Top 7 Things to Do Now to Maximize Website Value

What do I mean by “maximize website value?” I mean now is a good time to look at how to maximize the business value of your website.

I recently needed to shop for new homeowner’s insurance on my home island of Kauai. Being a digital marketing guy I started searching with Google for who might be local agents that I would want to speak with. I was surprised to find that not all local agents had a website. I was also surprised to find that some gave no information on their website as to whether they could assist with the type of insurance I was looking for. And even more surprising was that some of the websites failed to have basic contact information, like email, phone, and address!

I assume that if you don’t have accurate contact information on your website then you may not be a very professional agent to handle my insurance needs. (One insurance company that did have a professional looking website asked me to leave a voicemail for a return call and they didn’t call me back for over two weeks!…..but that’s a different business issue….)

So if you are a small business without a website, the number one thing to do is to get one. You are missing out on new business!

If you do have a website, it’s a good time to check over updates you may need to make to maximize its marketing value to your business. You may have spent money to have a website that really isn’t driving business value. Here I have compiled what research and my own personal experience have shown to be the top 7 things you should do now, if you haven’t already. Now is the time to check the list and make any updates!

1. Content is up to date, accurate, and informative

Does your website clearly lay out the value proposition for your prospective customers? Does it clearly communicate the benefits to them of doing business with you? For example, in my business a web design is not a benefit. Being found online and growing your client base is a customer benefit.

Does your website clearly communicate what differentiates your company. Why should a prospect do business with you versus your competitors?

Does your website make it easy and clear to contact you via email, phone, and social media? Does it have your address if you serve customers at a brick and mortar location?

Does your website have lots of photos? Most people don’t read very much. They are scanning and absorbing visual information before they may read any text. Are you posting to a blog on your website that helps to provide insights and demonstrate your expertise in your particular business? It also signals to search engines that you are a relevant and up to date source for key words related to your business. It’s a business blog, not what you had for breakfast or the fun thing you did on Saturday night.

2. Responsive for mobile devices

Half of all Google searches are done on mobile devices. More than 60% of emails are read on mobile devices. Younger generations live on their mobile devices. Your website now should be using responsive technology to adapt to various devices.

If you are found in a search, but your web page is not easily readable, your prospective customer may just move on to the next company. And Google has started to tighten down and penalize some pages in ranking if they are not mobile-friendly. Expect that to get even tighter in the next couple of years.

3. It is easy to find information and navigate your website

If your website still looks like it’s 2010 or before, you’re cheapening your brand image and dissuading potential customers from contacting you. The look and feel of websites is evolving. If you haven’t already, it’s time to declutter. White space is in! Focus on relevant images and key information. Make it simple, clear, and relevant. Your menu and navigation should be simple and easy for people to follow.

4. Social Sharing should be enabled and easy to use

Your website should be the content hub about your business. Social Media is a channel to help drive prospective customers to your content. And it should also be easy for people to share content from your website to social media. They will actually help you to market and spread awareness with their family and friends if they find interesting and useful content and an easy share button.

5. Email capture

Someone who visits your website today may or may not be ready to make an immediate purchase. But they have shown interest in your brand. Give them an incentive on your web page to opt-in to your email list. If you offer them some information of value in return for opting-in, you will see a much higher signup rate. By opting-in they are giving you permission to market to them over time in a personal way. They are much more likely to open your email than they are to see one of your social media posts.

6. Speed and performance should be optimized

If your website is too slow to load, you may lose a prospective customer. There is a trade-off between lots of images that tell your story and the speed and performance of your site. A tool set like Google PageSpeed Tools will analyze your speed and give specific recommendations for improvement. Make sure you are using a web host with adequate performance relative to others. Also make sure that all images are highly compressed.

7. Optimize for search engines

Check Google Search Console to make sure there are neither errors nor resource blocking for your site. Follow best practices for focus keywords, titles, snippets, photo alt text, and text so that search engines will recognize and reward your valuable content with higher rankings. Reach out to other relevant high value websites to request a link back to your site. Create relevant links between different pages of your website. Make sure your address and contact information are consistent across all sites and social media. Search Engine Optimization experts may chuckle at this simplified list, but these are good first steps to address or to discuss with your web designer.

Maximize website value

If you started the new year without updating your marketing plan and checking the health of your website, now is the time to maximize website value!

Did Your Facebook Ads Not Produce Results?

Many small businesses have tried Facebook ads that did not produce results. Others are using them to drive significant business results. What is different?

Facebook generates $4B. in ad revenue and over 1 million small businesses use Facebook ads. When I speak with people about online marketing, I often highlight the opportunities to use Facebook (and now Instagram) for cost-effective advertising. I also highlight that you can no longer rely on organic reach to get to existing followers of your business.

Several people have recently told me they tried Facebook ads and they “didn’t work.” So they stopped. That usually means that they did not see an immediate, short-term uptick in sales.

Advertising can generate awareness and it can induce someone to look more closely at your product or service. It may not produce an immediate sale. It depends on your product/service and where the reader is in the buying cycle.

In Facebook, People Are Not Actively Looking to Buy Things

[Tweet theme=”basic-full”]In Facebook, people are not actively looking to buy things.[/Tweet]

In Facebook, they are likely not actively looking to buy something right now. Google ads based on certain keywords may be aligned with immediate purchase intent, but Facebook ads have another complementary role to play.

Facebook advertising is usually a longer-term investment. It helps you to generate demand with people who weren’t already looking for you. It helps you to build an audience to market to over time.

There are exceptions. Some products or services may be impulse purchases that can show immediate sales results. Certainly Facebook and other social media networks are hoping that is the case as they all continue to invest in social commerce capabilities. But most of the value of your Facebook ads is to generate awareness and to build an audience to sell multiple things over time.

Common Reasons Your Facebook Ads Didn't Work

There are some common reasons why your Facebook ads didn’t produce the desired results or “didn’t work.” I have compiled my top ten things to look at and adjust in your approach:

