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A Dozen Delusions About Advertising

Terri-Ressler

May 16, 2012

by:
Categories: Business, Internet Marketing

Advertising Myths

Advertising works (but not always). When marketing your product to the masses, there are certain elements you can control and others you can’t. And while there is no formula for success, I’ve learned a few things (12, to be exact) over the years that usually make a difference when it comes to results.

  1. My audience knows me; I don’t need to advertise! Many advertisers find it difficult to justify spending marketing dollars when brand awareness is good, but one of the biggest benefits of advertising is that it’s always available. Use it as a platform to build your brand, stay ahead of the competition, and maintain that market awareness.
  2. I know my audience; I’m ready to advertise! This is a great start. But do you have potential audience targets you’re trying to reach? How much do you know about the different segments within your target? Do you know how all of them consume information? It never hurts to dig a little deeper.
  3. Print is dead: It’s not. We all just need to focus on the smartest and most profitable ways to use it. Combine it with online tactics to really saturate the markets.
  4. Why don’t I just shop around? I’ve had a lot of experience in media buying while working at agencies. Clients sometimes want to take on media purchasing themselves, but agencies know how and when to buy – and how to get the best deals.
  5. Find what works and stick to it: A broad mix of advertising is good. Speaking to your audience through different channels is one of the smartest ways to ensure your message resonates. Benefit from branching out.
  6. I will see a bump from an ad: This goes hand in hand with number five – limiting your touch points with consumers isn’t an effective strategy. Running an ad once will probably not help; you need to run ads multiple times in order to truly resonate with an audience.
  7. There is print and there is Web: There is more! Be creative – you can also place ads in unexpected places like on buses, at transit stops, in movie theaters, and sponsoring events also provides a lot of ad opportunities.
  8. I have social media; I don’t need advertising: We all love social media, but we don’t believe it eliminates the value of all other content. People have to stop playing Angry Birds eventually, and (again) you’ll benefit from a multi-channel strategy.
  9. I don’t have a budget…why bother? Choose a few key outlets that reach different segments of your target audience. You’ll get more bang for your buck. And remember that there is a trade association (and supporting publications) for every market.
  10. I can’t afford to take risks: Be creative. Strange and wonderful ideas, even when executed through traditional outlets, have the greatest impact on an audience. Sometimes these ideas are bizarre and annoying, but you still remember them.
  11. I don’t really need a plan, do I? Content rules, but setting goals and developing a strategic plan (that includes good content) is equally important. Because there are so many media outlets available, having (and sticking to) a strategy makes a big difference, and it helps you make smart decisions about future campaigns.
  12. Advertising = success and giant profits: It can…but advertising is not a perfect science, and there are no guarantees. This may feel like an easy way for agencies like us to explain away lackluster results, but we have seen it countless times: You develop a sound strategy, secure optimal placement, and deliver great content, but so many factors are at play that sometimes things just don’t work out. There is a lot of volatility in advertising, and this is one reason why utilizing multiple channels is so important. If your advertising strategy isn’t going as planned, refer back to numbers one through 11. (Or give us a call.)

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Choosing the Development Platform that’s Right for You

Dave Nard

May 8, 2012

by:
Categories: Development, Tech

One of the most common questions I’m asked relates to language preference for new website development. Namely, “What should we build our site in – PHP or .NET?” This question has been a hotly debated topic for as long as I can remember, and probably will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

In reality, you could develop a site in one of dozens (or a combination) of languages – Java, Perl, Ruby, Python, etc. – but for this article, we’ll be focusing on the two industry leaders. With that, let’s break them down into some general categories for comparison.

PHP

Hypertext Preprocessor, better known as PHP, was first released to the public in 1995. Since then, it has gone through several substantial version changes, the current being PHP 5.

As an open source development language, anyone can download a copy, set up a web server, and immediately start programming for zero cost. PHP is often run on what is referred to as a LAMP stack:

  • Linux – the operating system
  • Apache – the software that delivers your website to the world
  • MySQL – the database that stores all your information
  • PHP

.NET

The .NET framework was developed by Microsoft and originally released in 2002. Before ’02, the bulk of web-based Microsoft development was done in classic ASP.

Fun Fact: Mention you’d like a site written in classic ASP and you’ll see a look of terror flash over any developer’s face.

While PHP is a specific language, .NET is a framework and can be thought of more as a family of languages; the two most common being Visual Basic (VB.NET) and C-Sharp (C#.NET). Without going into detail, a developer can choose the .NET language he or she is most familiar with and begin to write code. That code is translated down to something referring to as the Common Language Runtime, or CLR. This CLR allows code written in one Microsoft language to “talk” with code from another Microsoft language.

As .NET is a Microsoft technology, it runs only on Windows-based systems. There are a few exceptions to this, but that discussion is for another day!

As opposed to a LAMP stack, .NET websites use Microsoft IIS, or Internet Information Services. The most common database solution for .NET is MSSQL, Microsoft’s version of MySQL.

