The Proof is in the Stats

Sometimes trying to convince a business owner that thousands of one time visitors are not nearly as valuable as hundreds of repeat visitors feels like trying to convince a dog to avoid chicken bones. (For those of you that are not dog owners, poultry bones are fragile and the "splinters" can hurt a dog.)

Many business owners are smart enough to look honestly at statistics. With this in mind, today's recommendation is an article entitled "Repeat Site Visits - A Critical Goal for a Successful Website" by Ayo Ijidakinro

Hopefully the charts and statistics will convince you to focus less on the first time visitor and more on the second and third time visitor.

Top Level Recommendation - Newsletter

I attempt to recommend only good articles with solid substance in this space. Occasionally, an article is even better than most of the articles in this space.

There are three very valuable tips and one nice tip in today's recommendation.

The topic is how to write a successful Newsletter.

One thing that this article does not discuss is typography and layout. If you want your Newsletter to be printable and to look professional when it is printed - Qwerty's PDF services can really improve the printed look of your Newsletter.

BUT - looking great is not as important as the first three tips in "4 Easy Tips On Writing a Winning NewsLetter" by Ritu Pant.

Was it something that they said?

What you say doesn't mean nearly as much as what your consumer's say!

More and more consumers are turning to the internet to either express their frustrations or to magnify their favorites when it comes to products and businesses.

Where they express their feelings can impact your business success.

Believe it or not - providing a platform upon which your clients can vent or praise publicly can be beneficial to your business, especially if you are quick to resolve any problems to the client's satisfaction.

Because they will find a venue in which to vent! But if it is not on your site, it may be weeks or months before you find it and by then your reputation is damaged. If clients complain on your site then you know right away and can respond in order to make your reputation for customer service sparkle.

Karon Thackston wrote "The Incredible Persuasive Power of Online Consumer Reviews."

Lots of Sales with disgruntled customers!

Believe it or not, too many sales can result in loss of customers and reputation.

Have you ever been in a too crowded bus? Have you ever been to a reception with insufficient refreshments? Have you ever had to wait way too long to get served at a Restaurant?

Well, Guess What? An Extremely Enthusiastic Clientele is a much better long-term corporate resource than a one day blowout sale.

Mark Ritson wrote: "Don't Confuse the Value of Customers and Sales."

Seeking Dear John

So your beloved reader

has gone and left you

and do you

know the reason

Why?

---

Getting feedback from those readers who decide to unsubscribe from your web feed is valuable marketing information.

Susan Abbott wrote: "Unsubscribe - or what readers do in their spare time"

Without Vitality, there is no Viability

In mid-twentieth century Sci-Fi flicks, the actor who supplied the voice for a robot would attempt to speak without inflection and without imbuing his/her diction with any emotion. (Later films tended to feature robotic characters with personality.)

One of the problems with many business blogs, especially the blogs of older corporations, is that the textual content is written to sound objective or journalistic.

Most successful business blogs are very opinionated and written from an editorial standpoint rather than a journalistic standpoint. Additionally, the successful blog's opinions are not focused on the services or products of the business which publishes the blog but rather on expressing the viewpoint of the business concerning other industry related developments or current events.

The successful blog also focuses on providing content which is useful for the reader but which is not merely a rehash of something which has been produced elsewhere.

The question of how to make a blog sound unique and imbue it with a consistent persona is one with which some companies have to struggle.

Dave Taylor wrote an article entitled "How To Write With a Distinctive Voice."

Clientele Leveraging

There is passive Word of Mouth referrals and there is leveraged Word of Mouth referrals.

How can you effectively turn your current clients into promoters of your business?

John Jantsch describes four areas in which to focus your efforts in the article: "Customers Are Your Most Effective Sales Force."

Can You Be Trusted?

There has almost always been a segment of the business community that was convinced that Nice Guys finish last.

These are the Donald Trumps and the Financial Advisors that do redistribution just in time to pass on 1099s to those who are supposed to be their clients.

Well if you want to swim with the sharks, go right ahead. But sharks are neither trustworthy nor trusted, at least not by the wise.

Someone recently asked Marshall Goldsmith what advantage there is in business to being "good." He wrote an article entitled: "Why Shoot Straight in a Crooked World?"

Controversy - A key to Web Success

In traditional public relations, the publicity manager is always trying to avoid negative publicity. However, on the internet being a little "in your face" can be as valuable to the blog author as it is to the radio talk show host.

In some rural markets, a very pleasant non-controversial talk show can be quite successful within the local community. But there are almost no national talk shows that don't include a bit of controversy.

