Customers Can Market For You

Your customers are purchasers, influencers, decision makers and prospects, right? With the launch of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linked our customers and prospect are now in control of the conversation, states Dan Ziman, Director of Marketing with Lithium Technologies, Inc. In a recent article, Ziman recognizes that we have all spent a great deal of and effort building, managing, and analyzing our websites, but now our existing and prospective customers are demanding ever greater levels of interactivity; and they want not only more interactivity with you but also more access and engagement with one another.

That means managing your brand has become increasingly difficult. We have paid careful attention to search results, customer experience, and internet lead generation, 2010 is forcing us to face that We need to engage with our customers and prospects—or risk losing them. Ziman shares key steps you can take to engage with that customer network—and therein lies the opportunity.

According to Ziman, one of the most powerful, proven ways to build your brand and customer network is through online communities like Facebook and Twitter. Organizations are using these mediums to identify and engage customers who willingly share insights, help solve support issues, and drive word-of-mouth marketing on their behalf. Also, customers can get answers quickly; and by knowing the reputation of other members, they know whom they can trust.

Here are Ziman's Proven Tactics For Engaging Your Customers:

1. Use a reputation community system. Online communities are not just a place to view information. You've got to know who you can trust based on community feedback. In addition, it will help you quickly figure out who your brand advocates are and encourage your most knowledgeable customers to frequently participate. You must manage the interaction as well.

2. Encourage repeat visits. Create areas where they can return within the community, such as a contests, feedback, and photos where only those with similar reputations can go and participate.

3. Promote early and often. It's critical that everyone knows about the community and can easily navigate there from any place on your website. Businesses will find their communities to be one of the most visited Web areas.

4. Use mobile. Can your community can be easily viewed and used from any mobile phone. Communities are not just for when you're at your desk. People use communities when shopping at the store, traveling, or grabbing a cup of coffee.

5. Pay attention to all visitors. In particular, consider those non-active users or "lurkers"—people who visit the community, view information, and move along and don't participate in the discussion. Have your team review ways to engage with new customers and potential members of the community.

6. Focus on search results. SEO is critical to your success. Managing the customer network on your domain will lead to far better results than if those conversations take place elsewhere. A holistic SEO strategy will help your customers and your extended business network find you when they're searching for answers and ideas.

Finally, the key to managing a successful community program is measurement. According the survey noted above, the top two analytics for measuring success are (1) number of active users (34%), and (2) how often people post/comment (32%).

But success must go deeper to ensure people return to the community. You should evaluate a composite index of community components, including members, content, traffic, responsiveness, interaction, and liveliness.

By Promotional Channels, a Connecticut Marketing Company

Sharing Your Knowledge Can Grow Your Business

We have all heard the phrase ‘Knowledge is Power’. Some of it is common knowledge like one plus one equals two and some of our knowledge is uncommon. But is your uncommon knowledge holding your business back? Can the knowledge that you hold and others are interested in, increase your business by establishing you as the expert? Define you as the person or company that others want to do business with? Or be the company that consumers want to purchase products or services from? Yes.

Your knowledge of your business and industry can establish you as the local or global go to company. We know that consumers and businesses want to do business with companies where they can be honestly informed. They will pay for products and services where the owners and employees are educated and experienced in their field and products. They want the specialists because their expectations can be met, and even over achieved.

There are very few places where the try before you buy option is offered. Sure, the software industry is easily able to offer fifteen day free trials. But, you don’t go to the grocery store and take home a gallon of milk to see if it the milk and grocer's service will meet your future needs. Essentially, we buy it first, if we don’t like it. We just don’t buy it again. Plus, if we did not have a positive experience at the store in which it was purchased, the consumer may move on to shop at your competitor.

But how can you let your prospective customers know before they buy that you and your business are the place that they should be doing business with? That it’s your restaurant that they should eat at. It is your technology company that they should sign a maintenance contract with. Or know that it is your consulting services that will give them the value that they need.

By sharing and proclaiming your knowledge where potential customers can see it, read it and identify with it, you will find your business grow and expand. Because in today’s society, more and more people are doing their homework and research before they buy. Including consumer product goods and services like restaurants and home electronics. What they are doing is minimizing their risk of disappointment or wasting their money. So, sharing your knowledge before you even know that a consumer is interested in the types of products and services that you provide, will positively influence their decision about purchasing products or services with your business.

