I know how proud you are of your website from 2005, but just like marriage proposals on reality TV shows, some things are not meant to last. Websites today are what business cards were 30 years ago. You can either hand your customers a bland, bent-up mess that looks like it has been sitting in your wallet for the past 8 years, or provide a fresh, eye-catching representation of your business.

While visual appeal is an obvious reason for updating your website, the benefits are more widespread. For example, Google has recently announced a “freshness update” to its omnipotent search engine algorithm that rewards websites for fresher content with higher search engine rankings. Also, integrating your website with certain social media tools can vastly increase your website traffic and brand awareness.

Tip #1

Dates and Links

Update or remove old references on your homepage. In particular watch out for old dates, outdated events, and broken links that no longer point to their original source. Another commonly overlooked example is the copyright date usually displayed at the bottom of websites. Using the same copyright date from 2008 will make website visitors question the “freshness” of all other website content. Here is an example of a professional format for the copyright date on websites:

Copyright © 1998-2012 Example Corporation. All rights reserved.

If you have not taken the time to do this for 2012, now is as good a time as any.

Tip #2

Old School Visitor Counters/Website Analytics

Whenever I find a rectangular box on a website informing me I’m the 11,658^th visitor, I look outside my window to make sure I didn’t accidentally step through a crack in time on my way to the office and get transported back to 1999. What’s worse than the tacky, completely inaccurate counter is knowing that behind the scenes of this website there is a hamster wheel powering the analytics where there should be a modern day V8. Good website analytics have become so crucial to the modern business I can’t imagine trying to use a website without them. In fact, most of the major business decisions we make are based on data collected from our website analytics. Even free tools such as Google Analytics can provide comprehensive insights such as how and where people are finding your company online, what marketing methods results in actual sales, and the list goes on. While I admit there is a small learning curve to using these tools, many of them are free to use and the investment in time/money to learn how is always worth it.

Tip #3

Overly Flashy/Unrecognizable Content

As much as I appreciate a good episode of “Wheel of Fortune”, flash and mystery have little place on a modern website. Today’s consumers want information clearly laid out and easily accessible online. If customers have to scroll down and/or click through multiple pages to find what they are looking for, they will drop like flies. My pet peeve for industries breaking this rule is restaurants. As much as I appreciate the decadent slideshows of featured cuisines and pages regarding unique philosophies for seeking out only the best ingredients, I do not want to feel like I’m looking at a Where’s Waldo book while simply trying to find the menu. As a business owner, you need to identify what your customers want most from your website, and give it to them in as simple a format as possible while retaining a professional appearance.

Tip #4

Website SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Many recent studies have found that while pay-per-click advertising can still be effective at driving website traffic, SEO is the leading vehicle of choice for growing online traffic as consumers become more adept at discerning ads from natural search engine results. Many older website designs lack SEO rich features that search engines like Google look for today. The first step of SEO is to include local and specific keyword phrases into you web pages. If your website is heavily designed with images instead of text, search engines are likely skipping over important content. A good way to determine what is being read by search engines is to click and drag your mouse to highlight all the text on a web page. If the text is part of an image (bad), the entire image will be highlighted or you won’t be able to highlight the text at all. If you have additional questions regarding SEO for your website, we are happy to provide a free consultation and quote.

Tip #5

Social Media Buttons

Simply put, they are free to use and allow your satisfied customers to instantly connect with your social media sites which can create social buzz about your company and promote branding. Rather than get into a lengthy How-To here, I’ll direct you to a host of other sources dedicated to this topic:

http://mashable.com/2011/03/11/add-social-sharing-buttons/

http://www.addthis.com/

If you want more ideas, just google “how to add social media buttons to website” and you will find several detailed guides.

