Marketing Planning 101: Part II, What a Marketing Plan Is NOT
This is the second in a series of articles on creating a strategic marketing plan for your business. Part I, “What Exactly IS a Strategic Marketing Plan Anyway?,” looks at what a plan actually is and how it works.
So your business already has a marketing plan. Are you sure? A plan is NOT that wildly creative brand idea. (You know, the one you paid a lot of money for someone to come up with.) It’s NOT the same thing your competitors are doing. (And it’s not the opposite, either.) It’s NOT what you end up with if you just keep talking about it. (Although input from the whole team is a key part of the process.)
One of the biggest obstacles to creating a marketing plan, especially for small businesses, lies in not having a good understanding of what it is in the first place.
Common Misconceptions
Some of the most common misconceptions we hear can be boiled down to these:
- “You’re the expert, so you tell me what we need to do. (And, by the way, I don’t expect to pay for it).”
- “Nah, we already have a plan: There’s our ad list for the year.”
- “We already found a marketing plan for our type of business and filled it out [last year] [when we started the business] [a while back, I don’t remember when].”
- “We can’t be tied down by a marketing plan. [In our industry] [As a startup] [As a rapidly growing company] things are changing too fast for us to be constrained by a plan.”
Do any of those sound familiar? The one thing they all have in common is that they show what a marketing plan is not.
Let’s take them one at a time.
1. A Pitch Is Not a Plan
This one came as a shock. For years I had seen business owners not wanting to commit to a plan because it takes too long, because it costs too much, or because it’s just plain not a lot of fun, but it had never occurred to me that anyone would consider a pitch for business an actual plan.
A few years ago we received a Request for Proposal from a well-respected nonprofit, one with some solid history and success under its belt. They needed a marketing plan, which was right up our alley, but, oddly enough, their budget was way too high. That never happens. People always underestimate the cost of a good marketing plan, not the other way around. And this wasn’t a detailed brief, it was a very general RFP for developing a marketing plan. Something was off. I made an appointment to find out more.
Soon I found myself sitting in the executive director’s office, having a wonderful chat about the history of the organization and her vision for the future. I brought us back to the RFP.
“What’s your marketing budget for the year?” I asked. Fifty thousand. Hmmm. That’s what the RFP gave as the too-high budget just for developing a plan. “I mean your overall marketing budget?” Fifty thousand. “For everything?” Yes. Well, that was awfully small for everything. “If that’s your total budget,” I said, “you’ll probably need all that for implementation. So how much can you allocate for developing the plan? Will you pull that from a different budget?” Oh, no, she said, it’s fifty thousand for the whole plan.
Then it hit me. The $50,000 was indeed a too-low budget for all of their marketing and advertising for the year, and, what was worse, none of it included a marketing plan, because she didn’t expect to pay for a plan at all. She thought she was getting it for free in the form of a proposal. I felt like banging my head on the large desk between us.
“A proposal is just a proposal,” I tried to explain. “It’s a pitch, not a plan.”
But she didn’t understand. Of all the agencies and consultants out there, she thought, surely someone would hit the bull’s eye—even if all of them were taking aim blindfolded. Someone, surely, was bound to hit upon the just-right mix of marketing strategies and tactics for her organization—despite the fact that none of us yet had any idea what goals and strategies the organization actually needed at this point in time.
“A proposal is an outline of how we would approach working with you,” I continued, “but it’s not the actual work itself.” I explained that developing a good marketing plan for an organization this size would probably take at least 25 hours of an experienced strategist’s time, maybe more. “You can’t hire an agency to implement a plan that doesn’t exist,” I tried. “First, you have to create the plan.”
But she didn’t understand. She had probably never seen an actual marketing plan. It was clear she had never been part of the process of developing one. She was at the mercy of whatever flashy proposal hit her desk with the biggest thud.
I thanked her for her time, we chatted a bit more, and I left, telling her later in a short note that we wouldn’t be bidding on the project at this time.
2. A Media Plan Is Not a Strategy
Many marketers, especially marketing managers and directors at larger companies, are well-versed in hammering out an annual media plan. Number crunching starts early in the fourth quarter, when you pull out all the data you’ve been able to collect and try to figure out which advertising was the most effective.
A media plan is important, but it’s only a part of the overall plan. And while the amount of a marketing budget allocated to paid advertising can be a sizable chunk of the whole, especially for older, established companies, it’s still just a part.
A marketing plan includes an outline of strategies, tactics, and budget for all of your company’s marketing activities, not just paid advertising. What about your website? Does it need an update, or even an overhaul? Have you factored in costs for maintenance and updates? What about SEO? Local search? Will you use direct mail? Email marketing? What about print collateral? Signage? Promotions? In-store marketing? Special events? And where does your online advertising—PPC and social—fit in? Have you budgeted for that?
