Looking to finally start a website for your company? Congratulations! There are a couple of things you’ll want to consider before putting any real effort into design or implementation.
1. Get your domain.
The absolute worst thing that can happen to a company is to get the creative juices flowing before getting the name of your website locked in stone. You need to register your site before you worry about any aspect of design. For example, if your company was “Jenny’s Flower Shop”, you had best start searching for a name first. You aren’t going to get www.jennysflowershop.com, since it’s already taken. Therefore, before you start designing graphics that aren’t going to make sense, or have your heart set on a moniker, remember to check this first.
2. Get your concepts.
There is a phrase that makes any web designer cringe, and it is “Oh, and I want it to be able to…” The cringe comes from that word “OH”. Those two letters cause more redesigns, and potentially cost you more money, than any others. When you are going to start building a site, know what you want it to do upfront. Spend some time looking at your competition’s sites. Look at sites that have features you want. There are certain things that can easily be added at the end, and there are others that would require a complete rebuild. Therefore, make sure you have all of your goals cleanly written out.
For example, • Do you want email attached? • Do you want to be able to process sales online? Is your site a catalogue of all of your products? • Do you want features like Live Chat? • Are you interested in giving the opportunity for customer reviews on your site? • What social channels do you want tied into your website? • How often does your page need to change, or is it mostly a static, information based page?
3. Build it.
I strongly recommend (obviously) getting some professional help. As a small business owner, you may be tempted to try and save money and build it yourself. You may decide to call up that nephew that is “really good with computers”, and that helped get a virus off of your computer last year, to build it for you. Although the ability to program is obviously a requirement, you really need someone who has a solid grasp on design, and art, so that your site is visually appealing. You need someone who understands SEO, and can make sure your site is indexed correctly with all of the search engines. That someone needs the skills to market your website out to the masses. There are a lot of small websites for companies that you’ve never heard of right in your town, and that you won’t find in a search engine, because it wasn’t promoted correctly.
Of course, the last step is use it. Nothing frustrates customers more than when you have a stellar website, and you never check your email. When your website is advertising great President’s Day sales, and it’s coming up on the Fourth of July, your customers are shutting you off. Your website is your storefront. Keep it up to date and clean. These steps make your website work for you, instead of the other way around.
Chances are, you’ve seen something similar to that at one point or another. The one that I most often see is a company selling ringtones via this method. I know of at least one radio station that uses this method to communicate with fans on their morning show. So, what is it, and how can this form of marketing help your business?
For those that understand what SMS is, this next paragraph doesn’t really matter to you.
For those unaware, SMS is “Short Messaging Service” most often referred to as “Texting” A text message is typically sent from one mobile device to another, although the reality is, this format has changed, and can be sent via several different means. It uses a standard protocol that allows devices to share up to 160 characters.
SMS Short Code marketing takes the innate mobile utility of SMS and enables it to talk to a company in a variety of different ways, and it uses a short code as a receiving device. The “999999” I listed in the title bar will not work, the numbers have to be between 22222 and 899,999, and these numbers are highly regulated by the Common Short Code Administration. You have the ability to lease one of these numbers for 3,6, or 12 months at a time.
Ok, so now that you know what they are, what can you do with them? Basically, there are two outcomes. The customer will send you something, or the customer can send you a request that you will answer with information, whether it is a return SMS, a website link, etc.
Examples: - Text “Davis” to 999999 for additional information!
- Text your email address to 999999 to enroll in our mailing list.
- Text “Winner” to 999999 to enter into our online giveaway!
- Text your question to 999999 for an answer in 15 minutes or less!
- Text “Davis” to 999999 download the app!
- Text the correct answer to our trivia question to 999999 and win!
- Text “Two 4 one” to 999999 for an instant coupon you can use right now!
- Text “Vote1”, “Vote2”, or “Vote3” to 999999 for your choice of the winner!
No matter how the customer initiates the interaction, you are guaranteed to have their phone number. This information should be entered into some form of CRM tool. Depending on the call to action that the customer is fulfilling, there will be different information that also should probably go into the CRM.
The opportunities for this type of marketing are growing exponentially. Every week, there are millions of people voting for their favorite dancers, singers, and more on television using some form of SMS Short Code. It is a process that many potential customers feel very comfortable doing. If you would like to look into this for a marketing campaign, text “Info” to … Just kidding. Click on the “Feedback” button on the side.
