Advertising

When A Free Website Costs You

Free website like shooting yourself in the foot A nearby business (franchisee of a national chain) announced a new website today on their Facebook page. I truly believe they’re shooting themselves in the foot with the website they designed.

It’s built using a FREE service called Wix. Wix puts banners at the top and bottom of every page, with text such as “Create your stunning website with Wix. It’s super easy and free! Go”

The domain name on the new site is very long, something like:
http://turtlenappy.wix.com/nameofbusiness#!Home|mainPage

Not only is there no professional domain name, there’s no professional email address either – they use something nonsensical like “[email protected]”

The photos on the home page are blurry too; obviously not done by a professional photographer.

I don’t have a problem with Wix or any other free website builder – for a personal or hobby site.

But for THIS business?

One… the loneliest number in marketing

Maybe that email newsletter you started a few months ago has really taken off, and you’re getting new customers and re-orders by the truckload. [font family=”Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif” size=”26″ color=”DE0202″ textshadow=”0″ alignment=”center” weight=”normal” style=”normal” lineheight=”110″]Yes! Ka-ching![/font]

That’s wonderful! Don’t mess with something that’s working, keep it up!

Just don’t count on it continuing forever. Having one campaign that works well for you in one particular media is great, but that can change in an instant, and you need to be prepared.

Stuff happens. Facebook decides to terminate your account. The local radio personality who was personally endorsing your business lands a new job in another state. Your website ranking plummeted when an aggressive rival moved into town.

There’s just too much risk involved in having one, solo marketing medium.

As your financial advisor has probably told you before – you need to [font family=”Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif” size=”32″ color=”DE0202″ textshadow=”2″ alignment=”center” weight=”bold” style=”italic” lineheight=”110″]diversify![/font]

Diversity leads to stability when it comes to marketing. I’m certainly a big proponent of websites and Internet marketing, but that’s not the be-all and end-all of any marketing campaign. You’re very vulnerable if all your marketing efforts are online; that’s one of the reasons I started my direct mail, postcard marketing business a few months ago. By having more than one way to reach prospects, you not only minimize your risk, but you increase your exposure across a wider spectrum of customer media preferences.

Birthday Club Marketing

“Delight Your Customers and Improve Your Bank Balance: Easy Program Works Year-Round”

Birthday Club Coupon — Ask about Birthday Club Marketing

Are you looking for an easy, inexpensive way to market your product or service to new and existing customers? Then why not start a Birthday Club*?

Birthday Clubs have long been a favorite tool of savvy marketers.
Here’s why.

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People love to be remembered, recognized and appreciated.
Birthday Clubs help you maintain favorable “top of mind” awareness.
Birthday Clubs generate more business (money!) for you when someone redeems the offer.
They’re an easy way to collect contact info (name/email) for future marketing.

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NEW – Birthday Club Management from Your Friend on the Web, Diana Ratliff

There’s never been such an easy, hassle-free way to set up and manage a birthday club. I’ll set you up to collect names, email addresses and birth months on your website or Facebook page (you don’t even need a website at all.) Coupons are automatically delivered via email, so there’s no need to remember to send out the coupon every month – the software I use does it for you. This is truly “set and forget” marketing!

*Of course this program is not limited to people’s birthdays – why not celebrate wedding anniversaries or graduations? How about pet birthdays? Salespeople can celebrate the month someone bought their home/car, or the month they became a client.

Sample Birthday Club Offers

Of course YOUR offer can be whatever you want, but here are some ideas:

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Free meal or dessert
An upgrade to your normal service
$10 off a purchase
Coupon for oil change, coffee – the offer does NOT have to be from your own business. Partner with a fellow business owner and give away one of THEIR products/services!

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I’ll be happy to work with you to craft a good offer – and set any terms/conditions you’d like on the offer as well.

“Birthdays Mean Business – Contact Me TODAY”

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Be Suspicious of Award-Winning Web Design Firms…

… unless the awards are for the sales they generate for their clients.

David Ogilvy, considered by some to be the “father of modern advertising”, puts it this way:

Be suspicious of awards.

