What’s in Your Web Site?

In “ The Three Secrets Of Successful SEO – Three Hard Truths” I talked about the need for fresh content which is frequently updated for your online marketing.

Blogging is only one type of content. There are several types of content that you need AND need to keep fresh. Depending on your type of business, you should probably have the following:

• Product sales sheets/Info
• White Papers on your industry and issues
• Product demos, including video
• Portfolios
• News & events
• Case studies – real world, specific customer examples
• References, reviews, and press

Take a look at your site. For each type of content, take a look at when it was last updated. Was it within the last month? When you look at each piece, do you say to yourself, “Nothing more could be said about this”?

Here’s the real kicker: If existing customers visited your site, would they find ANYTHING new from when they last visited. If not, why would they ever visit again?

Frequently updating and adding these types of content are the backbone of your online marketing. The first thing that fresh content does is wake up the search engines and improve your rankings. Next, fresh content gives your customers and prospects more and more information to help convince them to buy from you – or stay with you.

The beauty of this type of content is that it can be “multi-purposed.” The information you create for a sales sheet can be used to update your product page AND be used as a PDF as well as a printed version. The same thing applies to almost everything else. Also, this fresh content can be used for e-mail campaigns, direct mail (“Visit our site to download our latest whitepaper on product X”), and to support your trade shows and face-to-face meetings. These are tools your salespeople need.

You should set a goal to give your sales team at least one new piece, or a significantly updated piece, once a month. I really think you should do more, but if you do at least that, your Web site will stay fresh and you’ll end the year with twelve new sales tools. That’s a goal worth having.

We’re doing some cutting-edge things with content, including a unique system that allows our customers to set up an “intranet” and provide their sales teams with an entire library of marketing materials that they can customize and receive as electronic versions OR order print runs. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. This is the type of thing that’s helping sales teams stay sharp when others are having difficulty selling in a tough economy. Today you really need an edge, and that edge should be more and better information about your products and services in the hands of your sales team, your customers, and prospects.

Want to do more with your content? I’d be happy to sit down in person or via video chat and talk about how you can create lead-generating content and keep your Web marketing fresh.

Let’s Link Up! The Three Types of Web Links that Take Your SEO Through the Roof

In a previous post named “The Three Secrets of Successful SEO – Three Hard Truths” I laid out the three simple rules to succeed with Search Engine Optimization for your Web site.

Here they are again:

1. Write great, clear content about your product, services, and company and things you deeply care about or have an interest in doing.
2. Update it frequently.
3. Responsibly build real links.

Today let’s focus on that third point: Responsibly build real links.

If you listen to what Google and the experts tell you about SEO, links to your site are a critical component in determining how you’re ranked, but link-building is one of the most difficult tasks. In the early days of the Web, people tried “link exchanges” where you’d sign up with a service and other sites would put up pages of links on their site, including a link to yours, and you’d put up a similar page on your site. The problem is this: It doesn’t work. Google and the other search engines can determine the relevance of the other site to yours. Furthermore, if they just see a page of links to totally unrelated companies, they ignore them. Sometimes, they even penalize you, too. The last thing you want is to fall to the bottom of the rankings.

Your links have to be relevant. Here are the three types of links you want:

1. Links from the press – including established print and online reviewers, bloggers, online news, and industry sites.
2. Links from your customers.
3. Links from industry analysts, associations, and related bodies.

So, if you’re in the business of making eel-skinned wallets, a link coming from a software company Web site doesn’t do anything much for you, but a link from a fashion site is incredibly useful.

It takes time to build links. You’ll need to approach it like farming. It’s a long process of planting the seeds, nurturing them, and maintaining them over time. Anyone who tells you that he/she can do it for you overnight is conning you.

Fortunately, the Web is designed for linking. What you have to do is make it completely simple and natural for others to link to you. For press, you want to supply them with a special section of your site where you give them product photos and images in various resolution, your logos in both color and black & white, company data sheets, links to other reviews, and clear contact info for your designated press person. Moreover, here’s the critical point: If anyone from the press contacts you, you drop EVERYTHING and bend over backwards to help him or her. A favorable review, a mention of your company or product, a quote from your executives – all this is worth thousands of dollars in paid advertising. Reporters and writers quickly learn who they can turn to when they’re short on time. You want to be one of those people. Give them your personal cell number. Tell them to call you anytime.

