Marketing and advertising advice for owner-operated businesses
Your website is a two-dimensional experience of words and pictures. Design alone can’t add the third human dimension made possible when you add video.
Video opens a window into your business that connects you face-to-face with visitors. But, be warned: bad video is worse than none at all. Concentrate on these three basics to create a video that makes a positive contribution to your site:Continue Reading
You may have noticed a lapse in posts here at adMISSIONs. A funny thing happened along the way from May to today: summer break. I consciously chose to set posting here aside for the season. I spent time instead generating posts in the memories of my children because this summer demanded special attention. This is how I spent my summer vacation.
My son will be 17 in a few months. Accompanying him on a two-week, once-in-a-lifetime trip to New Mexico’s Philmont Scout Ranch trumped every other card on my table. There’s something beyond words in the experience of having the boy you’ve raised cheering you on to the 12,441 foot summit of Mount Baldy; the last 50 yards took nearly an hour. Those fourteen days with my son will be among the most precious memories I’ll have of him the rest of my life. John must have loved it because two weeks after coming home, he packed his trunk and headed off to Boy Scout summer camp in Oklahoma.
My children take turns every summer in Utah visiting my mom. We call it Camp Grammy because she pulls together side-trips and activities with each of them in mind. Only Kate and Zuzu made the trip this summer. John and I had New Mexico. Stella had DECATS–a gifted and talented summer program. And, then she answered the call of the sea….
From painter to rudder, Stella spent two weeks sailing to briny deep of Clear Lake at Camp Casa Mare. Her near-daily dispatches became the highlight of our mail call.
Just before leaving for Philmont, I began having trouble with my MacBookPro. Disc searches were slowing, strange error messages were popping up. I thought it might be a too-full hard-drive. I returned from my trip to discover something far more disastrous: a failing drive. Two weeks of plucking off survivors, replacing and rebuilding the drive took me way off course. So much for quiet months of summer.
We got in some day trips, splashed in the pool, and spent time around board games. Among our trips was a run to see the chainsaw art created on Galveston Island from the oaks fallen by Hurricane Ike. It was hotter than hell that day, but a fun time in the end. Parents will understand that better than I can explain.
This may be the last summer of us all together. With John’s 17th birthday coming in December, his thoughts are shifting to college, cash, and cars. Kate is similarly shifting into high school mode preparing for her freshman year at Saint Agnes. Both of them are already talking about summer jobs next year. So, time with them this summer took first priority. Even so, I wish there had been a way to have had more of it. We’re about two weeks from uniforms, lunchboxes, and early rising.
Life is often better remembered than experienced. This summer, I made sure we all had enough experiences to remember for many summers to come. Thanks for understanding.
A magazine that updates scores. Ads showing a car driving down the road and, at a touch, reveals specs and customized pricing. News stories that link to background information. Meet the coming face of interactive magazine publishing . Are your online advertising best practices ready for this new technology?
Check out examples interactive advertising in a magazine being developed now. Look past the corpo-speak and see the future of how your customers will be consuming information in the near future. Near as in when the iPad comes out.
Don’t think this advance is way off or reserved just for the big boys. The ability to create this kind of interactive advertising will come to the local level quickly. How can you prepare? Here are three things you can do now:
Consider how you currently execute banner advertising. If your ad simply transports a reader to your home page, you’re missing out. The shortest path to conversion is relevant results; a click is my question, where you take me is the answer.
Instead of just bringing visitors to your home page, choose specific points of your banner ad to bring visitors relevant points on your site. Click on the product, you’re taken to that specific product’s page. Click on copy in your ad and it brings you to an expanded version with more information. The company logo in an ad on the sports page takes visitors to a landing page written for sports-minded customers.
Whether you’re paying by click or impressions, the more efficiently you resolve each click, the more likely you’ll convert visitors into customers. It starts by answering the questions customers are really asking (not the ones you want them to ask) quickly and efficiently.
Video brings visitors into your business in a way words alone can’t. It’s a form of interactive advertising that communicates differently than cable or TV video; don’t consider using your TV spot on your site as having video. In fact, TV spots on websites can create a conversational disconnect.
Web video works best when it’s person-to-person conversational. Grab a Flip Video camera and welcome a customer as you would when they come into the store. Interview some of your customers. Don’t worry about making it pretty; the more authentic is looks, the more believable the message.
Creating polls or surveys is an easy way to solicit customer input and generate better engagement. Survey Monkey gives you the ability to conduct live polls of your web visitors and display ongoing results live. Your online advertising immediately appears more connected and customers gain a greater sense of involvement.
You may get some poll results you don’t like. If you have a product or service customers aren’t happy with, they’ll tell you. That’s a good thing. If they’re already unhappy, at least now you have a way of addressing it with them and in front of everyone else. You’ll just have to walk your customer service talk.
Not only will making these adjustments enhance the effectiveness of your online advertising now, but when time comes for interactive media in dynamic publications, you’ll already have the necessary best practices in place.
As credits roll on 2009, before the lights come up and we move on to a new year, I suggest you answer this question: What is your why?
Next week gyms will be crowded, sporting goods stores will be sold out of workout togs. Many a diet will begin. Noble efforts every one of them; too many will fade and fail. Without an adequate why, the how has nothing to steady it when winds of resistance and same-old-same-old blow.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there”
–Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
Why before How is a principle every bit as important to your bottom-line as it is your waistline.Whether it be business practice or marketing initiative, failure to define your why in ten words or less that you can recall without effort will put the odds against your success.
Just like gyms and sporting goods stores, office supply stores will be a buzz with anxious buyers of organizational tools next week too. Every team is in first place on opening day and 1/1/10 seems a ripe time to embrace the latest organizational method.
I can’t complain. You might not be reading these words had a man I worked for about 25 years ago not given Franklin Dayplanners to his employees as Christmas gifts. Many scoffed at the idea. I took it to heart.
After two weeks of listening to Hyrum Smith explain his system to identify and integrate my guiding principles, I found a why beckoning me to get into radio sales. That why led me to become top billing rep at a major station, then tops in the market, then out to start the firm I run today. Why? Exactly. Because I knew my why.
Guy Kawasaki makes an excellent point: instead of merely making money, what if we all set out this year to make meaning in our businesses? Invest a couple minutes to watch and consider his suggestion. 2010 could be just another year of the same, or an explosive 12 months–if you’re willing to connect with and follow your why.