Naturally, where is the most ideal place – and cost effective as well – to proclaim your knowledge? On your website. Your website is your hub for not only describing your product and service offerings, but regularly sharing your knowledge on your website will demonstrate that they will be making a choice to purchase these with an expert that will meet their expectations and minimize their risks and provide them with a great deal of value.

Take the time to share your knowledge, because the long term effect on your business is inevitable

Here's Why You Should Avoid Directly Marketing to Your Facebook Fans

Recently, Morgan Stewart, Director of Research and Strategy at ExactTarget, conducted a research study on consumers' attitudes toward marketing. He surveyed more than 2,300 consumers and interviewed almost 100 random. Below is an excerpt from his November 2009 results:

70% of consumers who visit Facebook at least once a month and are a "fan" of at least one company or brand don't believe they have given those companies permission to market to them.
40% of those "fans" don't believe marketers are welcome in social networks at all.

Why have a fan page then? Stewart indicates that the following findings from the study* will help you understand marketing to fans without losing them:

• What Is The Facebook Environment
  
  - People visit social networks to communicate with current friends, catch up with old friends, and otherwise express themselves.
  
  - 44% of people who are fans of at least one company or brand on Facebook also say social networks should be used strictly for interpersonal communication.
  
  - People on social networking sites don't believe marketers are welcome. To them, self-identification as a fan is not an invitation; it is an expression of personal taste or style intended to be shared primarily with friends.
  
• Don't Act Like A Marketer
  - Consumers don't trust marketing. Consumers trust people (or brands) that help them and exhibit interests similar to theirs.
  - Marketers' first inclination is to build a fan base so that they can send those people marketing messages. Consumers are increasingly put off by offers on their Facebook fan page like “exclusively for our fans.”
  
• Align With Fans, Don't Sell
  o Anything that shows you are aligning brand with the interests of your consumers
  can constitute a meaningful brand experience. For instance, if you have a interest in raising money for diabetes
  or cancer research then take your offer and align it with that foundation. Something along the lines of “we
  gave 10% of all revenues from January's sales…" Make sense?
  
• Be quick to listen and slow to speak
  
  - When it comes to positive comments, let your fans tell the story for you.
  - Negative comments. Two types: those you can address in a helpful manner and those you can't. Don't engage unless you can be helpful, but if you do, do it in real-world dialogue and solve their problem.
  
• Direct consumers to other channels for marketing messages
  
  - When Stewart compared data from this year with data collected in 2008, Morgan noticed consumers' attitudes toward non-permission (or "pushy") marketing messages souring fast. However, that wasn’t true for permission-based messages; consumers are very receptive to promotions and are reporting using coupons more often.
  - In marketer-initiated communications, email is the preferred channel (75% of consumers overall), even among teens (64%) and college students (70%). Consumers prefer to maintain that separation of "church-and-state" between how they communicate with friends and how they receive deals from fan pages they follow.
  
• Use what you learn to improve marketing
  
  - Fans' comments can provide valuable insight in regards to what is and isn't working with your fans. This provides an opportunity for marketers to adjust their message on respective promotional channels accordingly.
  
  - Identifying email subscribers from Facebook fans, marketers are able to better target and communicate with them as members of this vast, motivated and engaged audience.

Peoples' expectations in social-media environments are very different from their expectations of other direct-marketing channels. Approach social media with that difference in mind. To succeed, marketers need to overcome considerable skepticism on the part of their consumers.

If consumers are to change their minds about marketers' being welcome on Facebook or other social networks, it will be because marketers interact as participants in the dialogue instead of attempting to control the dialogue through slick messaging.

Stewart states, "That it's not that marketers can't launch social-media campaigns; rather, they can't act and think like marketers when doing so". Marketers are to create messages that are about service that is aligned with your fans taste, preferences and the like. Then they have no idea that they are being marketed to.

Effective Marketing Activities For The No Or A Low Budget Business

Small business owners know they have to market their business for all the same reasons as mid to large companies market their companies. Growth and viability. But we know a key differentiator is that the marketing budget for a small business tends to be very limited, in good and bad economic times.

So how can we market our small business when there is little or zero money available to do so? Through what is called Integrated Direct Marketing or what we marketers call ‘combining our sales initiatives with our marketing initiatives’. What does that mean, you ask? Well it’s taking those selling, interacting and networking opportunities and then coupling them with your marketing tactics.

