick on CNN to make sure the end of the world didn’t whisk by while I was asleep, and with all this economic unrest potentially being bad for business, lately I tend to tune in more often.
CNN is arguably the top dog in the news industry, and they are smart enough to know what it takes to stay there. So what does this have to do with anything? Well, everything.
As you watch CNN, especially their celebrities (Cooper, King, Cafferty, Dobbs), you can always see a laptop on their desks, and not so they can read their notes (they have a teleprompter for that), but to interact with visitors of CNN.com while we watch 60 second ads of E.D. medication.
Each one of them fellas has a website and a blog that they relentlessly promote during the show, and people posting online often see their questions or comments make it on the air. This is good thinking by the brass at CNN, even if it probably took them a while to teach Larry how to type.
CNN is building their brand using their own viewers. They aren’t aggressively trying to squash the competition because they don’t need to. They understand that the public has opinions about what is going on in the world, so they use the Internet to let the people express themselves. Little did you know, this is all part of a brilliant marketing strategy.
A good example of how it all works is Jack Cafferty and his blog. The man comes on the air looking pissed off and blinded by camera lights, fires off something opinionated and controversial, and invites the public to respond on his blog. Later during the day he reads off a few responses on air and asks those who submitted an email comment to see if it got posted online. Brilliant!
It doesn’t matter that half of the people disagree with what he says. The point is not to please the crowds, but to create a reaction. The end result is that the lovers and the bashers all go to his blog and become part of the company-client interaction that is vital in today’s competitive market.
CNN gives the people what they want, and that gets them more people.
No commentsLove Your Peoples
Not long ago I was renewing my home Internet contract with Bell, and I was interested in an offer they had on their website. When I asked about it, I was told it is only available for new customers. I renewed for the regular rate because I had the bundle and switching ISPs would be too much of a hassle. I could just feel all the love Bell was throwing my way.
This got me thinking about what should be the focus of a company: keep current customers happy or risk existing loyalty and go after new ones? The first thing that came to my mind was Vista. Microsoft is running the “Mojave Experiment” ads to try and get people to upgrade, but what about the herd that is using Vista and is unhappy with it? I am part of that herd, and I haven’t felt any love coming from MS. Is that a good decision on their part?
In my opinion it’s a no, but I might be biased since I’m the one getting the shaft. Putting the rant aside though, keeping your customers happy is part of the new age of marketing that is filtering out the good guys and the bad guys.
Lets play pretends. Say Microsoft invested all that ad capital into Vista and made it work great. Would people upgrade? Would word of mouth bring in more customers than traditional advertising? The whole issue boils down to a simple question. Who would people believe more, television or a large percentage of overjoyed users? Furthermore, is there anyone who doesn’t know Vista exists? Did anyone see the recent Vista commercials and went “whaa”? This is why Google doesn’t advertise itself. They try their best to keep their peoples happy and word of mouth takes care of marketing.
I didn’t even mention the obvious advantages of customer satisfaction, like loyalty, a solid customer foundation, and a safety net when the feces hit the fan or the competition releases something shiny. So why do we still see all these companies screwing their own to go after the birds in the bushes? Next time I renew my Internet contract, I’ll be sure to ask.
No commentsNew Age Marketing
The rules of advertizing have changed. No longer can you shove promotional messages into people’s faces and build a brand. People skip TV ads with DVR or by changing the channel, and the news isn’t good for radio and print ads either, which makes old marketing habits mostly obsolete. So what does it take to promote a product of service in this new and crazy world?
Story time. I was recently on a business trip to Europe and my route included a few stops on connect flights, so I decided to take along a book on management in the field of IT. I went to browse the online catalogue of my local book store and picked out a few books that caught my interest. Afterwards, I looked up each one on Amazon.com and read buyer reviews. One book caught my eye: “Managing humans: biting and humorous tales of a software engineering manager” by Michael Lopp. Anyone who hopes for a career in software development or any related field should read this book. The reviews on Amazon were mostly positive. A couple of reviews were negative, but they were by people who kept mistaking “your” with “you’re”, so I ignored them. A few articulate people gave the book great reviews and backed them up with good explanations, so I made my choice.
Let’s now take this apart. I bet I am not alone in visiting websites to read personal reviews before making certain choices. I didn’t want reviews by experts in book review. I wanted opinions of people with interests and career goals similar to mine. Amazon.com was one of the first to allow customer ratings and reviews. Before that we had to rely on people who put together reviews for a living. I am not saying they are inacurate. What I am saying is that this Average Joe wants to know what other Average Joes think, which is why Amazon is and will remain the top dog. Admittedly, I never actually bought anything from them, but not because of a lack of trust (I’m an Ebay fan). However I contribute to Amazon’s traffic, and if people come to use your services, you will eventually start getting a return on your investment.
Ok, Amazon is awesome, but so what? How does that help the little guy get a high ROI? It’s actually quite simple once you let go of the old ideologies. Marketers often sort people into groups defined by age, sex, location, etc. A 25 year old single male would definitely be interested in a purely off-road vehicule, right? Sure, but so can a 55 year old who finally put his kids through college. In the new age of marketing, people are targeted by interests, regardless of what demographic they belong to. The problem is that interest, unlike age or location, is difficult to probe if you live by the old rules. However, a change of mindset can open up numerous possibilities to get the word out there. First, you must understand that people want you to market your product or service to them. What? Am I nuts? People hate advertisements, right? Yes, but they also want the best for the least amount of money.
Take yourself as a test case. You come in a store to buy a few things. You most likely know what brand you are going to buy, and are satisfied with what you get, otherwise why would you buy it? Somewhere along the way you were sold on that brand, whether it’s with friend recommendations, ads, or whatever else drives your opinion. Would you be happy to know there is a better product at a lower price? I would, and most of the time there is, but the company making it didn’t yet figure out a way to swing your vote. On a side note, to have a successful marketing campaign you must have a quality product. If you hope to sell garbage, then you belong in a black hole.
