SPAM, SPAM and more SPAM in Vermont

SPAM! We all hate it. But to be in business and actively pursue unsolicited emails from potential clients, donors, vendors, etc some SPAM is going to get through. Read a little bit about the battle that is waged against SPAM on a continuum. We all wish there was a magic bullet for SPAM...

Coolbreeze Air Conditioning in Tuscon, AZ speaks Spanish!

Through our iMarket Solutions partnership, we have a client in Tuscon Arizona, CoolBreeze Air Conditioning and Heating. In their market, they have a large Spanish speaking population. And since Cool Breeze cannot necessarily afford the expense of having an entire website translated into Spanish (particularly when considering all the ongoing blog posts and social media content strategies they employ), they compromised on having a landing page translated into Spanish. The approach is to let their Spanish speaking potential clients know that they have staff both on the phone and in the field that can communicate in their native language. So far, this program has met with great success.

In particular, when discussing what can be a difficult subject matter for any consumer, it is important that the language not become a barrier. Air conditioning repair might be straight forward to CoolBreeze as they are experts. But talking about why an air conditioning system might not be working, or the options for air conditioning installation, or even describing the needs for an air conditioning repair can be difficult and confusing to the ordinary person let alone having the communication be compounded by a language barrier.

So the lesson is that you don't necessarily have to manage your entire website in a different language but if you do have a client segment that you know speaks another language, reach out and dedicate a page or section that speaks to them in their own language. It might be more expensive in the beginning but you will show that you care and earn more business. It has certainly been true for Cool Breeze and their air conditioning repair programs.

Cheers, Andrew

Air National Houston Launch

Vermont Design Works and iMarket Solutions recently launched a new site for Air National Houston. Air National is an existing company that has expanded into the Houston area after many successful years running a full HVAC service company in Tampa, Florida. As a brand new company in a new market, they are actively building relationships, establishing a customer base, and providing responsive customer service.

For the new website, we will be working with them to post 3 blogs per week of interesting and topical subjects related to the comfort for homeowners at the beginning of summer. Check out their new site: http://www.airnationalhouston.com

iMarketSolutions.com - Vermont Design Works Partnership Launches 16 New Websites in March

Vermont Design Works started a partnership with iMarket Solutions (www.iMarketSolutions.com) in the summer of 2010. Since then, iMarket and VDW have created over 30 websites with full online marketing, blog, content and social media services. Our Domination package is bringing companies with very little presence in the SERPs to the top of the Organic listings within a few months of launch. And these HVAC and Plumbing companies will stay on top because we add new fresh content to their websites, update their promotions, add testimonials, and manage their social media on a daily basis.

In March, our partnership allowed us to launch 16 new websites for iMarket Solutions customers. And now our post launch activities are starting. These websites will always be up to date with new content that the search engines and customers love.

One recent search in a town outside of Tampa revealed that our customers held 3 of the top 4 positions in the google organic listings for the highly coveted "air conditioning repair" keyword.

Our mission continues. April looks like it might be just as strong.

The basic philosophy is to combine excellent user friendly design, with search engine friendly programming, with extensive click, email, and phone call tracking. After that platform is created, add fresh new keyword targeted content at least once per week (iMarket Domination customers get 3 new keyword targeted blog posts per week). Track all the leads and results and modify the approach to maximize the cost per lead of the websites. Our sites generate customers at a cost per lead that is 90% lower than industry averages. And we are adding more than 10 new pages to the Google index per month. Each one of those pages is like a raffle ticket just waiting to be read by a prospective customer.

Our results are strong and we intend to keep it that way.

Inbound Marketing Webinar

I am listening to the Inbound Marketing Webinar by Hubspot at #Inbound2011. Some of the data is great. More money and effort is being expended on Inbound marketing (blogging, social media, linked in, etc) versus outbound marketing (TV ads, radio, trade shows, telemarketing, PPC). The costs per lead for Inbound marketing are much lower than the costs per lead for outbound marketing.

Some great statistics and information. I'll post the followup report later.

The biggest hole in this presentation is that they have not considered Yellow page advertising at all. It does not seem to be on the radar screen.

