Keep Your Website Current

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An often overlooked aspect of a website is that it needs to be maintained.  Setting and forgetting is not a great strategy for your site.  The primary reason for this is that things change.  If you don’t keep your site current then it will not have no ability, or a hindered ability, to market your products or services.

Here is a list of things that change and efforts need to be made to keep up with it.

  • Content changes: There’s nothing worse than a website with a lot of information that is outdated.  That’s especially true if contact information is inaccurate.
  • Technology changes: The internet does a pretty good job of supporting older technologies but it doesn’t last forever.  It’s important to check on your site, especially any tools or programming to ensure it’s functioning properly.
  • Layout changes: Technology often breeds change in design.  You don’t have to be a cutting edge site but a critical eye is necessary if your site layout is dated.  Even untrained eyes can pick out dated sites that were clearly designed a decade or more ago.
  • Link changes:  Link internally to your site should be stable but what about links going to other sites?  It’s good to check those links intermittently as they can break at any time.  This is especially true for older blog or article posts that often are neglected.

So how does one keep up with changes?  Many folks don’t have time or a focus on their website to remember everything that might need updated in real time.  The simplest way is to create a maintenance matrix.  This is a schedule of what items need reviewed and when.  Setting a matrix often keeps the workload down because it dedicates certain times to updates.  Critical changes like contact information updates need done immediately but other updates for basic sites might be as infrequent as a yearly review.

Set a schedule to keep your site current.  All it takes is a schedule and some diligence and you will have a site serving visitors content that’s applicable for no, rather than the past.

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Does Your Landing Page Add Incentive or Repeat What Recipients Already Heard?

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Every offer made online through email, social media, ads, or sponsored links should direct people to a webpage on your site dedicated to that offer.  These landing pages are a tried and true best practice because if people land on a page that doesn’t reinforce the offer they were interested in, confusion and abandonment multiply.  However, good landing pages bring additional reasons for recipients to take advantage of an offer.

Your online target audience is looking for reasons not to take advantage of your offer.  And with good reason, there are so many opportunities and promotions online that we tend to have a strict filter.  There simply isn’t enough time in the day to keep up with every marketing message we encounter online.  So your landing page needs to reinforce the benefit of completing the offer.

The problem is that many landing pages repeat information rather than build on it.  How is this done? Many landing pages just repeat the initial marketing message.  For example, it’s not uncommon to receive an email marketing communication, click on the offer link, and find the exact same info and layout but with a form at the bottom.  Sometimes this is done strategically like if the page has a promotional video that couldn’t be delivered directly via email.  Many times, however, it’s done because it’s quicker to copy and paste the information than to build a custom landing page.

It’s a good idea to use some formatting and content from your online promotions to create consistency.  It’s a bad idea to copy it verbatim with no additional selling points.

The reason is that you usually don’t need to repeat yourself.  Some people will be very motivated to take advantage of your promotion.  They won’t look at your landing page and complete it as long as they clearly see the offer is the same.  Reinforcing the offer on the landing page is for the group of people who are interested but not quite convinced.  Repeating what they already saw is a poor way to convince them to complete the offer.  The landing page should have additional information about the offer that highlights subsequent or additional advantages.

There are a lot of schools of thought on landing page effectiveness and optimization.  Only two rules apply to everyone.  Your landing page needs to have a single focus of getting visitors to complete the offer and tests should be run to improve results.  Beyond that you are free to customize your content and layout.  Use that freedom to build a page that reinforces the promotions done for the offer.  Reinforce the offer with additional benefits and more in depth information so that people that need to know more to complete a landing page conversion are reassured to do so.

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Online Marketing Success Takes Work and Diligence

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The myth of getting rich quick through the internet still seems to have a pulse. Many people looking to start an internet based venture still have delusions of a “set it and forget it” situation. If only it were so easy to promote your business and generate revenue online. Online marketing is a process, not a task. Overall the process does not have a completion date, rather it’s a system of maintenance and gradual improvement.

