Marketing

Aren’t you just exhausted from the bombardment of messages like join me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, connect with me on Linkedin, sign up for my newsletter or blog, and - my favorite - visit my website.

I think something is missing don’t you? Maybe if I was told why, what is in it for me and will you respect my time, well then I might consider some or maybe even all of these options.

I have gotten invitations that told me flat out that they were trying to reach a goal of followers and so please help them reach that goal. While I appreciate their honesty and understand that it might even be a cutesy attempt at awareness marketing, a serious buyer might not be so inclined to indulge.

Whenever you create a call to action or an invitation to sign up or join in, take it a step further. Some questions you might want to address are:

1. What can they expect if they call?
2. How often are you going to message them?
3. What kind of messages are you going to be sending?
4. What is the value of these messages for them?
5. Are you going to sell their email address or share with others?

The point is that if you want a response then you need to satisfy two basic needs. The first is making them feel safe and secure. The second is that there is something in it for them – and what that is. So please take a few moments and revisit your marketing emails, mailers and your website to see if you have answered these questions. Once you do, check your traffic and crowd stats to see if it has had a positive impact. I think you will be pleased.

I am not an economist, but as an entrepreneur relying on the spend of other entrepreneurs I would have to say that faith in the economy has not yet arrived. Everyone I speak with says things are great ‘considering’ and yet I watch as they hesitate to hire, market or invest in their companies. A few cocktails later and I might hear just how much their business has fallen off.

I also receive email, tweet and snail mail marketing pieces that I refer to as Panic Pieces. They are emails screaming PLEASE BUY FROM ME or offering GREAT VALUE FOR LOW PRICES. The language used in these marketing campaigns smell of panic. As a potential customer I immediately pull back with a vision of a wild animal trapped, wounded and who would certainly bite a helping hand.

I believe that if one sees a company willing to sell off its inventory at reduced prices, one might jump in and reap the savings. If however, someone is offering lower prices for their time and expertise, then the value is immediately questioned.

We are becoming smarter shoppers and bargain hunters for tangible items. Service however remains one of those areas where you might shop price and use that market information to negotiate, however when it comes to making a buy decision, cost is often not the deciding factor.

Service is something customers are unwilling to compromise. Restaurant week in NYC is a perfect example when throngs of diners set out to experience the epicurean delights of the city’s best restaurants at a fraction of the price. These diners knowing full well that they were getting a great discount still would not tolerate any slight in either table service or food quality.

So why would business owners result to panic marketing? Struggling firms are doing what they believe is ‘what ever it takes’ to generate cash flow. But I question the judgment of pursuing cash flow that eats into profitability. It might prolong the death throws but will certainly bury you just the same, and maybe even deeper.

This type of economy separates business owners from entrepreneurs.

Tough times call for tough choices. Cutting costs and eliminating expenses are prudent acts of sound business practice, just as increasing sales and marketing are. Actually, these are prudent practices even in a strong economy.

Business owners selling below cost to keep the cash flowing might be executing a really bad idea. If your marketing looks like, sounds like and smells like panic, you invite vultures not clients into your business. If these are not your best customers then it might not be a good idea to send these types of marketing messages.

An entrepreneur might take a different approach. A hard analysis of their business model and recalculate or even reinvent offerings. Maybe survey customers to uncover unmet needs, discover problems they face and create solutions. If not surveys, then calculated informal interviews to uncover opportunities.

Make it a point to meet once a week with your sales and service teams, mentors, friends and even customers to brainstorm new revenue streams or new models for efficiencies to deliver your current goods and services.

Now is the time to dream, not scream!

...then give us a call - we won’t put together Panic Pieces but rather craft creative messaging that will help your audience realize your value.

Most days I am out during the day running to and from appointments. I doubt that my day-to-day life differs from anyone else’s. I rely on my Blackberry to deliver my email so that I can respond and stay in touch with staff, clients and prospects.

No matter if you are a Blackberry or iPhone user, my guess is that you have your email sent to your phone. This is a standard must-have feature today. That being said, what gets my goat faster than someone cutting me off on the road? An email that is one giant image.

Let’s examine what happens.

You want to invite me or inform me of something you think is important. You hire a designer or use one of the DIY (do it yourself) packages and create some image with all the information and hype to grab my attention. You spend time and money to create this image, struggle with the wording, the colors, and the imagery and then spend more time looking it over and over and over again to be certain it will knock my socks off.

You then load that image into an email and blast it out.

We get your email probably first on our mobile phone.

We can’t see the image because it is too large or too time consuming to download to our phone and so we don’t see any of the information contained in that invite or message.

We probably just delete it, I usually do. Maybe we save it for when we get back to the office with our grown up computers, and maybe we remember to go back and look at what you sent, or maybe your email just slips into the aging emails with newer emails piling up and burying your email even deeper down the inbox to not be seen again until we find the time to do some inbox clean up.

