Tips, thoughts and topics on marketing for small to medium-sized businesses in Michigan and throughout the world. Contributions by Chris Slocumb, Casey Frushour, as well as other members of the Clarity Quest team.
In our continued theme of "you too can make a video in under 1 hour", check out Animoto Business. Upload photos or graphics, choose a song from their library or yours and then Animoto creates a professionally-designed video that you can embed in your site, use on your blog, or share on popular social media sites. View sample videos on Animoto's case study page.
Once complete, you can share the video via web link or instantly upload to popular social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook. There's even a feature that allows you to download and burn DVD-quality videos. My favorite feature is a custom "call to action" button that can be embedded at the end of the video. You can encourage viewers to "visit your website" or "request a quote".
Business package pricing starts at a very reasonable $99 for 3 months, or $249 for 1 year.
Drip marketing comes from a marketing tenant that prospects need to see or read your message multiple times before doing business with you. In technology companies, 90% of salespeople give up on a lead after 3 contacts, yet 80% of deals are closed after the 7th(!) contact. Sales often moves on to greener pastures to follow hot leads, because they are easier to close.
Staying in constant communication with clients and prospects is a requirement to closing more business. Drip marketing is a direct marketing strategy that involves sending out customized communication pieces over a period of time to subsets of leads. The pieces can include whitepapers, letters, webinar invitations or event announcements.
Content is King Before you launch a drip marketing campaign, it’s imperative to build a library of value-added, fresh & interesting content. One of our clients calls them “SOVs” or “something of value” – I love that term. These can include whitepapers, product reviews, industry trends, webinars, newsletters, or forums just as examples. Currently video is becoming one of the hottest SOVs. Google & Tech Target released a report last year showing 72% of IT buyers watch video as part of their decision-making process.
Get a Content Generation SYSTEM Don’t have time to develop all the content yourself? Get others to write it for you! Partners and affiliates will often write blog posts or short articles in exchange for a back link to their website and co-promotion. Or outsource your writing – Clarity Quest has a staff of technical writers that ghost write on topics as varied as software development systems and medical devices. The key is to have a system that churns out content on a consistent basis – even when your internal teams do not have the time or energy.
OK, I have content. What’s Next? After you have a library of content, you’ll need a reputable email service provider (ESP) and the ability to add content to your website in the very least. We currently switched to iContact as our ESP because their ability to deliver email past spam filters is very good.
However, to take full advantage of drip marketing, we recommend marketing automation/demand generation systems which will be covered in an April blog post and our April e-newsletter. If you not already on our e-news mailing list, sign up today on our blog page.
If you use Blogger, you can optimize the search engine rankings of your blog posts by implementing a small Javascript application developed by Agawebs that uses the title of your post as the title tag of the post page.
In December 2008, we launched a new website for optical company SVS Vision. As a result of our on-page internet marketing strategies, SVS now ranks on Google and Yahoo! page 1 for "optical centers" behind just JCPenney , Sears and D.O.C (now owned by PearleVision). As importantly, the SVS website is getting organic traffic from more than 1,100 key phrases such as prescription safety eyewear thanks to an extensive keyword analysis and implementation on the new site.
Thanks to Cathy Walker, SVS Vision's VP of Marketing for the following quote:
"Clarity Quest replaced our outdated website with one that is wonderful! Response has been greater than anticipated. We are hearing from our customers more than ever before and they are telling us that the look, feel and ease of use have helped them in making buying decisions. Everyone on the Clarity Quest team is a true pro and we look forward to a long-term relationship with them."
A study by comScore Networks and TMP Directional Marketing, found that local search grew 24 percent in 2007, while general Web search grew only 14 percent. Piper Jaffray notes that 30 percent of all queries conducted today contain a city, state, or ZIP code. According to Yahoo! Research, 88 percent of sales revenue generated from online advertising is derived from consumers who have conducted their research online, then made their purchase in a brick and mortar store.
So what does this mean for your business? Your internet marketing and corporate blogging strategy should include ways to include city names, counties and zipcodes in your site and blog copy.
Compedium Blogware goes as far as recommending you have a separate blog for each location you serve based on key phrases.
At Clarity Quest, we use this strategy as well. Although we serve clients throughout the U.S. and the world, we concentrate our search efforts on "Michigan marketing" based on the location of our headquarters. Next up: More location-based blog posts and individual web pages for our Seattle and upcoming Oregon offices.
Visitors will stay on your web 50-70% longer if you incorporate video. Video is extremely effective for technology companies. Riverbed Technologies does a nice job of recording and post its "Chalk Talk" series. Below is my quick attempt at an under 2 minute video which took under 20 minutes to script and produce. Stay tuned for some more sophisticated videos from us both here on the Out of the Fog Blog and on in our Clarity Quest marketing resources library.
Please forgive the thumbnail Google came up with below. I was not asleep when I recorded the video!
Cisco's marketing chief Marilyn Mersereau was recently quoted in B2B Marketing..
"Video changes everything on the Web. People stay longer on our sites when video is involved. Also, instead of publishing a spec sheet about our products, our program managers publish a video of themselves talking about their product. People have short attention spans today. "
I could not agree more - it's nice to see a tech giant validate what we have been espousing for over a year.
If you try and get frustrated with video or audio quality, check out our Web Video Best Practices guide for tips on making your own videos.
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