The set and forget mindset typically sounds like this, “I’ll build a website with a great tool, product, or service. Then I’ll do some initial promotions, SEO, ads, emails, social media etc. Then I’ll rake in the money.” There’s a lot wrong with this idea.

The first might be that your tool, product, or service is great. It’s extremely hard to offer something online that doesn’t exist in some form. Check your assumptions and make sure that you are filling a need by focusing on a certain niche, geography, or competency.

The second false assumption is that initial work is the completion of your online marketing. It’s almost always just the beginning. SEO’s a good example, if you set your sites parameters and then leave it alone, you won’t rank well for long, if at all. SEO only works well when it is actively managed and content is added or updated.

Generating money as a blogger (FYI this blog makes me exactly $0 in direct revenue) is a great example of people’s misconceptions. There’s a general belief that blogging is a no-sweat way to make money. The reality is it’s difficult to make significant direct revenue from a blog as generating an audience is challenging. The other misconception is how much work it takes to maintain a “career blog”. Professional bloggers work full time keeping their content updated, fresh, and audience appropriate.

Everyone likes the raking in cash part of the process. However, when starting, people need to be aware that internet marketing is not synonymous with turnkey business. You can make good money, but not without putting in the work. Most people that promote their business through the internet have to work at it to be successful. It’s rarely a situation where they take months off at a time and just check in to see how large their bank account has grown. If you’re going to be successful with your internet marketing, you need to understand that it’s going to take work and diligence.

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Honest Social Media Evaluation

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Social Media has become a popular marketing topic.  That’s not news to anyone.  In fact, I’d suggest it’s become a trendy topic.  The problem with trendy things is that people tend to overweight the importance assigned to it.  Social media seems to be heading that direction.  Many marketers overemphasize the engagement levels of their social media audience to artificially inflate its importance.

To make a valid assessment of your social media channels, solid metrics need to be established.  In other words, it’s not worth spending a lot of time working on social networks if your audience isn’t paying attention.  Generating a list of people that accepted a single request is not valuable.  An engaged audience that pays attention to, and acts on, your communications is the goal.  So how can a marketer assess social media engagement?

The first rule is that just showing up doesn’t count as engagement.  A like click for your Facebook fan page is not engagement.  A follower on Twitter is not automatically engaged.  Gaining a contact in LinkedIn is not an engagement, etc.  Any of these activities are just showing up.  Sure, it’s a critical part of becoming engaged but not the act itself.

A better gauge would be someone on Facebook who liked the fan page and takes part in discussions or references links in their own communications.  Someone who retweets your posts is engaged.  Some one who provides a referral or joins your company group on LinkedIn is engaged.  Simply put, someone needs to actively interact with your content or offer to be engaged.

Engagement is flexible and can be custom defined from marketer to marketer.  Ideally a marketer should be able to put some general metrics on engaged contacts.  Social media can be a powerful communication channel but over-inflating its value often leads to neglecting other marketing efforts that might offer better ROI.

While translating social media marketing to a bottom line dollar can be difficult, marketers need to be careful they aren’t looking at social media through rose colored glasses.  After all, most of us have accepted a Facebook friend or LinkedIn contact we don’t really care for.  Just because they show up doesn’t mean we want anything to do with them.  Same goes for your company’s social media interactions.

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Buying or Renting Email Lists

It’s not uncommon for people to want to infuse their email list with a batch of new people.  The stock answer from email marketers (myself included) is to gradually and methodically build a list.  Use your network of contacts and regular business interactions to build up a legitimate opt-in email marketing list.  However, some people are in a hurry or don’t have the patience to build a list.  So if you find you are backed in a corner, the last resort is to buy or sell an email list.

The theory on any bought or rented list is that the people have opted in for marketing communications.  That assumption is only as good as the person you are buying or renting from.  The first thing that email marketers need to understand is that buying or renting a list has become difficult and/or expensive.