Now, what was it that you wanted me to know about?

That’s right. Stop putting all of your time, effort and money in to how your email looks and start putting your time into how your message is experienced. If your message is really important, then make sure we can see it!

If pretty is important then consider giving me the details or at least enough information to encourage me to hold on to the message and click through to a landing page. This way I get the information I need to decide if I am at least interested and you get the data from the click through and gather valuable metrics as to how many people were actually interested enough to learn more.

Why is this a pet peeve you ask? It bothers me when I think about how much time and money a company might spend, possibly with a ‘professional’ and does it in a way that pretty much limits or guarantees failure. I realize that sometimes marketing is more art than science, but industry best practices can usually make up for inexperience or bad judgment. Try sending your email with no images at all and see if you get better results. Then find a happy medium between pretty and practical.

I spent last evening at an EONY event where Gary Vaynerchuk spoke. I really wanted to see Gary speak, as he is a marketing person that I respect, primarily because he is a trailblazer and mold breaker. Second reason I really wanted to go is because after reading his book CRUSH IT I knew his vision and wisdom were not to be missed.

Gary’s energy is a turbo boost of reality delivered in passionate and caring verbal smack downs. I absolutely love it! He has a get real attitude about understanding and verbalizing what is in play now and although it might be hard to hear, it is the bucket of ice water that we all need flying in our face.

I want to share some of the points that he made so that you can understand the brilliance of what he has to share. I know that you may not want to hear some of these and may not agree with some of his views but maybe it will sink in enough that you can begin to incorporate this into your marketing and businesses. Also please understand that I am paraphrasing but I am making an honest effort to share his message.

1. SEO is dead and a waste of time. I know that seems hard to believe and you might not just disagree but be bewildered by such a statement and yet if you look at what is going on in the SEO world, it is in complete turmoil. Read my blog post on Google Caffeine.

2. Customer expectations are increasing and customer service is the game changer. Gary speaks to the amazing story of ZAPPOS and how that model of creating a culture where customer service is first and foremost built a business of an unlikely solution – selling shoes on line – to a billion dollar business in less than 9 years.

3. Word of mouth converts 80% while traditional marketing converts at 12%. I have not personally researched those statistics but from my own business experience I know that I close sales faster and more often when it is a referral over any marketing efforts.

4. Small Town Rules is a phrase he used repeatedly. Get up close and personal with your customers and prospects. Treat them well; remember their name, respond, share, and CARE.

5. The Internet is dominating. If you are marketing then you want to be where the eyeballs are and they are on the Internet. He gave an example that if you buy ad space on bus stops; look at the people walking by or standing waiting for a bus. They aren’t even looking up – they are on their mobile phones either emailing, texting, tweeting or doing facebook updates.

6. Mobile marketing has started to take hold and he projects that this is the next big play. This comes as no surprise and yet designs and applications are only now just beginning to emerge to address this issue. Just as interesting, no one ever asks us ‘so how does my website look on a mobile device?’ And few if any folks are getting ready for mobile marketing and advertising in their planning. Yet, look around you and what do you see? That’s right – everyone is on his or her mobile phones.

7. Content – create content daily. He urges that you follow your passion and your brand DNA. If you are a good writer, write a blog daily and write anywhere and everywhere you can. If you are better at talking then it is time for you to start a podcast or video blog. He assures the audience that it is not about the polish it is about the passion.

He passionately urges everyone to start now building your content. He notes that this shift is being underestimated and that if you don’t go out and get it – someone else will!

8. He is driven by gratitude. Be grateful for everything, be open enough to share your gratitude and make it apart of your brand experience any way that you can and instill this into your corporate culture. Not insincere gratitude but genuine passion to care for the customer more than anything else.

And so I suggest you buy his book CRUSH IT and check out his blogs – he has several. Just Google his name, Gary Vaynerchuk and you will find them all. Let it sink in and then pull out your keyboard or your flip cam and get started right away.

Hopefully you have had a chance to pull out your business and marketing plans from 2009 to evaluate how you did and will be adjusting accordingly.

I realize that 2009 was no ordinary year. Some companies got hit harder than others in this economy while other companies took off like wild fire. These unsettling times make it difficult to forecast, but knowing your numbers and having a plan are essential.

It is common for smaller companies to not have plans in place. Some companies have been in business for years and have let this slip away while younger firms have been in survival mode and just haven’t had the time. This past year was a wake-up call for many who were forced to reckon with two things: first, to survive in troubled times you have to market and second, marketing is entirely different today than it was just a few years ago.

As a prospect vendor I am often asked to provide a marketing services proposal. There are many things I need to know in order to put a proposal together that will make sense. First I need to understand what has been done so far and how did that work out; next I need to understand what internal resources are available to participate in the marketing efforts and it is helpful to know what, if any budget has been allocated so that the proposal can be structured to spend wisely.

