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If you were plugged into “the media” over the holidays, you couldn’t avoid hearing about the financial storm going down on Wall Street, in Detroit, and abroad. But guess what - the internet sector remains resilient. Yep, the Internet is alive and well (as if you thought it was going out of business).
With only a 2% drop in holiday sales over last year, the internet sector fared better than almost every other sector this holiday season. Compare that to the 34% year-over-year sales drop in the luxury goods sector, and that little 2% dip looks like a hiccup.
Consumers (individuals and businesses alike) may be spending less, but they’re all still in need of certain goods and services, and they’re increasingly shopping for them online. Getting those consumers’ attention in these new market conditions might require a change to your marketing approach, but if you’re marketing online, the beauty is you can make those changes relatively quickly and easily. There’s no printing of letters, flyers or catalogs or many of the other logistical issues associated with changes in a your traditional (i.e. print) marketing campaigns. With internet marketing making changes is easier (it’s all point-and-click), and results can be measured more quickly and accurately.
Just like consumers are diverting their dollars to the internet, smart businesses are diverting marketing spend to the internet as well - not just to chase the consumers, but also to diversify their marketing portfolio, and ultimately reduce their cost per conversion.
I know you’ve been waiting on pins and needles (sarcasm)…so I’m happy to announce the launch of R3R.com version 2.0! Internal projects like this tend to take a back seat to client work, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been dying to finish the re-design of this website. A big thank you to all who were involved!
We have built the site with an emphasis on lead generation, search engine optimization, usability, and aesthetics - in no particular order.
Related Posts:
We have repeatedly stressed the power of blogging to promote your business, and have more recently discussed the potential of “micro-blogging” tools (like Twitter) in attracting new business. Much has been debated about the value of these new micro-blogging platforms, and we’re running a few tests ourselves.
We recently started a Twitter (popular micro-blog platform) account for one of our clients, and have been updating it just a few times a week. Micro-blogs generally limit entries to 160 characters, so this literally take just seconds. In this case, our goal is to build a following by providing information about a specific topic that we think will be of interest to a targeted group of people. And by gaining their interest we hope they will be inclined to visit the client’s website.
We don’t include a URL linking back to the website in every ‘tweet’. Some of our tweets just include a quick blurb on a topic related to this particular website; some will include a link to other websites that have pertinent information; some will include a URL to the site we’re promoting. By mixing it up like this, it gives the Twitter page a more neutral and conversational feeling, and helps our percieved credibility.
Twitter (and other micro-blogging platforms) are certainly not the end-all be-all of internet marketing. In fact, there’s not really a concensus yet on whether micro-blogging is even appropriate for many markets. But there’s no denying the popularity of the tool - and for a marketers, any chance to put your brand in front of (possibly) millions of eyeballs - for free - is a chance worth exploring.
Dec
Picking the right domain name for your business website is critical, because changing your domain name (especially when it is also the name of your business) creates a ripple effect that’s hard to predict. We have done two major domain/business name changes recently (one for ourselves, and one for a client). Here are just some of the things you may have to deal with if you decide to change your domain name:
- Domain purchase (from the registrar or owner) and possibly a domain transfer (if you purchase from an individual you’ll need to transfer that domain to your own registrar account)
- A new corporate filing (i.e.: LLC filing) with the new name. Don’t forget the state, county, and federal filings that go along with this process.
- Coming soon web page: let your regular visitors know what’s coming by featuring an announcement on your old website - explaining that they can expect a new “identity” soon.
- Identity re-design: this could mean anything from a logo re-design to an entire website re-design, depending on how much the identity is changing. You may consider creating an interim “co-branded” logo for your website for a while - one that reflects the old brand’s transition to the new brand.
- E-mail setup: in our case, we had to open a new Hosted Exchange e-mail account with the new domain, and forward the old domain’s e-mail to this new account. For the long term, set up your old email addresses as ‘aliases’ (you can do this with Hosted Exchange), to ensure that you always receive mail to those old addresses.
- Mail client setup: whether you use Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, or Lotus Notes, each user’s e-mail client has to be re-configured to use the new e-mail address. Don’t forget to change the e-mail signatures!
- Smart Phone setup: same as above, users who have Blackberrys or other smart phones wil need to add the new e-mail account.
- Courtesy Notices: employees, clients, vendors, and other contacts all have to be notified of the new name, website, and e-mail addresses, and encouraged to update their address books
- Bank Account Changes: if your business name changes with your domain name, then you’ll need to update your bank accounts (including merchant accounts) to reflect the new name.
- Migrate the Website: move the old website to the new domain
- Copy Changes: check all the content on your website and update all copy that needs to be changed to properly represent the new brand.
- Search Engine Optimization: if your old domain name has been around for any length of time…if it has any search engine credibility at all, you’ll want to do your best to carry that over to your new domain. Important considerations include 301 re-directs: be sure to have your web master permanently re-direct pages from your old domain to the corresponding pages of your new domain. This is critical if you want to retain search engine rankings.