Now that we’ve had a brief overview of these two languages, let’s do a little side-by-side comparison considering the most common criteria for choosing one over the other.

Price Point

It’s long been assumed that PHP is cheaper to implement and host, and this tends to still be the case. Each component of the LAMP stack is open source. That means it’s free, which cuts hosting costs down considerably. With a linux-based hosting environment, you are usually paying only for the hardware in the computer, whereas with Microsoft hosting environments operating system and database server licensing, costs can quickly add up.

Code Security

Hands-down, I see .NET as the clear winner in this race. When a PHP site is put on a server, the code itself is stored in plain text. This means that if you have access to the server via FTP or another similar method, you can download the code that powers the website and see exactly how everything ticks. In comparison, .NET websites compile into something called a Dynamic Link Library (DLL). To the average user, a DLL is gibberish and unreadable. With proper software a DLL *can* be decompiled back to text, but Microsoft has a few tricks up its sleeve to help prevent this.

Site Maintenance

Many of our clients like to make little tweaks to website functionality at different times during the year. For instance, I may get a call that someone wants to have free shipping for the next two weeks. With a PHP website, we can open up a file, make a change, and push it up to the server quickly and easily, without affecting any other pages. In a .NET environment, we would need to make our change, recompile the project (build the DLLs), and publish back up. Nine times out of ten this may not be an issue; but with .NET, all code in compiled down to a core set of DLLs. This means that all changes across at least a portion of the site get pushed up at the same time. We need to pay special attention to any ongoing or future development that may be occurring.

Scalability

Leaving cloud computing out of the equation, Microsoft has the advantage when it comes to scalability. SQL Server (the database which stores all your information) has out-of-the-box functionality that allows you to set up redundant database servers. If you experience a hardware failure on one machine, the second can instantly kick into gear without any data loss. This same concept can be carried over to web servers as well, with the implementation of load balancers that distribute traffic across multiple machines.

PHP as a language has come a long way since 1995, both in terms of the language itself, and in terms of scalability. When used in a “Cloud” environment, it’s very simple to add additional processing power and memory to a Linux system, oftentimes without even requiring a reboot. However, in a cloud-based environment your monthly payment can vary drastically depending on usage.

Enterprise-Level Development

A major advantage .NET has over PHP is its unique ability to share code between web sites (web applications) and desktop application. This is possible because Microsoft’s entire suite of software – from Windows to Office to IIS – can all understand the code within DLLs. Let’s say you run a large eCommerce website and want a desktop application to handle order processing of online orders. With Microsoft technologies the business logic in place on the website can be re-used in your desktop application, many times without having to change a single line of code.

So, what direction should you go in?

That largely depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with your site. If your goal is to establish a web presence quickly and at a minimum cost, I tend to recommend PHP. There are several open source Content Management systems out there (WordPress or Joomla, for example) that provide an incredibly robust feature set right of the box, leaving lots of room in your budget to focus on the look and feel of your site. Those looking for a more enterprise-level solution for rock-solid, reliable performance with a high level of security should consider .NET, as I see it, the front runner for large corporate sites.

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5 Internet Marketing Tips from Your Mom

Curtiss Patrick

May 1, 2012

by:
Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO, Social Media

Does your mom know more than you do about how to market your business online?

In the enormous online landscape it is sometimes easy to feel lost when you try to figure out where to focus your internet marketing efforts. This post takes a look at a few of the simple (and some not so simple) things you could be doing right now to increase your business’ visibility, influence, and conversion on the web.

Sample sign-up form

FiveTips from your mom that will help you successfully market your business online…

Be Yourself.

Who is your company?

  • What products/services does your company offer?

  • Why are they useful/desirable?

  • Why should I choose you over a competitor?

Here are some helpful links:

Here are a couple of websites where you can source a professional logo design for pretty cheap:

Don’t Be Shy.

How can I learn more about your products/services?

  1. Is your website easy to use?

  2. Is it easy to contact your company?

  3. Is your website attracting visitors?

  4. Are they converting?

Your website is the hub of your internet marketing efforts. Would you spend money putting ads in the newspaper trying to get people to come to your store if you had no sign, no staff, and the front door was boarded shut? Spending time on internet marketing without first optimizing your homepage and landing pages can often be just as futile.

Limit focus points on each page of your website.

Each page of your site should have 1-3 clearly defined goals. Make these goals easy to identify by using spacing, coloring, and even visual cues (what is the big turtle looking at?). In this case the goal is quite obvious, to get a user to “Check out our turtles”.

Joe's Turtles website

Navigation should be clearly defined, easy to use, and in the same place on every page.

The average internet user is roughly as patient as a 2-year-old. If it’s not immediately obvious how they will be able to get around your site many visitors are likely to leave before they even get started. Everyone knows where the back button is.

Site Speed.

If your website takes longer than 6 seconds to load you are not only losing users but Google/Bing may drop your rankings because high load time creates such a bad user experience. There are many things which can cause slow load times, here are a couple of the most common:

  • Extremely large images

    Optimize your images for the web.

