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.

The Power of Positive Online Reviews

It is no wonder that online reviews carry significant weight in consumer buying behavior with the information overload on the internet. I’ll be the first one to admit that whenever I’m making a significant purchase I first check reviews from Amazon, Google and others. Similarly, online reviews have become one of the quickest ways to make or break a local company’s worth by accomplishing what used to take months of traditional word of mouth marketing in mere seconds. In fact, our research shows that 70% of Americans say they consult product reviews or consumer ratings before making a purchase (Business Week, October 2009).

The Plague of Fake Online Reviews

As online reviews become more important to businesses, there is more incentive to fake and manipulate reviews for profit. It is impossible to know just how prevalent fake reviews are in a specific industry, but one can only guess the percentage to be quite high (at least 30% by some estimates). I always knew that anyone could post a fake review on Google or Yelp with any made-up user name, but I was shocked to learn that major review sites like Amazon allow people to leave reviews for items they haven’t even purchased! To me, that seems like opening the door to fraud and the equivalent of leaving keys in a parked car with a sign that reads “Please do not steal”.

In the news and on the web, I commonly see opportunists cashing in on the power of online reviews by offering everything from fake review writing to services that literally blackmail companies by posting negative reviews and then requesting a fee to take them down. If your business has yet to be affected by fake reviews either promoting local competitors or demoting yours, consider yourself lucky because this is one of the most common complaints I hear from clients in highly competitive markets. I have seen these factors cost even the most well-run companies customers and in extreme cases, cause businesses to shut down completely. One thing is for sure, online reviews have become too powerful to simply ignore.

The Solution

Removing fake reviews is often not possible because they are difficult to prove and many review websites lack the level of support needed to handle every case of fraud. By far, the most effective solution to both fake reviews and negative reviews hurting your business is to have your own customers come to your defense online and overwhelm negative responses with true stories of their own satisfaction. This not only dilutes negative ratings, but it pushes them off the front page of review websites where most people are going to be looking. Recent reviews also carry greater weight in a customer’s eyes than older ones. Even if your competitors are stuffed with fake positive reviews, your real reviews can easily outpace theirs in quality and validity in the eyes of your potential customers.

Our Service: Survey Local

Due to the frequency and severity of issues we hear regarding online reviews, we went searching for an easy and cost effective solution to recommend to our clients only to find that no such option exists. At best, current online review services act as an intermediary to try to moderate negative reviews as they surface. Referencing what I mentioned above, we know this is not the most effective way to improve your online reviews. What we were looking for was a tool that could not only prevent negative reviews from being written in the first place, but proactively collect and submit positive reviews from real customers without requiring the business owner’s involvement. Realizing that no such service existed, we decided to develop our own online review management/survey tool which we named Survey Local.

Survey Local: Feedback Collection

In a perfect world, all your satisfied customers would happily take time out of their days and post their positive experiences for others to read. If you think that is the reality, then you probably haven’t been in business for very long. Most customers are willing, yet lack the time and motivation to act. Therefore, the first step in improving your online reviews is improving feedback collection from your customers. To do this, Survey Local assists you in setting up a short, yet effective online customer satisfaction survey. We then help determine to most effective delivery method such as email or printed materials like business cards or invoices.

When done correctly, a satisfaction survey provides a large demographic to pull online reviews from which essentially hits two birds (improving online and offline word of mouth) with one stone. Once you have this feedback, you will not only gain a better understanding of your customers’ buying behavior, but you can segment your customers based on satisfaction levels so that requesting positive online reviews is much easier.

Online Review Integration

Customers who take the survey are automatically funneled into two groups: unsatisfied and satisfied. Notifications are sent instantly alerting you to those who are unsatisfied so you can quickly address their problems and avoid negative online reviews before they are posted. Satisfied customers are asked to submit their reviews to the review website of your choice. We make this step very easy by providing a copy of their review from their survey right next to the link where it can be submitted. Most of your satisfied customers genuinely like to publish positive reviews because they know it will help you out, they just don’t want to take the time writing them up and trying to figure out where to publish them. Survey local eliminates both of these obstacles.

Survey Benefits

Having a professional and experienced marketing company develop and help distribute a short customer satisfaction survey for you is one of the most beneficial activities your company can engage in. We know how to distribute surveys and incentivize your customers so that they you collect more quality responses. We also know what questions to ask and how to ask them so they directly relate to your profitability. You should want to know things like:

• How are your customers finding you?
• How likely are they to recommend you to a friend?
• Why are certain customers leaving?
• What do your customers really think about your friendliness, value, professionalism, and service?

Guessing about these things is like guessing why your check engine light in your car is on rather than taking it to a mechanic. In today’s economy you cannot afford to throw away customers or lose on possible referrals just because you don’t know what your customers think.

How to Start

It just makes sense to combine a survey tool with an online review promoter because they can both work together making feedback collection and review publishing easier for you and your customers. We realize that professional customer survey tools in the past were expensive and even mysterious to many small-medium businesses, but that ends here and now. Our Survey Local tool is offered for a $200 setup fee and can then be continued on a month to month basis for only $80/month with unlimited email support. Also, our satisfaction guarantee states that if you don’t absolutely love the results after 2 months, we will refund your purchase 100% because we stand by its value.

Why are you still reading this, request your free Survey Local consultation now!

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

Sun-tzu, The Art of War, 722-481 BCE or 403-221 BCE

Anyone that has spent much time in the corporate world has heard this quote more than a few times, but in the real world of small business, can it still be applied to knowing your competition?

