online marketing

5 Exceedingly Simple Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Website

James Clear — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:10:08 +0000

Link:

http://www.openforum.com/articles/5-exceedingly-simple-ways-to-get-more-traffic-...

On January 1st, 2011 my brand new business—PassivePanda.com—had received exactly zero visitors.

Eleven months later, the website has received over 350,000 unique visitors and almost 750,000 page views. Even better, we have built an email list of over 10,000 people and gained hundreds of customers. I still have a lot to learn, but it's safe to say that things are going well.

What's the primary difference between my business on January 1, 2011 and January 1, 2012?

Traffic.

You can't do anything without people "coming in the door." Here are five stupidly simple ways to attract visitors to your site and keep them coming back.

1. Start a Newsletter List

Without a doubt, the number one thing you can do to increase traffic is to start a newsletter list.

Here's why...

An email list is the best way to build recurring traffic. By sending out emails to your newsletter list about upcoming events, new products and promotions, or even new articles on your blog, you can guarantee that visitors will continue to return to your site instead of hoping that people will show up when you have something important to say.

2. Get the Word Out With Guest Posts

Guest posting is a simple strategy where you create content such as an article, an audio session, or a video lesson for another website. Why would you do this? Because it can drive traffic back to your site.

It doesn't matter what you're trying to sell with your business, there are websites and blogs that cater to those people already. Your future customers are hanging out somewhere online. It's your job to get in front of them and share what you know.

Typically, at the end of your guest post, there will be a spot where you can link to your website. If you guest post for high-profile sites, then you should have no problem driving traffic back to your website.

3. Brand Yourself as an Expert Through Interviews

In addition to sharing your knowledge through guest posts, you can also share your brand or story through interviews.

There are many sites looking to do product reviews, talk with entrepreneurs, or interview people on recent events in the industry. Reach out to these people. Tell them your story and mention that you're available for an interview if they are looking.

Free promotion like this can help drive all sorts of people to your site—and save you money on marketing and advertising.

4. Use Social Media Strategically

Social media can be a decent traffic driver—if you do the opposite of what most people do.

If you have a decent social media presence for your company, then you can try to drive traffic through your audience. In most cases, however, you'll be better served by connecting with a social media influencer and sharing your information with them.

There are many news sites, media outlets, and individuals that have access to hundreds of thousands of people through their social media pages. Reach out to them, say hello, and share your content in a friendly way. If you build a solid relationship, these people can become large drivers of traffic to your business.

5. Use the Power of Search

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a powerful tool.

If you can rank #1 in Google for a popular phrase, then the big G will send all sorts of visitors your way. SEO is far too broad of a topic to cover here, but you can learn a lot about SEO on OPENForum. And for an in depth look at the fundamentals, be sure to read the tutorial created by the SEO experts at Yoast.

At the least, I recommend doing some minimal keyword research and using the proper tags and headings. If you do only those three things, then you'll see some benefit without too much effort.

And the #1 Thing You Need To Do...

Actually try all the suggestions above.

The only thing that separated my site from many others was that I actually implemented the five steps I mentioned here. Everyone else talks about this stuff, but few people actually do it. Don't make the mistake of knowing what to, but failing to execute on it.

This article is from James Clear of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

How To Claim Your Online Identity and Keep It Relevant

Julie Rains — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:30:21 +0000

Link:

http://www.openforum.com/articles/how-to-claim-your-online-identity-and-keep-it-...

Your customers are looking at your online business listings whether you’ve claimed ownership or not. In fact, they may be writing reviews and telling the world about how much they love your company, regardless of whether you are actively involved on Yelp, Google Places, Foursquare, etc.

This scenario is what Bob Young of ComputerTree encountered when he did an Internet search on his business. He stumbled upon Yelp and read positive reviews already posted by customers.

As a seasoned entrepreneur in the technology industry (his company is an Apple reseller and training provider), Bob knew that people rely on the Internet to get information needed to make purchase decisions. But reading The Referral Engine: Teaching your Business to Market Itself by John Jantsch reinforced the notion that he should take control of and manage information contained in online directories and review sites.

Claiming the listing was a first step. Building out a profile and adding content were natural next actions, enabling him to direct the flow of conversation and deepen engagement with interested visitors, prospects, and existing customers.

Many business owners are very involved in managing their virtual presences on multiple sites while others are still figuring out what to do. Here are a few tips for those just getting started.

Claim your online listings

Start by identifying the business listings and review sites that appear on the first page of search results for your company. Depending on your market, these are likely to include Google Places, Yelp, City Search, Insider Pages, and Yahoo! Local. Then, take these actions:

Register for a business account, which should be free and easy;
Stake your claim as the owner of your business;
Confirm your ownership, generally through a verification process that may involve responding to a call or entering a code from a postcard delivered to your physical address.

