Web Savvy Marketers

What Net Neutrality Means to Small Business

The internet, in it’s short history, has been a great equalizer for small businesses. Small businesses are free to put up websites that promote their business, sell their products, services and applications and are assured that their information is served to the consumer in the same way that everyone else’s content is served. It gives all businesses the possibility to attract a worldwide market. Many of today’s internet giants–think Google, Yahoo, E-bay–started out as small businesses with great ideas. Because their ideas were allowed to be served to the public in a fair way, they were able to develop into highly successful businesses.

Some of the major network operators are trying to change that. They want to set up a tiered payment system for content providers. Theoretically, the premium fee would ensure the fastest download speeds. And lesser rates would result in slower websites. What does that mean? Network providers could decide what content is shown on their networks and at what price. Suppose AT&T decided they wanted to expand their web hosting business. They could effectively eliminate the reach of web hosting competitors’ sites by raising their rates or slowing the delivery of their material to an unpalatable crawl.

Given the fact that there are actually very few network providers in the US — especially in rural parts of the country — shouldn’t we be trying to ensure that everyone has access to all information on the internet no matter what network they can access. In some parts of the country consumers may only have broadband access through one provider. Even in populated areas the choice is usually limited to the phone company or cable provider for the area. Shouldn’t we ensure that your website is as accessible to everyone as your competitor’s website?

Do we really want want big business deciding what is available on the internet? If not, we need to ensure that net neutrality remains in effect. Please support the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009.

Keep consistent styles in your WordPress posts

pastetextThere is nothing that screams amateur like a website with a mishmash of fonts and styles.  Sometimes people copy and paste posts from a document they’ve already created in Word.  Unfortunately that can also copy the Word styles and fonts into the WordPress document.  In order to keep your styles and fonts consistent in your WordPress posts,  click the “paste as plain text” icon in the toolbar.  It will delete all the Word code and paste nice clean text into your post that will use the styles in your WordPress theme and keep your blog looking well-designed and professional.

Kill That Buzz

Creating a buzz about your company is a good thing but using buzz words in your marketing copy is not. Buzz words are those words everyone else is using: crispy to describe potato chips; state-of-the-art to describe technology; quality to describe any product. Yes, you can still use these words, but if you do, back them up with proof. Better yet, come up with a new way to describe the same thing: noisy potato chips; out-in-front technology; or the valedictorian product of its class. Old buzz becomes a drone.

Guerilla Marketing: Could I ask for a few mouse clicks?

This morning I received an email from one of my clients, Trevor Eissler.  Trevor’s a clever guy who is marketing a book he wrote.  The subject was “Could I ask for a few mouse clicks?” The email was addressed to friends and family and asked if they’d mind spending ten minutes to complete 3 of 6 items on a list.

Here’s Trevor’s list:

  1. Post a review of the book on Amazon.com. (If you haven’t read it yet, feel free to improvise. Pretend it’s one of your all-time favorites!)
  2. Paste the address www.montessorimadness.com into an entry you write—in support of the book—on a site geared toward education, parenting, or early childhood such as www.mothering.com, www.parenting.com, or other big name sites, or even smaller blogs such as www.themoveablealphabet.blogspot.com, www.montessoriforeveryone.com, www.educatingforlife.wordpress.com/category/book-reviews, or any other relevant site you can think of. If you can’t think of anything to say, you could cut and paste or cite the review at www.michaelolaf.com/store/product1032.html or any of the reviews at www.montessorimadness.com.
  3. Join the Montessori Madness! Facebook group and post a link to www.montessorimadness.com on your Facebook page.
  4. Hold a sandwich board, emblazoned with the book title, outside your local Barnes and Noble bookstore.
  5. Tuck the book under your arm next time you’re on Oprah.
  6. Tattoo “Montessori Madness” on your forearm (using other body parts tends to discourage sales).

Trevor’s common sense approach to spreading the word about his book is simple and brilliant.  By asking a favor of friends and family who I’m sure want to see his book succeed he’s leveraging the power of their networks.   With Facebook, Twitter and other networks it’s easy for Trevor’s friends and family to help him spread the word.