Many small to mid-size businesses handle day-to-day marketing activities in-house, but there are inevitably some outside expenses beyond what staff can handle on their own. Printing. Software. Mail services, postage. Packaging design and production. And there’s usually some level of professional assistance needed, either in the form of regular agency support or occasional help with special projects. Web and app development. PR assistance. Professional photography and videography. PPC expertise. Social media management. Creative services. Ongoing or special-project consulting.
All of that needs to be considered when developing your marketing plan. If you’re just looking at advertising, you’re missing a big part of the big picture–and hampering your ability to budget effectively.
3. A Generic Plan Is An Oxymoron
A “generic plan”—just like “cruel kindness” or “hugely small”—is an oxymoron, a meaningless contradiction of terms.
A sample of a good marketing plan can be very helpful, especially if it’s for a similar business of similar size and scope, but there’s no such thing as a marketing plan template you can fill in and be done with once and for all.
The only thing we find is really standard is the process every business needs to go through for creating a plan, a process that applies to businesses of any size, in any industry, start-up and established company alike. Of course, for bigger companies, the process will be more detailed, multi-leveled, and complex, than what small businesses have to contend with, although the drill-down process for developing a strategic plan is basically the same. However, the actual plans that evolve from that process will always be completely different for every business or organization.
There is no “marketing plan for X type of business” you can buy, borrow, or steal that will be right for your business. Not now. Not ever. If there were, it would be for an exact clone of your business at this exact point in time, which is about as likely as finding an exact double of yourself.
Same goes with determining the size of your marketing budget: There’s no single one right way someone else can tell you what that should be. Should you spend 2%? or 5%? or 10% Surely there’s a standard somewhere you should follow, whether you can afford it or not. Right? Wrong. Within reason, you can develop an effective marketing plan for just about any size budget. But, however small or large, it will be unique.
4. An Excuse Is Just An Excuse
If you’ve ever entertained the thought that your business is exempt from planning because you’re too something—too new, maybe, or too established, too successful, too different, too special in any way—you’re simply deceiving yourself. And hurting your business. It’s like going to your grade school teacher and saying you didn’t do your homework because you’re too smart. It’s just an excuse, and a poor one at that. (“The dog ate my homework” is actually more creative.)
“We’re changing too fast to be tied down by a plan” is typical of startups and small entrepreneurial enterprises. “Our marketing department has it covered” is typical of larger, more established companies. Both are nothing more than an excuse.
Successful businesses understand that good strategy is the foundation for success. And successful entrepreneurs and business leaders understand that good strategy grows and evolves. It changes over time, in response to the measurement tools you built into the plan in the beginning. That means your business is never too anything to be exempt from a well-crafted plan.
You might get by without it—a lot of businesses do—but you’ll certainly get by lots better with it in hand.
Next Step: How To Create a Strategic Marketing Plan
So how do you actually do it? The next post in this series will take it apart, with step-by-step instructions and examples. But be prepared: This is not a cookie-cutter template or a fill-in-the-blank form. A good marketing plan is strategic—which means, built around your company’s goals and objectives. A good plan is integrated—with all of your marketing, advertising, and communications activities working together around shared goals. And a good plan measurable—defined specifically and clearly enough that you can measure and assess results.
All of that takes work. But it can be done. And we’ll show you how.
Marketing Planning 101: Part I, What IS a Strategic Marketing Plan Anyway?
Where are you headed? How will you get there? How long will it take? How much will it cost? And how will you know when you’ve arrived?
Nobody would set off on a trip without having any idea how to answer these basic questions. But far too many business owners and marketers—even corporate marketing professionals in mid-size to large companies—set off on the journey of managing a business without figuring this out. When it comes to marketing, it’s often easier to (a) keep doing whatever you’ve been doing, (b) do something different because you think you’re supposed to (a variant of this is “everybody else is doing it”), or (c) do whatever the most persuasive seller talks you into. Each is inherently risky, and none are likely to get you where you want to go.
What A Strategic Marketing Plan Really Is ….. and Why You Need It
Let’s face it: Creating a marketing plan is not the sexiest job around. In fact, most marketing directors and small business owners would rather do anything but. Develop a new marketing plan every year? Spare me. Don’t even think about a five-year plan. Let’s just jump into that new ad campaign! How about a new video? Isn’t it time for a website redesign?