According to an article published today in Mashable, 70% of marketers plan to increase their social media budget by more than 10% this year. The primary goal of increasing this budget is to increase Facebook “likes”.
Ugh. Here we go again.
Let’s pretend you create a new Facebook page, and you aggressively market using a major prize giveaway on that Facebook page, and you get 1000 people to click “Like” in just the first month! You give away your winning prize, the contest ends, etc. You post your ads all the time, and your likes slowly begin to decline, as people slowly shut you off. There isn’t a mass exodus, but on average you have someone click “Unlike” once every other day, and no new likes are coming in. A typical status update from your page will have one or less comments. At the end of a six month period, you have 900 followers.
Let’s compare that page to a second concept. You create a new Facebook page, and you run small, interactive contests with lots of small prize, which people need to interact with in order to win. In the first month, you only get an initial 100 people to click “Like”, but you average an extra 3-5 people a week that additionally click like. Your page is growing, and the people that “Like” your site interact with it well. A typical status update from your page will have an average 5 comments. At the end of a six month period, you have 400 followers.
Out of these two options, which would you prefer? According to the primary goal listed above, the first campaign would be the more effective, right?
Likes are the primary goal because there is an obvious number. You can simply look at the increase in the number, and say, “It went up, so therefore I did a good job.” The fact that no additional sales occurred does not matter. The fact that your customer loyalty did not change, and that your customer satisfaction did not change doesn’t matter to “Likes”. If your “Likes” go up, and nothing else does, WHO CARES?
Meanwhile, if your interaction goes up, typically, so do your sales. People that are responding to your status updates, and are interacting with you on your social media sites are also spending more money at your location. They are able to receive better customer service, and will most likely refer you to others more often. This interaction helps to build brand loyalty, and keep your customers spending money with you.
In essence, it boils down to the fact that the number of “Likes” is secondary. Obviously, you need people on your site, but the focus shouldn’t be on arbitrarily achieving them, but rather on making their experience the best possible. Happy people will bring you more “Likes”. Simply buying them with a single time contest gives you “Likes” for a short period of time, but does not necessarily relate to any form of monetary or customer satisfaction gains.
The most common answer to the question “Why get involved with Facebook?” is simply “To engage our customers.” However, what does this mean? Many cannot explain it. Some will mumble about “Brand messaging” or “Creating personality”. Others may have a stock sentence prepared, something along the lines of “To dynamically create a dialogue between the company and our customers in order to achieve higher penetration and marketability in an attempt to forward our brand identity and provide the upmost in customer service.” Whew! I’m almost scared to ask for that sentence to be broken down…
When we are asked, “Should I use Facebook for my company?” the first question we ask is, “Well, why do you use it yourself?” The answer that we hear all too often, unfortunately, is “I don’t. But I think my company should!”
Ouch.
This means that there is no goal set. Other than the fancy buzzword sentence previously mentioned. That means you don’t know why you should enter into social media, other than someone suggesting it as a way of growing. Chances are, six months from the date this question was asked and answered, the company will say, “Social just doesn’t work for us.” Instead, let’s slow it down, and think about it for a bit. Understanding why people are on Facebook is paramount to creating accurate, achievable, and realistic goals.
• Most people are on Facebook to communicate with people they either know now, or knew in the past. It’s typically not to make new friends, or to try new things. It’s a place to come and find your buddies. If your company is thinking of entering into this world, you must understand this principle first.
• Facebook has lots of ads running on the side of the screen. People don’t want to see ads running on their wall, too. There’s a place for everything.
• As a Facebook user, I don’t want to see too much of anyone. I have lots of Facebook Friends, and I want to be able to see what each of them are doing. So if I have someone who posts about nonsense every 15 minutes, chances are I’m blocking them.
• As a Facebook user, I’ll follow pages that have high interest to me, or that a friend of mine asked me to follow. Since I’m limited to how many pages I can follow, I’m not going to follow everything. Especially since it would cut into my ability to see what each one of my friends is doing.
Based on this information, what is your company’s goal by entering into Facebook? If it is to become friends with your customers, and communicate with them on a personal level, so that you can provide additional service to them, that’s ok. If your goal is to double your sales penetration by engaging the masses, spreading brand awareness by targeted marketing, and presenting additional vehicles to populate advertisements, you may be in the wrong place.