Build your profile

Review the information that is already posted on the business listing. Determine what information and categories to keep, remove, change, or embellish.

Verify basic information such as your address, phone number, and business category. Update whatever is outdated or just plain wrong.
Add your website URL and pertinent facts that you want to customers to know prior to making a visit to your location, such as hours of operation, and whether you accept charge cards.
Post photos of the exterior of your facility, which is helpful for those who may need assistance in locating your office or storefront in a business park, office complex, or shopping center.
Publish images of your space’s interior, which can give people a better understanding of your operations and help those who may be reluctant more comfortable with the idea of visiting your location.
Write a paragraph or two about your business, its history (or back story), and you, the owner. Give customers insight into your approach to doing business along with specifics about product and service specialties, areas of expertise, and credentials.

Take care of listing annoyances

Claiming your listing is generally a simple process. Problems arise when information contained in a main source is incorrect or outdated.

Business directories proliferate and tend to use one or two main sources. So, amending some listings does not seem to stop the spread of false data, such as a wrong address or old phone number.

To assure that the right information multiplies, pinpoint the source of any errors and correct information at its origin.

For example, I have found that updating Google Places was more effective than correcting off-brand listings, as the bad data kept reappearing until the Google info was corrected. In a webinar on local marketing sponsored by OPEN Forum, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing mentions key sources that compile and disseminate data as infoUSA, Localeze, and UniversalBusinessListing.

Also, make sure that company information is consistent. If you have multiple phone numbers, websites, email addresses, etc., choose one to represent your business in online directories.

Engage customers and prospects

Both standard and advanced features on business-listing sites can help market your business as well as build and deepen relationships, online and offline.

Create deals. These offers may be more meaningful to site visitors than those on an email list of a deals service. A deal can act as an incentive to prospects that have shown interest in your company.
Encourage loyal customers to review your business. These folks will often highlight the best attributes of your company compared to your competitors.
Interact with customers, whether they provided a positive, so-so, or negative review. Claiming your listing typically will give you the opportunity to respond to reviewers, address concerns, and thank people for their patronage directly.
Add video to offer a multi-dimensional perspective profile of your business. This step can further clarify your brand message and business strengths.

On Bob’s agenda is the addition of video footage from an upcoming customer appreciation event. He plans to show the joy of interacting with his business and capture customer testimonies.

Have you experienced success by claiming your online listings?

This article is from Julie Rains of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Is Social Media Killing Your Business?

Annie Mueller — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 20:51:14 +0000

Link:

http://www.openforum.com/articles/is-social-media-killing-your-business

Social media isn't always a good thing, and it's certainly not a guarantee that your marketing is in the bag. Are you using social media in a way that builds a great reputation and enhances your business, or are you achieving much different results?

If one or more of the following statements is true for you, you may be killing your business with social media.

You’re spending more time "doing social media" than you are on the important work of your business.

What an easy trap to fall into. Who hasn't sat down to answer just one email or spend five minutes on Twitter, only to lose a couple of hours? Social media can be a fun, new toy that distracts you from what you need to be focused on, such as, producing things people want to buy, perfecting services, gaining sales, dealing with customer issues, getting better deals from your distributors, training your employees…

You're confusing your customers with a fragmented approach.

If you haven't taken some time to develop a unique selling proposition (USP) and the core message of your business, chances are you're throwing a lot of different things at your customers. Maybe you emphasize one service on your Facebook page, some other product with your Twitter account, and an entirely different aspect of your business on your blog or Youtube videos.

Customers who find you at one social media outlet and like what they see follow you to the next platform, only to see a different message from you. What are you all about? They're getting different pieces of the puzzle at different social media outlets, but nothing that provides a cohesive overview of your business.

Confused customers don't become loyal customers. If they can't quite figure out what your business is all about, they won't be ready to but any trust in what you offer.

You’re failing to provide the basic information people want.

You've had this experience, most likely… You find a cool new site, a great blog or company, and you click over to find something basic: contact information, or a price list, or a description of service. And it's not there. Maybe there's no link, or there's a place holder page.

When this happens, whether it's on your business blog, website, Facebook page, Twitter page, or any of the other social media platforms you might be using, it's a huge turn-off for customers. Internet surfers are notoriously short on attention span. They don't need to check back later, and they probably won't, because there are ten thousand other options out there instead.

If you lose your potential customers because you're not providing basic information when and where they want it, you've probably lost them forever.

You're making your business look amateur.

Do-it-yourself works, to a certain point, and part of the appeal of social media marketing is the potential to jump into it and do a great job without a huge initial investment. For SMB owners, it's a dream come true: a great marketing outlet that doesn't cost thousands of dollars you don't have.