When I ask about budget I get one of two answers. “We don’t have a budget.” (they really don’t), or “We don’t have a budget.” (they fear I will find a way to spend it all).

The next set of challenges in establishing a marketing proposal comes when a manager or entrepreneur decides it is time to jump into social media and they want a proposal. Here is where it can get messy. This is a relatively new niche so you have talent coming from many different aspects of the industry and therefore each has a different approach and a different fee structure. Entrepreneurs and managers are forced to evaluate apples to watermelons in proposals and further challenged with not really understanding what they are buying or how to evaluate the talent they are interviewing.

Allow me to offer some suggestions how one might go about planning for this coming year.

The Budget:

The rules of thumb vary by industry and by market. One cannot simply say that your marketing budget should be ‘X’ and be confident that it the magic formula. Both the Counselors to America's Small Business (SCORE) and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) define the variable for a proper marketing budget to be between 2% and 10% of sales, noting that for B2C, retail and pharmaceuticals, these budgets can exceed 20% during peak brand-building years. You can find the complete article with this citation on SCORE's website.

Marketing efforts should have a direct impact on revenue and so it is prudent to spend on marketing, the trick becomes spending it wisely. You have so many options and things are far more complicated today that the options are overwhelming and I find many companies frozen in place. They aren’t spending in advertising because they aren’t sure what anyone is reading and they aren’t spending on banner ads or PPC (pay per click) campaigns because it appears to be a science run by snake oil salesmen and they aren’t participating in social media marketing because they just don’t know where or if it is even worth it.
Everything shouldn’t be done at once and so planning where and how to best invest for the year should be determined by where you are in the process.

Where to spend:
Entrepreneurs tend to be impatient and forced to focus on too many things at once so are A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder) either from birth or by necessity. You cannot go through a day without being faced with social media marketing and networking as the hottest topic in how to grow your business, so it goes without reason that everyone ‘knows’ they have to be involved. And I would agree. However there is one caveat to that, if you aren’t ready, don’t start there!

Social media marketing has become the gold rush for business but it is a mistake to think that this is where you start and business will flow like the mighty Niagara River. Social Media Marketing is a component of an overall plan and effort that can positively impact your revenue. At the very least it delivers brand awareness and grows your audience. But you must be ready with a strategic plan that is interwoven with the rest of your marketing efforts and your overall business operation.

What does it mean to be ready? Think about hosting a party in your home. Is the house clean and presentable? Do you have food and refreshments ordered and are they going to be prepared in time to serve? Do you have ample room for guests to mill about or sit and relax and mingle with other guests? Have you thought about how best to introduce guests to one another who might not know the others? You get the general idea.

1. Your Website: If you have a new website that is optimized for the new search rules and Web 2.0 then you can move on to the next steps. However, if your website is not new or revamped – within the last year, then you need to start with your website. Regardless of the road you take, email campaigns, print ads, social media, they all will point to one place first – your website.

This analogy then suggests that the first place to invest is your website – this is your home base – the central piece of equity that establishes your brand, your identity. It is the doorway to your company, services, products, and staff and how you operate. It is your reputation, reception desk, waiting room, library and sales and customer service center. No? Well it should be.

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization): If your web designer is not up to snuff on the latest – and I mean the latest changes that are happening everyday in search technology, then hire someone or a combination of vendors who are. Your marketing dollars should include on-going updates and maintenance to your website toward building fresh content, links and adding to resources available on your site. There are code modifications and other considerations that should be brought into the makeup of your website and marketing efforts. You should not think about your website like print collateral – it was designed and went to print and therefore is complete. Your website should be an ever evolving lead resource – constantly being tended.

3. Research: Another critical place to focus your spend dollars is with research. This doesn’t have to be an extreme investment but some time, effort and dollars should be spent to understand how your market is behaving today. Get to know Who is out there and Where are they engaging on the internet. What your competitors are doing and identify Where your prospects are and When do they search for solutions, what issues are they congregating around, what networks are they participating in and what exactly are they searching for. And let us not forget Why do they buy? What are their triggers?

4. SMM (Social Media Marketing): Now that you know where in the social networking world you are going to engage, building your profiles is the next step. No matter if you are B2B or B2C this is about P2P (people to people). Companies have people who make buying decisions and so it is people doing business with people they know and trust. It would make sense then that the managers and staff in your company have an on line presence and so profiles for the team and the company should be developed and branded. This could include LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo, Ning and others.

5. Blogging: a hot and critical topic in all of this marketing planning. Blogging baffles many. A blog needs fresh ideas and content on a regular feeding schedule. Comments are solicited and require a response and other’s blogs require comments. All of this blogging activity is a critical component of search engine optimization and marketing. Can you hire someone to do it all? Get you started? Help you along the way? Or can you and your staff tackle this aspect of your marketing efforts?

