Total Marketing Solutions

When was the last time you took a good, long look at your website? It’s a process we’re undertaking ourselves at TMS, having realized that our own site was in need of a little attention. So we recognize that we aren’t perfect, but when did you last visit your own website from the perspective of a potential client?

It really is worth taking the time to walk through each page, following the “persuasion pathways” your customers are following - checking that you are persuading them to do what you want them to do along the way. If you’re website is feeling a little unloved and lacklustre at the moment, it’s time to bite the bullet and get stuck in. Try some of these ideas to get you started:

1. Take your time. It’s not a quick fix. Taking one page at a time will give you time to approach it as your customers do.
2. Does it hold my customers attention and stimulate interest? Don’t bore them with long paragraphs and wordy descriptions. Make sure they can find what they want quickly, without having to click their way to a well-hidden page only the most tenacious of customers can be bothered to find.
3. Does your website talk to your customers? When visitors come to your site, do they get a sense of who you are and what you’re about? Or do you just blend into the background like so many other faceless, bland websites? It’s important for customers to get a feeling for your company, who you are and what you stand for. It builds confidence and forms the basis of developing a relationship.
4. Get to the point. Don’t waffle on about stuff that just isn’t relevant to your customers. Keep it simple - flashy graphics and clutter detract from the message. Keep to the bottom line of what benefits you are able to provide. It’s easier said than done but Occam’s razor is a powerful tool when wielded correctly.
5. Take a look at your site map too, because too many clicks lose customers along the way. Make sure your pathways are clear and well-marked - only the truly bored can be bothered to spend time faffing around dead-ends and are far less likely to be real potential customers anyway.
6. Can your customers actually understand you? Sounds obvious, but even the most technically-minded consumer might struggle with some terminology known only to your inner sanctum. Revisit your site and make sure you have not only spelt out your message to your customers as clearly as possible but also that you hit them over the head with it.
7. Make sure your customers quickly understand what’s in it for them. You know you’re fantastic, but you need to communicate this in benefits for the customer, otherwise you will lose them at the home page.
8. Keep your blog up to date. If your last blog was three months ago, how is a customer going to feel about your company? Not that you should fill it with inane drivel (ahem!) but try to vent your spleen on matters of interest to your customers. It shows a commitment to your website and also provides another opportunity to communicate with your customers.

So pencil in some time to revisit your website - if you can’t be bothered, then why should your customers? A little time spent rekindling your relationship with your site will soon start to pay and you might fall in love with it all over again!

There are still a great many people even within the marketing community who have not yet really grasped why social media should now be an essential and integral part of the way in which they ‘go-to-market’ with their business. In the following ‘colourful’ presentation, Marta Kagan makes the argument quite convincingly that social media is relevant to us all - that is if we want to continue to thrive and survive in our businesses!!!

Take a look & see what you think - please address any comments on the language used directly to Marta!

Back in the old days, that is the 1990’s, when Altavista used to rank web page content solely according to its relevance to the user’s query, bless ‘em, life seemed so much simpler somehow. Since the arrival of Google’s algorithm, content is ranked according to 0ff-the-page elements as much as, if not more than, what is on the page itself. Whilst no-one outside of Google’s hallowed walls knows the exact formula of the algorithm, a whole SEO industry has sprouted up around it and people the world over spend hours a week ensuring that their site is optimised to the hilt. But how can you be sure that a little tweaking here and there will bring results? Here are a few points to bear in mind before you start tinkering with your website:

• How to play the ranking game: There are two types of ranking factor: query dependent or query independent. Query dependent criteria - these assess content acccording to the relevance of content in the original search request. It not only assesses frequency of key words but more importantly where and how they appear. Query independent factors - these are pieces of information a search engine already knows about a page, like Google’s PageRank, which measures a web document’s popularity based on among other things the number of links that point to it. The assessment of inbound links to your webpage is now the most important element of most search engine technologies and should be ignored at your peril.

• Don’t be an online potato: Whilst “Search” has been the main technology for getting your information online since all this SEO fun started, the advent of Web 2.0 - since broadband speeds enabled the internet to become a 2-way medium - has changed this forever. Now, potential customers can upload content rather than just passively receive it and has changed the way people spend their time online. This can encompass everything from keeping your blog up to date in order to interact with your target audience to incorporating Web 2.0 marketing methods into your future marketing strategies.

One thing’s for sure, nothing is going to stay the same for very long and the better we are as marketers and online marketing consultants at embracing all new channels at our disposal, the rosier our future - and that of our clients - will look.

Whilst we are not ones to jump on the next marketing guru’s bandwagon, having read Seth Godin’s “Meatball Sundae - Is your marketing out of sync?”, we felt it had some nuggets in there of particular interest and relevance to our clients at Total Marketing Solutions. As marketing strategy consultancy we have regularly helped our clients with their online marketing strategy and it is clear to us that the whole area of Web 2.0 and how to make it effective is still little understood so here we try and learn from the ‘master’ himself.

