The tools you use for web marketing and website management are important, and there are so many of them out there for you to use. Most people find a few that become favorites and typically end up paying for at least one. However, Google offers a variety of tools for free that you should absolutely check out.
What is marketing myopia? Simply put: it's tunnel vision. More specifically, it's what occurs when a business becomes complacent in its marketing efforts, and either focuses too much on the products they sell and not enough on the benefits it provides the user, or focuses far too much on one marketing channel and ignores others.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the more times you connect with your customers, the more likely they are to remember you and choose your company's product and/or services over a competitor.
In marketing, the official term is called ‘touches’ – an instance where your customers see or interact with your company.
When it comes to customer delight [see the Four Actions of Inbound], 'touches' can go a long way. According to Stacy Willis on iMPACT, "When expectations are met, you have customer satisfaction. When expectations are exceeded, you achieve customer delight. How do you get there? By being human. Listen to your customer and their needs."
Studies have shown that it takes at least 7 or more touches to generate a person’s interest.
So, how do you make sure you interact with customers in an engaging way and often enough so that your company becomes memorable without you spending a fortune trying to do so?
Years ago, I was at a conference in Orlando, Florida and happened to stay across the street from Downtown Disney. I spent each of my nights there walking around, riding the water taxi, eating dinner and just relaxing. Usually when I travel for work, it’s all about work. Rarely do I find the time to enjoy my surroundings, so this was new for me.
I started thinking a bit about what Disney knows how to do right, and that is to provide the customer an experience that they won't forget. As I sat there one evening eating dinner I realized that my reality seemed suspended for a short while.
Think about Las Vegas. Every so often, a casino will be torn down so that there can be room made for a new one. The casinos get bigger and better. Moreover, they are all designed to give the visitors an experience that is otherworldly. It’s a design that is meant to suspend reality.
Now, I can understand that people want different experiences, but which experience do you think fosters a sense of excitement for your customers? Which experience do you think causes people to tell their friends? Which experience is worth more to the consumer?
The eight-hour workday is a tired and old concept. It's time to put aside this tired, arcane way of thinking about work. In order to understand how to fix it, we have to understand why we have the eight-hour workday to begin with.
In the late 1800s, full-time manufacturing employees would work around 100 hours per week. Death and injury were commonplace. It wasn't uncommon for children to put in far more hours than we think reasonable today in the factories, fields, mills, and mines.
Last year we tested, and then made official, Office Free Friday. It's been a very cool thing for us as a company because it's provided us some much-needed focus time each week where our customers expect us to be a little less available.
If you aren't interested in clicking through to that announcement link, I'll give you the simple gist here. On Fridays, we officially close our office and our phones go directly to voicemail. It's still a working day, but because the office is closed, our employees have an option to work wherever they want.
I had a neighbor ask to pick my brain about what it takes to move into the web design and development field. She is starting her degree program and still has a couple of years but is wise to start working toward her career now. I was originally just going to respond to her directly but I figured I’d write a blog post because I think it might be helpful to others, too.
One thing to note: the answers I give here are based on how we do things at Tribute Media but we are a little unique… mostly in how we work with our employees. Our office is closed on Fridays and we encourage our employees to work remotely every Friday. Most agencies/companies will expect their employees to work on site but allow contractors to work wherever. There is something positive creatively about working on-site with your team that you can’t get remotely.
Oh, and a little, not-so-humble brag here.
Last year, Jillian and I attended the Best Places to Work in Idaho ceremony for the first time. We felt proud to be surrounded by so many incredible local employers, and we were buzzing with anticipation (and maybe a little wine).
Autumn Kersey of Treasure Valley Children's Theater began calling up winners from our category. Believe me, we were so honored to be there, we would have been thrilled to be called up first to accept the 10th place award. With each winner that wasn't us, our eyes grew wider. 10th, 9th, 8th, 7th--and these were amazing companies we respect and admire! We couldn't believe it when Autumn announced her "friends in downtown Meridian, Tribute Media" for 5th place.
Years ago, in a different life, I was a sales manager in a different industry. I had ten sales associates working for me in outside sales. We won some and we lost some.
Whether we won a deal or lost a deal, I would ask my sales rep to debrief. I wanted to know how it all worked out. I was always much more interested in the reasons we lost deals than the reasons we won deals.
In that highly commoditized industry, more often than not, the reason for losing a deal came back as, "We were too expensive."
That always frustrated me; not because we were over-priced but because the sales rep didn't understand that price is only one part of the buying decision. It's usually not even the most important part.
Let me get to the switch on that bait right off the bat. Your sales pitch is probably okay. What really sucks is your sales approach. But, that might not make you feel any better.
The sales world is changing. In my opinion, the consumer isn’t really changing but, instead, the options available to consumers in they way they buy makes the consumer realize they don’t have to put up with the crap traditional sales people spin. Inbound marketing has changed the way people buy and if sales people are still using the old methods of selling the consumer simply gets angry.