It’s a new year! Time for planning, strategery and general optimism about the year! Whatever happened in 2009, now is the time to figure out where you want to be at the end of 2010 and start taking steps to get there. The first step for any strategy is to decide on a goal. And a good Internet strategy starts with a good business goal. Here’s what I think makes a good business goal…
Jan
05
2010
Getting Your 2010 Internet Strategy Off to The Right Start – Pick a Goal
Nov
06
2009
Social Media Basics – 10 Things Every Business Should Do
How a business uses social media depends on what they’re trying to accomplish (their business goal), along with where their intended audience is (among other things). But, there are definitely things that every business should do with social media, because a good deal of social media success involves listening and being available where your customers are. Here’s my list. If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments – I intend to add & update this list occasionally (social media is evolving, after all)
Aug
13
2009
Book Review: Marketing Management – The Big Picture by Christie L. Nordhielm
Most marketing textbooks are hundreds of pages long and are filled with term definitions that hardly anyone remembers. When it comes to implementing a marketing strategy, it’s difficult to remember the 4P’s (or 5 or 6 or whatever you follow) so it’s hard to put together a strategy that will work for the particular product/brand/company. Businesses are hungry for information on how to market effectively and this book takes a hands-on, step-by-step, easy-to-measure results approach to creating a marketing strategy that has been proven to work even at very large companies. Marketing Management: The Big Picture
Jun
29
2009
Ask Sazbean – Why Shouldn’t I Use Hits to Measure Traffic on My Website?
Hits are really a reference for how many files are being downloaded from the web server. In the days when web pages only had one file associated with them, it made more sense to use hits as a measure of traffic on a website. These days one web page is made up of many different files. Each file downloaded is considered one hit. How many files (hits) per page can vary greatly. So it doesn’t make sense to use hits for measuring traffic any more (unless you want to know how much you’re using your web server).
Jan
22
2009
15 Ways to Add Social to Your Business Website
Many of us would agree that adding social to your business website is important for connecting and networking with your customers. But how exactly do you make your business website more social? Here’s some ideas – some are specific and some are more general:
- Add comments to your posts.
- Add reviews to your products and services.
- Add ratings to your products and services.
- Encourage customers to comment on your posts.
- Allow customers to create a profile on your website.
- Add a discussion board.
- Add badges/links to your social network profiles – encourage people to connect there.
- Add a twitter RSS feed to your site.
- Add a delicious RSS feed to your site.
- Encourage customers to link and blog about your posts.
- Read customers blogs and add your thoughts.
- Write posts about your customers.
- Link to posts your customers write.
- Add your own social network.
- Encourage customers to connect with each other.
How do you add social to your business website? Please share in the comments below.
(photo by freeparking @ Flickr CC)
Technorati Tags: social media, social networks, social media strategy, internet marketing, internet strategy business
Jan
20
2009
Why Use Social Media?
Social media seems like just a buzzword to many business people. Why should you consider using social media for your business?
- Your customers are probably already using social media.
- Lower costs for market research.
- Lower risk for new products.
- Deeper insight into customer wants.
- Tap available collective wisdom.
- Reduce customer dissatisfaction.
- Decrease marketing costs.
- Increase purchasing information to customers.
- Increase brand loyalty.
- Increase customer engagement with your company and brand.
- Reduce customer support costs.
Are you using social media for your business? What business reasons do you have?
(photo by kevindooley @ FlickrCC)
Technorati Tags: social media, social networks, social media strategy, internet marketing, internet strategy business
Jan
16
2009
Are your FAQs Questions your Customers Actually Ask Frequently?
When was the last time you went to a website looking for some information about a product or service? Did they have a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)? Was the information you were looking for actually there? A lot of times FAQs are only marketing driven – trying to cover any doubts a customer may have about purchasing a product. But there is a real opportunity to provide useful information for your customers by providing answers to questions they actually ask frequently.
Obviously listening to your customers is one way to find out what types of questions they may have – and the best way - support and sales people often are a good source within your company. Another source of information is the search functionality on your website (if you have one). What searches are people performing on your website? Those may be the types of questions that are worthwhile to provide answers for (and make easy to find).
If you don’t have search on your website, or don’t have a good way to tell what people are searching for (both I would recommend remedying), take a look at the searches (keywords) that people use to come to your site from outside search engines. This is information that the search engines feel you are good at answering, so it may be a good idea to make sure your answers are well rounded and provide all the information your customers (or potential customers) need.
