Archive for the ‘Strategy’ Category

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X Marks the Spot

December 12, 2011
Goonies Treasure Map

Photo by MontyAustin

Begin with the end in mind.

This has to be one of the greatest pieces of advice ever offered. Because if you don’t know where you’re headed, how can you possibly know when you’ve arrived?  Or how to get there in the first place?

That goes double for your website.

The success of your website will be determined by the degree to which you ask yourself this one question:

(ready?)

What do I want people to do here?

Ask and answer this critical question and you will have the foundation for a winning site.

“What do I want people to do here?” gets at results.  Here are some possible answers:

  • I want people to fill out this form.
  • I want people to pick up the phone and call me. (Are you sure?)
  • I want people to attend an open house.
  • I want people to register for a class.
  • I want people to make a donation.
  • I want people to buy my book.
  • I want people to gain confidence that I am the right resource for them.

Combined with a clear understanding of your target market (“What do people want to do here?”), you have everything you need to create a website that gets results.

Careful!

Uh oh.  Is this you?

Ann, spot on as usual!  Brilliant!  Yes, I want people to do ALL of those things!

Danger, Will Robinson.

One objective per audience.

Websites get clunky in a hurry when you ask them to do too much.

Yes, it’s likely that you have more than one audience.  And you want to appeal to all of those audiences.  But you can’t do it all on your homepage.  (Really, you can’t).

Example

Say you’re building a website for an educational institution.  You have prospective students, current students, alumni, faculty, and parents all visiting your site.

Consider:

  • For each of these audiences, what is the one thing I want people to do right now? (Yes, of course it can change later).
  • Which of these things is most important to my institution right now?
  • Are there one or two others that are almost as important to my institution right now?

The most important call to action goes on the homepage. Maybe there’s a secondary call to action in a sidebar or near the bottom.  Everything else goes inside.

And I do mean everything else.

For this to work, you’re going to have to be very tough. Because everybody’s going to think their thing is the thing that should be put right on the homepage.  Don’t do it! Stand your ground.

You will be rewarded with a website that does exactly what it’s supposed to do and generates results everyone will be proud of.

 

Posted in Marketing, Strategy, Web Development, Writing | Leave a Comment »

The 7 x 3 rule

November 28, 2011

One of the earliest and most basic steps in planning a website is to define your navigation.  How many main pages will you have?  And how many sub pages?  And how many sub sub pages?

Here’s a little rule I live by: 7 x 3.

Seven

Each menu on your website should have no more than seven items.

Why seven?  Because, as a rule, seven is the maximum number of items a person can keep in his head at once.  This is why phone numbers have seven digits.

Why does this matter?  When a person interacts with your menu, he creates a virtual map of your site in his head.  This helps him remember where he’s been and where he still needs to go.

“Okay, I’m in the About section now.  And there are six other sections, and I generally know what they are.”

Sure, he probably doesn’t say that out loud.  But he’s comfortable.

When you have 14 items in your menu, danger!  Your user will  forget where she’s been.  She’ll get confused, nay, lost.

Three

Your website should have no more than three layers of navigation:

  • Main Menu
    • Sub Menu
      • Sub sub menu

That’s IT.

Again, people like three. They can hold onto three.  Three makes sense.  Four, five or six do not make sense.

That’s not enough pages!

Really?

Seven items in your main navigation.  Each of those has seven items underneath of it, and each of THOSE has seven items underneath of IT.

73 = 343 items

What are you, Amazon.com?

If you are, thanks for reading my blog!  Tell your friends!

If not, consider this:

Even Amazon lives by this rule.  Mostly.

Amazon's Category Navigation

Nine departments.  I can give them that, can’t you? They genuinely have a really big site.

Each of the departments has a manageable number of items underneath.  Under books, we have six.  Others have more, but they also have dividers in between to help you chunk items together in your head:

Home and Garden Nav

13 items, but they’re organized into 4 groups.  Which is almost like a third level of navigation.

All of this is to say that, even if you’re Amazon.com, you still pretty much play by these rules.

