May Marketing Madness Content Week, Post #21

It’s not personal, it’s business…but sometimes it helps when you give your website a bit of that personal touch. Chances are, your customers don’t have time to get to know who you are and what your business does. So, you really have to tell them. Included in your website content should be a generous section highlighting key facts, figures, and maybe even some friendly faces customers should know about your business.

Keep it “About Them”

Here are some About You suggestions that makes your website more About Them (them = your visitors).

About Us

How old your business is, how your business got started, and what exactly your business does all offer customers a bit of background knowledge and a frame of reference. Got any mentions or awards? Include those as well. The more useful info customers know about your business, the more willing they’ll be to share their own.

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May Marketing Madness Content Week, Post #20

You know your business, what you do and the message/products you sell. That’s why it’s often too easy to get caught up in your own internal company terminology and tech lingo. However, visitors to your website or blog you wish to attract might not know what you’re trying to say. Therefore, the language and style of your content should be understood on a universal level. So take some time to step back and observe your business with a fresh pair of eyes, from the outside looking in.

Metaphors and Images

Without getting too poetic on you, put yourself in the shoes of your visitors. What messaging are they used to hearing? What do they expect to see? And what would give them that wow factor? Studying your competitors’ lingo never hurts. You can see what you like, what you don’t, what customers respond to and what they ignore. If your content is getting good hits and generous page engagement times, you’re on the right track.

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May Marketing Madness Content Week, Post #19

By Adam Greco

Senior Partner, Web Analytics Demystified

While every business hopes people read everything in glorious detail on their website, the truth is that in today’s busy world of 140 characters, people skim content. It is the reason CNN puts bullets at the top of its articles because it knows people are too lazy to read the entire thing!

I can illustrate the skimming effect in a fun story…As a frequent blogger, I often write pages of (what I think) is super-useful information. I spend time thinking about the content, come up with good examples and do my best to structure it in a way that makes sense to the reader. The same is true for any website content. However, I never really knew how people consume my content. Using web analytics I could see which blog posts were more popular than others and look at time spent on the page for an indication of interest. I thought I was pretty good.

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May Marketing Madness Content Week, Post #18

Links are a wonderful way to supply additional data and improve SEO for your online business. However, if you are not careful, they can also be incredibly distracting. Trying to give visitors all necessary links he/she needs to make a purchase is a great customer experience strategy in some cases, but it’s important to think about your visitors and their cognitive capabilities.

Some Food For Thought

Upon arrival to each page, the visitor is required to process all engagement options the page offers. These include clicking on menu links, buttons, in-text links, etc. Each additional link adds more to the cognitive process. In addition, since clicking links is a standard behavior and offers no risk (unlike clicking a form submit CTA), the chance of a customer clicking a link which takes him/her outside the path to conversion can be high, TOO high.

While optimizing internal links on your site as part of your customer experience strategy, take into consideration your industry, product and marketing channels.

SEO

Sometimes marketers overdo their internal linking for SEO keywords on other pages of their website. Don’t forget your visitors are human, and therefore might be confused and overloaded by the options presented to them. So, keep your keyword links to a minimum.

Ecommerce

Think about the checkout counter in a brick and mortar store. How would you react if the cashier offered you the chance to go back to the store’s entrance to double check products you’re about to buy? Would you get out of line and really go check? Links on your checkout page make this decision way too easy, and many customers have no problem leaving and never coming back to make a purchase.

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May Marketing Madness Content Week, Post #17

By Naomi Goldberg

Your website is the public face of your business. Just as you wouldn’t dream of going into an important work meeting with a stain on your shirt, you shouldn’t dream of presenting your web content with grammatical and spelling errors.

Sound simple? You would think so, but these unprofessional faux pas seem to plague big and small companies alike. So how can you avoid errors in your web content?

Avoiding web content errors

Here are my top tips:

1. Use a native English speaker to write your web content.

The internet has created a world without borders, and a small business website in one corner of the world could be utilized by someone thousands of miles away. Over 25% of internet users are native English language speakers and 42% of all websites are in English. So if you don’t have the English writing skills to get your content right, get a native English speaker to write it for you.

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May Marketing Madness Content Week, Post #16

Visuals are powerful and can often communicate a message much faster than words.

Visuals are vital for online businesses. We need to wow, reassure, and make our sales without the “in-store advantage”. So, in order to make up for the products/services visitors can’t touch, test, try on, or sample, we need to offer significant qualitative data on our websites. Adding images/infographics is not a bad start.

Images and infographics, in addition to adding to aesthetic value to your site, serve multiple functions.

