Joe on Twitter
Well, I finally got aboard and started my own Twitter account. I should be updating it frequently, http://twitter.com/jfordnetvantage, and don’t forget about our Netvantage Twitter account, http://twitter.com/netvantage. My tweets will be focused on search engine marketing, although as you can imagine my thoughts may wander to other things as well. If you are wondering how best to use Twitter for your business, my colleague Adam Henige wrote a very good post on it. Looking forward to gaining followers, and following others! Drop a line if you want me to follow you.
Lansing Small Biz Customer Service Rants
Note: This is not a normal post on how search engines impact small business.
Okay, we are in a recession, right. So someone tell me if I am off my rocker in being miffed by the lack of customer service and process I am seeing, and how there is opportunity here to make supposed money in this economic environment.
Situation 1: I receive a direct mail piece from Case Credit Union saying I am qualified to re-finance my truck, which is through them. Now, I completely realize that this does not automatically mean that I will be able to refinance it, and that I will get a lower rate/monthly payment. I figure I give it a shot. I call, and of course get lost in the phone directory, and have to hang up and call back. Once I finally reach someone, I talk to a very nice customer service lady. She takes my information, and of course we get to the credit check situation. Spare some details, we go through my information and she states she is going to go to underwriting on it. Now, this while process goes about 40 minutes on the phone. I now have some time invested in this. I realize I may not qualify for the re-fi, but figure it’s worth the shot. She does not give me a time when I will get a decision, but we end our call. That was Thursday. It’s now Wednesday AM. No call. What is wrong with this picture???
Situation 2 Hot tub repair. We bought our house in July of 2007. It came with a hot tub, and we enjoy it. Within the last month, it has started leaking into my deck. I understand the hot tub is coming of age, and this is normal. I figure I can tear it apart and investigate, OR given the disaster that that would develop from me trying to do that, I will just call and have someone come out and look at it. I understand this is going to cost money. I try searching on some keywords and actually really have a tough time finding someone to call. I finally find a firm, Hot Water Works. Very nice website, good verbiage regarding their service. I am convinced. I call. First, the guy can’t take my call because he is “upstairs”, so I need to call him back. I understand that, ourphones here can be odd as well. (thank you Comcast). So I call back. To paraphrase the conversation, Nope, I don’t know the model, OK, sounds like the pump. My question: How much to come out - Answer - $95. OK, I guess I can do that. They need me at the house when the guy comes, etc. He shouts over to someone next to him about going out to Mason that day, muffled response on background, and then he tells me that he will figure out a time and call me back. It is not the next day. No call.
Getting impatient, I do more searching yesterday afternoon, find Dietz Pool, which is a well-respected pooland spa supply company in Mid Michigan. I call, talk to a more friendly person. He says he will get with a service person and call me back. No call.
My hot tub continues to leak and ruin the deck wood. I will continue to make payments on a truck that has become an awful money pit. In the grand scheme of life, these are tiny issues. That is not the point. The point is that there are 3 examples of situations where I have MONEY TO SPEND IN THIS ECONOMY. And the response I get it is…… crickets.
Situation 4: This is less a service issue, and more a courtesy and a truer reflection of these times. Last week, I was leaving the IT Council meeting when my 2004 Chevy Silverado with 121,900 miles makes an exploding sound, and will NOT go forward in drive. I can go in reverse, I can limp it in the first gear. And I do all the way to Shaheen Chevrolet, which out of probably bad, lazy habit we tend to go to for all of our cars repair. I am sure this has cost of thousands of extra dollars over the last 6 years, but that is another story for another day. Regardless, the service there was good, my tech manager was receptive to my pain of my truck dying, etc.
The only concern I had was this: Shaheen’s courtesy car gave me a ride to Enterprise rental car around the corner. A very nice lady helped me with my car an paperwork, and away I went. Got the terrible call later that afternoon that a sprocket in the truck’s transmission had to be rebuilt, and it was going to be between 1700-2000 dollars, (of course with labor discount - yeah good one)
The next day, Shaheen got the truck done on time, which was great, and I went to turn in the rental car. $67. For some reason, I was under the impression that Shaheen was going to pick this up. Cough - $1854 of work had just been done, do you think there were going to pick up the $67 tab for the rental car. Rental car lady calls dealership to verify. Ah, no. ”Customer pay, and he should know that” Why would they. Why would they do that for a loyal customer that has always gone to that dealership for repair and service. I can only imagine in a better economy that this would have been covered. As a result, I will be looking for a new oil change place for both our vehicles, not to mention repair service.