Just one little problem: What if your business doesn’t actually need any of those things right now? If your company’s goals require an altogether different set of tactics than the sexy stuff vying for your attention, why let yourself be sidetracked? If you do, how will you ever meet your goals?
Then there’s the even bigger question: What are your company’s goals anyway? Can you name them? Are they specific? Measurable? Achievable? Does everyone on your team know exactly what they are?
If you haven’t sat down to figure out exactly where you are and where you’re going, there’s no hope of getting anywhere near where you’d like to be.
I never cease to be amazed at the number of businesses that don’t invest in developing a marketing plan. Why spend money on marketing—any type of marketing—if it’s not part of a strategic plan? Without a plan, you’re running a business based on impulse buying.
Advantages Of a Good Marketing Plan
At the very least, every small to mid-size business needs to hammer out a basic plan once a year. The advantages are huge:
1. A Good Plan Saves Time & Money
While we don’t advocate a completely automatic “set-it-and-forget-it” approach, a strategic marketing plan does have a plug-and-play component built right in. Once you’ve figured out the strategies that are most important this year, then decided on the best tactics for carrying them out, in line with the budget you can afford, you can pretty much work the plan and get on with business. The time and energy needed to monitor and adapt is miniscule compared to what it takes to create. Businesses without a plan end up spending a lot of energy making up a plan as they go along, grabbing a little of this, a little of that—which nearly always ends up costing more in the end, either through unbudgeted expenses or ineffective results.
2. A Good Plan Keeps You On Track
A good plan not only maps out what you need to do, it also blocks out what’s not a priority for your business right now. So the next time a persuasive sales rep sails in with a tempting offer and a persuasive pitch, you can file it away for future reference and get back to work. No detours. No getting lost on side roads. A good plan keeps you from spending money on stuff you don’t need.
3. A Good Plan Has Measurement Built Right In
A critical part of creating a marketing plan is defining exactly what you want to accomplish and how you plan to do it. When that’s written down and understood by everyone on the team, from executive suite to sales staff, it’s much easier to measure what’s working and how. A well-developed plan defines each tactic according to costs and measurable results. For example, “Increase retention by 5% through use of a customer rewards program” is measurable, where “Start a customer rewards program” is not. When the program itself – the specific tactic – is spelled out in detail, with how much it will cost to implement over the year, you can then measure results and your return on investment. All of that is contained in how the plan is laid out.
4. A Good Plan Keeps Your Team Focused & Boosts Sales
When you have a clearly mapped out strategic plan and communicate it clearly throughout the company, everyone can focus on their jobs and not worry about the big picture. The plan is the big picture, and when it’s clear to everyone, they know where their specific tactics fit into the whole. They know why their job matters. Individuals and teams working under a good plan are more motivated and generally more productive, because they know they’re accountable.
Next in Marketing Planning 101
Next in this series we’ll look at “What a Marketing Plan is NOT.” You think your company has a marketing plan? Is it in fact just a media plan—an advertising budget? Or a list of somebody’s favorite projects? Or are you thinking of that impressive brand strategy document the designer wrote up? Or that long-winded piece on messaging and positioning? All of those are interesting and can be very useful, but none are a plan. This next installment will help you avoid those mistakes.
Then we’ll get down to the nitty gritty: “How to Create a Custom Marketing Plan” will walk you through exactly that, with detailed instructions and examples.
Stay tuned.
Brenda Murphree
Hot off the Presses: What’s Newsworthy?
There are thousands of pieces of content hitting the internet every day. If you’re not keeping your audience updated on your business, you’re losing out.
How to get the word out? First, before considering the how, take a look at the what: Whether it’s going out in a press release or in a customer email, you want to make sure that what you’re actually sharing is news. “Super Duper Ice Cream Offers 18 Exciting Flavors!” is not news. But “Super Duper Opens Second Location Downtown” is.
Not sure how to judge what’s newsworthy? Here are some tips to get you started.
Is your business is moving or expanding? Spread the word!
Are you changing locations? Expanding your current offices?
A relocation definitely calls for a press release to your local news media, and, depending on your business, a submission to industry and trade publications as well.
Next, use a more informal version of your news release to send out an announcement to your customers and the general public through all your normal communication channels—email, website, billing inserts, maybe even direct mail.
In your more personal communications with customers, such as emails and blog posts, don’t be afraid to bring them into the process. Take pictures and interview staff to let people see the ‘behind the scenes’ part of the move.
And don’t neglect the obvious: the company website and local SEO. Be sure your website is updated thoroughly with the new address, wherever it appears, looking especially at the header and footer and location-specific SEO tags, as well as the Contact page. And update your online listings, so that people searching for you—or for your type of business—will find your new address online.
