Our Monmouth Blog

comScore Releases April 2008 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

According to the May 22nd comScore press release “April 2008 saw Americans conduct 10.6 billion core searches, with Google Sites continuing to gain market share as the leading search engine.”

The report continued:

In April, Google Sites extended its share of core searches to 61.6 percent, up from 59.8 percent the previous month. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 20.4 percent, followed by Microsoft Sites (9.1 percent), AOL LLC (4.6 percent), and Ask Network (4.3 percent).

There is no doubt Google is the steak and the potatoes in the search industry. If you are serious about improving your Internet marketing ability you need to strongly consider how you can improve your Google search results. Search Engine Marketing should be a part of any businesses marketing plan. Local businesses can make their mark in search if there is a focused effort.

The New York Times reported a story today by The Associated Press that “Online Sales to Grow 17 Percent in ‘08” in spite of all the current negative economic news.

NEW YORK (AP)– Online spending is expected to rise a robust 17 percent this year, despite a sluggish economy that has bruised many brick-based retailers, according to an annual survey to be released Tuesday.

Retail sales online, excluding travel purchases, are set to grow to $204 billion in 2008 from $174.5 billion last year, fueled by sales of apparel, computers and autos, according to a survey conducted by Internet analysis firm Forrester Research for Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation trade group. That projection is below the 21 percent increase seen in the prior year, but industry officials attribute it to the maturing of the business, not the sluggish economy.

If your business is not already online now is a great time to establish an online presence. Below are a few reasons why this is a good idea:

• Increased Visibility
• Being online improves your credibility and brand
• Customer convenience: 24/7 access to merchandise and information
• Increase your market place from local to global
• Customers and competition are already are online
• Minimum investment with high return on investment (ROI) potential

Find out what I am doing on Twitter.

Best Wishes!

Email is a powerful but often underestimated marketing tool. According to a Direct Marketing Association report the ROI of all non-email online marketing is $22.52 compared to the estimated ROI for email marketing of $57.25 for every dollar spent. In another relevant report Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey detailed that Email marketing is twice as effective yet only 2.5% of businesses have marketing budget is allocated to email. This represents a huge opportunity and potential competitive advantage.

Despite valid concerns about spam, email is the consumers preferred medium for receiving information. Make no mistake about it spam is a legitimate marketing concern and consumer nuisance. It is estimated that an astonishing 62 billion spam message are sent event day. For email marketing to be effective your business message must get delivered to its target audience.

It not enough to have the message delivered to an email address. The message must be professional, compelling, timely, and with a call to action. Using opted in email address or rented lists must be done with purpose. If email are poorly planned and designed they can do more harm than good to your brand and reputation.

Best Wishes!

I must give credit to the marketing genius that thought this up. Invite some 2,000 brides to be to a sale with reported savings in the thousands of dollars. The story reported in The Star-Ledger makes it a success. The Internet buzz it created only furthers the potential of this marketing opportunity. It doesn’t matter if you love it or hate it as we should all learn from it.

The report describes the frenzy:

“As the doors to the store in the Bergen Town Center mall opened sharply at 8 a.m., hundreds of hootin’ and howlin’ women and the friends and family they brought along stormed racks of wedding gowns on sale for savings in the thousands of dollars.

In less than a minute, the racks were stripped bare as some 2,000 wedding gowns were carried off into the aisles to be quickly tried on by scantily-clad brides-to-be wearing sports bras, shorts, tights or bathing suits.”

Any business would benefit from this type of attention. I am fairly certain this will also get the added benefit of TV coverage in addition to the print and blog buzz it already received. Now that is what I call maximizing an opportunity.

Best Wishes!

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The OurMonmouth.com directory has everything you need for a fabulous wedding including a local list of bridal boutiques.

I recently had a fun night out with my wife. Our children were at a much anticipated sleep over at my sister in-laws and we went to the Borgata in Atlantic City. Our evening began with dinner at Bobby Flay Steak, and continued with the fine stand-up comedy of Lewis Black. We were both really looking forward to this long overdue time together. The weekend was fun and we had a great time with Lewis Black, but our dining experience at Bobby Flays was outstanding, and that got me thinking.