While these folks (#inbound2011) have just addressed my question about yellow page advertising on the webinar, I think they are reducing the discussion to far too narrow a focus.

Their idea was to cut Yellow Pages advertising by 10% and see if your leads drop by 10%. If not, reduce even further. But it will be critical to move those reduced yellow page spending into building an Inbound marketing strategy.

Stock Options 101

Vermont Design Works just launched a great new website that supports the http://www.terrystips.com/ project. Terry gets so many questions about basic stock options information, that we wanted to create a website dedicated to the basics of trading stock options.

On Terry's Tips behalf, I acquired the URL http://www.stockoptions101.com/ from a person that was not using it. The URL had been registered for a few years so it already has good history online despite not having a good website full of content.

Then, Terry wanted the site launched quickly...of course. So we used Vermont Design Works "template" program where we took a standard installation of our ContentWorks content management system with a standard set of tools. In just a few weeks, we had the site designed and built and ready for content. Terry, despite having limited technical skills, was able to populate the site with content, set up navigation, and get the site ready.

We launched the site and we don't even know how, but Terry got his first sale without doing any advertising of any kind. Just another reason why content is king!! Publish good content on your website that speaks to your audience and is full of good keywords and google will give you traffic!!

More on the success of this site as we start to actively promote it online.

Cheers, Andrew

Blog updates made easy

Every website needs to have a blog or news update module. A blog is an easy way to create new pages on your website easily and efficiently without hiring a content writer and stressing about what you will say. Ideally, you will use your own customer service policies, schedules, and selling points for your business to update the blog.

Essentially, each blog post is a new page on your website. Each new page is like a raffle ticket that might draw a potential customer into your sales funnel. In addition, it also shows your site visitors that you are an active business that takes the time to stay on top of their website updating. And that similarly, they take care of their business as well as they take care of their website.

If your website looks at all like it is not getting attention, your web visitors will assume that you manage your business in the same way.

And in the worst case, not having a website clearly states that you are not in business or taking your business seriously.

Ok. Back to blog/news posts. Here is a quick list of ways to add blog posts on a calendar that is easy to execute:

10 federal holidays - list your hours of operation, emergency phone numbers if necessary, and let your customers and potential customers know about your availability during holidays. This can actually turn into 20 posts. A week before, announce your schedule. The day before, remind everyone of the schedule and wish them a happy thanksgiving, memorial day, presidents day, etc.

1 promotion per month (12 per year) - offer something each month as an incentive for web visitor to take action and become a customer. It doens't have to be the best deal ever. Just enough for the customer to take the next step with you and for you to build a stronger relationshiop. Usually, this can be set up once per year and it will automatically appear each month on your website.

Tips/Articles/Suggestions once per month (12 per year)- whatever business you are in, surely there is advice that you give customers every day in your business or on the phone. Use this same advice to come up with 1 suggestion or piece of advice each month about your business. Visit other websites, see what others in your industry are doing and use that for inspiration.

Post links to other tips/articles/suggestions (12 per year)- if you don't feel comfortable or dont' have time to write, find a good article from your industry, post the link on your site, and write a 1 or 2 sentence commentary on the article. Make it easy on yourself by using content from other websites!

So with holidays, promotions, and just links to other articles that you don't write, you are looking at 44 updates per year. Almost 1 per week. If you then write a few articles yourself or provide tips, you can get this up to once per week in no time.

Weekly updates to your website would put you ahead of 95% of all businesses on the web.

Social Media Forum Review

Rick Burnes of HubSpot on Inbound Marketing using Social Media

A forum hosted by BTV Social Media Breakfast Club

Twitter account: @rickburnes

Here are my notes (and some elaboration, corrections, and expansions on my part; very little editing or checking was done)