The best source of FAQs really should be your customers. Provide contact forms and periodically poll your customers (both in-person and online), to make sure you really do have all their frequently asked questions answered. By providing FAQs that your customers actually need, you’ll provide more support information for current customers and more purchasing information for potential customers.
(photo by -bast- @ Flickr CC)
Technorati Tags: faq, content, content strategy, customer service, business
Jan
06
2009
What is an Internet Strategy?
You may have heard the term Internet Strategy thrown around recently. With the rise in popularity of the Internet, businesses have felt the need to get on the Web bandwagon. Most businesses have a website, but many are feeling the need for a more thorough look at how to use the Internet effectively. So, what exactly is an Internet Strategy?
Like any good strategy, an Internet strategy is a process of deciding upon a goal and then figuring out how to work towards that goal. An Internet strategy should be intimately tied to your business strategy. If you don’t have a business strategy, start there and incorporate the Internet into your planning. The goal should be a business goal, not just an Internet business goal. The Internet has matured enough to be able to assist in reaching most business goals.
Once you have your business goal, an Internet strategy is the process of figuring out how the Internet can help you reach that goal. Think about your business website. What functionality and information should be available to your customers to help you reach your goal? What other Internet technologies can help? It helps to think broadly – email, internet advertising, twitter, social networking, blogs – can all help you reach business goals.
To differentiate yourself from your competitors, think about what makes your business different. What are you good at? What is your core competency? How can you apply that to your Internet strategy?
Your customers are the reason why you’re in business. Don’t forget about them. What benefits will you offer them through your products and services? How can you leverage these benefits on the Internet? How can your customers help you reach your goals?
(photo by compujeramey @ Flickr CC)
Technorati Tags: business, internet business, internet strategy, internet marketing, strategy, business strategy, internet business strategy
Oct
18
2008
Recommended Web Strategy Reading
Want to learn more about Web (or Internet) Strategy? Web Strategist and Forrester Jeremiah Owyang has compiled a reading list.
Oct
07
2008
Reach for Your Business Goals, Not for Numbers
One of the top requests we get from clients is to help increase traffic to their business website. Our first response is to ask what business goal they are trying to attain. While increasing traffic may be one of many possible solutions, it may not be the right one. Working on increasing traffic on your website without understanding how it will help you reach your goals is like getting triple-bypass heart surgery before you’ve had a doctor’s diagnosis.
Let’s take a look at an example:
An e-commerce site is spending a great deal of money on Internet advertising and SEO, but is sales have fallen. Their first reaction is to increase traffic to their website. What should they do?
Understand your business goals
Is the business goal to increase traffic? Hardly. Their business goal is to increase sales. Increasing traffic may help, but there may also be other issues. By understanding their business goals, they’ll be able to come up with solutions and ways to measure whether they’ve attained their goals.
Understand the problem
Understanding the problem helps you brainstorm all the possible solutions. The highest return on investment may come from a mixture of solutions or one solution may not be complete without taking a look at other aspects of the website and business. After taking a look at their website, their advertising and marketing efforts, this client had a number of different issues to address, including conversion rates, usability, marketing message, and ROI of advertising, which were all affecting their sales and bottom line.
Look for solutions
Now that you have recognized your business goals and understand the full set of issues, you can come up with the right solutions. In our example, there are a wide range of solutions, of which, increasing traffic was only a very small part. By creating an Internet business strategy from the set of solutions, the client was able to more efficiently attack the problem.
Measure your progress
This is where the numbers do actually help. Of course you need to understand exactly what numbers you are looking for. Just increasing the number of visitors or page views won’t help attain your business goals. For our example, we had to measure conversion rates, ROI of advertising, time on site, exit pages, etc. to see how we were progressing. It may seem like a confusing bunch of numbers, but once you’ve gone through this thought process, the numbers you need are much more clear.
Summary
Before you spend big bucks on SEO or Internet advertising, take a few minutes to consider what business goals you are trying to achieve and all the possible issues that you may need to consider to reach those goals. Just a few minutes of thought can help direct your efforts into the biggest bang for your buck.
(photo by randy son of robert @ Flickr CC)
Technorati Tags: internet business strategy, internet strategy, internet strategic planning, internet strategic plan, internet strategy consulting, internet business consulting
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