But you do pay a price for that controversy. There are some fringe radio talk shows that have a national audience but there audience is not mainstream. Finding the right balance and avoiding tainting your brand is a constant challenge to the program.

Similarly, in the internet world, finding the right balance of "edginess" is key to success in the Internet publishing world. Different venues call for a different degree of controversy.

Either extreme amiability or gratuitous shock can be a death blow to internet publishing.

Sonia Simone wrote: "9 Little Known Traits of Successful Bloggers."

Can You Pass This Exam?

If your businesses main marketing focus is primarily offline and you aren't really wanting to change that focus, then this exam is not extremely vital to your marketing success.

But if you want to succeed in the Internet Marketing world, then you have to adapt to the new user-centric web.

On the web, the audience drives the discussion. This is very difficult for many business owners to grasp. Quite frequently, business owners think that using new internet technology is all that it takes to participate. But as long as you are focused on telling, instead of responding - you can't play effectively in this game.

Ed Cotton asks some very basic questions, which if answered honestly can help you to determine whether you are really ready to participate in the audience driven social internet.

Surviving in the Virtual Village

Movies have provided entertainment based on the humor of watching an urban suit try to adjust to a rural community or a real cattle drive. There have been other movies that focused on small town visitors to the big city.

The serious theme behind these comedies is that survival in one environment does not necessarily provide you with the skills which are necessary to survive in a foreign environment.

The social web is like a foreign culture to those executives whose primary focus in marketing is offline. The rules which produce marketing success offline, do not produce the same results within the social web's Virtual Village.

Within the social web, relationships are vital to marketing success! The anonymity of the metropolitan environment allows for impersonal marketing offline. But online, you can irritate your potential audience and alienate your past clients by failing to focus on relationship development.

Ardath Albee wrote "Build Relationships ONE Step at a Time."

Can you speak "Buyer?"

When a company writes me a letter that is all about them, it really irritates me. Also when a company sends me email that is completely irrelevant to who I am, it irritates me.

You probably have experienced the same reaction to a promotional mailing.

So what makes you think that your audience is different from you and I?

You think that you already know all this? Then why did that last mailer you sent out irritate more than half of the people who received it.

Maybe you don't know your audience's language after all.

Oh, you think that you do? Did you ask them?

How do you feel when someone ASSUMES something about you?

What is the best way to avoid making a wrong assumption? That's right! ASK, already.

Karon Thackston writes "Understanding & Communicating with Your Customers."

We want to invite you back again

Receiving an unsolicited invitation for a repeat performance is one of the sweetest experiences a person can have.

The actor is called back over and over again for encores. The suitor who receives love letters begging for his return. The business whose past clients are cramming their calendar full with repeat businesses. These are visions to which most people would aspire.

But how to make it happen?

Chris Brogan wrote an article about giving speeches. But what he wrote can be used in many different venues. The article is entitled Two Important Speaking Tips but these two points are almost universal.

Why I threw your Newsletter away

So anyway I opened up that newsletter which you sent me today and after looking through it for a couple of minutes, I threw it away.

Do you want to know why I threw it away? Does it matter to you that I threw it away?

Well, to be quite honest with you. It was too much puffery. What wasn't about how great you are and how great your product was - tended to all be stuff that I have heard a million times before.

If you really want me to retain the newsletters that you send me - if you really want me to spend time focusing on your message - there's one big secret to getting my attention. And here it is, listen closely now: Tel me something of substance that I can use. If the information in your newsletter is Practical and Valuable, then I will focus on what you are writing. Otherwise, we are both just wasting our time.

Ryan Allis wrote an article on five approaches to writing a newsletter which will be valued by the readers. However, I disagree with Ryan's first point. Benchmarking and Statistics are useful but only when they are objective. I don't care that much about how well your company is doing. I care about how well your company is treating me and how good my experiences have been with the product you sold me last year.

Borrow a page from the wise Politician

Politicians who stay in office for a long career learn the same lesson. Their constituency's voting patterns are not based on the strident special interest group demonstrators.

Sometimes to survive a primary, a politician will focus on pleasing special interest groups, but when it comes to the general election - the wise politician realizes that the independent vote is often the deciding factor. He also realizes that the size of a market segment is not based on the volume of the vociferous few.

As a business, to discover how to please your customer base, you need to discover how large the silent majority is and what the gripes of the silent majority are.

Seth Godin wrote "Listening to the Loud People."

Quality or Money

Money has a tendency to cancel out Quality. Although there are definite exceptions to this rule, it is a general tendency.

If a customer buys on the basis of price, the customer will tend to reject Quality to get a good buy.