6. Listening: A critical yet often overlooked aspect of marketing is learning to listen, setting up systems to gather the flow of information and then responding, participating and ‘feeding the beast’ with new and interesting content. The budget dollars and resources that will tend these ripe fields is another area where you need to balance internal and external resources.

7. Other: Add to the list email campaigns, print ads and promotional items along with other activity that you think will come into play. We suggest that you also include development of policy and procedures, training for management and staff as to best practice and policy with regard to participating in the social arena and of course monitor and tracking.

Now with this summary review you can begin to flush out a budget and plan for 2010 marketing. Create a simple spreadsheet listing the topics covered in this article.

Spend wisely; choose your resources even more wisely, and best wishes for a grand and successful new year!

We design web sites. Our clients ask for easy to navigate compelling sites that will be SEO optimized. They want a professional looking, branded web site that is their primary face in the world. Not too much to ask. That’s what we endeavor to do.

There are over 231.5 million websites on the internet today according to Netcraft.

That is a lot of websites and given the amount of time people spend on the internet today and how reliant we have become on the internet for our news, shopping, research, work and socializing, we get into patterns. We look somewhere to login each time to member sites, we go to where the navigation should be and we scan relevant copy where it is supposed to show up. Yet, when you get to a website there should be something unique and branded about it so that there is no question that you are where you want to be.

Corporate web design should provide clients with an ‘above and beyond’ site over their competition, a site that makes their clients and prospects feel confident that they have come to the right company and encourage prospects to dig deeper and join the club.

When deciding things like color, layout, organization and navigation, there is a balancing act to perform. On the one hand you want to create a welcoming environment that quickly and easily engages. On the other hand, you want to create a site that differentiates yours from the other 231.5 million sites that are out there (is that even possible?). To be template or canned is not a good solution but sticking to some norms will go a long way toward helping the A.D.D. armies of over worked, over stimulated, over informed audiences.

Gerry McGovern for Ragan Communications posted an interesting blog about what actually gets read on a web page and although I didn’t see that there was deep research on this it is still interesting, valid and logical. I love logical although I am often reminded that logic and reality are usually unrelated (and I cannot begin to tell you how frustrating I find that!) OK, back to the article in Ragan. By the way, if you want to read this article Here are a few of his main points:

• People don't scan an entire Web page; they break the page up into sections and then scan.
• The left column is where people expect to find the core navigation.
• The center column is important space, but if someone expects to find something in the left column, they may literally not "see" it in the center.
• The right column tends to be particularly weak for scanning.

McGovern also offered these general guidelines:
• Place the local navigation in the left column
• Put the logo in the top left
• In the navigation that runs across the top of the page (global navigation) place a link to Home as the first link, and also include a Contact link.
• If you are dealing with a top task, it should be startable on the homepage, and there may be multiple links to it on the page.

I like these basic guidelines. They are logical, practical and incorporate common sense around usability.

Do you have a different take on web page real estate and navigation? Leave a comment below.

I am always so impressed when someone out of the blue introduces me to someone looking for a service company like ours or without being asked writes a recommendation for our work or a thank you note shows up in my mailbox. I find that these gestures come from people who are extraordinarily busy and usually successful in their field.

Business owners and sales professionals often consider their connections as top secret or deeply private. Yet, there are a few who recognize that these connections are resources. The explanations for not sharing are usually based on the fear of word getting out to competition where those connections are and with whom. If you nurture these connections and relationships well, who knows shouldn’t matter. Sometimes I hear explanations have the tone of just plain over-protectiveness. It might be insecurity about how well they really know those connections. But I look at it as hoarding a valuable resource.

Hoarding and protecting are two different things. Hoarding is collecting without sharing or using, and protecting is guarding with care.

I believe that making introductions should be done with care and thoughtfulness, that the introduction makes sense to both parties and that both parties will exercise professional decorum. True, there are some people in our worlds that simply should never be introduced to others, but that is more the exception than the rule. I confess that I don't always think of the connection but am also proud when I can connect the dots and put two people together - if there is a win/win then I am thrilled, even if there is just a mutual acceptance of each into their circle, I am thrilled.

A purely unselfish act of introducing two professionals to one another where nothing is to be gained, such as a commission if a sale is made or some other perk, is good karma. Do that often enough and introductions will be made for you in return. Sharing connections, making introductions, recommendations and referrals is simply good business all around.

I just came back from a breakfast networking event. It was a small group, which made it all the more friendly and inviting. Since we were such a small group and clearly everyone was there to get ahead, we decided that we would interject suggestions as each of us gave our elevator pitch, to also get feedback. This was as intimidating as it was exciting. Most of us struggle with our elevator pitch. We’ve read articles, we’ve heard others, but what do we sound like?

