Thursday, November 19, 2009

A/B Helps You See


Whatever email marketing solution you choose, you should definitely consider whether you want to do A/B testing for your campaign. A/B testing measures the response to emails with different subject lines. This approach is a long-standing mainstay of direct marketing, and for good reason. Sometimes just a small change to a marketing message can significantly increase response. But, without trying various options and measuring their success it’s impossible to determine why a particular campaign succeeds beyond expectations, or fails to make the grade. Automated A/B testing has recently been added to Campaign Monitor and is also available with MailChimp, but it’s not yet available with Constant Contact.

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Monday, October 19, 2009

Three Picks for Email Marketing

Email campaigns and newsletters are an effective way to stay in touch with existing customers and build your business. A well-known and popular online email marketing service is Constant Contact. But, while it has name recognition, it’s not the only option available. Two other online services getting attention and positive reviews are Campaign Monitor and MailChimp. Our client Dan McCormick, of Photographytips.com, is finding Campaign Monitor to be both an effective, and economical means of distributing his company’s newsletter.

“Constant Contact charges a lot on a monthly basis to maintain an account even when no newsletter is sent out,” says Dan, “but with no additional cost whenever a newsletter goes out. Campaign Monitor charges very little on a monthly basis, but charges a lot to send out each newsletter, dependent on how many recipients there are. So, when I wasn’t regularly sending out newsletters, like every month, I was wasting money on maintaining my Constant Contact account. It is cheaper, when not sending out a lot of newsletters, to maintain an account with Campaign Monitor.”

The upside of both Constant Contact and Campaign Monitor is the full-featured service and extensive support. MailChimp on the other hand, offers bargain pricing, including an ‘always-free’ option. The trade-off: MailChimp does require users to embrace a do-it-yourself approach to some extent. One of the three services is probably right for you. Get in touch with Mastermynde and we can help you find the right fit for your email marketing needs.

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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Symbols of Success: Yen, Euros, and the Pound

Does this sound familiar? You stare at your keyboard, searching vainly for the symbol you need to display an amount in Yen, British Sterling, or Euros. Frustrated, you decide it’s just easier to spell it out. Or, perhaps you open up your web browser, Google for some currency converter website, cut and paste the appropriate character into your document and then to reformat it to match the typeface in your document? There’s an easier way to get the right symbol… and you don’t have to be a typesetting expert, graphic designer, or word processing power user. Both OS X (Macintosh) and Windows operating systems offer keystroke commands allowing you to quickly insert the correct symbol into a document.

One important note: to use the Windows symbols you need to have your numeric lock (numlock) on and use the numeric key pad on the right hand side of your keyboard.

Euro (€)
OS X - Hold down both the Shift and Option keys and type ‘2’
Windows – Hold down the Alt key and type 0128

Yen (¥)
OS X – Hold down the Option key and type ‘y’
Windows – Hold down the Alt key and type 0165

British Sterling, aka the ‘pound’ (£)
OS X – Hold down the Option key and type ‘3’
Windows – Hold down the Alt key and type 0163

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Monday, August 17, 2009

Understanding Search Engine Optimization

It’s estimated there are now more than 70 million websites and over 19 billion web pages on the Internet. For web surfers, finding the information they seek in this vast universe of data demands the use of search engines such as Google or Yahoo. It’s a credit to the programmers who code these search engines that most of the time, when you perform a web search, the key words you choose will deliver the information you’re looking for, often on the first page of results. Put simply, the system works.

How it works and how you can make it improve your website’s visibility on the Internet -- by utilizing search engine optimization and marketing, is the subject of this blog post. To keep things simple, we’ve chosen to use the terms ‘business’ and ‘customer’ to describe the owners and users of web sites respectively. However, the same principles apply – whether or not a web site is a for-profit enterprise or a free information source, or the user is looking to make a purchase, or find an answer.

The way in which Google and other search engines find, classify, and catalogue millions of sites is fairly straightforward. Web pages are retrieved and their content indexed. When a search is performed, the key words in that query are compared against the index, evaluated using mathematical algorithms that take into account parameters such as the content of the page, the number of links to the site, and the age of the site. The best matches are then displayed. However, making sure a web site can be easily found and indexed is more complex. For businesses that want their web site among the top results for a particular search, waiting for the search engine to eventually discover those web pages and add them to its index is slow and unlikely to have the desired result.

