Crumbs from the Scone
So this has been something that has occupied a unique space in my mind for quite some time. I have spoken with so many clients who ring me and ask to if I can help them get their business “found” on the internet in a less expensive way. My first response (being curious as to what they are paying for) is “what are you doing now?” They tell me they are with “the phone company” or the “yellow pages people” and that they are paying hundreds of dollars a month for their “Search Engine Optimization” and/or “Search Engine Marketing” (I promise not to use so many quotes for the rest of the post… honest!).
When asked if any new business is coming in, some say yes (a bit) but almost all of the people I have spoken with have mentioned that they do not feel as though the ROI (Return On Investment) is worth it.
Recently I have had a couple of perspective clients ask my opinion flat-out as to whether or not they should sign up for one of these accounts. Now, in the past I have given the anecdotal evidence and let the client make their own decisions. But lately, in an effort to better serve my clients, to educate them with more specific information and to also enlighten myself as to the current state of affairs, I decided to spend some time nosing around forums and such to get a better idea of what the dominant outlook is on the whole “yellow pages as a marketing/SEO tool” issue (see… only one set of quotes in that paragraph!)
Here are some samples of what I have found:
From an article on the Site Revamp Blog:
“If you have ever talked with a salesperson from your local Yellow Pages company, you can feel how desperate the industry is. In the old days when most consumers relied on the Yellow Pages for business information, every company had to have a presence in the Yellow Pages. The way to gain dominance on the Yellow pages is to print larger, more colorful ads. In most locations, businesses pay at least $5,000 per month for a half-page ad, and $10,000 per month for a full-page ad. That is $60,000 – $120,000 a year!
As search engines like Google and Yahoo become the place for people to search for products, services and information, smart businesses are investing their money into search engine optimization to make their web sites more visible to searchers. When it comes to the cost, SEO costs only a fraction of that of the Yellow Pages advertisement. Unlike the Yellow Pages that charges a fixed price over 12 months regardless of the results, SEO can be very scalable. You can increase or decrease your SEO spending based on your business cycle, seasonal cycle and search marketing results. The SEO cost can be varied based on the business’ needs. Even spending $5,000 on a one-time search engine optimization service can produce great, long-lasting results.
If you are a business owner and you are skeptical about the effectiveness of SEO, here is a question you should ask: if SEO doesn’t work, why are your competitors doing it? Based on the experience of our clients, those who used to advertise on the Yellow Pages had all stopped after they started with our SEO service. In terms of the return on investment, SEO outperforms the Yellow Pages by 5-10 times.”
A quote from the Wall Street Journal (November 17, 2008):
“The yellow-pages industry is running out of lifelines. In recent years, as its customers migrated to the Web – flocking to sites like Google – the telephone-directory business followed, hoping the Internet would be its salvation.
But that strategy hasn’t panned out. Now, the economic downturn is sending the already ailing business into a tailspin.
The audience for online yellow pages remains relatively small, and traffic growth is slowing. So many directory services are vying for the ad dollars of local businesses that no single site has an authoritative roster.
Meanwhile, ad dollars are drying up as small businesses – the industry’s bread and butter – find it harder to pay bills or have cut their spending sharply.”
And an article on the Switchfast website: (september 4th, 2009)
“Yellow Page usage amongst people in their, say below 50, will drop to near zero over the next five years.” – Bill Gates (Seattle Times, 2007)
There was a time when the phone book, specifically the “yellow pages,” was the premiere directory listing for businesses. Thanks to the world-changing advent of the internet, this is no longer the case. Over the past decade, usage of the traditional and online versions of the yellow pages has declined sharply, showing no signs of a comeback. But how are people finding businesses if they aren’t using the yellow pages? The answer is internet search.
According to an annual study by ComScore, yellow pages usage dropped 3% from 2007 to 2008 alone, a number that’s very substantial considering usage already dropped 6.8% in 2006. In fact, 2008 marks the first year that internet search has eclipsed all forms of the yellow pages in usage, claiming a massive 31% of all local business search queries and trending upward.
