I do quite a bit of presenting to a wide range of audiences and once a quarter I present to a “group” (notice group, not just an individual) that doesn’t understand the basics of the Internet and Internet marketing. If we don’t take time to educate everyone rather than just the Internet intellectuals then we risk leaving many behind.

Yesterday I spoke to a group of juniors and seniors at Widener University. I have been doing this now for 5 years. I love interacting with the students to see what they understand about the medium they have grown up with and use at dizzying speeds. The change is dramatic and yet the biggest surprise is the lack of understanding about fundamental marketing principles which is precisely what the Brass Tacks post talks about – fundamental marketing.

Selling has always been about using new tools to engage with folks in an ever expanding network and the foundation is still the same. Have you taken the time to ask the pertinent questions? To exhibit caring? To talk about what I care about? This has always been the difference between good sales people and “great” sales people – they take the time.

Many years ago I was made a sales manager of a Yellow Pages team (remember them? Yeah. They used to actually print phone directories). Part of my job was to ride with the folks on my team to see how I could help them. This is an interesting proposition when one of the team has been selling for the Yellow Pages for over 30 years.

One day, I watched as a seasoned colleague went into a radiator repair shop and spent 45 minutes talking about his business and all kinds of other things. At about minute 30, he discovered that the owner had a salt water aquarium. For the next 15 minutes there was no other talk but the aquarium. If you’ve sold ads for as many businesses as this fellow, you get know a bit about a lot of things. Five minutes later we walked out with an order.

The ‘Like’ button is a shortcut to the start of an engagement. Do you have anything more for me? After you have attracted folks to your blog, Twitter, or Facebook page – what then? If you can’t answer that, your driving force is wrong. Decide what you want to do next and ask if it fits within the overall plan and goals of the organization. Let’s stop the ‘ready, fire, aim’ of social media once and for all.

Photo Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1285834
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Rick Simmons is a principal at Dinkum Interactive, a firm specializing in online marketing solutions for small and medium sized businesses around the globe. With more than 25 years of experience in advertising and marketing, Simmons has spent the last four years focused on search engine optimization, and other Internet marketing strategies. Reach him at 267-626-9094 or rick@dinkuminteractive.com.

Both are good automated transactional emails that seek further engagement with the company in question. The content, however, varied significantly.

CloudFlare was a bit sad that I had switched my DNS to another location and “opted out” of their service. When the company noticed this, it reached out via email to learn from the encounter. Overall, a great thing. Dreamhost went far beyond CloudFlare. For them, it’s a matter of success, not failure. They are positive, helpful, and confident.

While it’s important to be smart about your opportunities for communication and customer engagement, it’s critical that your culture shines through. In my view, CloudFlare was helpful but a bit sterile. Dreamhost, on the other hand, was engaged and solutions-oriented, ready to help if I was ‘man’ enough for it. Does your company pack a punch in its automated emails?

Photo Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/498916

Jacob Smith is a Senior Project Manager and Web Strategist with Dinkum Interactive and has led over 150 high-level consulting and website development projects over the last 10 years. He is active in both the internet and cultural communities, and served on the board of Philly Car Share, a nonprofit and one of the largest car sharing organization in the United States until helping engineer its sale to Enterprise Holdings in the summer of 2011. Originally from Southern California, Jacob and his wife, Meghan, now live in Center City Philadelphia with their young sons Rory and Duncan.

First of all, the city knows how a transportation system should run. Routes and other information are clearly marked, and a day pass that allows you to use any form of public transportation – buses, trains and the seabus (wonderful way to go from Vancouver to North Vancouver) cost all of $9. The parks in Vancouver are well designed with separate areas for pedestrians, skateboarders and bikes all separate from the cars. Most of the time, all of these various modes of transportation didn’t need to cross paths.

Now the best part – we got a map of the city from the hotel we stayed (recommend the Ramada on Pender Street). Anytime we pulled out the map and just started looking at it folks would come up to us and ask if they could help. Now if this only happened once I would have thought it was one special person. NO! It happened when we were on the train, in a bus or just strolling down the street. It got to be a bit of a joke that if we wanted to meet someone new we could just pull out the map. Not once did we pull out the map that someone did not stop to offer their help.

Here is where I started to think about the way we often treat our clients – we wait for them to ask for help with something. We all try to be helpful and tell them to contact us with any questions, but if we were really oriented to customer service we would be trying to figure out what do they say or do that indicates they are looking at a map and need help. What are the signs?

If we could figure that out, your prospects and clients would never leave you, ever, because you would always be there before they even asked.

What are you doing to look for folks who have pulled out the map?