Tip #6

Online Reviews Tools

In typical format, I have saved the best for last. One of the fasting growing trends in social media regards how customers interact with businesses via online reviews on social websites. Gone are the days when customers patronize a company because of a glossy brochure or fast talking salesman. Customers today have especially grown a distrust of testimonial web pages (for good reason) in favor of social review sites like Yelp, Insiderpages, Google Places, and so forth. This has led to an explosion in online review website usage which is not always advantageous to business owners. As consumers turn to outside sources to evaluate businesses, owners can be crippled by negative reviews (true or not), constantly needing to monitor the plethora of review websites, and long drawn-out processes for addressing harmful content. Rather than accept this as fact, there is another option. Several companies now offer very inexpensive online review tools that allow business owners complete control over 3rd-party, verified reviews.

For example, our tool, SurveyLocal, lets businesses automatically invite customers to review them, while directing positive reviews to social websites and negative reviews to be addressed offline (over the phone or in person). Once collected, the entire report can be made available for the owner to post on their website (optional of course) in place of an outdated and mistrusted testimonials page. While your complete report may include a few minor blemishes among all the positives from your real customers, if you choose to display it on your website you will gain significant trust from potential customers while reducing the need for people to turn to outside review websites that you have little control over. Also, most companies that offer this kind of tool give you the option to have positive reviews shared on your Facebook page which is a great way to populate your page’s feed.

Summary:

In case you are still thinking: “Well that sounds great and all, but I still prefer our website from 2005,” let me conclude with one last statement. The tips from above are not merely suggestions for future experimentation, they are all tried and tested methods that have produced real results for our clients. I purposely singled out the simplest and most cost effective ideas in hopes that 2012 will be an improved year for your company as we all endure the tighter economic climate together.

5 Worst Banner Ads of 2011

#1 Worst Banner Ad

For the past few months, I have been repeatedly seduced by the claims of a “revolutionary new muscle builder” from numerous variations of the ad below:

Inspired by the genius marketing design and compelling title, I decided to create a banner ad promoting a healthier lifestyle that all the non-steroid injecting folks can relate to:

#2 Worst Banner Ad

Being the overly self conscious, money-smart person that I am, I’m always on the lookout for the next latest and greatest home remedy for teeth whitening. Just when I was about to give up hope, this ad caught my eye:

Unfortunately, it turns out that Mom is more into accounting tricks than home remedies as this product will net you a recurring $100/month charge for what’s probably an unregulated knockoff version of Crest Whitening Strips. Perhaps a more accurate ad could read:

#3 Worst Banner Ad

These days it seems you can get about anything online…

This ad was admittedly hard to improve; however, I figured a more targeted and direct ad copy might give it a little extra oomph:

#4 Worst Banner Ad

Let’s be honest, we all are busy people, constantly looking for shortcuts to help us save time in an increasingly time-demanding world. Well, when every second counts, there are always pajama jeans:

Personally, I’m waiting for the 3 piece suit option to come out before jumping on board, but perhaps a different version of the ad would be more enticing for the mass markets:

#5 Worst Banner Ad

And finally, what list of 2011’s worst banner ads would be complete without a completely legitimate sounding get-rich-quick scheme while relaxing from the comfort of your home, no doubt wearing your newly purchased pajama jeans.

What my version of this ad may lack in flash, it more than makes up for in practicality:

That’s it! 

For the past 100+ years, most business marketing plans were pretty simple: treat your customers right so that they happily tell others about you. In the past 5 years, however, the internet has spun this traditional method on its head by introducing online word of mouth. Online word of mouth has taken on many forms in recent years and business owners should make it a priority to understand how each of these forms can and do affect their businesses.

Don’t Get Left Behind

Here is a story about one of our recent clients and how they nearly missed the recent shift to online word of mouth marketing:

Business over the past 15 years was going great at XYZ Company, a medium-sized and locally oriented corporation. In fact, business was growing every year just from the glowing word of mouth produced by providing an excellent quality of service. Then came the “Great Recession” and the growth slowed and even started to reverse. Nothing had changed about the business and nearly every customer was still extremely satisfied. I know this for a fact because once hired, our company conducted a satisfaction survey from a large customer sample size and found that 99% of XYZ’s customers would recommend this business to a friend. I then discovered an overlooked area of the businesses that had seemed insignificant until now and was greatly lagging behind most of their competitors: their online word of mouth.