Predictably, this is bad news for the future of the yellow pages. Wachovia expects print and online ad spending on yellow pages to decline 6.3% next year, and a devastating 39% over the next four years. If the trend continues, the yellow pages won’t be around much longer at all. Search engine marketing spending, on the other hand, is expected to continue growing from 17.7% of budgets to 20.3% over the next five years, reaching $23.4 billion by 2013, according to eMarketer.
All this, and the average national cost of a half page ad in the yellow pages remains $17,100, a figure that increases greatly in larger markets. By comparison, search engine optimization (SEO) pricing varies greatly depending upon your business’s size and industry, but the cost to get started in most situations is a fraction of $17,100.
So if you haven’t already, it’s probably time to move the yellow pages budget somewhere else – like SEO.
And if you want something more substantial than articles or blog entries there are many sites like SearchEngineLand and SEOMOZ who provide actual trending data.
In my marginally humble opinion the cost for the “Yellow Pages” solutions far outweighs any substantial benefit to online marketing and/or SEO. Especially considering the rise in relevance of social media assets and online reputation building. Yes, proper SEO and SEM techniques and campaigns cost money however, as the title of this post says, my bottom line is that the “smart money” (could not resist one more set of quotes) will be spent on more direct, measurable and uniquely customized SEO techniques and not on blanket one-size-fits-all yellow page based solutions.
Take care,
Skip
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When used improperly, email personalization can go horribly wrong, writes Dutch Hollis at Chief Marketer. “You could, for instance, thank the wrong person for a purchase or misspell a customer’s name,” he explains. “Mistakes like these leave the customer with a bad impression of your brand—quite the opposite of the reason you chose to customize your digital communications to begin with.”
To help you avoid any personalization faux pas and keep your recipients smiling, Hollis offers recommendations like these:
Use your preference center to ask subscribers how they like to be addressed. There’s almost nothing less personal than getting someone’s name wrong, Hollis notes. “I have a friend named William who goes by Bill,” he explains. “When he receives an email that greets him with ‘Dear William’ or ‘Dear Will,’ he knows right away that the sender doesn’t know him well.”
Make sure your list is squeaky clean. “The customer information stored in your database is what will appear in the email,” Hollis reminds us. “If a customer’s name is misspelled or just a first initial is provided, that is what they’ll see.” He suggests a second segment that inserts salutations like “Dear Friend” or “Dear Valued Customer” for subscribers whose given names remain in doubt—but also cautions that this generic solution could highlight the weakness in your data.
Don’t use a subscriber’s name more than once or twice in each message. When you make repeated use of a name—say, at the beginning of several sentences—it starts to look forced and unnatural.
Don’t fake it. The whole point of personalization is to connect with your customers in a meaningful way. Do whatever it takes to ensure that the effort appears—and is—sincere.
Source: Chief Marketer.
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“At least once every day I consider replacing myself with a ‘real’ CEO,” writes Ian Lurie at Conversation Marketing. “Then I could just be the nerd in the cave, writing and programming and SERPing and such.” But—like many entrepreneurs who love their business passionately—Lurie never follows through on the threat.
And he maintains his sanity by following rules like these:
Brace yourself for unexpected trials and tribulations. The top job comes with more headaches than the normal stress of making payroll or dealing with irate customers. In Lurie’s case, unexpected snafus have included “busted air conditioning pouring water into your office, the fired client driving down from Canada to accost you in your office, and of course the loss of phone service for five days.”
Hire people who fit in with the rest of your team. “If you hire for skills, you get someone who can do the necessary work right away,” he says. “Hire for smarts and you get someone who can learn a lot. Hire for chemistry, though, and you get someone who meshes your team, does a fantastic job in the long term and will probably be smart and skillful.”
