Aligned Marketing Blog

When we conduct website evaluations for clients we usually have to spend time explaining what certain terms mean. That's too bad because these are terms, in my view, that every business person should know.

Just as someone had to explain to you what a website was in the 90's, you now need to know some of the other key terms surrounding websites and, specifically, terms associated with search engines.

Search engines are, after all, what drives traffic to your site. They are the first step in converting someone with an interest in your products and services into a paying customer.

Here are some of the more common terms and definitions.

Search engine: Search engines are programs that attempt to emulate human behavior as it relates to finding information online. There are 100's of search engines but Google, with 65%+/- market share is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla, followed by Yahoo with 19% share and Bing with 9%. Google users are more often male, older and wealthier. Yahoo searches tend to be younger and less affluent. Bing users tend to be female, older, and are most likely to convert from searcher to buyer.

Spiders, crawlers, or robots (bots): These are automated programs used by search engines to visit your website, analyze, and then index its content. You need to create and insert "Metadata" (see next bullet) and a "sitemap" to help these programs analyze your site and its content correctly. If the search engines are able to analyze your site accurately then they are more likely to deliver high-quality visitors.

Metadata & meta tags: Metadata and meta tags give the search engines a structured description of your website. They are invisible to the average visitor and appear at the beginning of the code on each webpage. Metadata must be keyword (next bullet) rich to help drive traffic to your site.

Keywords: Finding the best keywords for your site is part science and part art.The best keywords are the ones people actually type into the search engines when looking for your products and services. If those words have limited competition, so much the better. Generic terms such as "marketing," for example, are too broad and have tons of competition.

Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO is the process of editing metadata and website content to rank higher on the search engine result pages (SERPs). It has been reported that ranking at the top position (#1) on page one of Google, for example, will drive significantly more traffic (254%!) to your site than the next highest (#2) ranking position.

Natural or organic search: These terms refer to search results produced by a search engine's algorithm when indexing unpaid submissions.

Paid search or Pay-Per-Click (PPC): Paid search results are purchased (fixed fee or bid) by someone, usually the website owner or their marketing agency. They can appear in sponsor banners at the top of the search engine page or in ads that appear in the right margin of the page. They are typically highlighted with a slightly darker background so you can distinguish between paid and natural (or organic) search results.

Search engine marketing (SEM): SEM combines both natural and paid search activities. So if you are conducting both SEO and PPC activities, or campaigns, then you are actively conducting search engine marketing. In my view doing either qualifies as SEM.

Steve
800-707-9150

The great David Ogilvy was a genius at understanding customer behavior and communication. In the presentation below we see how we can apply Ogilvy style thinking to today's selling.

Steve 800-707-9150

I guess I should warn you, I’m going to pound this subject hard. The reason is the overwhelming evidence is shouting Act! yet the activity level suggests few are listening. Change is coming too slowly.

If you own or manage a business have you figured out how the web, yeah, the one that’s almost 15 years old, will change your business or industry in the next few years? Okay, so you have a website. That's not enough. That's just a first-step. We're still at the beginning of building a connected commerce-enabled world, not the end.

What I’m asking is do you really understand how the online world is going to change your business over time (going forward) and what are you doing about it? Will you lead the innovation or will you run into it like a brick wall. Will you accelerate the adopion of new technologies and platforms like Jimmie Johnson coming out of a turn or will resist change like a grease stain on Jimmie's garage floor?

Based on facts, on history, it seems very few people figure out technology in time to prevent massive shifts, new winners and losers, in industry after industry. "Change your business" is a task, not a theme for a meeting or annual report.

Companies and people are generally very slow to change. Even overwhelming evidence is often ignored. Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.