I found that the most influential form of online word of mouth marketing for this local company was their Google Places page, which showcased all of 2 reviews, one of which was blaringly negative. Having just surveyed the company, I knew that what the majority of potential customers were finding about this company online was in no way an accurate representation of just how good the company really was. At the same time, many of their competitors had accumulated dozen of positive reviews making XYZ’s profile that much less appealing.

Building Positive Online Word of Mouth

Before you can set off on promoting your business through online word of mouth, you need to narrow down the list of ways your potential customers find out about you online. The most straightforward way to do this, of course, is to simply ask your customers. There are usually certain industry specific review websites (e.g. urbanspoon for restaurants) that you should be aware of. You also might want to check to see what information comes up when you google your business name or related products.

Google Places for Local Businesses

If you are targeting a local audience, you cannot afford to ignore Google Places, which thanks to Google’s recent search engine layout update, has taken a staggering leap to the top of both online and offline local search tools. The graph below, provided by www.clickz.com, illustrates just how important Google Places has become to local businesses:

One takeaway from this chart is that in most cases online reviews displayed on your Google Places page will be seen by more customers than those on any other review site.

The bulk majority of online word of mouth is generated by review and social media websites. Keeping up with every one of these websites can be a hassle so make sure you focus your time and money on first improving your reputation on the websites that count the most. An easy and free method to track any mention of your company is to sign up for Google alerts and enter your company name which will then let you know if your company is mentioned anywhere on the web. It’s no silver bullet, but it should provide a useful resource at least.

The next step is to begin directing positive customer feedback and reviews to the websites of your choice. The best way I have found to do this is to constantly invite your customers to leave you feedback (we provide a short online survey tool for our clients) and then invite the most satisfied ones to help support your company by leaving a positive online review. Our statistics show that on average, 20% of your customers will complete a 5 question survey that is emailed to them without any incentive. Of those, roughly 15% will then also leave a positive online review if prompted without any incentive. If you do provide some sort of incentive, those percentages jump up dramatically.

Combating Negative Online Word of Mouth

If you do happen to find negative reviews or comments out there on the web, many review websites give you the option to flag comments that are spammy or violate the website’s terms of agreement. Sites like Google Places also have a voting system where you can vote down the helpfulness of any comment. While these options can help for fake or derogatory comments, you should pay close attention to negative comments that are from real customers. When available, you should always try to respond to negative criticism online and practice your diplomacy skills to resolve the issues which can help demonstrate your commitment to customer service to other potential customers. One of the major benefits of providing your customers with a short survey is that it is much better to catch and address complaints before waiting until you find out about them online where they can be difficult to remove. Finally, the simplest way to combat negative online word of mouth is to overwhelm the negative with positive feedback from your real customers through the steps previously mentioned.

Professional Online Word of Mouth Services

Whether or not you decide to hire an online reputation manager, you should make improving your online word of mouth every bit as important as maintaining your traditional word of mouth. Although the internet makes keeping track of your online reputation somewhat complex, there are many automated services available that cost little to use and can be of great assistance, such as our survey local tool. If you want more information about automated reputation management tools or other professional online word of mouth services, just give us a call.

For this survey, I asked each respondent to rate 4 sources of consumer driven information on a scale of 1 (least reliable) to 10 (most reliable) in determining whether or not they would use a company for the first time. They were also asked to briefly explain their ratings. Here are the averaged ratings for each category:

Disclaimer about the survey method.