Wrong Objectives. People on Facebook are primarily looking to connect with friends and family and to be exposed to interesting content. They are not primarily there to find and buy products. If you have a relatively inexpensive product that someone can make a fast purchase decision about, then maybe you will see product sales directly from ads. I get a lot of ads for T-shirts in my News Feed and I might click to purchase one that I found particularly interesting. People may have an interest in your products, but are not currently ready to make a purchase. Or your target audience may need additional information before they are ready to make a purchase from you. Facebook is primarily a place for you to create awareness and induce people to do something to start a relationship with your business to learn more. Ask people to sign up for something rather than make an immediate purchase.
Incorrect targeting. The power of Facebook advertising is in targeting your audience. First you have to define the personas of the buyers of your product or service. Then look at the Facebook targeting options to match those personas. You don’t want to target too broadly. You want your ad to display to the person who will have the most interest in your products and services. If you only rely on targeting by location or by interests, you may have wasted your ad dollars. Use Facebook Ad Manager or Power Editor to get the most targeting options, including location, age, gender, interests, connections, relationships, language, education, and workplace. You may also be able to make use of custom audiences to target people from your email list or lookalike audiences based on people who liked your page or visited your website.
Uninteresting Image. Facebook is a visual platform. If your image does not stop the user’s eye and grab attention, they will scroll right past your ad. Generally, images with people grab the most attention. Or your image needs to stand out in some other way. It might be brightly colored. Or it might be funny. Sometimes the images that I think are good turn out to be duds and ones I think are marginal turn out to be stars. You have to try multiple images and test to see which ones work the best.
Dull headline or unclear value/benefits. Headlines with emotion get the most attention and response. Words like “easy” or “free” or “simple” or numbers or brackets in the headline generate more clicks. Clearly stating the value or benefits you provide also will drive clicks. If the reader is unclear what the the value or benefit is to them, they simply scroll to the next thing. The value proposition needs to be aligned specifically to the target audience for the ad.
Going after quantity versus quality. Going after the most ad impressions or the most page likes or most website clicks is simple and enticing. But it may not be capturing the people who are most likely to engage with your business and eventually make a purchase. Set your objectives and targeting to go after the people who are most likely to be interested and engaged. Big numbers of uninterested or marginally interested people won’t lead to results.
Not capturing and nurturing prospects in email. Someone may read your ad and have some interest, but they are not ready to make an immediate purchase. But they are a valuable prospect for you to capture and nurture until they are ready to buy. The most effective way to do that is to capture their email address. By opting-in they are giving your permission to do personalized, 1-1 marketing to them over time. What a tremendous value. You may need to offer them a bribe to sign up and give their email. Offer something of value – some information or a contest – that creates an incentive for them to spend a minute filling out a web form.
Relying only on Boosted Posts. Since Facebook now only shows your posts to 2-6% of your page followers, I think the Boosted Post has a role to play in getting key content posts to display to your followers (or your followers and their friends.) Beyond that use Facebook Ad Manager or Power Editor to create and target ads. The Boosted Post gives you more space for text and a link, but fewer options for targeting and bidding. It also won’t enable you to do A/B testing to find out what works well with your target audience.
Unclear Call to Action or No Landing Page. An “aha” moment came to me a couple of years ago when I learned that people only do what you tell them to do. I had previously assumed that people would take action on their own. It doesn’t happen. If you want someone to sign up for email or to follow you on social media or call you or take some other action, you have to ask them to do it. When you ask them to take action, they do, if you make it easy. Make sure you have a focused landing page that is simple and clear for them to take the desired action.
No Retargeting. Retargeting works by keeping track of people who visit your site and displaying your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites. Someone may have visited your web site, but was not ready to make a purchase. Retargeting keeps your business front and center to bring people back when they are ready to buy. Retargeting helps to increase conversions after they have visited your site.
Failure to constantly be testing. One well known web site had a call to action button that was colored green and blended into the overall color palette of the page. They found when they changed the color to red that their click-through rate skyrocketed. It leapt off the page, captured the eye, and more people took action. Test alternative images, headlines, and colors to find out what works best. Constantly monitor and re-test new ad variations to find what works best for your audience.

Will Your Facebook Page Replace Your Small Business Website?

Facebook is making it easier for your small business to engage with customers on mobile devices. They recently announced some interesting new features for Facebook business pages. As they begin to roll out, some people think they could eventually replace your small business website. Others think that they are just a more effective way to drive traffic to your website.

Facebook reports that a billion people visit their business pages every month. And they also report that there are 45 million active businesses on Facebook. The numbers are huge. At the same time (as I’ve blogged about before) more that 50% of Google searches are now done on mobile devices. Also, about 25% of people search for local businesses on Facebook. Facebook is making it easier for your business to be found and accessible on mobile devices.

New features

Not long ago Facebook announced new messaging features to enhance communications with people who like and comment on your business page. Now, rather than having to reply publicly, you can private message the poster. Then last week Facebook announced additional new features particularly targeted at small businesses:

More prominent call to action button – They are testing new buttons for Call Now, Send Message, and Contact Us. The call to action button will also be placed just under the cover photo on a mobile device.
New sections for Shop and for Services – Retailers will be able to list and feature products for sale. Service providers will be able to showcase a list of offerings at the top of the page. Additional sections are still under development.
Mobile-oriented layout – The mobile display of your page will be designed for less scrolling and clicking. It will also introduce section tabs to quickly select what section you want to look at.

The features are starting to show up for some business page managers now and will be rolling out to others over the coming weeks.

Separately, Mark Zuckerberg also confirmed that they are working on:

A Dislike button – He says people have been asking for this a long time. He now sees it as a feature to enable people to express empathy with particular posts. But will it be available on business pages? And will it be an easy way for people to express a negative review?

Why Your Facebook Page Should Replace Your Website

If you are a small business person, you know it’s sometimes complex and time consuming to either build your own website on a hosting service like Wix or Squarespace or to hire a web designer to create and maintain a custom website. On the other hand, Facebook business pages are pretty simple to create, maintain, and update. Facebook pages are already integrated with messaging and with advertising. You don’t need a technical expert.

With the addition of the Shop section, Facebook may be offering an alternative to keep you from going to Shopify or other competitors. Depending on your target audience, Facebook’s Shop section may be as valuable to you as the integration of Shopify and Pinterest with Buy buttons. There is an evolution toward Social eCommerce and Facebook also wants to enable that.

Google and other search engines can index and rank your Facebook page. Then you don’t need to worry about the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of your website.

You don’t need to worry about the mobile display of your business, since Facebook will do that for you.

Why Your Facebook Page Should Not Replace Your Website

If you don’t use Facebook to drive traffic to your website, then you are giving up control. You are at the mercy of Facebook’s terms and conditions and future features. Do you want to be locked into their platform rather than pick and choose the best ways to target your audience? And will their features be sufficient to communicate the unique value proposition of your business and to express your business culture and values? Even with these new features, your options are still fairly limited.

Will the Dislike button be an asset for expressing empathy with your business posts? Or will it become the bane of your existence when misused by an unhappy client or competitor?

What if Social eCommerce on mobile devices doesn’t really work for your business? Can and will your customers make a purchase decision from a small photo and description on a mobile device inside the Facebook app?

Facebook still only displays your posts to 2-6% of your followers unless you have extremely engaged followers or you pay Facebook to boost your posts. You may be locking yourself into a lot of payments to get your content seen.

Risks Outweigh Benefits

I think the risks outweigh the benefits at this stage. While you could rely on Facebook with these new features, I still think the cons outweigh the pros.

What do you think about Facebook’s newly announced features? I know many small businesses who started with a Facebook page and then later built a website. But that was before Facebook became pay to play. Would you be willing to rely on Facebook moving forward for the simplicity instead of doing a simple, small business website?

If you haven’t already, please like us on Facebook!

Easy Steps to Create Your Mobile Marketing Strategy

The way we look for information continues to evolve quickly. A few years ago a mobile marketing strategy was nice-to-have. Now it is a must-have. In fact, it should be your marketing strategy, not an addition to it.

Customers are on the go and inundated with possible sources of information. To succeed now and into the future you need to be able to engage them seamlessly across social media, your website, and email. You also need consistency across all the devices they use. For small and mid-sized business people that can be a big, complex task.

Your customers may be at home on a desktop, traveling with a tablet, or walking or driving in your neighborhood with a smartphone. Will they find you? Will their experience with your brand be good on each device and each touch-point? Let’s try to boil it down into a some easy steps to think about to create your (mobile) marketing strategy.

Get insights into your customers’ buying behaviors. Marketing and strategy start with understanding exactly who your target customers are and their behavior for making a purchase decision.
- Who are they?
- What kind of devices do they use when?
- When do they make a decision to contact you or come into your business?
- What information is most helpful to them to engage with your business?
- How do they most often contact you?
- What times of day do they look for information about you?

Answering these questions will help to guide your strategy. Don’t know the answer to these questions? Then it’s time to start asking. Ask your customers individually. Conduct an online survey. Look for market research online relevant to your location and industry.

Only invest in a mobile app if you have business justification. Most small and mid-sized businesses will find the cost and usage of a mobile app to have a negative return on investment. While smartphone users spend a lot of time using apps, they primarily use about five very popular ones, like Facebook, Google, etc. Don’t worry if you don’t have a mobile app. Many people prefer to use a mobile web browser rather than load up their device with niche apps.

Create a consistent experience across channels. Your brand image and value proposition should be the same across the web and social media platforms. Your customers interact with you across multiple channels even for one purchase decision. Make sure they can easily link back and forth. And make sure the key information about location, phone number, and email are consistent.