Create your goal before “stepping foot” on Facebook. Understand what it is you hope to accomplish, before spending the time, energy, and resources required to create the site. Otherwise, save yourself six months of pain, and resign yourself now to the “Social just doesn’t work” mentality now.
Davis Advertising has purchased the property at 1331 Grafton Street which will become the new home of one the fastest growing agencies in New England.
The 14,000 square-foot building will be completely renovated over the next six months. Once completed, the interior of the building will include a reception area, offices, a state-of-the-art photo studio, several conference rooms, a multipurpose room, a kitchen and large storage areas. The exterior of the property features more than 70 parking spaces. Davis, currently located at 306 Main Street, plans to move into the Grafton Street location by late fall 2011.
“We have experienced tremendous growth as a company and this new facility will provide us with the large space we need to accommodate both our clients and our employees,” said President Andy Davis. “It was also very important for us to remain in Worcester where we’ve been in business for more than 60 years. This space is really the perfect fit for us in many ways.”
The Grafton Street building is conveniently located at the intersection of Route 122 and Route 20 and sits within close proximity to the Massachusetts Turnpike.
Although it is always important to look for trends changing between demographics, be cautious of determining your entire marketing strategy based on a stereotypical view of a group. Generation Z, made up of children born after 1992, is highly influential but may lead your marketing decisions astray.
Companies that expect Generation Z to be loyal based on a carefully crafted brand image and marketing message will find that their effort is wasted. Generation Z simply doesn’t buy it. Instead, the product itself is what’s important, regardless of marketing campaigns.
In this article, she states that Generation Z categorically reject “Badge Brands”. As far as brand “Badges” go, Nike’s stock, although hit with seasonal highs and lows, continues to grow year after year. Anyone who has a young girl in the family knows what an American Girl doll is. Nameplates most certainly do matter just as much to this younger generation. Another aspect of the supposed gap between Generation Y and Z is the art of self publishing, whether through video or written word. Generation Y started this trend, and taught Generation Z how to do it. The true trendsetters in Generation Y were the pioneers in this aspect of information sharing. Therefore, it is less a gap between the two generations than a continuance, as technology and the tools that Generation Y set up are taught to the next group. These tools have simply been adopted by the masses in Gen Z. How do you market to this new, younger generation? The same way you did to the generation before them. The difference is, instead of aiming at just the trendsetters, you are speaking to the entire generation. There is no longer a long, trickle-down method of what’s “In.” Trends happen on a daily basis, no longer in weeks.
For proof of this, look at two different recent events in “Social media”. For the Gen Z, you had an explosion around a 13 year old girl, Rebecca Black. For Gen Y and X, look at the explosion on Twitter regarding the “Winner” Charlie Sheen. There is no difference to how quickly these two trends happened, and it was based on the same technology.
Older generations build fear around Generation Z, since they basically will take what was considered somewhat fringe, used mostly by trendsetters from Generation Y, and it will be completely mainstream. Therefore, your marketing does not need vast overhauls, unless of course, you couldn’t speak to Generation Y, either…
Google's Farmer Update (officially called: Panda Update) at the end of February forced a lot of content producing Web properties to take a closer look at their model and how it fit into Google's new algorithm -- aimed at improving quality. Content farms such as howtodothings.com and mahalo.com, both known for churning out poorly written content, loaded with keywords, that secured top listings in Google were penalized severely. In fact, Mahalo was hit so hard that it had to eliminate 10% of its workforce shortly after the change.
The takeaway here is for anyone looking to rank remotely high in search results is to avoid shallow, unoriginal, poorly written or useless content. Sites who do this -- the same sites that were part of the small fraction of sites effected by this change -- are just a couple of steps away from being a spammer.
Guest Written by Chris Gregoire
Every year, I can guarantee a certain discussion happens at my inlaw’s Thanksgiving dinner, between a couple of my sister-in-laws and my wife. Does this sound familiar to anyone else?
“So you want to leave here at 5:00?”
“No, I want to get there at 5:00. We’ll have to leave here at 4:30ish.”
“Last year, we got there at 5:30, and there weren’t any parking spots, do you think 5:00 will be early enough?”
“Hmm… Maybe not. Maybe we should leave here at 4:00…”
The hype surrounding Black Friday is amazing. My personal dollar value on sleep traditionally keeps me in bed, as waking up that early simply isn’t worth the cost. There are others who see Black Friday as the absolute best purchasing experience ever.