The title of the book alludes to how companies undertaking traditional marketing activities [the meatballs] can’t just add cream, chocolate flakes, raspberry sauce [web 2.0 marketing techniques] on the top of what they do to make it into a sundae that is going to work and people are going to like - unfortunately it isn’t that simple!

The book tracks the decline and fall of some traditional marketing activities and outlines the need for companies to use new marketing techniques. But the fundamental message is about authenticity and how web 2.0 can quickly and easily find you out if you don’t act with integrity, honesty and try to create genuine products that give people what they want. The key barrier to this in the most part is the nature of the organisations that are trying to make this change from ‘old marketing’ [ie. TV advertising] to ‘new marketing’ [ie. social networks].

Seth goes on to identify some key trends, including:

The need for an authentic story as the number of information sources available increases: Telling true stories is the only way to spread messages on the unforgivable medium of the internet. Those being economical with the truth will be found out and their brand will suffer or be destroyed.

Extremely short attention spans due to clutter: This speaks for itself - organisations have to get over the fact that they can’t engage individuals unless they are totally relevant at a specific moment in time

Outsourcing: The internet has delivered a global supply of resources, skills and talent and enables all companies to outsource the stuff they can’t do or don’t do well enough.

Google and the dicing of everything: Search engines have enabled consumers to buy everything they need in component form, such as holidays, ultimately eliminating whole service sectors.

Infinite channels of communication: With new platforms and web sites being developed almost daily it is key to keep abreast of what is going on, what works and what doesn’t. Internet experiences will need to become entirely tailored to the individual [web 3.0].

Direct communication and commerce between consumers and consumers: Customers now gravitate towards each other via social networks, sharing experiences and creating communities of interest who can exert pressure on organisations.

The shift from “how many” to “who”: One of Seth’s previous work, Flipping the Funnel, covered this subject. The use of technologies like Google Adwords have put individual consumers in touch with companies rather than companies having to find them through uneconomical techniques.

New gatekeepers, no gatekeepers: The rise of the likes of YouTube has broken down the barriers to communicating with audiences and blogging community are becoming influential in the spread of messages.

The book is meant as a warning to organisations expecting the new marketing techniques to just replace traditional communication channels and effectively just ‘plug and play’ into their marketing strategies. As ever with Mr. Godin, there’s a good range of case studies, reference sites and examples to explain and support his argument, including one of his own companies, Squidoo, which features quite heavily.

If you’re already employing web 2.0 marketing techniques, or “new marketing”, with some degree of measurable success then this book may well inspire you to build what you’ve learnt into other aspects of your business. If you haven’t started yet you may well find the premise of the book quite daunting, in terms of how your organisation may have to change before you can exploit these techniques.

Either way, it’s well worth taking the time to explore how best to plot your future route through web 2.0.

What does MSN’s announcement of cashback for users of its live search mean for PPC advertisers and online marketing consultants?
In a previous post, I mentioned advertisers who spend significant amounts with Google Adwords but do not use Yahoo Search Marketing or Microsoft AdCenter. The main reason for this is that, for most companies, neither Yahoo nor MSN deliver enough volume to make the effort worthwhile. (It’s also worth saying that neither has an interface as easy-to-use as Google’s.) And in the volume game, MSN finishes a poor third for UK advertisers.
So hats off to MSN. This is an innovative attempt to shake up a market that is at risk of becoming a monopoly. Anyone who is familiar with Affiliate Marketing will recognise the concept immediately – but instead of the advertiser paying the commission to the affiliate, the search engine will pay commission to the customer. It will only work if searchers like the concept, and more of them defect to MSN – and stay with MSN, increasing their share of the market. And they will only stay with MSN if the search results, and in the case the paid results, deliver relevant results. So it’s back to square one, because most searchers use Google because they believe that the results it delivers are more relevant. For my part, I think this cashback initiative is just the first step in the next phase of the search war, following Microsoft’s failed bid for Yahoo. I believe that Yahoo and Google will fight back, and at this stage my money’s still on Google to keep its lead in the battle.