You probably don’t browse departments like this when you use Amazon, but if you did, you’d have a reasonably happy time of it.

It’s Navigation, Not Pages

So you’ve got up to 343 items in your navigation.  Remember, this does not necessarily equate to 343 pages on your site.

If you have an ecommerce site where you sell thousands of products, you’re going to have more than 343 pages.  But while your departments may be in your navigation, each product won’t be.

And if your site’s really that complicated, you’re going to need to lean on your site’s search capabilities anyway.

This rule is for you.

I’ve never met a site I couldn’t fit into the 7 x 3 rule with a little creativity.

It’s well worth the effort to give your visitors the best possible experience.

Posted in Graphic Design, Marketing, Strategy, Web Development, Writing | 1 Comment »

Starting up your mailing list, or “beware the angry monkey”

November 7, 2011
Angry Money

Photo by Mike Tok

Building an email list is a great way to stay in front of business contacts over time.

Let’s face it, not everyone’s ready to buy from you right now.  Some contacts need to be nurtured, which is marketing-speak for “gently, but persistently reminded that you’re brilliant.”

The idea is that, sooner or later, at least some of these people are going to need what you sell, or they’re going to meet someone who needs what you sell, and when that day comes, you’ll be splattered all over their brains.

Uh, that’s a good thing.

Right, so how do you start?

What NOT to do.

Do NOT export Outlook and call it a day.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been working in the same Outlook data file since the Clinton administration.  There are people in there that – well, I have no idea why they’re in there.

Why, here’s the property manager from that house I rented three houses ago!  And here’s that former client that finally stopped emailing me asking for favors.  And the rat catcher. And my ex-husband.  Hmm.

You get the idea.

In short, our Outlook databases are not well-manicured.

If you import your entire contact database into any of the big opt-in email sites – say MailChimp, for example – two things will happen:

1. A significant percentage of the email addresses will bounce, meaning they will be undeliverable. People change their email addresses, sometimes because they’ve changed jobs, but mostly because they’re trying to avoid getting crap they don’t want from people like you.

2. Of the people who actually receive your message, a significant percentage will unsubscribe from your email. Some might even complain to MailChimp.  Then they’ll stomp their feet a few times and change their email addresses to something that ends in 2k11.

As a consequence, this will happen:

You will be blocked from sending mail through MailChimp until you explain yourself to the monkey’s satisfaction.

You don’t want to go there.

Size Doesn’t Matter

Yeah, I know you want to have the biggest mailing list imaginable.  It’s quite the ego trip, starting off with 3,500 or 5,000 or 10,000 email addresses.

Don’t. Do. It.

It’s the quality of the email addresses, not the quantity, that counts.  Really.

You’re not running for class president.  No one knows how many names you have on your list. But sending to the wrong people can seriously hurt your brand.

A Caveat

For the purposes of this discussion, we’re talking about your trusted, internal mailing list.  The Opt-In list.  These are the people who really do want to hear from you most of the time.

There are situations where it’s appropriate to send unsolicited business email to people you don’t know, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.  And it’s certainly not something you want to try to do with an opt-in service like MailChimp or Constant Contact.

So What To Do?

This part is painful, and you’re going to hate me for it.

  1. Take the Outlook list and highlight the people you are currently doing business with.  Clients, vendors, and partners count.
  2. Highlight everyone else you’ve had a real business-related conversation with in the past 12 months.  I’m not talking about saying “excuse me” when you reached for the cream at that networking event.  People you really know. 12 months is generous.  Use your best judgment.  Be ruthless.

This is your list.

Fifty names?  I’m wasting my time!

If you came up with 50 names (or fewer), you are NOT wasting your time.  You are saving the time of all those people who don’t give a crap about you.

And you are allowing the possibility that those people may one day become part of your mailing list.

You are being respectful, and you are protecting your brand.

The monkey is pleased.

Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing, Running Your Business, Strategy | Leave a Comment »

How to Get More Traffic, Part I

May 30, 2011
Get more traffic

Photo by Michael Loke

You want more traffic, right?  So how do you get it?