Each case will have its own unique challenges. And the the age of the old domain name will factor heavily into how many effects there will be. But it’s almost guaranteed to be a major project. If there are any key items you think I left out, please feel free to add a comment below.
Dec
An Efficient Solution for Capturing Web Leads: Salesforce Web-to-Lead Form
12-15-2008 | Posted by: Carolyn Young
If you use Salesforce.com to manage your customer relationships, and one of the goals of your website is to capture lead information (contact info for prospective clients or buyer), then you should definitely consider using Salesforce’s Web-to-Lead form.
The Web-to-Lead form - which is available free to all Salesforce.com account holders* - creates a seamless integration between your website’s contact form and Salesforce Lead records. You replace your website’s existing contact form (if you already have one) with the Salesforce Web-to-Lead form, and when a prospective client enters their information into your contact form, a new Lead is automatically created in Salesforce within minutes. No more manual data entry!
Once the new lead is created, you can even set up “auto-response” rules so the prospect receives a personalized message from you and/or you can receive a notification e-mail informing you that a new Lead has been created. That way you can follow up with leads more quickly - while they’re still hot.
The Web-to-Lead form is extremely customizable - it can be formatted to look like any other part of your website.
The feature has saved our clients a tremendous amount of time. With it, you no longer have to gather the prospect’s information entered in your contact form or input it manually into Salesforce. Your initial contact is done automatically as well - with the automated response e-mail. With this automated process, the chance of a lead falling through the cracks is decreased to nearly zero. It’s just on you or your assigned agent to follow up appropriately.
* Most editions of Salesforce are able to utilize the Web-to-Lead form, and depending on the amount of customization needed, it can be up and running within a few hours. If you are unsure of where to start, or if the thought of working with HTML code makes your brain hurt, we can help you out.
The holidays and New Year’s are rapidly approaching. Most will agree that the only task more daunting that getting your holiday shopping done is getting your holiday cards out before the end of the year. One reason it can be so stressful is because you don’t have your contacts organized properly.
I may not send out holiday cards yet, but I have a head start because all my contacts are already organized and easily accessible. There are so many different contact management tools available that there isn’t a good excuse why personal and/or business contacts aren’t centralized in one place.
I know a lawyer that runs her practice with some old school tendencies, one of which includes not having any sort of database for her clients or vendors. Every time she has to find a phone number or address, she has to look through a massive folder to find it written down on a post-it somewhere. So much time wasted that would be better spent somewhere else!
Don’t be overwhelmed by the concept of consolidating your contacts. You can take baby steps to build an electronic database of your contacts, or do it all in one big block of time. Even if you only add 5 contacts a day to the tool of your choice, those are 5 that you will never have to search for in files, shoe boxes, old address books or rolodexes again.
If you do more with your contacts than just referencing a phone number or address, then you might want to invest in a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution like Salesforce.com, NetSuite, or SugarCRM. However, if you just need a tool so you can keep everything in one place, there is a good selection of free resources, such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Plaxo, and a new website Soocial, to name a few.
Update: I neglected to mention the free Personal Edition that Salesforce offers for single users. It obviously does not have all the features that the paid editions do, but it is still a great free solution.
Do you use something else besides these options? Let us know…we would love to check it out!
We recently published a multi-part series of posts about common search engine optimization (SEO) misconceptions. Here are a few of the biggest:
- SEO: Set It and Forget It: it requires more than just flipping a switch; SEO takes involvement from business operators
- SEO: the Quick Fix: when done correctly, the results of search engine optimization can be easy to sustain, but getting there takes time
- SEO: the #1 Ranking Guarantee: as much as you might want to believe the claims you’re seeing in your e-mail inbox, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is
This is part three in a series of posts that we hope will help our readers better understand search engine optimization (SEO), by first understanding what it’s NOT.
It’s often the case that business services (like payroll, for example) can be performed in an automated fashion, requiring little oversight from you. It’s a common misunderstanding, however, that search engine optimization falls into this category. Perhaps the day-to-day part does, but there are aspects of SEO that, in order to be effective, do require close coordination with core business operators on an ongoing basis - there is no “set it and forget it” SEO.
Outsourcing your payroll requires some up front involvement on your part - agreeing on the settings and available options - and then for the most part payroll can wholly outsourced to a 3rd party. The difference with a service like search engine optimization is that, like other areas of marketing, the efforts have to reflect the current business strategy (which can change or be modified from season to season).
Additionally, the results of any SEO efforts need to be measured on a regular basis - to know which efforts are yielding the best results. And the SEO strategy itself needs to be modified accordingly. Modifications to the SEO strategy might include additions or changes to targeted keywords and writing of additional articles, press releases, or other website copy. These types of adjustments, if not coordinated with business objectives, can lead to an SEO campaign that performs at less than its potential.
