Are You Being Served?

As the country begins to cut back on non-essential products and services, customer service becomes an especially important element for those of you who market specialty items. And in a post at the Church of the Customer Blog, Jackie Huba lauds the personalized approach from Hem, an Austin, Texas, boutique that specializes in high-end jeans.

Huba freely admits that she—like most women—dreads the usually intimidating task of shopping for jeans. But with the guidance of Hem's approachable owner, Loree, Huba tried on at least 20 different styles to determine which worked best with her body type; along the way, Loree peppered their conversation with helpful advice that ranged from setting the color with the first wash to removing the odor of cigarette smoke. "Because of Loree's attention to the buying process," says Huba, "I bought two pairs of jeans confident I will look great in them. That will be my rational and emotional foundation to a strong referral."

The friendly, insightful service at Hem not only removed anxiety from Huba's shopping equation, it led to a satisfied customer and a word-of-mouth recommendation that will be seen by thousands of her readers—and now by you.

"When it comes to luxury items," says Huba, "there's an inverse relationship between price and service. The higher the price, the higher the expectation for hand-holding during the purchase." Keeping that in mind is your Marketing Inspiration.

8 Things That Motivate Web-Audience Response‏

By Jerry Bader

It's always a good idea to stick to the basics. When businesses stray too far from the fundamentals, problems arise, but sticking to the basics doesn't mean boring people into a state of unconsciousness. If Web-visitors' eyes glaze-over upon entering your site, you've lost them before you've begun.

Web success is based on creative implementation of the basics, and that's where your Web-marketing presentation should begin.

1. Web-Audience Response Demands Communication

The Web has a lot in common with television but there are fundamental differences; it is important for Web-entrepreneurs to understand these differences and similarities, and learn from them.

Television and the Web are both communication environments, but television, like magazines and newspapers, are primarily advertising platforms. Of course there are plenty of websites around that follow the advertising financial model, but for the average business website, depending on third party advertising not only dilutes their marketing message and brand, but it also makes for a confusing and cluttered visual presentation.

Just because your website presents information, doesn't mean it's communicating it to your intended audience in any meaningful way. The manner in which you communicate your message is as important as the message itself. The medium is increasingly becoming the message, and even in situations where it isn't, it definitely shapes the message.

2. Web-Audience Response Demands Content

You have repeatedly heard the comment, 'content is king,' but we think, 'communication is king' because without communication your content is meaningless. But here's the dilemma, your information is basically advertising, after all you're in business, and business is about selling something - a product, a service, an idea, or your know-how. So the real underlying purpose of your website is to make that advertising message worth listening to, and to do that, you need to turn it into content.

To turn advertising into content you have to accept that sales take time. You have to be patient. You can't hurry a sale, you first have to build confidence; stop rushing the close and start thinking of selling as a courtship. You would never ask someone to get married on a first date, so why would you expect to get an order from a potential Web-client on their first visit.

3. Web-Audience Response Demands Courtship

No one is going to make a substantial financial commitment without reaching some level of comfort with who you are and what you do, and that requires some repeated contact: a courtship, or negotiation if you prefer.

Therein lies the similarity and difference between websites and television: the success of a television program is based on habituation. If you get people to tune-in every week on the same night, at the same time to see their favorite program, you will be able to keep delivering your marketing message through the commercials that pay for the content. In the same regard, if you can make your website interesting enough through the compelling presentation of content, you will get visitors to return again and again, each time gaining confidence and respect for what you do and what you sell.

The difference is people accept television commercials as the price they pay for free TV programming, but the same cannot be said for the Web. People want free information on the Web without the irritation and bother of ads; so the challenge for website owners is to turn their marketing message into compelling programming that creates habituation which is just another form of negotiation, or courtship of potential clients.

4. Web-Audience Response Demands Consistency

You hear the word strategy bandied about with little relevance to its precise meaning. In marketing terms, strategy is a big idea, a sustainable concept that you can build a business around.