And so, off we went around the room, introducing ourselves and then getting feedback from the others. This had two positive effects. We actually got an even more in-depth opportunity to ‘explain’ who we are and what we do giving others a chance to know us more deeply and we got great feedback on what we sound like so that we can improve. Now here is the real kicker… those giving feedback seem to have a more vested interest in the other’s success. By turning it from what can you do for me? It turned it into ‘how can you help me’ and that was the beginning of relationship building. I never saw business cards exchanged with such enthusiasm and sincere statements of ‘give me a call’.

What was the consistent suggestion? Begin at the End! Start off not with explaining the services or products you offer but with a statement of what customer’s GET from you. Financial security, leads into your pipeline, effortless production, and then your company name. Think of it as a teaser that gets them to ask you ‘and how do you do that?’

Start and the End for a better beginning. Refine your elevator pitch so that people you meet will be curious enough to ask and thereby reveal their needs. This lends itself to a more meaningful conversation and developing the relationship that turns prospects into clients.
Have some tips on making better elevator pitches? Please let us know as we would love to share them with our readers.

Link building is the third and final fundamental component we are covering in this SEO Basics series. Link building is referred to as off-page SEO and although I consider this SEM (search engine marketing); it is often times discussed as part of SEO.

There are two kinds of links, internal and external. Internal Links are important on a website to help SEO. Mentioning pages and linking to them creates a ‘spider web’ of relevantly linked pages on your site. An excellent example is Wikipedia. If a topic is mentioned on one of their pages, and that topic has a word or phrase underlined then it is a clickable link to its own page.

Linking is like electrical waves that connect back to your site. Google places a lot of weight on links back to your site – external links - as they place a higher value on what others say about you than what you say about yourself. Getting valuable links should be an on-going marketing pursuit but keep in mind that quality links are what counts and not quantity.

What makes up a quality link?
• One-way links coming in without you linking back.
• Anchor text: when the text is the link to your page. Best text links are your key terms!
• Contextual: links within the copy (they look the most natural). And the copy around it probably refers to your site as well.
• Use keywords in link text
• “click here” – no no no no! Use a widget or button or a relevant term

As you plan your site to rank for different key words or key word phrases, aim for your ranked pages not to always be your home page. Each of your main product or service pages and core pages should be getting you targeted traffic. Strive to have other websites link to those pages as that will give those pages more trust and put you on the road to higher ranking results.

You can search how many links are going to a site or page in a site from Google by conducting this query: link: www.SiteName.com. Google does not return every link to that page—that would open up their algorithm formula, which they don’t want to do. Google has said that the links they show are not necessarily the most valued links and don’t have anything to do with why you rank—so Google is not always the best place to look.

Another tool to find who is linking in to your site http://ericmiraglia.com/inlink and there are Link analysis and management tools such as Linkscape and BuzzStream.

Yahoo! and Yahoo! Site Explorer are pretty good – at least for now, as this may change soon with the MSN merger. Go to Yahoo! and type in the “link:” command (all search engines will recognize that command); Yahoo will show you almost all of your links and many times it will rank them in order of importance.

Yahoo and Google do not rank the importance of a link the same way but recently their methods have grown more aligned. Yahoo typically values the quantity of links; get a lot of links, even from unrelated places and they will help your rankings. Google is the opposite. You can have a page that is not very well optimized as far as content, title tags, etc., but if it has a lot of quality links with the proper anchor text, it will rank better with Google.

On your website you should install, at the very least, the free Google Analytics so that you can track and monitor keyword searches and links to your website. Google’s analytics is actually quite robust but if you feel you need more data to monitor specific campaigns, there are many fee based analytics programs that can be installed on your website.

CONCLUSION: Websites should be considered an ever evolving marketing asset. Continue to add content, nurture links, update coding when necessary and get involved in virtual social mediums.

How and Where to Get Links

Tips to get links that are based on your keywords, not just your brand:
• Start with trusted directories: Yahoo, BOTW.org, and Business.com.
o Don’t just submit your home page. If you have sub-pages on specific topics then also submit those to the directories.
• Get niche publications and organizations to link to you; search for industry related publications and see if you can sign up.
• Press: take advantage of online press releases that allow links. Again, link to sub-pages when possible.
• Link “bait”: content that is just so good it has to be linked to (breaking news, controversy, how-to, resource guides).
• Promote your content via distribution channels (email, RSS, social networks & media)
• Submit your content to social news sites.
• Sponsors or partners. When possible, request that they link to a relevant sub-page.
• Leverage social media and social news and use blogs to create word of-mouth influence and buzz.
• Create content that is viral in nature, (e.g. resources, lists, studies, how-to’s, videos, breaking news, etc.)
• People will link it to Digg and SumbleUpon. Millions of people use those sites, giving you the chance to dramatically increase views by being featured on them, so sign up.
• Make content sharable and easy to absorb. That has a lot to do with how you lay out your site.
• For content, use lists and break up paragraphs. Make it easy for someone to scan and digest quickly.
• Pay attention to social media (e.g. comments, feedback, reviews both on your site and the news site where it was shared). It’s important to look (or more importantly, be) legitimate and sincere and not look like it was purposefully meant to be a viral magnet—that turns people off.