What isn't a dream, however, is the very amateur image you can produce with a misinformed DIY strategy. Slapping together a color-block logo and a cheesy tagline does not equal good branding. A website that looks like a clip-art explosion punctuated by long blocks of error-filled text does not equal a good web presence.

When you carry your unpolished branding efforts into your social media marketing, and then send potential customers to a dated, amateur website, you're not building your business. You're convincing potential customers that you really don't deserve to be taken seriously.

You're skipping from one media outlet to another.

If you get started on Facebook, decide Google+ is better, abandon Twitter for Youtube, you leave your customers frustrated and ready to find someone consistent.

You don't have to be on all the social media outlets. You most likely shouldn't be on more than a few. Too many false starts and a mile-long list of online profiles simply convinces potential customers that you can't stick to something long enough to make it work.

You're providing content without direction.

All content and no sales funnel means you're not (actively) helping your business grow.

Don't get me wrong: free is wonderful, and can be a powerful marketing tool, especially in terms of social media. However, content can't do everything. It can help you establish expertise, and get people to pay attention to you, but you can't leave them there. Once you've gotten their attention, what do you want them to do?

To put it plainly, you're not putting that work into social media just so you can make the world a better place or make a lot of neat, new friends. No, you're putting that effort into social media so you can build your business.

That means that the end result of successful efforts in social media should be something profiting your business, either in cold, hard cash or in selling potential (mailing list, surveys, opt-in forms filled out by rabidly eager new customers, and so on).

You're failing to respond to negative reviews and mentions.

The good news about negativity in the form of review and press online is that you have the ability to access it, track down the source (usually), and respond to it publicly in the same sort of forum.

An accusation or negative review without rebuttal seems legitimate, even if it is not. A total lack of response says, “Um, I really don't have anything to say to make this better...”

If there are legitimate complaints, it's infinitely better that your potential customers see you acknowledge and correct your mistakes. Trustworthiness doesn't mean your business is perfect; it means that your business has a policy of quickly dealing with mistakes and making them right.

How are you using social media in your marketing? Are you actively building your business, or are you wasting your time?

This article is from Annie Mueller of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

How To Use Cross-selling And Upselling To Maximize Online Sales

Margie Fishman — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:22:53 +0000

Link:

http://www.openforum.com/articles/how-to-use-cross-selling-and-upselling-to-maxi...

Online retailers, who don’t have the benefit of smiling cashiers asking if you’d like fries with that, don’t always make the most of their sales opportunities. Yet when deployed effectively, cross-selling and upselling should benefit your bottom line and offer valuable insight into user purchase patterns. For example, back in 2006, Amazon reported that cross-selling was responsible for more than a third of all sales. Expedia has pioneered bundling travel packages, while Apple unobtrusively recommends a host of products after customers add items to their baskets. Yet many small business websites continue to use unproductive add-on and upgrade tactics (if they bother with them at all), which can sabotage their marketing efforts.

Simply put, cross-selling involves promoting additional, but related, products to a customer making a purchase. Examples include recommending a memory card to someone who just bought a digital camera or a matching handbag to complement that pair of red pumps. The riskier upsell encourages customers to consider an upgraded or premium item. Why buy a 16-inch chainsaw when, for $20 more, you can snag an 18-incher plus free extension cord?

Before calling in the IT folks to retrofit your website, learn these basic cross-selling and upselling tricks.

Price Matters

Cross-selling and upselling are most successful when they communicate added value. Online business experts agree that add-on merchandise should be less expensive than the original product the customer is considering—sometimes as low as half the price. Accessories are a popular choice.

A common upselling practice is to offer discounted or free shipping above a certain purchase amount, improving the retailer’s sales volume. When looking to upsell, focus on products that retain the key features of the original product at a slightly higher price point. You wouldn’t hawk an Alfa Romeo to a Chevy buyer. Customers are interested in products demonstrating higher quality or superior options, as long as that value is clearly articulated. On the flip side, exercise tact when trying to upsell customers who are already shelling out for a premium product.

Be Brand Conscious

Focus on grouping similar brands together, particularly when upselling. Evaluate customer purchase histories, search histories, and average order value to select the most appropriate merchandise.

Subtlety Goes a Long Way

This is not the time for a hard sell. Rather, it is an opportunity to educate customers about a variety of products that might fit their needs. Take a casual, helpful approach in suggesting other merchandise, such as “customers who bought X also purchased Y,” “recommended products,” or “complete the look.” Avoid bothersome automatic opt-ins at checkout, which are often used by airlines and car rental companies peddling supplementary insurance.

Timing is Everything

The very worst thing you can do is provide so many distractions that customers wind up abandoning their carts and your site altogether. One rule of thumb is to display a maximum of three cross-sell items for each product (though you can maintain a database of double that amount to avoid out-of-stocks). Keep descriptions short and display thumbnail images to prevent information overload.