1. Interruption marketing is the old media model
2. Inbound marketing takes time but eventually saves money for a business (Inbound marketing being defined as providing great content, surrounding the content with on and off page search engine optimization, and letting your customers and prospects find you)
   Invite people into your website instead of “interrupting their lives”
3. Rick made a big mistake by declaring unabashedly that ALL traditional media is dead. He got hammered b/c he suggested that all traditional marketing is bad and online is the only way to go
4. Including direct mail and Pay Per click that don't work effectively
5. While I think Rick goes too far to suggest that internet marketing is the only way to go, I wish all my clients had been there to hear how effective and inevitable a content rich web presence is for all businesses if they want to compete in the long term.
6. I suggested to Rick and in my opinion it is more accurate to suggest that it is the effectiveness and ultimately the return on investment of traditional marketing that is diminishing. That on the rise is online marketing which includes providing lots of free content about your industry and business and your specific business approach.
7. I went on to tell him not to trash traditional marketing but talk about the trends in marketing. Traditional marketing still works but the trends all point to a diminishing return on investment. Starting now with online marketing means you'll be a player down the road when the trend lines get more severe.
8. There was a lot of conern in the audience about the quality of writing (the “I can’t write” problem) Writing content for the web does not have to be elegant. Just use the same language you use to sell your services, promote your products, and talk to your customers. Start a conversation about what you know. It does not have to be complicated.
9. As you live your life and business, put yourself into the content mindset.
10. Repurpose every interaction in your business into a content opportunity.
11. Probably the strongest analogy that Rick made was the Lottery Ticket. It's all about content. Each page or article of content from your website that appears in the search engines is a lottery ticket. Would you rather have the same 8 static pages as lottery tickets or a 100 new lottery tickets per year as you write 2 blog posts per week about your business?
12. Every business is different in terms of measuring success of your online presence. What are the metrics for your business? Customers? Subscribers? Diners? Do you make large one time sales? Do you have recurring revenue clients? Set your metrics and then measure them (and he wants you to use HubSpot).
13. Rick finished by giving a relatively subdued pitch for the $250 per month HubSpot online marketing software. $3000 per year might seem steep but if you were able to prove positive ROI (return on investment) on the $3000, it would be worth it.
    
    Questions from the audience:

Question: I use direct mail. It works. Why should I stop?

Rick: Online is better. Which was not a great answer. What he should have said…keep doing direct mail. But put effort into online marketing and continue to measure the return on investment for both channels. Over time, you will probably learn that the online marketing approach will provide much higher rates of return.

And in fact, use direct mail to build your list of email addresses so that you can continue to follow up with your direct mail prospects for almost nothing with email marketing.

Question: Must a business have your own blog on your own domain?

Yes. And I agree with Rick. Absolutely. That doesn’t mean that you might not put the same blog entries (or a shortend version pointing back to your main website) on a blog hosted at blogspot or wordpress. But you want all that wonderful blog content to be credited to your main Domain (aka, website address or URL or URI).

Question: Do I need a website and a blog?

Rick didn't answer this as we ran out of time. However, a blog can in fact act as a website. They can be one and the same. However, the blog format does not always lend itself to providing some of the basic information about your business nor advanced functionality that a full website can offer. Having just a blog is always better than nothing and some blogs are hard to differentiate from full websites! And a blog is always better to have than to have a web site that never gets new content or updates.

That’s all for now. I will surely touch on these topics more in the future. Content is king!

Please contact me if you have any specific questions about these issues.

Santa Night Black Tie Event

The Vermont Agency Foundation is holding a Black Tie Event to support the Santa Night mission in St Albans, VT, Burlington VT, and Plattsburgh, NY along with the Common Ground center.

Not only is Vermont Agency a client of Vermont Design Works, they have been strong supporters of the Santa Night mission to help children and families during the holiday season.

This is our 12th year of running Santa Night in Burlington. The Burlington event is on Friday December 18th while St Albans and Plattsburgh are set up for Friday December 11th. 14 other cities around the country are also running their events on the 11th with the exception of our newest Santa Night City, Montclair NJ. Welcome!

Thank you to everyone for your ongoing support of Santa Night and its mission to become the largest 1 day fundraiser in the world!!

Advanced Landing Page Strategies for Higher Pay Per Click Conversions Webinar Summary

Not a bad little webinar. Ion Interactive is promoting a tool to make it easy to create and test Landing Pages. Briefly, a Landing Page is the page that a web visitor sees after clicking on a Pay Per Click ad.