There absolutely must be close communication between search engine marketers (or any marketers, for that matter), and business operators. If you want to launch a successful SEO campaign, and plan to outsource the heavy lifting, you should still be prepared to be involved in the effort along the way.
This is part two in a series of posts that we hope will help our readers better understand search engine optimization (SEO), by first understanding what it’s NOT.
As I mentioned in part one of this series, when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), unfortunately there’s no such thing as a #1 ranking guarantee. That misconception is largely propagated by sneaky marketers trying to sell their services to uninformed buyers. So, we can blame them for that one.
Another related fallacy, which is the subject of this post, is that top search engine rankings can be achieved quickly. But I think you know what I’m going to say here - SEO is not a quick fix. We can all take a little responsibility for this misunderstanding.
SEO is not a quick fix. I’m speaking in general terms here, of course. Some might argue that in some cases search top engine rankings can be achieved quickly. That may be true, but the catch is that not all search terms are equal. We’re not talking about getting ranked for some obscure search term here. What good would that do you? We’re talking about being ranked for valuable, high-volume search terms - the kind that will actually generate more business for your website. Top ranking for those terms are seldom easily or quickly achieved.
Other exceptions to this rule include:
- Non-competitive markets: if you’re among the first in your industry to have a website, and there’s relatively little competition, then you’re in great shape. You can probably achieve top rankings for your target search terms relatively quickly, and with only basic understanding of search engine optimization practices.
- Using black hat SEO tactics: sometimes there are ways to get ranked quickly by exploiting loopholes in the search engines ranking algorithms. But these quick rankings are often short lived. And worse - if you don’t play by the rules, the search engines could place you in a lower position than when you started, or even blacklist your site altogether!
We might be able to point the finger at deceitful SEO service providers for planting this seed of misunderstanding, regarding whether SEO is a quick fix, but our fast food / immediate gratification / gimme now culture is already inclined to believe that almost anything can be done quickly. In other words it doesn’t take disingenuous marketing to make people believe that SEO can be a quick fix - people tend to think that anyway.
So it’s worth understanding that search engine optimization can be an effort that - depending on your target market - can take months or even years to achieve top rankings. But the beauty of SEO is that maintaining those top rankings takes considerably less effort ongoing.
Recently we enlisted a local graphic design agency to give us a fresh perspective on our logo for some new business cards - the result was the R3R logo you see at the top of this page. It’s simple; it’s memorable - that was the goal. We told the designers we wanted to make the business cards stand out somehow - make them a little bit unique. Ultimately we ended up with a subtle feature on our cards that gets noticed, and gets comments. It took a little extra work, but the cards now an effective piece of our overall marketing strategy at tradeshows and social settings.
Of all the ways people make their business cards “different” these days, here are a few that I ruled out right off the bat:
- Odd Sizes: Strange proportions might get your business card noticed, but it might also get your card lost or tossed in the trash by your new contact. Too small, and it might fall out of a stack of cards, never to be seen again. Too big, and it might be handled like a postcard, and trashed instead of kept with the other business cards.
- Glossy Finish: Too many times I have needed to write an alternate phone number or alternate e-mail address on the back of a business card. Glossy finishes make that all but impossible. Think functionality - gloss is no good.
- Embossing: Raised images or fonts might look good on one side of the card - but the other side of the card becomes useless since the embossing is reversed on the back. That means the back of your card will only look good if it’s blank - but that blank backside will be difficult to write on (see ‘glossy finish’ issue above).
The designers suggested die-cutting - a technique that allows you to trim the edges, for example, to give the cards a custom shape. But in this case, they were suggesting die-cutting the dotted line around the logo - sort of like a hole punch pattern in the interior of the card.
This is only possible with a semi-symmetrical logo like the R3R logo because the reverse die-cut pattern will obviously be visible on the back of the card. In our case that was what we were trying to do. The front of the card shows the logo red on white - the back of the card shows the logo white on red. The same die-cut holes represent the dotted lines around the logo on both front and back.
This seems simple enough, right? But it turns out standard die-cutting is only good for less intricate designs - such as rounding the edges of a card. So, we needed to find a printer that does what they call “laser die-cutting.” Apparently this is a pretty specialized technique, because not only are laser die-cutters hard to find - they’re also pretty expensive. We were able to get several quotes - but they all more than tripled the cost of printing the cards, compared to printing without the die-cut design.
After a little shopping around, however, we found a print shop in China Town - here in San Francisco - that did their die cutting overseas (in China, of course). Their prices were about 60% of what we were finding here in the states. I felt a little better about outsourcing the job overseas, knowing that the print shop was located here in the city. That, plus the lower price tag quickly helped relieve me of any guilt.
One drawback of laser die-cutting is that the thickness of the paper must be limited - because if the paper is too thick the laser can actually burn the edges of the cuts, and you’ll get a brown coloring around the borders. Luckily we chose a good paper weight, and the cuts all came out perfect.
We got the cards from China just one day before an affiliate marketing conference in Las Vegas. Perfect cut. Perfect timing.
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