The following is a list of other link building suggestions:
Profiles
Article Submissions
Widgets
Conference Sponsorships
Association Sponsorships
Research & Surveys
Blog Reviews
Job Listings
Testimonials
Letters to the Editor
Bookmarking
Social Media Pages
Build and Host Useful Tools
Awards (badge)
Contest (badge)
Cross link company-owned websites
Write reviews
Ads on Search Friendly Sites
Classified Ads
Post Ebook or Substantial Whitepaper
Exchange links with marketing/business partners
Post Surveys
Write Guest Posts on other Blogs
Speak at events, offer PPT with links embedded
Donate where a link of donors is published
Create a wiki
Create microsites for causes, events, specific purposes
Affiliate program
Become resource on Q/A websites like LinkedIn and Yahoo Answers
Slideshare and similar content hosting
Monitor 404 stats and ask link sources to fix broken links
Solicit links directly from sources
Provide ‘link to us’ content on blog and/or website
Leverage publicity and media relations for links
Digital asset submissions: images, audio, video

I wanted to post this article because I linked to a TechCrunch blog post on Twitter and it got a lot of attention. So in case you have not have been following me on Twitter, I am sharing the information here as well. Their article was focused on the 10 words to eliminate from Press Releases but really this applies to any marketing material you might be producing or email blasts you are preparing to launch.

Stay tuned, this post is merely a brief interruption. SEO Basics Part III will get released on Sunday - for those of you who are diligently following this series.

Robin Wauters cites that the over use of these words has rendered them meaningless. His list is as follows:

1 ) LEADING / LEADER
2 ) BEST / MOST / FASTEST / LARGEST / BIGGEST / etc.
3 ) INNOVATIVE / INNOVATION
4 ) REVOLUTIONARY
5 ) AWARD-WINNING
6 ) DISRUPTIVE / DISRUPTION
7 ) CUTTING / BLEEDING EDGE
8 ) NEXT-GENERATION
9 ) STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
10 ) SYNERGY
And he throws in the bonus words: enterprise-grade, world-class, turnkey, premier, unparalleled and unrivaled.

I am always sharing great blogs and resources on Twitter if you want to follow me just look for me at @MardySitzer, I promise to keep the good stuff coming, reply when you directly or indirectly get my attention and never never spam or sell you with anything.

Why should I care? When you are preparing an advertisement, an email campaign, a newsletter or any material to get the attention of clients, prospects or expanded audience, first answer the question ‘so what?’

The answer is NOT because you are awesome, and it certainly isn’t because you offer a particular product or service as I am certain that thousands of others do as well. So, why should they care?

I have spoken to and coached my clients on understanding their USP (Unique Selling Point) and being able to brand consistently around what separates you from the pack as important, but is it enough? The truth is it just might not be. You can be the only one who does something or has something now, but what about tomorrow? It is only a matter of time before someone emulates if not improves on what you are doing, so staying ahead of the competition requires more than just saying you are unique.

Better offers are a great place to start if you are looking to drive in more new business or increase the share value of existing customers. Some terrific tips and examples on this topic are in a recent article from Chief Marketer and you can read this article by following this link.

What else? Well, there is an amazing marketing technique that we design firms and marketers never focus on because we are all about the written word, the visual, the buzz, the hype and well, all the fun stuff really. But there are some hard core business strategies that you can implement that can take your business not only to the next level but also build the iron gate that keeps out the competition. I affectionately refer to this as the Zen Business Tip: Look within to improve the customer experience.

Yes, today we have Social Network Marketing (SNM) but we also have the social networks or Word of Mouth (WOM) to consider. If you can wow your customers surprisingly and repeatedly, then I will lay an honest man’s (or in my case – woman’s) bet that you may have uncovered one of the best marketing tools. You can build an army of free sales and marketing folks who will promote you one friend and family member at a time. Everyone you come into contact with has the potential to introduce your company to 5 to 10 new prospects. Imagine that. So count up your current clients and multiply that by 5. Let’s do the math. You have 500 customers and an amazing plan of action to wow each one of them this year, they encourage 5 friends or colleagues to have the same amazing experience and you could have an opportunity to close 2,500 prospects.

Sign you up you say? Ok, well we are a marketing firm and not a customer service improvement company but here is a tip: Read one or both books from John DiJulius, What’s the Secret? and Secret Service, Hidden Systems that Deliver Unforgettable Customer Service.

In the meantime, don’t give up on marketing. It is an on-going and organic process to grow your business. Nurture what you have already accomplished and plant new seeds to continue the growth. Marketing is still a necessary component as it educates your current clients and prospects as to what you have to offer and introduces you to a wider audience.

If the influx of inquiries from your email and newsletter campaigns has slipped off then it is probably time to bring in a pro to revamp your efforts and help restart the buzz you might have experienced at one time.