You’ve hired great talent or promoted someone special. Show them off!
It takes time to find and hire new talent, those just-right people who will add value to your business. Why not take the time to share why you brought them on board?
For your ‘inside’ communications—the company newsletter or email updates—don’t be afraid to get personal. Use an informal photo, and tell about the new person’s background and interests as well as his or her role in the company. Be sure to update the website promptly, and maybe even add a news flash announcement on the About or even the Home page.
And don’t overlook the humble press release. Although many local news outlets no longer publish new-hire announcements (except in small-town papers or for big-time companies), changes in management or senior level positions are still often newsworthy in themselves.
Finally, ask yourself if a bigger story is lurking behind a new hire or promotion. Put yourself in a journalist’s shoes: Is the company expanding operations? Is it shifting how it does business? Is it headed toward a merger? Is this a newly created position? What’s behind that new talent might be the more intriguing story to a feature writer or news editor, so consider all angles—and make a pitch if there’s an interesting story there.
You’ve won an award. Flaunt it!
Winning awards and recognition for your industry builds trust. Anyone unfamiliar with your business can quickly see what you’re known for, and dedicated followers will have confirmation for their confidence in you.
Whether it’s for the company as a whole or a specific employee, awards ultimately reflect back on the business’s commitment to excellence and hard work. It also distinguishes you from your competitors by showing what you’re good at and value. So don’t miss an opportunity to showcase exceptional work.
First, write up a clear and concise press release, giving clear information about the awarding institution and the nature of the award, as well as a link to any online citations. Next, send it out to all relevant news outlets, and announce it to your customers and followers through email, website, and social media. Finally, update that website with the new award—and highlight the person or work being honored.
You’re offering a new service or product line. Make an announcement!
What’s the point of offering something new if you don’t tell anyone?
When you have a new product or service, first make sure all your current customers know about it and understand how it might benefit them. If it’s appropriate, consider noting which of your other offerings pair well with the new.
Then get the word out to everyone else, via website and social media. If it’s a major development for the company, a news release or story pitch would be in line, too.
Now for the how.
Now that you’re getting a list of newsworthy topics, it’s time to get the word out. Here’s a quick list of ways to share your good news.
Cover all bases:
- Your website & social media – This is a no brainer. Write up a news post for the company website, update pages of other content that may be affected, then spread the word on social media.
- Your current email list – If you send out regular email communications, be sure to include a section for Business News. Write a short little intro to your latest news announcement, and link to the full post you’ve written for your website.
- Specialized business & industry publications – Does your business belong to a professional or trade association? Does your industry have a website or publication that shares news from member businesses? Write up a succinct announcement and send it in.
- Local news outlets – If your news has significance locally, write a well-crafted and clearly focused news release and submit it to the appropriate editors at your local news outlets.
- Your local chamber of commerce – If you’re a member of your local Chamber, they probably have an active section on their website and email or print communications dedicated to news from members. Use it! You can usually send them the same press release you wrote for the news media.
Submit to the press:
A well-crafted press release sticks to the facts, so avoid hyperbole. Ditch the sales pitch, and stay away from words like “best” or “top” when referring to your business. That said, even a fact-based news release has a story behind it, so announce the news in a way that tells that story, indicating how this new development will allow you to expand your products or develop new services or serve your customers better.
Track your results:
Finally, be sure you have a news tracker in place for your business. Start by setting up Google News Alerts for any mention of your company’s name, principles’ names, and names of any trademarked or proprietary products or services. Go to Google.com/alerts to get started. News alerts make it easy to track any online mentions of your business—and easy to share the published stories with your customers and wider audience.
How to Deliver a Great User Experience: Your UX Checklist
Ever found a site so difficult to interact with that you just left?
If you haven’t given thought to how your customers use your site, they could do the same thing.
Your site is how your customers learn that your business can solve their problems, so you need to make sure they have a good experience.
Here’s your checklist for ensuring your customers don’t drift away.
Navigation
How you set up your website should be based on how your users will interact with it. Can customers find the information they need? Are they able to discover other services/products you offer? Have you provided simple ways to order from or contact you?
Your primary menu options should at least address who you are, what you offer, and how to contact your business. You might even add a FAQ page if you are asked certain questions repeatedly.
Review each page as you would if you were your ideal customer – then get someone else to review it. Make sure users can connect to relevant info or resources on your site. If they can’t find what they need, they’ll go somewhere else. Your site is your chance to grab attention – help users find what they need.
Broken Links
Clicking on an inviting link and receiving a “Whoops! Page not found” note is a letdown. You were hoping to find an answer and hit a wall.