I did this survey on a small scale and used a rather informal distribution method (my email contacts). The results above are from about 40 email responses and although I would consider this survey sample small, I think the results still provide a relevant estimation of today’s consumer buying behavior. Using the data above in conjunction with the additional explanations provided and my personal knowledge of the survey respondents’ demographics, I made the following observations:

Observation #1: Online Reviews

Anonymous online reviews scored least reliable as many of the respondents noted the increasing trend of fake reviews and the belief that only a small portion of customers with extreme experiences (either good or bad) take the time to write reviews online. However, many respondents pointed out that online reviews are the most plentiful and easy to access of any of the above sources and therefore are used most frequently when evaluating businesses.

Observation #2 BBB

The Better Business Bureau easily attracted the most polar responses garnering trust from older respondents (40 and older) and being more or less ridiculed by the under 40 crowd. The older respondents used phrases such as “feel good”, “trust”, and “well known” when describing the BBB. The younger respondents had more verbose comments such as these:

“The BBB sticker on a business actually means nothing to me and I would even go so far as to say the sticker makes me wonder what the business is hiding from — are products and services of such poor quality that they need the sticker to encourage me to use their business?”

“I’m sure there are lot of good companies that aren’t members, and a lot of crappy companies who are members.”

“The BBB is just trying to make money like everyone else. I don’t know that they always have the consumers best interests at heart.”

Another factor that kept the BBB at the bottom of the pack was that many respondents simply did not know enough about their membership process or how a BBB membership correlates with trustworthiness.

Observation #3 Independent Survey

Most respondents considered a customer satisfaction survey to be a highly reliable source when evaluating a business as long as the survey wasn’t gamed and had a good sample size of respondents. In fact, a few respondents indicated that they would trust a survey even more highly than a referral due to the fact that a referral is based on one person’s experience where a survey is a broader sampling of experiences. The single common factor that held back customer surveys is that they are nearly impossible to find for local businesses. This is one source customers would like to see more of.

Observation #4 Referrals

It comes as no surprise that people generally trust referrals above any of the other sources mentioned. This source was mainly included as a base to measure against. Any business owner knows the biggest downside to utilizing this source is that you are limited by the willingness and availability of your satisfied customers to do this for you.

Takeaways for Business Owners

#1 Online Reviews Still Affect your Business

Just because online reviews have the lowest credibility does not discount the fact that most of your customers will view them and be influenced by what other people are saying about you online. In recent years, online reviews have become the primary source for customers looking to compare similar companies. Pay attention to the various review websites and actively encourage your satisfied customers to post their positive experiences online.

#2 Is BBB worth the Cost?

There are many forms of BBB membership to consider as well as your business type and target market. If you are in a business with high amounts of distrust and are targeting older customers, the BBB might make sense. Overall BBB usage by consumers seems to be on a downward trend and may soon become obsolete as review websites become better at filtering fake reviews and customers have more options for comparing businesses online.

#3 Utilize customer surveys in your marketing

Whether you serve 1 customer a month or 500, customer feedback collection can be incorporated cost effectively (thanks to the internet) with your customer service and marketing plans. We even offer a free trial of our professional survey service, Survey Local, so that you can see how easy and valuable feedback collection can be. Also, Survey Local gives you the option to publish your survey results right on your website (and on ours) so that potential customers can easily find and read them. Making this information available to potential customers will really help you stand out from your competitors.

#4 Promote Word of Mouth Marketing

As mentioned above, the best way to get more referrals from your customers is to first of all find out what you are doing right and where you need to improve. It doesn’t matter how good you think your business is because you’re not the one making the buying decision. Fortunately, the internet makes feedback collection more affordable and easier than ever.

The Domino Effect

All the sources measured in our survey are direct reflections of your customer service. By measuring and improving your customer service you can effectively improve your results in all 4 of these categories. Our survey tool is designed to easily integrate 3 of these sources by collecting customer feedback, screening the good from the bad, and helping you get noticed both online and off for the good things you are doing. Give us a call to get a free 30-day trial of Survey Local today.

Comment on this post if you agree or disagree with the survey results above so we can broaden the sample size!

