Leverage Blog: How to Exploit the Web.

(even) More proof that your clients visit websites.

Do we need more evidence that websites influence buying decisions?  That your customer is using the web more every day, trusting it more deeply, and pulling-out their credit card?

Well, we got some.

I read today that a recent art school graduate used a blog, a social networking website, and an online gallery online gallery to sell her art.  $20,000 worth so far.  She's using a website, blog and good-old-fashioned networking to grow her business.

She's succeeding (in large part) due to a striking design and compelling content.  Her website is attractive, professional and useful to her audience, and her blog sports a clean design and a message well-suited to her customer.  Well done Emily.

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Thanks to Seth for the discovery.

Elton John earned over $50 million last year. (And what that has to do with your business.)

Good things happen to your business when you make the investment.  The Long Trail from Seth's Blog:

[...Want to guess what these musical acts have in common?

The Rolling Stones
The Eagles
Elton John
U2
Paul McCartney

They each made more than $50 million last year, according to Forbes. They accounted for 40% of the top 10 acts.  The long trail is what happened...

...The long trail explains why so many unprofitable movies turn a profit when the DVD comes out. The Shawshank Redemption got seven Academy Award nominations when it was released, but disappointed at the box office. Now, after more than 1.3 million reviews at NetFlix, it is one of the most enduring DVD hits ever.

The long trail is a reminder to invest like your product might just be around in ten years...]

Local search and web design: A match made in heaven

I wrote earlier this month about the death of the yellow pages, and author and search guru John Battelle has some great insights on the YP and Yahoo! Local Search today:

Yahoo Local has rolled out an update to its business model for local merchants, and it's looking a lot like what the Yellow Pages do, only online, self service, cheaper, and, well, what I've been on about for a while - a step towards the online version of what the Yellow Pages really need to become...  (Full article here.)

My particular focus is on your business, and using the web to help you grow.  If you feel your customer is using search engines to try and find you (probably) and you buy a local ad (they are pretty affordable,) then you need to differentiate your business from the other guys.

You need a clear, smart, compelling website that inspires your prospects and motivates them to call, to come by, to request a quote.

...oops, I misspoke.  You need a great website to differentiate regardless of whether you advertise on Yahoo!, The New York Times, or by trailing a banner by from a plane flying over the Giants game this weekend.

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Return to Leverage Blog homepage:  small business blog  >>

Do your customers want you blogging?

One key to growth is anticipating the needs of your customers.  While it can be a challenge to figure out exactly what new service or product they might need, we can safely say everyone likes information.

The business that educates and informs is often the most trusted, and trust wins clients.  Blogs are a pretty easy way to provide that information and build trust.  To see if your customers want you blogging, think about the questions they ask...

...and then answer them, in your blog, one post at a time.

Still not sure how a blog can grow your business?  Email me.  Let's dive-in.

Good times: We just launched a blog for this small business

Four cheers for Cyd Kmeto, a counselor, personal-coach and guru (no exaggeration) in Sacramento, CA.  A long-time client of Wheel Media, Cyd approached me looking for a new website.  The conversation went thusly:

Michael:  A new site is a great idea.  Have you thought about creating a blog?

Cyd:  A what?

Michael:  A blog.  A blog is a new kind of website that enables the author to add new content as often as they like without fancy hi-tech skills.  Visitors can post comments to your ideas, and you become the hub of a conversation (online)centered on your work.  The world needs to know what you do...and of course many of those people will become clients.  Exciting stuff, no?

Cyd:  [puzzled look]

Michael:  [optimistic, encouraging look]

Cyd:  OK, this sounds interesting.  Give it to me one more time...

The rest is history.  Well, the future.  The future of small business.  The website and blog compliment each other, cross-market and encourage visitors to come back.  The website is richer in design, the blog in content.

Our blog marketing strategy is one part planning, one part execution, and one part maintenance. I've trained Cyd on the art of blogging and she's running the show now.  Read her at Move Inside and learn more about her counseling practice at www.cydkmeto.com.

Hats-off to Cyd for her vision and willingness to lead.

The death of the yellow pages

A quick thought on the yellow pages:  Even a hot-air balloon won't save them.

I know it's hard to imagine a world without that big book in your drawer, and I know that sometimes it's more effective than a search engine at finding a local service, like a plumber.  Or a roofer.  Or a jumpy-house for your daughter's birthday.  (You didn't forget, did you...?)

But Local Search from Google, Yahoo and MSN will replace the yellow pages, because it's getting better.  Better at presenting all the plumbers in your area, instead of a random few.  In the past local search has fallen-short because we're not getting the results we want...so we turn to the big yellow book.

But the advertising revenue is too great for the search industry to ignore, so local results are becoming more relevant, more useful, and the search-method of choice.

Where is the local-search opportunity for your business?  If you deliver a product or service within a specific regional area you still have time to beat the competition.  How?

1. Build a clear, smart, professional website.
2. Optimize it (i.e., search engine optimization, or SEO) for specific, local keyword searches.

Just showing up in Google's "Local Results" is not enough to win the business.  A one-page website created by a friend is not going differentiate you from the other guys.

I still believe local search is the biggest opportunity for small business on the web.

 

A good reminder

Sometimes we're moving so fast to keep up with the competition that we forget.  Forget to plan and execute.

Or we're so consumed with our busy workday routines that we forget.  Forget to step back and create something new.

