Managing Your Reputation Online

In a series of studies from the late 1970s through the late 1990s conducted by the research firm TARP, it was found that only 50% of consumers will complain about a problem to a company. And on average, twice as many people are told about a bad experience than they are about a good experience. TARP’s last basic finding is that customers who complain and are satisfied are up to 8% more loyal than if they had no problem at all.

These studies provide us some valuable lessons- unhappy customers are likely to never even let you know that they are unhappy, but they WILL tell their colleagues and friends. Even if you have an excellent customer service department that resolves problems quickly, which actually helps your relationship with customers more than if they had never had a problem, you will often never have the chance to address these issues.

These problems are compounded by the fact that the prevalence of social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, MySpace, Blogs, etc.) make it very easy for someone to spread the word about your company. Since they are twice as likely to do so when upset as they are when happy, it is simple for a customer to express their disdain for a company or product to dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of contacts. If you never hear about a problem, how can you possibly hope to resolve it and get a chance to turn that unhappy customer into an evangelist that spreads the word about your great customer service?

Luckily, there are ways to combat this problem. Here are three essential tasks that are essential for managing your online reputation. These will give your company the best chance possible to keep your customer base satisfied by helping you find customers that are expressing problems with your organization of which you are unaware.

1) Set a Google Alert for your company name- Go to: http://www.google.com/alerts – complete the form, entering your company name or any product names you wish to monitor. You can set up multiple alerts for different terms you wish to monitor. When you have done this, once a day you will receive an e-mail letting you know about any new information about your company and products that have been added to their database. This will allow you to quickly discover both negative and positive comments.

2) Search Twitter at least weekly for these same terms. This can be done in an automated fashion with a Twitter client such as Tweetdeck, or manually through searches on the Twitter website. Again, the purpose of this is to find both negative and positive feedback about your organization.

3) If you sell products, either through your own website or through online retailers and partner sites, search product and company reviews for new comments about your company and products. Whether they are sold through amazon.com, newegg.com, or even on your own site, it is imperative that you read the latest reviews.

Now that you have seen the latest feedback your customer base has about your company, respond appropriately. If persons are making positive comments, thank them publicly by posting replies to their tweets, blog posts, and reviews. You may also wish to respond with coupons or other special offers as a way to solidify their positive feelings about your company.

If someone has left negative feedback, publicly make it known that you would like to discuss their issue with them, and provide a means for them to do so. Then make sure that you treat their concerns with a high priority in your customer service department. You likely only have one chance to get it right with an already upset customer. Lastly, once you successfully resolve the issue with an upset customer, ask them to publish their satisfaction in the same manner as they did their complaint.

Following these tips will help you find unresolved customer complaints and deal with them appropriately.

Integrating On-line and Off-line Marketing

There’s a lot of discussion these days about small businesses obtaining greater access to capital. But what many businesses require much more than funding at this time are more clients and increased revenue. For this reason marketing must move from a temporary focus to a more consistent focus for small businesses. This has mandated a greater need for the smooth integration of online and offline marketing efforts. The following are some simple ways that this integration can take place:

Consistent Branding – Include your URL or website address on every piece of business communication. This includes letterhead, business cards, post cards, Yellow Pages, ads, flyers and handouts. Image Continuity – Try to use the same format, imagery and colors on your promotional material which is used on your web site. This promotes greater consistency, higher top-of-the-mind awareness and re-enforces your branding message. Use of Spaced Repetition – Be sure to promote the same message in your off-line material as on your web site. There’s nothing worse than offering a discount in the store or on a mailer but not showing this same discount on your web site. On-line customers may feel cheated or less important if we don’t include them in the program. Coordinated Timing – It is also important to roll-out promotional campaigns simultaneously. Planning on a target launch date for your campaign and ensure that all preparations are made by this date on both fronts (on and off-line). Professional Web Presence – It is absolutely critical that your on-line image matches your off-line (or brick and mortar) image. If your retail or office location looks professional, organized and reflects your business philosophy it is just as important that your web site does also. This means you may want to make the investment in professional web development services. Meeting the above criteria in the development and launching of any marketing efforts will make all the difference in the world when it comes to creating viable response.