If you have broken links on your site, you’ll also frustrate your users. They’ll doubt you have the solutions they’re searching for and might not stick around to engage you further.
Don’t be overwhelmed thinking you have go through every page and every link. There are broken link checker plugins that you can download in the back end of your site that will do the searching for you. The plugin will let you know what’s broken and where, so you can update the link or remove it altogether.
Don’t want to download another plugin? Try out Broken Link Checker or Dead Link Checker. Both sites allow you to enter the URL of the page you want to audit and they’ll scan it for any busted links.
Set a reminder to try this out every quarter to spot check your site. The longer you let broken links go, the worse response you’ll get from users and even search engines. For example, your page rank on Google will drop if their bot determines that you have a ton of broken links.
Page Layout
Like navigation, page layout needs to consider how a user can easily interact with your site.
Are your pages cramped with text? Do you have enough whitespace on each page? You might think that you need to use all available space to reach your customer, but that’s not the route you should take. Don’t be afraid of whitespace, which is essentially just the blank space between text and images on your web page. It makes your page easier to read and lets the user focus on the most important parts.
Is there a clear call to action? While users are scanning your site, you need to be clear about what you want them to do. Tell them to place their order or schedule a service. Make it easy to do business with you by including buttons and forms that let them get the ball rolling.
Just make sure to avoid adding unnecessary content or multiple calls to action. You want to keep customers focused as they review your page. We already know your customers are in a hurry and want answers quickly, so your pages need to be easily readable. Keep your most important information at the top and use lists when you can to breakdown important information.
Page Speed
You’ve found the right site… but the page won’t load. How likely are you to return to that site again?
There are a ton of sites available to your customers and they have limited attention spans. If they can’t easily view yours, they might just reach out to your competition.
Cut down on the lag time for pages to load to reduce your chance of losing them. They want to interact with you now, so your site needs to be ready to meet their expectations.
Not sure how to gauge your page speed? Google has a tool for that. You can find it here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/?hl=en.
Spending time on user experience will make sure you’re getting the best responses to your website. Need help checking your page speed or with more website development? Contact us to see how we can improve your users’ experience.
Brenda Murphree
Rework. Repurpose. Recycle.
Website, newsletters, eblasts, social media. There are a whole whole lotta bases to cover these days, and coming up with fresh content can be a challenge. If you’re struggling to find new content, try repurposing what you have already. Three easy ways to recycle include:
- Turn your FAQs in a blog: Do you have a Frequently Asked Questions page? (Or should you? If there are common questions customers always ask, it’s a good idea to answer them all at once.) Take your FAQs and break them out into a series of short articles for your blog, maybe even with real-life photos and examples.
- Turns words into an image: Take a published blog post and and turn it into an infographic. A visual image can often be a lot clearer than words—making complex info easier to grasp and retain.
- Update older articles with current info: Things change in every industry! But some of the key topics remain important over time. Look back at previously published articles or posts for a topic that’s still relevant but needs updated stats or just a little freshening up, and publish that.
Voila! New content made easy.
Passing It On: The Power of Referrals
“Can anyone recommend a good landscaper?” “I need a plumber!“ “Do you know anyone who builds apps?”
How often do you bump into questions like these? Friends and colleagues often ask for recommendations, and most of us are all too happy to jump in with a referral.
On the flip side, when you find a just-perfect item or the absolutely BEST brand of something you use on a regular basis, what’s the first thing you do? Tell someone! Ditto for an amazing customer experience.
Your customers are no different. When customers are bowled over by your company’s products or services or impressed with the extra level of attention and care they got from you, they’re likely to spread the word.
The catch is, you don’t want to let that happen by chance—and you don’t want to wait around passively until ‘likely’ turns into action on its own. The key to getting customer referrals is to make it something that’s easy and inviting to do. And that’s where a well thought-out customer referral system comes into play.
It’s not complicated—in fact, a good referral system is mostly plain common sense—but it does benefit from a little thought and planning. Here are our top four tips for using referrals to drive business.
1. Expand Your Customer Rewards Program
Who doesn’t like getting rewards? Especially if it’s for doing something you’d do anyway, getting a little thank-you in the form of an up-front incentive or an after-the-fact gift is always well received.
If you already have a customer rewards programs, look closely at how you could incorporate referrals into the system.
For example, if you use a points system or a similar discount rewards program, could you add on Refer-a-Friend cards? The specifics of referral cards will vary from business to business, but the general idea is this: Existing customers take a referral card, write their own name and email on the card, and give it to a friend. When the friend brings in the referral card and makes a purchase, the referring customer gets a reward.