Make your physical and emotional wellbeing a priority. When you’re in charge of a small business, it’s easy to work an insane number of hours, seven days a week. Because of that, notes Lurie, it’s important to create manageable routines in a comfortable workspace. “Your personality drives your company,” he says. “If you start to fall apart, your company will, too.”
No one said running your own business was easy—but the right approach can make it much less difficult.
Source: Conversation Marketing.
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If you say “this is she” rather than “this is her,” or “it must have been they” rather than “it must have been them,” your high school English teacher would give you a gold star. But your customers? Not so much. The reason: Most people often don’t use traditional grammatical rules in conversation, so you run the risk of sounding stilted—or even wrong—if you always stick to those rules.
That’s why you might need to fudge some rules when you communicate with customers, whether on the phone or in your marketing copy. “I will confess that I sometimes make the technically wrong but conversationally right choice under these circumstances,” writes Julia Rubiner at Editorial Emergency. “Because sometimes, the technically right choice—’It is I,’ for instance, instead of ‘It’s me’— makes you sound like the Scarlet Pimpernel.”
If you’re nervous about using incorrect grammar, Rubiner cites feedback like this from Grammar Girl’s Mignon Fogarty: “Most … grammarians agree that unless you’re answering the phone for the English department at the University of Chicago or responding to a Supreme Court judge, it’s OK to use what sounds right rather than what’s grammatically correct.
Like it or not, language is in flux. And while it can be downright painful for grammarians, going with the conversational flow might be what it takes to connect with your customers.
“I can only conclude,” says Rubiner, “that there’s nothing wrong with being right. It’s just that sometimes, in life as in branding, it’s better to be unstuffy than right.”
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In a post at his Marketing Minute blog, Drew McLellan talks about the frustration he felt every time he made deposits at his bank. “Like most bank drive-throughs,” he says, “they have a commercial lane on the far left and then several ‘everybody and anybody’ lanes to the right of that.” The commercial lane at this branch, however, has a few impediments; it curves to the right and is hemmed in by large poles that keep cars from running into the building.
“I [could] never get quite close enough to the drawer (even when … fully extended) to comfortably put something in it or take out my receipt,” he explains. “More than once on a windy day, the receipt … fluttered off and I [had] had to chase it through their parking lot.” As a result, he dreaded the banking experience.
Then McLellan had an epiphany. “[I]t occurred to me that I didn’t need to use the commercial lane,” he says. “I could use any of the drive-through lanes [that] are straight and utilize the tube/chute thing rather than a drawer with a paperweight in it.”
Banking from the regular lane couldn’t have been more pleasant, and he realized why he hadn’t thought to try it before: He was a commercial customer and went where the sign told commercial customers to go. “Human beings, even incorrigible ones, typically do as they’re told,” he explains. “We are all, even me, rule followers by nature. We want to get it right.”
If you tell customers what you want them to do, they will probably follow your instructions—just make sure it leads to an experience they’ll enjoy!
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“The recession has caused lots of companies to panic,” writes Laura Ries at Ries’ Pieces. “And when companies panic, they print coupons and throw up sale signs. Look in your mailbox, your email inbox or your newspaper and you will see what I mean. Everybody is having a sale.”
There’s only one problem, she argues: Though deep discounting works in the short term, it causes long-term damage to your brand. This is why:
For some companies, the culture of discounting has spiraled out of control. “Try checking out of one of these stores without using a coupon and even the sales clerk looks at you like [you’re] a pathetic loser,” she says. “Nobody pays full price here, what’s the matter with you! She may even reach down to pull out a coupon of her own to give you.”
Resisting the urge to offer coupons isn’t easy—especially when everyone seems to be doing it. But protecting your brand now will provide better overall results in the long run.
As Ries sees it, discounting creates a lose-lose situation by lowering both your customer’s opinion of your brand and your profits.
Source: Ries’ Pieces.