The essential premise of the webinar is that most PPC campaigns are flawed because more often than not, the landing page of a PPC ad is the home page of the web site. This is a horrible idea (except for a specific search for a company's brand, ie Joe's Plumbing Service Burlington Vermont - they are specifically looking for this company.)

The question is why is the home page most likely a bad landing page. When running any PPC campaign, there are 3 elements: the keyword that was used to search, the Advertisement that is displayed, and the Landing Page where the visitor ends up. Creating a cohesive strategy to guide the web visitor to what they want is how PPC advertising works.

The unique angle of this webinar is using their analogy of the Ad as the "promise" and rehashing an old Seth Godin gorilla/banana analogy. Once your ad is displayed, the copy is the promise you are making to a web visitor. The landing page must match the promise made by the ad. Make your landing page as specific and easy as possible to take action from.

If a gorilla is searching for bananas, the keyword, ad copy, and landing page should all offer bananas and nothing else. If someone is looking for an air conditioning unit, your ad copy and landing page should promote air conditioning units (not your home page selling your overall HVAC service, or air conditioning repair, or solar panels...but only air conditioning units).

Ideally, the "promise" of the ad is associated with a call to action that delivers on that promise. "The 6 critical decisions to make when considering a new air conditioner" with an offer for a free estimate for example.

Overall process for a solid PPC campaign:

• write ad copy that creates a solid "promise" that will appeal to whatever keyword was searched
• create a landing page that delivers on that promise
• offer very targeted and few click paths (hence, never use the home page where all of your standard navigation just gets in the way)
• make sure that the promise is connected to a very specific call to action
• test different keyword, ad copy, and landing pages to maximize conversions
• measure the results and test again

Good advice for any small or medium sized business that is involved in a Pay Per Click marketing campaign. If you are outsourcing your PPC work, use this list to ensure that your current firm is maximizing the return on your investment.

Advanced Landing Page Strategies for Higher Pay Per Click Conversions Webinar

I am about to start a Webinar entitled "Advanced Landing Page Strategies for Higher Pay Per Click Conversions." Landing pages are customized pages promoting a specific call to action based on the keyword, PPC ad combination that generated the click. More to come on what they are recommending. So far, they have an example of an HVAC contractor so I am hopeful that this will be focused on true small businesses.

Bing a success...so far

Bing, the much hyped new search engine developed by MSN has so far lived up to its tremendous and expansive marketing campaigns. Microsoft might have finally learned that when web site users think of online search, MSN is not top of mind. It is still a distant third in the search engine battle (Google, Yahoo, and then MSN, now Bing).

However, some of the new search features of Bing are quite fun to use. The importance for my online marketing is that Bing is becoming a much effective online marketing tool. We are seeing steady and profitable increases in conversion rates and click through rates for Pay Per Click campaigns from MSN since it morphed into Bing. Accounts with Pay Per Click budgets on MSN that were never reached are now maxing out at the mid month point. Conversions are up as well but only time will tell the overall conversion rates and ROI for our campaigns.

While it is too early to tell about how effective Bing will be against Google's dominant market share, we are seeing very nice returns from the new launch. Once the honeymoon effect of their marketing expenditures tails off, we will keep an eye out on this new/not new search engine.

New Terrys Tips Weekly Newsletter - The Difficulties of Making Money at Expiration

The Difficulties of Making Money at Expiration

A nice piece of how making money with stock options trading can be so tricky.

This is the kind of regular updating that we want all of our website customers to be making even if it can only be quarterly.

Content is king!

Ben and Jerry's April Fools Website Revealed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Local Firm Vermont Design Works Partners with Ben and Jerry’s on Cloned Milk “April Fools” Website

Burlington, VT, April 1, 2009 - For the past week, a website for “Cyclone Dairy” (www.CycloneDairy.com), a company that allegedly produces milk from cloned cows, has been the subject of intense speculation in the blogosphere: are the company and the website real? Are consumers really drinking milk from cloned cows?