Reduce Text Content

While text is necessary for communicating valuable information, attractive visuals can give customers that extra push towards making a purchase, reading your blog, opening up your newsletters, and/or simply enjoying your website.

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May Marketing Madness Content Week, Post #15

Everyone sends newsletters, right? And why not, as they should be a great way to communicate with your business community. However, we all know that getting a good click-through/conversion rate from a newsletter is not easy. The risks are high – if your customers consider your newsletters to be spam, newsletters may have the exact opposite effect you hoped for.

So the question is, how do you create great newsletters? Newsletters that convert…newsletters that your community wants to read and enjoy…The kind that will get your community excited about, and involved and engaged with your product?

Here are 3 tips, taken directly from my inbox – from the newsletters I really enjoy receiving.

1. Make the Title Appealing

Writing a title to your newsletter is an art form. Many of your readers will glance at the title for a fraction of a second and use it to decide whether to open the newsletter or just delete it. Therefore,the title needs to fit your product and your community. The title can be provocative, or tempting, to create a question or a sense of agreement, and most importantly – the body of the newsletter needs to match the title. Don’t make promises in the title that you do not keep inside the newsletter itself.

It may be worthwhile to test a few titles, and see which one is performing better. The title is important, I think that is already clear.

2. Provide Meaningful Content

The best newsletters are those that teach us something, that give added value. It can be added value directly related to your product such as an announcement of a new feature, it can be insights that are derived from your system, or it can be completely unrelated to your service.

A great example for such a newsletter was LinkedIn’s newsletter at the end of 2010. They used their knowledge of your specific professional network, and what each of the members of your network did in the past year. The newsletter displayed a list of your contacts that had changed jobs in the past year. It was informative, derived directly from the product, and it was even presented beautifully… see tip no. 3.

Some of our favorite newsletters are just beautiful. Jetsetter does a great job at providing meaningful content subscribers want to read.

3. Make It Beautiful

Some of our favorite newsletters are just beautiful. In effect, that is another way of providing meaningful content. Some newsletters are just so beautiful, that they make you want to open them, just to see what visual treats are waiting for you this week.

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May Marketing Madness Online Strategy Week, Post #14

What are the advantages of a really good tagline? Good press, good way for customers to remember your name, great way to facilitate business branding.

Alright, so what qualifies as a good tagline and how do you create one?

While some business professionals attribute their taglines to magical moments of genius, there are some guidelines out there to help you out. When going about composing or recreating your own tagline, here are some pointers you may want to keep in mind.

Got milk? A catchy tagline, now part of cultural mainstream.

Bring Out the Best

What are the benefits of your company? Use adjectives that you want to define your business. For example, if you are an insurance business, customers want you to be trustworthy, secure, patient, reasonable, etc…your tagline should make them feel this way about you.

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May Marketing Madness Online Strategy Week, Post #13

When making changes to your own website it always pays to check out the competition. By identifying who your main competitors are, and recognizing their strengths and weaknesses, you can target your own customer base more effectively.

First Step: Identify your competition

When identifying your major competitors, don’t only focus on companies and websites that produce a similar product to you, but on any website that targets the same audience. For example, online gaming websites should not only check out the big websites in the industry, but should also take some time to look at other entertainment, forex or day-trading sites. Use tools like Alexa to find out what other sites your visitors go to, and make sure you take them all into consideration.

Healthy competition never hurts anyone.

Step 2: Check out competing websites

Once you’ve identified your top competitors, take a thorough look at each of their websites, noting each segment of their site in a comprehensive table. Do they have a blog which highlights their product? How about a news section, keeping their customers up to date with what the company is up to? What methods do they offer to get in contact? Are they pushing any social media or other external links on their homepage, and which of these links could work for you? Finally, ALWAYS read through competitors FAQs, because you can guarantee your customers are asking exactly the same questions.

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By Anne Scharlow, Head of Conversion, Clickthinking

May Marketing Madness Online Strategy Week, Post #12

Your Corporate Identity (CI) creates the general perception of your brand and how it is positioned within the market. It can also go a long way in differentiating you from your competitors.Although a logo is a quintessential representation, it is not the only component of your brand’s image. Your product, people, consistent quality and a true understanding of your target market should be reflected in every aspect of a business and at every point of contact. However, theory is only one side; implementation is where it gets tricky.

Experiences With Digital

Simply put, we’ve found that even large global brands have not yet recognized digital as a fully established marketing channel and thus CI guidelines are either not in place, not readily accessible to digital agencies, or simply too strict to be followed in the digital environment. Read More »