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I had a truly wonderful experience on Saturday…
A week or so ago, I was contacted by a new client who wanted me to produce a dvd slideshow for him. Okay, no problem there. Then I found out the slideshow was to be played at the memorial service for his recently deceased father. Well, having lost my father just a couple of years ago it occurred to me that I had an opportunity to produce something really special.
I contacted Will Hawkins at Wilco Films who is my “all-things-video-and-film” superhero and got started on the project. The client sent over the images and music that was to be used and WIll (once again!) went above and beyond anyone’s expectations with regard to the quality of the work and the design/layout concept. The project was completed ahead of schedule and the client was absolutely satisfied with the preview of the finished piece.
Not wanted to leave anything to chance, I suggested (since this was all local) that I meet the client at the restaurant where the gathering was to take place. I was told that they had all of the equipment that would be needed and I just wanted to set things up, put the dvd in place, run the presentation and make sure everything went smoothly. Then I would hand over the finished DVD to the client so he could bring it to the Saturday event and play it in the DVD player…. simple right?
You know the answer already don’t you…
We arrived at the restaurant only to find that they had a PA system but absolutely nothing in the way of TV/DVD/Projector equipment other than a portable screen. This was Tuesday… the gathering was on Saturday.
Think fast wabbit…
Okay… I new I had my laptop with a digital copy of the presentation, and I knew someone who had a projector. I had (only a few weeks earlier) helped a client setup his new Epson projector and configure it to his laptop for presentations at his local Rotary Club. I rang Dr. Bob Turcios of Advanced Eyecare Optometry and he was gracious enough to let me borrow his projector for the event. Now with only a day or so to get this all together, and since I would have to used my own laptop for this, a decision was made that I would actually attend the event and run the presentation myself so I took everything back to my office, set everything up, configured it and made sure the presentation ran smoothly.
Saturday came and I arrived at the event to find a double sized meeting room filled with people. The setup went smoothly and went it came time for the presentation, the announcer called for a champagne toast and then I hit the play button… I must admit I held my breath for a second or two, but then the presentation started and the gathered friends and family fell quiet.
The presentation itself was less than 10 minutes long although it seemed much longer. As the music and slides played I watched and listened as certain groups connected with the music and specific images. It was incredibly gratifying to know that Will and I were responsible for producing this piece that touched people in a very special way. As I stood in the back of the room I could see people react to the images and hear the comments about… “oh I remember that” and “oh that’s so-and-so”. There were some tears and some laughter, and at the end there was some applause and smiles on almost all the faces.
I packed up my equipment quietly as the speakers and presenters continued and just before I left my client came up and let me know how grateful he was that I was able to make this happen for him. I told him I was very happy to have helped make this event special for him.
Sure Will and I got paid for this project, but on occasion, there are other things that make the work that I do so much more satisfying than just getting paid. This was one of those very very special projects that I will always remember working on.
It makes me smile thinking about it even now as I write this.
Take care,
Skip
Crumbs from the Scone
Choosing a good domain name for your blog or website is vital. Why?
Because the domain name is the corner stone of your online brand.
People will link to your site using your domain, your search
engine results will contain your domain and so on.
One common mistake people make when choosing a domain, however, is
to only consider the short term. That is, they figure what their
website will look like for the next three or four months, and they
buy a domain name around that idea.
Let’s suppose that a guy loves the Corvette cars, and he decides
to start a blog on that topic. After researching for a while he
purchases the domain CorvetteCentral.com. It is a good domain,
because it is short, descriptive, it has the main keywords in it and
so on.
The blog grows healthily, but after one year it reaches a plateau.
The guy realizes that in order to make the blog grow further he
would need to start covering other sport cars, and not only the
Corvette. Guess what… too late! He is already trapped with his
domain. At this point his choices are either to keep writing about
Corvettes and accept the fact that his audience will be limited to
fans of that car, or buy a new domain and start from scratch.
I have been in that position myself, and it is not cool.
If you don’t want to get trapped by your domain, you must plan
ahead.