LA Business Journal

Many businesses in Hollywood are suffering due to the economic slowdown, and as usual it is small businesses that are suffering the brunt of the problem. While most of the press is focused on multi-billion dollar studios, it is the caterers, prop rental houses, equipment suppliers, post production facilities, independent contractors, and other small businesses that make it possible for studios to make huge profits every year. I was recently quoted extensively by the LA Business Journal on this issue, and give some tips on what these companies can do to combat the problem. Please read this article at: http://www.labusinessjournal.com/news/2010/aug/23/lot-left/

Stop Burning Your Money (Part 2)

Last week we began a discussion of techniques used in effective Internet Marketing campaigns. To read that article, please click here: http://articles.markdeo.com/2010/08/stop-burning-your-money-like-dead.html

To recap, the 5 most important activities you can undertake are:

Keyword Selection/website copy
Inbound links
Landing Pages
Blogging
E-mail marketing

We wrote previously about keyword selection/website copy and inbound links, and now we’re moving on to landing pages and blogging.

To read more on these topics, click here, or request our FREE Internet Marketing Whitepaper by sending me an e-mail at mark@markdeo.com.

Stop burning your money like dead leaves! (Part 2)

To recap, the 5 most important activities you can undertake are:

Keyword Selection/website copy
Inbound links
Landing Pages
Blogging
E-mail marketing

We wrote previously about keyword selection/website copy and inbound links, and now we’re moving on to landing pages and blogging.

Landing Pages
Landing pages are a technique used to help funnel inbound traffic to the website to pages that are targeted towards specific keywords. The pages are designed to be the first thing a visitor sees when they come to the website, and include not just the keyword text at a high density, but also a call to action and a means of responding immediately through a feedback form. This is important so that when visitors come to the site, it is easy for them to express interest and become a qualified lead.

Blogging
A blog is often the best way to add new content to a website. It provides an easy to use interface, a simple method for uploading photos, and if properly integrated into the website, helps keep search engines coming back to the site to index content on a frequent basis. Sites with blogs outperform sites that lack blogs in most measures of search performance, and help visitors know that the content they see on your site is up to date. Thus, it is important for your site to include a blog that you use to keep the site up to date.

To read in more depth about these techniques, simply send us an e-mail to request our FREE whitepaper on Internet Marketing Techniques, or e-mail us with your questions at info@sbanetwork.org.

Stop burning your money like dead leaves!

While the country is currently faced with heat waves from coast to coast, in a few short weeks leaves will be changing colors, evenings will bring a pleasant cool, crisp breeze, and fall will be in full effect. In some parts of the country, people will be raking leaves into piles that they burn. Those leaves are a lot like the dollars business owners have spent on their websites- in a seemingly endless cycle, small businesses spend money on web design, copy, hosting, and with no return, they are burning their money just like those leaves.

Some persons, however, will take those falling leaves and turn them into mulch. They can use them to provide nutrients to the soil, and be able to have a great garden come spring. That’s exactly what a small business can do with the dollars they spend on the Internet- rather than just throw away their money on costs that bring no return, they can use that Internet budget to actually bring in new business in the future.

How do you go from burning your dollars to investing them in future sales? An effective Internet Marketing Plan is essential to getting the most from your efforts online.

To set up an effective Internet marketing plan, you need to take into account the following major areas:

Keyword Selection/website copy
Inbound links
Landing Pages
Blogging
E-mail marketing

Keyword selection/website copy
It is critical that you understand the terms used by persons searching for your solution to their problem. To do this, you need to do some research through tools made available by search engines such as Google. This will help you identify the best keywords to target with your online efforts. What makes a good keyword? A large number of searches with low competition is ideal. A search professional can help you with this process, and should be able to identify the best chances you have at achieving success online.

Once you have identified these keywords, you need to use them on your website. Rewrite the copy on your pages to include your targeted keywords. This will make it so that your website is more relevant for those terms.