  • Too many external items being loaded

    Combine multiple CSS files into one CSS file. Do the same for your JS. Minify both. Here is a great post on optimizing your webpages.

Your 6-year-old son should be able to sit down in front of your website and find your contact information without any problems. Don’t have a 6-year-old son? Find the least tech-saavy person you know (usually a parent) and ask them to send your company an email. If it’s not easy for them you have some work to do.

Add a search box.

If the whole point of your website is to help visitors find what they are looking for; why make it more difficult than it has to be? If you don’t want to code it yourself look into Google’s custom search tool. Here’s a great tutorial on using Google custom search.

If you have a phone number display it proudly

Make it big, throw it right up top in the header if you have to. You WANT people to call you. You NEED people to call you. People only call you when they’re interested in buying something or they already did. Don’t lose their attention by making them click 13 buttons to send an email to an account that you only check once a week.

If you are a local business your physical address and phone number should be on EVERY page on your site.

Go to schema.org and learn about something called schemas. Use them to markup your address/phone. If you don’t speak nerd give this link on local business schemas to your webmaster, it’s a way for you to talk to the search engines directly, “Hey, Google, this is my address, can you please show it to people who search for Tinytown turtle sellers?

Is your site attracting visitors and, more importantly, how many of them are high-quality/targeted visitors?

Sample search query page

Getting 5,000 people a day onto your homepage is great, but if you’re selling turtles and 95% of those people just want to watch a “Happy Together” video (song by a band named, you guessed it, The Turtles) then you’re probably not going to sell many turtles.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is setting up and promoting your site in a way that makes search engines like Google and Bing place more value on your site for certain search queries than sites of competitors. If someone searches for “Buy turtles in Tinytown” and you show up #1 in the results there is a great chance that someone in your town, looking for your product, is about to visit your website.

SEO

So how do I tell search engines what my site is about?

Search engines use advanced algorithms with hundreds of factors to determine what information is on your site and how valuable that information is to a searcher. Even their engineers don’t know exactly how it all happens, however, SEOs doing tests and case studies around the world have identified these factors as “extra important”:

  • Title tags

    Title tags are located in the <head> section of your html and look like this:<title>Pet Turtle Shop in Tinytown, WA | Joe’s Turtles </title>In general you want to put the most important keywords near the front and limit the length of the title to around 70 characters. If you’re a local business make sure your city and 2-letter state are in here too. You are basically getting a chance to tell Google exactly what your page is about. Use it to your advantage.

  • Links

    Search engines use links to your website to determine how popular and important your website is among other sites. You can imagine that having a link to your website from the home page of nytimes.com is sending a strong signal to Google/Bing that your site is VERY important and they will definitely factor links like that into their rankings. Getting links from a variety of valued sources is probably the most difficult aspect of SEO and we’ll discuss many different forms of link-building later.

  • Content / Usability

    • Is your site useful?
    • Do people spend lots of time on your site?
    • Are visitors finding things on your site that they want to share with other people?

    The day you can answer yes to all 3 of these questions is the day your website becomes a marketing machine. There is no secret formula but a great place to start is to figure out what users are looking for on your site and make sure that you provide it in an interesting, informative, easy-to-use format.

    The search engines know how long people are staying on your site, how many pages visitors are viewing, even whether or not they have bought one of your products or shared your content on a social network. Build your website for users, not search engines. Ultimately, the search engine is trying to find the best user experience available for each and every search query. You may have heard the phrase “Content is King”. Quality content and lots of it will make your site much more valuable not only in the eyes of your site’s visitors, but also in the eyes of Google.

  • Social Signals

    If your site is popular on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. then Google will factor that popularity into it’s rankings. We’ll talk more about social later, but for now just know that it’s importance often goes beyond the community that it creates.

Local SEO

If your business has a physical location you are eligible to show up in Google’s Local search results (usually combined with Google Maps). Here’s a list of important local search factors. You’ll see that many of the same general factors play a part in your local ranking (links, content, title) but there are a few extremely important things that you should try to do right away:

  1. City/State in title tag and content
  2. Address/phone number on every page of your website
  3. Reviews on sites like Yelp, CitySearch, Urbanspoon, TripAdvisor

    Depending on the type of industry your business is in there are lots of different review sites that Google and Bing use as part of their local ranking factors. Encourage your customers to participate through email newsletters and point-of-sale reminders.

  4. Claiming and optimizing your Google Places listing
Question mark

What is Google Places?

If you are a local business and you haven’t set up/claimed your Google Places page this is your new “most important thing to do”. Learn more on this great post on Google Places optimization.

Paid Search

When you perform a search on Google you’ll often see a group of results at the top surrounded by an orange box. These are paid results. In other words, that company is paying for their result to be included, often with a CPC (cost per click) agreement.

Basically, you can set up an account with Google Adwords and start creating ads. For each of these ads you will set a maximum CPC and Google will arrange ads based on a number of factors they call “Quality Score”. To learn more about Adwords check out this post on how an Adwords auction works.

