Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

There are a lot of things that go into operating a successful business. But, when it’s all said and done, the thing that really matters most is building relationships. Sure, your customers are concerned about price, quality, service, etc., but the most successful businesses are those that work to create some kind of strong rapport with both their customers and potential customers alike.

Wal-Mart provides a quick and easy example. Do you really need someone handing you a shopping cart as you walk into the store? I’m a big boy, I can get my own cart. But, almost every Wal-Mart employs friendly, elderly types to smile, say “Hello”, and hand you a cart as you walk in. Believe it or not, that little gesture is relationship building!

Many businesses fight to keep their prices low, and they make cuts so they can have the lowest prices in town. But, the dirty truth of that is, people will often pay more for something if they have a connection with person or business selling. That connection–that relationship–leads not only to repeat business, but to word of mouth business as well. This is true whether you run a grocery store, a restaurant, a sporting goods store, or a movie theater.

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Coupons are a great way to entice new visitors to purchase something from your site or to reward frequent customers. The popularity of Groupon is a great testament to the power (and desire) of coupons.

But, sometimes coupons can backfire. Not for those who have them, but for those that don’t.

Have you ever been to a site where, you’ve shopped around, found what you wanted, and when you went to check-out they asked you to enter your coupon code number? WTH! You don’t HAVE a coupon! But, you know that, somewhere out there, a coupon can be found!

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Google has this tool called Insights for Search.  At first glance, it looks like a pretty simple, fairly unsophisticated tool that just tells you if search volume is going up or down for a particular keyword or group of keywords.  Not many insights there, right?  I mean, all you really have to do for search engine marketing is keyword research with one of the many tools available to you out there and you can easily line up the keywords that you want to go after by search intent and volume, right?

But, here’s the problem with your keyword research.  It’s static. You get a number and you compare it to other numbers at a single point in time.  That’s great for that day, that month, or even that year.  But as you know, your industry changes.  There’s new advances, new challenges, new demands, etc.;  and part of winning is staying ahead of your competition.

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I wish I had a buck for every time my daughters have repeated a commercial “pitch” as reasoning for why we should buy the latest toy or food marketed to kids. I also wish I had a buck for every time I responded, “It’s an advertisement. Don’t believe everything they are telling you.”

I can’t help thinking, what’s wrong with THIS picture?

For the past 10 years, I’ve made my living as a marketing and PR writer, and – though I scorn pandering, hyperbole and truth twisting – I’ve had to spin some yarns from time to time. Traditionally, companies have attracted people to their product or service by hyping it. The more alluring or creative (or shocking) your advertisement, the more likely people are to notice it, for at least a second. However, the majority have clearly become jaded by and distrustful of this old approach.

Content marketing, on the other hand, appeals more to reason and relationships than to hype. That’s what happens when consumers – who are usually inclined to educate themselves before buying – now have the power to do so at their fingertips. They’re looking for solid advice, helpful conversations and enough useful information to enable them to make a well-informed purchase. That’s what the Web can deliver.

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Engaging in competitive research before and during your SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Link Building campaigns is smart business. As they say, “information is power.”

But, too much information can also cause a handicap. It’s not too difficult to be so inundated with info. that you get information overload or conflicting advice. That leads to decision paralysis. You don’t know the right course of action to take, or you can wind up using good information to make bad judgment calls.

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Below is the second set of questions from an interview I had given late last year. If you started this series with the introduction, you already know that the answers here differ from the answers given in the interview. One of the reasons I like written interviews is that it gives you a better opportunity to provide a more thorough and thought-filled answer. While these may not be life-changing questions, I hope they are at least thought provoking for the small business owner who doesn’t know a lot about SEO.

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There is an odd phenomenon that I have noticed in the world of websites. There is a small, yet vocal, group of people that love crap! Time and time again, when I advise a client to improve their website or logo, I hear, “we get complimented on it all the time.”

That?

It brings up images of Charles De Mar from the movie Better off Dead saying, “I’ve been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I’m no dummy.”

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The thought that you should SEO your site before you even develop it seems counter-intuitive, and in many ways, it is. But, not entirely. I’ve been an SEO for over 12 years, and I still can’t get past the fact that optimization continues to be the “after thought,” only coming into play long after the site has been up and running for months or even years.

This mindset needs to change.

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One of the questions that I keep hearing from small business owners every year is this: How can a small business like me afford SEO/SEM? It’s a fair question coming from budget-conscious business owners. Not everybody can afford SEO. But, nobody can afford NOT to SEO.

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There was no commercial internet in the 80′s, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t reach into the recesses of our past to see that, everything we know now about SEO, we already knew back then. How? From the greatest, most magical music of all time: 80′s hair band glam rock!

They just don’t make music like this anymore, and it’s a shame. The sweet sound of rock’n'roll has never tasted better. All it takes is a reflective look at some of these song titles to realize that these guys knew their online marketing! (Though I’m sure they were all too wasted to even know it!)

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