Map Photo Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1076818

Rick Simmons is a principal at Dinkum Interactive, a firm specializing in online marketing solutions for small and medium sized businesses around the globe. With more than 25 years of experience in advertising and marketing, Simmons has spent the last four years focused on search engine optimization, and other Internet marketing strategies. Reach him at 267-626-9094 or rick@dinkuminteractive.com.

1. Start with testing the ad groups that cost the most money, but have the lowest reward. Since you can run an unlimited amount of tests concurrently within Google Adwords, there is no reason not to be testing all the time. This way, you can ensure the account is always performing at its best.

2. Remember not to test with too many variables at one time. If you are testing your keywords, don’t change your ads or landing pages. If you are testing ads, don’t change your keywords or landing pages; and if you are testing landing pages, make sure to keep your keywords and ads consistent through the test.

3. Just because one test performed well for one set of ad copy and keywords, doesn’t mean it will work across the board. When you decide on an action to take after the tests are completed, don’t assume it will work for the entire account.  Test and make necessary optimizations to different campaigns and ad groups separately.

4. Start with the basic framework for a test to ensure you stay on track. Plan out what results you would like to see, how you are going to set up and run the test, and what will you do after you get your results. By mapping out this basic framework, you will not only stay on track, but you can quickly optimize depending upon the results you receive. This is especially helpful in staying organized when you are running multiple tests at one time.

5. Start with testing two of the most important aspects of PPC: Ad Copy and Landing pages.

Always Test Landing Pages.

The content of the ads is what causes a user to click through to the site, but the content of the site will influence the user to purchase or follow through with a desired call-to-action. By using the same ad copy and keywords, test different landing pages to determine the page on your website that will produce the highest conversion rate or other desirable metric.

Test Different Variations of Ad Copy.

Change the default setting for your ads in Google Adwords to “Rotate” instead of “Optimize” . This will allow full control over the ads that are displayed. Optimize for both CTR (Click-Through-Rate) and ROI (Return-On-Investment). In doing so, you want to look for optimal spend for the highest amount of conversions.

Share a favorite PPC testing technique or story with us in the comments.

Kerrilynn Young is the resident PPC Coordinator and readily shares her knowledge with Dinkum's PPC clients. You can find her at Kerrilynn@dinkuminteractive.com.

The types of questions the folks asked who had assembled there were relevant and indicated an understanding of the interrelation between Marketing and Social Media. The most interesting one to me was a guy who was working with a sizable firm and he wanted to know how to get management to consider a venture into social media as part of the overall marketing plan. After some discussion the panel came up with this:  every company needs to step up and take charge of their obligation to be a part of society and the tools available with social media allows – no encourages – no mandates that companies now do this.

The mix of tools can be resolved for the company by where their customers are, but the decision to participate or not should never be the issue – the issue should be how, why, what to measure and my favorite – to what end.

It is time to think about social media not as a stand alone or separate outreach, but as part of an overall marketing strategy. The question should never be about convincing someone they should consider the new tools – it should be which of these tools make the most sense.

Never before has there been so many choices for marketers and yet decisions are slow to evolve. Is it because some wish for the good old days when the company was in charge? Is it fear, or is it that companies do not know what to expect and therefore opt out.

The discussions will take place whether you participate or not – it can be fun and highly rewarding if done correctly – take the time to plan a strategy for marketing that includes listening and engagement – you ignore at your own peril.

Rick Simmons is a principal at Dinkum Interactive, a firm specializing in online marketing solutions for small and medium sized businesses around the globe. With more than 25 years of experience in advertising and marketing, Simmons has spent the last four years focused on search engine optimization, and other Internet marketing strategies. Reach him at 267-626-9094 or rick@dinkuminteractive.com.

Rick Simmons is a principal at Dinkum Interactive, a firm specializing in online marketing solutions for small and medium sized businesses around the globe. With more than 25 years of experience in advertising and marketing, Simmons has spent the last four years focused on search engine optimization, and other Internet marketing strategies. Reach him at 267-626-9094 or rick@dinkuminteractive.com.

Facebook Fan Pages

Truth be told, I haven’t traditionally been a fan of Facebook as a user but that’s changing. Originally I had a personal account that enabled me to stay in touch with friends and family, not to mention keep an eye on my children. When it was suggested that I immerse myself in Facebook and its Fan Pages, I thought, really? Me?  Are you sure?

Consequently I’ve been “bitten” by the Facebook bug as both a user and a marketer. Now as Administrator of Dinkum Interactive’s Facebook Fan Page I’d like to invite you to Fan us. What can you expect of me and the Dinkum Fan Page? It will be a veritable mixed grill including:

• Social Media Observations
• A Heavy Dose of SEO
• Some Business Marketing Insights
• Daily Conversation and Opinion
• And a Touch of Philly Flavor…

I really look forward to cultivating our Facebook community and I hope that you’ll join us. As time goes on, I’ll be blogging a little more about our Fan Page and you will begin to see some changes regarding contests, promotions, speaking engagements, etc.