Ask yourself how far you can take a website with the domain you own
or are planning to purchase. What limitations does it have?
Creating niche websites is not a bad idea per se, but you must be
aware that they have limited potential. If you want to create a
business out of your website or blog, then the domain name must
not limit you to a small niche or market segment.
Going back to the example above, a better domain would be
SportsCarsCentral.com or MySportCar.com. This would allow the
person to write about Corvettes the same way, but the moment the
wanted to expand beyond that, the domain would allow it.
source: DailyBlogTips january 11th, 2011
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If you want to step up your networking activities, but you’re not quite sure how, Rohit Bhargava has some advice. “The challenge isn’t how you can find more opportunities to network,” he writes at Influential Marketing, “but how to talk about business in an unobtrusive way.” To accomplish that goal, he offers tips like these:
Hone your conversational skills. Your networking strategy will fail before it begins if no one enjoys talking with you. According to Bhargava, great conversationalists ask leading questions, listen intently to answers and add their own personal stories to the mix.
Create a distinctive nametag. Bhargava decorates his nametags with a sticker of his book’s chicken icon. “People want to know why I have that sticker there,” he says, “and it gives me a chance not just to share the story of my book, but also to talk about my philosophy of business—which is that personality matters.”
Make friends with introducers. “These are the people,” he says, “who always come to a moment in their conversations where they say something like ‘oh, you do _______? You should talk to _____.'” Introducers are more likely to provide introductions, he notes, when you’ve made a favorable impression with your conversational ability.
Respect the nature of the event. Unless you’re at a networking event—when you can dive right in—always evaluate the situation before you start talking business.
“You should feel comfortable [networking] in every situation, as long you can avoid becoming that blowhard at an event who won’t stop trying to sell his or her company at every moment,” says Bhargava.
Source: Influential Marketing.
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Heads up: The age-old “sales funnel” metaphor—consumers begin their decision-making with a large number of options in mind and narrow their choices to an eventual sale—fails to capture the shifting nature of consumer engagement in the digital age, warns David C. Edelman in a recent article at the Harvard Business Review.
As a result, many companies could be wasting precious branding dollars, Edelman contends. “What has changed is when—at what touch points—[consumers] are most open to influence, and how you can interact with them at those points,” he explains.
He cites an article in the McKinsey Quarterly that redefines the sales process in terms of the “consumer decision journey” (CDJ). Briefly, these are the steps in that journey:
Unlike in the days of the sales funnel, today’s consumers often limit their considerations at this first stage, Edelman notes.
Evaluate. At this stage, consumers seek input from peers, reviewers, retailers—and the brand and its competitors. Be there to answer questions, he advises.
Buy. Increasingly, consumers put off a purchase decision until they’re actually in a store, Edelman says. “Thus, point of purchase … is an ever more powerful touch point.”
Enjoy, advocate, bond. This is perhaps the biggest change from the sales-funnel model, Edelman contends. Post-sale behavior has taken on vastly new importance as the consumer interacts with the product and with new online touch points after a purchase.
The shift to a CDJ-driven strategy takes three steps, according to Edelman:
- Understand your consumers’ decision journey.
- Determine which touch points are priorities and how to leverage them.
- Allocate resources accordingly.
Put your money on interaction. To best serve today’s consumers, companies need to spruce up their Internet presence and encourage more consumer feedback (chats, testimonials, brand pages)—before and after a purchase.
Source: Harvard Business Review.
So this has been something that has occupied a unique space in my mind for quite some time. I have spoken with so many clients who ring me and ask to if I can help them get their business “found” on the internet in a less expensive way. My first response (being curious as to what they are paying for) is “what are you doing now?” They tell me they are with “the phone company” or the “yellow pages people” and that they are paying hundreds of dollars a month for their “Search Engine Optimization” and/or “Search Engine Marketing” (I promise not to use so many quotes for the rest of the post… honest!).