Situation 5: Over the Christmas break we had some nasty wind at our house, and lost some shingles. I wasn’t sure if this meant replacing the section of the roof, the whole roof, etc. First call was to my MEEMIC insurance agent, Winston Insurance in East Lansing, which of course just simply gave me the 1800 MEEMIC number. (I really think I should be an insurance agent) Anyways, I did the normal phone chain battle and got connected with a MEEMIC claims rep. She gave me the instructions - pictures, two quotes, $500 deductible, etc, and her contact information. Having never filed a claim before, this was all new to me.
Well, did some Google searching and found Exteriors of Lansing. Got connected with a very nice lady there. She was to come out and do an estimate — the problem was the weather. We had a good deal of snow, and she wasn’t actually able to see the damage. I held off on getting a second roofing firm lined up until the weather cleared. Finally she was able to come out a month later as the snow cleared. Didn’t need a new roof, but could just replace it. The cost really was barely above the deductible. Got a secondary quote. Went back to the MEEMIC claim rep, had to push her a bit to get a response, but within 3 business days she got back to me. All got approved, and Exteriors came out to do the work. Check from MEEMIC came quickly. Good customer service, good story.
A week later, we got another horrible wind storm. I lost more shingles in the same problem area, including some of the newly patched ones. Some of the other shingles we flapping in the wind. Called Exteriors. ”No problem, we will come back out and take a look” I thought, cool. That day when I got home, I when to look, and I couldn’t really tell what had been done. It appeared that the shingles had just been patted down, and I wasn’t sure if this was just them settling after the wind, or if they had actually came out. Given the forthcoming rain forecast, I was concerned. Called Exteriors next morning. My contact was not in, but the lady transferred me to the service coorindator. He has not heard anything of this, and it wasn’t in his records or job schedule. Okay? Takes down my information, says they will take a look, doesn’t give a time frame. Concerned, I call back later in the afternoon. Relay the story to the another person, and she says: “Yes, they were out yesterday, I overheard them talking about it this morning” WTF? So I ask if my original contact is in, not until tomorrow morning is the response. At this point, I am very confused.
Next day call, talk to my original contact. She says they will send someone back out. (?) That evening, check on the roof, and the whole section up to the peak was replaced. Now, that is good for me. And I commend Exteriors of Lansing in their work. But I don’t know if I would recommend them due to the massive confusion. The lesson here is process in customer service. Couldn’t all of this confusion have been avoided? You would think there would have been more a process in place to take my call, answer my questions, and let me know what was going on. AND at the very least a follow up phone to say that the work had been done, thank you again for your business.
I know, with absolute certainty, where all of our clients at Netvantage Marketing stand. Sometimes our clients are confused about results and reports, but we immediately get them on the phone to address those needs. They are NEVER left in the dark. Granted, we are in a position where they aren’t bringing us a broken truck. But, if a client calls or emails, we call back right away. A client called my cell phone last Friday night at 7:30. I answered. Same client texted me at 1:30 on Saturday with a question. I answered immediately. And of course you can imagine that if someone calls looking for assistance with SEO or search engine marketing, we immediately respond and get them their information within 24 business hours. If we wrap up an engagement with a client or one of our web design partners, we always follow up with a thank you.
I don’t have my MBA in customer service, but I think as a relatively new small business owner I am paying more attention to how other small businesses handle their clients and prospects. And in this “recession” I am confused how a business would just leave money or client satisfaction on the table. Please respond to this and tell me if my expectations are too high, or misguided. Again, in this recession,,,,,
Greater Lansing Entrepreneurial Awards Musings
Well, the Greater Lansing Entrepreneurial Awards were earlier tonight at the Downtown Radisson in Lansing, and it was a very nice event. Netvantage Marketing was in attendance. We were nominated, but obviously we didn’t win, nor did we expect to. We are still in our infancy as a company, and we were very surprised to have been nominated. (any time the culprit wants to admit it, please come forward)
At any rate, it was a good gathering of business minds. We were very, very pleased to see both partners, clients, and those that have done projects for win awards. Among those were Scott Mc Auley, McSquared Technology Group won, whom is a parter of ours, and as well as Jeff Detloff of Providence Consulting, whom are clients of ours. We are very happy that two very deserving and long standing IT firms were honored.