Absolutely. It takes time, and the ability to leave your prejudice at the door, but every business regardless of size should know and learn from their competitors by gaining an understanding of the marketplace from the eyes of the customer.

To begin, bias for one’s own product or service has to be set on the side. You must assume the role of the customer and view the offering choices as they do. See what they see. Think what they think. Question what they would doubt. Pace the buying process as they would. Fear what they would fear.

Start with the search. People looking to fulfill a need or want seek out a solution. Who and what (ads) do they find and where do they find them?

Offline marketing and advertising

• Gather all relevant information – yours and the competitors. Potential sources include: Yellow page ads, Direct mail pieces, Trade journal and industry magazine ads, Trade shows (look up the registration list online), etc.
• Track your advertising activity and the competitors’ in a spreadsheet (Ad type, placement, size, date, frequency, etc.)
• Compare your ads and their ads with a critical eye. Are you getting out- advertised? Which creative is the most effective? Take note of the headlines, the copy, the branding. Is there a call to action? Is there a consistent look, feel and messaging across delivery channels?

Online marketing and advertising

Organic or Free Search. Most product searches start with an online search, so begin there. Start with Google, but don’t forget Yahoo and MSN.

Now, what search terms do new product or service seekers use to conduct a search? The search term it is not, is your business name. Most small businesses are not known by prospects and must be found by the key words and key phrases entered into the search engine. Google has a free tool to discover/refine keywords and there are numerous others (free and not free) available.

Once you determine the key words and key phrases, work must begin to assess the SEO strengths and weaknesses of your competitors to gain a competitive advantage in search engine rankings. This process is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, and is an entire topic on its own. If you are unfamiliar with SEO, you need to get familiar, and quickly. Google has a beginner’s SEO guide available or check out DIY Website Success.

Paid Search or Pay Per Click (PPC). PPC ads are the paid ads that appear on the right and top of search results pages and say “Sponsored Search” above the ads. Here is a simple method to gain a quick understanding of your ads versus your competitors:

• Determine your top key words from your keywords list
• Open a Word document and create a table, 4 columns wide with 14 rows
• Label the top row of each column with a key word or phrase
• Label each row of the left column Top 1, Top 2, Top 3, Right 1, Right 2, etc.
• Now search the first phrase and cut and paste the ad results into the table, one result per cell

When you finish, you should have all the page one PPC results for your top 3 key words or phrases. Repeat for as many keywords as needed.

Google also has quite a few free tools available for AdWords advertisers. Simply create/login to your Adwords account, go to Tools and begin exploring.

Next, for the top ads (the biggest competition because customers see them first), examine their landing pages, or the place where the person is taken if that ad is selected. Does the thought path flow well or does the landing page have nothing to do with the ad? Remember, the closer the landing page is to the ad creative and messaging, the more likely the success.

Competitors’ Web Sites

If you aren’t already visiting your competitor’s web sites at least a couple of times a month, again, you need to be. Simply create a folder in your toolbar, bookmark their sites and then choose a day of the week to visit them.

Next-> Marketing Insanity

Considering the significant cost associated with marketing and advertising efforts, when was the last time your company spent some quality time ensuring the correct features and benefits were being utilized across all marketing efforts?

Features

Every marketable product or service has features, but what makes a feature unique?
Take the apple.

Features
Common: Round, comes in multiple colors
Unique: Contains soluble and insoluble fiber
Obscure:   Contains quercetin

Developing a robust feature list

♦ Compile a full feature list for each product or service offered, from common features to the obscure.

♦ Brainstorm with the entire organization (development, sales, customer service, implementation, etc.) to uncover all product features and customer uses.

♦ Document alternate terms or names used for features by customers and competitors. (Make sure you’re comparing apples to apples ~ pun intended).

♦ All features should be fully documented and clearly described to provide customers a clear understanding of the attributes of the product or service.

The “So What?” Test

Now, take the list and feature by feature, ask “So what?”

♦ Some features are merely features.

An apple is round, but aside from the fact that the human eye finds round objects more pleasing than square objects, it is not really a marketable benefit.

♦ The middle ground will most likely yield benefits for the most wide segment of customers.

Apples contain pectin, a soluble fiber that can lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of stroke, and insoluble fiber, which provides a filling effect that helps suppress appetite and improve digestion.

♦ The obscure facts will appeal to niche segments and those with more educated needs.

Fresh apples have a high level of quercetin, an antioxidant that researchers believe may help fight the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

So What Marketing

The list of significant “So Whats” should serve as a foundation for developing or uncovering any required updates to the marketing positioning and marketing messaging.

♦ All marketing collateral, such as product brochures, web design copy, PPC ads, etc. should be created using the most relevant features and terms, while highlighting the product’s unique benefits.

♦ The more unique or niche features and benefits may be good for developing long tail search terms.

♦ Conduct an annual or semi-annual check-up to ensure features and benefits remain up-to-date.

Next-> The Buying Process

Over the next series of posts, we will cover the various aspects of developing a marketing strategy and then creating a tactical marketing plan.

• The Discovery process
• Defining benefits & features
• The Buying process & the participants
• Who are your customers?
• Markets – SMBs, verticals, specialties
• Competitors – learn from them
• Marketing insanity
• Positioning & messaging
• Opportunities: Awareness, Offline & Online
• Developing a marketing budget & a tactical marketing plan