For your customers to link to you, you’ll have to do something unnatural: You’ll have to ask them. Most will say no, and that’s OK, but you’ll be surprised at how many will say yes. What you’ll need to do for them is very similar to what I’ve recommended for the press, but for customers, make it even easier – package it all up in an email and send it to them. Make it completely simple, easy, and effortless.

Working with industry analysts and associations is more difficult, but the payoff is worth it. You can’t just sit back and wait for them to contact you. Once again, you’ll have to get in touch with them, make sure they consider your product or service, and make it easy for them to get review copies; or better yet, put them in contact with your best customers so they can hear those glowing reviews. Work as the intermediary and be as helpful and easy to work with as possible. Set up an e-mail alert so you can respond to any request from an industry analyst immediately.

Furthermore, here’s something that often completely screws up a link-building effort: Don’t change your Web site URLs. Your Web site should be designed with very simple links to your product and services – links that NEVER change. If they are long, complex, system-generated links, they’re very likely to change. If you change a URL, you break the potential external links and they become useless... Worse than useless! It’s very frustrating for a prospect to follow a link and get one of those annoying “Page Not Found” errors. Police your external links and make sure they all end up at a payoff for you. If you find a link that no longer works or has moved, change it on your side (301 redirect scripts) so the page is redirected to where it should go.

You might have the best product or service in your category, but if you don’t have the link infrastructure, no one will find out about it. It’s not easy or quick to build, but a strong link infrastructure is a valuable asset. It will bring you new business.

If you don’t have a link-building campaign as part of your marketing plan, you need to stop and think about what you’re missing. Give me a call or send me an e-mail – I’d love to talk with you about how link-building can be an integrated part of your online marketing.

The Three Secrets of Successful SEO – Three Hard Truths

I’ve already told you that “Your Web Site is not a Brochure”. Now I’m going to tell you the three secrets that will increase your search engine rankings and bring you more prospects and customers. But let me warn you, these fall into the category of “hard truths”.

Here they are:

1. Write great, clear content about your product, services, company, and things you deeply care about or are interested in.
2. Update it frequently.
3. Responsibly build real links.

That’s it. Those three things will improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and bring you new prospects.

What? It sounds like work! That’s the hard truth part.

Over the past year or so I’ve been pretty busy and let the whole exercise thing slide. Since I just turned forty and was getting out of shape, I joined a gym at the first of the year. With the help of a determined friend, I’ve been hitting the gym EARLY every morning.

It was awful. It hurt. I did not want to do it. but I’ve kept at it.

Guess what? I’m down over fifteen pounds, and I’m feeling and looking great (if I say so myself)! That’s because the hard truth about fitness and health is this:

1. Portion control and watch what you eat.
2. Exercise more.

Hard truths are usually hard because they don’t offer a magic or easy solution to life’s problems. Getting fit is just like attracting visitors to your Web site. I’ve seen our SEO at Minds On improve dramatically since I started blogging regularly late last year, and I only publish about twice a week. Businesses that are publishing daily and even multiple times a day are seeing terrific results. And, the search engines notice. Google, in particular, pays little to no attention to your keywords and meta tags (you really should click that link – it’s very revealing and straight from the horse’s mouth).

What Google and the others are looking at is your human readable content. That’s who you want to talk with anyway – humans. Google, Bing, and Yahoo will all categorize you better if you are frequently talking about your business, the industry you serve, the problems you and your customers face, and what your products and services provide to your customers. Look at this: A recent survey done by HubSpot.com found that social media and blogging were rated as the most cost - effective lead generation method, “below average cost”. If you look at your Web site and see that you haven’t updated ANYTHING in over a year, that’s the reason you do so poorly on search rankings. No amount of messing about with keywords is going to change that, but a couple of blog posts a week will. I’m seeing that for myself.

