Successful Web Design and Internet Marketing Strategies from Desiree Scales, CEO--Bella Web Design, Inc.

Does Your Website Educate or Frustrate?

There are many types of sites out there: ecommerce, web brochure, informational, data. The ones that bring business to their owners are ultimately the sites that educate their audience.

So ask yourself, are you educating your audience? Five signs of a good educational website:

1. Articles that are updated weekly about recent developments in your industry and/or business


2. A list of links or resources which are updated regularly which help your customers understand your/their business


3. Link to your blog or some other pages which discuss new techniques, news, inventions or anything that can help your customers gain knowledge about your/their business


4. Informational whitepapers or essays of how you helped other customers and have good testimony of how you came up with solutions to common problems for your customers

If you're not doing any of these, start on at least one this month, then slowly move into the others. Customers can get frustrated with a lot of fluff. They don't have time for it.

Education is information which is currency in today's business market. Enpowering customers enpowers your business.

Ready for Social Media?

Our friends (and fellow web developers) at Flyte Media in Maine were interviewed and posted a great video about "social media." Social media means taking the news to the people from the people. "We" create the media and spread the information ourselves. This has great possibilities for business use because it gives businesses another platform to become "experts in their field" and share knowledge easily with others. Take a look at the video of Rich Brooks being interviewed and talking about social media. Click here.

Watch for our Social Media Webinar coming in 2008! Click here for more information about how to make webinars part of your company's online marketing success plan.

Does Your "Long Tail" Wag Your Business?

I'm having so much fun with my guest bloggers, I thought I'd invite Barbara Moss to join us this week!

Barbara Moss, Senior Account Manager at What a Concept!

For the past few decades, Barbara Moss has been a technical evangelist connecting people with the tools that enhance collaboration efforts and streamline processes (starting with dual floppy PCs in the early 1980s!). Her roles have spanned across the spectrum from developer, trainer and recruiter to manager/director, project manager, and sales. Her industry experience includes insurance, banking, software, retail and health care/bio tech.  As a Sr. Account Manager with What a Concept!, she currently helps organizations understand how to implement Web 2.0 interactive technologies into their business practices.

“The Long Tail” and Small Business

I have been reading The Long Tail, Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine.  The basic premise of the book is that businesses with strong distribution power (i.e., online stores) can sell a greater total volume of otherwise hard-to-find items in small amounts than they can sell of popular items in large amounts (see graph below).  This situation has evolved because traditional brick and mortar stores don’t have the physical space to carry the depth of inventory that online retailers can carry, especially when the inventory is electronic or can be produced on-demand, such as publishing on-demand.  Unfortunately, the book restricts long tail theory to large businesses.

The yellow area under this graph represents the Long Tail

So, does the long tail theory apply to small, niche online stores?   If so, how can online retailers apply the theory? 

The answer to the first question is YES.  Thanks to the Long Tail economics made possible by major online retailers, a large number of online consumers now expects and searches for an ever increasing array of “obscure,” niche products.  Smaller online retailers who are also smart can reap the benefits of the path their larger counterparts have laid.

Here are several simple things small online retailers can do to expand their reach to online consumers:

1. Search Engine Optimization: a lot has been said about this subject because it can’t be stressed enough.  Ensure that your website is designed with SEO in mind and revise it as necessary to keep current.  Did you know that the more you talk and are talked about on the web, the higher your SEO rating?  The recommendations below are other ways to increase SEO ratings.
2. Blog: get out there and talk about your passion as it relates to your product.  Have your own blog and comment on other people’s blogs.  Be willing to share ideas and help others.   Don’t make your blog an advertisement - people want to hear about you and your expertise, not be sold to.
3. Post videos on YouTube and pictures on Flickr:  Again, share information, don’t sell.
4. Participate in online communities: Almost all niche markets have at least one community.  Get involved!  Communities like FaceBook and MySpace have all kinds of niche groups – join these as well.
5. Meta Tags: Tagging is a way to categorize web pages and blog posts.  Since any entry can have multiple tags, use as many tags as needed to reach your relevant audience.  Tagging is another way to increase SEO.

Don’t forget, your customers are your best advertising.  Solicit and use satisfied customer comments wherever possible.  Find out if they’re hanging out on the web in places that relate to your business and join them there. 

