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Cyber Monday and SEO: The Pumpkin Pie and Ice Cream of Online Shopping

December 23rd, 2011 :: grownetadmin

By Joseph Baker

Pumpkin pie is generally a special holiday treat. The pie on its own is pretty good, maybe even great, but to really stand out as a stellar treat, something more needs to be added to the mix. Enter vanilla ice cream. The combination of the two is unstoppable. Websites offering holiday shopping deals and search engine optimization (SEO) have a similar relationship—with SEO being the “ice cream” that makes some websites stand out.

Cyber Monday, the most popular online shopping day of the year, may be over, but there is still profit to be had in the online shopping arena. With this year’s Cyber Monday sales up 26 percent over last year, according to USA Today, there is clearly plenty of interest in online shopping. How can your retail website stand out from the crowd? With SEO.

Search engines are the road maps of the Internet; if a site doesn’t show up prominently on them, most people won’t know they exist. SEO helps raise sites in search results and engages site current visitors while positioning them directly into your company’s conversion funnel. What are the keys to SEO?

First is branding. If your company’s website is the pie, branding is the scent that wafts through the kitchen, letting people know exactly what kind of pie it is without being overly aggressive. Building your company’s brand should be your foremost concern. Consumers become attached to brands, engendering loyalty and respect. If your company doesn’t display a coherent brand identity throughout its interactions with consumers, many will be confused or frustrated due to an inability to quickly perceive exactly what your business is all about.

Whether your marketing approach includes email newsletters, blog or printable coupons, all of it should offer a single, cohesive brand experience, including logos, color schemes, layouts and voice. Providing a unified experience cements your company in a consumer’s mind, making them more likely to recognize–and therefore purchase from–your business in the future.

But to stand out from the crowd, you need more than a unified branding experience. The second component of success is a blog. Blogs provide a place to establish yourself as a leader in your field, someone who knows what they’re talking about and wants to freely share their knowledge and expertise. Furthermore, it gives you a place to provide deep, rich content, the kind that search engines like Google love. If your content is good enough and you build a following, you’ll be linked by other websites, increasing your site’s overall standing with search engines. Though it’s too late in the season to start a blog and fill it with enough content to provide much benefit this year, a blog is something that will aid you and your business year round.

Last, but not least, your business should use branded keywords to spread knowledge of your products and services. Branded keywords are, essentially, including a brand name in a keyword phrase. Generally you’ll include your own brand, though if you sell name-brand products, you’ll also want to include those. Keyword branding can make a major difference in search engine referrals. Targeting specific brands with keywords will show the major search engines that your company has a legitimate connection with the brands, helping your site gain credibility and start climbing in rankings. Make branded keywords even more useful by creating a business blog, then using those branded keywords within a blog that informs readers and directs them to the products or services they desire. This not only provides value to readers but also creates the deep content that Google now looks for.

Every online retailer needs to use some form of SEO to ensure they’re featured prominently in search results. This goes double for the holiday shopping season. With the basic SEO tweaks described above, any online retailer can target special events, thus ensuring the maximum return on their investment.

Joseph Baker has worked in the business world for over 15 years, specifically in management. He has led development and management teams, and implemented budget reductions both professionally and as an independent contractor. In his many years of experience within the business world, from acclimating corporate America to social marketing trends to developing marketing/management strategies for small business. In addition, he has led strategic planning and systems of implementation for nine organizations, both public and private, and worked extensively with small businesses. Visit his blog at www.professionalintern.com.

Image by Flickr user The Culinary Geek (Creative Commons)

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Tags: Branding, seo, small business marketing
Posted in Branding, Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business | 1 Comment »

How to Keep Your Business Card Effective in a Changing World

August 15th, 2011 :: grownetadmin

By Bill Post

Nobody can stop the onward march of technology. But one thing we can always do is to step back and see how that march affects all the things in its path. Some things get stepped on, trampled over and left behind. If you don’t believe me, look at that slide rule gathering dust in your attic. But technology is not always this cruel. Some things join the parade and become better (e.g., TVs, computers). And then there are things that never seem to go away, like the good old reliable business card. It’s been around forever and probably always will be. But does that mean technology hasn’t left its mark? Not really. That little card is evolving and changing with the times too. Here are just a few of the ways the business card is adapting to the digital world:

Customized business cards:

Cards no longer have to be boring and predictable. It’s now very easy and cheap to add your own innovative touches to your cards. Just go online and you’ll see lots of sites that let you design your own cards. You can even make them all slightly different by using your own photographs to create several cards, each with its own personalized image. And to make them even more unique, you can now print them on aluminum, plastic or magnetic material.