Successful companies rarely change their strategies, a concept that should not be confused with tactics, which are the various methods used to implement strategy in order to secure the ultimate objectives.

Business has to be resilient and open-minded enough to adapt to an ever-changing business environment by constantly updating tactics, but strategy needs to be a constant, a touchstone or benchmark for implementing action. Staying on course requires confidence in the strategy with a vigilant eye on the big picture.

Websites that are nothing more than brochures or catalogs of product that anyone can purchase at the local mall or box store is a tactic that delivers little relevance to today's Web-savvy consumer. And the same can be said for the blatantly obvious direct marketíng sites based on old magazine subscription techniques. The new multimedia communication-based Web requires new presentation tactics in order to successfully implement marketing strategy.

5. Web-Audience Response Demands Expectation

Successful marketing is not just about persuading people that what you have is what they need, it's about creating a series of deliverable expectations.

If you expect a product to be easy to use because that's what the marketing communication states, then that product better be easy to use. Effective marketing presentations not only prompt action but just as importantly they create a set of realistic, deliverable expectations.

Ask yourself, why do people mistrust politicians, car salesmen, and telemarketers? We all know the answer: many will say, and promise, just about anything to get your vote or order, and the result is a disgruntled, cynical voter or customer. Read my lips, no false expectations!

6. Web-Audience Response Demands Trust

When customers' expectations are met, you begin to create trust, and trust is one of the hardest things to achieve on a website that lacks any kind of human connection to the audience.

I can't tell you how many websites I've visited that make no effort to humanize their presentations, and consequently their businesses. When you go to a contact page and all that's there is a form to fill-in, with no contact name or phone number, it says to people, 'I really can't be bothered talking to you.' Hiding behind email tells people not to trust you, and if they don't trust you, they are not going to do business with you.

Business is about connecting to people, whether they are consumers, purchasing agents, or suppliers. If your website doesn't have some kind of human element like a video Web-host, audio message, or even a contact name and phone number, how can you expect to connect and build confidence, and trust in your intent to satisfy their needs?

7. Web-Audience Response Demands Personality

By building trust with your Web-audience you are also building your brand and defining your corporate personality. Here again we have a bit of a dichotomy since personality is a human-based characteristic, so how then can we create a personality and instill human characteristics into an inanimate entity like a business?

Corporate personality does not derive from a logo, packaging, or your website's aesthetic qualities. Corporate personality is the sum total of the collective experiences your audience has with your company. In the brick and mortar world, corporate personality is a result of dealing with people, sales people, receptionists, and telemarketers; in short personality is derived from interaction with real human beings.

Clever, well written website copy can help create personality as long as it is written in a distinctive human voice, but we know that 70% of all website text is never read; people skip to bulleted points and captions. But the same material delivered by a real person either through Web-audio or video, not only delivers the marketing message in the most memorable and compelling fashion, but it also defines the business personality and humanizes the website.

Two caveats: avatars are not people, and unless you can afford to hire the creators of the Simpsons to develop your animation, you best forget it; as well, using yourself or a non-professional as a spokesperson or Web-host is a dangerous practice, and speaks more to ego than it does to effective business development.

8. Web-Audience Response Demands Motivation

Lastly your website must communicate content that excites and motivates people to do business with you. The ability to motivate people isn't about what you're selling; it's about how you present it.

Motivational speakers, whether in the business, entertainment, personal coaching, or sports arenas, all deliver a similar message; but the ones that truly stimulate people to act, are the ones that know how to present their ideas in the most exciting and compelling manner. If you want to motivate your Web-audience to respond, your presentation has to be delivered by a real human being: a professional with charm, charisma, and a distinctive character.


About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit MRPwebmedia.com, 136Words.com, SonicPersonality.com, and CacheClosed.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

How To Create a Perpetual Traffic Machine‏

By Titus Hoskins

The Internet is such an unknown commodity anything is possible. One of the most intriguing questions concerns the idea of a perpetual traffic machine. Create a website and design a system of automatic programs (both interior and exterior) that delivers content and backlinks to a site that updates itself automatically and keeps growing without any help from the creator. In the process you build a flow of traffic that doesn't stop, even if the site is abandoned or not touched for a couple of years or never again.