It’s time to let your long tail WAG THE DOG!

How to Write Good Web Content

This week I'd like to introduce another member of our team, our writer in residence--Sallie Boyles! Sallie has been assisting us with writing our client's web copy for 2 years. Clients love when she steps in to help. We hired her because we saw that most people froze up when asked to send us their copy for their site and caused some serious delays in the progress of their projects. Sallie has now cut the project times in half and has become a very important part of the Bella Web Design team. She is this week's guest blogger. Enjoy her article on "STOP-Wise Words for the Web."

STOP—Wise Words for the Web
By Sallie W. Boyles 

What happened to the days of “build a website and they will come”? It seems that era ended when “we don’t have a website” was no longer quaint. Today, your Web business must not only look highly professional, but it must also communicate effectively. If you want to attract prospects as well as convert them to clients, remember: Good looks will take you only so far. 

Rapidly changing technology, savvy Internet users, and stiff competition demand that our online verbal communications evolve as well. Therefore, as we race to keep pace, let’s consider the acronym STOP:

1. Search Engine Optimization: In order for your prospects to find you, your website better be a headliner among countless competitors. Using the right keywords and phrases in your content is a starting point.

  Does your language accurately define your reason for being?

2. Target the Market: You cannot be all things to all people. The longtime reminder is worth repeating when we see the world and want it all.

Can you effectively appeal to people in Toronto, Tennessee and Timbuktu?

3. One -Two Punch: Get to your point quickly in as few as words as possible.

  How hard are prospects willing to search for the punch line?

4. Point of Difference: Hook them by sharing your unique benefits. Your staff photographer speaks six languages. Your auto mechanic services race cars. 

What extra advantages will customers gain when they choose to do business with your company? 

Though not rocket science, effective Web writing is a skill. If you’re going to take your presence online, make every word count... 

Be Consistent When Marketing Your Brand

We're going to try something different this week. I'd like to welcome our guest blogger Russell Fair--our new Sales Manager. Russell has quite a bit of web development and sales experience and he will be contributing once in a while to the Bella Blog as a guest blogger. I hope you enjoy his first blog post!

Although it seems obvious, I am still surprised when I see inconsistent branding between a company's web site and their non-web marketing efforts such as printed materials and TV commercials. This happens for different reasons I am sure, but primarily, I have observed, it is just because people do not think that it was important to match the online and offline marketing "look and feel." When these inconsistencies are minor, they can slide, but when they are obviously different, the company loses a lot of validity and might even lose potential customers. Companies don't always realize how much it can hurt their business when their customers have an inconsistent experience with the company's branding.

One of my long time friends and business associates had this problem. The majority of his website had a light blue and white theme, the sign outside his company was navy with silver letters, and his printed materials were black ink on ivory parchment. I knew that his customers were getting an inconsistent experience and thus he was most certainly losing business or at least not impressing some folks because of it. His branding message was weak. Once he decided to ensure all materials matched, his business started to pick up. He also gained more confidence in his company's brand which spilled over to his presentations.

I myself have picked up a business card (often without a web address) and go in search of that company. I enter the company name into my favorite search engine and hit the first link. When I get to the website, it is the right company name, but it just does not look like the right place; the colors are different, the logo is different, the fonts, phone number, even the slogan is different. It can be a little disconcerting. So I try a couple other sites. I can't find the one that looks right so I buy my widget from the third or fourth site I visit. Oh, not to mention I threw away the business card, because the information on it was not relevant to me anymore.

When people see different styles and themes they get confused and often are deterred from sending their business your way. When getting a new website, I strongly advise my customers to phase out their old marketing materials and replace them with newer, fresher content which match the new look and feel of the website so their customers get a clear and consistent experience. If these efforts are arranged correctly, they add a lot of validity to your company. That almost always translates to more customers. If you would like more information about how to align your marketing materials to give a consistent experience to your customers please feel free to contact us at 770 509 8797. We can review your current materials, make suggestions and help implement the changes. We look forward to hearing from you!

