On the other hand, if you do a great job, it makes for the perfect story. One of our clients is K9Cuisine.com. They sell premium dog food online. Nothing too glamorous, but their customer service is amazing. They go above and beyond just delivering an order. If a client orders regular shipping, they upgrade it for no extra charge. If a customer says his dog didn’t like a specific brand, they swap it out and help him find something that his dog will like. They’re more than just a dog food seller; they become trusted dog nutrition advisors who care about your four-legged friend.
2. You have to use your success to attract more success. This goes beyond just regular testimonials. This involves telling your customers’ story—the story of what they achieved through your service or product. When K9Cuisine.com receives an email thanking them for helping Jack, the loved golden retriever, start eating again after a long illness, they ask the customer if they can share their story with others. The story then makes its way onto their Facebook page and into their tweets. Soon, lots of people know about how K9Cuisine.com helped Jack. Next time they think about Fido needing dog food, they will think about K9Cuisine.com. If they have a great experience, they may tell their friends. The cycle continues.
Traditional marketers didn’t worry about who controlled the message. Online marketers today engage an empowered customer. For this reason I ask my clients to keep two principles in mind at all times:
1. Make it easy to buy. This involves telling the right story, exposing the real benefits, and making your shopping cart a one-click affair. It helps keep you focused when you are creating your online presence and figuring out how you will construct your marketing message.
2. Pick tactics last. This ensures that you won’t get distracted by the latest shiny object fad before you have your essentials in place. Once you do, you can focus on picking the right tactics to really hear your customers.
Stephanie Diamond,
author of Web Marketing for Small Businesses
What Does Social Media Marketing Have to Do with This Step?
Everything! Whereas social media may not be ideal for converting strangers into clients, it’s an excellent platform for sharing stories. Stories establish your expertise, attract fresh consumers, and even help convert faster.
The following are possible tools for transformation:
• Testimonials from customers and clients
• Case studies that showcase how a customer found a solution to his or her problem (ideally the solution is your service or product)
• Video interviews with clients
• Audio interviews with customers
• Pictures of smiling clients with your products
AHA! Zen Moment
Social media platforms are a great way to showcase past and present success stories. By letting the customers speak for themselves, you can leverage social proof to attract more prospects.
Overview of Online Marketing Tactics and How They ACT (Attract, Convert, Transform)
The following table presents several online marketing methods and how well they accomplish each step of the ACT process. (Note: Search engine optimization [SEO] involves increasing the traffic to a website from search engines by causing the website to appear higher in a list of search results. SEO is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2.)
One-Minute Online Marketing Secret
Have you ever heard of putting strategy before tactics? A strategy is an overall plan. It is the big picture: what needs to be accomplished and why. Tactics, in contrast, address the when, where, and how. Tactics are the way you implement your strategy.
Strategy should always come before tactics. However, most people doing business online go about this backwards. I call this the “shiny toy syndrome.” They see the next cool networking site and join, or someone tells them they have to have a blog, so they start one only to abandon it after a month. I see people constantly chasing the next cool thing online without really knowing specifically what they want to accomplish. They may think, “I want to make money,” but don’t go further than that. And most importantly, because they don’t know what they want to accomplish, they don’t know how to measure the success of their tactics.
The net comprises a gazillion splinters, most of which are businesses trying to claim their spot. So social media doesn’t amount to a hill of beans unless what you’re promoting stands out in that crowded marketplace. Differentiation is key, and that is why nothing can get along in the land of social media marketing without a clearly defined, unique, “hooky” offer. This is actually the most important part of branding—not the clever name or snappy tagline, as most think. In fact, when I brand folks, the brand is added last and naturally tumbles out of the “hooky” offer. My intention in branding folks is always to extract what is truly unique, quirky, interesting, and relevant about them and their businesses and then roll that into the offer and consequently the brand. What’s hooky about you?
Suzanne Falter-Barns,
Get Known Now (www.GetKnownNow.com)
Are you trying to attract? Convert? Transform? Once you decide what your goal is, look at the preceding table to find a tactic that will help you achieve it. Then you’ll also know how to measure your success. For example, if you know that the ad you are going to put on Google is meant to attract, then you will measure the number of visitors to your site to gauge how successful your investment was. You won’t waste your time being frustrated that it didn’t lead to more direct sales. If you were using a tactic to convert, you would check the number of people who subscribed to your newsletter. (Hint: These subscribers would be considered consumers! Remember: Consumption of Valuable Content + Time = Client.)
Now that you have a solid understanding of how social media fits into the bigger scheme of things, let’s take a quick look at how to make the most of your ultimate conversion tool—your website!
Websites and Content Marketing
“When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the Worldwide Web . . . Now even my cat has its own page.”
Bill Clinton
YOUR WEBSITE IS A WINDOW into your company. If eyes are the window to a person’s soul, a website is the window to a company’s soul. Okay, okay, so now you know why I am sticking to writing nonfiction. My point is your website is crucial.
Social media,