A shopping cart tool is a simple way to automate the cross-selling and upselling process. Suggest add-ons or alternatives after customers have placed their original items in their carts, but before checkout. Another option is to engage customers as they are shopping by displaying products, clearly demarcated, to the side or at the bottom of the screen. Either way, be sure to track how well buyers are responding to your sales pitch.

This article is from Margie Fishman of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

The Dark Side of Viral Content

Glen Stansberry — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 20:19:54 +0000

Link:

http://www.openforum.com/articles/the-dark-side-of-viral-content

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is typically a very polarizing topic, so when I wrote about it on my site, I created a post with a custom graphic and added a catchy title. The post was picked then up by Hacker News, and the rest, as they say, was history.

For those not in the know, my guide was what's known as "linkbait," which is content created specifically to attract incoming links. And the guide did just that. The article generated (at the time of this writing):

570+ retweets;
More than 180 likes on Facebook;
Lots of links from other sites around the Web.

Nearly 100,000 people have seen the article, and it was even on the front page of Google's search result for the super-competitive term "seo guide". Go figure.

Possibly the best byproduct of the buzz surrounding the article was the number of people who subscribed to my site. In terms of improving list growth, the linkbait was a fantastic success.

Fast-forward five months later, and the majority of people who expressed interest in my site have mostly moved on. Many who subscribed to my site have either unsubscribed or, worse, marked follow-up emails as "spam" because I haven't written about SEO since then. To top it off, the article received some terrible comments on networking sites, saying I had no idea what I was talking about. Maybe they were right...

This is the dark side of linkbait.

You spend countless hours crafting a bit of content and manage to have it spread virally, only to have any real user traction slip through the virtual cracks. Anyone who has traffic from StumbleUpon or Reddit or any other 3rd party discovery service knows too well that more often than not, the traffic doesn't stay. It's fickle, un-targeted traffic that most likely will bop on to the next flashy thing in under a second. Linkbait traffic is very similar: it typically doesn't linger long.

Crafting Linkbait that Endures

What the experts won't tell you is that linkbait is really good at one thing: getting links. If you're trying to build a community, then linkbait usually isn't as effective as other forms of content.

Yet sometimes linkbait can defy the odds and help grow a readership, convert sales, or any other positive long-term action that you'd like the casual visitor to take. So how do you avoid the dark side of linkbait? How do you avoid the rush of visitors that don't hang around? Here are a few tips.

1. Create really targeted linkbait.

The main problem with my SEO post is that while the actual meat of the article was in line with my site, the headline and graphic weren't. And guess what most people saw first? While the headline and lead graphic were great at generating discussion, the rest of the content really wasn't seen by most visitors. Because I don't write about SEO often, most people who subscribed via this article jumped ship after a few articles.

2. Make it clear what your site is about on subscription pages.

If the goal of your linkbait is to generate subscriptions to RSS or email (like mine was), then you're better off making it very clear what your site is about during the signup process. I had a simple "if you liked this post, why not signup for..." message at the end of my post. It said nothing about what my writing was like, what the site hoped to accomplish, or anything of the sort. So naturally most people assumed that there would be more articles on content marketing. Oops.

3. Don't make a habit of it.

There's nothing wrong with linkbait every now and again. It's fun, and it has the potential to draw in outside readers. Who doesn't love an interesting infographic? Yet regular readers can tire of linkbait quickly. Most people who decide to hang around want meat and potatoes. You've drawn them in with something sugary, but it's the healthy, nutritious content that promotes readership growth. Just like too many sweets can sour a stomach, too much emphasis on linkbait can make regular readers feel cheapened.

Is Linkbait Worth It?

Would I create another linkbait article on my site knowing about its dark side? If I had a choice, would I endure the nastygrams and spikey traffic and disappointed un-subscribers?

Was it really worth it?

Absolutely.

Even though 98% of the traffic that came to my site didn't hang around, I still have two percent that did decide to stay. I improved my site's awareness. If some of those visitors find their way back to my site a second or third time, they're much more likely to pay attention. And let's not forget about the search engines. Google sends plenty of people to my site, and the higher I can get my content to rank, the better. More links to my site mean higher rankings, and that post brought in lots of links. It wasn't a total loss. That page continues to be one of my highest-trafficked pages to date.

The question you should ask yourself next is this: Is linkbait a good idea for you? Is it good for your audience or niche? You're the only person who knows best whether or not it will resonate with your audience. (And sometimes you just have to roll the dice and find out for yourself anyway.) Just don't fret when most of the traffic doesn't stick around.

This article is from Glen Stansberry of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Why Offline Marketing Still Matters

Annie Mueller — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 23:02:05 +0000

Link:

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/marketing/article/why-offline-marketing...