If an employee leaves one company because of a slightly larger salary at another company, it usually means that either the first company did not provide a quality work environment or the employee does not value nor give quality.

The stereotypical general reaction which occurs when a young beautiful woman marries an older wealthy man is based on the cynical assumption by society that the marriage is not based on quality.

If your company has to rely on cash incentives to retain your best customers, you are probably failing to provide either quality customer service or a quality product or failing in both areas.

Steve Yastrow wrote "A Bribe is not a Relationship."

Doc, You Gotta Help Me - I just Can't Seem To Stop Writing

In spite of the humorous title of this article, frequency of communication is an important business decision.

However, I would argue that consistency is actually more important than frequency. A few weeks ago, I had a booth at the North Georgia State Fair and this recommendation feature ground to a halt because I had too many things on my platter.

There are two main considerations in my opinion when considering frequency and both of them can be included under the single heading of Customer Expectation.

1. How will this frequency schedule affect my brand?
2. Can I commit to this frequency schedule?

I know that for this recommendation feature, I will probably eventually go back to once a day because I have found that twice a day places too much of a strain on my other responsibilities.

Seth Godin is both a writer and a start up visionary. (He is exemplary evidence that Marketing startups and Tech-Innovation startups don't have to play by the same rules.)

Seth wrote an article entitled "How Often Should You Publish?"

Didn't even have to ask

Have you ever watched a medical show in which the surgeon holds out his hand and the assistant places the correct instrument in the surgeon's hand without the surgeon specifying which instrument was needed?

Have you ever been a regular patron of a restaurant, where the wait staff knew exactly what your order would be even before you placed it?

If you really want to be successful in client relationships, you should work on providing your clients what they want - when they want it.

Ivana Taylor explains how to achieve this level of service in an article entitled Use Better Delivery To Enhance Your Image Problem

Speaking Ancient Greek to the construction worker

Monday Morning and Tuesday Afternoon, I wrote about business stupidity and delusions. In this article I would like to talk about communicating with the prospect.

Can you describe the prospect to me? How old is he or she? Is he married, single or divorced? Does he/she have children? Are they young or old? What is distracting him or her from listening to you?

Does your prospect know how to speak technobabble? If you are in the financial industry, can the prospect speak like Barrons, WSJ and an HBS faculty PHD?

There are two major problems that occur when many entrepreneurs attempt to speak to their prospects. First they don't know who their prospect is and Second, they try to speak as if their prospect is an industry insider.

Oh and just to make it more complicated, their target market is not homogenous. (That's technobabble for say that there is a lot of diversity among their prospects.)

To successfully market to your prospects, you need to identify (and I don't mean Guess) the different categories of prospects you have, you need to identify (and I don't mean guess) what their lifestyles (or if you are B2B, what their company is like on the inside) and then you have to learn their language.

Mike Moran wrote a nice article entitled "Do We Really Understand Personas?"

To receive Trust, you must first be worthy

Recently, I talked about the need to be genuine.

Today, let's talk about being "real." Real people have convictions and opinions. Real people are not always trying to hide. Real people have the courage to be real. Real people are loyal to their relationships.

In other words, to be real is to be engaged in the humanity of others.

Sonia Simone wrote "Are you trustworthy?"

Stay in Touch, No Really - STAY in touch

There are no short cuts to doing things right!

The internet has made so many things possible and less expensive, but many of the things that can be done less expensively should have been done even when it cost postage!

But I don't have the time, you say? You can't afford not to!!!!!

One of the things that every successful business needs is the attitude that every customer is our only client - and that means keeping the relationship alive.

Don't be like the boyfriend who never calls or sends a gift but only shows up when he wants a date!

Be like the Romeo who sweeps the girl off her feet because he never lets her forget that he cares.

Bernadette Doyle wrote "Are You Making This Marketing Mistake?"

With your clients: There's a time to talk and a time to be silent

When do your clients want to hear from you?

When do they really wish you would SHUT up, already?

When do they feel neglected?

When do they feel inundated by too many messages?

When do they really wish you would use a different method of communication?

If you can answer all these without guessing or "making it up" out of thin air, then you don't need to read today's recommendation.

Deborah Garry wrote: "Communication is key with your customers."

Slow and Steady Wins The Race

Many sales and marketing people could learn a lot from the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare. There marketing comes across like a jack rabbit, both by trying to cram too much into each communication and by the sporadic nature of their communication.

A much more effective method of communication is audience development and nurturing.

Another metaphor for this same idea is "watering a cactus."