I also like that he asked us to “Spend ten minutes to complete 3 of the 6 items.”  By telling us how long it will take us (not long) I think that the average friend or family member would be more likely to complete the request.  And by giving us a list of six and only asking us to complete 3 items it seems an even easier assignment.

Items 4 -6 are kind of funny and are a little beyond what most of us are willing or able to do, but that makes the list more brilliant. By process of elimination most of us are likely to complete items 1 -3 and that was probably Trevor’s goal.  But it’s not beyond belief that someone in someone’s network knows Oprah – so spread the word friends!  Good work Trevor!

More information about the book – Montessori Madness! A Parent to Parent Argument for Montessori Education

Free Shipping Closes Sale

A couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail Father’s Day reminder from a store where I’ve bought gifts from online before.  Since I typically put off holiday gift buying to the last minute and end up paying extra for shipping, I was grateful for the reminder.

Lesson one to online merchants: EMAIL MARKETING WORKS!

With over a week before Father’s day I thought the ample lead time would save me some cash on shipping. I clicked through to the website and browsed to find some sweet treats for dad. I quickly found a nice gift of sweet snacks at a reasonable price and clicked through to the checkout page.  Where I stopped.  The shipping charges nearly doubled the price of the goodies.  Call me cheap,  but if there’s one thing I learned from my dad growing up on his farm in Minnesota it’s the value of the dollar.

That reasonably priced gift now seemed tremendously overpriced. If I was going to spend that kind of money – it had to be a better gift. So I abandoned my shopping cart and Googled “Free Shipping Father’s Day gifts”.  Multiple stores came up and I quickly found a gift.  It was much nicer than the original gift.  I did end up spending the same as the other gift would have cost with it’s shipping charges,   but I now felt like the gift I was sending was worth the money I was spending.

Lesson two to online merchants – FREE SHIPPING WORKS! Consider the value of your product.   If shipping costs make your item seem extraordinarily overpriced you will lose sales.

Lesson three to online merchants.  CLOSE THE SALE! If your e-mail marketing campaign is driving traffic to your site but you’re not seeing corresponding sales, make sure you look at the value you’re offering to your customers.  It’s a shame when something like high shipping costs causes them abandon their shopping cart when you’ve successfully drawn them to your store with your e-mail marketing campaign.

Debunking Great Myths of Selling

Selling is hard enough, but we make it much harder by believing sales myths. Here are a few sales ideas I’ve heard expressed many times. I’d argue each is a dangerous myth that you should avoid.

Myth #1: There’s Something Distasteful About Sales

Business is all about selling. People who avoid sales and leave it to others because they think it’s “below them” are wrong. The most rewarding, the most exciting part of running a business is making a sale.

Myth #2: Market And Advertise More And You’ll Generate More Sales

Believe this myth and you risk ignoring the quality of your marketing materials. Today with the Internet and TV and squawking ad boxes at gas stations and phone ads and more, we bombard people with 3,000 marketing messages a day. More isn’t more effective. Salespeople who focus strictly on pumping out more marketing can easily lose track of whether they’re reaching people who really want and need to hear their message. Getting ten people to love your product is much better than getting a thousand people to like your product.

Myth #3: Great Salespeople Focus On The Close

This is backwards. A great salesperson focuses on the opening, on the relationship, on the first impression. When you focus on the close, you put your need before the client’s need. You need the sale; the client doesn’t. The client needs a trustworthy business relationship. When you start the sales process, focus on getting to the truth, finding the prospect’s pain, or uncovering a problem you can solve for them.

Myth #4: To Sell Well You Must Persistently Pursue Prospects

Dispelling this myth may be tougher. You must think counterintuitively. When you stop pursing people, they become drawn to you. Who do you want to see – the salesperson who is always calling you up or the salesperson who is hard to get in front of because he’s so busy helping other people? Persistently pursing prospects smells of desperation. Yes, you need to work hard to gain new prospects but that doesn’t mean texting them every 15 minutes.