For this reason, Search Engine Optimization has become an invaluable process. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a catch-all phrase for a number of strategies and techniques that can be used to bring a web site to the attention of the search engines more quickly; to ensure it will be among the top results for a particular search, to make sure it’s included in search results for certain key words, and to make sure that this accurate, higher ranking among the search results happens in a timely fashion.

There are even more reasons to implement a SEO program. It helps ensure the ‘right’ customers are finding the site, improves ranking in relation to competitors, and often increases the credibility of those results.

No matter how well known a web site is, SEO can broaden its reach and increase its effectiveness. There may be phrases your customers use for searching that can’t be found on your website. Optimizing your copy to include them can increase the traffic to your site, or move you up in the search engine rankings. You may have a very profitable product or service you’d like more people to consider. Utilizing SEO to highlight this aspect of your business can increase your profit margin.

Because search engines rely on users to provide the criteria for a search, it’s important to know what terms your potential customers choose for their queries. SEO helps businesses understand the phrases their best customers are using in their web searches and ensure that they are including those phrases in their web pages. Some examples – are your customers looking for fishing ‘rods’ or fishing ‘poles’? In Canada, summer homes are called ‘cottages’ in the East, but Westerners call them ‘cabins’. Knowing which terms are the most used helps you adjust your content accordingly. That way, when a search engine indexes your web page, you aren’t missing out on potential visits simply because a word or two in your copy is ill-chosen. Over time SEO strategies also allow you to learn more about your customers and compare search phrases to their behaviour on your site. This assists you to make judicious decisions in the layout of your site (so that the most profitable areas are featured prominently) and to choose wisely if and when you implement paid advertising initiatives such as pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

Of course, your business probably isn’t the only one of its kind. To be competitive, you need to be among the top results in a search. Countless studies have demonstrated the importance of a good ranking, preferably on the first page of search results. The higher you rank, the more likely your link will be clicked on. Customers simply aren’t going to wade through pages of search results. They’re using the Internet because it’s fast and convenient. SEO techniques can bring you to the forefront of the search results and when applied as part of long-term plan, it can keep you there.

SEO can also make your web site’s appearance in the top results more credible. It’s well known that a newspaper article holds more weight with a reader than an advertisement, even if both are saying the same thing. On the Internet, this reality is demonstrated by users’ preference of ‘organic’ search results over that of paid placement via PPC. Pay per click works by allowing businesses to bid on certain key words. Those search results show up as ‘sponsored links’ at the top of the list or to the right of the search results. Your prospective clients will sometimes bypass these links in favour of those web sites who have naturally (organically) climbed the rankings, due to popularity and the inclusion of relevant phrases in their web pages. SEO can ensure you have the right phrases, so that the search engine brings you to the top of the search results, making your link more likely to be clicked on, rank higher in popularity, and creating a positive feedback loop where your site is visited more often, therefore more visitors are likely to want to visit your site. Which is not to say PPC campaigns are a bad idea. They have an important place in SEO, especially when you want to get into the top results quickly, without having to wait for the organic process to return results.

SEO involves a number of strategies. Acquiring links to your website from other sites is a very effective way to move up in the search results rankings. These links act as a kind of validation of your site and its contents, convincing the search engines that your site is worthy of a high ranking. The ‘code’ that works behind the scenes on your website can also be optimized. This helps the site conform to the criteria search engines use to find and rank web pages, essentially making them search engine ‘friendly’. Changes to the copy on your web site can also help. Sometimes even just some minor changes can have a very positive result. Through analyzing your web statistics, key phrases can be included in your text that correlate to the most common searches. All of these changes are then reviewed and monitored. Over time this allows you to gain a better understanding of who is visiting your site, what they are looking for, and what actions they are taking when they find you. This information lets you revise your strategies to focus on what’s successful and not waste time on initiatives with little likelihood of increasing traffic or profits.