This morning the website was revealed to be an “April Fools” joke by Ben and Jerry’s, intended toraise awarenss that food from clones could be in our food supply and consumer have the right to know. Milk from cloned cows is in fact approved for consumer consumption by the FDA and does not have to be labeled as such on food packaging.

The website was created by local web and graphic design firm Vermont Design Works (www.VermontDesignWorks.com).

“When Ben and Jerry’s came to us with this idea, our entire team was excited by it,” says Vermont Design Works owner Andrew Allen. “We have a long history of working with Ben and Jerry’s and with other socially responsible companies. This fit right in with our mission.”

The challenge in designing the site, says Vermont Design Works’ Director of Web Strategy Craig Chevrier, “was to make what looked almost like a perfectly legitimate corporate site, but hinted at activism. We had to strike just the right balance so that when the truth was revealed, it would all make sense.”

“Once bloggers found the site, it took off like wildfire,” says Allen. “We’ve had a great time following the online forums. People were speculating that it was animal rights groups, Food and Water Watch, etc.. But all the buzz has done exactly what it was intended to do – to create awareness and get people thinking seriously about an important issue affecting our food supply. We are proud to be a part of this project.”


For more information about Vermont Design Works’ involvement in the Cyclone Dairy project, please contact cyclone@vtdesignworks.com or call 802.383.7679. For more information about Ben and Jerry’s anti-cloning mission, visit www.cyclonedairy.com, where videos and activism links were posted this morning.

Vermont Design Works was founded in 1999 to help businesses and non-profit organizations build a presence in the marketplace and on the web by offering a full range of graphic design and website development services. The company jumped into the Vermont business community with a big splash by designing the 2000 summer marketing campaign for Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Since then, Vermont Design Works has created hundreds of successful websites and graphic design projects for large and small businesses and nonprofits, including Nantucket Nectars, Equipe Sport, New England Naturals, GlobalZ Data Processing, and Gardeners Supply “Flower Power” Fundraising.

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Terrys Tips latest post...

We are offering a special, buy 1 of Terry's books and recieve his new book for free! Just $12.94 (when using Discount Code Tee) at www.Making36Percent.com and you get both books for the price of one.

To learn more about his books, review today's newseltter posting: Christmas Gift Ideas from the Conservative Options Strategy Website.

Terrys Tips Newsletter Posts

Adding content is critical! For Terry's Tips, we took their weekly newsletter which they were sending to their entire newsletter list every Monday and posted it to the website with an archive tool. We are now adding 1000 new words to the home page every week and adding articles to the archive. Within a week, this content is indexed by Google and appears in the search engines. And we are providing a great service for first time visitors. They get a tone of what Terry's Tips is all about and a snapshot into what the service being offered.

If you can, create a strategy that includes adding new content about your services, products or industry every week! Daily is best. Weekly is good. Monthly is a minimum.

And each of Terry's newsletters focuses on "trading stock options" which is one of their number one sought after keywords.

Google's 2009 Search Engine Results Page Change - Behavior search

This year at Pubcon by Webmaster World 2009 in Las Vegas (a trade show for everything happening in search and search engine optimization) there was a buzz about the changes in how Google is going to display search engine results pages (SERPs). Google's vision is that search will become more personalized by the user's location and previous searches.

In other words, your particular search results will be tailored to your pattern of search and your geographic location (called behavior based search). Google will begin to give personalized Organic search page results as well as more targeted Pay Per Click ads on a world wide basis.

This has been available now if you log into your Google account and perform your searches. A good example is the keyword "delta". For stock options trading website Terry's Tips, the keyword delta means "The ratio comparing the change in the price of the underlying asset to the corresponding change in the price of a derivative". Nonsense to most of us but easily understood by Terry. However, to someone in New Orleans, "delta" probably refers to "landforms where the mouth of a river flows into an ocean."

Google will now be changing the results to suit the particular user based upon their location and what other things they search for on a regular basis.

Since Terry of Terry's Tips performs most of his searches about the stock options market and trading, Google will deliver websites about options investing. While a searcher in New Orleans will get websites about rivers flowing into the ocean.