Buying a list is very rare.  In fact, if I run into someone that is selling lists, I am suspicious.  Selling lists legally has become very challenging, if not impossible, and is typically not a good route to pursue.  You’re more likely to run into a scam than a legitimate list source.

List brokers will rent a list by sending a communication to people that have opted in but prices can run up to 50 cents a name.  In most cases, that multiplies the overall expense of the send by at least five.  If the price doesn’t scare you off, the good list brokers can also offer some kind of targeting so that the list is sent to people that fit your email offer.  Bad list brokers don’t even share basic demographic data.  I ran into one that couldn’t/wouldn’t verify the email was sent to their list.  In shor

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Don’t Get Caught Up in “Best Practices” – Even Short Subject Lines

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There are a lot of online marketing best practices that float around that people take as hard and fast rules.  This can be a big mistake.  Best practices are great guidelines.  They are often a head start for people that are just getting started.  But it’s like pre-school, it lays a foundation so that we’re prepared to actually learn.  Use best practices as guidelines but use metrics and common sense for making the best online marketing decisions.

A recent article from Marketing Experiments is a good illustration of best practices taken too far.  I’ve recently heard this same principle taken even farther.  The new best practice for email subjects being promoted is 5 – 8 Words maximum with 5 as a target.  This has runaway best practice written all over it.   I’m used to recommendations trimming down subject lines.  I’m still getting used to the idea of suggesting more text to at least explain what an email is.

The reason short subject lines became a best practice is that many people were jamming a bunch of descriptive text in subject lines.  Long subjects actually were registered as a knock against an email in spam filters.  I guess like many things, best practices will swing from one extreme to another.

The reasons behind the short subject best practice are that people don’t have time to look at longer email lines so they’ll skip them (this idea is well grounded at this point) and it’s better for smart phone viewing (newer idea but as smart phone usage grows the current minority will be more prevalent and need to be taken into account).

Two good points but an extreme solution.  To me it’s like saying, “I’m tempted to steal, so I cut off my arms.  Sure I could have cut off just the hands but this seems fool proof.”  Was therapy or group support never an option?

So here’s a more moderate solution.  How about a very short (no more than five words) intro so that smart phone users get the idea of what it is.  Then add a second piece to the email line that describes the email (but stays under 10 – 12 words).  Something like Marketing Experiments did is perfect (the 5 words in parentheses would appear for smart phones, the rest is a short descriptor for those that view it):

(IADC 2011 – Exclusive First Look) at New Products, Technology and More

In this way we serve both audiences but provide flexibility.  Maybe I’m guilty of just reshuffling the best practice, but it seems like a distinction to me.  As is stated in the linked article, if a subject is so short that recipients don’t know what it’s about, that’s going to have adverse effects.

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, But Which Words are You Saying?

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Pictures (and multimedia) can be worth a thousand words.  Just make sure that the images used in your online marketing are the ones you want to say.

Years ago most images on a website (at least professional ones) were analyzed, if not labored over.  The reason was that every page counted and just the right image was necessary to make the most of the sites marketing potential.

With the explosion of social media and link farms there is a lot of new content hitting the web.  And as you’d expect when quantity spikes, quality often plummets.  Social media and content management tools have been great in opening the web up to anyone who can use the internet.  Unfortunately this lack of restraints can lead to too much content being produced in a low quality manner.

Of course for many applications a low quality doesn’t matter.  No one is going to criticize a poorly shot photograph from vacation that someone places on Facebook.  However, if you are representing a company or organization, that will reflect poorly.

For example, I get Tweets from a company that regularly posts poorly shot and often pointless photographs of events they hold.  The people in the photos are never identified and aren’t recognizable because these snapshots are usually taken too far away.  In short they are pointless.  The company would be better served in buying stock photos of groups of people looking at speakers.  At least the photos would be well composed.