There’s no single best way to implement an SEO program. Priorities, budget, and timeline are all factors in choosing the best plan of action. The more money you spend, the faster you will see results. Because no one has an unlimited budget however, it becomes necessary to balance good results with cost-effectiveness. If you have a small budget, but are willing to be patient, you can still work your way up the search engine rankings, especially if your SEO provider develops a well-thought-out plan at the outset.. A good SEO provider will always consider these factors before suggesting a plan of action – so that your SEO efforts deliver the best combination of fast results and a high return on the investment. Beware of SEO companies telling you what you need to do before they’ve looked at your company and determined your goals and your limitations. Look for those companies who want to work with you over time and seek to gain an understanding of your particular needs before coming up with SEO solutions.

Generally it’s going to take at least a couple of months to see obvious changes in your traffic and rankings. If your industry isn’t very competitive (in terms of SEO), it may be easier and faster for you to rise to the top. If your competitors are actively engaged in SEO however, you will need to work just as hard, or harder, to keep your website among the most visible. Some preliminary research and discussion with your SEO provider of choice should result in a realistic appraisal of the time and effort required to achieve results. Once again, beware of anyone promising instant results. If it seems too good to be true….

Of course the big question is always, “How much will it cost?”

And, of course, the answer is always the same… “It depends.”

But. at Mastermynde we’ve found $300.00 to be the absolute minimum monthly budget to create effective results for our clients. Once we’ve had a chance to review the results and gauge them against your goals, we can recommend whether spending more will have a positive result and tell you why. Typically, SEO efforts are revenue neutral after time. The money you’re spending will be offset by additional revenue. For many of our clients, the investment in SEO has made a big difference in their profitability. After seeing how effective SEO has been for them, they would no sooner remove SEO from their marketing efforts than they would disconnect their phone line.

The positive result they’ve experienced is one reason why. But there’s another. There’s an important difference between SEO and more traditional forms of marketing. Your results are easy to measure and track. Anyone who has ever spent money on a Yellow Pages ad or radio spot can attest to the frustration of spending money on advertising without knowing if it’s actually working. SEO, when combined with the data generated by Google Analytics, gives an illuminating snapshot of your site’s visitors and their behaviour.

At Mastermynde, part of our service is to provide detailed monthly reports that show site traffic changes, site traffic changes via search engines as a source, individual search phrase ranking changes, overall search phrase ranking changes, top referring phrases and sites, and where appropriate, changes in sales volume, gross revenue, inquiries, etc. Any reputable SEO firm should provide this service so you can see what effect your SEO efforts are having on your business.

It’s important to note however, that SEO is unlikely to increase the percentage of sales or enquiries from your visitors. If you currently have about 1% of your site visitors making a purchase or seeking further information, that statistic is probably going to remain about the same. How SEO makes a difference is by increasing the amount of people who find your site. More visitors means a larger pool of prospective customers for you to draw upon.

You shouldn’t be considering SEO if the challenges you wish to tackle concern making your website easy to navigate or improving the processes that visitors utilize to take actions such as online purchasing, order placement, or product searches. SEO can’t really be used to encourage a site visitor to take action (although an increase in the quality and quantity of potential customers may give that impression). These goals are usually considered a part of usability or lead generation improvements. Mastermynde also works with clients who need these services and can combine them with SEO, but it is not a part of the SEO process, which is only concerned with getting more people to find out about and visit your website. In an ideal scenario, the increased revenue from additional visitors will also allow you to implement those usability and lead-generating changes which can increase the number of visitors you are converting to paying customers and/or increase their total value to you as a paying customer, i.e. they spend more money!

The fast lane to increased visibility on the information superhighway is through the process known as ‘pay-per-click’ advertising (PPC) with programs such as Google’s Adwords. PPC lets you buy top ranking exposure in search results for certain phrases. It usually has a lower return on investment than SEO, but it’s a good way to turbocharge your short-term marketing goals, or highlight seasonal or limited-time offers by ensuring your visibility. If you have the budget, a PPC campaign is generally a valuable addition to your SEO efforts. It can however be a complex undertaking. Done wrong, you can end up buying search phrases that don’t deliver paying customers and wasting money. At Mastermynde we’ve managed countless Adwords campaigns and can ensure you’re making the right decisions to get the results you want.

