Marketing Tips

Archive for January, 2010

Seven Clues That Your Company Needs A New Website
Seven Clues That Your Company Needs a New Website
Mark Schmukler Sagefrog Marketing Group LLC

Your company probably has a website but what has your website done for you lately? A modern website is competitive professional optimized and easy to use and maintain.

Are you getting the traffic leads and sales that you expect and deserve? If your website is not performing as well as you believe it should its probably time for a new website. Following are seven questions you need to ask to determine if it is time to revive your web presence:

1. Does my website portray the image of a successful company?

Your website should engage visitors with a professional design and should entice them to learn more about your company products and services. Your website should project the image of a company your size or larger with a strong professional brand identity design layout imagery and illustrations.

2. Are my competitors sites attracting more attention than mine?

Have you checked out your competitors website lately? Do they look more professional successful and uptodate? Is their strategy and message clear? Is yours? Ideally your website should be comparable if not superior to your competitors.

3. Is my website content engaging and persuasive?
What are your companys positioning messages and value propositions? Is this information coming though on your website? You may be confusing people and scaring them away. Try talking a little less and saying a lot more. Edit text to communicate your message in fewer shorter and more thoughtful words and sentences. Using subheads and bullets can make complex information easier to understand.

4. Can visitors go to my website find the information they need?

Your home page should allow visitors to easily identify their areas of interest and get to relevant information fast with an intuitive userinterface sitemap and wellorganized content. Your site can be creative and exciting but it should not be perceived as inappropriate by people in your market. If you have a lot of content and numerous web pages you may want to consider drop down popup or flyout menus making your new website easier to navigate.

5. Is my website generating sales leads?

Every webpage of your website should have a calltoaction. Offer information that visitors find useful and they will most likely provide their contact information in return. Dont be too selfish. You need to givetoget providing news they can use so visitors will fill out an online lead form for you.

6. Can target customers find my website using search engines?

Your website needs to be found. The practice of getting your website found is known as Search Engine Marketing SEM. Many people use web search engines and directories such as Google and Yahoo. Search Engine Optimization SEO can get your website to naturally show up on the first few result pages of a search using relevant keywords and phrases. Search Engine Advertising SEA is paid advertisements on search engines typically cost per click.

7. Is it easy to update and maintain my website?
Most new websites offer content management and posting tools enabling nonprogrammers to quickly and easily update the more dynamic sections such as news events and other frequently updated features. This is will help you keep your website fresh.

Conclusion

Your website should support your business strategy and objectives by engaging persuading and generating leads. If its not its time for a new website.

Mark Schmukler is a managing partner at Sagefrog Marketing Group a fullservices marketing interactive and public relations agency specializing in health technology and businesstobusiness marketing. He can be reached at 2152309024 or markssagefrog.com.

About the writer:  Mark Schmukler is a managing parter at Sagefrog Marketing.

Send A Media Release To Stand Out And Shine

The media are always looking for stories of interest to fill their newspapers magazines TV and radio shows. If you can offer them something that is newsworthy topical interesting or entertaining then you have a good chance of your story being used. Sending relevant media releases often ensures you stay top of mind with your database of media contacts and is great public relations for you or your business when your story is run.

Here are some good reasons to send a media release any time you have something interesting to say.

1.Continuous brand building. Anytime you get a media hit and your name is mentioned it will add to the publics awareness of your brand and what you have to offer.

2.Credibility of your message. An editorial story is a lot more likely to be read and recognised than an advertisement. Seeing a story on the TV news or reading about it in the paper gives your product or message a lot more credibility.

3.Cheap. Certainly cheaper than advertising and free if you write and issue your media release yourself. You could end of with thousands of dollars worth of free editorial coverage.

4.Clients and customers kept informed. You need to find ways to continually keep in front of customers and clients. Perhaps they will see your story in the newspaper. But why not call and alert them to your story or send a clipping of your article to keep in touch. Better still include comments or quotes from your clients in the media release.

5.Clarity. Writing a media release will help you get clear on what your message is by being succinct and concise with the words you choose. Clients will gain more understanding of your products or services also.

6.Communicating who you are what you do and how you make a difference is what public relations is all about. Getting into the habit of communicating your successes and achievements by sending media releases will aid in raising your profile.

7.Celebrity status. Gaining publicity in the media will help you become known as the expert in your area and will enhance your image and reputation.

About the writer:  Sue Currie the director of Shine Communications Consultancy and author of Apprentice to Business Ace your insideout guide to personal branding is a business educator and speaker on personal branding through image and media. To learn more about how you can achieve recognition enhance your image and shine sign up for free monthly tips at http://www.shinecomms.com.au/subscriber.html

Scented Coupons: An Interesting Idea

While there are many methods retailers seek to get your business I would like to cover two interesting ways retailer can get an extra dollar squeezed out of your pocket.

The idea of coupons has been a strategy of retailers for generations. Coupons give incentive for buyers to purchase products receiving savings. For retailers it gives customer incentives to try the retailer’s products with the impression of a discount. It’s an overall victory for all sides of the business food chain: the consumer gets his product cheaper the retailer sells a larger quantity of products and there are smiles all around.

The idea of using scents to spur consumer to buy is a novel concept. Have you ever gone to the movies and felt the need to purchase popcorn and coke to complete your movie experience? The scent of popcorn when entering a movie theater urges your senses to buy and enjoy. I recently discovered a site scentair.com which provides scents to retailer stores such as bloomingdales coors Hard Rock cafe Chidren’s museum of Indianapolis and others. Bloomingdale uses coconut in their swimsuit department invoking a scent of paradise. In their infant department they use baby powder scents appealing to mother’s maternal instincts I wonder why they didn’t use soiled diaper scents. Children’s museum of Indianapolis wanted the scent of dinasour dung for their dinasour exhibits.

I would like to suggest the next possible step in the future of products: scented coupons. Maybe a florist like 1800 flowers can offer 1800 flower coupons with the smell of roses. I can just picture it: “10 off with the purchase of Valentine roses” with a scent of flowers. How about a Chefs coupons with an aroma of fresh baked pie.

It’s just hypothetical but hey if it works for perfumes inside magazines I think it is a novel concept and worth looking at.

About the writer:  Sam is the webmaster of webcouponcodes and innovative promotional code website with retailers such as Shoebuy Stubhub Zappos that allows users to vote for coupons across the web.