Is such a perpetual traffic system really possible?

Before you conjure up pictures of HAL and creepy talking computers in distant space... realize that question may carry more weight than it would seem at first glance. But is it like its predecessor, the perpetual motion machine - just more an illusion than actual fact?

For curiosity's sake if for nothing else, the idea of a perpetual traffic machine does require further investigation. Such a system would have special interest for millions of webmasters whose main task is acquiring traffic for their sites, not to mention the potential for monetary gain a PTM (rhymes with ATM) would produce. Some credence was given to the idea recently when Tinu Abayomi-Paul, a well-known online free traffic expert, produced with the help of Marlon Sanders an info-product entitled "The Evergreen Traffic Machine."

Tinu's story is very interesting. Tinu had built up a whole array of sites and optimized them successfully for countless keywords in all the major search engines. She had built up a steady flow of traffic, resulting in thousands of visitors "a day" to her sites. This in itself is not that extraordinary, but that's not the full story.

Because of a personal illness she abandoned or left alone most of her sites for over a year or more - only to discover the traffic systems she had put into place didn't just dry up, they still kept producing tons of traffic even though the sites weren't being updated.

The traffic was still coming. The traffic was still fresh.

Tinu basically built her perpetual traffic system around three major areas: High Profile Article Marketing, Exact Keyword Focus and Blogging/RSS Feeds. Tinu's system proves you can create a traffic system for a year or two, but the real question is will it still produce traffic five years from now? Fifty years from now? How about a hundred years?

The real question: how long will such a system work without fresh input of unique content like the viral articles and blog posts now feeding it? This question is even more tantalizing when you consider it is now possible to create fresh content on your sites with RSS feeds, blog comments and user contributed content.

What's more intriguing is the fact that all aspects of a website can be automated, including payment for all renewals: domain, hosting, autoresponders... as well as the collection of revenues such as affiliate commissions and advertising fees.

Are we at the stage where the Internet will be filled with these automated human-less web sites drawing traffic/visitors and slowly building and expanding on their own for eternity? Many cynics would argue this is already the case with the majority of sites on the web.

In case you like that idea and want to fully embrace this brave new automated perpetual Internet, here are a few tips to create your eternal traffic machine:

1. Build lists and pre-load your AR system with follow-up messages to keep visitors coming back to your site. You can rotate these messages and ask your subscribers to opt-ín to different lists on related subject areas. Always ask your readers to recommend your content to others.

2. Use social bookmark software or links so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content which brings in both new links and new traffic. Simple programs like the one offered by Addthis.com will get your visitors building your backlinks for you, bringing in fresh visitors who in turn will also bookmark your content.

3. Write viral articles, reports and ebooks that have your backlinks in the resource boxes. Likewise, viral software programs can help bring a constant flow of traffic to your site. If your content is of a high quality and your themes universal... new sites will pick up your content and build your backlinks, creating fresh traffic. The search engines will also index these new links and your rankings will rise, bringing in more traffíc.

4. Use blogging and RSS feeds to get your content out there. You can also use these RSS feeds to bring in new fresh content to your site. Creating new content will be your main obstacle to creating perpetual traffic... you can get new content from feeds but will it be unique? Comments in your blogs could bring in unique content but if you're not monitoring them, you must have solid software in place to fight against spam.

5. Have "Tell a Friend" forms on all your content. This will bring new traffic to your site, which can be self-refreshing as new people discover your content.

6. Encourage user generated content such as articles, comments, posts... you can even have a community monitoring system where your site's members monitor this new content.

7. Form JV alliances with webmasters in your related field. Do co-registration so that you help build each other's lists and traffic.

8. Likewise, if you have products to sell, create an affiliate program to get your affiliates to build your traffic for you. Affiliates are an excellent source of permanent traffic.