The Refer-a-Friend reward could be in the form of points—maybe fixed points for any new card brought in to the store, or a range of points corresponding to the friend’s purchase amount. The reward might also be a small gift or samples to be picked up in-store during a special promotional period, or it could be a fixed percent discount off the referrer’s next purchase. It doesn’t have to be big, but it should be perceived as valuable.
Adding referrals to punch or stamp card rewards are a bit trickier, but with a little thought and ingenuity you can make it work. For example, a small counter sign beside new stamp cards could say, “Did you bring someone new to our shop today? Tell the cashier and get an extra stamp on your card!”
However you set it up, adding referrals to an existing rewards program helps your business grow and helps your customers feel special. You’ll appreciate the new and recurring business, and your customers will appreciate the extra perks.
2. Track Referrals
Even if you don’t have an official rewards program in place, you can still make sure your customers benefit from referrals. When a new client walks through the door or a new customer makes a purchase, always ask, ‘How did you hear about us?’ If they mention another client or customer, make a note of it.
Then look for a pattern. Who’s giving the highest marks? Who’s referring the most customers? Who’s referring the most valuable customers?
Then take a look at what the referring customer got from your business to start with. What was the source of the referral? A particular product or service? Or the way it was delivered? The relationship? The quality? Something extra?
The more you understand about what’s behind a referral, the more insight you’ll have into how your business is perceived and how your strengths actually matter to customers.
Tracking, of course, also gives you a specific customer or client to thank. Say they bring in a significant amount of new business, try adding a surprise discount to their next invoice. Or include a small but valuable free service or a sample of new products. Even something so simple as a good old-fashioned thank-you note does wonders—maybe even accompanied by a small gift.
Goodwill goes a long way. It strengthens relationships, increases loyalty, and encourages more referrals down the line. And tracking helps you stay on top of it.
3. Get Technical
Have a lot of online sales? Consider adding an online referral program to your website. Applications like Referral Candy allow you to ask for and track referrals within the online shopping experience. Online referral programs give shoppers an incentive for sharing their experience immediately with friends and family.
If customers are already on your site planning to make a purchase, use that momentum to engage with them. Feedback and referral options keep customers focused on the need you’re meeting and the solution you’re providing, while prodding them to think of others who might also want something similar.
4. Ask!
Don’t be afraid to simply ask. When you know a client is happy with the service or product they got from you, ask if they know anyone else who’d be interested. Especially if you’re in a niche industry, it’s likely your customers know others who are looking for a business just like yours.
Also ask for reviews. Direct referrals can carry more weight with potential customers, but reviews can help a tire-kicker decide if what you have to offer might actually be just they’re looking for.
Before getting referrals, of course, you first have to deliver outstanding products or services. But once you know you’re meeting—and even exceeding—your customer’s needs, leverage that to reach a larger audience and let others know what your business can do. Happy customers are usually happy to help —so don’t miss an opportunity to let those customers help promote your business!
Those are some of our top tips. How does your business reward referrals? What methods have worked best for you?
Website Performance Tip: Check Your Speed
Have you clocked your website’s speed lately? If not, you might be missing out.
In the online universe, speed counts. The faster a web page loads, the better the user experience. And the better the user experience, the greater the likelihood you’ll convert visitors into customers. Research shows that 40% of shoppers won’t wait more than three seconds before abandoning a retail or travel site. Three seconds might seem like no time at all, but it’s an eternity to someone searching for something online.
Did you know you can check the page speed of any website for free? Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a free and easy-to-use tool that analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster. Simply plug in a web page URL, and PageSpeed Insights will do the rest.
This easy-to-use tool analyzes performance of any web page on both mobile and desktop devices, and measures both the above-the-fold load—the part of the page that comes up first on your screen—and the full-page load. Best of all, it then gives you a detailed report with specific suggestions for improving performance. It even color-codes the results, where a green check-mark means “Good job!” and a yellow exclamation means “Fix this if it doesn’t take a lot of work” while a red exclamation means “Definitely fix this if at all possible.”
Give it a try. Even some simple improvements could have a big impact on your website’s performance, and PageSpeed Insights shows you which improvements matter most.
Are Your Video Ads Making an Impression?
As video is used more and more in online marketing and advertising, how do you make sure that labor of love (and money) pays off? Which factors affect the viewability of video online?
First, we need to define viewability. A “viewable impression” occurs when at least 50% of an ad’s pixels are visible on screen for at least two consecutive seconds, according to the Media Rating Council and the IAB standard. What determines whether both of those conditions are present? Google recently conducted a study to find out, analyzing tons of data from their Active View measurement technology.
