Blog & Website Marketing Resources
I’m not usually a fan of storing files in places that aren’t completely under my control. I guess I’m too paranoid for it. However, I’ve been using an online storage service called Dropbox for a couple of months now and I really really like it. It’s drop dead simple to use, quick, and is very [...]
Thank you for subscribing to Blueverse!
Dropbox: A Great Online Storage Tool
Time Spent: 15 minutes
$ Made: $0
Main Focus: Nothing worthwhile
Today’s Value (1 to 10): 1
Overall Value (1 to 10): 1
My Thoughts: I’m sure you’re probably sick of me saying stuff like “nothing new to report” and “no new videos”. I apologize, but that’s the honest review pretty much every day for the last 11 days. [...]
Thank you for subscribing to Blueverse!
Days 10 & 11 – Shoemoney System Review
Standing out in a crowd of superstars is damn tough. Good thing there aren’t that many of them.
Lack of commitment and willingness to suffer personal sacrifice gives everyone else a fighting chance.
You should be glad that there are so many people out there that don’t want to take the extra step, or who decide to stop when they’re so close to the finish line. If it wasn’t for people who give up, it would be harder to stand out.
Remember the joke about two guys who run into a bear? The first guy immediately kneels and tightens the laces on his shoes.
The first guy yells out, “do you really think you can outrun a bear?”
“No. But I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you”.
Keep going when it gets tough. Keep pushing and striving and trying when everyone around you gives up. You will succeed. You just have to go farther than the other guy.
Celebrate the average Joe. If it wasn’t for him, then I wouldn’t be able to spot you as easily as I can.
Now tighten those show laces and run,
Toff Ward
OpenSourceMarketer.com
Accelerate your business online using LinkedIn.
Live optimization is often one of our audience’s favorite aspects of a MarketingExperiments web clinic. For those not familiar with the term, live optimization is when marketers submit their advertising and marketing materials and, if chosen, receive free advice from our optimization researchers. 
For our April 28 web clinic – Integrate Your Marketing: How one company combined offline and online marketing to increase subscriptions by 124% – Jimmy Ellis (Director of Optimization), Gina Townsend (Senior Research Manager), and Corey Trent (Research Analyst) will apply the same MarketingExperiments Optimization methodologies that have driven triple-digit conversion gains for our Research Partners to your offline and online marketing (if you are chosen).
This clinic will focus on the integration of traditional and digital marketing. To have your materials considered for live optimization, just register for Wednesday’s free web clinic and complete the fields on the registration form. Or, send your creative (direct mail, print ad, billboard, you name it), along with the online marketing it corresponds with, to WebClinics@MarketingExperiments.com.
PLUS: We’ll pick one lucky marketer at random to win free enrollment in one of our Online Training and Certification Courses (winner chooses).
Related Resources
Live optimization + lead generation = better B2B landing pages in one hour
Live optimization: Boost your PPC campaign conversions
Time Spent: 30 minutes
$ Made: $0
Main Focus: Taking affiliate marketing into my own hands!
Today’s Value (1 to 10): 1
Overall Value (1 to 10): 1
My Thoughts: Guess I complained too much about not getting videos fast enough. Today when I logged in, not only did I not have a new video to watch, but all [...]
Thank you for subscribing to Blueverse!
Day 9 – Shoemoney System Review
Time Spent: 30 minutes
$ Made: $0
Main Focus: Create our first affiliate network account
Today’s Value (1 to 10): 2
Overall Value (1 to 10): 1
My Thoughts: 2 days in a row now that I’ve gotten a new video to watch. Maybe we’re picking up some steam here. Although, for every video they give me, 2 more [...]
Thank you for subscribing to Blueverse!
Day 8 – Shoemoney System Review
If you’ve flipped through your favorite print magazine lately, you might have seen an ad for a product you’ve never seen advertised to consumers before – magazines. In fact, magazines now even have their own tagline – The Power of Print.
At the same time, the publishing industry is falling all over itself to promote the supremacy and fresh capabilities possible with every new digital distribution tool (Heart is even looking at buying digital-marketing firm iCrossing). It is quite a post-modern experience for my print version of The Wall Street Journal to try to sell me on reading that issue on the iPad instead.
The way the publishing industry has reacted to the digital world is akin to your wife trumpeting how wonderful your marriage has been at the same time she suggests you would have been much happier with her sister.
I kid because I love
I kid the publishing industry because I love it so much. In my job, I read every publication I can get my hands on, and savor the knowledge awaiting me in every bound issue that arrives in my mailbox.
