What is the most important marketing tool in your proposal?

Every time I present a marketing strategy proposal, I get the question 'which one of these marketing tools is the most important?'  I know that you are not suppose to answer a question with a question - however - my response is 'what are your goals?'.  I cannot answer their question without knowing what is their most important goal for their business.  Adding new customers? Bringing back old customers? Increasing sales to existing customers? Just increase the bottom line?

I was actually asked that exact question today during a presentation today.  My answer for this particular company was a new website and SEO.  The website is the foundation to all their marketing strategies.  It has the greatest potential for generating leads and providing the most information for potential customers.  If you are an ecommerce site - then I don't have to explain that one.

I know what many of you thought when you saw SEO. I am not talking about just keyword phrases. I include inbound marketing and blogging in my SEO package. You cannot provide a successful SEO program without including inbound marketing and blogging. Call-to-actions, landing pages, links and social media are all a part of an inbound marketing plan. Blogging can increase traffic to your site by up to 50%.

Don't get me wrong - other traditional advertising, email marketing, internet marketing and traditional media can all be important components of a successful marketing plan. However, small businesses many times need to start slow and a little at a time. Know what a small businesses goals are and match the appropriate marketing strategies to their goals.

What are your goals for your business in 2011 and does your marketing plan match those goals?

Is Your Website Generating Leads?

Many SEO or internet marketing companies wow businesses by how much traffic they will bring to their website.  Great!!!  The bad news - traffic does not always mean more customers.  What are you doing to capture the traffic?  Do you have a call-to-action on the website?  What is a call-to-action?

The best way to capture leads from website traffic is to have a call-to-action on the home page an other appropriate pages.  The call-to-action must be viewed as something of value to the visitor.  There are two different types of offers for call-to-actions: 1) 'Just Shopping' and 2) 'Buyers.

'Just Shopping' are those visitors that are gathering general information on the products or services you offer.  They are not convinced to even by the product or service whether it is from you or someone else.  Offer them a whitepaper on the benefits of the product or service.  This is not to sell your product or service, this is to give the basic benefits that they offer.  You can mention some of the added benefits your product or service offers, however, this is not the main point.  General information to show them they need the product or service.

'Buyers' are those visitors that are going to purchase the products or services you offer and you need to convince them to purchase from you.  It could be an article from a third party showing your products and services are rated higher than the competition - or - it could be a live demonstration - or - a video showing the superiority of your product or service.

How do the visitors receive these offers?  Landing pages are the most effective.  When the visitor clicks on the call-to-action, it sends them to a landing page that has the following: 1) picture - related to offer; 2) general points about the offer; 3) form - to acquire visitors information prior to receiving the offer; and 4) links to all social media, blog, and email list sign-up.

Here is an example of one of my customers landing pages:



Once they submit the request for the offer - do not forget to say thank you.  You have given this visitor some valuable information to assist them in making a decision and now that visitor is a LEAD!!!

Let me know of any other ways you capture visitors to websites.  I know there are more - let's see what you got!!!

9 Ways to Create the Right Customer 'Experience'

Why do some customers spend money with you and others don’t? Why do some customers come back again and some don’t? You could really increase your profits if you could get them to spend money the first time and get them to return. Return shoppers provide a larger profit margin because you did not spend as much to get them to come back as you did to get them to purchase the first time. Here are some things to do:

Customer service is about the ‘experience’ not the sale
The customers ‘experience’ is what you are trying to create. When sales people appear uncaring and/or unhelpful you lose a lot of potential sales. Create a company policy on interacting with each and every customer that comes in the store. For ecommerce, interact with live chat, FAQ’s and follow up from visiting the site. Also have strategies to prevent communication breakdowns with customer and how to settle customer disputes.

Shopper Education
The general public has become much more savy in shopping these days. They will search online for the best price and customer reviews. You must provide information in the store as well as online for today’s shoppers. If they can find more information about another product, there is a greater chance you will lose the sale. In store and online you can provide fact sheets, video, publications and reviews.

Male vs Female
Women account for 60% - 80% of buying decisions in today’s market. Understanding how men and women shop is a must. Many industries have not embraced the fact that the majority of the buying decisions are made by women. Your store set-up and website design should appeal more to women – don’t ignore the men – but remember 60-80%!

Create an atmosphere to maximize potential
Customers will spend more money the longer they are in your store or on your website. In store – create an area for men and women to sit and relax – provide coffee or water – use video to educate and entertain. Online – design an entertaining and educational experience that will draw them to different products. Remember – relaxing, fresh, visually stimulating and of course clean.