First, they found that over three-fourths of the ads that were not seen were in a background tab or never on screen at all. The remaining one-fourth of non-viewable ads were either scrolled off-screen or abandoned in less than two seconds.
Of those that were viewable, here are some interesting findings:
- Device Matters—Video ads are significantly more viewable on mobile devices and tablets than on desktop screens. Surprised?
- Player Size Matters—The most popular video ad player size across the web happens to be the least viewable. The most popular player sizes are the smallest, but the most viewable ads were on large players, especially those on video-focused sites, like YouTube.
- Location Matters—Horizontal and vertical positioning both matter, as both correlate directly to viewability.
Want more? Google has summarized all the findings in this nifty infographic.
Top 5 Proofreading Tips
In William Safire’s delightful book Fumblerules: A Lighthearted Guide to Grammar and Good Usage, he illustrates each of his basic rules with a statement that clearly violates the rule—such as “Don’t use no double negatives” or “The passive voice should be avoided.” The section on the importance of proofreading begins with the obviously unproofed sentence above.
Proofreading is the final step in the writing process—first write, then edit, finally proof—but in today’s fast-paced work environment, it’s a step that’s often overlooked. Why work for two weeks on that quarterly report only to have it marred with errors when it hits the boss’s desk?
A good proofreading will catch any typos, misspellings or punctuation mistakes before anything ever gets that far. (Grammatical mistakes should have been caught during the editing stage.) Here are our top five tips and tricks for proofreading well.
- Put it away for at 24 hours. Although not always possible, putting some time between the writing-and-editing phase and the final proofreading will allow you to check your writing with a clearer eye. The more you can approach it as if it’s new to you, the easier it will be to catch mistakes.
- Do something non-verbal. Check on those budget figures. Pick out a picture for the new brochure. Or run an errand you’ve been putting off. When your brain engages in something completely different—especially an activity that engages the visual or mathematical part of the brain—you’ll come back to words on the page with a fresher eye and more alert verbal acuity.
- Read backwards. As absurd as it sounds, reading backwards forces you to look at every single word and punctuation mark. Don’t worry: it’s easy. You’ll read the whole word, one word at a time, but you’ll take it in slowly instead of in a gulp as we tend to do when reading something familiar. When we read “normally,” we’re reading for meaning, and that often induces us to read what we intended to say instead of what’s actually on the page. The whole point of proofreading is to catch the mistakes we didn’t intend to make.
- Check for commonly misspelled words. Don’t rely on spell checkers! The syntax and grammar recognition capabilities built in to those things are limited at best, and at times they’re downright wrong. No office software available today comes close to a human paying attention to words in the context of real sentences. Check troublesome words carefully, and look up anything you’re unsure of. These are some of the most common trouble-makers:
- “it’s” for “its”
- “there” for “their” or “they’re”
- “your” for “you’re”
- “and” for “an”
- “effect” for “affect”
Are there words that often trip you up? Make a list of those and be sure to check them carefully in your writing.
- Rinse and repeat. That’s right: If it’s an important document, or if you’re signing off on a print job, proofread again. Better yet, have someone who has no connection to what you’ve written give it a careful reading—and then proofread again. It’s surprising how much we miss. This is the writer’s version of “Measure twice, cut once.” Proofread twice, and be much more confident in what goes out.
Once you start proofreading regularly, you’ll find it’s easy to make it a habit—one that’s guaranteed to make you look more professional (if not downright smarter).
Do you have other proofreading tips? Let us know what works for you.
Connecting the Dots
We had a great Google Partners Connect event here last week, when we hosted another Google livestream presentation on online marketing, featuring Google’s Matt Lawson and Fred Vallaeys. For those who missed it, here’s a recap.
The Consumer Is In Charge
Matt started out by reminding us that in today’s media environment, the consumer is in control, choosing what media to consume and—perhaps most importantly—when and how to consume it.
Media consumption has risen 500% in the past three years alone. On top of that, we all use multiple devices many times throughout the day. We even check our phones, he said, an average of 150 times a day. (Let that one sink in.) And according to a recent study from Accenture, up to 88% of consumers are now researching products online and then buying in a physical store.
So we know consumers are online and active. The key question is, Where are you? Is your business in front of them when they need it? And do they see it as relevant to what they want?
Micro Moments: The New Battleground for Brands
“The biggest opportunities sometimes come in the smallest moments.” Consider these some common scenarios:
- You’re in a new town and you want to find a good restaurant nearby.
- The coffee pot breaks and you want to find a replacement….right now.
- You’re buying a home and you want a mortgage calculator to use whenever you have a free moment.