But I’m also picking on the publishers because I don’t want to turn that harsh spotlight on myself and my fellow marketers. Truth be told, while all these digital developments are exciting and spark the creativity inherent in marketers, they’re also a little scary.
And while there are sublime examples of marketers combining the traditional with the 2.0, many marketers are losing money by not putting the puzzle pieces together correctly.
On our free April 28th web clinic – Integrate Your Marketing: How one company combined offline and online marketing to increase subscriptions by 124% – we’ll share the latest discoveries to help you do just that. In the meantime, here is a look at how your peers are making the connection…
Start with the problem
For too long marketing budgets have been set and then an arbitrary percentage, say 10%, went to online without a true understanding of its impact. My firm, WCM, no longer differentiates between traditional and online because the separation is not necessary and new tools are constantly being developed. Online is mainstream.
Moving forward: Start with the business problem. Then make a list of the techniques you can use to solve that problem with marketing. Prioritize the list and diagram the best course of action. See where the connections lead – I suspect traditional is driving interaction through online channels.
Example: For a hospital network, we are creating pre-scheduled, topic-specific discussions on Facebook. (Most companies still use Facebook as a broad discussion board). By using traditional marketing (TV, radio, posters), we will drive patients and caregivers to the daily discussion and grow the loyal and active fan base. Monday is a discussion on nutrition and diets for those combating cancer, Tuesday is all about fashion tips (“looking beautiful when your hair is gone”) etc.
Marketing tool selection should be based on how you want to interact with your audience, but more importantly, how they prefer to be communicated with. For example, those struggling with cancer generally crave interaction with people. Social media makes it happen.
– Rick McKenna, President of Wallwork Curry McKenna
The hub or the mirror
There are a thousand different techniques used to integrate online and offline marketing. For a lot of companies, the website is the “hub” that all other marketing efforts connect with. And if the website is not a “hub” then it works as a “mirror” to reflect what other channels are promoting.
With that in mind, online and offline marketing work best in tandem. And they work best when there is a common strategy with outlined goals and pre-defined benchmarks for evaluation.
Here are some obvious techniques:
- Developing a plan for accounting for untrackable web sales (it’s going to happen)
- Making sure a website’s URL can be used as a response mechanism
- Including the URL in all marketing efforts (if it fits strategy)
- Allow the website to “enhance” the content or messaging of your offline efforts
- Other than the URL, make sure your site can be found; using keywords in offline marketing that are mirrored through paid and organic search
In the end, your customers do not necessarily care about the techniques used, only that their ease of shopping or ordering or learning, etc. is as seamless and unobtrusive as possible.
– John Kennerty, Director of Marketing at Sinclair Institute
Communication and eliminating silos
You must first align your goals, objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) around one strategy and then speak the same voice across all channels. The communication internally and externally must mesh and meet the customer’s expectations in each channel.
Beyond this, cross promotion and teasers are great. Examples:
- In your catalog, place the copy of a hot blog, but only put the first couple of lines and refer to the blog. Or have a fun fact and point people online to learn more.
- Make your homepage either match any direct mail or retail pieces that are active or at least have a space for it.
- Have a virtual catalog online and/or a virtual showroom.
- Have your email messages, direct mail, direct response television (DRTV) or other advertising hit at the same time with the same message. Make sure your promotions/discounts are available through any ordering method.
There are many other examples and ideas, but at the core you must stay true to your brand and message in all channels.
– Steve A. Cates, VP of Multichannel Marketing at Carrot-Top Industries
A detailed method
Here is a strategy we tested that has worked successfully for us since 1999. We used it for over 30 Fortune 500 clients, mostly publishers. Word of warning: excellent technology will not take a bad campaign and make it good. However, if you have an otherwise excellent effort, it’s worth adding powerful technology behind it. Passing some of Marketing Experiments’ exams would truly help you understand the power of this method.
Overview:
1. A direct mail piece goes out with a common URL and a unique login ID for each recipient.
2. There is an incentive and a deadline to encourage recipients to log in.
3. When they do, the campaign owner will be notified.
4. Additional enhancements (leads delivered by email, SMS, stored and exported to delimited or mainframe formats), are all possible to add value to your client (if you are an agency).
A brief non-technical explanation:
Direct mail list (database if you will) gets an additional field, let’s call it UniqueID. This number can track each individual as well as campaign constants (campaign ID, incentive used, etc).
The recipient is offered an attractive incentive in the mail piece to log in with their unique ID (raise motivation).
When a login occurs, the campaign owner is notified. If a form must be completed, the information we already have about recipient can be conveniently pre-populated (reduced friction).
Notice how even if they DO NOT proceed to claim your offer (but just log in) you are still notified, giving you the ability to identify “warm leads.”