There are lots of ways, but one of the most effective is by creating sharable content.

“But Ann!” you wail. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to show up at the top of the search engines?”

Ah, young padawan, one result begets the other. More on that later.

Why You Should Care About the Social Web

So, the web is social.

That means that one of the main ways we’re exposed to new content is through our online friends.

I have a niece who always finds the most interesting and/or thought-provoking and/or unabashedly feminist stuff on the interwebs.  She’s also really good at finding adorable cat videos.

Every time she posts on Facebook, I’m right there, because I know she serves up quality content.

Well, quality to me. And that’s the beauty of the social web:

1. Shared links are embedded with social proof.

When a person shares your content, whether it’s a blog post, or a video, or a tool, that share comes with built-in social proof.

That person is saying, “I found this useful/interesting/hilarious and I think you will too.”

When the person sharing the content is someone I trust, that makes me trust you.

Cha-ching.

2. Your target market sorts itself.

You create content. You put it out on the web.  It gets shared.

Sure, some people click on it, and some people don’t.  But the people who clicked on it self-selected.

Look, you’re a big kid, right?  You know that getting everyone to like you is impossible.  What you do just may not appeal to everyone, and that’s okay.

The clickers looked at your content, evaluated the person who shared it, and decided it was worth a click.

Hopefully many of them then shared it with their networks, of their own volition and with no strings attached.

You didn’t force anything on them. And that’s a good thing.

By creating consistently sharable content over time, you will create a dynamic market that’s pre-disposed to receiving your messages.

Cha-ching, part deux.

This target market may overlap with the target market that buys your products or services, or it may consist of influencers or referral sources.

It’s up to you to decide who you want to go after and to create content that will appeal to that market.

Have I convinced you?

Come back tomorrow, and I’ll show you how to create sharable content that gets you noticed.

Posted in Blogging, Facebook, Marketing, Social Business, Social Media, Strategy, Twitter, Video, Web 2.0 | 1 Comment »

Gilbert Gottfried and the Fine Line

March 18, 2011
Photo by davidkosmos

Photo by davidkosmos

By now, you’ve heard about Gilbert Gottfried’s tweets following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and that he was fired because of them.

It’s not surprising that Aflac made this move, since the insurance giant does 75% of its business in Japan.  They are working overtime to demonstrate all the compassion a giant corporation can muster. Without, you know, appearing to be motivated by greed. Or whatever.

I’m not here to defend Gottfried (or Aflac), but the ballyhoo over the jokes, which were broadcast over Twitter, gave me an idea about The Fine Line.

If you’re a comedian, your job is to be funny.

The problem is, being funny is a moving target.

  • If you play it safe, you sound like everyone else, and nobody buys your DVDs or comes to your shows.
  • If you’re too edgy, you get fired from a sweet gig impersonating wildlife.

The same can be said for anyone who gets paid to create: novelists, painters, dancers, filmmakers, and even commercial artists like us.

For comedians especially, there is a fine line between being a little dangerous (good) and being offensive (bad).

Writing jokes that are safe is not an option, because safe doesn’t pay the bills.

In our world, we are always challenging our clients to get out of their comfort zones and do something a little bolder. But there’s a risk.  Maybe your audience won’t understand it. Maybe they won’t like it.

Kind of like how you might not like this post.

Controversial? Yep.
Memorable? You bet.
Safe? No way.

Posted in Marketing, Motivation, Personal, Strategy | 3 Comments »

Moms? No, Geek Moms.

March 17, 2011
Photo by jmv

Photo by jmv

Last weekend, we shot over to Best Buy to pick up a new Blu Ray player – you know, the kind that streams Netflix (heaven!).

Anyway, Dave’s the details guy when it comes to this stuff, so he ran off to find exactly the right player, while Sam and I checked out the video games.

My Secret Life

Okay, so mommy’s a bit of a gamer.

And a perfectionist.

