Posted by: M Charles Egan
on May 12, 2010
I was browsing the web today, and I found a media placement that was hurt by its own intelligence.
Posted by: M Charles Egan
on Mar 09, 2010
How to
create websites that people want to use.
We spend a lot of time with clients trying to generate business leads, but it is all worthless if a user gets there and doesn’t see what they were expecting. There is no one guide book that will tell you exactly what to do for your specific site, but with this in mind I have put together a few rules of thumb that we use to build web sites.
Know your Audience
- It is impossible to build a useful site if you don’t know what people are expecting. Try to gather as much data as you can on who your
Posted by: M Charles Egan
on Mar 01, 2010
The question that my clients have been asking me recently is what should my company be doing on Facebook and Twitter? My first response is not to rush into anything, don’t be swept into the hype that says you have to be tweeting every 20 minutes or your falling behind. This does not mean that there no value in social networking for business. I believe that social networking outreach needs to make sense within a company’s overall marketing strategy, and does not become a directionless monologue with no one listening.
Setting Business Objectives
The first question that needs to be asked is what are you trying to accomplish? Companies need to have a set of specific goals for any communication. Lets take for example a business-to-business company that already invests in going to a series of trade-shows around the country. This company has been going to this same series of events for a number years and has a decent idea as to how many useful contacts they have seen in the past at these shows. This is a great place to employ a goals oriented social networking strategy.
Setting Social Networking Goals and Benchmarks
The first thing that would help our hypothetical company would be to set reasonable goals to benchmark against, like a 5-10% increase in qualified booth traffic at these meetings. Notice we are not trying to say an increase in the total number of conversations, but an increase in the quality of the conversations at the show, making the limited time available at the show more productive. Finally we would set up a simple system to track the overall quality of interactions at the show. Now that you have a well defined objective with a specific measurement the task becomes focusing on your specific audience.
Posted by: M Charles Egan
on Nov 24, 2009
So a lot of client’s come to us asking for a website, thinking that is the best way to take advantage of marketing on the internet. The truth is that while a good website is key to most digital marketing plans, it is only one element. Digital marketing is a broad category that includes banner advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click, email, RSS, blogging, advergaming, and social networking. You get the idea.
Digital marketing is about interaction, highly targeted demographics, and quantifiable results. This may seem like a broad topic, sometimes it’s easier to define what is not digital marketing. Print Advertising, direct mail, Radio, TV, and outdoor do not offer the instant response and analytical data of digital and should be thought of as more traditional marketing. While these are still viable channels it is hard to get an exact calculation of outreach, and response times are much more variable. There are many innovations in these mediums that are giving more direct data, but they still lack the precision of digital channels.
Because of its reporting capabilities digital integration with traditional campaigns can make it easier to benchmark success and adjust messages quickly to respond to audience preferences. This allows marketers to more effectively gage the effectiveness of broad based outreach campaigns.
Another key aspect to digital marketing is that it is constantly evolving. It is possible to reach out to audiences at different levels and get them more engaged with brands in new ways. For instance using a well-planed social networking strategy it is possible to create a dialog with your customers that gives them a sense of brand ownership. If done correctly this will lead to an increase in word of mouth referrals, effectively turning your audience into another marketing channel.
At its heart digital marketing is about using internet based communication to get closer to your customers. Digital marketing lets you reach out to highly targeted audiences and hear what they have to say. By effectively interacting with your audience your company becomes more agile and can expect quantifiable returns on marketing investments.
Posted by: M Charles Egan
on Nov 17, 2009
In my career I’ve been at agencies that have had differing opinions on how to treat clients. These have run the gamut from complete appeasement to yelling at them in front a crowd of their coworkers. While it is hard to justify the later, I think it is just as much a disservice to say yes to all client requests.
I think clients are looking for honest advice, sometimes that means telling them that what they are planning is not the most effective way to accomplish the task. Don’t get me wrong; our clients are very informed about their own products and services. The truth is that we do not really design websites for our clients. This may sound strange, but when it comes down to it, we are developing websites for our client’s customers.
Posted by: M Charles Egan
on Nov 05, 2009
1.Not defining goals for your site. It sounds simple-- but many companies approach websites as something they are required to have and consequently do not demand results. You should treat any marketing expense, including website development, as an investment. A website development plan that is not based solidly on your business goals is wasting marketing resources. If you don’t set realistic goals and measurements for your website, it is impossible to tell how effective your investment has been. This means that you need quantifiable business based website results. Website analytics make it easy to track results and tie them to concrete business goals (e.g. conversion rates, sales).
2. Building a site for you instead of your target audience. If our customers already thought like we did then marketing would be easy. The truth is that it can be very difficult to have the perspective of your target audience. As businesses, we become so closely involved with what we do on a daily basis that it becomes hard to remember what’s important to outside audiences. On the flip side--there is another tendency to overload your audience with all of the reasons that you believe set your company apart. Communicate with the people using your site and get to know what they are looking for. Then-- build a simple and distinct hierarchy in your message and site structure to educate your audience on your key competitive advantages.