If the user is supposed to complete a form, this can be pre-populated with variables which display values from the same database used for the mailing. When they log in, the form they are supposed to use for ordering is already filled out (they can correct any mistakes / update info and continue).
Some marketers make intentional mistakes, to “push a button” in people to correct a misspelling (and in the process subscribe to something they offered).
Simply having the technology (your prospect receives a mail piece that allows them to log in to claim a desirable bonus) puts the merchant in a better light (reduced anxiety).
If the campaign is an email, the login step can be eliminated. Clients can click and land directly on a pre-populated form or personalized welcome / landing page.
This is something I’ve done for a decade and I can elaborate at length, if anyone is interested in the technical details.
– Dan Banici, Business Analyst at Incentive Server
Win a free ticket
Are your worlds colliding? Or are you a smooth operator at making the digital and the analog flow seamlessly together? Let us know how you integrate traditional and digital marketing in the comments section. Our favorite comment will win a free ticket to the 2010 Online Marketing ROI Tour.
UPDATE: Congratulations to Paul Pacun, winner of a free ticket to the 2010 Online Marketing ROI Tour.
Related Resources
Are video clips medium-agnostic?
Time Spent: 30 minutes
$ Made: $0
Main Focus: ClickBank getting started video
Overall Value (1 to 10): 1
My Thoughts: FINALLY…a new video. Today was a video about getting started with ClickBank. A good presentation showing how to sign up for a ClickBank account and a very very basic explanation of how to find a product on [...]
Thank you for subscribing to Blueverse!
Day 7 – Shoemoney System Review
Whole books have been written about the ins-and-outs of landing page design.
Each element on the page, each word, graphic, block of text and link, contributes to conversion, or lack thereof. However, this complexity can be boiled down to six essentials.
If you’re designing a land page, or revamping those pages you have, make sure you cover these six points:
What is it? What value are you providing the customer? What is in it for them?
Your value proposition should be part of the ad text, and it definitely needs to appear on your landing pages. Whilst there are always exceptions, the value proposition generally comes first.
People will judge the overall look of your page to determine credibility and relevance, and next they will try to determine what’s in it for them. Craft a succinct value statement that conveys your value to customers, and if possible, let people know the positive, compelling attributes that separate you from the competition.
People judge by appearances.
This is not to say that complex graphic design is desirable, however landing page design needs to be of sufficient quality that it doesn’t put people off. Design is obviously highly subjective, so take a look at the designs your competitors are using, particularly those competitors who rank highly over time. Does your design standard mirror theirs?
Is it immediately obvious what action the visitor needs to take? Make your action buttons large and surround them with white space. Make text links bold, in that they stand out, visually, from surrounding text. Surround the calls-to-action with benefit statements that signal to a visitor what to expect after they click the link/button i.e. Click here to order [product/service] now! If you are asking a visitor for information, then keep your requirements brief. Deliver the visitor significant value over the time it takes for them to provide you with this information, and the risk in doing so.
Cover the basics, such as contact information, security assurances, and privacy. However, trust elements need to be part of everything you do. Correct spelling and grammar, ensure fast load times, offer guarantees, state and answer objections, ensure terminology is aligned with your industry/visitor level, and your overall design quality is high.
Your aim is assure, and reassure.
After the visitor takes the desired action, what happens next?
Is the end-to-end experience a good one? Beyond the shopping cart process, are you providing a seamless back-end experience? For example, are phones always answered in a timely manner? Are shipping times met? Do you get back to customers when you say you will? Can you handle the load if you receive more orders than you were expecting? Have you planned for this (pleasant) eventuality?
You may understand what your landing page offers, but do your visitors?
Do the “mom test” i.e ask “will my Mom understand this page/site”? Nothing against Moms, of course 
Even if your audience is savvy, people don’t like to be faced with something they find cryptic. Everyone appreciates efficiency and clarity.
The way to ensure this happens is to test. Show the page to people and ask them about the five points mentioned above. Can they recite the value proposition? Can they order easily? What do they think of the design? Do they trust it? It’s important to ask people who will be honest with you. Even asking such questions can be leading, so keep this in mind.
The ultimate test, of course, is in the live environment. If you’re having problems with conversions, evaluate your pages and site against these six points.
When you run a blog with any amount of traffic, especially one with topics people have something to say on, you quickly get to a point where spam comments become a normal part of your blogging life. Not a big deal usually. In most cases they’re absolutely blatant and easy to spot. And I actually [...]
Thank you for subscribing to Blueverse!
Spam Comments: More Annoying Than Spam Email