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Feb
17
2009

Don't forget the Relationship in CRM

By | Marketing, News & Notes, Strategy

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relationshipsolarikonDoes your company have CRM (Customer Relationship Management)?  CRM used to be about a business process of managing a relationship with a customer, but now it often just applies to a piece of software that stores customer names and some information about them. During this recession, there is an opportunity to actually form relationships with your customers.  As Lee Odden from Online Marketing Blog says:

As companies decide where to invest their limited marketing resources, there is a distinct opportunity to focus on investing in relationships: with their customers, prospects, employees and business partners.

So instead of using your CRM to blast out targeted email campaigns, use CRM to form long-lasting relationships with your customers.  Reach out to them and see if you can help.  Companies and people who connect with their customers will be remembered much more than companies that just sent out lots of advertising.  Best of all, building relationships is easy on the wallet – just takes a bit of your time.

(photo by “Solar ikon” @ Flickr CC)

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Feb
16
2009

Is Free Actually Valuable?

By | Marketing, Strategy

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freelimbopoetOne way to entice customers to try your product or service is by giving away a sample for free.  This tactic is quite prevalent online with free e-books, free webinars, free slideshows, etc.  But is free actually valuable?

On the one hand, putting a value of 0 on something may make it seem less valuabe to potential customers.  Why are you willing to give it away?  It must not be all that great.  On the other hand, offering a free sample has become expected, especially for companies establishing themselves.  As a new product or service, a reputation has not yet been developed and so potential customers have no where to turn to get an opinion about whether its worth buying.

I think free is a great way to give potential customers a risk-free taste of your products or services – and, as I said above, it is pretty much expected.  However, I think what is given away should actually be valuable.  Take a bit of time to provide useful information to your potential customers and instead of thinking of it as free, think of it as a trial.

(photo by Limbo Poet @ Flickr CC)

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Feb
12
2009

Do You Know What Your Customers Don't Know?

By | Marketing, Strategy

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questionandreannaThis is the question that every business asks themselves (or should) – What do our customers not know?  It is vitally important to know the answer to this question because that is the very information you need to have on your website and in your brochures.  Potential Customers come to your website to get the answer to their questions.

The hard part is that the question is not the same for everyone.  But there are some easy ways to find out what customers want to know.  Most obvious and easy is just to ask them.  Much of this information is also already known by employees of your company.  Anyone who takes sales or support calls will have information about what customers have questions about.

Helping customers answer their questions will lead to higher customer satisfaction and an improved sales process, plus provide you with better content on your website and brochures.

(photo by Andreanna @ Flickr CC)

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Feb
03
2009

Want to Reach Your Goals? Make Sure They're Attainable

By | News & Notes, Strategy

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goalcoxyIf you have goals like “Increase profits” or “Make Money” or even “Be Profitable”, you may have a hard time achieving those goals.  Why?  Because they are not clearly defined nor do they have a set time limit.  When setting goals, it’s important that they are short, to the point, and reachable within a certain time.

Setting goals which are actually attainable will make it easier to figure out the tactics you need to implement to reach the goal.  Most of all, these goals are actually useable for management and business purposes and will help align your company to work towards a single endpoint.  Reaching a goal is great for morale, which is important if you want to be able to focus on new goals in the future.

Sometimes businesses get caught up in setting goals which are a bit outside of their reach.  Sometimes “stretch goals”, these goals are sometimes attainable by putting in an amazing amount of effort and having a lot of luck.  Some people think that having goals that are not easily attainable makes people work harder, but usually there is little reward for working so hard and it is not sustainable without burnout – which eventually leads to less productivity.

So intead of setting big lofty goals that no one really understands how to reach, try for smaller, concise goals which have a specific timeline.  For example, “Increase profits by 5% by the end of the first quarter, 2009″.  You’ll set up both yourself and your business for success.

(photo by coxy @ Flickr CC)

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Jan
29
2009

Marketing isn't just an Advertising Campaign

By | Internet Advertising, Marketing, News & Notes, Strategy

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bullseyeleeroy09481I think a lot of companies get all bound up in the need to advertise, advertise, advertise, which is great, but successful companies understand that marketing is so much more than advertising.  Marketing is intimately tied to business objectives, strategy, and customer relationships – how they inter-relate and how to tie them together to reach the business’ goals.

Take a look inside

The first step to good marketing is to take few minutes for some introspection.  Who are you as a company?  What do you do better than anyone else? What is your goal?  By understanding exactly who you are as a company, you’ll be able to develop marketing that accurately depicts your corporate image and works towards your goal.

How do you want to get there?

There are many different strategies that may help you achieve your goal.  How do you want your company to be perceived?  What is important to you in terms of image and ethics?  Are there certain strategies that you aren’t comfortable with or that don’t fit your ethics or image?  Setting guidelines for what your company stands for will help you avoid missteps along the way.

What are you offering?

What benefits are you offering to your customers?  Why should they choose your products? What type of relationship are you offering to them?  Customers can be very selfish, especially at the beginning of a relationship, so you need to make sure you are accurately representing your product benefits to them.

Use advertising as one of many tools

Advertising can be a vital tool in your aresenal for reaching your business goal, but keep in mind that there are many steps before you start implementing tactics.  Taking the time to work up to advertising will increase your return on investment by more accurately targeting your customers.