The pursuit of creative awards seduces creative people from the pursuit of sales. We have been unable to establish any correlation whatever between awards and sales. At Ogilvy and Mather, we now give an annual award for the campaign which contributes the most to sales. Successful advertising sells the product without drawing attention to itself, it rivets the consumer’s attention on the product. Make the product the hero of your advertising.

More great quotes from David Ogilvy

Ben Hunt, author of “Save the Pixel”, puts it this way:

“Design your content, not the box it comes in.”

How do you know you’re talking to a web designer who’s focused on your sales, not their design? By the questions they ask. If she’s asking about what products make you a profit, the most desired response from your website, how you want to follow up with prospects, your plan to keep site content current – that’s a good sign. Those questions relate to generating leads and sales.

If the conversation revolves around colors and layout and custom graphics – the designer is focused more on the “box” (the site), not your product. Yes, the graphic and visual appeal of a site is important – but look for a designer who realizes that the underlying goal if your web presence is to make you money.

To put it another way – look for a web design company who values sales rewards over sales awards.

That Confusing Internet “Stuff” Is Just Advertising

No matter how hard I try to use plain English, all this website-Internet-social media-Google “stuff” is just plain confusing to a lot of business owners and salespeople. Their eyes glaze over when I talk about ranking well in Google or converting site traffic to email subscribers.

Confused people don’t buy – which might explain why about half of all small business owners still don’t have websites – and why most of those who DO have sites aren’t happy with theirs.

So let me frame Internet marketing in another way – friends, it’s just another way to advertise your business.

Wikipedia defines advertising as “… is a form of communication used to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services.”

When you print business cards or run an ad in Doormail or Columbia Marketplace magazine or buy space in the Yellow Pages or do TV commercials, you’re advertising. Your website is advertising too – and it’s an important way to advertise, since most people look online today to find products and services.

You don’t have to understand how the printing process works to use print media effectively. You don’t need to know how to determine the best radio stations and time slots for your commercials. There are experts to help you with that – you find someone you trust, who DOES understand how all that works, and they’ll help you make the right decisions to make the most of your ad dollars for that particular medium.

That’s how it works with websites and Internet “stuff” too – you find an expert you can trust, who DOES understand how it works, and let them advise you on how to use your advertising budget, online. It’s okay if you don’t understand websites and the Internet and the search engines and Facebook, as long as you work with someone who does. It’s just advertising, and you do it all the time.

Better to Advertise on Google or Facebook?

Is Google dead, now that Facebook gets so much traffic? I loved the answer in a recent blog post on AttorneySync.com. Author Jeff Berman makes very good points about the importance of intent and “interruption marketing”:

“People are on Facebook to be social, interact with friends, check out interesting stories, post updates, etc. People are on Google seeking information to help them answer questions, perform research, locate services, etc.”

When – and whether – Google or Facebook is more important to you when you’re seeking new business is highly dependent on that distinction.

When someone visits Facebook they’re looking to connect, to hang out, to talk to friends, to see what’s going on with the people and businesses they know and like.

When someone searches for “Columbia plumber” their intent is quite different – they’re not looking to chat, they’ve got a toilet that’s leaking or need plumbing installed, and want to find a reputable plumber.

In my opinion, putting your website or ad or offer in front of your prospect THEN – when they’re actively looking for your product or service – is what’s going to give you the greatest ROI. Search engine optimization (SEO) – the art of making your website easy to find in Google – is a good way to make sure people find you when they’re looking.

Yes, Facebook offers ads, and because of the demographic information Facebook collects, you can really target your offers/ads. Some businesses do very well with this approach. But as Berman also points out:

“In my mind, this makes Facebook a more targeted version of television-style advertising. You are blasting out your message to a certain demographic of users (or viewers in the case of television advertising) in the hopes that you catch a certain number of them at just the right time.

The advertising is interruption marketing. You are “interrupting” the users from their socializing in order to present them with your offer. They were not actively seeking it out at the time. The result is that many, many more people need to see your message at just the right time in order for you to convert those people into new clients. “

I couldn’t have said it better, myself! There are certainly sound reasons to add social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to your marketing mix.

But as Berman asserts “… doing so at the expense of marketing dollars devoted to the search channel would be a mistake.”