Once you decide SEO can help your business, your SEO provider will need to know some things. They will want to make sure you have good statistics regarding your website performance to date. Initiatives such as print advertising, tradeshow attendance, and other online marketing efforts will also be important information for them to consider. They will have to be aware of your long and short-term marketing goals so they can best structure their SEO efforts to meet those objectives. After this initial investment in time, typically monitoring and participating in the SEO process shouldn’t require more than a couple of hours a month. If you want to market more aggressively, Mastermynde can highlight the best methods and opportunities for you to work in conjunction with the other SEO strategies to maximize the positive effects of the optimization process.

Of course, there are things you need to know about your SEO provider too. Ask them about their policies regarding working with your competitors. A reputable SEO provider will want to know which companies you consider to be your competitors, to make sure they are not already working with a business that’s chasing the same customers as you. Ask for testimonials. If they are good at their work, an SEO provider will have no qualms about letting you know who their satisfied clients are. Because effective SEO requires an ongoing effort, those companies which have long-standing accounts are probably achieving their clients’ goals and delivering effective SEO strategies. Because SEO is a fairly recent innovation in advertising, there are plenty of fly-by-night companies eager to jump on the bandwagon and make a quick buck cashing in on this trend. They may employ methods of SEO referred to as ‘black-hat’ techniques within the industry. These unscrupulous approaches usually deliver an immediate result in terms of a rise in the search engine rankings, but once the use of unethical SEO practices are uncovered, your website can end up being banned from search engines and it won’t be indexed. All of your SEO efforts are down the drain. The immediate results simply aren’t worth the risk.

In addition to the specific techniques of SEO, there’s the broader area of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This term encompasses SEO, PPC, and some other ways to increase the visibility of a website. Some techniques include paid inclusion, whereby you can pay a fee to certain search engines to index your website regularly and include it in search results. This approach can be useful when you wish do certain kinds of SEO testing, or you have a web page that is often updated, since you can schedule the frequency of indexing. Other kinds of SEM include banner ads, link-building, actively submitting sites to web directories and developing online marketing strategies. SEM strategies such as PPC and sponsored search typically offer faster, but more expensive ways of increasing the traffic to your website.

Link-building is a very effective way to market your website. By trading links with other companies who may also be targeting the same customer demographics as your business, you can leverage increase your exposure to qualified prospects. For example, a landscaping company may find it useful to have a link on the website for a plant nursery. Or, an accountant looking for new clients might seek to have links on websites for legal firms that specialize in business start-ups. Generally, these are reciprocal arrangements, where the two parties recognize the mutual benefits and trade links to each other’s websites.

To get good results, your SEO provider may suggest changes to the copy or design of your website. Generally, these will be minor adjustments to facilitate indexing by search engines, or to reflect the common phrases your customers are using to perform searches. Your SEO supplier may suggest replacing some words with close synonyms, or adding a particular phrase to additional pages. Sometimes new content may be suggested as well, if customers appear to be looking for it and it could draw more visitors. An example might be a ‘F.A.Q.’ (Frequently Asked Questions) page that anticipates what your prospective customers will want to know about your product or service. A good SEO company will seek to gain an understanding of your customers and their needs so they can identify where your site may be lacking in terms of content.

A well-designed website will probably need only small changes over time, as a better understanding of the website’s performance is gained. If a major re-design is recommended to you, it’s important to understand the reasons behind the suggestion and to ask what kind of improvements in search results you can expect from such a major undertaking. Of course, the best thing you can do is consider SEO and SEM at the outset. Doing it right the first time is the most efficient way to ensure your online presence is highly visible.

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Sunday, July 12, 2009

Time To Reconsider The Walking Fingers?

A Yellow Pages ad has been a pre-ordained part of most companies’ advertising budgets for decades. But with local search capabilities becoming more refined every day, it’s a good time to re-assess your need to be locked into a print ad in a book that’s declining in use. The big search engine companies have recognized local search as the final frontier for contextual advertising. For purely business reasons, they are dedicating significant resources to ensuring companies of all sizes have a chance to utilize the medium. The spin off benefit for smaller advertisers is an advertising medium where it’s finally possible to customize ads and localize content in an ongoing fashion at an affordable cost, enabling a changing response to the market, rather than being locked into a single advertising message (both in print and online).