Time some content posts to customer behavior. Do you have customers streaming off a cruise ship at certain times? Do you see most of your business late afternoon and early evening? Timing some of your content posts to those times may engage people in social media or email at just the time they want or need to interact with your business.

Run mobile ads on social media. Facebook is now a pay-to-play platform for businesses and other are moving that direction. But you can reach your on-the-go audience by running pay per click mobile ads on the social media platforms where they spend their time.

Test and refine. Try out your strategy. Use the data on what works and what doesn’t work to refine or modify your strategy. Ask customers for feedback in person and online to guide what adjustments you may need to make.

Responsive Web Design Critical to Your Bottom Line

Have you re-designed your web site in the past couple of years? If not, you are likely in urgent need to update it to a responsive web design. If you’re a digital marketing person, you already know what that is. If you’re not, you may be wondering what I’m talking about and why I say it is critical to your bottom line.

Why Responsive Web Design Is So Important

A while ago I shared data on the shift of consumers to mobile devices to find information. I blogged about it in Mobile First Marketing. I also blogged about what I called Mobile Meltdown Day earlier this year when Google was updating their mobile search rankings. (Others called it Mobilegeddon.) Mobile Meltdown is just beginning. The reality of the initial impact was less than expected. About 17% of non mobile-friendly sites saw their mobile search ranking decline significantly from page 1 results. But that shouldn’t make you complacent about mobile-friendly sites that use responsive web design.. Mobile searches are already over 50% of total searches and continue to increase.

Failure to make responsive web design a priority will put your business at risk moving forward. You will be missing out on customers if they do not have good experience with your web site on mobile devices. In the short-term they may continue to find you in search results. But they will likely abandon you when your site is shrunken, un-optimized, unreadable, and difficult to use. Depending on your business and the typical age ranges of your customers you may already be at risk of losing new customers. The potential impact to your bottom line is huge.

What is Responsive Web Design?

I primarily use three different devices for accessing information on the Internet. I have standardized on Apple (don’t get me started on my poor experiences with past Microsoft products!). So I use an iPhone, iPad, and Macbook Pro at different times and locations. At work I am using my desktop browser(s) on a large screen. If I’m relaxing in the family room, I usually have my iPad open checking social media, reading news, using apps, and searching for information using the browser. If I am not at home I am using apps and searching for information on my iPhone while I am on the move. You may have fewer or more devices than me, but you get the idea. No matter what device size I am using I want to be able to read and interact with information from your business. If it’s unreadable, too slow, requiring me to go to a separate mobile site, or otherwise difficult to use, I just go to the next of your competitors. I personally don’t have time or patience to deal with your business if you don’t make it easy for me to learn about or find you. And I’m not alone!

Responsive web design is the approach to deal with this situation of multiple devices to have a consistently satisfying customer experience. It is a way of designing and developing web sites so that they are easy to read, interact with, and navigate across a wide range of devices. It is an approach for your web site to adapt and adjust to the customer, based on which device they are using at the time. There should be minimal re-sizing and side-to-side scrolling required. Mobile customer experiences should be optimized for speed and for minimal page switching.

How You or Your Web Designer Implement Responsive Web Design

You may use tools or frameworks such as Webflow, Bootstrap, Foundation, or Skeleton if you are Web developer into the technical details. For a WordPress-based web site, I like to start with a theme that already incorporates principles of good, responsive design. That way I can focus more on the customer experience and compelling marketing content.

Principles and best practices continue to emerge for Responsive Web Design, but these are some to consider now:

Start by designing for the mobile customer
Use images that are flexible and workable on retina displays from small to very large
Compress images and videos to improve performance
Get rid of non-essential content and site decorations
Present more information that can be seen scrolling downward rather than requiring a lot of back and forth between pages
Get rid of Flash on your site
Minimize navigation menus
Have important information at the top of your site
Use bigger buttons
Look at whether you should have an app in addition to a web site

Small and mid-sized businesses are particularly lagging in the move to responsive web design. If your web site is not yet using responsive web design it needs to be on your priority list of things to do. You’re probably already losing some customers who are trying to interact with you on mobile devices. But this will increase significantly over the next 1-2 years. The time to act is now before you see a negative impact to your bottom line.

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Social Media Marketing for Small Business: Half Are Losing Out

I was surprised when I read a recent research report done by Clutch. They surveyed small businesses about their usage of Social Media marketing. The data indicate that around half of them are ignoring prospective customers by not using Social Media marketing for small business. And more than half are not investing in work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

According to the Clutch study of small businesses:

<20% of marketing budgets are spent on Digital Marketing
only 53% do some work on Social Media
only 45% do some work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
only 25% do work on online advertising

Small businesses are slow to invest in digital marketing to acquire new customers and expand relationships with existing ones. But Social Media marketing is about inviting people to get to know your business and for you to get to know them.

Why are many small businesses reluctant to do Social Media marketing?

I have heard various reasons from small business people I have spoken with, including:

I tried Facebook or Twitter a little while, but I didn’t get any sales from them.
I asked my customers if they use Social Media and they said no or not much.
I don’t know where to start – there are so many social networks and I can’t cover all of them.
I think I have to have a website, but I don’t have time or money to spend on Social Media.
Isn’t Social Media primarily for young people?
If I were to advertise on Social Media, wouldn’t Pay Per Click (PPC) ads be very expensive?

Why is Social Media marketing for your business important?

Increase your brand awareness
Drive more traffic to your website
Get new leads
Leverage the trust that Social Media users have in their friends, family, and people they follow
Extend your message with Likes, Comments, and Shares faster and cheaper than word of mouth
Reach new prospects for your products and services that may not otherwise find you
Provide additional differentiating information about your company, products, and services
Put a human face on your business and let people get to know your people
Find new connections of suppliers and partners in addition to reaching new prospective customers
Target very specific audiences in ads based on interests, behaviors, job titles, locations, etc.
Try out marketing ideas fast and with very low cost to see what works or doesn’t work
Contribute to your search ranking with strong social signals that you are a valuable brand (this is likely to increase in weight over time)

As I’ve blogged before, the way people are making their purchase decisions is changing. They rely much more on online reviews and referrals. When was the last time you booked travel without looking at online reviews? They often research products and services online before they have any contact with your company. They may interact with your online information multiple times during their purchase decision as they advance through their process.

Some small businesses drop social media marketing if they don’t see any immediate increase in sales. But social media marketing is not a short-term investment. You are building a timeless presence on the Internet. You are increasing awareness and starting to build relationships that will likely pay off sometime in the future. Short-term promotions on social media with contests, coupons, and specials can drive a short-term uptick in sales depending on your organic reach or ad budget.

You may not realize that half of the world’s population has grown up with the Internet and Social Media. Yes, that’s right! 50% of the world’s population is under 30 years old. They are connected, they use less and less of traditional media, and they are technology savvy. They are not kids anymore. And those in their 20s and 30s have tremendous purchasing power.

Social media ads are still an under-utilized marketing element by the majority of small businesses. With traditional advertising you are broadcasting to a very wide audience in order to reach the subset that is your target audience. Social media advertising enables you to specifically target individuals in your target audience and to only pay when the target clicks through your ad for more information. Since there is no publication or broadcasting overhead, the cost of social media ads is way less than traditional advertising. It’s also less costly than Google Adwords ads that are only based on keywords on search result pages. And how many people are like me who ignore the display ads in newspapers and on web pages. What better place to get attention on your ad than in someone’s News Feed between photos and videos of their friends and families?

How can you get started economically?