Let me give you a few ideas that you can implement quickly or ease in to them one by one. Just a note though, some of these activities require serious time commitments and others may only be effective for the small local company. Yet, all have been proven effective marketing tactics for the small to mid-sized company:

• Get On Your Local Banks Small Business Spotlight of the Month Program. Many local bank branches have recently been offering their customers’ free display space in programs like ‘Small Business Spotlight of the Month’ (or two week intervals). You will have to create a display of some kind and it will gain attention and provide value to passerby’s with an enticing offer for encouraging folks to take the next step towards purchasing your goods or services.
• Be The Expert in Your Industry. Can you provide educational presentations or write articles for your local Chamber of Commerce or other national organization? When you provide educational seminars to your Chamber of Commerce or organization where your target market participates in, those members see and hear your knowledge and they begin to recognize you and your business as the experts within your field. People like to do business with experts. You can also utilize online blogging websites as a method of sharing your expertise. But will talk about that in a future newsletter.
• Become A Volunteer. Volunteer with an organization or program that you have passion for. An organization that allows you to meet and interact with many people, while supporting a greater cause. One thing that people really like is the company they do business with give back to their communities - local or global. They are attracted to companies that genuinely support their communities. Also, some non-profit organizations will even promote your personal volunteerism by advertising your business as a sponsor.
• Partner With Your Vendors. Partner with a vendor that provides a complementary product or service to your business and has an established reputation/ brand within your target market. If it is a retail store, ask them to allow you to put up a small display or flyer that includes an incentive or offer with your vendor or partners name located within the display. Joint collaboration helps with many direct marketing tactics, like having a joint direct mail campaign with a combined offer or co-sponsored newspaper advertisement.
• Get a Facebook Fan Page. Fan pages on Facebook are free and if you carve ten minutes out of a day, you can effectively build your following – or rather, fans. Use your fan page to post recent events, happenings, news, incentives or specials. Post photos or ask existing customers to write reviews. This will provide you with a method to keep your business in the minds of your existing customers. You do not have to post every day, but do post often and make it effective. Word of caution... do not sell to your fans on Facebook. Just communicate with them. See my next blog for more information about this.
• Write and Submit Press Releases to the Media. Press releases are free but they must be news worthy. It is at the discretion of the media provider whether or not your press release gets published or not. Do this on a monthly basis and the news mediums will want to know you more.
• Reach Out To The Media. Meet your local press – small and regional newspapers, radio and television. Introduce yourself, your services and provide them with an opportunity to showcase your products or services with their medium. Remember that volunteerism that I mentioned above? Well, volunteerism makes great human interest stories and the local press really likes to portray those stories. Invite them to your volunteer event. If the press does attend they usually interview organizers about the event, its purpose and history. Then when the story is aired or published, the reporter will name you – the interviewee – and your business name. Free publicity instills a subliminal message in viewers and readers minds that you and your business are respectable and trustworthy.
• Become An Active member of Your Local Small Business Organization. You will want to join your local Chamber of Commerce or similar organization. But more than that, you will want to become an active member of that organization. Get yourself, your skills and your business known throughout the membership. Attend the networking events and educational sessions. Meet the people. Members tend to be loyal to each other and buy and support their local businesses.
• Begin A Monthly Email Newsletter. Start an email newsletter program where subscribers are provided with practical and useful information about your industry, business or area of expertise. For example, we here at Promotional Channels are marketers with specialties in web design, search engine optimization, advertising, direct mail, social networking and much more. But it is our intention via this newsletter to share our knowledge to help you market your business.
• Institute a Customer Referral Program. Provide an incentive for customers, friends and family to send you customers. For instance, a $50 credit or gift card, or comparable, for any referral sent to you that actually purchases your product or services. This way, your customers will be sure to send you quality referrals, not just quantity.

As mentioned, each of the above requires time, but they are options for low or no direct costs to you. Also know that marketing is not an exact science like, one plus one equals two. So not every promotional strategy mentioned above will be a match for your business and there is also no cookie cutter promotional strategy by industry either. So you must do your research, some trial and error testing and tracking in order to increase your success.

You may not be able to do all of these right away, but by adding one of these activities one by one you will begin to see your business grow and expand over time. As you implement each program, be sure that you continuously and regularly work the tactics that work for your business; maintain these Integrated Direct Marketing commitments for your business until you find that the respective approach is not feasible for your business.

If You Build It They Will Come - Part II

Your Website.

Make the Technical Structure of Your Website Web Crawler Friendly For Good SEO.

In Part I we discussed Keyword Density, but the technical make up and structure are also important. You see, web crawlers can not read certain types of technical content and you want to make sure that if you are using any of these technologies that alternatives for are put in place so that web crawlers can read and index your content.