• iTunes has sold over 10 millions songs online, how many record store owners saw that coming?
• Netflix is approaching $2B in sales and the stock has climbed 182% in the last 52-weeks. Blockbuster profits declined 17% and their stock price is down 51.4% during the same period. Mom-and-pop video stores are about extinct.
• The print industry is down an estimated 30%-40% from the highs of just a few years ago, and the smart ones left standing are scrambling to get into the website building business. The rest need to get used to revenue levels that make supporting expensive printing equipment difficult at best.
• Movie producers are linking up with the cable providers to deliver newly released movies (30 days after opening in the theaters) into our living and media rooms. Do you think most theater owners have a plan to combat this new channel, this new competitor? Some probably do, maybe, but most will watch the sun set on them and never take bold action.
• Mainstream marketing firms with plush offices and high fixed cost teams of people ready to help clients with PR, web-design, advertising, branding, logo design, messaging, product launches, annual reports and channel programs are laying off people by the truckload. Small, low-overhead outfits promoting and selling their services online are thriving.
• While we’re on the subject of “mainstream,” how about the major news networks. If you still watch the evening news on CBS, NBS and ABC, you’re watching the same format everyone watched in the 50’s and 60’s. That’s remarkable! Is it any wonder that  they are now competing with Fox News, which I consider a serious news outlet, TMZ,  Comedy Central and The HuffingtonPost.com? The HuffingtonPost now has 4,000 regular contributors (literary crowd-sourcing), 11 million visitors a month and a value estimated at $100M. They were a startup in 2005.
• The United States Postal Service is trying to eliminate an entire delivery day (16.6% of their schedule) to bring costs inline with revenues while email, texting, bill paying, banking and online promotions continue to enjoy double-digit growth.
• The big brokerage firms were getting their hats handed to them by online discount firms long before the current financial crisis hit. Rather than reposition their businesses they chose to destroy their brands by selling inferior products to trusting clients. Their strategy was no more sophisticated than a thief's: "Grab what you can before the police show up..."
• And personally I don’t see how our high-cost universities can survive into the future. The web has enough interactive capabilities and bandwidth to deliver a ton of education to our screens (all of them) at a fraction of the cost we tolerate today.

I could go on...but the point is you need to take ht e"change your business" lead.

In industry after industry a new entrant or an enlightened company figures out how to leverage the web, change the competitive landscape, and grab huge chunks of market share. The previous industry leaders stand around watching, tweaking their businesses at the edges, and waiting for yesterday’s model to reemerge victoriously. That ain’t happenin'!

Yesterday is gone forever. If you’re not figuring out how to leverage the web in a big way to change your business and the competitive landscape in your industry then know this, someone else is.

Steve
800-707-9150

Website design is often in the eye of the beholder. However, no matter how great your current website design is most of the experts say websites should be updated every 3-5 years. Technologies change, your audience probably changes slightly and giving your site a fresh new look seldom hurts. With that in mind, we're updating www.aligned-marketing.com.

To get some inspiration for our new site I visited 9 "award" sites. These websites let me glance at a bunch of websites that the experts have decided are the best-of-the-best for various industry segments. I thought I'd pass the list along so you can see what the folks in-the-know are saying about website design. Please feel free to add to the list.

• Davey Awards: http://www.daveyawards.com
• EduNet: www.edunetconnect.com/awards/index.php
• Interactive Media Awards: www.interactivemediaawards.com/default.asp
• Internet Advertsing Competition: www.advertisingcompetition.org/iac
• Kasina's Awards for Financial Professionals: www.kasina.com/Page.asp?ID=493
• MuniNetGuide: www.muninetguuide.com/top_picks.php
• W3 Awards: http://www.w3award.com
• Web Marketing Association's WebAward: www.webaward.org
• Webby Awards: http://webbyawards.com

Steve
800-707-9150

Fun post: Here is a long list of websites that have thousands of video lectures from universities and scholars. Browsing through them is a good way to spark your imagination, peak inside the heads of some of the smartest people on earth, learn a foreign language or learn more about something that interests you, like medicine or physics.

• http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/av/index.htm
• 

http://worldlibrary.net/Collections.htm 


• http://freevideolectures.com/ 


• http://videolectures.net/ 


• http://lecturefox.com 

• http://www.youtube.com/user/Harvard 


• http://www.youtube.com/user/stanforduniversity 


• http://www.youtube.com/user/ncstate 


• http://www.youtube.com/user/carnegiemellonu
• 

http://www.youtube.com/user/georgiatech 


• http://www.youtube.com/user/UniversityofMinn 


• http://www.youtube.com/user/pennstate
• 

http://www.youtube.com/user/wesleyan
• http://OCW.ND.edu 


• http://OCW.Tufts.edu
• http://www.learnerstv.com/
• http://oedb.org/library/features/236-open-courseware-collections 


• http://www.careervoyages.gov/education-videos.cfm 


• http://www.sba.gov/tools/audiovideo/deliveringsuccess/index.html 


• http://www.sba.gov/training/index.html 


• http://www.sba.gov/tools/audiovideo/Podcasts/index.html 


• http://www.openculture.com/2007/07/freeonlinecourses.html
• 

http://www.videomd.com/featured_videos.aspx 


• http://www.freesciencelectures.com/ 


• http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/ 


• http://www.nachi.org/advancedcourses.htm 


• http://education-portal.com/video_library/index.html
• http://www.ocwconsortium.org/use/use-dynamic.html
• 

http://www.oercommons.org/ 


• http://selfmadescholar.com/b/self-education-resource-list/
• 

http://www.missiontolearn.com/2009/12/learn-foreign-language-online/ 



Now go learn something!

Steve
800-707-9150

This is the second of two posts on ways to find information and inspiration for creating new marketing video and blog posts. Any one of these activities, we use them all at Aligned Marketing, will produce new ideas to play with, new interests to explore, and new fodder for your marketing videos and blogs.

