Marketing for Success - Mike Vilimek

Savvy Marketing by Obama

There is little doubt that the Obama campaign will be considered as one of the best examples of presidential marketing in US history. The campaign was dominant in online marketing with Obama having around 3 million supporters on Facebook, 4 times as many friends as his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, on MySpace.com, and an email contact list of almost 10 million addresses.

What’s even more impressive is that within 24 hours of last week’s historic vote, Obama’s team launched a new web site, Change.gov to reach out and connect with the public. In addition to a countdown to the January 20 inauguration, the site has a newsroom and even a blog. The site is also very interactive allow visitors to share their vision of Obama’s presidency and even apply for jobs.  

 

Obama is the first president in a long time to have such a tremendous following among the youth of America, and he continues to do the right things in order to maintain that following. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found almost half of Americans ages 18 to 29 turned to the Internet as their major source of election news in 2008.While I have no proof, I would image the majority of them voted for Obama.

Landing Pages

Where do your PPC ads link to? They should link to a page specifically designed to function as an extension of your PPC ad campaign, often called a landing page. They are not generally part of your existing website and are not linked through the site map. Landing pages usually have 2 purposes:

1.       Reinforce the message of the PPC ad and encourage the visitor on to a goal conversion.

2.       Allow you to track how effectively your PPC ads are drawing qualified traffic and how well you are converting that traffic.

You should have a unique landing page that is tailored for each unique PPC ad campaign. The landing page must provide what your PPC ad promised or you risk having a large bounce rate.

Think like one of your buyers. What information do they need to reach their goal? That’s the information you should provide. But don’t overcrowd the page, you don’t want to the buyer to become distracted. Make the next step within your conversion process the most prominent feature. Eg. If your goal is for visitors to sign-up for a newsletter, then the sign-up form should be front and centre.

As with PPC ads themselves, you should be experimenting with different landing pages and testing to see which ones are the most effective. It should be an ongoing process that never really finishes.

Writing for Your Buyers

When writing press releases, blogs, or website content, it seems too many companies use words and phrases that mean nothing to their most important audience, their buyers. Have you used the following terms in your recent communications? Flexible, robust, world class, cutting-edge, groundbreaking, turnkey, the list goes on and on. Do you think these terms mean anything to your customers? Well they don’t. They are so overused and meaningless; they don’t provide any value in your communications.

Every time your company communicates with the outside world, regardless of the medium, use it as an opportunity to connect with your buyers. Think of the problems that your customers face and the language in which they would use. Communicate less about the features of your product and more about solving your buyers’ problems. This will also improve your visibility in search engines, as potential buyers will search for solutions to their problems using their own language. Can you image someone searching for a turnkey, flexible, robust solution? I don’t think so.

Before releasing any content, always ask yourself, “Am I writing for my buyers?”

Are Your Customers Happy With Your Website?

Having spent some time in Montreal, I recently heard from a colleague about a company with offices here called iPerceptions. The company focuses on optimizing and improving websites by using customer feedback through online experiences.

What caught my attention was their simple, but powerful initial approach for clients. They encourage you to ask your website visitors 4 questions:

1. Who is coming to your website?
2. Why are they there?
3. How are you doing?
4. What do you need to fix?

Do you know the answers to these questions? Your visitors do. And their answers can significantly improve your site.