Identify Conversions

A conversion is reached whenever a visitor to your website completes a preset goal. The first step toward figuring out whether your site has been successfully converting users is identifying which conversions apply to your business. Here are some common goals that companies are often trying to get customers to complete on their website:

  • Sale
  • Sign up for a Free Trial
  • Sign up for an email newsletter
  • Fill out a contact form
  • Register (create a login)

You can see that there are different levels of conversion that wouldn’t all have the same value to a company. Getting an email address is great but not nearly as important as selling a brand new pet turtle, right? The short-term answer is yes, but quite a few businesses get caught up in sales and neglect free trials, email signups, and contact forms. These less-glamorous conversions, while not showing immediate profit, will ultimately lead to more sales at a higher conversion rate than organic (regular unpaid) search traffic. Because they are so valuable in the long run these conversions should be tracked just as diligently as sales.

What is Google Analytics?

If you aren’t using analytics on your website you’re missing out on tons of valuable information that is, best of all, free of charge. You’ll be able to see how many people visit your site, which pages they look at, even the keywords that sent them there.

Google Analytics sample

Here are 2 great tutorials on getting started with Google Analytics:

Are you making any of these mistakes?
The purpose of each page is not clearly defined in the headline and first paragraph

When a visitor first lands on your website you have about 2 seconds to let them know that they have found what they were looking for. You have to assume that they will not scroll, they have no idea what your site is about before they get there, and that they are not smarter than a 1st grader. There is nothing wrong with a clever slogan or creative headline, but you must be careful that the point of the page is not lost in a play on words or obscure acronym. It doesn’t matter how many thousands of visitors come to your site if they all leave before they do anything.

Clearly defining your web page’s purpose has been mentioned twice so far in 2 sections. Seem important?

Vague content example

No calls to action

Are you looking for a few easy ways to increase conversions on your website? Start with these:

  1. Make your buttons stand out from the rest of your page.
  2. Have text near the button explaining exactly what users will be getting when they click.
  3. Give visitors an incentive to click. Tell them why they should click right now.
  4. Use a call to action like “Buy now”, “Learn more”, or “Try it free”.
  5. Create better buttons, make them look clickable and cool.

Do you have product pages with a hard-to-find little silver “Submit” button? Boo.

Submit button example

Overcomplicated forms

It’s amazing how many websites have this all wrong. “Oh, someone is interested in our product? Let’s get as much information about them as we can.” Then they ask you to fill out 30 pieces of information and register as a member just to get their newsletter. What information does your business NEED to send out a newsletter? An email address. Here are some situations that your business may be able to make more user-friendly.

  • Asking for phone numbers.

    Does your business really use this? Do you actually call the potential customer? Do they want you to call? If you aren’t going to use it take it off the form, you’re losing customers who are deathly terrified of giving away their phone number (there are more of these than you may think, ask your mom how often she puts her phone number in a form).

  • Required fields.

    Are all of your fields required? If someone doesn’t enter their middle initial will the form not submit? Require only the fields that your business absolutely must have. Usually there aren’t many.

  • Requiring registration.

    Do you force users to create a login before they buy a product or sign-up for a service? All you really, truly, definitely need to get checkout started is an email address. After they buy you can ask if they want to register, and if it was a credit card payment it will be easy for them since you’ll have their name and address already in the system. Keep them moving through the checkout process, the further they get the less likely they are to bail out.

Sign up form example

Speak Clearly.

What do you know?

  • Have a voice as a business.

  • Share your knowledge.

  • Share your experiences.

Are you truly interested in your industry?

Are you excited about your newest products/services?

Do you have knowledge relating to your industry that would be useful to others?

Prove It.

Here’s a hypothetical situation:

You really, really need a new car and you happen to have 2 buddies who are used car salesmen (lucky you).

Used car salesmen

Buddy #1, let’s call him John, never really talks much about his business. You know he sells cars because you have his business card but you’ve never heard him talk much about selling them, and the few times that he has old John just talked about how many cars he sold last month and how nicely his moustache is coming in.

Buddy #2, George, loves to talk about cars. He’s always current with the coolest new models, information on which types of used cars last the longest, and the best mechanics in town to have work on your car. You know George reads all of the car magazines and blogs because he’s always telling you about this cool article or that great post. You also know that George would drop whatever he’s doing and answer any question you had because you’ve seen him do it time and time again.

Time to buy.

Now the time has come for you to get a new… well, a new used car. John and George are both your friends and we’ll pretend that you like and trust them the same amount. Both guys have cars with similar prices and about the same selection. So whose lot do you go to? If you’re anything like everyone else in the world you’re going with George.

Why? Because you know he’ll have answers to your questions and plenty of knowledge to help you make the best decision with the amount of money you want to spend. You also know that if anything ever goes wrong with your car George is going to be there for you to answer questions and help you out. Customers aren’t just thinking about who seems trustworthy WHEN they buy but who will be trustworthy AFTER they buy as well.

What does this mean for your business?

Whatever business you’re in it can hopefully be assumed that you have some knowledge about your industry or niche. Even if it’s not you personally, there must be someone who works at your company with valuable knowledge and experience. Share this knowledge. Write about these experiences.