Myth #5: Sales Are Made On A Rational, Thinking Basis

Tsk, tsk if you fall for this one. We like to think of ourselves as rational, thinking beings. In some ways, we are rational. But what truly motivates us to act or to buy is emotion. Just watch the commercials on TV and count how many are emotional appeals. People will buy more often because they feel an emotional connection than they will buy because the sale makes sense.

Myth #6: The Sales Is Lost Or Won At The End Of The Process

Are you beginning to see how many of these myths are related to one another? This myth is similar to Myth #3 above. The most important part of the sale is the beginning, not the end. At the beginning of the sale you must establish trust, build rapport, show value, and demonstrate a primary interest in the prospect. It ain’t about grabbing prospects by the neck and injecting them with a closing argument serum. It’s not about us selling them; it’s about us letting them buy.

Myth #7: The Best Way To Handle Objections Is Overcoming Them

This is a great way to start an argument with your prospect. Try overcoming a belief prospects have and their natural tendency is to fight for their belief. You risk offending the person you’re trying to sell. Instead, Australian sales guru Ari Galper says to acknowledge the legitimacy of the objection (in the eye of the prospect). For example, if a prospect says they don’t need you as a vendor because they already have one, you might say, “I understand your concern and I don’t want to replace your current vendor. I just want to see if you’re open to some new ideas that only our company can present to you. Would that be okay?”

Myth #8: You Either Sell A Product Or You Sell A Service

This myth used to be true. Today, smart companies and smart salespeople are beyond selling just a product or service. Companies like Disney and Intel use their products as props and their services as a stage to sell an experience. Tim Sanders, former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! spells out this concept in his book, Love Is The Killer App: How To Win Business and Influence Friends. Macdonald’s doesn’t sell food; they sell a clean, quick, enjoyable family experience.

Myth #9: Top Salespeople Are Independent And Self-Sufficient

The only truly independent salespeople are those no one else wants to relate to. Keith Ferrazzi, in his best selling marketing book, Never Eat Alone, says “Autonomy is a life vest made out of sand.” In sales, independence is less important than teamwork, cooperation and communication. Givers gain. You teach someone a sales technique and guess what? You learn more in return. You share sales leads and guess what? Rather than having fewer sales leads, you find more leads flowing your way. Top salespeople give freely of their time and expertise and the pie gets bigger for all of us, including them.

Do watch out for these myths. Live by the sales truths that really are truths, like this one from Zig Ziglar, “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

Chris John Amorosino
Amorosino Writing, LLC
Writing Business Stories That Live Profitably Ever After
amorosinowriting.com

Choosing a merchant account provider

With merchant account providers raising processing rates and charging annual fees for security (PCI DSS compliance) it makes sense  for small business website owners to review merchant account providers carefully before choosing or changing a provider for online credit card processing.

I’ve had an account with the same merchant account provider for several years, but recently the rates have been creeping up, in many cases to over 4% per transaction.  Add the monthly fees and the new annual PCI DSS compliance fees together and the account is  costing about $500 a year before a sale is even made.  That’s alot for a small business to pay in account fees.   Combine the increasingly high rates with the surly customer service and it has become clear to me that it’s time to review other choices.

The criteria for my business may differ than other small businesses, but here is what I looked for when reviewing  my options:

  1. Monthly fees
  2. Transaction fees (percentage and flat fee per transaction)
  3. Contract commitment – avoid early termination fees
  4. Compatibility with existing website and accounting systems
  5. What are the company’s  procedures for compliance with PCI DSS? What are the costs and the procedures?
  6. What online method of payment is most desired by your website customers?

There are many merchant account providers to choose from, among the choices, Paypal and Google Checkout are becoming increasingly attractive to small business websites.  They are PCI DSS compliant, their monthly costs are minimal or free and their transaction fees are competitive for small business transactions. A contract is usually not required and  they are easily integrated into most shopping carts and websites. 