Also honored as Liquid Web. Frankly, I was shocked that such a company had not yet won. This is one of the fastest growing companies in Michigan, this is a company that is doing REALLY cool stuff. And they are just now winning? This is a company that takes a proactive approach to search engine marketing, managing it very well internally. The real shame was that Matt Hill, CEO was out of the country, and Travis Stoliker Director of Marketing, was sick. However, Matt’s Dad accepted, which was neat as well.
In summary, great to see our partners, clients, and friends get honored tonight. It was a very nice event, and great to see a lot of the business partners at the event that we have forged relationships with in our first 10 monts of existence. No, of course we didn’t win, and as I said, nor should we. However, I am very pleased to see us getting ingrained into the Lansing business community, and it is great to see IT companies in Lansing be honored for their hard work!
Guest Blogger - Harnessing the Power of Social Networking
The blog post below is courtesy of Bob Ruggio, of Webgio.
Webgio is one of our web solutions partners, based out of New York, and Bob is one of the sharpest minds that I know when it comes to web strategy, and has a great pulse on emerging tech trends. He was kind enough to provide a guest blog for me.
Harnessing the Power of Social Networking
Article by: Bob Ruggio
Social networking has been a media buzz word over the last few years.
Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter are connecting friends, businesses and information through the World Wide Web via any device, anytime and anywhere. I personally think social media is in its infancy and yet to be fully tapped. This is what makes it such an exciting topic to follow. In mid December I had the opportunity to experiment with this technology in a non-conventional way. The outcome was a viable model for harnessing the power of social networking within communities, businesses and organizations to achieve results.
Here’s how we did it -
The Challenge
A Central New York family of twelve lost everything in a fire in the middle of winter and needed the help of the community. Unfortunately every possession was lost, the children only had the clothes on their back and some evacuated without shoes into the snow covered streets.
When hearing this tragic news, the number of children involved, and losing every possession including car keys, it was a moment in my life that I felt the need to step up. My next immediate thought was “What could I do to help?” And within seconds I was planning to use a social networking solution.
Action Taken
I choose Facebook as the social medium because that network had the largest number of community members within my network who could provide local support for the victims. It all started as a simple note and making friends aware. The family needs were clothing, nonperishable foods, toys, financial gifts and a key ingredient of helping us spread the word.
Within minutes of our first post, a flood of questions came in from the network. Within hours we had over one hundred members participating.
Until this event I never truly felt tapped into the sheer power of social networking on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
The first thing we did was coordinate with volunteers and local businesses to identify drop zones for donations. Next we conducted a needs assessment with the family for ages, gender, shirts size, pants size, and shoes size. This information was then updated on a newly created group called the Angel Donations Network. The use of a group vs. a note gave us several advantages for administrative control and communication over the project.
Then something special happened as donations began to pour in on the first day. Traditional media outlets learned of our use of the social networking tools to help the family and this created a viral media buzz.
For some reason traditional media loves writing about social networking.
This resulted in people joining Facebook through traditional media awareness such as television and newspaper. It was very exciting being able to harness on a small scale the power of social networking, turning what started as a dripping faucet of data, into a full water main break of information flow by Facebook members. This presented one of our biggest challenges, controlling the information of the social network.
As donations came in volunteers kept inventories and relayed data from the donation drop zones to the Facebook inventory. We learned to control the information through the use of well crafted press releases posted to the Facebook group. The press releases served as what I call a “valve”. The press release valves gave us control over the flow of activity and information. After this discovery we now had the ability to turn a dripping faucet into a full water main break of information flow on command. This served as an effective tool in the project.
The Results
As in any project, this didn’t go without logistical challenges but some amazing social networking lessons were learned while using social media.