The average visitor to your website won’t always be ready to buy a product or sign up for a service, sometimes they are just checking stuff out. Give them some stuff to check out! Tell them how many different types of turtles there are in the world, which ones are good pets, where they come from, what they like to eat. The longer you can keep someone interested in your website’s content the more likely they are to complete a conversion or at least remember your company’s name for next time. People and businesses like to deal with companies that they trust and view as experts.

How do I give my business a voice?

Q & A

There are websites all over the internet (Quora, LinkedIn Answers, Focus, Yahoo Answers) where users can ask questions and other users can answer them.

Find sites related to your niche or questions about your industry. Answer some questions openly and honestly. Sometimes this might even mean responding to criticism about your company. With a few well-worded answers, however, you will start to be known as an expert in your field and at worst you’ll be an active part of your business community.

Blog

If marketing your business is a sports team then your blog is the game program. There will be some stats of course, but that should just scratch the surface of what’s inside. This is where potential customers get to see what’s important to you, what your company cares about, and what your employees know. It’s a chance for you to give your company a personality and engage your customers in a variety of ways. One thing’s for sure, it should be a whole lot more interesting than reading a whitepaper that charts how much money you made last year.

If entertaining and educating your customers isn’t enough incentive, blogs are also AMAZING for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Earlier we talked about content being important for SEO. Well, a great way to create a bunch of fresh new relevant content is by starting a blog. If your posts are interesting and informative you’ll also start to generate a steady stream of links and inbound traffic. If you can only do one thing for internet marketing this month we would say work on the blog.

Tips for blogging

Here are a couple of tips for blogging:

  • Don’t just talk about yourself.

    This is a great rule for life in general. If you go on lots of first dates and spend the entire time talking about what you’ve done, who likes you, and why you’re so amazing, then you probably go on lots of first dates. Start talking about other people who interest you, maybe even the person you’re on a date with (gasp), and you’ll start getting 2nd dates. It’s the same in business. There is nothing wrong with talking about yourself but if you never speak of anything else people are going to lose interest very quickly.

  • Develop your writing style.

    Every writing style is unique. Most are uniquely boring. Don’t be afraid to mix things up a little bit. A blog doesn’t have to be post after post listing monotonous things that your company did that week. Blogs should be emotional, interesting, engaging, and (hopefully for your readers) occasionally funny. Just because your CEO never smiles doesn’t mean your customers shouldn’t.

  • Give away some knowledge.

    Start with this. Try to think of something people in your niche are looking for or really want to know but can’t easily find. Now write an interesting blog post on that subject. If your blog is consistently unique and useful people will be on the edge of their seats waiting for your next post to come out.

  • Use pictures or videos or charts or stick figures. Anything. Please.

    Nothing says “Please don’t read this” like 100 lines of black text with no visuals or spaces or even headings, subheadings, and lists. Which reminds me:

  • Use headings, subheadings, and lists.

    Break. Up. Your. Text. If a paragraph is longer than 4 sentences make a new one. If you are listing more than 3 items make a bulletted list. Starting a new topic? Use a heading with a different color font. Internet users don’t always read, most of the time they scan. Help them scan and they will stay longer.

  • Make your blog posts easy to share.

    Social media is all the rage among internet marketers and it’s not hard to see why. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest are like word-of-mouth on steroids. If you have interesting content/pictures/facts on your site make sure they are easy to share. “Like”, “Tweet”, “+1″, and “PinIt” buttons are easy to add and you’ll see an increase in traffic almost immediately.

    Speaking of sharing, are you enjoying this article?

  • Write catchy headlines.

    Have we mentioned that headlines are important? Before a user can see one word of your creative content they have to decide to read your post… and they make that decision by reading your headline.

    Which post would you rather read?

    Headline 1:

    5 Awesome Tricks Your Turtle Will be Able to do if You Feed it the Right Food.



    Headline 2:

    New Turtle Food Released.

    Same here.

  • Predict the future.

    If you can forecast trends and predict events in your industry you’ll establish yourself or your business as a thought leader. You know, the guys who speak at all of the events, are interviewed for articles, end up owning big, powerful, companies…

  • Encourage reader participation.

    Every post should pose a question that can be answered in the comments (make sure you have commenting enabled). Get the conversation started, and even more importantly, make sure you stay involved as the comments come in. If a comment includes a question who better to answer than the blog author and future thought leader?

Make Friends.

Who are your customers?
Where are your customers?

Who are your customers?

Baby, baby, baby, noooo

Bald Belieber

I just started a new business… My team of scientists just discovered a revolutionary new cure for baldness. Today we are making a plan to promote our new product, Hair Today, to the masses. The best part of the whole business plan is where we are going to sell this product: kiosks. Not mall kiosks, we’re talking kiosks outside of an event where tens of thousands of people attend daily and even more wait outside just to be near the experience. It’s a place where thousands and thousands of items are sold every night to excited people with lots of spending money. The place: Justin Beiber concerts.