Inbound Links
One of the major factors Google and other search engines use to determine the importance of a website is the number of other websites that have links pointing to it. A search professional can help you find other sites that will link to your website. This may involve linking back to those websites, as well as finding directories for companies in your industry that will link to you.
Next week we’ll send information on landing pages and blogging, and the following week will be a message on effective e-mail marketing. For more details on any of these topics, reply to this message to say that you want to stop burning your money like dead leaves and we’ll send you our whitepapers on Internet Marketing Plans and E-mail Marketing. Have a great weekend!

Mark Deo
mark@markdeo.com

Stop burning your money like dead leaves!

How do you go from burning your dollars to investing them in future sales? An effective Internet Marketing Plan is essential to getting the most from your efforts online.

Click here to read the full article and to get our FREE whitepaper on Internet Marketing.

Put your prospects in PAIN

The dance of marketer/prospect mostly involves the salesperson MOVING TOWARD the prospect looking for an opening to push their product or service. Unfortunately this creates repulsion rather than attraction. While there are exceptions where chemistry is strong, often times, the more we move toward the prospect, the more uncomfortable they get and MOVE AWAY from us.

Again the focus should NOT be to talk about our company, product or service but rather ask genuine, creative questions about the prospect’s experiences, feelings and vision of the future. The only way to incite change is by getting the prospect to realize, of their own volition, that their current solution or current collection of possible solutions are inadequate for their very specialized needs. When this occurs the prospect will begin to move toward us rather than away from us. This is what is meant by creating attraction. It is not an OVERT thing that we do but rather a COVERT realization in the mind of the customer.

Here are some questions that can allow us to create PAIN in the mind of the prospect without making them feel we are trying to move in on their space:

1. What are some of the solutions that you have already tried?
2. How did they work?
3. What kept them from being the most effective solution?
4. What were they missing?
5. How will you avoid this from happening again in the future?
6. What is it that most of the vendors that you speak with just don’t get?
7. Why are your needs so “specialized?”
8. What would happen if you cannot get this project properly completed in time?
9. What happened last time?
10. What is the cost of staying with your current solutions?
11. What do you like most about your current vendors?
12. If there was one thing that you could change about them what would it be?

There are many other PAIN questions that we can create. Think of a few and share them with your colleagues. Ask these questions of your existing clients and prospects and see the PAIN you force them to face, and then help them resolve those issues. Let me know how it goes.

Be well and enjoy success this week.

-Mark Deo

We Fall For It Every Time

In this difficult economy everybody is looking for a bargain. That’s why we have to seriously entertain reducing our prices in order to compete effectively. Right?
WRONG! We fall for it every time.

If you are a finding that you clients are putting more and more pressure on your firm to reduce prices then it’s about time you change your clients! That’s right often times price erosion is not so much a problem with your pricing strategy or product selection or service but rather your customer profile.

Continually reducing our price is like prostitution. WE can never become cheap enough. In fact the cheaper we get, the less valuable we are perceived.

I encourage you to look at your customer pool and begin to segment them not so much by demography or psychographics but by “value perception.” Do you understand why those specific customers are “willing to pay more?” What is it that they value that the “price-oriented” customer do NOT value? Why? Then you can create a NEW customer profile and focus on those clients that find great value in your product or service. Perhaps you can even discover a way to create evangelists who trumpet this value claim.

I encourage you to check out this brief video of a seminar where I discuss price sensitivity and what you can do about it.

WOMMA

Can you beleive that there is now a Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA? If you go to this site, http://womma.org/main/ you will discover that there are all kinds of articles regarding how to get your message delivered to your target audience withOUT using the traditional marketing or advertising channels.

In one article it outlines how fast an ad campaign can become saturated in this time starved, relationship savvy culture that we live in. Why? “Because people tell other people about things they think they don’t know about. If you want to spark word-of-mouth virus, the first thing you need to do is realize it’s not about you. Word-of-mouth only works if your give people an amazing story to tell so that THEY are the introducer of something new, cool, different, interesting, or outrageous.