Playing Epic Mickey with a four year old is not exactly, er, as much fun as it would be without the four year old.  He’s constantly running off of cliffs and falling into acid and crap.

And no matter what I do, he’s never going to hold the controller straight. (Note to non-gamers: this is pretty much the whole point of a Wii controller).

Sam was getting frustrated, so before long I took the wheel.  I was busting up control panels and shooting paint on walls and jumping over gaping chasms, and Sam was saying, “Go mom!”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “Mommy’s kind of good at this.”

I didn’t notice the Best Buy lackey, who was organizing the X-Box games a few feet away.  He craned his neck to see the screen.

“Are you a gamer?”

“A little bit,” I replied, just as I beat the level.

“Man,” he whispered, “I wish my mom played video games.”

To Niche or Not to Niche

If your target market is Moms, I might be your customer.

If your target market is Geek Moms, now we’re talking.

What’s a Geek Mom?

  • My son has his own twitter feed.
  • Family TV time usually involves a SyFy Original Movie.
  • My proudest moment was when my son learned the secret identities of all the major super heroes. Seriously.

Of course I’m going to buy stuff other moms buy, but what I care about is superheroes and tech.

Frankly, I don’t have a whole lot in common with a mom who spends her time three aisles over, agonizing over which Ken to buy.

What Makes A Niche?

There are lots of factors that go into defining a niche.

Does it matter that I have a boy and not a girl?  As much as my feminist self rails against such notions, the truth is, it probably does matter.

But go deeper, beyond circumstance and into preferences and behavior. I am a programmer. I play video games. I buy movies on Blu Ray.

Check my Facebook profile. I like The Matrix and Star Trek.  It’s probably also relevant that I like Dave Matthews Band and Lost.

Twitter?  I’ve mentioned #inception four times.

If you have a product that’s geared toward Geek Moms, I am the living, breathing embodiment of your target market.

And you CAN find me.

Why Niche?

Lots of my clients tell me they don’t want to get too specific about their target markets because they think they’ll be leaving money on the table.

“Really, EVERY mom needs this,” they say. But does every mom need it?  As in, insatiable craving? Can you create that feeling in every mom?

I suggest not.

Niches are powerful because they allow you to make a deeper emotional connection with your target market. You don’t have to generalize about what “moms” want because you have a much clearer picture of your audience.

What about you? Have you identified a niche that works for your product or service?  Tell me in the comments.

Posted in Marketing, Strategy | 2 Comments »

On Planning Ahead

January 31, 2011

“We don’t have time to do it right, but we have time to do it over.”

How many business communicators can relate to this statement, which came to me via Ann Wylie and Twitter?

I run into this literally every day with my clients:

  • We have an advertising deadline next week.
  • We’re opening our new store in 10 days and we need to get the word out.
  • We have to distribute our annual report on the 25th.

When I get these frantic phone calls, I always think of that old saying:

“A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”

Except when it does.

If something significant is happening in your business, or if you have a major publication to produce, you should begin planning months, not weeks or days, in advance.  And by planning, I mean:

  • Interview and select your vendors
  • Get everyone briefed
  • Make a detailed plan, with interim deadlines that give you room to breathe

Here’s what happens if you don’t:

1. Strategic thinking gets compressed, or lost.

Every vendor you hire for your marketing or communications project has strategic expertise, from the copywriter to the graphic designer to the printer.

If you assemble your team early, you create space for good thinking to happen. Maybe I’ll talk to the signmaker about emerging fabrication techniques.  Maybe the PR person could use my insight into your strategic messaging.

You might think you know what you want, but if you’re getting a late start, odds are you haven’t thought it through or written it down.

As long as you’re hiring all these experts, shouldn’t you benefit fully from their expertise? Longer lead times lead to better solutions.  Period.

2. Fewer ideas are fully explored.

There are many ways to skin a cat, especially if your cat is a communications project.

Maybe you’re married to the idea of doing a billboard on I-95.  Heck, you already reserved the space.  You just need a design.

What if I can convince you that a billboard will be far less effective than a video?  Or a brochure?  Or an email?