Available and Open
It is a must to be available and open to customers. Not just being in the store – be with the customer assisting them in their shopping ‘experience’. Online – make it very easy and obvious how to connect with a live person via chat or phone. This will lead to increased sales and increased return purchases. Remember – the experience is more important than the sale.

Layout/Design to increase sales
Know where to put what merchandise in your store and have related products on the page for your ecommerce store. Place the sale items in a store in the middle to back of the store with visible signage to attract the customer. Online – always have related sale items on the page.

Create an environment that expresses emotion and product related
Your in store environment should be one that causes the customer to react emotionally. Appeal to the target market. The look and features of your website should do the same. If you sale sporting goods – create a competitive atmosphere with action photos of popular athletes and sport video games. This will maximize your sales and create enthusiastic customers.

Show your trust and ethical business
A study (www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog) has shown that saying “trust us” will increase the customer’s perception of fair price, caring, fair treatment, quality and competency in your business. Create an atmosphere and reputation of high morals and ethics will attract consumers. Display in your store and online any involvement in community and charitable organizations.

Create an environment for feedback
Ask for your customers opinion. You will build a larger loyal customer base by asking and implementing ideas from your customers. You don’t know what they want or if they had a ‘great experience’ unless you ask.

You may not think these topics are related to marketing – I strongly disagree – anything that is related to increasing leads or sales is marketing. Customer service is marketing and the ‘experience’ you create for your customer will make or break your business.

Is Your SEO really working?

How do you measure if your SEO is working? Even better, how do you justify the money you are spending on SEO? There are alot of statistics you can gather to show the activity on your website. Visits and clicks are the most common. There are others, however, those are the two most commonly talked about.

I come in contact with many businesses that tell me that they are really excited about their SEO and what it is doing. The first thing they say is "wow, traffic on my website has really increased". Traffic? What is traffic? You might as well say "alot of people have seen my website". Does that really equal success? NO!!!

You can have a billboard on the side of a road that gets thousands of cars drive by every day. The problem is that you are selling vitamins for individuals over 65 and the billboard is placed in front of a high school. Wrong audience!

Is the traffic on your website the right audience - target market? If you are getting the correct target market to visit your website it will create leads. That means you get information on individuals that visit your website or they will contact you (phone or email) based on the information on the website.

From these leads, you get customers that actually purchase from you. NOW that is a statistic that everyone understands. That is the number used to determine ROI, not traffic.

Okay, you say increased traffic equals leads which equals sales. Prove it!! Track how many leads and sales you get from your SEO and not just traffic. How do you do that? There are very highly technical ways to do it that are automated and there is the old fashion way - ASK the potential customer how they found you.

3 Important Points in Website Design

When designing a website there are 3 things that you must decide before starting. If you start the process of designing before determining the answers to these three questions - you will waste alot of time and money. These issues are the foundation of the website.

A couple of things to remember - Your website is the center of all your marketing arms. Every marketing tool you have should direct the customer to your website. Consistency in presenting your brand is a major key to effective advertising. Visually all of your advertising and marketing should have some consistency with your website.

With those points out of the way - here are the 3 questions to answer.

1. Are you selling or answering? What I mean is are you a B2C or a B2B business? B2C will sell their products and services to their customers. Many times having an ecommerce site is a large part of the revenues. Presenting all of the products with descriptions and prices gives the customer the ability to make the decision online. B2B will provide the solutions to the customers problems. You are not selling a product or service you are selling a solution. Present the information in a way to answer the customers questions that solve their problems. They are not looking for a particular product or service - they are looking for a solution to their need.

Here is a good B2B website:

2. Layout - text vs graphic? Everyone wants pictures and video on their website. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it depends on your industry and who is your target market. The younger the target market the more likely video will be effective. If you have an ecommerce site then you must have pictures of the products and video can enhance the customers experience and will increase the chance of the customer purchasing. For B2B a video can be used to introduce the company and the individuals that work at the company. Remember - text is king in search engine optimization. You can optimize the pictures and videos with tags for SEO.

3. Color scheme? This should be the easiest one to answer unless you are completely re-branding your business. Consistency with color is one of the rules for branding. So when choosing a color scheme you must think about all the possible marketing mediums you will use and if the colors work with print, video, billboard, email, blog, etc. You do not have to come up with a color scheme that is unique. There are reasons some color schemes are popular. The color of the text on the background must be easy to read!!

These 3 questions are only the beginning of the process of designing a website. Once you have answered these - you are just getting started. However, you just made the process easier and more cost effective.

Take a look at some of the websites our designers have developed. http://www.davismarketingpros.com/portfolio/websites.php