I’ve set up many sites with Paypal but I had not tried Google checkout yet, so in the spirit of testing the product, I removed the encrypted client payment form that I used with my old merchant account on my website and replaced it with Google checkout.  Set-up and installation was simple.  Client approval is yet to be determined.

My perception of Google checkout vs. Paypal is that it’s a newer product and fewer people are familiar with it.  Therefore, people may be less receptive to it or more receptive depending on their experiences with Paypal and with the Google brand.   I’ve used it a few times when making purchases on websites and I found the purchasing process to be simple and user-friendly. 

But that’s just my perception.  I’m currently running a poll on LinkedIn to find out what other people prefer. Please take a minute to take the poll.

In addition to testing Google Checkout, I’m also testing the Intuit merchant services.  Their rates were lower than my old account  and their interface with QuickBooks makes processing transactions and accounting for them a breeze.  I’m currently just using this account for offline payments as I haven’t set up a payment form on my website yet for use with this provider.   But I expect if I’m happy with their product I will set up a payment form on my site to use with this account. 

I’m interested in hearing about your experiences with merchant account providers — from a merchant point of view and customer point of view.

SEO is Important but Not Exclusive to Website Success

It is important to optimize your site for search engines. That means it should employ the three tried and true search engine optimization (SEO) techniques: good titles, meta tags and most importantly well-written content.

Three Tried & True SEO Techniques

Title Tag
Title tags are within the head section of the html code and it is what appears in the blue bar at the very top of the browser screen. Titles tags should succinctly describe (using 6 -12 words or about 60 characters) the content on that page and they should be unique for each page.

Meta Tags
Meta description tags are also included withing the head tags of the html code. The meta description is often used as the text that the search engine displays below your link. So it is important that this text is keyword rich and accurately describes its page. Meta descriptions should also be unique for each page on your website and should be written in a way that would make a potential customer want to visit your website.

Use the meta keyword tag to focus on what’s important on the page. Again, make it unique to each page and don’t stuff it with every imaginable combination of keywords. Pick a few keywords that focus on the content of that particular page and list them. Search engines may or may not use the tag to list your site, but they won’t penalize you as long as you don’t stuff it with excessive versions of keywords.

The Heading tag and Content
The H1 tag is an html tag that identifies an important heading. There are actually 6 levels of heading tags within html with h1 having the most importance. Your content (that means the content that people read on the page) should use appropriate keywords and should be well-written and structured for easy reading. Use the H1 tag for important keyword rich headings and write content that clearly and quickly identifies the focus of the content and supports the heading. Use video and graphics to support your concepts too and remember to use descriptive alt tags for images.

What if SEO doesn’t work as well as you expected?
These search engine optimization (SEO) techniques have been around for at least a decade or more and while I highly recommend optimizing your website for search engines, you should be aware that SEO in itself will not make your website successful and may not provide your site with the desired search engine rank.

If you’re confident that your site has been optimized well but you’re not happy with your current search engine rank, it may be time to analyze the competition. Which websites consistently rank higher than your site in the search engine results? What differentiates the top-ranking sites from your site?

Typically, I find 2 or 3 obvious factors that seem to contribute to the higher search engine rank.
1.Their site has better content – it’s more in-depth, it’s better written, it appears to be the better resource.
2.The site has been established longer and has been managed consistently and kept up to date.
3.It has current information and uses current techniques for presenting information.

There are of course many other factors that can come into play. But given that your site is free of technical errors and is coded to be crawled easily by search engine bots, probably the most important thing a website owner can do to optimize their website for search engines is to optimize their site for their customers.

The search engines’ goal is to list the best resources – it should be your goal too.

1.Continue to add depth to your content. You might add a blog or a user forum that will encourage customer participation while building the depth of content on your website.
2.Reach out to your audience – participate in social networks and give freely in the areas of your expertise.
3.Ensure that your site makes your customers feel secure with appropriate security measures and easy to find contact information.
4.Set a schedule to review your site regularly and edit dated information with updated content.

Your website may not be an overnight success, but with continued diligence in managing your website it will continue to improve as a source of referrals for your business and will become more and more valuable over time.

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