If you provide just a little marketing, on a consistent basis to people who have given you permission to communicate with them, you will build an audience of clients and allies who will recommend you to others.

But if you "flood" your prospects, you will kill your cactus.

Ardath Albee wrote a great article on lead nurturing.

Understanding Online Community Development

Developing alliances and community on the internet, is not the same as networking offline. There are factors to consider in order to develop a strategy which accomplishes that which you desire.

Crystal Williams provides a very nice introduction to virtual communities in "Online Communities 101."

Calculating the ROI of being Loyal to your Client

A lot of companies create customer loyalty programs to try to encourage their customers to keep buying from them. However, many of these companies make no attempt to be loyal to their customers. This has a hindering effect on their efforts to encourage loyalty in their customers.

However, if it were possible to calculate how much each customer is worth in revenue to the company over the lifetime of the customer, companies might be more inclined to being loyal to their customers.

Crystal Williams wrote an article entitled "How Much Is Your Customer Worth?"

How big is your Booster Club?

Do your Fans brag about you?

Do you even have any Fans?

Would you like for your business to have a lot of people who champion your Brand?

Ed Roach wrote "How To Make Brand Champions."

Sometimes, its all in how you package it

Sometimes, even the best content in the world will only be considered by your audience if the packaging is right.

Let me illustrate:

Would you believe that some of the top read writers on the internet compete to have their content "re-packaged?"

Every month, writers send proposals to ChangeThis.com. These proposals are then posted for public voting on the Change This proposal page. This link goes to that page.

Whichever five proposals gets the most votes that month, then gets the chance to be featured as a Change This eBook.

End of Illustration.

The point is that the Media in which information is presented affects the optimal format of the information.

Have you ever been to a Power Point presentation where the speaker attempted to put the entire text of his speech on the screen. Bad Decision.

The substance of the speech might be GREAT and yet placing it on the screen ruins the speech.

In the early days of the web, there was no professional looking page layout. When websites started being designed to resemble printed documents, many websites were mis-designed to scroll downwards through more than a dozen screens or more. This was a mistake for the same reason that putting all the content of a speech on a projection screen is a mistake.

Content needs to be formatted for the medium in which it is being presented and the limitations, as well as the advantages, of the medium used need to be understood and respected.

The amount of content which you need to present, should have an affect on your media choice. If you are presenting a lot of content, it is frequently a good idea to present this content as an eBook. A professionally designed eBook can be used as a Premium in lead harvesting, as a community development giveaway or as a product for marketing.

(Disclosure: My consultancy provides typography and page layout services for eBooks and other electronic publications including eNewsletters and Presentations.)

Vera Raposo wrote an article on how to market eBooks. (The Ebay suggestion is obsolete. see the comments below the article.)

Transparency can destroy Mental Commodification

Have you ever found yourself faced with a long term client who is beginning to waver about whether or not to switch to your competition?

The reason this happens is because of mental commodification.

Although you are always trying to differentiate your company from your competition, on some level this client has decided that the difference is relatively insignificant.

But what would happen, if instead of your TELLING the client that you are different, the client was able to SEE the difference?

Sean Hazell wrote an article entitled, "Take Your Customer to Work Day."

How to start a Business Newsletter

This posting is not going to contain a whole-hearted endorsement of an article. However, the article which I am going to recommend that you read, does contain many good ideas.

I will provide a link to the article at the bottom of this posting, but the article is "Starting An Ezine" by Corte Swearingen. Tips 2 and 3 are very good. The other three are good, but ....

Regarding Tip #1: If you do not plan to publish your ezine as a downloadable or as an e-mail attachment, then I agree with Corte's tip #1. However, if your audience agrees to receive your newsletter as an attachment, then a PDF is greatly superior to HTML e-mails.

Regarding Tip #4: Let your audience community "drive" your content. Too many business newsletters focus on "telling" the audience some viewpoint or philosophy which the business wants to promote, instead of focusing on what your audience wants to hear.

Regarding Tip #5: PREselling is like salt in a cooking recipe. Too much salt will ruin a recipe, too little salt makes some foods taste bland. I strongly recommend that you keep your PREselling content to less than 20% and that you treat it as delicately as great copywriters treat the inserting of keywords into copy. In other words, keep it to a minimum.

Corte Swearingen wrote: "Starting An Ezine."

Playing Nice

Community and Alliances are key to long term internet marketing.

But you need to know how to build community and what to do to avoid destroying your relationship with your community.

Jason Drohn offers advice on how to be successful in Social Media marketing. (For the record, Point 5 in his tips should always trump point 9 whenever a question arises over suitability of a new venue.)