 

Top Online Advertising Strategies in 2006

I just got my latest issue (June 2007) of Entrepreneur Magazine and saw a poll from U.S. marketing gurus who were asked their best and worst performing strategies in 2006. Here are the results:

Best:
1. Paid Search Ads  49%
2. Email-House List  47%
3. Search Engine Optimization  45%

Worst:
1. Email--rented list 56%
2. Pop-up and pop-under ads  45%
3. Ads in email newsletters 47%

What's interesting about this list is how predominant search engines are, both in paid and organic listings. I have a feeling that Search Engine Optimization would be number 1 on the list if there were more companies who could actually do a good job at it. This would then push paid listings down the list a bit. A combination of the two might be more of an accurate picture of what's really going on.

Email marketing comes in second which is no surprise. What better customers to sell to than people that are already buying your products and/or services?

I don't think any of us are shocked that pop-up ads, pop-under ads and rented lists are part of the "worst" category. These are all very annoying for us all and should be banned along with banner ads and other advertising junk.

I'm still surprised at the majority of my clients who aren't taking advantage of both email marketing and search engine submission. I really don't understand how you can compete without doing at least one or the other. If any of them know a secret I'm not privvy to about marketing offline, let me know. I'll be the first to try it out!

Why Your Email Address is a Powerful Marketing Tool

"A new study finds that electronic resumes linked to job candidates with quirky and “unprofessional” e-mail names are rated lower by potential employers than those with professional names."  --article here.

Did you know the same thing applies for your business email as well? Let's see, would you put more trust in a business who's CEO has an @gmail, @yahoo or @aol address or one with @acmecompany.com address? On the other hand, would you sincerely open an email from an address like rockinceo@acmecompany.com? I highly doubt it.

In this age of technology and spam, people are judging you based on your email address every time you send an email. Your email address and your domain name say a lot about your company and how its run. Cutting corners with a freebie email address isn't a way to impress future customers. It also isn't a way to get people to your site. (Did you know that most people who receive an email from a company they haven't heard of or aren't very familiar with will go to that company's website based on the address in the email? For good sakes people, FREE ADVERTISING!)

We recommend to all of our customers they use their company email address for correspondence and not to just forward their email to their Yahoo or AOL account. They forget that when they forward their email and then hit reply. The return email will have the @aol.com address and not the company address.

If you have company website addresses, USE THEM! Learn how to set them up in Outlook, Outlook Express or your web hosting company webmail program. After all, people are judging you and your company every time you write an email.

By the way, you can always email me here at desiree@bellawebdesign.com  Ahhhh, see how nice that sounds? Now go check out my website!

Education Based Marketing

Education Based Marketing (EBM) is a concept that I, personally, have built my business on.

When I started my business back in 1998, I had to actually talk people into getting websites. Not many people understood the power of the Internet and how it could be used to sell people on their services/products. It was a very, very scary place.

My first experience with EBM came when I was invited to speak to a group of Realtors at RE/MAX Greater Atlanta. I walked into a room of about 30 people and walked out with 15 new clients. The reason is because I went there to educate people about how the web worked, not to sell websites. Ok, that's totally not true, but I honestly didn't give one sales pitch during the entire hour I spoke and this is key. I never talked about selling sites until the group started to ask questions about what I did. It was pretty exciting once they started to understand how they could form a virtual presence on the Internet that helped them sell their services 24 hours a day. That one seminar jump-started my business and many of those folks are still clients of ours to this day.

There are many ways to use EBM. I'm using one now in this blog. You can also email newsletters to your clients or hold Webinars (short web-based seminars). I plan on doing more of both for my own company's marketing efforts. (I would love some ideas on topics if anyone wants to comment please!)

The most winning way to get more clients or sell more products is through education on your own website. If people can go to your site and learn something new, they will tell their friends about it and will probably come back to see what else you have to show them. That is one of the most effective ways to use EBM. I tell clients all the time to use a page on their site to educate clients about their services or something in their industry they are passionate about. A lot of my Realtor clients like to educate people about the buying or selling process for instance. A great example of this is www.atlantahometeam.com/buyerssellersinfo.html

Another example is www.southernstaircase.com/planningyourstair.htm which Southern Staircase uses to help their potential customers properly decide which staircase works best for their house.

Establishing yourself as the expert in your field without doing an obvious sales pitch is going to help you go much further in your marketing efforts faster and with much less expense. It is a concept I continue to practice and teach clients after almost 10 years in business and will continue to use until I retire. (Which, at 38, is a loooong way off people!)