Leverage Blog: How to Exploit the Web.

Quote of the Day

The idea that Google has some edge because they've got super-duper rocket scientists may be a little antiquated now.

This is from Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, when he announced in Tokyo that they will be releasing a collaboration-based search engine to challenge Google.  For those not familiar with Wikipedia, it's an online encyclopedia edited by readers.  Take a look and search for a topic you know something about-- I bet you'll find the results pretty impressive.

Another search engine, you ask?  Sure, I say.  Competition and alternatives make the net-go-round!

Keys to great websites (from the New York Times)

THE idea that if you build it, they will come, might have worked for Kevin Costner in the movie “Field of Dreams,” but it certainly does not hold true for Web sites.

Brilliant! Now my clients and readers won't just have to take my word for it.  Recently the NY Times had an article discussing great web design and it's full of smart ideas-- best-practices that every small business website should follow to be an effective marketing tool.  A few tidbits:

• Build a bad-looking small-business site filled with poorly written text, and your potential customers will go away.

• Web pages must visually hit a visitor right between the eyes. If a site does not answer a user’s questions about a business, then you have scored one for the competition.

• Users spend 30 seconds reviewing a home page...a business must encapsulate what they do in very few words.

Does my web design agency Wheel Media make the grade?  Do we design with these principles in mind?  I say yes, but pop-over and take a peek for yourself!
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Read the full article here.  (Free online subscription required.)

How much should you spend on a new website?

As the director of a web design agency I appreciate how difficult it is to answer this question.

We all know how to shop for a new computer-- compare a few different manufacturers, look for online reviews, choose features, and buy one.  Not the cheapest, and not the top-of-the-line.

But how much should a small business pay for the company website?  If you read the spam you might think $299.  And if you speak to one of hundreds of very talented interactive advertising agencies across the U.S. you might get figures of $60,000, $80,000 or more...

It's hard to identify value in an industry that's fairly new.  For small businesses, I offer the fairly simplistic rule-of-thumb:

• Small company:  1%
• Medium-sized company:  .5%

I'm referring of course to a percentage of annual revenue.  Spending less than 1% of your annual revenue on a marketing tool that is working for you 24/7 is a responsible, smart investment.  This is not an annual investment-- this is key-- this is a one-time cost.  Unlike recurring marketing costs, once you build a website the bulk of the expense is history.  Paid-for.  Finished.

Sure, you might decide down the road to optimize your site for Google, or do an email marketing campaign, or change up the content, but these projects are smaller (and much lower in cost.)

Do the math yourself-- how many sales do you need for a 1% investment to pay for itself?  How many new clients?  I'm guessing not many.

Relying on a busy, incomplete and unattractive website is like giving your clients a shoddy service:  It may be OK, but it's not going to help your business grow.

Net Neutrality: Why it matters

You may have read about the discussions of "Net-Neutrality" in congress recently.  If you've missed the debate (perhaps on purpose) I'll provide a high-level review of the issue and throw-in my .02.

Net-neutrality refers to legislation being debated in Congress that would keep the internet free.  This activity is in response to cable and telephone companies lobbying Washington to create two access-levels to the internet--  large websites that pay large fees would get priority over smaller sites.  The impact?  Small (business) websites would load more slowly and be harder to navigate.

Who does your customer blame when their experience on your website becomes harder and slower?  Comcast?  SBC?

That would be nice, but no.  They form the impression that your business is harder to work-with.

A few companies would make a windfall, like internet service providers and telcoms, but the small-medium enterprise would pay the price.  This issue has joined the left-leaning moveon.org with the conservative Gun Owners of America, as wild as that sounds.  What's more, a Democrat and Republican have teamed-up to draft a net-neutrality bill.  This issue has created strange bedfellows.

I suppose my .02 is clear:  Let's hope the lobbying skills of a small group of companies don't win-over our Representatives in Washington.

Additional ideas in the NY Times here.

Pay-Per-Click online advertising: What is it?

This week clients have asked about our pay-per-click advertising services, and the questions were good ones.  Here are my answers:

Q: What is pay-per-click?

