Consider this … If you met someone at a business function and wanted to build that relationship for the benefit of both parties, would you just send them an email saying it was a pleasure to meet them? No! You’d probably continue to follow up with that prospect knowing that they showed an interest in your service or product.
So, when a visitor comes to your website and signs up to receive information such as a monthly newsletter or some type of subscription, do they receive a “Thank you” or “Welcome” response from your company? Other than the initial welcome message, do you have any further communication with these prospects other than the information they signed up to receive?
If you answered ‘no’ to the question above, then you might want to think a bit more strategically when it comes to building and nuturing a relationship with the prospects that you will probably never meet but have shown and interest in what your company is offering.
Sending a series of automated welcome messages just might do the trick! Over and above confirming the subscription that the visitor has requested, sending a welcome series can also help set expectations, offer valuable information and assist in building the relationship. What about surveying your subscribers to determine preferences and profiling attributes, explaining benefits and even provoding additional ways to interact such as your social network site (your company is participating in social networking aren’t they?).
Of course, before planning a series of welcome messages, it is important to think about what you want out of each message as it relates to your business as well as the interest of the prospects. Bottom line, all messaging should be valuable and beneficial to the subscribers in order for them to remain engaged with your brand.
When do you start communicating with a new prospect? – the initial message is obviously sent immediately upon subscription. After that, it would be necessary to test the timing of any remaining messages to find out what will work the best. However, remember that the welcome message will depend upon the type of strategy and the goals you want to achieve. To start out on the right foot, here is a great overview provided by ListTrak that will help you in formatting your communication for building that online relationship.
Google is now allowing businesses who have registered with Google Places (formerly Google Local Business Center) to respond to negative reviews that appear with a business listed on Google Maps. This is good news as it allows for dialog enabling businesses to represent themselves. A business owner can now answer their detractor’s complaints (and hopefully redeem themselves in the process) and thank satisfied customers for their feedback. If you haven’t registered your business you’d better get to it, Google Maps results often appear the highest in Google rankings. If you need local search marketing help, let us know. Google has also provided some tips for responding to user reviews.
Focusing SEO efforts on a website are important aspects toward a well-positioned site on search engine results. However, if the online game was just about rankings then this approach would prevail – although an additional challenge is to ensure that the presentation of the site to the visitor is very important to the entire goals of online success. User experience is critical and goes hand in hand with all the efforts that take place within search engine marketing. In other words, it is a balancing act!
If we spend our efforts driving traffic to the site but neglect the user experience, the external marketing efforts will not translate to the overall goals. Therefore, it is imperative to do the research and have a clear understanding what your audience wants to do once they arrive at the website. If the copy on the site isn’t engaging, the site loads slow due to heavy graphics, etc., it will not only hurt your onsite SEO efforts but also turn off the visitor.
Would you prepare a pot roast dinner for your guests without inquiring as to whether or not they all eat meat? The same can be said with the presentation of your website – it’s all about a great experience so, if your target market doesn’t like meat, then don’t serve it!
By now you may have heard of Google’s latest update, dubbed “Caffeine.” It’s been on the horizon since the end of last year but now is fully propagated throughout Google’s system.
You may have also heard that it can affect your website’s ranking unless you do something to counter that. Well I’m glad to tell you that it’s not true: Caffeine is an update that only affects the speed at which Google finds web pages and delivers them to searchers, it doesn’t change Google’s rules for ranking websites. So if you are following good SEO practices and are hopefully in a continual test-refine-review process you have nothing to worry about. The video above, from Google, serves as a great overview and reminder for how the giant search engine works.
There are always challenges in assuring that a website is easy to navigate, customer-centric and is appropriately optimized for good keyword visibility. As relevant copy is a very critical component to a website, when is the last time you actually read the copy to ensure it isn’t egocentric?
Do you know someone that is completely self-absorbed and no matter how hard you try, every topic leads back to them? Well, is the copy on your website focused more about the company rather than solving a customer’s problem?
Instead of addressing the benefits of a product or assisting potential customers in solving their problems, a narcissistic site can be focused on a company’s great offerings, superior manufacturing techniques, how great their people are or their offices, etc. (you get the picture). Let’s not forget that this information is really secondary to a customer’s issues.
Because most visitors have an attention span of a few seconds and will scan copy rather than reading every word, an egocentric site can basically turn people off. So check out your site and be sure that it’s oriented to the benefit of your customers!
This video (click the link above to view) is provided by Lon Safko from a presentation he did going through the topics he covers in his book The Social Media Bible. While I disagree with some of the things he promotes (advertising inside of the massive online game World of Warcraft is not a good fit for most businesses, no matter how big the audience), it’s good for those people who may still be unfamiliar and/or uncomfortable with Twitter, Facebook and related “social media.” It covers a wide spectrum of social media and provides some case studies for each. Worth a watch if you don’t understand how effective these tactics can be for a business.
Remember the good old days when the company’s sales staff would attend to conventions, send out direct mail pieces and even cold calls? Well, some of these practices are certainly being put to use now, but depending upon your product or service, there are other opportunities that don’t cost quite as much and can provide an even greater ROI.
I know a lot of people are probably getting tired of reading about social media, but, guess what … social media is getting a reputation for lead generation as well as customer interaction and brand awareness.
Onesource reported that business-to-business salespeople were looking to LinkedIn for prospecting and HubSpot found that Twitter usage could double monthly leads.
For online marketing, lead generation was their first priority, with 66% indicating it was their greatest concern for 2010 compared with just 17% who chose brand awareness. Take a look at a survey of US marketing professionals conducted back in April 2010 regarding the reason for implementing a social media strategy:
So how does a company determine whether or not a lead might be valuable? Interest and demographic information were the two most obvious picks, which could make social media an even more important and useful prospecting channel since profiles can include that type of data.
The question now remains, if your company is ready to increase their lead generation, you might want to seriously consider a social media presence (with a solid strategy, of course).
Last Friday, before the big Memorial Day weekend, Google released its list of the 1,000 most-visited websites. Guess who is the #1 website, reaching over 35% of internet users?
Facebook.com.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to any business, Facebook has twice in the last several months seen more visitors than even Google, which is the titan of the Internet. If you weren’t convinced of a need to be on Facebook, hopefully this does it for you. Why? Your customers are already there, why wouldn’t you be?
The Kite Store is the U.S. branch of the first company in Europe to sell kites online beginning in 1995. Starting in July of 2007, the company sought to dramatically increase its online presence in America via improved organic search engine placement.
Solution
To increase positioning for keyword phrases that encompass the wide range of kites and aerial toys sold, CloudBurst Consulting seeded these terms throughout the appropriate product pages in content and meta data. Initial organic program ran from July 2007 – April 2008
Results
Improved visibility on Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines
Traffic from Google alone increased over 165%
Revenue from organic traffic increased 626%
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The Hermitage Hotel, a five-star property in Nashville, was interested in driving more qualified traffic to their website by promoting special monthly offers.
Solution
Using a conversion-based Pay-Per-Click campaign, we focused on the monthly hotel promotions as well as highlighting the upscale hotel property and amenities.
Results
Increased online brand awareness
Improved website leads by 48%
Created a 139% increase in ROAS
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