Bobby Flay has a marketing machine with his multiple food network shows, and he does not disappoint. Everything from the quality, preparation, and presentation of the food to the service and the décor combines for a world class experience. Bobby’s unique cooking style was prominent and the staff did a good job explaining the menu helping us make perfect selections. There really is a recipe to success and every business can apply it if you take these principles to heart.

The marketing. Yes, I understand not everyone is going to have multiple network TV shows, but your business plan must include a way to reach your target market. In Bobby’s case the food network is perfect to attract Bobby’s target market. It worked like a charm on me… As business owners we should look to identify inexpensive ways to reach our target market. Ads, newspapers and magazines in most cases are overpriced and less effective. A good marketing plan contains high ROI advertising opportunities that enable us to track results. From the results you can make small adjustments in plan along the way to refine and improve it.

The experience. My expectation for Bobby’s restaurant was very high. What made this meal special was that my already high expectation was exceeded. This is where many businesses go wrong. Client experience should not be taken for granted and must be paid attention to. All of our clients have a minimum set of standards they accept from businesses they are patrons of. Complaints and lack of repeat business occur when expectations are not met. When client expectations are exceeded good will, referrals, and people will talk (or blog) about you. This blog post is the direct result of exceeding my expectations. Can you think of a better ad? I wanted to share my fantastic experience with you. Now that is powerful marketing.

As business owners we need to think about our ingredients for success. Are we reaching our target market with our business message? Is our product or service unique? What makes doing business with us special? How do we service clients to create an exceptional experience? Think about the places you like to do business with. Where do you like to shop? Apply the lessons learned to your business and the sky is the limit.

Now if Bobby Flays Steak only served breakfast….

Best wishes.

ourmonmouth.com offers a local list of steak houses.

I am a firm believer in relationship marketing and have talked about it in previous posts. The value and returns that relationship marketing potentially offers can be significant. When was the last time you had a casual discussion with one of your top clients? Does that leave you with an unease feeling? It might be time to deepen your relationships with your clients.

I suggest making plans on shorter notice (2 days) as a casual invite to a friendly restaurant where you and your client can talk. How the meeting goes all depends on what you want to get out of it. Either way you will have the opportunity to thank them for their business but you can also use the occasion to find other business opportunities. For example:

How can I better serve your needs?
Has our ________ met your expectations?
Would you recommend me?
What can I do better?

These are just a few examples of the types of questions you can ask your valued clients. The whole point is to get into a dialog to learn about client needs and how you can better serve them.

This type of meeting not only strengthens relationships with a client but helps you make informed improvements that will not only increase client retention but also attract new clients.

Let me know how your meeting goes!

Wishing you Success!

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As we begin to implement our business plans for 2008 nobody should question the value of the Internet to any business. The numbers are clear and compelling:

- 71% of all Americans (over 237,000,000 people) use the Internet on a regular basis. (Source: internetworldstats.com)
- 91% of Internet users use a search engine to find information. (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking)
- 78% of Internet users research a product or service before buying it. (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking)

For most businesses it is not the question of why should I have my business on the Internet but how. This can be a significant challenge given the number of options that are available in the market. Companies like Yahoo and Google would be happy to get you started and by the way so would the Yellow Pages and hundreds of other web developers and marketers. How as a business owner can you make an informed decision without investing so much time that it distracts you from your business?

It is important for anyone who is interested in taking the first step to do some homework, and there is plenty of information on the Internet. If you have a general understanding of some of the basic technology this will be very helpful as you take your first steps forward. Have a general understanding of what a Domain name and hosting is. Write down all of your questions as you explore the information. What websites that you use do you like? What don’t you like about other websites? Remember your website will be your business card to the world.

Take a look at your competition and see what they are doing on the Internet. Do they have a website? Are they doing PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising? Are they collecting eMail address and marketing via email. These are just a few basic marketing activities the Internet has to offer. Is your competition taking advantage of them?

Once you have an idea of what you would like to accomplish online and have taken a look at the competition the next important step is to determine whom to work with. How comfortable are you with the technology? Are you the type of person that needs likes handholding? Or do you want to be in control of every step? Do you want to hand the reigns over to expert? Do you want to work locally or with a large corporation? What is your budget?

Based on the answers to these questions there is a solution for every business. My advice is to speak to several companies and get proposals from all of them. Once you have the proposals in hand ask yourself the following. Do they understand your business, your clients, and market place? Do they have a track record of success? Are they accessible if there is an issue? Do they have references? Will you be an account number or a valued client? Now your ready to make a decision.