A: Pay-per-click online advertising, or PPC, is paid text advertising in search engine results.  On Google they are called "Sponsored Links" and on Yahoo! "SPONSOR RESULTS."

Businesses with websites purchase keywords-- the terms a customer would use to try and find their product or service-- and only pay when a visitor clicks on the listing.  (It doesn't get much more 'targeted' than that.)  The cost of each click is determined by competitive bidding, and prices range from a dime (.10) to over $13.00.

Small and medium-sized businesses getting started in PPC should budget $750 - $2,500 per month for a 3 month trial campaign, evaluate results and adjust accordingly.

Q:  What does my business need to do to get started?

A:  My experience has shown there are 3 keys to an effective PPC campaign

1. A fantastic website
   • PPC advertising will drive qualified leads to your site.  What will they find when they get there?  A clear, professional design?  Compelling copy?  Testimonials from your elated clients, and an easy way to request a quote?  Driving traffic is half of the equasion, and converting visitors into leads is the other half.
2. The right keywords and ad copy
   
   1. research tools from the PPC advertising platforms are great at helping identify who your competitors are online and seeing how much traffic you might expect-- and at what cost.  You only get 65 characters per line in Google's PPC program so your message better be just right.  Ad copy will make the difference between a prospect clicking on your ad or the other other guy.
3. A resource to manage your campaigns
   1. There is one PPC platform for Google and a second for Yahoo!, MSN and AOL.  Plan on managing your bid prices daily to start and 3 days/week moving forward.

Q:  What's the ROI?

A:  The return on the PPC investment is going to vary, but because it's so targeted it's easy to measure.  You'll know how many clicks you're getting each month, and if the people on the phones (and email) are asking prospects where they heard about you you'll get an idea of ROI.

In the service sector, where a new customer or project could amount to $2,000, $10,000 or more the return is easy to see.  1 new project pays for the campaign for the whole month-- maybe for half-a-year.  If your company sells prodcuts and an average ticket is $350, let's say, then we can easily calculate a break-even point.

The bottom-line:  I like PPC.  Wheel Media is creating PPC campaigns for our clients, training them on the management, and helping evaluate results.  This is the most effecient, not to mention affordable solution for small business.  Is PPC a better choice than search engine optimization?  it depends on your business and where your customers are.

It's worth a serious look

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Wiki's: What are they?

A Wiki is another form of website where users create the content. The most well-known wiki is Wikipedia, essentially an online encyclopedia created by, well, all of us.  Use it like you would use an encyclopedia (not a search engine.)

Is there a marketing opportunity in wiki's?  Yes, but for most businesses I would say there are other online tactics that will drive more revenue, including email marketing,  blogging and word-of-mouth marketing to name a few.

Wiki's and blogs sound similar, and they are.  The main difference is that a wiki will read more like an encyclopedia, and a blog more like an ongoing conversation.  You can now create a "Product Wiki" on Amazon.com, as dozens have done for the book Freakonomics  (scroll down to the bottom.)

Why does Amazon have forums, customer reviews and a wiki?  Does it sound like overkill?  Yes, there's lots of overlap, but a huge online brand like Amazon understands that they need to give their customers different ways to get involved. Some prefer a wiki, while others would rather write a review. More on how this will shake-out later; things are moving fast.  Wiki's are undoubteldy one more way to leverage the internet.

wiki wiki+marketing small+business smb sme leverage+the+internet

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RSS. Explained in simple terms.

RSS has been explained beautifully by programmers with PhD's from Stanford in terms only Masters-students from Stanford can understand.  I'm going to give it a shot in a learn-by-doing format.

RSS is a way to receive automatic updates from websites and blogs.  The updates are content, like articles from the New York Times. To receive the updates you need a place to read them, and one of the easiest is Google  Reader.

Create an account with Google and you'll be able to search and add feeds from many of the websites you visit during the day, from ESPN to Investors Business Daily to the National Enquirer. Most large sites have RSS feeds.

How does RSS help you?  It brings all your online information into one place where you can read the headlines and click-through if the article interests you.  The content is updated automatically from the sites, often almost instantly.