The same holds true for design.  If our design schedule is compressed, we’re going to have to make decisions faster.

That means that a good idea may not get the attention it deserves, simply because it will take too much time to develop.

Sad, but true.

3. You pay more.

When you wait until the last minute to hire vendors, your project will be competing with all the other projects I already have in my backlog.  That’s true for other vendors as well.  The printer’s got to find time on the press, the signmaker has to schedule installation, etc.

You will pay a premium for your project because you didn’t plan ahead.

It’s hard to think about what’s going to happen six months from now, especially when you’ve got so many urgent things on your desk.  But ideal lead times are longer than you think, and the rewards for planning ahead are enormous.

Posted in Marketing, Motivation, Strategy | 3 Comments »

Strategy & Execution: Why you need both

January 28, 2011

There are two distinct phases to any effective marketing plan: strategy and execution.

Many people don’t realize that developing a killer strategy and executing that strategy are two completely different skill sets.

ONE EXTREME: “idea people” who don’t ever seem to do anything.
THE OTHER: project managers with no imagination.

Because these skill sets are so different, they are often separated into different job functions.  You may or may not be aware of this.

If your point of contact is an account manager who seems to be repeating things that other people said, without much passion or substance, you deserve to know what’s going on behind the curtain.

What is strategy?

Developing an effective marketing strategy is about finding and exploiting the intersection of what you do well and what the world needs. We start with you:

•    Who are you?
•    What do you do better than anyone else?
•    What are your outcomes? What are you trying to accomplish?

With these answers in mind, we turn our attention to the world.  Thinking about the people in your target market:

•    What pain are they experiencing that you can alleviate?
•    What pleasures are they seeking that you can provide?
•    What are the values that drive them?

The answers to these questions help us understand what messaging will resonate with your target market and how and where to communicate that messaging so that they’ll notice and take action.

Your marketing strategy isn’t something you finish and relegate to a high shelf.  It’s a living, breathing framework, a way of thinking about your business, that evolves as we hypothesize, test, and make new distinctions about your offering and your market.

What is execution?

One thing’s for sure – your marketing strategy is going to spawn projects, and lots of them.

You don’t want to be in the trenches.  Skilled project managers are your corner, setting goals, developing schedules, and formulating budgets.  They manage the details, from contracting with the right vendors to measuring results.

You need both.

Remember those results we measured in the execution phase?  They need to be sent straight over to the strategy people, so they can revise your approach, rounding out a great big happy circle of marketing awesomeness.

When you’re working with a small company that doesn’t have the infrastructure to separate strategy and execution into different job functions, you need to make sure both parts are there.

A brilliant, but scatterbrained strategist won’t get the results you need any more than a button-pushing project manager.

When interviewing a marketing partner, make sure you’re getting both bold strategy and careful execution.

Posted in Marketing, Measurement, Strategy | 4 Comments »

Rubber Hits Road: The myPanera Card

January 19, 2011

I am once again compelled to write about Panera Bread’s awesome marketing strategy.

I have about 10 rewards cards hanging from my key chain, and I dutifully produce them at the appropriate times in order to save a few bucks or get a coupon I’ll never use.

But the myPanera card is my favorite. Why?  Because it means free pastry.

Here’s how it works: every time you come into Panera Bread, you present your card before you order.  Sometimes you get a free item, and sometimes you don’t.

It could be anything – a bagel, a pasty, or a drink.  The thing is, you never know when the reward is coming, or what it will be.

Enter game theory

There’s a reason you can’t stop playing World of Warcraft or The Sims. Game theory is the science of keeping you playing. And the myPanera rewards program is a great example of game theory applied to marketing.

Consider how rewards are distributed in a hypothetical video game:

  • The object of the game is to complete certain tasks and avoid or kill enemies.
  • When you kill an enemy, sometimes you get a reward.  (Sometimes not).
  • The value of the rewards is not always the same.  Usually you get a small reward.  Occasionally you get a big reward.
  • The reward you receive (or not) is determined by probabilities that are designed to keep you playing.
    1. If you never get rewarded, you will get bored and stop playing.
    2. If you get rewarded too often, you will get bored and stop playing.
    3. If you get small rewards periodically, with occasional big rewards, you will play forever.