1. Movies and Books. The formula for a good movie or book is the same. They introduce a likable or sympathetic lead character, introduce danger or threat, which can be in the form of a person, a situation, or both, and then resolve the conflict just when you think all is lost. Use books and movies as an inspiration to write and shoot your own video. What would you do different if you were the lead character? What did you learn about management from watching The Godfather?
2. Traveling is one of the best ways to find your muse. Changing your location changes your thought patterns. New places and new people can alter and refresh the way you see the world.
3. YouTube and Flickr are both loaded with visual stimulation. You can quickly find amazing images of people doing extraordinary things, or just dumb stuff, to tickle your imagination into producing your next great video or blog.
4. If you like technology visit websites like CNET's, Fast Company's, Wired Magazine's or the TechCrunch blog and write or create a video about what you found interesting. If you like current events, visit The Wall Street Journal, CNN or USA Today's websites. Every subject has a few sites that do a great job of compiling and reporting current trends and noteworthy topics.
5. Speaking of trends: Trends are posted automatically on Yahoo and Twitter. See what all the hubbub is about, do a little research and then shoot a video or write a blog post adding your (informed) two-cents to the conversation.
6. Look in the mirror. I know, it sounds strange. It works. Sit in front of the mirror for a few minutes and let the self-reflection bring you to deeper thoughts than most of us have as we sit in front of our computers or ramble through our days. Then write about those thoughts.

I hope these short exercises and tips helps get your imagination brewing and makes the process of creating new, entertaining and insightful videos and blogs a more enjoyable experience.

Steve
800-707-9150

The purpose of this blog is to reach out to small manufacturers, distributors and retailers and see if anyone is interested in conducting a pilot for a new online catalog/ecommerce service we're helping launch.

In my time in the industrial and the electrical segments I saw many of the smaller firms struggle with the complexity and expense of online commerce. While, at the same time, there very survival depends on their ability to provide their customers what they want, and more and more customers want to order products online.

Aligned Marketing has been contacted and asked to help launch a new online service, an "eStorefront" if you will, that makes online commerce for even the smallest of firms possible and affordable. Setup is actually free, hard to beat "free."

Each storefront is customized to represent, in color and style, your existing company. It might be similar to the one you below, but it doesn't have to be:


All you have to do is provide the item images, set the prices and provide an email address where we can send the orders for fulfillment. It's fully secure to protect your and your customer's information. We process the credit cards so you receive a fully "paid for" order and even teach you how to manage the ecatalog, which is super easy, and review your monthly reports.

At the end of each month we send you a statement. It's that easy to launch an eStorefront and not only satisfy the needs of your existing customers, but make yourself available to new customers.

We can only select a few firms for our pilot. If you're interested, or know someone who might be interested, please go to the "Contact Us" page on this site and complete the form. In the "Comment" box give us an estimate of how many items you'd like to put online, 5-300 is what we're looking for depending on the business, and tell us a little about your business and the market you serve.

Thanks in advance for your consideration and feel free to give me a call if you have any questions.

Steve
800-707-9150

In this two-part series I’ll give you specific ways to find information and inspiration for new video and blog posts. Here are the first six.

1. How do you find anything? If you’re like a billion other people, you “Google” it. Do the same thing for topics you want to shoot a video about or blog about. You can type anything into Google and get more than 1,000,000 results, all pertaining to your topic. Scan through the results until you find something that sparks your imagination.
2. Delicious is one of the post popular sites on the web. Delicious describes itself as the “world’s leading social bookmarking service.” It’s packed full of the most popular bookmarks and blogs on the web as selected by its members. If you want to know what people are talking about, what they’re interested in, then visit Delicious the next time you’re looking for video or blog ideas.
3. Blogs. There are blogs about seemingly everything. I particularly like to read about video production and blogging. I incorporate the tips I pick up into the work I do and, then, if it works well, shoot a short video or write a blog post about my experience.
4. People. I’ve always been a people watcher. At Starbucks, at the mall, at the airport, it doesn’t matter, I watch people because they fascinate me. Observe parents, waiters, firemen practicing their craft long enough and I guarantee you an idea for a video or a blog will pop into your head.
5. Exercise. When I feel like something is brewing inside my head but just doesn’t seem to want to come out, or I find myself not taking decisive action, I take my dog for a long walk. You’ll be surprised how 30-45 minutes of exercise will relax your mind and release your creativity.
6. I have a couple books that list Quotes by topic and by author, there’s also several websites that do the same. Read through the quotes by topic or author and soon you’ll have all the inspiration you need to produce a new video or write an insightful blog post.

That's it for now.

Call if I can be of service.

Steve
800-707-9150