Sounded pretty good until that last part, didn’t it? The reason this promotion would most-likely fail miserably is obvious; balding men aren’t Beliebers (besides the occasional extra supportive dad-of-the-year type), teenage girls are. And who is the most likely person to buy a cure for baldness? A balding man. So thousands and thousands of people are going to see our product but not many will be too interested in buying it.

This example is extreme, but the concept may apply to your business right now. Have you heard this in a meeting recently? “We need a social media presence to help get people to our website, let’s start a Facebook page.” This sounds cool and hip and may even end up getting lots of people to your site, but there is a fundamental problem. You don’t just need to get “people” to your site, you need to get potential customers to your site. Maybe your potential customers don’t even use Facebook (you might sell bongo drums to remote tribes in Africa).

Where do I find my potential customers?

To start, you need to know WHO your potential customer is. Not just demographics like how old they are and where they live; you need to know what situation they’re in, how they think, what they like, and why they like it. You especially need to know how much time they spend online and which sites they use regularly. These visualizations of your typical customers are called personas.

Personas

Profiling your typical customer

A persona is an imaginary person who represents one of your business’ typical customers. It’s similar to a target market but a little more detailed and a lot more fun. Every business has at least one persona, some have many more. If you haven’t done at least one of these yet don’t waste any more time messing around with internet marketing until you do. The information you discover will give you a whole world of insight into where customers are coming from and what their decision-making process will be like. Here are some great questions to use when you’re getting started with personas:

Who are they?
Where do they live? How old are they? Male or female? Single/married? Kids? How much money do they have? Do they belong to any groups/clubs? How do they spend their time offline/online?

Personas

What do they want from life?
What are their goals/dreams/beliefs? These will be broad ideas like more free time, travel the world, or save the whales.

What do they want from you?
These would be specific products or general types of products they would most likely be interested in. If they landed on your website what would interest them the most?

Why do they want these things?
Are they influenced by friends/TV/news? Whose opinion matters to them? Is there a problem/concern in their life that is addressed by your product/service?

How will they find these things?
Do they rely on referrals from friends? Reviews online? Are they impulsive? Do they do a lot of research? Will they compare many different brands/services?

What will affect their decision?
What concerns them? What do they not like? Is trust a major factor in their decisions? What will they value most/least about your product/service?

What is their value to our company?
Will this be a one time interaction? Will they continue to use your product/service in the future? Will it be difficult to keep them as a customer?

Where do I find this information?

There are quite a few different ways to go about finding this information. If you are an existing business your very best bet would be to start with your own customers. If you have customer information stored in a database you’re already ahead of the game. Grab whatever data you have (or have a nerd grab it) and make a chart. Try to identify some trends: Male vs. female, age, income level, marital status, how they found your website. These are all questions that you might be able to answer from information you’ve had stored for years.

Survey says… Now set up a survey. Set up your own if you can or use an online tool like Survey Monkey. Offer a prize, reward, or discount for participation. This is where you can get a great look into motivations and interests of your current customers. Ask them what they do online, how they shop for services like yours, what interests them, and what affects their decisions when shopping. Keep it short and get creative, this can end up being a great tool if you can get the right people to complete it.

Now what? There are some great tools to help you get a better feel for your audience. Google Insights and Facebook Insights can give you great… Insight on visitors to your website. There are websites with demographic data by industry like Quantcast or Google Ad Planner. You could also try offline methods like Experian Consumer Research if you have the budget for it.

Who knows this persona? Talk to anyone in your company that directly interacts with this persona. Support, customer service, and sales will all have valuable information about customer/prospective customer mindsets. Once you have a specific persona formed it can also be helpful to talk to people outside of your company who interact with someone like your persona on a day-to-day basis.

Let’s see a sample persona…

Who are they?
Meet Flo. She is 32 years old, married, and has 2 children who are 5 and 7. She lives in Tinytown, WA, is a stay-at-home mom, and has a successful husband ($80K per year). She spends about 1 or 2 hours a day online. Most of that time is spent on social media or reading news.

Personas, Flo

What do they want from life?
Flo goes to church, volunteers at the SPCA, and contributes to water conservation and animal protection charities. She loves staying at home with her kids and wants to travel the world someday.

What do they want from you?
Right now, Flo is looking to buy a pet turtle for her children as a present. She’ll want a tank and some food, too, since they’ve never had a turtle at the house before.

Why do they want these things?
Her sons really, really want one. She and her husband have discussed it and think that a having a pet will be good for the boys because it will teach them a little bit of responsibility and they’ll have fun.

How will they find these things?
Flo will look online for local pet shops that sell turtles. She will probably call a few pet shops to make sure she is getting all of the right equipment and a turtle her kids will love.

What will affect their decision?
Flo would really like to buy the turtle, the tank, and the food in one stop. She doesn’t know much about turtles so she’ll be looking for a lot of information up front. She also wants to able to call the store she gets it from whenever she has questions.