In the end social networking helped catalyze traditional media and successfully rallied an online community around donating all basic needs for the family within 4 days.
The first lesson learned from this experiment was the speed that we were able to enlist the help of community members. Within minutes we began helping this family. Very few phone calls and most communication happened by social media.
The second lesson was the level of awareness we could achieve by using social media. Each member of the Facebook group was able to stay up to date with posted statuses as the family was helped. This allowed for easy viewing of outstanding donation needs against current inventory levels. From a management standpoint this was vital to in achieving our objectives responsibly.
The third lesson was choosing the correct mediums, frequency, and timing around using each. I viewed this as situational. In this experiment we used Facebook notes then shifted gears to a group to allow more advanced features of control.
The forth lesson was balancing traditional media with social media at a low cost or no cost based on the “buzz” of what you are doing.
Traditional media is always looking for a good story to fill a newspaper or evening news spot so exploit that gently.
Lastly and probably the most important lesson was learning to control the flow of information by carefully crafting press releases in the Facebook group. This served as a valve for speeding up and slowing down the flow of efforts and activities based on needs. This allowed us to effectively communicate the message at specific frequencies and outline specific actions the group could help with. It gave everyone direction and turned what could be chaos into social harmony.
Summary
Social networking has many uses and can be very powerful. I believe we’ve only seen the tip of the ice berg on harnessing its true value withinc ommunities, businesses and organizations. Since this event I’ve had the opportunity to use this model to help a small business build its clientele base and develop a means for effectively communicating messages outside the use of traditional mediums. While both projects are small in scope it has yielded the results we set out to achieve in both cases. The next time you have a community or business challenge try tapping into the power of social networking as a solution or compliment to the main plan.
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About the guest author:
Bob Ruggio is a Sr. Business Analyst, Project Manager and .NET Developer specializing in building and growing businesses using next generation web solutions. He holds a Computer Science degree from Hawaii Pacific University, a Master’s Certificate in Applied Project Management from Villanova University, a Certificate in Entrepreneurship from Syracuse University’s Whitman’s School of Management, an M.B.A. in Management from the State University of New York at Oswego, and multiple computer based technical certifications.
Landing Pages and Natural SEO
Landing pages have been a topic of discussion lately with clients, so I think it is an appropriate discussion point for today. I have written about landing pages before, with an emphasis on matching your users expectations’ with their click through. If a user performs a search, and clicks on your ad, be sure you are matching their expectations. I elaborated on this specifically with my geographic blog reference, written in January.
Besides the obvious geographic considerations that I pointed out in that post, there are some more detailed considerations for landing pages, the main one being using very subtle variations in your keywords, and the corresponding landing pages. You may have 4 to 5 landing page variations constructed for your ad groups with your pay per click management campaign. For example, in a campaign focused on shoes, you may have different ad groups set up for red shoes, green shoes, and blue shoes. The most effective approach to converting visitors when they arrive to your site, is to be splitting your ads for each color of shoe and sending users to the corresponding page.
Now, within this you may have the same pricing, benefits, consulting footwear staff, and support service no matter what color shoe your visitors are interested in. Thus, the content structure for red shoes, green shoes, and blue shoes may be exactly the same, only the header text, visuals, and content differences being the color of the shoe.
Setting your landing pages up in this fashion will increase conversions. However, if you are not careful, this can be intepreted as duplicate content by a search engine. As we know, this is not good from a natural search engine visibility standpoint. Given this, it is important to write code with your meta data on these pages so that they are not followed by search engines. This is known as no follow, and can be implemented by the code below underneath the title tag of your page:
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW”>
Taking these steps will ensure a stronger conversion probability for your PPC campaign, and not endanger your site from a natural SEO standpoint.
Is your AdWords testing passing the test?
I am talking more and more to prospective clients who are already running or have run an AdWords campaign. This is obviously a positive sign in how many businesses are starting to grasp the effectiveness of paid search management and search engine marketing. The unfortunate part, as you may imagine, is many of these businesses are not feeling that the campaign is working for them. There can be many reasons for this, time, knowledge, resources, etc. But one of the issues that I see that many campaigns that I evaluate lack testing. This is a step that could help many campaigns, and may be easier to tackle than you think.
