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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