What is their value to our company?
If Flo chooses us, she will likely be a customer for life. She’ll buy food and supplies regularly and want to ask the occasional question, most likely in person. Of the personas we have created, Flo has the greatest value to our company.

What have we learned here?

Confusing phone models

While this is a very brief example there are still a few actionable takeaways from what we now know about Flo. We can see that she is interested in more than just turtles. She’ll have questions about tanks, food, and how to care for them. With this in mind, it would be in the best interest of Joe’s Turtle’s to not only make this information available, but make sure it is easily accessible on their website. Joe’s could also make this a selling point in any of the promotional material Flo is likely to see.

What else? We can also see that Flo isn’t going to buy turtles that are caught in dolphin nets thrown into the ocean by slave pandas wearing baby seal pelts. We should make sure she knows our turtles are taken care of every step of the way from the wild to her “recreation” of the turtle’s nutural habitat in a 100 gallon tank with a stick in it. We can also get a sense that customer service will be a major selling point for Flo. We need to make sure that she knows whenever she needs something she can always call us or go to our website.

How? Does this slogan sound familiar? You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers. It’s the slogan for Radio Shack who, as you probably know, has sold electronics for a long time.

Why? Buying electronics in the late 20th and 21st century has become confusing even for the tech-savvy. Let’s say you’re a marketer for Radio Shack. After creating 5 personas for them you notice that 4 out of 5 list “knowledgability and helpfulness of staff/website” as something that will affect their decision to buy. If you’re smart you’ll make sure that when a visitor lands on any page of their site or walks into a store they know right away how easy it will be to get their questions answered. Often the most effective way to relay this message is simply to put it in writing.

Where are my customers?

Using the information you have gathered on your sample personas you now have a great starting point for finding ways to reach your audience online. If I know that Flo reads lots of mom blogs and loves Pinterest it would be in our best pinterest to look into guest posting on mom blogs or having products reviewed. If we don’t have a Pinterest page we should probably look into starting one. Lastly, we should come up with a content strategy for both that will make our brand more visible and more pinteresting to moms like Flo.

What do you mean by content strategy? This gets us back to the subject of being interesting as a company. Again, talking about yourself in these situations will get you nowhere. There aren’t many blogs that are going to let you guest post about how many doohickeys you sold last month. Flo doesn’t want to see your Pinterest page filled up with snapshots of you counting all of your money from this week’s sales. Luckily, you already know what sorts of things Flo likes from the research you did for her persona. If you can identify specific subjects and products that would probably be interesting to Flo your content strategy will start to form itself. Engage your audience’s interests so that your company becomes a resource and not an interruption.

How to be social

Someone who is at a party but sits in a corner by themselves is by definition a partier, but that doesn’t necessarily make them social. In fact, they may even be considered anti-social even though they’ve already made more effort than Eugene and Melvin who stayed at home to do some prank phone calls and have a World of Warcraft tournament. In terms of your business it isn’t enough just to start a blog or create a Facebook page. If you aren’t actively involving your company in your industry’s community you might as well throw some popcorn in the microwave, put on your sweatpants, grab a lightsaber, and tell Melvin to come over.

Define active… We’re not talking about spending all day on Facebook liking people’s status updates here. Being active in your community means staying up-to-date with industry thought leaders and other respected individuals/companies in your niche. It means making insightful, well-written comments on posts and updates you find useful. It means posting stories and discoveries that your followers will find interesting and asking them to be involved in the conversation.

If you are just getting started in using social it will take time to build an audience. Giveaways and contests can help give you a kickstart. Here are some great tips on using social media for your business.

Honesty is the Best Policy.

How do you treat your customers?

  • Do you tell your customers you’ll take care of them?

  • Will you do it?

  • How do your customers know?

Did you enjoy this article?

What’s Next?

Do you have any internet marketing tips we missed? Have you had success with any of the methods we talked about? Let us know in the comments.

Here are some great blogs to follow if you’re interested in learning more about internet marketing:

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The Resurrection of Outrageous

Paul Schrecongost

April 25, 2012

by:
Categories: Business, Uncategorized

Don Draper

Don Draper, from the hit TV show Mad Men, is said to have been inspired by real life art director and ad guru, George Lois.

Lois was one of the leaders of the so-called “Creative Revolution” in advertising during the 1950s and 1960s. He became one of the most influential admen in advertising history. He once said that true creativity can solve almost any problem. “The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything. And I really believe that. What I try to teach young people, or anybody in any creative field, is that every idea should seemingly be outrageous.”

Outrageous? What’s that? A quick scan through today’s advertising begs the question, “What happened to true creativity… the fresh thinking… the outrageousness?” It has apparently gone by the wayside of the omnipresent digital media habit.

Media has become the message. Social media screams, but too often
it’s white noise. Concept is no longer king, it’s been replaced by the opportunistic prince of immediacy. You see plenty of communications with ideas forced by a tie-in to a product promotion riddled with QR codes, URLs, Facebook and Twitter icons and, if you’re lucky, maybe a cool music track.