Don’t get trapped in the quantity trap. Take the time to only create and release quality materials that are pertinent to your audience.  There is a lot of drive now to maximize the use of social media and build links.  Both of those are admirable goals but only if the content being created is up to par.  After all, dumping a lot of poor quality or pointless material onto the internet might generate a few clicks but your credibility will gradually erode.

Search Engine Optimization, Site Conversion, Social Media, Web Maintenance ,

Define Success: Social Media

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There is one metric that most people use to measure social media:

  • Contacts (LinkedIn)
  • Followers (Twitter)
  • Friends (Facebook)

However the number of people watching is not always the most important number to review.  Certainly social media is about interaction but our ultimate goal is what needs to be kept in mind.

For example I worked with a client who was frustrated by a lack of followers on Twitter.  Upon review we discovered that no notification or promos were put in place for the Twitter account.  It basically existed to feed other social media systems.  Under that goal it was a complete success.  It had been well set up and the Tweets were feeding multiple system.

This was more of a misunderstanding but it shows how legitimate goal can be mixed up.  Twitter was serving the intended function it was designed for in this case.

Remember, social media needs to be gauged by the opportunities it generates.  An audience that doesn’t interact is fairly worthless.  Don’t assume that contacts, followers, or friends is a measure of success.  It’s more of a gauge for the number of opportunities you have for success.

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Define Success: Website

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Website metrics are often simplified to website metric, visitors. While the number of visitors is certainly important as we need traffic, many other metrics are a better measure of success on a website.

There are several web metrics that can be used to define success based on the company objective:

  • Bounce rate – This serves as a reverse goal, meaning a low rate is better.  Bounce rate designates how many people land on a page and then move away from the site.  It’s a great way to see if your content is delivering what visitors expect.
  • Time on Page – With a little analyzing you can see if people are using your webpages as you intend.  For example if it’s an article and they only stay a few seconds, then it’s unlikely that your content is engaging.  Conversely if it’s a directory and the time on page is low (and bounce rate isn’t high) it confirms that people understand the navigation easily and are finding the link to information they want.
  • Conversion – This takes some set up in the metric system but there should be clearly defined conversions for every site.  These are typically landing pages and a measure of how many people took advantage of a landing pages offer like newsletter sign ups, contact form, or event registration.

Truly valuable information comes from mixing these metric and analyzing the story it tells.  For instance viewing visitors to a conversion page and see how many people fulfilled the conversion is a powerful way of gauging offer and page layout effectiveness.

Don’t simplify website metrics into visitors only.  After all if people only visit the site and without taking any action, it’s unlikely that the website has fulfilled its real purpose.

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Define Success: Email Marketing

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Using generic metrics for gauging success is very common in email marketing.  Specifically the most common gauges are:

  • Open rate
  • Click rate

Don’t misunderstand, these metrics are important but for most email campaigns they should not be the defining factor in measuring success.  Success depends on the intent of the email.

Here’s an example, an email campaign that consists of one communication promoting an event and a second that offers informative tips.  The open rate matters in both cases as it is an indicator of subject line clarity and recipient loyalty.

In fact, for the informative tip the open rate is a good immediate indicator.  However, the rate of the email being forwarded might be a better gauge because it clearly indicates that recipients valued the content.  Even a fairly small percent of forwards is a major victory because this particular metric typically only records a fraction of actual forwarding activity.

For the event promotion opens are a good initial indicator and click through rates are important.  However drilling down to what was clicked on is typically more important.  Were people drawn to a video link, an image, a headline, or a particular hyperlink?  This information is a better gauge for success because it can be linked to who registered for the event as well as inform future communication on what draws the target audience.

Of course this is only a sample and other metrics would be more critical to success in other cases.  The point is that open and click rates are usually a starting point to evaluating a campaign.  They rarely are capable of being a stand-alone gauge for success.

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