There can be several, several elements in a search marketing campaign to test. Let’s keep it simple. I would propose that you test 3 areas, keyword variations, ads, and landing pages.
Of the three areas, probably the easiest to test is your ad text. I read a great blog by Dan Theis on a technique for testing using control ads, and weaving in your test ad. I highly recommend you take a look at it. If you feel that as a small business owner that multiple control ads are not in your day to day operations, I understand. BUT, at the very least, it is critical that you implement multiple ads with your campaign. Why? Well, first off, if you do not test different ad variations, then you simply are dealing with the opportunity cost of unknown increased CTR and possible revenue.
Perhaps start with two ads when you begin your AdWords campaign. As we have counseled many businesses, be sure to turn off the Optimize function in your AdWords setting - you want the Rotate option. This will ensure that your test ads all get the same shot at being served.
Next, write two ads that are very different. I say this to make your job easier as you get warmed up to testing. Take one ad, focus it on your pricing. Take another ad, perhaps focus it on a differentiating your product. Utilize them in the same ad group, and be sure that you get over 200 impressions on both ads to get a good sample number. Then, look at the click through rate. From this, you will make evaluations on which ad performed the best.
Next, you may want to move into testing ads that are more similar to each other in nature, with similar texts. Subtle differences may be huge, like changing active language, or adding /keywords to display URLs, – they may not be. At least starting with two very different ads will give you a good feel as you wade in the world of testing. As you can tell, from there is a a limitless amount of testing you can apply. And you have other functions in life as well. So start small, but we in the paid search industry implore you, TEST, TEST, TEST.
Remember, in the portfolio of tactics in your overall marketing strategy, paid search should give you the most accountability. That is the second most important reason you do it (next to the primary reason that you are advertising based on the premise that someone is trying to find you, versus you trying to find the customer) Make sure you are testing your AdWords campaign to ensure that accountability, and make the changes needed to run a maximized campaign.
Our new website
I am going to (kind of) take a break from the normal education and tip-oriented blog posts to take a quick moment and put in a plug our new site at http://netvantagemarketing.com. IT’S AWESOME!! VISIT IT OFTEN! There. That should increase traffic, right?
Of course not. We must continue to be diligent in our SEO efforts, and optimize our site’s content to increase our positioning and visibility on search engines to generate traffic. And of course, I can’t miss this opportunity to say that if you are in the process of launching your website, make sure your SEO ducks are in a row. If you have established rankings, take the necessary 301 redirect steps to ensure that you are not taking well indexed content and losing it. If you want better search engine visibility, this represents a great time to get the content and the code right and pay attention to what search engines want.
As an advertorial aside, we do encourage you to visit the site. We invested a lot of time into the content and site map. And our Michigan web design firm GreenLite Web did a tremendous job with the design. If you are reading this and looking for affordable yet extremely high quality design work with fantastic client support, contact them. You will not regret it.
If you go through the new site and have any comments, by all means, let us know, jford@netvantagemarketing.com
Lansing, I mean, Landing page Development
In these posts, we always try to bring to your attention the more overlooked elements of strong online marketing campaigns. I have covered ad text, timing, and accountability. My new topic is landing pages. I was recently reading a very good article on landing pages here, by Tim Ash on Search Engine Watch, and it tipped me off to an idea regarding landing pages within geographic campaigns. Many of our clients at Netvantage Marketing use geo-targeted campaigns, meaning that the search engine marketing we are performing are only serving ads for those Googling in certain geo-graphic pockets. A key piece of a successful geo-targeted ads is utilizing the local area within the ad text, as well as bidding on keyword variations with a geographic orientation. For example, instead of “copier suppliers” we may select “lansing copies suppliers”, and then write accompanying ad text that highlighted the geographic area you serve. It can be a great tool to increase click through rate and customers. But then what?
One of which is your landing page. Landing pages are an important element to your AdWords campaign. Sure, you can generate lots of traffic through your search ads, but are they converting? When users go to your site’s content, the real measure of success will be conversion to your goal. Landing page content gets even more intriguing when you enter in the realm of geo-targeted campaigns.