(photo by leeroy09481 @ Flickr CC)

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Jan
14
2009

17 Tips for Good Business Website Design

By | Design, News & Notes

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designgeishaboy500If you are creating a business website, or looking for ways to improve yours, here are some tips to consider:

  1. Make it Clear – exactly what your company does should be available on the upper half of your home page.
  2. Describe Benefits – Customers only care what benefits your product or services gives them.
  3. Who Are You – Contact information should be easy to find (at least a link from every page, ideally a phone number or email).
  4. Customers Need Support – If customers have a problem, support information should be easy to find.  If the information you provide online isn’t enough, give them a way to contact you.
  5. Minimize Clicks – Keep the number of clicks to a minimum – for any activity on your site, but especially for buying processes.
  6. Purchasing Information – Give customers all the information they need to make a purchase on any product page and/or landing page.
  7. Minimize Distractions – Keep flashing, moving and distracting items to a minimum – even if they provide additional information.
  8. Design Down – Not everyone has state-of-the-art technology.  Design for the lowest generally accepted standards (which are widely available around the web).
  9. Consistent Menus – Menus should be consistent throughout the site to make it easy for customers to find things.
  10. Clear Page Titles – Page titles should make it clear where a customer is – use descriptive words for both the web browser window title and for text on the page.
  11. Don’t Touch the Back Button – Do not _ever_ disable the back button.  Customers need to be able to back out of wherever they may go.
  12. Avoid Popup Windows – unless they provide pertinent information to the current page and are initiated by the customer.
  13. Let Your Customer Be In Control – any extra features, such as audio, video, popups, etc. should only activate when a customer clicks on them.  Have you ever been at work when a website suddenly started making annoying sounds out of your speakers?  Don’t do that to your customers.
  14. Make it Readable – Fonts need to be easy to read in terms of size, font type and colors – include what color the background is.  Make sure to use high contrast colors to make your text easy to read.
  15. Whitespace is Your Friend – Space between items on your page is critical for customers to be able to scan through the page to find what they’re looking for.
  16. Consistent Layout – Try to keep the layouts of your pages consistent, so at least your pages look like they belong to the same website.  Navigation and information about where on the site a customer is should be in the same place.
  17. Search Should Be Easy – Most people expect a search to be in the upper right region of a page – or at least near the top.

I intend this list to be a work in progress.  What other good design tips should be used on business websites?

(photo by geishaboy500 @ Flickr CC)

Sep
22
2008

Internet Business Strategy – What is the Current Situation?

By | Analytics, Content, Design, News & Notes, Strategy, Usability

situationargenbergBefore beginning to strategize, you need to create goals for your business.  In order to create goals you need a solid grasp of your current situation on the Internet (your current web presence). To get an idea of your current internet situation take a look at:

Website – Ideally your website is the hub of your Internet presence with customer-centric design and content.

  • Analytics – How well is your website performing?  Basic statistics such as page views, visits and uniques are useful.  But more importantly, how many leads and conversions are you getting?  Where is your traffic coming from?  How useable is your website?  Are people getting frustrated?
  • Usability – Can visitors find what they are looking for on your website?  Is it easy to use?  What could be improved?
  • Content – Great content provides your customers with the information they need to succeed.  Creating content should be a continual process.  What content do your customers want to see?  What expertise can you provide?
  • Design – Your website needs to be easy to use (usability), but also should be eye-catching and professional.  Are the fonts need to be easy to read and does the layout should draw visitors into your message?

Community & Brand Reputation- Your customers are talking about you both online and offline.  Find where your customers are and join the conversation to get key insights into improving your business.

  • Blog – If you have a blog, what feedback have your readers given you? What are other bloggers saying?  Who has linked to your blog and what have they said?
  • Forum / Discussion Boards – If you don’t have discussion boards on your website, find places where your customers frequent.  Listen to concerns and join the conversation with suggestions for improvement.
  • Social Networks – Your customers are probably on social networks already (if they aren’t they probably will be soon).  Find social networks where your customers frequent and see what they are saying.  Join the social networks to give them an opportunity to connect.
  • Reviews – Have there been any reviews of your products and services?  What can be improved?

Search Engines – Many potential customers will find your website through search engines so it is important to understand how search engines currently crawl and index your site.

  • Keywords – What keywords do the search engines see on your site?  Where does your site rank for various keywords?  It can be helpful to pick the top 100 to monitor at first.  There are a number of free tools available to help (Google Webmaster tools, Rank Checker for Firefox, SEO Quake for Firefox and Internet Explorer).
  • Indexed Pages – How many pages on your website (and blog) do the search engines include in their indices?  (SEO Quake and Website Grader can help).
  • Incoming Links – How many other sites are linking to your website?  What are they linking to?  What are they saying? (SEO Quake and Website Grader).
  • Outgoing Links – What other websites are you linking to? (Google Webmaster tools, SEO Quake).
  • Cache – What pages are the search engines displaying in their results?  What do they have saved that may be old content?  (Google Webmaster Tools).

Marketing – What is your company trying to say to customers and potential customers?  What are the current marketing messages your company is using?  What is the status of any advertising or sales campaigns?  What is the return on investment (ROI) of any campaigns?

  • Advertising – It is important to understand how any advertising is impacting your bottom line and helping to reach your goals.  Besides budgets, clicks, and impressions, it is important to measure leads, conversions, or sales – what return you are getting on your investment (ROI).
  • Competitors – Who are your competitors?  What are their web presences?  What marketing and advertising are they doing?  What are their strengths and weaknesses?  What opportunities and threats exist?

There is quite a bit of information to gather, but once you have it you’ll be able to get a good overview of what your current Internet presence is.  You should be able to find opportunities to improve and be able to formulate some business goals. As you can see, Internet business strategy merges into traditional business strategy by using the Internet to collect information and feedback and to further business goals.  Next we’ll talk about vision and goals.

(photo by argenberg @ Flickr CC)

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