Offline marketing — you remember it? — used to be the only kind of marketing. Billboards, flyers, brochures, sales letters, direct mail, cold calls, marketing events, seminars, sponsorships, newspaper ads, magazine ads, giveaways, signs — those were all the old fashioned methods of building a brand, building relationships, building awareness, communicating with your customers and potential customers, and getting buzz on the street.

They were all common marketing techniques for small and large businesses, and they often cost a lot of money. Small businesses have, for the most part, embraced online marketing with a sigh of relief. For a smaller investment, they can reach a more targeted market and, often, have a better chance at tracking their ROI, which means they can make better choices about whether or not to keep investing those marketing dollars in the same places.

Does offline marketing even matter anymore?

Here's a scenario. You're looking for a new employee. You've got an expansive online network, lots of contacts in social media, a huge email address list, an active Linkedin account. You get social networking. You've put the word out that you're looking for a new hire.

You go out to eat with your family, and while you're there you run into an old friend. You shake hands, chat, and it turns out your friend has the precise skills you're looking for and is looking to make a job change. He promises to send you his resume.

The next morning you check your inbox to find a flood of responses from your online network: personal recommendations, Linkedin messages, emailed resumes. Oh, and there's the resume from your old friend, halfway down the email list. Which one do you click on first? Which one gets the most consideration? Which one has a draw, a personal connection that makes it easier to imagine hiring this person who sent you this resume?

Most people will be drawn toward the face-to-face connection. As great as social media networking is, as powerful as online connections can be, as many new doors as the Internet can open, the tangible reality of seeing a person in the physical context of your real, offline life makes more of an impression than a virtual hello ever could.

Does this mean your small business is wasting time and money with online marketing?

No.

The world of marketing is not diminishing and should not be divided into online vs. offline. Rather, marketing has expanded into a two-ring circus.

Online marketing provides many immediate ways to connect with a target market. It gives you a voice into new circles of conversation. It gives you the ability to meet people who otherwise would have remained unknown to your business. It provides instant connections, unlimited availability, and many ways to gather and track and respond to data. There is much to love about online marketing.

And online marketing, all by its virtual self, can garner a good response if done properly and consistently.

But if you're tired of seeing incremental number changes in your online marketing, you need to step back into the second ring.You need to make a tangible connection, and that's done via offline methods: a paper letter, a hand-written card, a physical product, a face-to-face meeting, something to be touched and felt and experienced, or someone to be met and talked with and remembered.

However advanced our technology might be, we still rely on direct methods of assessing value and trustworthiness. Your haircut, facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language might have a far greater effect on how I perceive you than do the actual words you say.

Online interaction removes many of those gauges we use to establish value and trustworthiness. A person's relationship with a business depends on how the person perceives the value and trustworthiness of the business.

If you limit the gauges by which people can establish your business credibility, you slow the relationship down. In some cases, you'll stop it altogether, because your business will simply get lost in the online roar. But when you couple online marketing with the tangible, offline interaction that we still need and crave, you boost relationship development.

When a couple who has met through an online dating service starts "getting serious," what is the normal next step? They meet in person, in the real world, in a place where they don't have to make judgments based on virtual clues which none of us are instinctively good at reading. It's the real-life meeting that determines whether the relationship will go forward or not.

Don't make the mistake of keeping your business relationships and your marketing virtual when a little offline work could move them forward, from connections to loyal customers.

It doesn't take as much effort in offline marketing – in terms of time or dollars – to make an impression. If you've already established some common ground via online marketing, then the offline efforts will have a foundation on which to rest. You can follow up with more online marketing, but you'll be following up with the strength you didn't have before: the strength of a tangible, personal connection, the same strength your old friend has behind his emailed resume merely because you shook his hand the night before.

This article is from Annie Mueller of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

The Power of Retargeting

Chris Birk — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 19:56:42 +0000

Link:

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/technology/article/the-power-of-retarge...

For many consumers, it's rarely love at first sight when it comes advertisements and online purchases.

Only a small fraction — around 2% — of visitors who click on an ad actually wind up making a purchase. That's a chilling and sometimes deflating statistic for entrepreneurs and site owners.

Tweaking conversion strategies, site layout, and other key elements can help eliminate some of that fallout. But the reality is there's still a huge chunk of visitors who flee your site without spending a dime.

Yet all is not lost. Enter the power of retargeting.

Getting Your Ad Front and Center

This increasingly important marketing tool allows business owners and marketers to strategically display their own advertisements to consumers as they search the Internet.

Retargeting drops a cookie in visitors' browsers after they visit your site. Entrepreneurs can essentially keep track of visitors and their product preferences out in the greater world of the web. Using that data, business owners can target ads to consumers on scores of different websites. Former site visitors will see ads for your product regardless of whether they visited your site during that particular browsing session.

