The A-B-Cs of Digital Marketing

September 1st, 2010

   It pays to know the basics of digital marketing  

We all use digital communication and many managers become curious in how to digitally market their businesses.  Many even enjoy doing their own, if they can afford the time.

There are others who latch onto a digital marketing concept and ride it until disillusioned.   Many managers have told me their goal is “to be at the top of Google”.  That’s great, but for what and, what makes them believe they deserve to be “at the top of Google”.  Google believes the web page they feature at the top of their results pages should be the best alternative for the query. 

One manager recently told me he wanted no negative reviews on the Internet.  Nothing else mattered.  What he couldn’t grasp is that a negative review still has value.  It’s not as preferable as a positive review ( for several reasons) but, it is better than no review at all.  There is a lot of research with supporting data.

What many small to mid-sized businesses fail to realize is that digital marketing requires a coordinated effort to succeed.  Digital marketing components are integrated in varying amounts, based on data.  It sounds complicated but the best plans are as simple as A-B-C.

Managers need to consider the A-B-Cs of digital marketing.

  • Analytics – measure what you do so you know you are doing the right things.  It’s the report card for your efforts.
  • Be Found – you must help your target audience find you.
  • Convert Visitors to Prospects and Customers – landing customers is what marketing is all about

There are several tools for being found, tactics for converting visitors and data from analytics to point us in the right directions.  Sales funnels stay full.  Small to mid-sized businesses can simultaneously work with various prospects and customers throughout the sales cycle, from prospecting through post sales.  The future is now.

 Craig Ruess Craig Ruess

 

Craig Ruess’ Digital Marketing career started in 2000, marketing airline cargo services online.  Since September, 2003 Mr. Ruess has been a Digital Marketing Consultant with Sirius Business Solutions, Inc. and WSI Serious Web Solutions.  Craig partners with Kevin Dean of WSI Net Advantage to offer monthly Better Web Results Workshops for industries such as Home Improvement, Law, Auto Service and Machine and Sheet Metal Shops.

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Why Wouldn’t You Focus on “Keywords”?

July 10th, 2010

Search Engine Optimization remains the best value for marketing money

No search engine has ever bought anything but they are critical vehicles for delivering customers and shoppers to websites.

Shopping malls build parking lots and bus stops for vehicles delivering clientele.  Websites have landing pages built for delivering patrons.

If a shopping mall’s parking lots and bus stops are inhospitable, patrons stop coming.   The same is true for web pages; if they are not of a certain “quality”, search engines will not deliver visitors.

Search engines develop “quality” scores to prioritize page links displayed on search result pages.  They do this by analyzing access routes (inbound links) and focusing on keywords.  Building inbound links is difficult and a subject for another posting.  Focusing web page content around popular keywords is easy and the best practice for ranking high on search result pages.

If you were an artist and wanted to present information about your sketchings but there were more searches for the synonym “drawings”, why wouldn’t you consider using “drawings” as the keyword.  In fact, there may be good reasons for using “sketchings” instead, i.e. “drawings” is more broad, includes architectural drawings and possibly water drawings.  There will be fewer competitive pages for “sketchings and the ratio of searches per competitive page may be better.  All aspects of keywords have to be considered when developing web page content.

There are several free tools for researching keywords.  Google offers a fairily good tool as part of their AdWords service.   The best search engine optimization service will come from professionals who can help determine which keywords will work best for you.  Sirius Business offers various SEO services, including keyword determination.

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How Much Does It Cost to Acquire a Customer?

June 15th, 2010

One of the greatest competitive advantages is a lower customer acquisition cost

Do you know how much your business is spending on marketing?  If so, you can determine the marketing costs of customer acquisitions by simply dividing the money spent by the number of customers acquired.  Since many of our other business costs are exactly the same as your competitors’, having an advantage in customer acquisition costs is very beneficial.

In the past, dentists and plumbers advertised in the Yellow Pages.  If ad size, quality and salesmanship were equal, so were the costs of customer acquisition.  Everybody paid the same for ad space.  And, if two divorce lawyers had differing size ads, their costs were different but neither knew the “optimal” ad size (cost) because they didn’t have the data we have today.

 Today, effective marketing requires a mixture of marketing tactics, each supporting the other.  Plumbers use email marketing, search advertising and social media to find new customers.  Even 1-800-Dentist, a company that began with its telephone number in its name, refers more dentists online rather than via telephone today.

There are methods for achieving the lowest customer acquisition cost and they all involve determining the optimal mix of marketing efforts within a marketing budget.  It’s all about doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

A more difficult calculation to make is the cost in time to acquire customers.  This is for another discussion but assigning values for time spent in customer acquisition is critical when considering total customer acquisition costs.

Craig Ruess’ Digital Marketing career started in 2000, marketing airline cargo services online.  Since September, 2003 Mr. Ruess has been a Digital

Craig Ruess

Craig Ruess

Marketing Consultant with Sirius Business Solutions, Inc. and WSI Serious Web Solutions.  Craig partners with Kevin Dean of WSI Net Advantage to offer monthly Better Web Results Workshops for industries such as Home Improvement, Law, Auto Service and Machine and Sheet Metal Shops.

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To Whom Do I Send My Digital Marketing Message?

June 3rd, 2010

Spam Avoidance

An appointment was set with a provider of artificial turf about a month ago.  I wanted to know how much it would cost to cover parts of my yard.  There was no mention of price on their website and the company would not provide pricing over the telephone.  The only way to determine how much it might cost was to have a sales person visit.

The salesman began his presentation and I attempted stopping him, advising I was already aware of his product’s features, advantages and benefits.  The biggest piece of missing data for my considering investing in artificial turn was cost so I requested just getting a price and saving time for each of us.  Unfortunately for me, the salesman would have none of that.  I was going to get his full presentation; like it or not.

At the presentation’s conclusion, the salesman spent another 20 minutes working up a price for me.  Unfortunately for him, I was turned off to his sales process and became unwilling to buy before he ever removed the calculator from his case.

I felt spammed by the sales guy.  He was forcing information on me I did not want.  It is very similar to many newsletters and blog replies I receive.  Marketers are pushing information at me that I do not want or appreciate.  Typically, I do not want to be “sold” anything.  However, I sincerely appreciate having assistance when I “buy”.

In the past, many marketers would use resources for every possible sale.  Before the days of terrorism, my boss at a major airline said, “We want every possible customer to fly with us.”    That may have made sense because of the perishability airline seats at departure time but, if he really thought it through he would have realized that some customers have higher costs than the revenue they contribute.

Many merchants continue selling to customers where there wasn’t a good “fit”, resulting in unsatisfied customers.  Digital marketing enables us to clearly focus our messages to those who most appreciate our unique selling propositions.  Our businesses can thrive by cultivating only the “low hanging fruit” (in most cases) without imposing on those having no interest.

Digital marketing provides for far more intimacy between buyer and seller.  There are nearly no justifications remaining for bombarding uninterested audiences with marketing messages.  I’m hoping the same is true for the artificial turf industry some day.

Craig Ruess’ Digital Marketing career started in 2000, marketing airline cargo services online.  Since September, 2003 Mr. Ruess has been a Digital Marketing Consultant with Sirius Business Solutions, Inc. and WSI Serious Web Solutions.  Craig partners with Kevin Dean of WSI Net Advantage to offer monthly Better Web Results Workshops for industries such as Home Improvement, Law, Auto Service and Machine and Sheet Metal Shops

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Website, Email and Social Media Analytics

May 6th, 2010

Making optimal digital marketing tactical decisions

We’ve come a long way with digital marketing analytics.  Website traffic statistics have been available since we’ve been in business (2003) although the earliest data was fairly basic.  Today’s digital marketing analytics systems are robust, deliver information in logical and graphically appealing formats and are fairly easy for pros to customize.

We use Google Analytics for our clients and our company.  It’s free, combines website and Google AdWords analysis and has many bells and whistles.  High quality and free of charge has been a potent combination.

Our email marketing has been via Constant Contact.  Their analytics provide fine data for adjusting email marketing campaigns to find “sweet spots”.  They are trusted providers and provide true value for money for the services offered.

The new system is WSI Digital Marketing Pro.  It combines measurements for websites, email and social media enabling review of  the interrelationships.  It’s one dashboard for reviewing results for everything.

The system’s foundation is in email marketing.  It enables us to send customized emails directly to those in our database whose profiles contain triggers (birthdays, etc.) or who act to trigger an email.  This technology was available in the past but we never implemented it for ourselves.

With Digital Marketing Pro we can also send automatic, customized email to a prior recipient who navigated beyond the linked landing pages contained in the original email.  In other words, if someone receives an email and clicks through to a web page about email marketing and then follows internal navigation to pages about search engine optimization, the system automatically sets up and sends (at a predetermined time) an email about our SEO services, with an offer. 

We’re going slowly for a smooth transition and to insure the effort is well received.  There is a slight “Big Brother” element to this and we need to get it right the first time.

Craig

Craig Ruess’ Digital Marketing career started in 2000, marketing airline cargo services online.  Since September, 2003 Mr. Ruess has been a Digital Marketing Consultant with Sirius Business Solutions, Inc. and WSI Serious Web Solutions.  Craig partners with Kevin Dean of WSI Net Advantage to offer monthly Better Web Results Workshops for industries such as Home Improvement, Law, Auto Service and Machine and Sheet Metal Shops

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Posted in Digital Marketing Websites, digital marketing analytics | 8 Comments »

Website as a Receiving and Converting Tool

May 4th, 2010

Meaningful Engagement Begins on the Website

The goals for Sirius Business Solutions’ website are to receive a targeted audience and convert those for which we are a good “fit” into prospects and customers.  As digital marketing and our company morph, so does our website as our digital receiving and converting tool.  Meaningful engagement begins or flows through websites for most digital marketing.

We need 16 new web pages to enhance page relevancy for specific, popular keywords we researched.  A combination of tools was used to determine the optimum keywords for our local market.  We sought keywords that would not only drive targeted visitors to our website but also help tell our “story”.  Our target audiences are small to mid-sized enterprises who market high ticket products and services direct to consumers.  Dentists, lawyers, veterinarians, insurance companies, body shops, kitchen re-modelers and etc. fit the category.

We found a balance between keyword popularity and competition from otherweb pages. Labled links have been added to the home page and new pages are in production.  The most recent  was added today as a working model for the “look and feel” of the other 15.   Base analytics measurements were taken before launching this page.

The list of 16 keyword laden page titles was sent to a contractor in India for their advice on page creation.  They felt there were 5 pages outside their comfort zone, unless more details were available in the summary we provide.  We’ll simply produce those pages in-house and contract for 11.  The first of of our 5 was on base website analytics measurements.

The goals for these new pages are to be indexed high by search engines and to be relevant to those who seek services provided by Sirius Business.  They are intended to assist targeted visitors to “engage” with Sirius Business.  We want targeted prospects to call, email or complete our online form.  A visitor taking one of those actions is considered a conversion.  The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who become prospects.  A higher conversion rate means less cost needed to drive sufficient traffic to the website.

Websites are like receiving and converting valves in the sales funnel and the goal is to keep them open and flowing freely.

Craig Ruess

Craig Ruess’ Digital Marketing career started in 2000, marketing airline cargo services online.  Since September, 2003 Mr. Ruess has been a Digital Marketing Consultant with Sirius Business Solutions, Inc. and WSI Serious Web Solutions.  Craig partners with Kevin Dean of WSI Net Advantage to offer monthly Better Web Results Workshops for industries such as Home Improvement, Law, Auto Service and Machine and Sheet Metal Shops

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The Website as the Digital Marketing Foundation

April 28th, 2010

The Website is Digital Marketing’s Soul, With a Capital “S”

And, as Tower of Power states in their Soul, With a Capital S, “You’ve got to have that soul.”

Our websites are the foundation and single digital marketing element that nearly every prospect visits.   On our websites, we engage with prospects in all three of the buying modes;  just looking, ready to buy-but not necessarily from you and ready to buy.  The success of every other marketing element depends on how well we engage with prospects on our websites.