The Internet can be a catalyst to bring any business to the next level and beyond. No matter what choices your make, now is the time to put it together and make it happen in 2008.

Wishing you success.

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Client segmentation can be an important marketing tool and sales practice management technique to help increase your marketing efficiency and improve your sales. Traditional sales roles, such as the brokerage or insurance industries, have been using market segmentation techniques for years, but it can be used effectively in any business. Client segmentation is the practice of dividing customers or prospects into groups that are similar in specific ways relevant to marketing, such as age, gender, interests, geography, school, industry, spending habits, and so on.

For this exercise, I want to focus on top clients. Therefore, your criteria for grading client segmentation are on the basis of profitability. What is the total revenue generated for each client? How much time is invested in each transaction (is less is better)? How important is this client to my business (referrals/relationships)? These questions are the more important criteria, but I also like to ask the question do I enjoy working with this client?

The most often used term for a top client is “A list”. In most sales circuits this is known as the “A Book” although there are other less used terms such as “gold” or “diamond”. This segment may be broken down into four groups labeled A, B, C, and D. These percentages are guidelines, but they usually fall out something like this:

• “A”: top clients 20%
• “B”: good clients 40%
• “C”: potential 35%
• “D”: not worth it 5%

Once you have completed this exercise, I suggest that you “tag” these clients so that you can easily filter client lists in the future. Any CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software should have this function. Microsoft Outlook Business Contact Manager has a field called “account rating”, but this can also easily done in an Excel format with a few columns and simply sort your columns.

Once you have identified your “A list” it is time to get your marketing campaign ready for action. It can be as simple as a “thank you” telephone call or more elaborate like a client appreciation day. Remember the goal is to improve your sales so be creative and have fun.

What other tips and sales practices do you use to market to your “A List”?

Regards,
Howard

In a July 30th Press Release, a Yahoo and comScore study finds online consumers who pre-shop on the Internet spend more in-store. The compelling study showed that consumers who search and pre-shop online spend 41% more in-store when compared to consumers not exposed to online advertising.

“Although recent research cites 89 percent* of consumers shop for information about products online, less than 7 percent** of retail sales actually take place online,” said Amy Vener, Senior Director of Retail Category at Yahoo! “This means retailers have a prime opportunity to engage this audience of ‘pre-shoppers’ through online advertising to capture incremental sales in-store.”

This represents a competitive advantage for you over businesses that do not effectively market on the Internet, but also as a means to increase your average transaction. In order to make the most of your Internet opportunities make sure you are following a basic website maintenance schedule which I outlined in a previous post.

Here are a few things to do in order to improve your online marketing effectiveness:

• Review your website for any visual defects
• Check your links, nothing turns away a potential customer like a 404 page not found error
• Update your online marketing campaigns (Google Adwords or others)
• Complete a search engine optimization project

Remember the importance of a professional appearance and reaching your target audience online. The fantastic thing about the Internet is the ease and convenience it allows your potential clients and prospects to find out information about you. Put your best foot forward!

Regards,

Howard

* BIG Research 2007

** Forrester State of Retailing Online 2007

When was the last time you asked a satisfied customer for a referral? If you don’t do this on a regular basis you are missing an important opportunity to generate more business. Asking for referrals takes a bit of discipline and strategy, but once you have established a system becomes a habit. Asking for referrals is a trait that successful businesses have and embrace.

Why are referrals so important?

Referrals are the best way to generate a future source of warm leads for your business by tapping your most valuable resource, your clients. Here are a few more reasons why referrals are important to your business:

• instant credibility
• cost effective (asking for one is cheap!)
• are easy to get
• most importantly, their ability to generate future prospects and leads

When to ask for a referral?

The best time to ask for a referral is right after you complete a transaction, especially if you dazzled your client with exceptional service. Asking for a referral should not be limited to any one particular time so position yourself for future opportunities. For example, a thank you note for past business is a great opportunity to ask for referrals. The thank you note is a great way to stay in contact with your client (relationship management) and ask for a referral. Another opportunity could be a holiday or birthday card.

Remember the key to getting referrals is to ask for them. Referrals are another powerful relationship marketing tool to generate more leads and prospects for your business.

How do you generate referrals for your business?

Regards,

Howard