The cookie dropped in visitors’ browsers is anonymous, and each visitor receives a specific identity on your network. If you’re concerned that you’ll overwhelm web surfers with your ad, you can institute frequency caps. Doing so limits the number of times a former visitor sees your ad in a 24-hour period.

A slate of recent studies and surveys have championed retargeting as a crucial strategy for marketing professionals and entrepreneurs. Retargeted consumers are 70% more likely to buy something than non-retargeted shoppers according to a study from Criteo. They're also more likely to spend upward of 50% more. The same study concluded that personalized retargeted ads are six times more effective than standard banner ads, and four times more effective than basic retargeting ads. Nearly half of all specialized marketers contacted in a joint study by SEMPO and Advertise.com pointed to retargeting as the most under-utilized online marketing strategy available.

Successful and struggling online retailers alike can use retargeting. This marketing technique gives you an edge over competitors since you’ll be drawing repeat visitors. Retargeting is especially effective for big-ticket items that require research and comparison, which means more browsing sessions.

The Costs of Retargeting

Retargeting budgets can be just a couple hundred dollars a month. Business owners can certainly spend more or less depending on their needs and their marketing budgets. Entrepreneurs can connect with providers and agencies that offer retargeting services such as Collective Media, Fetchback, and White Pixel; and even some larger brands, like AOL, offer retargeting options.

This article is from Chris Birk of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

How Sales Has Changed in the Information Age

Julie Rains — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 00:29:03 +0000

Link:

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/technology/article/how-sales-has-change...

The Internet and search providers such as Google have revolutionized the way we access and interact with information. Nowhere is this more evident than in our purchasing decisions, whether as consumers considering major appliances for our homes, or as businesspeople considering goods and services for our firms. Our desire for information, the time required to deliberate, and the potential for post-purchase dissatisfaction all seem to have grown exponentially.

Marketing expert Jon Miller agrees that the availability of online content has altered the B2B buying landscape. The growth of social media and the belt tightening of the recession have accelerated those changes. During a recent discussion, Jon, a co-founder of Marketo, a B2B marketing automation firm, shared his thoughts on the nature of those changes — and on effective marketing and sales techniques in light of them.

Changes in the Marketing-Sales Cycle

So how, exactly, has the Internet changed the B2B marketplace?

Sales representatives are no longer the gatekeepers of information. The days when customers had to meet with sales reps to get information on company products and services are gone. Today, buyers can study industry-specific best practices, identify recommended approaches to problem solving, and begin evaluating possible solutions months before sitting down with a salesperson.

Demand for information (specifically online) is high. Among all demographics and across generations, interest in content is strong. Format preferences may vary between digital natives and boomers; for example: One may follow a Twitter stream or watch a YouTube video whereas another may read a whitepaper or attend a webinar to gather information. Everybody, however, wants access to it online.

Buyers initiate dialogue when they are ready to talk. Push-through techniques, such as traditional cold calls and broadcast messages, are becoming less and less effective. Overwhelmed with the abundance of information, prospects tune out attempts to get their attention. When they find the need to begin investigating solutions to a problem, they use pull-through methods of accessing information, typically searching for relevant online content.

Contacts by sales reps or offers made too early scare prospects. In the early or awareness stage of the marketing-sales cycle, buyers gather general information and become aware of potential sources; in the middle or consideration stage, they explore possibilities, identify key players, and begin to structure an evaluation method; in the late or decision stage, they conduct a rigorous evaluation.

The sales spiel is largely irrelevant. Customers want to control the flow of information rather than receive a sales pitch. They are becoming wary of content published by companies, and seek recommendations and feedback via social media and third-party sites.

Online body language can be observed to detect stages of the decision-making process. Just as in real life, body language can convey receptivity to sales presentations in face-to-face meetings. For example, someone searching for a “digital camera” is most likely in the early stage whereas someone searching for a “Canon PowerShot SD1400IS” is likely in the late stage of the marketing-sales cycle. Similarly, customers may signal their stages of decision-making based on social media activity, such as following a key influencer on Twitter.

The sale is never final. Buyers may have second thoughts after the sale is made. Unwavering belief in the purchased product or service, along with buy-in among all company employees, is often needed to assure proper implementation and integration of solutions offered by your company.

Enduring Aspects of Sales

What remains the same despite the information revolution?

Professionalism is crucial. Sales representatives have long been the face of the company. Today they should offer well-informed solutions and have much greater expertise than customers possess, given the accessibility and abundance of information.

Relationships still matter. The abilities to quickly build rapport and productively manage communications are still important. Though the marketing-sales cycle is often longer and more complex, the sales phase (and window for decision-making) is shorter; consequently, the ability to form seller-buyer bonds nearly instantaneously can be critical to sales success.