When was the last time you saw an ad that made you think, “Wow,
that was really great.” Think back to VW’s “Lemon” ad: It was revolutionary. Recall Apple’s “1984″ TV spot: It was hypnotic. Remember Nike’s, “Just Do It” campaign: It helped to ignite a fitness frenzy.

Even during this year’s Superbowl, the ads were less than spectacular. The big ideas felt more like sophomoric musings involving dogs, babies, girls in bikinis and an expensively produced spot that referenced a teen movie from the 80’s. Apparently, ad creatives had taken the day off.

The outrageous idea needs to be resurrected. The kind with a powerful hook that punches you right in the grey matter.

Relying on media to do all the work is a bad habit. Creatives in the ad business need to go to work. Spend more time up front on the concept. Play with it. Take it to dinner. Go to bed with it. Be fun. Be poignant. And bring outrageous back to life. God only knows the industry needs it.

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Do You Love What You Do?

Jill Yahnite

April 18, 2012

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Categories: Business

So many people have written about the importance of having a career that one loves, but I encounter people every day who are in a job or career that they clearly have lost the love for.

First, there is the matter of how do people end up in this situation, which one could write a whole book about. Secondly, and more strategically, I think it is important to consider the process in which people find the career they love. It should start early in life. As a society, we should educate young people about how to find their true passion in life. Having children in school, I know it’s not part of the curriculum. It’s up to the parents to teach their kids about finding a career that fuels their passion.

With the recent Mega-Millions craze, I thought to myself, “Would I keep doing what I was doing if I had say, $500 Million dollars?” I know that I would – I love finding clients and helping them sell more through marketing. Would I be able to be choosier with the clients that I deal with – SURE! But then, maybe I should be doing that already. When it comes to your job, can you say the same thing? Would you be doing the same job if you had $500M? If not, what would need to change? Don’t say money because I think that is a cop out. We all find ways to find the money that we need to survive in this world.

If we all have to spend an average of 50 hours of our waking week doing this thing we call “making a living,” shouldn’t it be doing something that we actually WANT to do? We all have had the not-so-pleasant experience of dealing with someone who clearly doesn’t like their job. More positively, we have also had the pleasant experience in dealing with someone who clearly loves their job. The energy is radiating out of them in a positive way. What is the difference? Is it attitude or something else? Sure, we all have bad days but overall, are you happy when you go to work?

One last thought. WHO you work with is equally important. Are they generally positive and happy? Your colleagues’ attitudes, make a big difference in your happiness.

On any given week, you have only about 120 hours of waking time to do what you want. If you spend 50 of those hours working, my advice would be to choose a career wisely—with your heart as well as your head.

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Creating a Custom Joomla Template

Brittany Linger

April 11, 2012

by:
Categories: Development

You may think creating a custom template for the Joomla CMS is hard, but it’s actually quite simple. To get started, you only need two files: your main index.php page, and a templateDetails.xml page, but it is also good to include a template_preview.png, and a template_thumbnail.png showing a screenshot of your site to easily tell it apart from the rest of the templates.

Your index page will be basically like any other html page you create for any website. You still have your basic html tags and such in there, adding <div> tags and other tags as you need them as well as a few things you will need to interact with Joomla.

<jdoc:include type=”modules” name=”nav” style=”xhtml”/>

You need those as module placeholders to position your Joomla modules. Where it says name=”nav,” you will need to make sure there is a “nav” position in your templateDetails.xml. That will look something like this:

<positions>
<position>nav</position>
</positions>

For each position you want to add, such as a header, you simply make another <position> tag and put header in the middle: <position>header</position>. Then you can add the line for that position in the index.php page:

<jdoc:include type=”modules” name=”header” style=”xhtml”/>

You can have as many positions as you would like to include, but typically you only need about four or five, maybe even less depending on how complicated your site is. Also in the index.php file, you will need to add a few lines of code to get the Joomla created content in you template:

<jdoc:include type=”message”/>
<jdoc:include type=”component”/>

In the templateDetails.xml page, you will also need to include the names of your files and folders like this:

<files>
<folder>css</folder>
<filename>index.php</filename>
</files>

For each file/folder you add, you will need to make a new line of code for it in the <files> tag. Your final templateDetails.xml page will look similar to this:

Create a Custom Joomla Template

To link your css files or images in the index.php page, you will need to start it with:

<?php echo $this->baseurl; ?>

To link to a css page for example, you would simply put:

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”<?php echo $this->baseurl ?>/templates/templatename/css/styles.css” type=”text/css” />

Your index.php page will look similar to this:

Creating a Custom Joomla Template

The template_preview.png and template_thumbnail.png are screenshots of your design so you can easily tell it apart from Joomla’s built-in templates. The template_preview.png needs to be roughly 640px x 480px, and the template_thumbnail.png needs to be roughly 206px x 150px.

Once you have those files, all you need to do is zip them up into one single folder and upload it to Joomla’s Extension Manager. Once you do that, it will be available for you to use in the template manager. All you need to do to get there is click on the Extensions->Template Manager and set your new custom template as the default template. Your custom template will then be on your site!

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