It’s a commitment. I know from first-hand experience how hard it is to sit down and write, but there are very few things that will work better. We’ll talk more about publishing frequency, social media, and link-building in later posts.

Here’s the good news: You don’t have to do it alone. For my fitness goals I have a buddy to make sure I work out, show me how to do it right, and keep me on the straight and narrow. You can get help with your content and media plan. Moreover, if you need more than coaching, you can get help writing your content, too.

I’d love to talk with you about how to make continually fresh content an integrated part of your online marketing plan. Drop me a line or give me a call and I’ll share with you what I’m learning with this blog and how you can put it to work for you and your company.

Your Web Site is not a Brochure

Minds On is a full-service marketing agency, but the core of our business and expertise is Web site planning, design and development. After building Web sites for almost twenty years now, I’m still surprised at how little thought most medium-sized business put into their sites.

Very few businesses have product or services so in demand that they only have to tell the customers how much it costs and where to buy it. If your product or service isn’t that easy to sell, then you’ll need to take advantage of every tool you can. A well-designed site can be one of the most cost-effective ways of doing that, but it can also be a complete waste of money if you don’t approach it strategically with clear marketing goals.

I have an exercise for you. Go and take a look at your Web site. Try and think like a potential customer. Can you figure out from only what you can see or read on your site why they should buy from you? Can they learn everything they need to know about your product and your company? Could they easily ask for more information, view demos, see what your customers are saying? Do you leave the site with positive feelings or frustration?

Web site design is not a one-size-fits-all exercise. Your business is nothing like every other business up and down the street. To build an effective Web site you have to understand where it fits in your sales process, what role it plays in brand building, and how it supports your marketing at every stage of sales, including the ongoing support of your customers.

So no, it’s not a brochure. That doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. It just means that it has to be fully integrated with your sales and marketing.

It’s your choice. Do you want your Web site to be a check off on a list so you can say, “Yeah, we have one of those,” or do you want to take advantage of one of the most effective marketing tools ever developed?

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting in depth on this topic – be sure and stop back to read more. Better yet, give me a call (740) 548-1645 and I’ll be happy to talk to you about how you can shape your Web marketing into a more effective tool to drive your sales.

Let Me Give You a Brochure – Why “Conventional” Marketing Still Works

I’ve mentioned before that Minds On is a full-service marketing company. We have special expertise in Web and interactive design. So why do we bother with the old- school marketing warhorses like brochures, white papers, sales sheets, and well, PRINT?

Because it works! With the advent of Web sites and e-mail marketing some people got the crazy idea that they didn’t need any of the sales materials that worked for them for years. “We can save all that money we spent on printing things. Now we can just tell people to visit our Web site.”

Electronic versions of your standard documents work if you never meet a prospect or customer face-to-face. But if you show up without any kind of printed material, how are you going to maintain that initial impression you just made? You have to Always be Brand Building. Even the smallest item, like your business card, can have a huge impact.

You do need terrific online materials, but why restrict yourself to just a few approaches? You should use every tool in your belt. Sometimes a brochure that you hand prospects can be the thing that drives them to your site a month later. It’s persistent in a way that an electronic message never can be. If you keep sending them physical items – a personal card, an industry article, a postcard – you’ll keep extending the impact of your product and your brand.

There are ways to save money on printing. I like digital print solutions, and we do a lot of that for our customers here at Minds On. The days of printing tens of thousands of brochures at a time are probably gone and that’s fine. But you can achieve the same quality with cutting-edge printing technology that’s available now. I’m not talking about printing from your inkjet printer, but full professional quality print, one copy at a time (or as many as you’d need for an event).

We’ve even set up a special tool where your sales people can customize materials and receive them as electronic versions (PDFs) or order printed versions. I’ll talk more about that in a later post.

You need to equip your sales team with the tools they need to close business. Do they have the product brochures, sales sheets, case studies, white papers, and all of the materials that will demonstrate to their prospects that your company knows what it’s doing? Are you going to send them out empty-handed?

I’d be happy to talk to you about how to use conventional marketing techniques and integrate them into your online marketing approaches.

Hey, isn’t that Tom’s Truck? Always be Brand Building.