If your emails and newsletters never generated much activity, then it is time to put your ego or your DIY mentality aside and bring in a pro.

If you aren’t active on any of the social networks and aren’t sure where to start, bring in a pro.

If you haven’t placed an ad in awhile, bring in a pro.

If your website is stagnating, traffic is low and pages viewed or time on your site has fallen, well, bring in a pro.

Refuse to participate in the recession, BRING IN A PRO AND GROW!

We are asked from time to time “why did you pick the name Bumblebee?” We found that bumblebees reflect the way we market today and the impact that they have is impressive. So we hope this answers the question and sheds some new light on the bumblebee.

Bumblebees are social insects and like their relatives the honey bees, bumblebees feed on nectar and gather pollen to feed their young.

Bumblebees generally visit flowers to extract nectar and gather pollen. Pollen is removed from flowers deliberately or incidentally by bumblebees. Incidental removal occurs when bumblebees come in contact with the anthers of a flower while collecting nectar. The bumblebee's body hairs receive a dusting of pollen from the anthers which is then groomed into the corbiculae (pollen baskets). Bumblebees are also capable of buzz pollination.

In at least a few species, once a bumblebee has visited a flower, it leaves a scent mark on the flower. This scent mark deters visitation of the flower by other bumblebees until the scent degrades. It has been shown that this scent mark is a general chemical bouquet that bumblebees leave behind in different locations (e.g. nest, neutral and food sites), and they learn to use this bouquet to identify both rewarding and unrewarding flowers. In addition, bumblebees rely on this chemical bouquet more when the flower has a high handling time (i.e. it takes a longer time for the bee to find the nectar.

Bumblebee species are non-aggressive, but will sting in defense of their nest, or if harmed.

Bumblebees are increasingly cultured for agricultural use as pollinators because they can pollinate plant species that other pollinators cannot by using a technique known as buzz pollination. For example, bumblebee colonies are often emplaced in greenhouse tomato production, because the frequency of buzzing that a bumblebee exhibits effectively releases tomato pollen.

Profit and loss
Bumblebees need energy to fly, so when they leave on a foraging trip they carry nectar in their stomach to fuel them. The amount of nectar needed is roughly about 10% by volume of the amount collected in one foraging trip. The average mass of pollen and nectar carried by bumblebees returning to the nest is around 25% of their body weight. However some bumblebees fly back carrying as much as 75% or more of their body weight! A bumblebee making about ten average foraging trips would expect to provide the nest with about 3 ml of honey a day. So to a bumblebee time is honey!

Bees are responsible for pollinating plants that provide much of our food; in North America it is believed that 30% of food for human consumption originates from plants pollinated by bees. Honeybees are generally thought of as the most common pollinator, and they are the most widely studied, but bumblebees are the chief pollinators of red clover, alfalfa, and in some areas cotton, raspberries, apple and plum blossom.

Endangered status
Bumblebees are in danger in many developed countries due to habitat destruction and collateral pesticide damage. In Britain, until relatively recently, 19 species of native true bumblebee were recognized along with six species of cuckoo bumblebees. Of these, three have already become extinct, eight are in serious decline and only six remain widespread. A decline in bumblebee numbers could cause large-scale sweeping changes to the countryside, leading to inadequate pollination of certain plants.

Maybe, just maybe, your e-letter, or e-zine isn’t driving in business because, well, how should I put this? Ugh, it is full of sin. Maybe out of laziness recipients haven’t unsubscribed, or it is flagged to go straight to their spam folder.

If you aren’t getting traffic back to your website and you aren’t getting orders or phone calls, then it is time to STOP what you are doing and rethink. Be proud of yourself for getting started and actually doing something, and we commend you for that, but STOP before you hurt yourself by numbing or worse, disengaging your list so that they just won’t ever see your message again.

STOP and REFOCUS. First, who are you emailing? Are these current or past customers? What and when did they last buy from you? Are they prospects? What are they interested in? What industry or market segment are they in? Where in the country are they or for that matter, where in the world are they? When are you sending these out? What are your statistics telling you?

If you can’t answer most or all of these questions then you are not going to be effective and you risk losing your audience all together. Here are some tips that might help.

The first golden rule is to segment your database and send relevant information. If you are just continuing to send self-promotional emails then you are doomed to fail with this marketing program. When your emails consistently sound like your narcissistic grandmother: I, Me, My, Our, We and other words and phrases that are self promotional, then you will be guaranteed to be tuned out. Your emails and e-letters should not sound like a sales pitch and if they do, then, you have just committed the first sin of email marketing.

Imagine yourself at a networking event or cocktail party. You don’t go up to a someone, even someone you know and say “hey, my company does this, so click here and buy today” and if you do, chances are you will quickly be left standing in a corner all alone. Email marketing is the same.