9. Automate all aspects of the running and managing of your website. Set up automatic payments for your AR system, hosting, domain renewal, PPC payments... thru PayPal or credít card. Likewise, receive affiliate commissions thru PayPal or direct deposit. Many advertising programs like Google Adsense provide direct deposit.

10. PPC Traffic - While we have mainly looked at free traffic systems, don't forget creating a PTM is relatively easy with Pay Per Click advertising if you know what you're doing. Target less competitive keywords to keep your costs down, tie this traffic into a good squeeze page for feeding your AR system with leads and have a good landing page that converts. You can create a system that delivers perpetual traffic and pays for itself from your affiliate commissions and advertising fees.

In summary, the argument for the existence of the PTM mainly relies upon the quality of your content or site. Is it unique enough to draw in new visitors? Does your topic have universal appeal that people don't tire of? Does it solve or provide advice on a common human problem? Will or does it have a viral "word of mouth" element to it?

As we move to a more and more automated world, all the automated programs and hardware are in place for the creation of such perpetual traffic machines.

Computers, autoresponders, content management software, RSS feeds, viral marketing, direct deposit, automatic payments... and the líst goes on. If we haven't already created the perpetual traffic machine - we are getting tangibly close to doing just that.


About The Author
The author is a full-time online marketer who practices what he preaches. Get a Free Perpetual Desktop Calendar. Read a review of Tinu's Traffic Machine at BizwareMagic.com
2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Kick the Web Development Blues

In a post at the True You Marketing blog, Tina Ferguson outlines the most common mistakes companies make when they create a Website. No reason you have to make any of them. Here's a sampling of how to get the best bang for your Web development buck:

Get to know the technology. Ferguson says vendors want to work with marketing or communications departments because they're less likely to understand the ins and outs of ASP, HTML, Java Script and Flash. She recalls one meeting where the marketers paid more attention to the vendor's shoes than the technical presentation—and wound up paying $500,000 for a site that should have cost $10,000. Avoid this fate by including your IT department in all buying decisions.

Know your position in the marketplace. "Your place and status … determine what companies charge you for their services," says Ferguson. "If you are at the top of the market don't expect too many people offering bargain web development and design services to you."

Ask to see working client sites. All of those great layouts a vendor shows you might be nothing more than stylish mock-ups. Ask for URLs that you can access and assess using your own Internet connection.

The Po!nt: Says Ferguson, "I have seen sites that don't match [a] brand, take forever to load, SEO that doesn't matter … and even navigation issues that you would think don't exist [in] this day and age." All it takes is the right approach to skirt all of these issues when you develop or overhaul your Website.

Source: True You Marketing blog. To read the full post, click here.

OMG! The Coupons Are Here!

In his book, The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm, Kenneth W. Gronbach tells a story about stopping at the top of his driveway to retrieve the mail, getting back in the car and hearing his two daughters—aged 13 and 16—excitedly ask what came for them. Both, it turned out, received direct-mail offers from their favorite clothing retailer, and they immediately asked if he would take them shopping. "This is not a real question," he writes, "because they know I'm trapped. How else will we save all the money reflected in the coupons?"

Even though kids live in a digital-online-wireless world of iPods, laptops, mobile phones, text messages and downloadable media, his daughters' enthusiasm for the low-tech approach of direct mail is not unusual. According to Gronbach, Generation Y customers—who will number 100 million by 2010—watch little broadcast television, don't read newspapers and rarely listen to broadcast radio. It's a good thing for marketers, therefore, that they respond so well to this tried-and-true channel.

"Put some compelling coupons in a snail-mail offer and watch what happens," he says.

It might not have the glamour of avant-garde marketing, but here's your Marketing Inspiration: "Generation Y loves direct snail mail," writes Gronbach. "I know this seems strange in the cyberage, but if you need to brand Gen Y and you are not using the U.S. Post Office, you are making a big mistake."