Please join the Dinkum Interactive Fan Page We’ll offer a great deal of useful information that you can use to increase your sales and improve your business. You won’t be sorry you did.

Thanks & I hope to see you on the Dinkum Facebook Fan Page soon.

Kelly Dunning

I recently found an ideal example of a Purple Cow. Check this out:

I enjoyed the Flight Attendant’s rap,  but found that his introduction applies to any business:

We do things just a bit differently her on Southwest. Some of us tell jokes, some of us sing and some of us just stand there and look beautiful. I , unfortunately can do none of those… So here’s the one thing that I do know how to do (well) …

Essentially, the Flight Attendant (and Southwest by inference) understands what it is that he does extraordinarily well. It may not be telling a joke, singing or being attractive, but he laid down his rap well, had fun and gave a plane load of people something memorable. Finally, I loved the end of his performance “You will not get that on United Airlines…”

Have you encountered a “Purple Cow” recently? What made that company or person so memorable?

Bill Rowland

First of all, we need to be convinced that “happy customers” are not only a measurable business metric, but a metric that is on par with revenue, cost of goods sold, etc. Thanks to expensive MBA programs, and equally expensive advertising and management consultants, in today’s complex marketing environment the “happy customer” mantra can seem rather simplistic, or worse -  downright foolish. What is it that makes us shy away from this approach?

Perhaps the word itself – “happy” – carries some baggage – i.e. “Happy Meals”, “Happy Days”, “Happy Birthday”, etc. So, in case you are in that camp, I visited thesaurus.com to develop some corollaries to the “happy customer” mantra. See if some of these phrases work better for you. Also, imagine the implications if and when these metrics are hit!

“Thrilled Customers”.
“Over-joyed Customers”.
“Ecstatic Customers”.
“Blissful Customers”.
“Tickled Customers”.
“Jubilant Customers”.
“Gleeful Customers”.
“Merry Customers”.
“Sparkling Customers”.
“Captivated Customers”.
“Elated Customers”.
“Mirthful Customers.”

I don’t know about you, but I almost feel thrilled just reading that list! Imagine if every once in a while a product you bought actually made you feel that way! The real life examples that come to mind are few and far between, so if you manage to pull it off, you will not run into a lot of competition. In fact, those who go the second mile usually have the road to themselves! So – what we’re really after are HAPPY!, Ecstatic, Captivated ,___________, ___________,  Customers. (you fill in the blanks!).

But how do we bring this approach back down into the day to day routine of business? At the risk of flogging you with another great book, I would like to point out a gem by serial entrepreneur Michael Masterson called Ready, Fire, Aim. Masterson is a big believer in focusing on customer happiness, and has seen the profitable results payoff in several different highly successful ventures.

“When customers are treated well, they stick around longer, buy more products, and recommend your business to their friends and colleagues….As a new business, making sales must be your top priority. Sales bring in cash, which can help solve most of your other new-business problems. But sales growth in and of itself should not be your main objective. You want to develop a growing business by providing quality products to an ever increasing base of happy, qualified customers. By qualified customers, I mean customers who will stay with you after their first sale and buy more products.”

Masterson goes on to discuss “CMQC” – Critical Mass of Qualified Customers. If you know the lifetime value of a happy (ecstatic, thrilled, mirthful) customer, and you have calculated how many of those customers you’ll need in order to scale up your business (the CMQC), you now have invaluable information about how many customers you will need to message, and at what cost per customer.  Once you attain your CMQC, your business will begin to grow far beyond its initial start-up phase.

In short, happy customers have a compounding effect, creating valuable sales both in the present and into the future when they will be inclined to buy your new products. Herein lies the rationale for investing in a solid customer database and messaging system. Believe it or not, the goal is not just to keep some expensive tech guys and consultants busy with work! Instead, you are building a working pool of long-term future customers who will gladly and happily – yes, maybe even joyfully – buy from you!

Next week we’ll explore the flip-side, taking a look at the potential damage that can be caused by unhappy customers in a 24/7 online age!

Jim Walker
jimwalks@yahoo.com

Rick Simmons is a principal at Dinkum Interactive, a firm specializing in online marketing solutions for small and medium sized businesses around the globe. With more than 25 years of experience in advertising and marketing, Simmons has spent the last four years focused on search engine optimization, and other Internet marketing strategies. Reach him at 267-626-9094 or rick@dinkuminteractive.com.