1. Flash. It can look great, be dynamic and quite eye-catching. But, whose eyes will it be catching if no one is able to find it? See, web crawlers can't read Flash content. Only use Flash when there is a text version of the Flash content available on your site.


2. Frames. Content within a frame is generally stored elsewhere and therefore, is not available for a web crawler to index it. Only use frames if you do not want the content within the frames to be searchable.


3. Java (or AJAX) Menus. Again, web crawlers to read or execute JavaScript code and will therefore, not be able to index it via the menu structure. If you use JacaScript, be sure that there is an alternative method for communicating this text to the search engines.


4. Dynamic URLs. Some websites have pages that query and provide the visitor with a list of results. Each time this a results page is displayed a new (or dynamic) URL for the website is displayed. This again creates a problem for those search engines to know where to locate content changes and updates. Note, there are ways to make search result pages SEO friendly.


5. Images in Place of Text. Be sure that words that are important for searching on are in text format on your site and not an image. However, when you do use images include these important keywords in the ALT tags.

Note, that Flash, images and other technologies mentioned can be used. But in order for the search engines to find these for indexing and weighing, you must also have this information in text format.

Diane Wishart
Promotional Channels
A CT Web Design and Marketing Outsourcing Company
http://www.promotionalchannels.com/

If you build it, they will come... Part 1

Your Website.

Not without some nurturing and attention! If you build, no one may know about it so how can they come? What is your web strategy? What is its purpose? What will it take to get them to come. You want to determine this, before you plan your Search Engine Optimization project.

Yes, you hear a great deal about Search Engine Optimization or SEO. It is important, but there is no need for EVERYONE to come. You are looking for serious, not curious. Right? Those who are seriously interested in your product or service. Window shoppers are good - but more like a long term branding strategy... a future customer.

But, how do we get them to come? Who do you want to come? Yes, Search Engine Optimization - the S E O! There are several components and factors that help you increase your search engine rankings. One of the primary elements is "Keyword Density".

What does Keyword Density mean and what do I do? In a nutshell, Keyword Density is the percent that your chosen keywords make up the test on your website. So, you want a minimum of five percent and no more than fifteen percent, of all the words/phrases on your site to consist of your specific keyword or phrase.

Some quick tips on Keyword Density:

1. Home Page - Home page introduces your keywords.
2. Landing Pages - Primary page(s) for keyword(s).
   
   • For example, if your company has three major service lines like Guitars, Music, and Concerts you would have a page for each one. As mentioned, your home page introduces these keywords, and then each service or product offering concentrates on their respective keywords.
3. Each landing page should comprise of approximately 10 - 15% keywords.
   
4. Keywords MUST be in the following tags:
   
   • Meta Tag - Title
     
   • Meta Tag - Keywords
   • H1 and H2 Tags
     
   • ALT Image Tags
5. Bold your Keywords/Phrases within your Body Text
   

The navigation structure, tags and bolding effects are identified and indexed by the web crawlers. These have leverage when being indexed. Use them to help your keyword density.

For more information about this Web Design Connecticut company, contact our offices at http://www.promotionalchannels.com.

Next Blog Topic: Choosing Keywords and/or Phrases.

Is Direct Mail Still Effective?

Out the gate... Yes. Direct Mail is still an effective marketing promotional technique. The biggest reason more companies have moved away from direct mail has been because of the more cost effectiveness of email, blogging and article marketing. However, not all businesses have abandoned using direct mail in the promotional mix. Less frequently than ten years ago, but still being used.

With several of my customers we are including direct mail campaign(s) in their annual tactical marketing plan. We have long stopped the monthly mailings, but instead are running one or two mail campaigns per year. Also, instead of mailing 35, 000 pieces* we are sending approximately 17,000 - almost half of what used to be mailed. We are only mailing to households and businesses that are not customers or we have no email address for them. Existing customers receive our monthly newsletter or email advertisement. These always include the same offer(s) that a direct mail campaign does.

In the past twelve months, I have found that my customers are receiving on average, one and a half percent response rate. Ten years ago, a successful campaign was considered to be a one percent return. Without conducting a formal study, I am going to guess that since there are fewer pieces of mail that a person sifts through each day, direct mail pieces are not getting pitched into the circular file as fast. There not getting lost amongst the bills, the many offers, the coupons. So much of that has gone online. But we are still receiving some mail... But the amount is way down. Direct mail pieces to household are getting attention. But make them count - they still cost more than internet marketing tactics.

Diane Wishart
Owner
Promotional Channels
http://www.promotionalchannels.com