Learn about our Marketing Strategy Package…

The Results:

• When the Kiss was a penny & the Truffle was 15 cents – the selections:
  The Kiss = 14%, The Truffle = 36%, None = 50%
• When the Kiss was free & the Truffle was 14 cents – the selections:
  The Kiss = 42%, The Truffle = 19%, None = 39%
• In a 3rd round, the Kiss was still free & the price of the Truffle was reduced to 10 cents – the selections:
  The Kiss = 40%, The Truffle = 12%, None = 48%

What We Learn

As marketers, there are many take-aways from this study, including:

• With regard to promotional pricing: while the actual dollars and cents may be the same, the BOGO promotion (buy one, get one free) may perform far better than 50% off.
• Free is powerful – but it still may not influence the audience if the perceived value is not there.  39% of the participants didn’t want the free Kiss.
• Price reductions may influence the cost-benefit perception with other associated products (test 3).

The Research

The study was conducted by Kristina Shampanier, Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely in 2005 and contains additional tests, examples and data that sheds light on the power of free products and their influence on purchasing decisions. I highly recommend downloading and reading it – a truly interesting read.

Additionally, Dan Ariely has recently released a book, Predictably Irrational, and should you want to further explore how the world often works according to principles of irrationality in the places where we least expect it, give it a try.

All company and product names are the trademarks of their respective owners.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) press release (5 Oct 2009):

“The post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.”

Given the core of social media is transparency and honest discussion, most bloggers and word of mouth marketers agree with this policy.   We have a published disclosure policy on this blog and have encouraged other bloggers and social media marketers to do the same in the past.  However, for social media marketing, the method for disclosure is not as straight forward.   We occasionally send tweets about our  (Seven Aspens’) clients and/or their products. How do you disclose in a 140 character Twitter message?

With potential hefty fines looming for violators, this is a good time to review your policies, ensure compliance and learn the best practices.  To assist in the education process, the Word of Mouth Marketers Association (WOMMA) is hosting a free webinar Thursday, October 8, to help explain what the new FTC regulations mean for marketers, advertisers and bloggers. Additionally, the Social Media Business Council provides a great Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit.

If you are on Twitter, as you follow more and more people, it can be difficult to keep up with your close friends. There is a really simple solution to keep an eye out for their latest tweets.

Using iGoogle and RSS Feeds to Track Tweets

iGoogle lets you create a personalized homepage that contains a Google search box at the top and your choice of any number of gadgets below.  All iGoogle pages start out with a Home tab on the left side of the page and you can add new tabs to organize your content.   The first step is to add a tab for your Twitter Friends.
Next, with that tab open, click on the “Add Stuff” link in the upper right hand corner.

On the Adding Stuff page, at the bottom of the left column you should see:

Click on the link.

In another tab on your browser, go to the Twitter page of the Twitter user you want to track.

For example, to track Dallas Marketing’s tweets, you would go to http://twitter.com/dallasmarketing

On the bottom of the right sidebar, under the Following images, you should see:

Right click the link and choose “Copy link address.”

Window back to the iGoogle page, click the “Add feed or gadget” link, paste the link and click the Add button.

Click the “Back to iGoogle home” link on the top left and your feed should be on the page.

Simply repeat for all your Twitter friends that you want to track.   Another use for businesses - set up a tab to track your competitors, customers and alliances or partners.   Then just pop over and check on your Twitter tabs a few times throughout the day as you work to check in on everyone.

Follow Dallas Marketing Services on Twitter.
You follow, we follow back.

Twitter users fail to return the following month. But, how about the graying of Twitter?

Twitter Demographics

Citing comScoreMatrix, eMarketer recently published a Twitter Demographic breakdown that shows the largest percentage of tweeters are age 25 – 54.

So, 45-54 year olds are the most likely to visit Twitter.

Guess that means you can forget those Mother’s Day cards for Mom and Grandma – just send them a tweet.

Follow Dallas Marketing Services on Twitter.
You follow, we follow back.
Twitterific.