This is exactly what the myPanera program does.

Not a loyalty card

Let’s compare the myPanera rewards program with your typical grocery store “loyalty” card.

Do you go to Giant because you have a card?  I don’t.  I use the card when I go to Giant.  There’s a difference.

Frankly, grocery store loyalty cards annoy me.  I am forced to use the card because there is a penalty (higher prices) when I don’t.  As a result, I have a card for every grocery store I might go to.

That’s hardly a way to build loyalty.

Yum

Panera Bread has hit all the right notes with this program, which uses game theory to reward visitors for coming back.

I never know what I’m going to get when the cashier swipes my card, but I know it’s going to be tasty.

That’s a win for everyone.

Posted in Marketing, Rubber Hits Road, Strategy | 2 Comments »

Why you should care about design

January 18, 2011

I’m looking at you, serious business person.

Do you believe that graphic design is just fluff wrapped in cleverness?  Maybe you believe you’d get as much business from writing your phone number on a paper napkin and handing it out at a Miley Cyrus concert as you would from redesigning your website.

Of course pretty isn’t enough.  But strategic design supports your business objectives.  Here’s how:

1. Strategic design reflects your professionalism.

If you’re suffering from a six year old website that you built yourself in FrontPage, or you’re using a free WordPress theme that doesn’t quite line up right, you are not making a good first impression.

This kind of goes without saying, doesn’t it?  If you look small time, people will think you’re small time.  If you don’t pay attention to the details when you present yourself, how will prospects know you’ll pay attention to the details when you’re working with them?

You wouldn’t show up at an important presentation wearing a hand-me-down tie your dad bought in 1972. Don’t let outdated or bad design be a challenge you have to overcome.

2. Strategic design supports your brand.

Your brand is everything that distinguishes you from your competition, including that pesky bit of jargon, “look and feel.”

Design is an important opportunity to communicate your brand on a subconscious level.  If you sell chainsaws to lumberjacks, but your color scheme and photos and the shapes on your site all scream “butterflies and kittens,” that’s not going to resonate with your target audience (unless they happen to be in a Monty Python skit).

More subtly, if your company is supposed to be on the cutting edge of its field, and your website doesn’t embrace a modern web aesthetic, your visitors will be puzzled.

And you say: “Please, Ann.  Nobody’s going to notice that I don’t have a modern web whazzihoozit!”

You’re right.  They won’t notice.  But something will feel off.  You won’t quite seem trustworthy.  You won’t seem to know what you’re talking about.

Not the look you’re going for.

3. Strategic design helps to communicate your message.

When your design is appealing, your message has a better chance of getting through. Text content that’s wrapped in an engaging design is more likely to get read, or at least snacked on.

Think about it.  Last time you picked up a prescription, did you get a brochure that was all teeny-tiny black print on white paper with no margins?  Did you read that thing?  Of course not.

Compare that to the brochure you picked up at the car dealership: all shiny with pretty pictures of your dream car.  You probably keep that thing on your bed-side table.

That’s the pretty part.  Taking it a step further, strategic design also helps get your content read in the right order:

  • If you have multiple audiences, you can use strategic design to sort them to the right message quickly.  Group A gets attracted to this, while Group B gets attracted to that.
  • If you have a complex message, you can take people through step by step, but only if the design supports that action.  In other words, you need to get people to need to click in the right place.  That’s what strategic design does for you.

So how do you know?

You’re not a designer. So how do you evaluate a designer?

Start with style.  Find a few designers you like. But don’t stop there.

Look for strategic thinking.  Ask your potential designers to explain the choices they made.  Every design element should have a purpose.

If a designer can articulate why she did what she did, she’s more likely to be able to translate your strategic objectives into a design that works.

Posted in Graphic Design, Marketing, Strategy | 2 Comments »

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