If you know your Yellow Pages ad is still bringing in more money than the cost of the advertisement, you may wish to continue. But, if you’re advertising there because it’s a habit… and your customers are finding you on the Internet, it may be time to rethink where you’re allocating the budget for your marketing strategy.

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Wednesday, June 03, 2009

New Search Engines Make Their Debut

A couple of new search engines made a brief appearance in the media spotlight before everyone went back to Googling for their answers. Here’s what they hope to achieve and why Google remains the one to beat.

Bing – Microsoft’s Bright Idea
Hoping to be a big part of the burgeoning local search market, Microsoft’s new search engine is called ‘Bing’ (supposedly the sound of the ‘eureka’ light-bulb overhead moment when a great idea is born). Described as a ‘decision’ engine, the theory is Bing delivers the search result you want on the first page more often, or provides you with the alternative you seek just a click away. This will supposedly represent an improvement over Google, where search terms sometimes must be refined to get the right answer. Its numbers are climbing slowly, but Bing will have to demonstrate a real advantage over Google to have long-lasting success. Already Google is responding to other search engines ‘related search’ functions with their own version, plus a ‘Timeline’ view and the new Google Wonder Wheel, which organizes related searches in a clickable cloud around the original query (find all three of the new results views under the ‘show options’ tab of a Google results page).

Wolfram Alpha – Crunching The Numbers
There’s not much marketing value in Wolfram Alpha at present, but certain users may find the powerful functions of this computational knowledge engine very useful. Wolfram Alpha delivers calculated answers to specific types of queries. Some of the recommended searches that showcase its strengths: enter any date, enter any town, or compare any two stocks. It also computes calculations and math formulas.

Some other types of queries that deliver instant answers: ‘60 mph in kmh’ (96.56 km/h) or ‘distance between Vancouver and Calgary’ (420.5 miles or 676.8 kms… travel time by aircraft 45.9 minutes). Type ‘Vancouver’ into Wolfram Alpha and in seconds you’ll know the city’s population, current time, weather data, and map coordinates. In comparison, the same search with Google returns a list of sites such as the official city website and tourism related pages. Contrast that search with ‘Vancouver restaurants’ however and Wolfram Alpha “isn’t sure what to do with your input” while Google’s search results are unsurprisingly comprehensive and useful.

The True Course For Turbulent Times
These new search engines coming to market may have you wondering if you’re going to have to change your SEO methods. At Mastermynde we believe the best current strategies are effective, regardless of the type of search engine people choose to use. Inbound links (links to your websites) are still important. Finding and pursuing them is worth continuing. Improving and expanding content on your website is a great value as well – at least every couple of months something should be added or improved upon to bring back repeat visitors. And ensuring you are familiar with your key conversions and know how to measure them remains of very high importance – knowing what actions your customers are taking, and what brings the right kind of visitors to your site and how they get from the search engines through to the final completed action page is a vital piece of business intelligence.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Marketing In A Troubled Economy

2008 was a year characterized by change. It seems the roller-coaster ride will only continue in 2009. Our uncertain future has everyone seeking stability, trust, and value in business dealings more than ever. You can respond positively to this economic and market turmoil by highlighting the ways your company embodies those characteristics.

It takes courage to maintain, or even increase, your advertising budget in tough times. But, ongoing research and data collected over the course of several business cycles show the benefits of this courage. Cutting costs should be a worst-case scenario – only to be considered in dire circumstances. If you have to reduce your budget, consulting with Mastermynde and identifying those marketing efforts that offer the best return on investment is definitely recommended.

Your web presence is your image online. For many of your potential customers it’s going to be the first impression they’ll get. It’s certainly your first, best chance to deliver the message you want potential customers to hear, to define the brand of your company, the service you provide, and the problems you solve. It’s important to ensure it reflects professionalism and cost-effective solutions.

Start with a good plan. At Mastermynde we approach the challenges of great web design and marketing methodically. Core principles of usability are coupled with respect for the client’s needs and implemented with a focus on measurable outcomes. The results are working!