The first and more important recommendation I would make is to make sure that for each of your landing pages, you are taking into accounting utilizing geography within your content. This particularly important for your header tag structure. If a user has clicked on “lansing copier supplier” - have this be prominent within the lead h1 introductory text. Then be sure to use geography within the body content.
The second recommendation I would make is probably more work, but worth it. For each of your services offerings and corresponding ad copy, make a landing page for that geographic area. Your ability to convert customers from this page will certainly rise. So, if you are serving two geographic areas, or geographic areas that could have different names, construct landing pages that fit both. Using our copier supplier example - you may want to point users to a landing page that highlights “Lansing copier supplier” content, - and then also construct a landing page that highlights “Mid Michigan copier supplier”.
Of course, I am getting deep into online marketing strategy and I should stop to say, at the top of this process you should be running an entirely different ad group for “Mid Michigan copier supplier” versus “Lansing copier supplier”, including your keywords and ad text. This is what will make my landing page suggestion work the best.
Yes, this all seems meticulous. Yes, it is work. If you are starting out on your own, I recommend a few ad groups and corresponding landing pages to test and gain a comfort level. Once you are comfortable, add onto your campaign with this strategy. The overall major trend in search marketing is the power of localization — be sure to take advantage of this and use it your benefit with strong landing pages.
Small steps to improving your website in 2009 - Content
I have never been a big New Years Resolution person. My stance has always been, why wait until the first of the year to improve your life, right? Well, when it comes to the web the beginning of a new year can represent an opportunity to evaluate your website, and turn your attention to the small things that can make a big difference. I have found many companies take the time to do this in going into the New Year because there is some down time and let’s face it, many just tend to treat it as starting anew on many levels.
So, as you begin the first quarter of 2009 with your website, some points to ponder:
1. Content. Many companies evaluate their websites, and they want to change the design. However, due to budget, resources, time, etc. a full fledged redesign may not in the future. This doesn’t mean the site has to be a laggard.
Most sites now employ a content management system. Use it to your advantage. Your prospective customers like fresh content. Fresh content can lend itself to stronger positioning for your search engine optimization. Go through your home page and sub page content. Make sure it still make sense, and represents your business. Be sure products are updated, and services are still being offered. Have there been changes to your target audiences? Have their personas changed? In this macro economic environment, have their needs changed.
As you evaluate the tone of your content, be sure to keep an eye on keywords. If you are wondering if your target audience has changed the way they search and the keyword variations that they are using, take a look at the Google Keyword Tool. This is an easy and free to way to get some basic keyword volume data, and evaluate any trends in how users are searching for what you have to offer. Then, take this back to your base page content during your 2009 evaluation. Pay attention to how keyword variations are utilized within your content, and make the appropriate changes.
Evaluating your base web content can be very important for your website to have success in the New Year. Sure, your marketing deparment may be saying “no money for the web this year”, but that doesn’t mean it needs to lag behind what your business is doing. Or for that matter, have a negative impact on how search engines will index your content.
Be sure to that your content has came with you into the New Year. It will be good for your users, search engines will like it, and it is an effective way to improve your site without having to totally redesign it.
Tips and Tactics for your AdWords Ad Text Part 3
Time to finally wrap this series of posts up. (AKA, time to put the egg nog away and get back to work, but more on that in my next post)
So far, in our review of AdWords ad text tips and tactics, we have discussed the following points:
- Utilizing tight ad groups with small amounts of keywords in order to incorporate keywords into ad text.
- The tactic of using keywords in your Display URLs : www.example.com/giftbasket
- The importance of qualifying and providing incentive for your prospective users to click through with strong content writing in your headlines and text lines, given the challenge of the character limits.
- Setting up tangible business goals that are aligned with your keyword campaign.
- Evaluating your target audience’s mindset when searching and structuring your ads around that persona.
- Using the various keyword tools out there to select the right keyword variations, and then utilizing that as a guide for your ad writing.
- Evaluating your competiton and their ad text.
- Putting strong analytics into place for the measurement of your campaign success based on the different ads that your employ. (My business partner Adam Henige has some great posts on that subject)