Focus on one or two Social Media platforms that have members of your target market. You don’t need to boil the ocean and get onto every Social Media platform. As I’ve blogged before each one has a slightly different audience with different interests and demographics.
Set your marketing objectives and strategy. Are your top objectives to increase awareness, generate leads, cross-sell existing customers, or ….? For each of the top 2-3 objectives, outline your strategy to use social media to support that objective.
Engage a Marketing agency, consultant, or coach. If you can’t train and dedicate an employee to Digital Marketing or Social Media Marketing, then look at hiring a marketing agency or consultant to be an adviser, a doer, and an extension of your staff part-time. Depending on how much staff time you can dedicate to Social Media marketing, you might only want a consultant to be on retainer to be your coach one or more times per month. An agency, consultant, or coach will also keep you up to date on the latest trends and where to invest time and effort for your business objectives.
Get Marketing training for yourself or your staff. If you allocate an internal staff person for social media marketing, make sure they are trained on Marketing. While almost any younger person knows how to post on some Social Media platforms, they don’t necessarily know how to do that effectively for business marketing purposes.
Look at your Digital Marketing mix holistically. Determine how much to invest in Web Design, Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, Blogs, Podcasts, video channels, eBooks, Social Media marketing, and traditional marketing. Speak with an agency or consultant if you need assistance.
Augment with Social Media advertising. Social Media organic reach is shrinking. Your posts will only reach 2-6% of your followers. Social Media is now pay to play for businesses. Different platforms will enable you to boost posts or insert ads into the News Feeds of the types of people and interests that you specify.

Let me know your thoughts and experience. Have you seen other obstacles to overcome? Are there other tips you would suggest for Social Media marketing for small business?

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Drive More Business with Mobile Local Search Marketing

As some of you know I live on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. Our largest industry is tourism. Every day we have more than 23,000 visitors with mobile devices looking for local business information. On top of that we have daily visitors streaming off cruise ships with their mobile devices. And we have 65,000 full-time residents that need to find information about local goods and services. After all, you can’t just drive off the island to buy something! These consumers are increasingly using mobile local search to find information. And people searching on a mobile device are closer to a purchase and more likely to take action than with traditional desktop searches.

Mobile Search and Local Search Marketing are Converging

It’s imperative for most of the local businesses that I serve to be optimized for both mobile and local search. But it’s not just for local, small businesses on my island. Large brands such as Ace Hardware in the U.S. and Argos in the U.K. are using mobile combined with local search marketing to drive customers into their stores. It’s no longer a nice-to-have. Mobile Local Search Marketing is a must-have!

Google has reported that more than 50% of searches are now done on mobile devices. On-the-go consumers are looking for local information.

52% of searches on smartphones are done in the car or away from home and work (source: Thrive Analytics)
60% of consumers use a smartphone while shopping and this number is growing over time (source: Thrive Analytics)
37% of all consumers use mobile search to look for local products and services, but the percentages are much, much higher for Gen X and Y consumers (source: Thrive Analytics)
70% of consumers prefer a mobile website over a mobile app for local information (source: LSA Local Media Tracking Study 2014)
56% of smartphone searches on the go or in a store have local intent (source: Google)
63% of consumers use multiple devices to find a local business and 79% of them are smartphone users and 81% are tablet owners (source: comScore study)
24% of local searches done via a mobile app are done through Facebook (they are number two behind Google Maps – source: comScore study)

The data are compelling. These are trends that will continue to increase.

How to Optimize for Converged Mobile Local Search Marketing

So how do you optimize for Mobile Local Search Marketing? I’ve blogged before about Mobile First Marketing and about Mobile Meltdown Day (that some other bloggers have also called Mobilegeddon!) Those posts also still apply here. But let’s look specifically at some things your business can do to be found on the first screen of a local search on a mobile device:

Have a mobile friendly web site that passes Google’s test – If your web site on a smartphone requires someone to scroll left and right or to pinch and zoom to be able to read something, then you need to update your web site now. As of April 21, 2015, Google started penalizing you in mobile search ranking.
Ensure your Google My Business listing is up to date – If you haven’t registered on Google My Business, do it! If you have, make sure information is up to date and that your business name, address, and phone number are consistent with other places you are listed on the Web. Having a Google My Business listing gives you a better mobile local search position and gives you a listing in Google Maps.
Include images in Google My Business – Make it easy for consumers to identify you and your products/services
Make location prominent on your web site – Have your location in relevant places such as title tags, description, and in your content
Ensure images on your web site are compressed and consolidated – Load time for your site is important, so make sure your images are optimized.
Get listed on other relevant business directories – Get a profile on Yelp, Yahoo, Bing Local, other local directories, plus directories relevant to your industry
Make sure your NAP (name, address, phone) are consistent everywhere on the Web – Google wants to know you are real, accurate, valuable and nearby to its customers in search results
Get reviews and recommendations – Reviews on Google and Yelp will also help your mobile local search ranking (make sure they’re positive!)
Create local content in your blog – Local content in your blog will also help to position you for mobile local search
Create a business Facebook page – For consumers doing mobile local search in the Facebook mobile app, be sure you have a business page with name, address, and phone number

These are some highlights for optimizing for mobile local search, but for a very detailed list of factors and weights specific to Google local search ranking take a look at Moz’s 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors.

Besides the basics, there are some other things you may want to consider to increase the amount of business you get from mobile local search. It may also be a good idea to have a click to call button so people can easily reach you. And you may want to consider other geolocation features that attract people who are nearby.

You may also want to consider PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising on mobile devices. These ads typically display at the top or bottom of the screen. If you are not highly optimized for mobile local search, this can be a way to make your business visible on the first screen. And if you are optimized, you could potentially have your business displayed three times on the first screen:

Google My Business listing
Mobile Local Search results
PPC ad

Are you optimized for mobile, but not for local search? Are you optimized for local, but not mobile search? Or are you not optimized for either? An investment in mobile local search, possibly combined with PPC mobile ads, will help today’s consumer to find you. Because they are closer to an action or purchase decision than a desktop searcher, this is an investment that will drive real business results.

What do you think? What have you done with local and mobile search optimization? What have you learned? Are there other tips you would share?

How to Avoid Mobile Website Meltdown on April 21…and Beyond

It’s almost here! I’m calling it Mobile Meltdown Day. April 21 is the date that Google will lower your web page rankings if your site is not deemed by them to be mobile friendly. Some big brands and lots of smaller businesses may wake up to a surprise on April 22 unless you take action now. Google announced this change in a blog post on February 26. It may only impact your mobile search rankings for now, but there is widespread speculation that it may also affect desktop search rankings later.

What are Google's goals?

Google isn’t making this change just to make work for your business. More and more of your and Google’s customers are shifting their time and attention to mobile devices to search for information and interact in email and social media. As Google wants to maintain their dominant market share for search, they have some goals they are trying to achieve with this change:

Have a better mobile search experience for their users
Give their users exactly the information they are looking for in the most usable format
Make money – they will be seeking to expose apps and media in search results on mobile devices

Why is this important to your customers, not just Google?

In a July 2012 study conducted by market research firms Sterling Research and SmithGeiger for Google they found:

67% of smartphone users say a mobile-friendly site makes them more likely to buy a company’s product or service, and 74% say they’re more likely to return to the site later
61% say that if they don’t find what they’re looking for (probably within about five seconds), they’ll click away to another site. Half say that even if they like a business, they’ll use its site less often if it doesn’t work well on their smartphone
72% of users say a mobile-friendly site is important to them

How do you know if you are at risk?

Look at your website on a smartphone. Does it appear cut off on the screen? Do you have to scroll left or right? Is the text so small that you have to pinch and zoom to read anything?
Run the Google Mobile-Friendly Test by entering your URL.

What can you do?

Chances are good that if you have not updated your web site in the past few years, you are at risk.

If your website is based on WordPress, you can convert to a responsive theme that will detect and adapt the display for different types of mobile devices. Look for a responsive theme that enables you to follow mobile design best practices.