Well, that was a lot of blabbering, but the goal was to convince you that times have changed. Now we can move on to the how-to guide. Always remember that your goal is to get people to talk about you, regardless of whether what they have to say is positive or negative, and the rest should make sense.
The first advantage of getting people to talk about you (or to you) is that you can probe interest and really see what people like and dislike about what you are offering up. I was recently in a large retail chain store, and while in there I heard about their new website which allows visitors to discuss everything fashion, but more specifically the brands the store carries. It isn’t brilliant or innovative, nor will it be a resounding success, but I’m guessing this is their first try at new age marketing, and that’s a good start. Rarely will you find marketing campaigns that succeed right away. First attempts are for learning purposes, and because businesses are of different varieties, each has to see what works and what doesn’t for one’s specific case. Also, note that the store used traditional advertisement methods (broadcasting through the public announcement system) to promote their new website. Old school marketing isn’t going to go away, but its role has changed. You must use it to promote dialog about the brand, not the brand itself.
A good example of smart advertising is Crocs, the plastic shoe maker. They created a love/hate affair between the public and the shoes. People either love them or hate them; there is no middle ground. To fuel the fire, they keep running TV ads of people expressing either delight or anger with the shoes, and invite the public to express their opinion on their website. It is why they went from “Crocs?” to “Crocs!” in a matter of a couple of years, and you can see that they really figured out what works for them. So how do you figure out what works for you? Use a little brain and stop dumping money into megaphone tactics to try and get as many people as possible to hear about you. They’ll hear you, and then they’ll ignore you.
First off, do some investigative work on the ‘net. Find forums, discussion groups, and online communities related to your business type. Believe me, regardless of what your business is about, there is a truckload of people out there somewhere gathered together to talk about it. Get a feel for what is being talked about. Are people really passionate about the quality of service? How about product variety or personalization? There are always a couple of important topics discussed, and they define the success of a business, so lucky for you, you get to find out what they are and assess how you’re doing in that regard. You might even be surprised to see that people are actually talking about you, which is even more eye opening.
Next up, you need to make your business the topic of conversation. Don’t try to be a smart ass and throw in a “The cakes at the Joe’s Cake Shop are just amazing!” while pretending you are just a passer-by (I’m assuming you own Joe’s Cake Shop of course). You will get busted and your brand goes down the drain. Instead be honest about your identity. Present yourself as the owner of the shop, announce the arrival of your new chocolate cake (don’t make it look like an ad, but instead like a factual announcement), and ask for genuine opinion. People who bought similar cakes in other shops will let you know what they liked and disliked, and those who bought it in your shop can really give you the pot of gold in terms of feedback. Boom! You are now the topic. Handle criticism with care and concern, and people will appreciate that you give a damn. They don’t care if you get rich or go broke, but they do care about cakes and how good they are, otherwise why would they bother joining a community and spending hours of their free time talking about it. Makes sense? I hope so.
If you already own a website and get a good amount of traffic, think about putting together your own online community and inviting customers to join. In addition to the benefits mentioned above, you will also allow your customers to do the advertising for you. If someone searches for cakes and lands on a thread in your community, they will find out about your business, read your customers’ (mostly) positive chitchat, and who knows, maybe buy some cakes down the road.
Another good idea is to get helpful. If you are selling cakes and have good traffic on your site, get a weekly Q&A going. It doesn’t have to be about your cakes, but about cakes in general. Remember, you are mingling with cake lovers, so they probably bake. Hence, they might have tons of questions about baking cakes, and you are the expert here, so establish yourself as one and answer some questions about which flour to use for a soft vanilla cherry cake. People will feel more comfortable buying cakes from you if they see that you know your stuff.
Also, to really kick start your efforts you need to generate some buzz, and that requires some cojones (look it up). Bake and display a human-sized cake instead of the OPEN neon sign on your window, go into the most popular cake community, and announce it to the world as the best thing since sliced bread. Some will call you a showoff and an idiot, while others will praise you for the work of art. Either way, nobody will be indifferent, and hence you generated buzz. Remember Crocs? Of course you do; you might have a pair.
Another important aspect of marketing your business online is Search Engine Optimization, but it goes far beyond getting a good rank in Google. I found out that people who look for E-commerce services in Quebec often use MSN Canada, mostly because it has a deal in place with Bell Sympatico, a major ISP, and the MSN Canada website is actually sympatico.msn.ca, which is the home page for a lot of Sympatico users. It is much easier to get on top of MSN Canada’s search results than Google’s, so your ROI could be much higher if you focus your attention on these kinds of little details. Do some research, and make decisions according to what you find.
A good idea would also be to find out how your customers look for you or your competition. Are they always using the major search engines, or are you a big hit in the Yellow Pages? A business I previously developed a website for drives massive traffic to their website purely through Craigslist ads. Their major search engine rankings are in the toilet, yet business is booming. Discover what brings you and your competitors traffic, and work on maximizing that traffic. If your business is often found on Google Maps, why not purchase some Sponsored Links for pertinent keywords? If your business has a high conversion rate (visitors become customers), then the pay-per-click system is your friend.
And finally, all of this takes effort. Do your research, keep up with trends, constantly discover new things, and take advantage of opportunities. Go many times small instead of one time big, and focus on your customers. Your marketing effort should always be a two-way conversation, and traditional marketing should be used to promote that conversation. Get involved, and the people will love you. Remember, they want you to market to them, but they are people with opinions and perceptions, not simple catch-all-and-store receptors.