The problem for SEO folks such as us is that we can no longer do a search on Google and get the same results as when our clients do the same search. Reporting on where a site ranks in the search engines will now become subjective and very difficult to report progress to our customers.

For the customer, it will be very difficult to gauge the effectiveness of organic search engine optimization efforts performed by themselves or by their SEO firm.

Next time: What does this mean for your search engine optimization efforts today and in 2009?

Google to change inbound link policy

Links on websites that point back to your website are one of tools that Google uses to find new websites and rank the importance of web pages. Google also uses the "anchor text" that is placed in the link to tell Google the topic of a particular web page.

For example, TerrysTips.com. When someone wants to place a link on their website or blog or forum to Terry's Tips, Google will look at that link and attribute credit to Terry's Tips for the link. How much value is much debated. http://www.terrystips.com/ is one way to link. A better way for Terry's Tips is to link stock options trading strategies at Terry's Tips. This way, Google knows that the owner of the website believes that the Terry's Tips home page is about "stock options trading strategies".

However, there has been much abuse of this kind of linking. Link pages that just have a series of links are common these days and have been a bit effective with getting good rankings. And pages that have hundreds or thousands of links (called "link farms") have spread around the web and have been ignored out of hand by Google for years.

Google has recently hinted that they are adjusting the way they follow and give credit for inbound links. No longer will a list of links on a page give much or any credit to a site. Google wants to see links within the body of a web page that gives the web visitor more information on a topic but will clearly be related to the page that the visitor is currently reading.

So "relevant" links are now even more important than ever. Google has stressed relevant since the beginning of time (OK, well not exactly...there was actually a time before Google). "Black hat" search engine optimization folks have been abusing inbound links for years and Google is finally putting their foot down.

Cheers.

Use Analytics to measure SEO effectiveness

Google Analytics is a free program which was based on the $500 per month Urchin Live web statistics program. None of our customers could afford this program. But when Google purchased Urchin, they offered their premium service to the world...for free.

While it does take some time to properly set up analytics, with basic HTML skills you could do it yourself. If not, it will take your web people about an hour to set it up right.

What analytics provides you as the site owner is insight into how web surfers are finding your site, what pages they are looking at, how long they spend on the site, what countries they are from, what screen resolution they are using, what internet speed they are using, what internet browser they are using, etc.

The question becomes how can you use Analytics to direct your SEO efforts. Today, we did exactly that for a real estate company. Using their analytics, we discovered that 2 out of their 6 top level navigation points accounted for less than 1/10th of 1% of all of their traffic. What they thought was their primary place to rpovide information to web visitors turned out to be the least visited. And after Property Search (which accounted for over 60% of the traffic), mortgage information was next most popular. And amazingly, all the mortgage information was buried in the 2nd level.

So we are using this information to move the mortgage information pages to the 1st level of navigation and burying the 2 very unused sections of the website. We will then optimize heavily for popular regional mortgage information keywords to capture additional traffic.

Beware SEO firms that gaurantee

I got yet another call from a client today that went something like this "A web design firm just called me and told me that my website is not optimized for search engines. They said they could guarantee me #1 listings in Google for $99. I would like to do the work with you but can you offer me that deal?".

After I have had a chance to calm down, I remind myself and my customer that NO ONE can guarantee listings in Google (without Pay per click that is and then usually not for $99!). No one can buy listings in Google, no one can guarantee. Have I made that clear? No one can guarantee placements. Anyone or any firm that guarantees ranking positions should be avoided like the plague.

Achieving rankings in the search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN representing 95% plus of the market) takes consistent effort and vigilance. Most companies do not have the resources in house in terms of expertise to be able to do this. And to get good rankings in the search engines for the right keywords takes effort and/or monetary resources. Figuring out how much to spend, how much effort to make, always depends on the Return on Investment. If a new customer is worth $100 per year to you as a business, what can you afford to spend to acquire that new customer? $50, $75, $100? It will depend on your renewal rates and how aggressive you want to be.

Any firm or SEO person worth hiring will review your own particular ROI situation and put together a plan accordingly.

Many firms have no way of measuring ROI. Tune in next time to figure out how to measure ROI for your company.