There is a prominent emotional component to B2B buying. Buyers are fearful of making a bad decision. Jon references "asymmetry" in describing the potential for negative consequences: The upside of making the perfect choice is just slightly better than making an acceptable decision (perhaps yielding 5% more profit), but the downside of being wrong could be devastating to the business. As a result, buyers often opt for the least-risky rather than the best selection, especially in a recessionary environment where potential job loss is a strong possibility.

Recommendations matter. Buyers still seek advice from trusted sources, such as industry colleagues, board members, and bosses.

All sales leads aren’t equal. Certain leads are more qualified and hotter than others.

Successful Sales Techniques in the Information Age

Given the landscape, what can businesses do better to better reach buyers and then make the sale?

Create and publish search-engine friendly online content. Reach prospects in the early, investigative, information-gathering stage by establishing your company as a thought leader in its niche, educating prospects on best practices and giving actionable ideas. Guide decision-making processes throughout the middle and late stages of the marketing-sales cycle. Provide detailed information on your product lines and applications.

Deliver content in various formats through multiple channels to reach diverse audiences. For example, use whitepapers, webinars, e-books, press releases, information guides, YouTube videos, podcasts, SlideShare presentations, Twitter tweets, and Facebook updates.

Nurture leads. Require visitor registration to access certain content so that you can begin lead nurturing based on buyers’ interests. Show restraint in contacting prospects and making offers too early. Understand that buyers often engage and then become inactive. Use web analytics to detect patterns typical for your company to get a sense of when prospects are ready to make a decision. Online leads can be scored in terms of customer readiness and urgency requiring immediate action on the part of sales representatives.

Simplify in order to facilitate decisions. Information abundance and relentless presence of social media have led to attention scarcity. Offer information that is relevant, well-understood, and easy to access. Provide expert guidance in facilitating decisions.

Reduce buyers’ perceptions of risk and increase their comfort levels after the sale. Affirm the validity of purchase decisions through techniques that include:

Continually reinforcing your company’s position as a thought leader
Engaging with third-party sites
Providing easy-to-use solutions
Making sure there are no surprises after the sale relating to extra fees and per-transaction costs

Marketing and sales have never been easy, and while the tools have changed, the fundamentals remain the same. Cultivate trust, deliver on promises, and give your customers a reason to come back to you for more.

This article is from Julie Rains of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Why do Facebook Ads not take me seriously?

Andrea Karim — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:37:48 +0000

It's not exactly a secret that women ages 18-55 are a sought-after consumer demographic. According to a non-profit report issued by the YMCA, "U.S. women spent some $7 billion a year, or an average of about $100 each, on cosmetics and beauty products." So, it's no surprise that social networking sites like Facebook want to capitalize on our deep pockets and obsession with appearance.

I'm not against consumerism or advertising. Hell, Google pays me for blogging using ad money, so I'm not about to bite the hand that feeds me. Online social networking allows companies the unique ability to gather demographic information (given willingly by the users!) that they can use to deliver targeted ads. I actually think it's a fairly useful tool, and it should solve one of my biggest pet peeves of advertising: being bombarded by ads for things I don't need (vacuum cleaners) or care for (Monday night football). Honestly, the idea of having a company know enough about me to provide me with advertisements for things that I might WANT is fairly appealing.

Here's what Facebook knows about me: I am single, and 31 years old. I am female. I've been known to date men.

When you sign up for Facebook, you enter a good deal of information about yourself. You don't HAVE to provide information about your sexual orientation or marital status, but I wasn't really thinking about the implications of all that when I signed up. Since I wasn't interested in dating via Facebook, I said I was interested in men and women for friendship, dating, etc.

And although I didn't provide this info to Facebook, I also admit the following:

I do meet and date people online.
I could stand to lose a few pounds.

Then why am I so irked every time I see a Facebook ad that asks me to try Oprah's amazing diet, or meet handsome and professional men online?

Because these are the only ads that Facebook showed me. Oh, there are variations on the theme:

Over 30 and lonely?
Get wooed by handsome men! (ad always features a picture of the exact type of man that I do NOT want to be wooed by)
Dr. Oz's Diet!
Muffin Top? Lose ten pounds in a week!

If these ads were mixed in with a variety of other ads for things like I want to buy, I'd probably have no problem with them. For instance, I'm in the market for a flat-panel television, and I'm not really sure how to shop around for one. I've been thinking of treating myself to a day spa in the Seattle area, but would like some sort of package deal that makes it worth the time, and money. Oh, and I'm always in the market for a pair of black, knee-high boots.