Cards on your phone instead of in your wallet:

There are now apps for your smart phone (e.g., ScanBizCards) that let you take a picture of a business card and the card (image plus content) is instantly downloaded to your phone. Not only can the data be imported into your contacts, but you can now flip through your cards visually on your phone as if they were in your wallet!

Smart business cards:

How about tiny electronic chips in your business cards? Well, the technology already exists and when you have these, all you need to do is wave your smart phone near the card and presto—the information on the card is downloaded to your phone.

Technology marches on, but don’t worry— that trusty old business card isn’t likely to disappear anytime soon. But it will change, and we are already seeing the changes! Your business card was always an effective tool—and in the digital world it can now be even more effective.

Bill Post, Small Business Research Analyst, has been providing research on issues of concern to small businesses for 123Print.com Business Cards for three years. Prior to his involvement with 123Print, Bill was a small business owner himself, providing marketing and branding services to other small businesses in the Washington, DC, metro area. Before working with 123Print on Business Card Templates, Bill spent several years after receiving his degree in the fast-paced corporate world. It was there that Bill not only honed the skills he uses to help small businesses get ahead, but it is also where he realized that he’d rather help the little guy prosper than make huge corporations money.

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Tags: business cards, small business marketing, small business networking
Posted in Branding, Marketing, Networking, Small Business, small business, Technology | 2 Comments »

The Essence of Small Business Excellence

July 21st, 2011 :: grownetadmin

By John Spence

Several years ago a client asked me to put together a brief speech on “The Essence of Excellence” for 1,500 of their employees at their annual global meeting. I researched the topic for weeks, called many of the CEOs I’d done work for, and tried to get to the core of what is required to truly achieve excellence in business. After much work and contemplation, I arrived at the conclusion that there are three key elements that constitute the essence of excellence: FOCUS – DISCIPLINE – ACTION.

Focus: First you must have a clear idea of what excellence looks like to you, how you define it in your business and how you will measure it. I call this your “Philosophy of Excellence,” and although I believe it is fundamental to creating any level of success in business, I’m still amazed at how few leaders have done an adequate job of creating and communicating a compelling philosophy of excellence for their organization.

One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to create a philosophy of excellence for your people to focus on. Every great business I have worked with has been able to boil down to a handful of key ideas exactly what every employee needs to focus on in order to achieve excellence for the organization. At Walmart, it’s pretty straightforward – Everyday Low Prices… buy it cheap, stack it high, sell it fast! At Southwest Airlines, they understand that success rides on friendly service, low fares, fast turns and team spirit. At Dell the major focus is good technology, built to order, just-in-time inventory and logistics. I could give you two dozen more examples, but the pattern is clear: The goal of the leader must be to deeply understand the key drivers of success for the business and then translate them into a focused philosophy of excellence.

Discipline: The next step is to infuse your entire organization with a culture of disciplined execution around the core strategies for success. The major responsibility of the leader at this stage is saying NO to anything that would cause the organization to stray away from these core strategies and lose focus. It was an epiphany for me a few years ago when I realized that one of the greatest skills of a highly effective strategic leader is the ability to figure out what NOT to do!

Action: The last step in the process is to create a sense of urgency by applying as much action, resources and focus as possible to the core elements of success. Here it is the leader’s job to knock down hurdles, open up doors and do everything in his or her power to keep people moving forward at a fast, but disciplined, pace.

The three watchwords of excellence for business success: FOCUS – DISCIPLINE – ACTION.

John Spence is the author of Awesomely Simple – Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas into Action. He is an award-wining professional speaker and corporate trainer, and has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Business Thought Leaders in America.

Image by Flickr user JazzyBlue TR (Creative Commons)

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Tags: small business leadership, small business management
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Small Business, small business, Workforce | No Comments »

Writing Web Content That Works: It’s About Your Visitors — Not You!

July 12th, 2011 :: grownetadmin

By Rick Sloboda

Are you self-centric? Your Web content might be, and that’s bad for business. To engage visitors and turn them into customers, you need to appeal to their self-interest, not yours. Think about it: When people get to your website, do they really care about your company? Probably not. Prospects, however, certainly care about what you can do for them.

There are two common culprits of self-centric, or company-centric, content:

1. The Writer With a Big Ego. You hire a copywriter who has little regard for your audience or even your business. He’s mainly writing to impress himself, and maybe his colleagues. Delectable prose might turn them on and possibly win a marketing firm an award, but you don’t want to overlook the purpose of your Web content: to get people to take action, be it sign up for a newsletter, contact you or buy a product.

2. The Business Owner Who Can String Words Together. You can write — great! But, as a business owner, what you want to say and what your audience needs to hear can be very different. For instance, your vision, mission and value statements probably make you feel warm and fuzzy all over, but imposing them on your visitors won’t spur them to take action. These documents belong in offices, boardrooms and manuals, not on your website. Visitors need and want information on your product or service offerings, and reasons to choose you over your competitors.

Getting Your Web Content Right

To engage visitors and turn them into customers, your web content must tap into basic human needs and appeal to people’s emotions. Benefits can do that. Why? Because website visitors don’t buy products or services; they invest in what the products or services will do for them.

What’s a feature? A descriptive fact — what the product or service is or has.
What’s a benefit? What the product does.

So a benefit is what the customer gains as a result of the feature. If written well, benefits provide compelling reasons the visitor should purchase the product or service. Also, benefit-driven Web content is naturally more visitor-centric than feature-driven Web content.

For people to take action, they need to care. Visitor-centric, benefit-driven content tells prospects why they should care, and gets them to act. So should your website content.

Rick Sloboda is a Web Content Writer at Webcopyplus, which helps designers and businesses boost online traffic, leads and sales with optimized Web content. He speaks at Web-related events, serves as a consultant, and conducts Web content studies with organizations including Yale University. Clients include Scotia Bank and AT&T. Connect with Rick on Twitter.

Image by Flickr user juhansonin (Creative Commons)

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Tags: small business marketing, website copywriting, website design
Posted in Business Development, Marketing, Sales Process, Small Business, small business, Web Design | No Comments »

The Mobile Retail Conundrum

May 12th, 2011 :: grownetadmin

By Tim Gorin

Ah, the brave new world of mobile marketing … it can be both exhilarating and vexing. As a vision care provider and optical retailer in the Washington, DC, area, my company is confronted each day with trying to reach a consumer that is increasingly beset by an avalanche of digital media. But unlike ecommerce retailers, we face the additional challenge of trying to promote “click-to-brick”–that is, harnessing technology to encourage consumers to physically walk into our offices … no easy task in the face of so many online alternatives.

In the last 18 months we have virtually abandoned most of the conventional marketing strategies upon which we relied since opening our doors in 2001. That means no more print ads, no more TV, no more fliers and dramatic cutbacks in direct mail.

Instead we’re exploiting the power of technology by capitalizing on social media, maximizing SEO, embracing Internet deal giants Groupon and Livingsocial, and using Yelp! to push both internal customer service and external word-of-mouth to drive consumer engagement. At the forefront of that technology are smartphones and Internet-connected mobile devices such as iPads.

Still, it’s evident that mobile technology is not yet the retail promised land everyone has hoped for. Mobile marketing remains a digital minefield that demands both vigilance and creativity to succeed. A recent report published on Tealeaf, a software company that monitors shoppers’ online behavior, provides some sobering statistics:

“In February 2011, Harris Interactive conducted a survey on the Mobile Customer Experience, commissioned by Tealeaf, the leader in online Customer Experience Management (CEM).

Consumers surveyed expect the mobile experience to be better or equal to in-store and online (using a laptop or desktop computer) experience.

More than four in five U.S. adults who have conducted an online transaction via a mobile device in the last year report experiencing a problem (84 percent).

Businesses may be losing customers due to poor mobile experiences: 63 percent of all online adults said they would be less likely to buy from the same company via other purchase channels if they experienced a problem conducting a mobile transaction.”

And if that’s not scary enough, let’s not forget that when consumers have negative experiences they are likely to take action. Consider this Tealeaf data:

43 percent would abandon the mobile transaction and try later on a computer
16 percent would become more likely to buy from a competitor
14 percent would email or log a complaint with customer service
12 percent would abandon the transaction at the app/site and try a competitor’s app/site

So what does that mean for small businesses with limited budgets, staffs and time? Is there an effective way to safely and reliably use mobile technology to drive revenue, consumer loyalty and branding without jeopardizing our customers’ hard-earned trust? That’s what we will explore more deeply in Network Solutions’ upcoming Livestream event.

To learn more about ways to leverage mobile technology in your business, register for Network Solutions’ Small Business Mobile Livestream, May 17 from 1:30 to 2:30 pm EST.

Tim Gorin is a Yelp!.com Small Business Advisory Council Member, and is Vice President of Business Development at MyEyeDr.

Image by Flickr user Phil Roeder (Creative Commons)

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Tags: Events, mobile marketing, Search Marketing
Posted in Customer Service, Email Marketing, Events, Marketing, Search Marketing, Thought Leadership | 1 Comment »

5 Ways to Leverage Mobile Technology

May 9th, 2011 :: grownetadmin

By Jennifer Shaheen

The mobile umbrella is no longer about just the use of cell phones and smart phones or even about creating SMS campaigns as part of our marketing strategies. Mobility today is about leveraging the technology both internally as businesses for productivity and externally to connect with our customers. To be successful with mobile you need to take the time to understand the power it has, but most of all you need to take the plunge and go mobile.

What does that mean? That’s a great question and, for small businesses struggling to keep up with technology, an important issue that needs to be discussed. Going mobile means embracing the technology that is being used by your customers, learning what it can do for you and jumping in. Here are 5 ways you can start to leverage mobile technology for your business.

1. The Mobile Website

You may have noticed as you load many websites on your mobile device that you are being asked to use the mobile version of the website. Creating a scaled down mobile version of your website is a great way to give your customers what they want on the go. You will need to work with your Web developer to create a separate version of your website that runs on a mobile browser. Or if you’re just starting the Web development process you will want to make this an important part of the discussion.

Another great trick is to create a separate mobile style that loads automatically when a device loads your website. Remember, mobile website access isn’t just for smartphones; we’re also talking about iPads and Droid tablets for shopping, reading and everyday use. More and more of today’s users curl up with their tablet to do everything from finding a place to vacation to reading the local news.

2. Flip, Flip, Flip

Whether you’re an architect, graphic designer or restaurant owner you want your clients to see what you have to offer. Not only do you want them to see your portfolio, menu or products, but you also want them to engage with them. Why not create a flip book so tablet users can use their fingers to scroll through what you have to offer? This tool is great for sales departments to use at trade shows or in client meetings. Think about what you’ll save on printing costs, not to mention how eco-friendly you will be.

There are some great flip software applications for you to use and the best thing is they generate different versions of your flip book for compatibility with different devices. A word of warning: Not all flip book applications are created equal. Be sure to avoid Flash-based flip books as they are not compatible with many mobile technologies.

3. We Do Love Our Apps

Some people would say we live in an “app based society,” and in some ways I agree. I never use the Twitter website on my BlackBerry or iPad; I use the app. I believe there needs to be a purpose behind creating an application for businesses, but it doesn’t need to be as trivial as Angry Birds. If you know what your customers or your staff need when they are on the go, then creating an app is just good business. You may also want to see if the tools you use in the office have an app version to make your staff more productive on the road. Many software developers are creating mobile application versions now that are optimized for the mobile user.

4. Are You Checking In?

You may not be a 16-year-old who needs to know where your friends are every minute, but checkins using services like Foursquare and Gowalla are a powerful marketing tool. People telling their friends, family and co-workers when they check in to your business is basically a way of telling the world they like your business. Whether you are a doctor, restaurant owner or spa owner, allow your users and staff to check in to your location from their mobile devices.

5. Codes

Many of us have probably seen the QR codes at our local Best Buy on many of the products in the store, but these codes aren’t just for retail. QR codes are for businesses of all shapes and sizes. QR (or quick response) codes allow you to provide visitors with the QR reader’s access to information about your product, service or cause. They’re perfect for mobile use in retail stores or even at a business trade show.

To learn more about these and other ways to leverage mobile technology in your business, register for Network Solutions’ Small Business Mobile Livestream, May 17 from 1:30 to 2:30 pm EST.

Jennifer Shaheen (@techtherapist), The Technology Therapist®, is an expert at helping business owners harness today’s technology to effectively grow their businesses in the digital marketplace. As a monthly columnist for Entrepreneur.com, and with over 13 years of top-level experience, she has empowered businesses of all shapes and sizes to integrate effective digital strategies that boost sales, enhance staff productivity, expand customer base and increase market share.

Image by Flickr user Phil Roeder (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Events, Marketing, small business, Technology, Uncategorized | No Comments »