All of these are moments when a business has an opportunity to shape people’s choices by putting the right info in front of the right people at the right time.
Where is your business when the individuals who matter to you are making a decision that matters? What are the points on their decision-making journey? And how do you connect the dots?
Three Steps To Successful Digital Marketing
- First, Matt pointed out, you need to identify the moments that really matter to your customers. Ask questions. Find out what they’re really looking for when they whip out their phones in the store…..or download that report…..or call in to customer service.
- Next, deliver on people’s needs in the moment. Get the content right, get the experience right, and get both of those aligned within the user interface and design. (A big challenge, but something an agency can help with.)
- Finally, measure each moment that matters. Because mobile has “fractured the customer journey,” it’s no longer enough to measure only the online conversion or lead. We now have to look at whether that customer called on the phone, came into the store, or started on a mobile device and completed a purchase in-store.
Identify, deliver on, and measure the moments that matter.
The importance of claiming online place listings
Google My Business: The Importance of Claiming Place Listings
Following Matt’s presentation on micro-moments, Fred Vallaeys gave a good review of the search engine results page (SERP). He emphasized the importance of understanding what the different components of the SERP actually are in order to focus on the ones that matter most to your business.
For those who don’t have a website, or those who need to drive traffic to a physical location more than to a website, claiming and optimizing your Google My Business listing is a great place to start. It puts your business on Search, Maps and Google+ so that customers can find you wherever they are, from any device. Best of all, it’s free—no ad spend required!
Of course, even businesses that invest heavily in driving traffic to their website should also claim and optimize their online listings.
A side note here: As a certified Yext Partner as well as a Google Partner, ClearPoint offers a streamlined and very affordable way to claim and update all your key online listings—including Yahoo!, Yelp, Bing, CityMaps, Merchant Circle, Yellow Pages, and many many more—in addition to your Google My Business citation. Give us a call or email for more on this valuable time-saver.
Going Mobile
“Get in front of the trend for mobile growth,” Fred urged. A few interesting stats on the necessity of being mobile:
- Local Search Keeps Business Local—72% of people who searched for local info on a smartphone eventually visited a business within five miles
- Phone Search Pays Off—50% of consumers visit a store within a day of searching on a smart phone
- “Siri, Please Find…”—A recent study found that the most common thing adults do when talking on their phones is to ask directions
- Gimme My Phone!—Another recent study found that 45% of people would rather give up their vacation than give up their smartphone
Getting The Most Out Of AdWords
He also went over a couple of “extras” that can give a big boost to search ad campaigns:
- Show Extra Info In Your Ad—One way to increase the number of clicks you get is to add ad extensions, a feature that shows extra business information with your ad, such as an address, phone number, store rating, or links to additional pages on your website. Simply adding extensions can increase click-through-rate (CTR) up to 30%. There are now 12 different ad extensions available with AdWords.
- Advertise When You Need It Most—It’s now possible to connect your ads to the temperature, the stock market, things happening on social media, things happening in your business—just about any variable you can measure—to control when and under what circumstances your ads show. This allows you to show the right things to the right user at the right time. This is an advanced AdWords tool, though, he added, and should really be handled by a Partner Agency (such as ClearPoint).
Watching the Google Partners Connect Livestream May 13
Tracking Online Ads
The presentation wrapped up with a reminder of the importance of tracking everything. What’s great about search advertising is how easy it is to track and measure—with a great level of detail—and see exactly what’s working and what isn’t. You can always optimize for better results, and a couple of cool new measurement tools make it possible to optimize at a very sophisticated level:
- Get Specific With Dynamic Numbers—Using ad extensions in AdWords, you can show a dynamic phone number on ads and even on a landing page. This is a unique phone number that you can track back to a certain ad and even a certain keyword, to help measure exactly what’s performing best in terms of conversions, cost, and ROI.
- Track Cross-Device Conversions—Google now has technologies in place that can estimate cross-device conversions, and now they can even estimate offline conversions for those customers who complete the sale in the store.
Powerful tools for getting the most out of your online advertising.
Trying AdWords For Your Business
Have you ever tried search marketing and advertising for your business? How did it do? If you already have a pay-per-click account, check out our our complimentary AdWords Audit. This is an 8-point analysis we developed that examines the most crucial elements of any pay-per-click (PPC) campaign—account structure, targeting, bid strategy, and more—and includes a written report of our findings and recommendations. There’s no charge and no obligation. As a Google Partner Agency with a Certified Google Specialist on staff, we know how to optimize for best results. Click here to find out more.
We expect to host another Google Livestream later this year, so stay tuned. If you’re in Asheville or within driving distance, please join us!
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