Remember that classic scene in the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” where Alec Baldwin terrorizes a group of salesmen with “ABC. Always Be Closing.” This is a terrific movie with some stunning performances from some amazing actors, but I wouldn’t use it as a sales-training video. Perhaps I should show it for what NOT to do.

I don’t think you should always go for the close. You don’t always have a fit for what the prospect needs. Often there’s a long process before you can even consider closing. On the other hand, you should always build on your brand and understand what your marketing impact is every time you’re in front of a potential customer.

I recently wrote about How My Business Card Won New Business a Year Later and I heard from a lot of readers about how it struck a cord with them. The more I talked about it made me think about all of the little things we can do to strengthen our brands and increase the impact of our marketing.

Here’s a little something that I did, and it’s amazing how well it works. I’ve already talked about my Ford F150. It’s big and red and very visible, and I went and bought vanity plates for it, “MINDSON.” I can’t tell you how many times people have said they’ve seen me around town, and they say, “I saw you out in the Minds On truck.”

I could have put anything on those plates, but by putting our company name on, reinforces the brand. For a couple extra bucks I now have a mobile billboard, and it has a clear and positive impact. Just like my business card, you might not act on it the first time, but every time you see it, it reinforces our brand.

Today people are so distracted and bombarded by messages. You have to do everything you can to build your organizations’ brand. Every time you touch a prospect they grow in appreciation of what you do, offer, and provide. You want to build on the quality and positive feelings they might have for you. That means really thinking through EVERYTHING you do from a marketing and brand perspective.

Always Be Brand Building. Now if I could only get Alec Baldwin on film saying that we’d have something we could show sales teams!

Are you doing everything you can to build your brand? I’d be happy to talk with you about shaping your marketing tools and sales processes into a winning sales effort.

How Blogging Made Me a Local Celebrity – Or at Least Eddie Merlot’s Made Me Feel Like One

Back in December, I published a piece titled. “Dine Out, Come Back Soon: How Restaurants Can Use Personalization to Create Repeat Business” about a terrific experience I had dining at the local Eddie Merlot’s restaurant. At the time I heard from a lot of you, both about your experiences in dining and about the approach to personalization marketing.

I had a chance recently to visit the restaurant again – we made reservations so the whole family could celebrate my birthday. Let me tell you this...these people pay attention! When we arrived the general manager, Vitto, greeted us personally. They had prepared a special table for us by the piano and James, our wonderful waiter from our last visit, was ready for us. I can only imagine what it’s like to be on the red carpet at the Academy Awards, but it must have been something like this. Vittorio was right there and he insisted that they bring us a selection of appetizers. The shrimp cocktails mesmerized the kids – they thought it was like something out of Harry Potter, belching fog and smoke (dry ice, but still very cool)!

The entire meal was just wonderful. I can’t say enough. Even the little details were perfectly done. My son got a kick out of the waiters scraping the tablecloth to clear the crumbs, and James noticed this. They presented him with his own Eddie Merlot’s crumb scraper at the end of the meal. My daughter told me, “They made me feel like a princess.” To a parent, that is priceless. James and Vitto ended the night with complimentary desserts all around.

Why the special treatment? Well, first, this is a great restaurant with amazing service. But more than that, they pay attention. My blog piece brought them business – people had told them that they’d read it and came there because of it. They recognized and understood what good word-of -mouth means – or in this case, good word via blogging.

I continue to get postcards and e-mails from them, but it’s still the standard, non-personalized stuff. It would be wonderful if they could extend that marvelous personal touch experience my family gets when we’re in their restaurant to everything they do?

Eddie Merlot’s is quickly becoming our favorite restaurant. You’ll notice I didn’t mention the food, which was great by they way. However, good food wouldn’t mean as much without the wonderful, personal attention to service.

Do you have a plan to help your customers spread the word about you? Do you help them blog and tweet about your business? And do you capture it and use it to amplify their recommendations. If their experiences aren’t what you’d want, do you have a way of addressing them promptly and effectively, turning them to strongly positive ones. I’d love to talk with you about how to build a 2-way social media component into your marketing and help you dramatically extend the reach of your marketing.