Archive for the ‘marketing’ Category

Bing continues to press forward

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Bing Search Engine LogoBy now you have all heard of the new search engine (I’m sorry, decision engine) from Microsoft named Bing. Microsoft has been pushing it pretty hard through ad campaigns on television, radio, print, you name it. Well it appears that their ad campaign has not been just wasted money.

In July Bing had 9% of the search engine market. That’s pretty impressive by itself for it just starting. You saw the same response when google released their chrome browser. It snatched up almost 5% of the browser market share practically overnight. However chrome still floats around 6% or so of market share.  Many people downloaded chrome and tried it because it was the new thing. They then found out they did not like it and went back to another browser or whatever the case.

Many were predicting a similar trend with Bing. People would try it because it is the new thing. Then it would level off or actually decline after the initial hype. However, the latest numbers to come out show that Bing has jumped to about 10.5% of the market share. Once again this is impressive.

What does this mean for you as a site owner? It looks as though Bing will continue to grow so it may be in your best interest to look into ways to optimize your site for Bing. Even if you have already noticed your analytics showing traffic from Bing, you could always use more right?

Sweetening the Deal

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Most economists agree that the economy is on the upswing but that does not mean that you should go back to business as usually before the economic crisis. The crisis has caused many changes and it is very doubtful that everything will go back to the way it was before. Some things have been forever changed.

One simple thing is to sweeten your sale with special offers or bonuses.  You could say “Receive 6 months of free hosting with the purchase of a web design package.” You could also say “Purchase from our online store with promo code xxxx and receive a free gift.”

Offers like this make your offer seem more enticing than your competition. You can even use it as a way of tracking and measuring how well your marketing campaigns are working. You could send out an e-mail campaign that says go to our website and use promo code xxxx upon checkout to get free shipping. You can then see how many orders use that promo code and see how many people were converted through that specific marketing campaign. If it performed well you can do more campaigns like it in the future. If it performed poorly you can reduce or eliminate the budget for that campaign and allocate the money somewhere else where it is needed.

The customer is always right … Sometimes

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Everyone has heard the expression “The customer is always right.” Well that’s not entirely true.  Don’t get me wrong customer service is paramount but sometimes they need to be educated before making the final purchase. You are the expert after all.

Imagine you are looking to purchase a new refrigerator for your kitchen. You really don’t know much about kitchen appliances because, let’s face it, you are not an expert. You go to an appliance store, find a refrigerator on the show floor that looks good, and say “I’ll take that one.” Then the salesman says alright. You are now the owner of a new refrigerator. You get it home and installed only to find out it does not have everything you want or need.

Now imagine that you go to a store and before allowing you to just randomly pick an appliance the salesman asks you questions. Not necessarily questions you would expect like what brand or color but questions like “How much space would you need inside or in the freezer”, “Do you need an ice maker in the freezer or ice/water dispenser in the door”, etc. He even asks about your budget so he does not waste your time showing you models way out of your price range.

You go home with the refrigerator you wanted and the salesman customer service was phenomenal because he helped you to  get the refrigerator you wanted but not necessarily the one you would have picked out on impulse.

Which store would you rather go to? We ask similar questions to our clients as well. If they come to us looking for a website we ask them about their budget and what the goals for the site are.

You can ask similar questions to discovered your clients needs as well. They will also be much happier with their experience and become a walking billboard referring others to you.

Website Update 2009

Friday, August 7th, 2009

We are always suggesting that businesses update their websites to stay current. Updates enable a site to increase its presence on search engines and let visitors know that the site is not dead.

Well we took our own advice and gave our site a complete overhaul. We reworked the design and even matched the new design to the blog to add even more consistency and brand awareness.

www.blainehilton.com

What do you think of the new design for the site and blog?

Now that the site has a fresh look we are now updating the content.

Company Busted for False Web Testimonials

Friday, July 17th, 2009

In the business world you can get in big time trouble for false advertising or falsifying testimonials and other marketing materials.  The web is no different. Many companies think it is OK to make up a testimonial here or there because on the web no one is going to know the difference. That is not the case anymore.

The company Lifestyle Lift was recently fined $300,000 in New York for Astroturfing on the Internet. Several memos were discovered that encouraged employees to pose as satisfied customers and post testimonials on forums, social media sites, and their own site.

The company was also found to have created additional sites appearing to be not affiliated with them. Many of these were forum sites but negative comments about the company were deleted from the site to skew the opinions to favor Lifestyle Lift.

The moral of the story is do not falsify your testimonials, online or offline. The backlash from people finding out could be much worse than any of the so called benefits.