If Facebook cared to dig any deeper in my profile, they would notice that I belong to a fair number of liberal groups on through their site, and might start pushing Obama stickers towards me in great fistfuls. Or maybe they would see how often I am listening to music on Pandora, and casually throw the occasional concert tickets ad my way. They might notice from my status update references and fan club membershipts that I have a very serious crush on Hiro Nakamura. Couldn't one of the dating ads at least point me towards a site filled with nerdy Japanese guys who can bend time and space?

But no - it was all diet and douchey-looking dudes.

Why is this? I NEVER click on these ads. Do other women in my demographic click on these ads, thus giving Facebook the impression that I will as well? Are there simply no other ads that would apply to a 31 year-old single woman?

A few months ago, Facebook started allowing users to start voting on the ads that they see. You can give a thumbs-up to an ad that you think is particularly interesting to you, and give a reason (good offer, relevant to me, etc.) or give a thumbs down and select a reason for that (irrelevant, uninteresting, pornographic).

I didn't enter my demographic information into my Facebook profile with the idea that I would meet a life partner through it. I ignore friend invites from people that I don't know, and for me, Facebook was simply a good way to keep in touch with my family members (Facebook is huge in Saskatchewan, don't ask me why). Of course, I know that most social networking sites make their money from ads (as do bloggers, for that matter), but when I clicked "Female" and "Single", it didn't occur to me that Facebook was going to assume that I was a lonely female version of Jabba the Hutt, longing to marry a single lawyer (see below) and produce little Jabbas.

Despite the fact that I don't click these dating ads, and give them a thumbs down every single time I see them, Facebook continued to bombard me with them. As if that wasn't bad enough, Facebook ads apparently started to believe that the reason I wasn't clicking them was because I was getting jilted by my current lover.

I'm well aware that the minute a woman on Facebook chances her 'status' from 'single' to 'engaged', she begins seeing ads for wedding photographers, wedding dresses, and of course, pre-wedding diets. And if she gets hitched and changes her status from 'engaged' to 'married', it's All Baby, All The Damn Time ads.

Now, as a woman with a set of ovaries, I'm not going to lie and say that I have no interest in getting married or having kids. These things are important to lots of women. But they're not ALL that's important to single women the world over. There are other things that we spend money on, like athletic shoes. And cars. We tend to buy lots of books; according to a study in 2007, the average American woman who belongs to a social network spends about $500 a year on books.

Why have I never seen an advertisement for a book when I'm logged into Facebook?

Hey, I care about health and weight loss, and I write about these topics myself. But I just can't get into fad diets, or the latest "miracle" food that supposedly burns fat directly off of my thighs, or an acai berry cleanse. I can cleanse using kale, thank you very much.

A while ago, after getting incredibly fed-up with the barrage of "LET SEXY MALE LAWYERS WOO YOU!" ads that Facebook continued to display, I started to wonder if all women were seeing similar advertisements. Because Facebook tracks your married status and announces it to all of your friends, I didn't want to announce that I was engaged or married, so I settled on becoming a Facebook lesbian. What's the first ad that I saw as soon as I came out?

An ad for small business services.

What, do lesbians own an inordinate number of businesses or something? Are they crazy about business cards and pamphlets? Why would a straight woman who owns her own business not see this ad? Seriously, if this is what it takes for Facebook to consider me a consumer with needs beyond finding a man and dieting like a supermodel, sign me up.

Sure, there were some "Find the woman of your dreams"-type ads and the requisite Olivia Cruises ads, but they were mixed in with a good deal of ads for interesting stuff - political ads, for example. I don't know if this is normal, but I stopped seeing weight-loss ads altogether. Either Facebook's algorithm seemed to realize how annoyed I was with the ads, or lesbians are all much more fit than heterosexual women.

I asked some of my friends to log into Facebook and take screenshots of the ads that they were shown on a regular basis. Men over 40 years of age seem to get lots of offers to earn money by filling out surveys. Also, ads for a "rolling razor". My friend Mike, who is over 40 and single, seems to get a lot of book ads, which annoys me to know end. Sure, he's a voracious reader, but c'mon. He also gets Obama button offers and information on local real estate firms. Why doesn't Facebook assume that he, too, is desperate to get married?

My married girlfriend Shannon, who is my age, sees ads for albums by someone named Amy Mcdonald. She also gets ads from her alma mater.

My coworker just got married last week, so Facebook ads now implore her to check her credit score so that she can buy a house. Also, they apparently want her to start reproducing ("Enter to win free diapers!").

A very smart gal I know who refused to enter any demographic information into her Facebook profile gets a whole range of ads - Facebook doesn't realize that she's a single woman and thus isn't able to insult her intelligence or consumer habits. Yet.

After weeks and weeks of voting down every single dating or weight-loss and dating ad shown to me (I finally just decided to remove my marital status and sexual orientation from Facebook altogether - it's really none of their business), I'm finally starting to see ads for Netflix, like the one below:

Well, it's a start.

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: