// BLOG
The view from digital marketing hq
November 20, 2008
Literally.
This was the view yesterday afternoon from Conversationware office.
Wild sunset in Milton Keynes
No photo shop buttons were injured in the process of posting this picture. It’s the real thing.
Click to comment(0)Social media generates interest? Who knew.
November 20, 2008
Did you know?
There is a BNP member location service on the web already? Just type in your postcode, and it will list the name and address of your nearest 20 members. click the link, and it shows their location on a google map. There are two within a mile for me apparently.
(I think the site went down under heavy load, 20,000 visitors within minutes, try later)
Did you know?
Whenever you add an article to your website, it can often be in search engines (google) within 30 minutes (with the right information architect)
I bet more people are searching for the BNP list today than are searching for information security. So, surely information security professionals’ websites will already be tagging onto this news story - with an ‘opinion’ or angle of course.
But I bet they’re not.
News travels faster (and further) with new media, and so do links. And yes, visitors aren’t everything, but awareness does help: whether it be search engines or humans that take note.
Is there any news that relates to your industry today, and is it on your website yet?
We’re not in old media land now you know. Make your own news.
Click to comment(0)Do websites need to look fantastic?
November 8, 2008
If you were faced with two equally suitable candidates for a job, would you choose the the most attractive?
If American, did you vote for Obama?
Obama for president
I’m not sure whether being presented with two equally good choices should be a reason to discriminate on attractiveness alone.
If presented with two equally suitable houses in the same area, would you buy the prettiest one?
OK, so that may be ambiguous, - but the answer is “No, of course I wouldn’t..”
Sometimes we just need to work harder to understand differences in our choices, because initial attractiveness is often superficial.
In case you disagree, just for a moment, imagine that you aren’t the sophisticated and discerning human being that looks back at you from the mirror. Put yourself in the shoes of someone really quite bad at making choices.
Firstly how do you know you’re that bad? Well, that marketing led vision of the perfect solution to your problem - it didn’t work our very well last time out, you do remember Smash?
You should know that instead of blaming the product or service, people blame themselves, for making bad choices. But, that bad feeling motivates people to try harder in choice making, which is great news for all those of us with great services and great end products.
But marketing campaigns, they’re smarter now too, pushing harder and faster than ever to make things even more attractive, to give us more choices, to stop us from making the wrong right decision!
Well, the answer is that this has been bubbling away for quite some time and we’ve all been around that block many times. We’re all a lot smarter than we used to be, and hardly any of us eats Cadbury’s Smash any more. Good advertising, but it left a bad taste in our mouths.
So, when people speculated whether people would vote for or against Obama because of the way he looked, because he was black, or not - and afterwards whether or not they voted to prove they weren’t racist. It took me right back to the 1980’s, it is a simplistic old world view, an old world argument, old hat.
I prefer to think Americans just worked harder at deciding, because their last choice went so badly wrong and made them feel terrible.
We, the People, are better at choosing than we used to be.
With that in mind, if you believe that making your website look fantastic will get you the business, then go right ahead.
It wouldn’t matter to me more than brushing my teeth, putting on a shirt and brushing my hair.
It’s about credibility, and people voted for that with their wallets.
Click to comment(0)Internet marketing numbers, quick look
November 3, 2008
If your website isn’t working as well as it might, how much do you have to improve to make a significant impact on the numbers?
Without measuring, lets say the poor site is converting visitors to prospects at perhaps just .5% - lets go with that low figure for the moment.
By the way, when you look, exclude people who search for your business - this includes referrals, existing customers, suppliers and competitors and so forth -they already know you, so you’ll get those prospects anyway. Also exclude any possible robotic visitors….this is about potential new internet customers.
At half a percent, just a 1 percent extra conversion rate could triple your prospects.
Once you improve the conversion rate, lets say we doubled the number of relevant visitors, or tripled - wouldn’t that mean we were adding 6 to 9 times as many prospects?
It’s not difficult.
If you don’t know how your website is working - that would be the first step.
And yes, ok, lots more questions to be asked, but it’s useful to keep in mind how a little effort can go an awful long way.
Click to comment(0)Businesses should not have Blogs
November 2, 2008
Those of us who have read lots of blogs, understand they’re populated by both genius and stupidity, in ever changing measures - and often within the same blog:
dot dot dot (insert mean spirited comment here).
Blogs are essentially a human device, and have that human fallibility ‘built in’.
So, enter the commercial organisation - put off by that blogging image, and quite rightly so, because;
- Everyone knows there was never much profit in constantly talking about yourself.
- A crisis in business reputation is often self inflicted (Cue joke with a play on words about the BBC’s ‘Brand’)
So, it’s an easy decision not to have a blog.
Only, people do KEEP ON saying that these blogs have a commercial value to the organisation.
Confusing, isn’t it?
Let’s face it, bloggers claimed the technology before it became truly useful. Now marketers love blog technology, but are hamstrung by the whiff of commercial hari-kari.
So, to get to the point of this post, why not approach the business blog issue with more clarity?
Businesses’ should not have blogs!
Instead, they should have;
- Websites written in a human voice, by humans
- Articles written for the benefit of their existing and potential customers
- Articles that show core business values
- Websites that make it easy to discover anything that may be of interest (everything, or not)
- Websites that work hard to raise and maintain the business reputation and avoid negativity
Oh, and it may suit the business goals to have;
- Website(s) that are exceptionally easy to update and maintain
- A website that allows anyone to contribute - especially your customers, prospective customers, suppliers, industry PR and journalists.
- A website that happens to appeal to search engines, attracting more visitors to relevant content and generating more business.
OK, so we might use blogging technology, and it may look like a blog (doesn’t have to) - but it ISN’T a blog, it’s content management :-).
We all know bloggers talk mainly about themselves, often have opinions which show themselves in a bad light and are prone to talk endlessly about the nuts and bolts of their own industry issues of the day. Not to mention those all too public arguments about things that don’t matter to their visitors, and other general negativities.
We can all indulge our blogging selves, for free, on Wordpress.com, but our businesses shouldn’t.
They should have better websites.
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