Websites need to remain current to support changing markets and www.SiriusBusiness.com needs to begin reflecting our services in social media marketing.  Less than half of our company’s target audience actively participate in social media today but most will be here soon, by necessity.  It’s time to refocus our website to reflect our digital marketing focus.

After preparing a rough site map, it appears we’ll need about a dozen new website landing pages.   These pages will contain new, relevant content for our target audience.  They will be our first opportunity to engage our this audience in depth.  Traffic will be driven to the new pages as soon as prudent.  We’ll also read and edit all existing website pages to insure the content and presentation are current.  Anticipation is for tweaking 20 pages but it could be more. 

We already worked on the home page ( www.SiriusBusiness.com), the big daddy of all landing pages.  It was fairly straight forward.  Home pages are gateways to the remainder of the site.  They act as websites’ directories, correlating with the site map.  Editing our home page was mostly changing listings and links.  Interior pages require more intimacy and detail for visitors.  Those will be done next .

Additional interior landing pages will be added with each new marketing initiative so results can be measured.  One of our goals is to have our website reach 100 pages within 2 years.  Google loves websites of 100+ pages.

Working on the website while keeping it live, easily navigable and relevant adds a little more challenge.  This ought to keep us busy during  the next couple weeks.

Craig Ruess

Craig Ruess’ Digital Marketing career started in 2000, marketing airline cargo services online.  Since September, 2003 Mr. Ruess has been a Digital Marketing Consultant with Sirius Business Solutions, Inc. and WSI Serious Web Solutions.  Craig partners with Kevin Dean of WSI Net Advantage to offer monthly Better Web Results Workshops for industries such as Home Improvement, Law, Auto Service and Machine and Sheet Metal Shops.

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Establishing a Digital Marketing Budget

April 16th, 2010

Budgeting for Digital Marketing

We ask prospects “what’s your budget?”.    Sometimes the answer is “we  have no budget”.  If true, there isn’t much to discuss.  If not, there are other issues to overcome.

Frequently the answer is “you tell me how much I need to spend”.   This isn’t because of unbridled generosity but rather because they really didn’t know how much they should be spending.

In the past, there were several rules of thumb suggesting dentists spend 20%, carpet cleaners 25% and  etc. of revenue on marketing.  Those were back in the days when it was necessary to get a marketing message to a lot to reach a few.  Advertising in Yellow Pages, newspapers and radio was and is relatively expensive.

The old rules don’t apply any longer so, what makes sense for today?  We need to first determine our goals.

We’ve determined that each of us can comfortably add one new customer per week.  The requirements for setting up a new customer and servicing existing customers should leave sufficient time for market development.

So, how many sales calls does it take to land a new customer?  And, how many leads does it take to develop each sales call?  Those numbers vary with quality of sales calls and leads but, for the sake of discussion let’s say on average, a sale is made for every 5 sales appointments and it takes 5 leads to develop each sales call.  Therefore, we’ll need about 25 leads per week to add a new customer.

There are several tools that suggest budget windows, the lowest and highest ends of effective digital marketing budgets.  We have a great one for search advertising.  It stipulates spending less than the lowest suggested level will probably fail to gain traction and spending above the highest suggested level suffers declining returns.  It states that average, similar businesses to ours should generate X number of leads for an investment of Y in search advertising.   We have determined the commensurate investment required to gain 25 leads and that amount fits comfortably into cash flow.

Our preference is to work with clients within a 25 mile radius of our office.  Although much can be done by phone or online, having the occasional face to face meeting seems to be in every one’s best interest.  Unfortunately, 25 miles wasn’t sufficient for yielding 25 monthly leads using only search advertising so the radius (for budgeting purposes) was extended to 35 miles.  That gets us 100 leads per month and the cost of advertising within 35 miles was conducive to cash flow.

We are aware that search advertising does not work as effectively as other digital marketing components for businesses like ours.  It will be determined what part, if any, search advertising has in our final marketing mix.  But for now, we know the high side for our monthly marketing budget and will see how much less it might be when we add email marketing, social media and additional search engine optimization to the mix.  The goal will be to add one new customer per week at the lowest customer acquisition cost.

The next step in our evolving digital marketing foray will be to address the website.  This is the place where initial prospect engagements occur.  We need to get that right since it is the foundation upon which the remainder of our digital marketing rides.

Craig Ruess
Digital Marketing Consultant
Craig@SiriusBusiness.com
LinkedIn

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Digital Marketing Strategy

April 14th, 2010

Situational Analysis

Continuing the saga of eating our own dog food, our digital marketing agency is taking steps to figuring out where we are in our own marketing efforts, the achieved results, our goals and how to bridge the chasm.  We begin by reviewing the current marketing efforts.

With varying degrees of success, telemarketing, email, direct mail, personal networking, educational workshops and basic search engine marketing have been tried.  We have analytics systems in place that have been measuring results for the past few years.

The prospect quality from telemarketing wasn’t very good.  email marketing was performed without a plan and we all know about failing to plan.  Direct mail was expensive and time consuming.  Personal networking is time consuming.  Educational workshops are time consuming and can be expensive.  Lately, workshop attendance has waned.

Search engine marketing has been neglected.  It gets put off because we’d rather work on someone else’s website than our own.  However, the value of search engine marketing is never argued.

We counsel clients and prospects to hire high value functions that don’t get done in house, for whatever reason.  We’ve had good intentions to address our own neglected marketing components but now, it truly is time to eat our own dog food and give it the attention it deserves.

The current results have been measured using a combination of tools; Google Analytics, email marketing host tools, and etc.  The amount of data available for digital marketing is incredible so our base measurements are quite good.  We’ll easily be able to measure the results of our new digital marketing efforts as we go forward and compare them to the base.

Over time, it has become clear that our  past  marketing techniques have become more expensive but less effective.  We seek the best return on our marketing investment and want to develop the optimum combination of components for that plan.  But first, we need to know the budget.  That will be discussed in the next post.

Craig Ruess, Digital Marketing Consultant
Sirius Business Solutions, Inc.
Craig@SiriusBusiness.com
LinkedIn

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Eating My Own Dog Food

April 8th, 2010

Digital Marketing

When my partner and I began Sirius Business Solutions (www.SiriusBusiness.com) our “Internet Consulting and Education” business 6.5 years ago, we were essentially selling websites.  About half our prospects had no web presence but everyone knew they needed to be there.   It wasn’t long before most either loved or hated their web presence, i.e. it was either working for them or it wasn’t.

Our marketing back then focussed primarily on personal networking and asking friends and family for introductions to targeted prospects.  Many prospect discussions back then were about how many “hits” a website received, when most didn’t realize what a “hit” really was.  Prospects just knew that “hits” was a good thing.

Internet Consulting and Education morphed into Internet Marketing.  Prospects wanted traffic to their websites.  Our marketing remained personal networking, some email, some telemarketing and some direct mail.

Over time, prospect conversations skewed toward  “conversion architecture”, getting targeted website visitors to engage in some mutually beneficial action like picking up the telephone, emailing or completing an online form .  Earlier, many websites had been launched solely for the sake of getting on the web.  They were digital calling cards or online brochures.  Some were visually dreadful.  Most had visitors leaving the website without engaging or moving down in the sales funnel.  Sirius Business’ strategy for reaching the changing market remained static.

That brings us to Digital Marketing.  Ever since our WSI Network began marketing via mobile devices, “Internet Marketing” no longer fully described the services we perform.

Social Media is selectively becoming a large marketing component for many small to mid-sized businesses but not for all.  It’s nearing compulsary marketing for restaurants but it will probably be a while before gas station operators feel the need.  Our gasoline vendor selections tend to have greater considerations for geography than referral.

But, there is that “aha” moment that nudges you when it’s your time.  And for my company, Sirius Business Solutions, Inc., a digital marketing agency, the time has long past.  Yes, our company has been clinging to past marketing tactics while evangelizing digital marketing to clients and prospects.  It is time to eat our own dog food.

It’s my intent to chronicle this journey into a new marketing strategy for our company.  Base measurements are being taken and marketing results will be reported as we move along.  The next blog will cover the plan.  I hope this is good for all of us.

Craig Ruess
LinkedIn
Craig@SiriusBusiness.com
Palo Alto Business Referral Network
www.SiriusBusiness.com

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