A consultant in San Francisco this morning knows this, and he has a reminder on his laptop:

Thanks to Seth for the wake-up call.

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Return to Leverage Blog homepage:  web design blog  >>

Listen to your staff, grow your company

Great article in the NYT yesterday about creativity and innovation in the workplace.  The idea is to create a culture where everyone in the organization is encouraged to think of ways to improve things-- make customers happier, deliver services at a lower cost, outflank the competition-- all that good stuff.

Tim O'Riley of O'Riley Media sums it up nicely:

"[create an ] Architecture of participation. That is...make it easy, interesting and rewarding for a wide range of contributors to offer ideas, solve problems and improve products..."

Yes, you could put a suggestion box on the wall in the lunchroom.  Or you could send an email to everyone in the firm asking for their ideas...

..but don't expect any results.  Proper execution of this (and most) good ideas requires a little planning, effort and persistence.  A mass-email won't foster a new culture in your business, but a simple plan just might.

Take a look at the the full article (free login required)

"I wouldn't be caught dead in that kind of environment"

Eric Sass has an interesting article about MySpace and why big companies aren't advertising there:

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE MYSPACE HAS grown to 60 million members, adding 8 million to million new members in the last few months alone, and now accounts for around 12.5 percent of all online display ads.

But major brand marketers continue to shun the site. That's according to executives at a panel on the "Revolution in Television" hosted by the Advertising Research Foundation Monday in New York.

You'll hear the term social networking websites, referring to sites like MySpace and the much smaller Tribe.  These are sites where tens-of-thousands or millions of people create personal pages and connect through similar interests.  Billions of hits.  Lot's of potential customers, but...

Big marketers are cautious because advertising on sites with user-generated content can hurt their brand.  Imagine your ad next to a profile with an explicit photo or bigoted headline...get ready for damage control when someone calls their congressman.

So is there an opportunity here?  Yep.  Smaller firms can grow revenues with user-generated content. It starts with creating a place where you know something about the users...where they are your customer.

It's called a blog, and if managed correctly your customers will be contributing content (in the form of comments) and interacting with you like never before.  The blog marketing projects I have in development are showing great promise as loyalty-building, repeat-business-generating, brand-boosting machines.  Blogs are valuable.

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ASIDE:  For an example of an excellent business networking site see LinkedIn. 100's of CEO's (and yours truly) find it a great place to make new contacts.

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Full text of Eric's article is here.

How can make your customers feel great?

I use Cloudmark as a spam-filtering tool and it works very well.  What works equally well is in their marketing. In the toolbar they have a little button that says 'My Rating.'  Now I'm a new user, and I don't even have a rating...but I want one.  Why?  Because we all want to feel like top-performers, or respected or valued.  Hey, I'm good.

How can you help your customers feel like they're a valued member of a group?  A group you created just for them?  In Cloudmark's case the rating also serves to preserve the quality of the spam flagging. In yours, maybe reward customer feedback with open recognition-- your most helpful clients are "Platinum Partners," and those in the "Gold Circle" are trying to make the jump up...

We don't need to give them a 10%-off coupon to participate. Just some recognition.

Hey, I'm good.

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.

Blog Marketing Best Practice: Contributors

Guy Kawasaki has a great example of one my favorite blog marketing tactics, one I'm calling Contributors.

On the 4th guy did an interview on his blog of Adam Lashinsky from Fortune Magazine.  It's super-successful in the blog medium for at least two reasons:

1. Smart questions, smart answers, smart people.  As with blogs, websites and all marketing messages, good content is key.
2. Sort-and-sweet.  Blog readers don't want a white-paper  (although they would appreciate a link to one.)  They want news that's current and on-topic, small nuggets of information, and/or sources of research.

Who do you know that can provide a sharp idea or observation for your blog?  A thought your readers would value?

Ask your peers to contribute by telling you something wise.  The interview format is great, but a brief quote will work well also, and your contributor will appreciate the visibility.

The rising tide lifts all boats, no?

Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing.

Broadly put, viral marketing is the practice of people outside your company to promoting you.  You'll also hear the term WOM, or word-of-mouth marketing, or "buzz" marketing, and the Fortune 1000 has been successfully using this tactic for 6-7 years.

More than a customer referral, a product or service that has gone viral has inspired people to shout from the rooftops, call their friends and email their associates. They are proactive and loyal. And they're your most valuable resource because the people they are talking-to trust their endorsement.

Do things to make your service viral.  Do them now.  Identify the customers that are opinion-leaders and engage them. Ask them to help shape your service, give them a title, provide them with a discount.

Recommendation:  Get started today.

Customers becoming salespeople

Seth Godin recently made another useful observation about building customer relationships (and sales:)

• Turn strangers into friends
• Turn friends into customers
• Turn customers into salespeople

Of course every business wants viral marketing to be a part of their strategy. The key is to begin at the beginning.  "Friends" are everyone that knows who you are and what you sell...but aren't customers.  They may have requested a quote from your website or visited your store (the physical space or online) but they didn't buy.  Yet.

So how do you turn these 'friends' into customers?  Fortunately there's more than one path to success. But if the goal is too convert a small slice of the new customers into salespeople down-the-road we need to inspire and connect with them all the way through the sales cycle, from when they first walk-in the door to 30 days after they purchased your product or service.  Talk to them about their need, how they will use your product, about how your service affects their life, about what you could do differently next time.

Connect with them.
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Coming soon:  Turning customers into salespeople.