What else could be possibly wrong with your email? The message and content are critical and when effectively crafted with list segmentation can be brilliant. But if you are under the misconception that what you have to say is so important and interesting, that everyone is going to read every word you or your brilliant copywriter writes, you are dead wrong. The minute someone opens up an email and sees a long paragraph or that they have to scroll and scroll, well you have just created the second sin of email marketing.

Long paragraphs defy readability; no one sits on their computer and devours every word. Your email should have scanability and the option to skip over or click for more. Your best plan of action is to create a series of headlines with a powerful description and a click for more option. Let the readers choose what they want to spend their time reading. You don’t have their undivided attention, you have to earn it. If your article or story is more than three sentences then you need to give the reader the option to click for more and be directed to a landing page where the full content resides. This helps the recipient manage their time and interest and it gives you valuable data as to what they are interested in and you can craft better and better emails over time. This also drives traffic to your website that now offers more opportunities for exposure.

You might think your design is interesting while others might find it a visual assault. If your design and imagery are overdone, then you just threw out your chance to be heard and committed the third sin. When design is done poorly you risk not getting any attention. Color boxes make content hard to read, embedded images and large images are just a big mistake. You’ve seen the email where you open it and there is a large box that takes up your screen and you have to click to download the image or choose not to at all but you can’t see any text without having to scroll. Don’t make this the venue where you attempt to showcase your designer and if you are doing it yourself, don’t unless you are trained! The bottom line is that your design could be the barrier to actually getting read.

Don’t give up your email campaigns, just get better at them! Think like a customer, think like a prospect and then craft your story and your design to engage them, not enrage them. And my all time favorite words of advice: You can only change someone’s mind from their point of view.

It was probably only a few years ago or less that you learned about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and witnessed companies cropping up all over the world as specialists. Consultants and experts of this new field grew like wild fire. Keywords, Metrics, Listings, Linking, Coding and more became the buzz to get your site to have better SERP (Search Engine Results Page). This then grew ever more dynamic with PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. So, what is the story now? Where is this all leading?

Programming is changing the landscape, not only with web design but also with SEO. Improvements in HTML and CSS (web page coding) have dictated new standards that improve the readability for search engines. Search engines have become a lot smarter in reading the pages and assessing the content for relevancy and recent updates. Another change comes from APIs (Application Programming Interface) that among other functions also allows for the sending and receiving of data enabling your website to have fresh content automatically as one of the benefits. Then there are the widgets that link your site to social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others.

Content updates and relevancy are critical components in SEO. Search engines are already taking into consideration microformats. An example of a microformat is the profile on a Twitter home page, and yes, Google is tracking Twitter. From time to time I get a message from Google Alerts that my name appears and checking that update, a tweet I made is displayed. Just as a side note, I use Google Alerts to track my name and my company name to see where and how we show up on the internet. I also use this feature to track other points of interest either for a client or a prospect or a particular topic that might be relevant. Twitter is not the only place these microformats show up. Ratings of your company or product on other sites, if you contribute to social networking or aggregate sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon and others your profile is a microformat that is indexed by Google.

The point to this blog entry is that if search engine rankings are important to grow your business then there is no time like the present to get comfortable with on-line marketing and social networking. If you just are not sure where to start, download our Buzztionary, produced last October, it is already out of date but still relevant. We will update it soon but for now, it might help you begin the exploration of what I always tell my clients “You have to get a life on line!”

What I am about to share with you might surprise you, especially coming from a design and marketing firm, and considering how much we all talk about digital campaigns.

I just got off the phone with one of our key clients. We talk often both as client-vendor, but more often as friends and as supportive business owners. We discuss all aspects of business and have touched on the topic from time to time before but in the last few weeks, we have discussed it a bit more – actually making a call to a client’s physical location. Yes, we do have an amazing drip campaign and a great touch campaign and more, but, what if, just what if you actually stopped in to say hello, shake a hand or two and said “just wanted to stop by to say thanks, and let you know we appreciate your business…” what would happen?

Would they sneer at you? Would they think less of you for doing it the old fashioned way – just send an email and move on? What? Or, would they thank you for caring enough, or even think – oh, you might want to give us a price on a new piece of business, or mention “I just got off the phone with ‘so and so’ and they need a company like yours – why don’t you give them a call”.

So, my friend/client braved the cold wind, the down pouring rain and did a bit of an experiment. Guess what? It worked more often than not. He actually closed more business in the two days he spent visiting than he would have had he spent those two days on the phone continuing to follow leads.

Filling the pipeline with prospects is critical to growth and we do not suggest you cease and desist. But keeping and growing the business you already have is doubly as rewarding, more exciting than you might imagine and you have a better chance of keeping what you have already worked so hard to gain.

Morale of the story: put on a pair of comfortable shoes, pull out your guide to good manners and business etiquette and get back on the road at least one, if not two days a week. Don’t fire your marketing and design team (please!) but do get back to the basics!