Here is my top ten list of mobile best practices:

Do not require any scrolling right or left
Make it easy to find your location and operating hours
Use bigger buttons
Enable finding important information in one or two clicks
Create a simple home page with a short menu
Highlight your site search so customers can quickly find information on your site
Add a click to call button
Simplify data entry for forms and minimize typing – use drop downs and choices to select
Don’t require customers to pinch to zoom to be able to read the text on your page
Keep the user in a single browser window

Are you ready for Mobile Meltdown Day? Have you tested your company’s web site? Have you at a minimum put an action plan in place to become compliant with Google’s mobile friendly policies?

Are there other mobile best practices that you have identified? Please share in comments so we all benefit.

If you have found value in this or other blog posts please also sign up for our email newsletter to keep up with the latest updates.

Periscope App for Business: Opportunities and Threats

New tools have come into the market that make it easy for anyone to be a mobile broadcaster. Now anyone can “show” in real-time, not just “tell.” This changes the landscape for broadcasting and social media engagement and also opens up new opportunities and threats for all types of businesses.

The Meerkat app was all the buzz at SXSW. They have already grown to 300,000 users, but have been cut off from Twitter graph functionality. You can still post on Twitter that you are broadcasting. The Periscope app from Twitter created all the buzz in the past week. Since Twitter purchased Periscope in January, they have it pretty well integrated. And there is Google Hangouts on Air that isn’t quite as new and shiny, but still a contender.

Each of these mobile broadcasting platforms has its strengths and weaknesses, but I believe the Periscope app is the real game-changer and will have tremendous benefit to Twitter and to businesses using it. Anyone with a Twitter account can watch live streaming video on Periscope or Meerkat. Anyone with a Gmail address can watch on Google Hangouts on Air. Periscope and Google also archive video streams for later search and viewing. Meerkat does not, but using the #Katch service provides archiving functionality. Just as Instagram has added huge value to Facebook post-acquisition, I believe Periscope will do the same for Twitter. Live streaming video and audio is not always great through these services, but it is certainly good enough. And the lack of quality is offset by the ease of use and immediacy of live streaming.

Google Hangouts for Air is farther along in having an ecosystem of functionality adding to its value for business. For example, you can schedule a broadcast in advance. You can create a landing page for registration and to collect more information on planned attendees or even to collect a payment. Your streaming videos are saved to YouTube with its rich functionality for perpetual archiving and search/recommend functionality. I expect that an ecosystem will also evolve around Periscope to exploit the business possibilities.

For most business broadcasts of importance you will want to schedule them in advance and publicize through all of your social media, web, email, and podcast channels.

Opportunities

Periscope for Business presents a lot of interesting opportunities to connect with your customers real-time and with visual content. Here are some examples:

Product or Company Event – Let your customers be part of the experience live. Let them share comments and Tweet to their followers about highlights.
Panels – You don’t have to wait for a conference to host a panel of experts and foster a dialogue between them and your audience.
Training – A picture really is worth a thousand words. Live and archived training can be produced cheaply and easily, be interactive, and prevent support issues later.
Advice and Discussions – You can show a use case for your product or service and get feedback or you can offer advice on how to optimize value from your product or service while entertaining questions.
On-site visits – You might host a behind the scenes visit to your factory location or to a customer site to see your product or service in action.
Product demos – Show the world how your product works and how it can benefit them while answering questions and getting new ideas for enhancements.
Product launches – You don’t have to gather press and analysts in a room for a launch or at least you can extend your audience online.
Regular broadcasts of news and opinions – Host your own online news broadcast or ongoing video blog and gain immediate feedback from your audience.
Live support – Show rather than tell someone how to solve their problem. Let them follow along in real-time while also potentially benefiting others who have a similar problem/issue.
Realtor open house – Host a virtual open house and get additional viewers who cannot or will not come in person. Get immediate feedback on the property.
Online focus group – Need some quick market research? Have an idea you want to bounce off potential customers? Crowd-source a virtual focus group to share ideas and feedback.
Tourist information – Don’t just post some photos, but let your target audience experience some of the sights and sounds of your destination in real-time.

I’m sure I am just scratching the surface with these ideas and that many other industry-specific ideas may come into your mind. I believe the opportunities to use Periscope for Business are great.

However, it is not all unicorns and rainbows. As with most new technologies, Periscope opens up new threats that will have to managed and possibly regulated.

Threats

The idea that now anyone can be a mobile broadcaster anywhere also presents potential threats to your business. Some that come to mind for me include:

Search – How do you enable your audience to find either live or archived video streams. What if you throw the party and nobody comes?
Copyright infringement – What if someone is mobile broadcasting your copyrighted images, music, or text? How will you know and how can you enforce?
Loss of revenue – What if someone broadcasts an event, concert, musical program, conference, or other content for which you normally charge a fee? How much revenue might you lose?
Privacy – Images of you, your employees, or your customers may be broadcast without their explicit knowledge. Periscope location pinpointing is more granular than just your city and may draw people to a location where you don’t want them.
Journalism and Broadcasting – If you are in the news or blogging business, you now have a whole new set of competitors – anyone around the world with a smartphone!

What do you think? Have you tried Periscope yet? For your industry do you see other Opportunities or Threats in using Periscope for Business? Please share your thoughts and ideas.

Social Media Ads: Why, Where, and How Much?

Why think about social media ads? Isn’t social media marketing free and easy? Most of the business people I speak with still think so. After all, it doesn’t require any special training to use Facebook or Instagram. All you do is throw up some posts to engage your target audience with company products, photos, and updates. You just need a young person to assist you. (I hear that a lot, too, from mature business owners.) They are still living in the good old days of social media marketing.

It used to be that social media marketing was just about posting interesting content for your target audience to read and engage. But as social media matures, social media marketing also has to evolve. As we’ve blogged before, your company’s Facebook posts may now only reach 2-6% of your followers organically. The same thing is happening on Twitter and other social media platforms where user feeds are becoming cluttered and crowded. Social media companies are 1) trying to cut through the clutter to show their users the most valuable content and 2) ramping up advertising platforms so they can monetize their huge user bases.

Google Adwords (and other search engine ads) are useful, but no longer sufficient. They are not necessarily the best way to reach your target audience as they go through the purchase decision process. Search engine keywords tend to target early in the decision process for general awareness. Search engine long tail keywords target more specifically and possibly later in the decision process. Social media networks have different ways to target your audience and at different points in the purchase decision:

Facebook: demographics, interests, and behaviors
LinkedIn: industries, job titles, and organizational levels
Pinterest: demographics and interests
Twitter: interests, followers, and keywords
Instagram: age, gender, country – they will also be sharing data with Facebook interests and behaviors

Not only does each search engine or a social media network have unique ways of targeting ads, they each have different audience profiles themselves:

Facebook and Twitter are both very large and cut across age groups, geographies, genders, and interests
Pinterest has a larger segment of younger women – 85% of its users are women
Instagram has a large segment of usage among young people – this is the place millennials go to interact away from older family members
LinkedIn has users who are business people

Wishpond has a good summary of user profiles for each social network that can help determine where you should focus for your target market.

Social media advertising means looking at which social media networks:

Have users in your target audience
Give you effective ways to select and specifically target them
Are cost effective for achieving your marketing objectives

Otherwise you are doing “spray and pray” advertising and wasting your money.

Internet ads now make up 25% of the entire ad market in 2015 (source: Social Fresh). One million small and medium sized businesses advertise on Facebook. And there are 2.5 million Facebook promoted posts. Twitter has not ruled out changes to its news feed algorithm to prioritize posts the way Facebook does. Instagram (owned by Facebook) is expanding its advertising platform to both deal with cluttered feeds and to monetize the user base.

Ad costs on different social media platforms do vary. A Facebook ad will likely be more expensive than a Google Adword, but less expensive than a LinkedIn ad. The ad costs reflect the specificity and effectiveness of targeting for your audience. Match your marketing to the right social media networks for your business. Then look at how social media ads can get your message consistently in front of your followers and your prospects. It’s not like the old days of just posting some interesting content for free.

Your Blog Drives More Business Than Social Media

Website+Blog+Search Engine Optimization+Social Media+Email=Business Growth from Digital Marketing

Does that equation surprise you? Of course, it is a gross simplification. But it illustrates a point. When I speak with other small business owners like myself, I hear them talk about a website and social media posts, but a blog and email marketing are usually missing ingredients.

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is also usually missing, but you may be able to rely on your website platform (e.g., Wix, WordPress) or web designer to assist with some basic techniques. However, depending on your website provider, they may not counsel you on the importance of content. A blog is a key way to deliver content that drives business growth from online, digital marketing.

Why Should You Care About a Blog?

In 2015 search engines such as Google are focused on creating the best possible user experience. They are continuing to increase their analysis of your web site to ensure it has the information your target audience needs. This and other factors drive your ranking in search results. If the keywords and content being searched for are not well represented and highlighted to search engines in they way they expect, your target audience may not find you online. (Or maybe you will spend a lot of money on ads.)

There is more to SEO than content that can be delivered via a blog. But a key component is content written in the language of your target customer and that hits their keywords for searching.

There are other reasons besides search engine ranking for why you should seriously consider a blog with your web site:

Establish your brand
Differentiate from competitors
Demonstrate expertise
Build an audience of potential and existing customers, partners, and vendors
Make your company more personal
Control your content as social media networks continue to change
Provide customer support for common questions
Collect email addresses

Let me emphasize that last one again – collect email addresses. In these days of social media marketing the data show that email marketing is still more effective for actually getting someone to buy your goods or services. Providing interesting, expert content and getting people to subscribe with their email address is even more effective in driving business results than all your posts on social media.

A McKinsey study found that e-mail is nearly 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined for acquiring customers. A Gallup survey found that 62% of consumers say that social media has no impact on purchase decisions. 90% of U.S. consumers use email daily. Also, the average order value driven by email is 17% higher than purchases that are attributed to social media.

I know you’re thinking:

Wait! I’m a small business owner, not a blogger!
I don’t have time for that!
I’m not a good writer!
How often would I do this and would I run out of ideas?

There are resources that can help and that don’t cost too much:

Blogs on best practices for writing a blog post
Google keyword planner for most searched keywords related to your business and geography
Online tips on where to find ideas for blog posts
Freelance writers and writing services that can research and write a blog post for $10-15 depending on the number of words
Marketing consultants and agencies that can assist to generate ideas and produce content on your behalf

Do you have a company blog? What tools and techniques have been helpful? What results have you seen?

You Know Your Web Site Design is Outdated if. . .

Is your web site design outdated? In the old days, we “Let our fingers do the walking.” The phone book was the go-to place for finding what we wanted so far as goods and services. Today customers don’t normally opt for the phone book when they are looking for goods and services. If you’re like most businesses out there, your website is likely the first point of contact for customers seeking your services.

What is the first impression of your business? What do your potential customers see when they land on your URL? Is your website contemporary and modern or does it provide a dated look that doesn’t show you or your business off in your best light?

Worse still, does it load in several minutes instead of several seconds? If it does then you’ve got to do something to change it all.

Take a long look at your website. Here are a few ways to determine whether or not your website might need a little renovation to be appealing to your customers?

Is your information outdated? If you’re showcasing the employee of the month from 15 years ago, it may be time for an update. If there are staff members on the staff pages whose retirement party you attended 10 years ago, it’s probably time to redesign and while you’re at it, get some updated content to replace the slightly moldy stuff that you’re currently showing to your visitors.

Do you have blinking links or scrolling text? While done in small amounts, it can be effective, the old school sites from the mid nineties offered blinking text, animated images and text that scrolled backward and forward across the site. If there’s enough blinking on your site to bring on an epileptic attack, it’s time for an upgrade. There’s nothing more certain to turn off visitors than an old and obviously outdated website.

Are you showing a splash page? You know your web site design is outdated if you’ve got a splash page as your opening credit. If you’ve got the old school look of a logo and a single page telling your visitors to click here, it’s well past time for an update. Those are one of the best ways to prove you’re a well dated company who has neglected your website. In addition, Google tends to frown on splash pages or doorway pages, so you’re probably not doing as well in search as you could be if you spent some time to update and speed up your website.

Do all of your in-site links tell your visitors to “Click here to. . .” If that’s the case you’re using a 90s method that is not the best way to accomplish what you want from your website. The website links today offer information about the pages that you’re going to be visiting or they offer anchor text. Click here is a sure sign of an outdated page that needs a revision.

Is your entire site built in flash? Do you have an entire website built in flash technology? A few years ago, full sites created in flash were the be all and end all. Today we tend toward easier and faster sites such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. These are easier to update and load more rapidly. If you’re using an all flash website, flash is difficult to read so the odds are good that your customers are waiting for the site to load and you’re lagging in search. Time for an update to something a little more modern.

Are you sporting a custom visitor counter? While a visitor counter was a wonderful thing in the old days, today they are considered amateur night. Counting our visitors is considered a private thing and we do it using analytics or other methods that aren’t quite as public as the traditional digital watch style visitor’s counter displayed proudly on every page. If you’ve got one on a new site, get rid of it. If you’ve got one on an old site, get a quote on a new site. Chances are that you need one.

Last but certainly not least, are you using coding that hasn’t been in use since Homer was a pup? If you’re using fortran, basic or html to create the pages of your site, there’ s a better way for both you and your customers. Getting an updated web site design means that your customers are going to have a better, faster and more modern site that will give them a much better experience. Make it sleek, make it clean, and make it easy to use.

An updated web site design is going to help you to rank better, to draw in more visitors and to bring you a great return on the investment. If you’ve kept the website that you have more than two years, it’s well past time for an update. Take a look at all of the great new designs and themes that are out there and pick one… and hurry.

The Facebook Ads Mafia Shakedown: Pay or Suffer the Consequences

Facebook ads can be a very effective way to gain awareness of potential customers and to engage customers and prospects over time. It is a critical digital marketing tool for most businesses to establish and nurture profitable customer relationships over time (there’s that definition of marketing again!). Facebook used to be the village square where people and merchants met freely to exchange information and goods. On the small island of Kauai where I live we do this at the local Costco. But Facebook allowed us to do this globally.

The Start of the Shakedown

Ah, the good old days. But then the Facebook ads mafia decided the village square didn’t have to be free for merchants and businesses. They could cleverly extort money from them in order to stay in place or else be relegated to the back alleys. This shakedown scheme began a couple of years ago now. If you were a business on Facebook back in February 2012, you saw an average organic fan reach of 16% with your posts. By March of 2014 you saw an average organic fan reach of 6.51%. (Source: Social@Ogilvy study.) It was even worse for pages with more than 500 likes. In other words, if you didn’t pay up, your reach and performance suffered. If you are a new business developing your social media marketing strategy, be prepared to pay up and pay for advertising to achieve results that were previously free.

Back in 2012 Facebook started changing their algorithm about what would be displayed in News Feeds. So while you still may see that casserole recipe post from Aunt Mary on a regular basis, you are not seeing all the photos posted by a big box store you follow. Many businesses have tried increasing the number of posts in order to tread water with the total reach that they previously had. But is that achieving the desired business result? Is your objective just to get something in front of a person with your business name associated, or is your business objective for them to do something (click your website, signup for a newsletter, go to your ecommerce site, contact you, etc.). Most of us would say the latter. So where it used to matter how many “likes” you had to establish a fan base, now what matters is the cost per desired engagement. Note that I say “desired engagement” as opposed to Facebook’s “engagement” defined as like, comment, or share.

Engagement in Facebook’s terms means that someone reacted to the photo or status

Note that Facebook’s reported metrics may still not be accurate for either reach or engagement, although they continue to improve. I know from my own Facebook ads that in auditing some engagements on posts, I found that the person was not at all in my defined target audience. So there is still plenty of room for improvement. Your mileage may vary.

What Can You Do?

You really have two primary alternatives:

1. Create extremely engaging content that will be widely shared within your target audience so that Facebook displays your posts more often.

OR

2. Pay up or suffer the consequences – buy ads and pay for boost posts to your specific targeted audience or be sidelined by Facebook

Extremely Engaging Content

According to TechCrunch, Facebook’s algorithm takes a large number of factors into consideration when deciding how much to display your content. But the main factors for News Feed Visibility are:

Interest – Has the user expressed interest in you before or your type of business/content?
Post performance – How well did this post perform with other users?
Creator – How has other content you created before performed with users?
Type – Is it a photo, status, video, or other, and does this match the type preferred by this user?
Recency – Is it new or stale?
and about 100 other factors

If you already have a lot of “likes” then you have an advantage, but no guarantee of success.

Pay Up - Buy Facebook Ads and Boost Posts

If you’re new to the game or you want to do more than just tread water with your fans/prospects/customers, then it’s time to pay up. But first make sure you are clear on your business objective and on your target audience. Otherwise you will be wasting money. Back in December 2014 Facebook announced a new feature of Call to Action buttons on business pages. This will help move someone to action if they actually visit your Facebook page. But how many will? And how many will just look at your post and move on? So think carefully about your target audience, what post content will engage them, and what desired action they should take as a result? In my case, having someone “like” my post isn’t very valuable to my business. I don’t know if that person will do anything else or remember my company of if they just like the photo that I posted. I want them to come to my web site, learn more, and either sign up for a newsletter to stay in touch or contact us. It’s good if they like our page as a secondary objective to have some connection to us. Your objectives may be different in order to grow your business.

Besides having a Facebook page with a Call to Action button and a page full of interesting content, what makes an individual post compelling for someone to take action?

First, you have to capture their attention visually as they scan through a News Feed or sidebar:

An eye catching image
A video
A compelling quote or status update (some people argue that text posts are now cutting through the clutter of picture posts in order to get more attention)

Once you have captured their attention, you need to have some compelling content that causes them to take action, whether that is to like your post, click through to your web site, like your page, or start shopping. See our related blog post on compelling content for some ideas on how to keep attention once you have grabbed it!

Finally, be sure to create more than one ad to test and measure. Be prepared to make modifications based on performance metrics. It is not a “set it and forget it” system. Monitor your dashboard and be prepared to cancel, revise, or kill ads based on your testing and results.

Do you have a Facebook page that the reach has declined? Have you done Facebook advertising? How did it compare to Google Ad Words for you? What have been the business results? Please share.

7 Advantages of Digital Marketing Strategy over Traditional

You’re a business owner or executive looking for ways to grow your business. How do you come up with an effective marketing strategy? What is the role of advertising as part of your marketing strategy? Should it be traditional marketing? Should it be online, digital marketing? Or should it be some combination of the two?

The Modern Customer Purchase Funnel

The purpose of marketing is to enable and drive sales. In my many years of experience as a marketing executive, I believe effective marketing starts with an understanding of your target customer’s buying behavior. Market research and feedback helps you to refine this. But there are some useful customer purchase models to help organize your thinking and idenitify where you may need to gather further information or do testing. A classic customer purchase model was the AIDA one:

Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action

But the Internet has changed that. It is no longer sufficient. A modern customer purchase model that I find useful is:

Awareness
Research and familiarity
Opinion and Shortlist
Consideration
Purchasing
Champion/Repurchase OR Defect/Detract

Think about this with regard to your own buying behavior for different products and services. For example, I am planning to build a house and need kitchen appliances. I have some general awareness of appliance brands, but I have become aware of newer ones through ads and web sites and store visits. I started to research the brands and how they will meet our needs. I asked people in stores. They offered a little insight, but I found a lot more insight and information on the Web. This is a major purchase that we will live with for a long time so I want to make sure we get it right. On the Web, I can also see customer reviews and lab tests of products to understand what other people have experienced. I can see video demos of the products being used. We have formed some opinions and narrowed down the list of brands we are interested in. Now we’re drilling down on those two brands to consider features, pricing, reliability, style, etc. to decide which ones we will purchase. Once we purchase and begin to use those products, we will either be satisfied customers who will champion them to others online and offline and eventually repurchase OR we will be dissatisfied customers who will make that known and detract from the brand.

Traditional vs. Digital Marketing

Customer buying behavior has shifted and so should your marketing mix. Should it be all traditional or all online? It depends on your business and your customers. For many businesses the answer may be somewhere in the middle. But the 4 Ps (product, price, place, promotion) are no longer sufficient.

What are the advantages of online, digital marketing strategy over traditional marketing?

Lower costs –Traditional marketing is expensive. It takes a lot of people, lead time, and materials. Trade shows, direct mail, TV or radio ads are all costly. Digital marketing is much less expensive. The cost to create and maintain a web site is much lower. The cost to write a blog or send an email newsletter is minimal. The cost to run PPC ads on Google or Facebook is much less. The cost to make changes is dramatically less.
Target your message – Your targeting is limited with traditional marketing. Many of your tools are broadcast to a wide audience rather than narrowcast to someone getting ready to make a purchase decision. You can target the right message to the right person and based on where they are in the customer purchase decision process.
Measure ROI – In traditional marketing you are often guessing which marketing elements contributed to return on investment because it would cost too much to find out. With digital marketing feedback is immediate and measurable. Analytics give us data on the performance and conversions associated by different online marketing activities.
Change or refine strategy easily – It’s difficult and time consuming to make changes to traditional marketing elements. Re-designing and re-printing a brochure takes time. Re-shooting a television ad takes time. Digital marketing is much faster to test and refine. You can do A/B testing and get immediate feedback. You can see where you are spending money with results and without results. You can stop and/or change things with less effort and shorter lead times. Real-time feedback and analytics tell you when and how to change your strategy.
Engage prospects longer – Nobody reads a long brochure. A TV or radio ad is usually 30 seconds. A trade show may yield a brief conversation. But online marketing can grab and hold attention. It can help to start building a relationship with a prospect or reinforce a relationship with an existing customer. Online, digital marketing is informative. It is not just PPC ads. It is educating and informing your audience so they can take the next step in their purchase decision process. They can interact with your business via text, images, video, chat. They can see what others have experienced with your business. They can learn more about the values of your business or how you work behind the scenes.
Be available 24/7 – If I wake up in the middle of the night I can still engage with your business as part of my purchase decision process. I don’t have to wait for a store to open or a sales person to call. And the content is long lasting. A blog post I write this year may be just as valuable to new prospects next year. Or it can easily be updated to be always accessible over time.
Be less intrusive – Most of us don’t want to be sold on something. We want to come to our own conclusions. We value advice and a small set of alternatives that are tailored to our particular needs and wants. But we don’t like people pushing something to us based on features and functions that we may or may not need. Online, digital marketing is available when I want it. It is informative. It helps me move through my decision process at my pace.

On the island of Kauai we have many businesses that are targeted to visitors. One of those businesses is selling activities to enjoy while on vacation (ziplines, fishing trips, snorkeling, etc.) It used to be that visitors almost always arrived and then met in person with a concierge at a hotel or a shop to be told what the offers and recommendations are and to make their purchase decisions. But that business model has been shifting rapidly. Now a large proportion of visitors arrive on the island having already researched activities online, reviewed customer reviews, shopped for discounts and promotions, and made a purchase before they ever got here.

Is the answer today all traditional marketing or all digital marketing? For a startup business in particular industries all digital may be the right answer. For some more traditional industries, traditional marketing may still dominate overall marketing investment. But for many businesses the shift is occurring between the two. You may still need traditional elements for that face to face connection via trade shows and an outside sales force. It depends on your product/service and your target customers’ buying behaviors. But chances are your marketing mix will need to shift increasingly toward online, digital marketing.

What do you think? Have you shifted your marketing mix or is it all traditional or all digital? Have you seen customer buying behavior changing in your business? Please share for the benefit of others working on their marketing strategies.

Web Design Top 10 Trends for 2015

Why should you care about web design trends for 2015 if you are not a web designer? If you have a website that has not been updated for a few years, you not only may look stodgy and out of date but also may be poorly positioned by Google in search results.

If you don’t already have a website, you have a couple of options. You can use a service for a “free” website (see There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Website) or a website generator and be locked into their design choices for you. Or if you are considering a custom web design these are important items to discuss with your web designer.

Good design is a reflection of your business. A well designed website can help to differentiate you and engage your audience on an emotional level as well as based on content. A poorly designed site can cause your prospective customers to move on to your competitor.

I have looked at a lot of web sites and predictions of trends by people in the web design business. In this blog I boil it down to the top ten that you as a business owner should pay attention to in 2015.

1. Responsive, Mobile First – More than half of all email is now read on mobile devices. Your mobile web traffic may be a lower percentage for now, but I bet it is increasing every month. It won’t be long before mobile web access exceeds desktop web access. If your site is not already using responsive web design to appear on mobile devices, you need to make that a priority now. In addition, some web sites are now adopting mobile techniques such as hidden or sliding side menus across all devices including desktops. Mobile will drive more design trends in the future as that becomes the majority of web views.

2. Performance and Speed – If your site takes too long to load on a mobile or desktop device you may lose a prospective customer or annoy an existing one. Even more importantly performance and speed is part of how Google ranks your site for display in search results. If your site has not been optimized for performance and speed your page rank may be slipping relative to competitors. Make sure your web design pays attention to performance and speed.

3. Larger images and less text – We are bombarded with information. We skim most of the emails we receive and the web sites we visit. We are scanning for the important points and maybe stopping to read when something catches our eye. Large images are one way to communicate and to cause the eye to stop. It really is true that a picture is worth a thousand words! An image with text or information overplayed may give you a big bang impact. At a minimum it may draw the readers’ attention to read more. Less text in your web design, more bullets and lists, and more graphics and infographics are ways to capture attention and transfer information quickly.

4. Video – Video is a powerful medium that is becoming more prevalent on web sites. Videos can be very effective to tell a story or evoke an emotion. They are very useful for instructions and training. They are a way to show a product in three dimensions or a way to provide a demonstration of a product or service. Think about how a video may be able to communicate more effectively than words or pictures.

5. Flat design and material design – Flat design has been around for a long time in general, but became important in the digital world in the past several years. Apple’s IOS 7 release in 2013 prompted a lot of attention to flat design. Flat design is simple web design. It doesn’t try to make things three dimensional. It is easy to scale across devices. It uses simple elements, typography and flat colors. Material design was announced by Google in 2014. It is widely used in Android and other Google applications. It includes increased use of grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, and depth effects such as lighting and shadows.

6. Big typography – Along with simplicity, flat design, and larger images is also the trend toward big typography. It’s another way to stop the reader’s eye and grab attention. It screams out “look at me” and “this is important.” It’s like the old days of skimming a newspaper for the headlines. It’s simple, clear, to the point, and attention grabbing.

7. Pinterest style cards – Another key trend in web design is a way of making it easy to scan a lot of information quickly primarily using images and “cards.” Your eye can quickly scan across the cards and titles to see if something catches your eye to stop, click, and drill down. This is the format on the growing Pinterest social media site. The blog page on our site is also an example of this trend.

8. Scrolling, not clicking – Users on mobile devices prefer to scroll rather than click to find more information. As a result websites are increasingly using long pages with scrolling rather than menus and navigation to click through. Apple’s web page for the iPad Air 2 is an example of this trend (plus others). Lots of navigation and clicking in web design is out. Minimal navigation and scrolling are in.

9. Storytelling and emotion – One way to differentiate your company to prospects and to encourage ongoing customer relationships is to tell stories and to create emotional connections. The testimonial or reference account has always been an important part of the traditional marketing mix. Customer reviews are another important part of many commerce and travel sites. Telling stories related to your company helps to create an emotional response in the reader of your site. The story may be executed with images and text or may be most effective with video in your web design.

10. Modular instead of pages – Related to trend 7, modern web design is also shifting to be more modular rather than going through pages. Cards are an example of this. Masonry or tiled layouts are examples of modular web design. Instead of navigation you are scanning through tiles of images with text overlays to determine where you want to stop and drill down further. Line25.com compiled a useful post of 25 Web Designs with Modular Content Block Layouts. My personal blog at kauaiguys.com is another example that uses the Booklet theme for WordPress and is designed to be modular.

Wondering if your site is up to date and effective for your target audience? When was the last time you updated the format? Updated the content?

For a free web site review click here to contact us.

Aulii Luau dancers at Kauai Chamber of Commerce

Kauai Chamber of Commerce Case Study

I was honored last evening to be featured as a new member at the Kauai Chamber of Commerce Annual General Membership Meeting. I am so pleased to be a part of these talented business professionals, to get acquainted, and to become part of the community. There is so much entrepreneurial spirit here across a number of industries.

As a new member I had a display table to do some traditional event marketing with other local businesses. It was great to meet new people and to learn about their business ventures. I was in between the dancers from ‘Auli’i Lu’au and the Westin Princeville Ocean Resort Villas. While I focus now on digital, online marketing, I have also done a lot of traditional marketing in my prior roles in technology and consulting companies. You may have a business where you can rely solely on digital marketing, but many businesses still need a mix of both. As a business and marketing professional, I would not hesitate to recommend a mix if it were the right fit. There is still a huge value to connect with others in your own industry as well as in others and to form those relationships both in person and online.

One of the things that I love about being located on the island of Kauai is the common view that we are all in this canoe together. The canoe is such an important part of Hawaiian history and culture. It is such a powerful symbol to me that when we row and steer in a common direction we all reach our destination faster and safer. This is part of the culture and values of Kauai that drew me to locate here. For the canoe to move forward, we need to work together. All as one. One canoe, one ohana, one community. And I believe it is a strong value to guide our business interactions.

KaiKini Case Study of Traditional and Digital Marketing

In learning about the business ventures of others based here, I was especially struck by the story of the founder and CEO of KaiKini Bikinis. She shared with me how she started with an idea and vision and acquired the skills she needed along the way. She envisioned designing and making bikinis in her unique style and optimized for wear while being active. She did not know how to sew, but she bought some commercial sewing machines, experimented, and taught herself to not only design but also to manufacture the pieces. She used traditional marketing and selling to get some local stores to carry her pieces as part of starting her business. She also focused on digital marketing and began social media marketing to engage her customers and to gain further visibility. She got additional retailers on other islands to stock her products. As the business started to grow, she hired others to train to sew. And she taught herself to set up a website. She now has several employees and continues to grow her business as a manufacturer and wholesaler while also selling directly worldwide via her ecommerce website at kaikini.com. She uses blogs and social media marketing as well as Google Adwords PPC ads in her digital marketing mix. A consultant manages her PPC ads for her so she can devote her time to other business initiatives. She uses BigCommerce as her web hosting and tools provider. What an inspiration that she has built a business to market and sell Hawaiian-made products all over the world. And the digital marketing and sales are a key growth area of her business!

What a great evening with the Kauai Chamber of Commerce!

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