Recommendation:  Gather together at least 5 sites you normally visit and throw them into your Google Reader.  Now you're pinging one site instead of five.  Entering 1-2 sites is a waste of time-- it makes RSS an extra step.  5+ and you're saving time.  20 or more and it's information-overload and time to get back to work.

FWIW (for what it's worth) you can get Leverage Blog online, or in RSS, or in Email.  You choose.  You're the master of your domain.

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Word of Mouth Marketing: What it is & where to start.

WOMm

Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMm) is giving your customers reasons to talk about your business and giving them the tools to do so.  Why is it important?  Good WOMm empowers your customers to share their experiences with their friends, associates and partners.  It's viral (can we still use that term?), it inspires new products and services, and it minimizes the damage from unsatisfied customers.

Here are a few simple best-practices to start the conversation:

1.  Give them reasons to talk about you:

• Build an amazing product or deliver an amazing service.
  • The lightest hammer
  • The cheapest drainage system
  • The most elegant presentation
  • More

• Listen to what they say.
  
  • What does your customer really want?
    • More features?  Which ones?
    • More live conversations with you (and fewer emails?)
    • Delivery? (doesn't have to be free.)
    • A personalized ________________ ?
    • More

2.  Give them the tools:

• Set-up a blog and invite your customers to comment.
• Invite 5 customers to lunch and ask them (good) questions.
• Create a prototype and ask a few customers to give you feedback.
• Survey your customers (of course everyone already is doing so, right?) and ask questions that will garner objective feedback.
  • Look the surveys
    • Do things differently based on the survey feedback.

Like all mission-critical marketing initiatives, I'm not too hip to the idea of adding a little WOM 'stuff' into the marketing mix. That said, I'm also pretty pragmatic, and I don't think most organizations need 3 months of research before rolling out a WOM campaign.  How about this middle-ground:

1. Define your WOMm objectives based on your customer and business-model.
2. Create a set of tools that can be rolled out quickly, measured and scaled.
3. Execute.
4. Evaluate.
5. Enjoy.

The Long Tail

Simply put, the Long Tail is a look at the company of tomorrow.  Maybe.

It's a theory advanced by Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, that makes a strong case for specialized business-models. Niche-companies with focused, highly-targeted services can compete with giant companies...and win.  So what does this look like from a 20,000 foot view?

1.  The internet makes it possible to target a very specific customer. (Example:  Pay-per-click advertising on search engines enables a niche business to target the specific words that describe their services...and not spend a dime on the rest.)

2.  And the search engines now make it easy for customers to find a very specialized company. (Example:  A Google search for "Environmental consulting company in Oakland, CA." This person knows just what they are looking for-- in this case a certain-type of company in a specific location.)

3.  The website behaves like a salesforce. (Example: An online tour introduces the firm's service, FAQ's anticipate objections and respond, quote-request form set expectations about pricing,  live-chat makes an instant conversation easy for the prospect...more.)

4.  If product inventory is online, you don't need a warehouse.  And you don't need shelf-space.  The Long Tail theory doesn't suggest that brick and mortar businesses will disappear, only that niche-businesses will spring up-- and do very, very well.

5.  You can listen to your customer like never before.  (Example:  Blogs.  The enable you to demonstrate your expertise, ask questions, gather feedback and refine your offering.)

Keep Long Tail on your radar.  Read more at The Long Tail.

Email Marketing: Where to Start

Email marketing is a big topic and my 'Getting Started' posts aim to be brief, so let me offer some quick, simple ideas on how to begin and save the fine-points for another day.  Note that I'm a fan of permission-based email marketing, AKA, 'opt-in.'

1.  Decide what you want to say

• Provide information to your readers
• Develop a voice, a message, and a mission

2.  Build your own list

• Start collecting names on your website
• Add your current and past clients to your list (ask permission.)

3.  Send in HTML

• Look smart, sophisticated and professional to your client
• Provide links back to your site

4.  Obey the SPAM laws

• Unsubscribe link
• Physical address
• Etc.

5.  Be consistent

• Send a monthly newsletter out MONTHLY, no less, no more.
• Always have an extra month's worth of content, so you're not scrambling around at the last minute if things get busy at publishing time.

Email marketing is a great way to turn a friend into a customer, and a customer into a salesperson. (For more on this see this post.)