A challenge for any business is to build even half that level of hype on a random day, at a regular time. It seems as though every other weekend is a “One Day Sale” at one store or another, and typically, the results are not spectacular. So the question remains, “How can a business create a level of hype around April 6th?”
First of all, Black Friday happens once a year, so there is plenty of time to start building the hype up. A random weekday or weekend sale is usually promoted for less than a week in advance of said sale. A business owner cannot expect the same results without the same level of advance notice. Therefore, if a business is looking to have an absolute blowout sale, it needs a long gestation period to allow shoppers plenty of time to plan for the sale.
Several large companies that capitalize on Black Friday sales “Leak” information via websites, or their social media. As a company trying to build a huge sale, rather than stating all of the sale prices, allow for a “Leak”. Give one absolutely incredible deal a little press, and let it percolate. There is no need to show your entire sale until there are people available to spend money. This can stop online shopping comparisons, and can limit competition from price matching sales prices in advance.
Another aspect that you can bring to a sale is the sense of urgency. My wife would prefer to wake up around 9:00 on days when she doesn’t have to work. In order for her to meet up with her shopping cronies, she needs to leave our house at 3:30. The “Early Bird” specials typically end around regular opening time. A business looking for a heightened sense of urgency should not have a sale that lasts all weekend. Set it for a short time period. Nothing happens unless someone gets excited, and without a mad house, it’s hard for some people to get excited. If it is too convenient, people will not set aside specific time to visit. You need to make customers plan on taking advantage of your sale, not just accidentally wandering into it.
So far, the marketing tools listed have all been traditional. Imagine the potential when non-traditional marketing tools are introduced. With social media backing, and some guerrilla marketing campaigns in place, a business could effectively create a “Black Friday” style sale on any random Wednesday.
For those who do not really understand the concept of guerrilla marketing, here is the definition from Wikipedia:
The concept of guerrilla marketing was invented as an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla marketing campaigns are unexpected and unconventional, potentially interactive, and consumers are targeted in unexpected places. The objective of guerrilla marketing is to create a unique, engaging and thought-provoking concept to generate buzz, and consequently turn viral. The term was coined and defined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla Marketing. The term has since entered the popular vocabulary and marketing textbooks.
Guerrilla marketing involves unusual approaches such as intercept encounters in public places, street giveaways of products, PR stunts, or any unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources. More innovative approaches to guerrilla marketing now utilize cutting edge mobile digital technologies to engage the consumer and create a memorable brand experience. Ok, so that’s the technical definition. Let’s get real.
Back in September of 2006, CBS did an investigative report that said the average person may see up to 5,000 ads a day. Then again, there were only 12 million Facebook users, and Twitter had only been around for 5 months. Today, people are bombarded with advertisements on the internet, television, radio, their cell phone applications, in print, signage, etc. That’s a lot of advertisements to digest, I don’t think it is possible for anyone to take notice of all of these ads.
Guerrilla advertising tries to break through the “noise”, and grab the customer’s attention by some type of shock value. Let’s pretend you walk past the same bronze statue every day on your way to work. It becomes a part of the scenery, and you don’t really notice it anymore. If, however, that statue all of a sudden was painted neon green, you’d certainly notice it.
Guerrilla marketing is that neon color in your regularly dull day. Here, in picture format:
-- Versus -- Which ad is going to catch your attention? You are used to seeing print ads in a bus terminal. You are not used to seeing plush furniture. Even though the sign is small (It’s the yellow card on the end table, advertising Ikea) the overall effect is going to catch the attention of passersby, and break them from the norm.
Many people think that Guerrilla marketing needs to be edgy. That is not necessarily true. No one would consider the picture on the right as edgy. It just has to stand out in a non-traditional way. It must be unexpected, so that it creates some reason to pay attention to it.
In order to build a successful guerrilla marketing plan, you must think in traditional ways first.
1. Does this ad maintain brand image?
2. Is there a concrete call to action that my customer will understand?
3. Are we using this opportunity to emphasize brand awareness?
4. Will it capture the target audience’s attention?
These are all questions you must ask yourself of traditional marketing, and you must consider them for non-traditional as well. Then, you’ve got to find your “Wow”. Using your product, what will your “Wow” be? What can you do that will distract consumers from their daily routines enough to pay attention to you? As is the case with social media, how will you engage your audience?
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