So you’ve given your website an extreme makeover, you’ve optimised it to the max and you’re still not getting the traffic you had hoped for. Why not get in touch with your inner journo and get writing? Submitting articles on topics of interest to your potential customers to some of the many online article directories and online PR sites like Article Blast or Expert Articles could be a further opportunity to exploit and ultimately increase traffic to your website. Once you have written your article, you submit it with a link to your website’s url. What’s more, your article may then be picked up by other webmasters for publication in their own directories, meaning that you can get an awful lot of mileage for very little actual cost. As marketing consultants for SME’s, we are constantly looking to improve and measure the impact of any marketing spend. If your sole cost is the time it takes you to write the article, then it can be an excellent investment. However, there are some golden rules to follow: 1. Use conversational copy. The relationship you have with an online reader is very different to printed material. Use words your target audience will know and be familiar with, but avoid jargon at all costs. Cheesy ad-speak will not work online.2. Get a shave. Once you have written your piece, use Occum’s Razor. Shave off all the wasted words. Keep sentences short and avoid long, scary chunks of information. Online readers do not dawdle or sift. Make sure your point comes across loud and clear from the beginning. Don’t wait until the end of the article to reveal your point - your online reader will have clicked and fled.3. Make sure your copy is benefit-oriented. Your customers don’t want to know how many Institutes you belong to, they just want to know how you can help them. 4. Simplify your ideas. It’s not that your online audience is educationally challenged in any way, but there is a lot of other good stuff out there to read. Make sure yours hits home quickly. It all sounds very easy but once you have got a good idea for an article, you’re halfway there to driving more traffic to your website. Happy writing!

Recent news articles have signalled some bad news for Google. The company, whose good-guy image and motto of “Don’t be evil” have helped it to survive previous bad news stories, such as the ongoing concerns over the length of its cookie to the furore over its censorship of results for Chinese users. And it’s likely that the news that Google is planning its first job losses will fall into this category, particularly as they’re a result of its acquisition of DoubleClick.

However the news that will give Google most cause for concern is that the rapid growth in advertising clicks has faltered. The Guardian reports that January 2008 saw zero growth in paid clicks, while February saw just a 3% rise. This contrasts with monthly increases of between 25% and 40% in 2007.

So what’s behind this? Are Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisers spending less or are users becoming more choosy about what they click on? My feeling is that it’s a mix of the two. Advertisers are now better at tracking results, and are acutely aware of the difference between traffic and sales. The days of generating traffic for traffic’s sake are gone. And users are aware that some paid adverts can find them just what they’re looking for – but some advertisers try to hijack traffic to sites that are light in content, perhaps in the hope of earning commission as an affiliate, which can result in a poor experience for the user.

I don’t believe that Google’s dominance is under threat, for now. As an online marketing consultant I know of PPC advertisers who spend significant sums with Google AdWords but don’t bother with Yahoo/Overture or MSN as they don’t deliver volume. As long as Google dominates search traffic, it will dominate the PPC market.

And what does this mean for SMEs? Not too much, for now. Consider your Pay Per Click campaign like any form of marketing. Keep a close eye on it and track your results. And if it’s not working to target, cut it out.

Every man, woman and their dog now has a website covering the whole spectrum of the good, bad, ugly and downright awful. But it’s fair to say that even some of the most beautifully designed, graphically pleasing sites may not be doing their job, which is not only to communicate with visitors to the site but to help get them there in the first place. If a website has not been fully optimised - i.e. is not exploiting every opportunity to be noticed by the spiders from Google, Yahoo, MSN, Mars and so on who crawl over websites gathering relevant information for the searcher - then it it doesn’t matter how lovely it looks, it is failing you and probably losing your company lots of opportunities for business.The good news is that to change things is neither impossible nor necessarily costly and can represent a real business development opportunity for SME’s who may have limited marketing budgets available.As marketing consultants we frequently look at overhauling a company’s website as a part of developing their wider marketing strategy. We find that our customers are often very pleased to see quick and significant improvements in traffic to their sites through even the most basic search engine optimisation (SEO). But just how easy is it to optimise a site for search engines? Here are some simple ideas that we believe work:

1. Make sure all copy is not only customer friendly but also “search engine friendly” - use your keywords (the main search terms used by potential customers) wherever you can, as long as the text still makes sense!
2. Make sure you have a site map - web crawlers can’t jump but love crawling from page to page via a site map. Take this a stage further and get yourself a Google Site Map, an XML thingy that is much loved by far and away the most important search engine. Note: if you Google the phrase ‘Google Sitemap’ you will find some ‘free’ software that will create your sitemap for you.
3. Keywords should be used in the title tags and meta tags on all your key pages - the snappier the better. Web crawlers don’t dawdle.
4. Take care with images - most web crawlers can’t read text contained in an image so make sure all images have an “alt attribute” - a text description so they do not remain invisible to the short-sighted crawler.
5. Get your finger out! Keeping your website up to date with blogs and news items will ensure web crawlers notice your site more easily.

For more hints and tips on Search Engine Optimisation, visit our Resources page. Whilst it will require time and effort to optimimise your site, it can pay real dividends quickly and effectively. A fully optimised site, even if it has been touched by the ugly stick, will prove far more effective than the airbrushed beauty. Whoever said looks aren’t everything certainly had a point!