travel packages, I suggested they implement a simple site search engine, so customers can quickly find the exact resorts or condos they are looking for. If you have more than 25 products, a simple search engine is a great feature. It will add to the professionalism and utility of your website without you having to spend money on expensive technology. (See Chapter 11 for more information on cost-effectively working with your web developer.)
Online marketing shouldn’t stop once a sale is made. The best way to generate new customers is through your existing customer base (just as Amazon.com did when they suggested I email my friends and family a coupon). I suggested that the travel agency give their clients a spot on their website to post photos from their trip. This not only serves as a genuine customer testimonial, but also encourages that customer’s friends and family to visit the site — and, with any luck, book their own trip. Implementing viral marketing concepts and tools such as “Send a postcard,” “Email my trip itinerary,” or “Tell a friend” are great ways to generate quality leads.
Focus on the customer
Another company, called Activation Imaging, wanted their website to generate more sales leads. Their website was nicely designed and professional. It featured standard navy blue colors and stock photos of business executives. Yet although the site looked professional, there was nothing on it that felt personalized. Nothing jumped out and said, “This site is for you!”
I asked them who their top clients were (their target audience), and they quickly listed real estate agencies, biotech companies, and law firms. However, nowhere on their home page did they mention these industries. In fact, all of the text on their home page was about Activation Imaging. Focusing exclusively on self-promotion online is a common mistake of small businesses. Your customers don’t care about you; they care about what you can do for them. You have ten seconds to capture an Internet user’s attention when he or she visits your home page, so you had better tell that person why he or she needs you. Use your home page to tell your customers why your product or service is right for them, personally. In short, put your company information or personal bio in the “about us” section of your website, not on your home page.
With this in mind, we simply rearranged Activation Imaging’s home page to include three boxes. One had a picture of a lawyer, the next a real estate agent, and the last a biotech student. Each image had a sentence appealing to that target audience, followed by “Click here for more info.” We then developed an entire page dedicated to why Activation Imaging was an expert in creating digital documents for that specific industry. In reality, we only had to change a few sentences on each page, because the company performs essentially the same service for each industry, but the new targeted sentences now made their product appear personalized.
Testing Your Website’s Appeal to Your Target Audience
How can you be sure that your website is attracting the right audience? Just ask them. Although Internet users are getting more and more protective of their personal information, if you offer something of value, they will provide you with this information.
Free products, coupons, and contests are great ways to get the demographic information you need. Emphasize the fact that visitors can trust your company by putting a privacy policy in a prominent place on your website, stating that you will not share their personal information with outside parties and vendors. And, most important, adhere to this policy. Getting your customers’ private demographic information is the same as getting their trust. Don’t abuse their trust by selling their information.
Knowing the demographics of your customer will help you better spend your marketing dollars and get the most out of your online promotions. A few years ago, market share was king. Today, the success of a website is determined by the quality of the traffic, not the quantity. The key to a successful website and online marketing strategy is to be as targeted as possible, even if that leaves you with a smaller audience.
Banner Ads Rely on Placement
When we first launched our Baja travel website, we wanted to buy some banner ads on Yahoo! After all, at the time, Yahoo! was the most popular site on the Internet. We pulled together our meager budget and purchased about 100,000 impressions on the main Yahoo! Travel page. We sat back and waited for the traffic to come rolling in. The result was more than disappointing. We made the number one mistake most first-time online marketers make; we tried to reach the greatest amount of people, rather than a few of the right people. First of all, our 100,000 impressions were completed in a matter of hours and we got a 0.02 percent click-through rate. And of the 0.02 percent who visited our website, not one person purchased anything. The campaign was a complete waste of marketing dollars. We knew we had to rethink our strategy — fast.
First off, I do not recommend buying banner ads, especially if you are on a limited budget. Banner ads can be effective at branding your company — if you have a large enough budget, negotiate some long-term contracts with prominent websites in your industry — but the actual click-through results are often so low that they are not cost-effective.
If you do choose to buy banner ads, the most cost-effective strategy is to buy them on a very targeted page. The more targeted the page, the cheaper the ad, and the more results you will get. Take our Baja website, for example. Rather than buying a banner ad on Yahoo!’s main Travel page, we should have dug deeper into the Yahoo! Travel site and looked up Mexico, then Baja, then determined which sites were already ranked number one on Yahoo! or were partners with Yahoo! Travel services.
We later went ahead and purchased banners on those sites, at a fraction of the cost of banners on the main Yahoo! Travel page. These sites did not get as much traffic as Yahoo! Travel, but the traffic they did get was more likely to click on our banner ad and purchase our products. These banner ads proved much more successful for us. The banners were cheaper, and the click-through rate averaged 4 percent, which is higher than the industry standard rate of 2 percent.
Another example of targeting your banner ad placement is embedding it in content. Before you buy an ad, ask the website editors what types of stories or promotions they may be doing that would relate to your business, then ask for ads on those pages. If the site has a keyword search, ask to have your banners come up when words associated with your primary product or service are entered.
The deeper the page in the site, the better, because you will be reaching visitors who are truly searching for your information. This strategy is directly aimed at those companies looking to get the most value for their online marketing dollar. For companies with a larger budget, I would recommend buying banners on the home pages for branding purposes. However, branding is expensive, with the average cost of establishing a dominant online brand estimated at $80 million USD. So for the purpose of online marketing on a shoestring budget, don’t waste your time or money on home page banner ads. (For more on online ad buys, see Chapter 9.)
Use Worksheet 1 to help you determine who your target audience really is.
Worksheet 1: Discovering Your Target Audience
Chapter 2 examined the importance of defining your target audience before starting an online marketing campaign. Think about the following demographics, and check off the ones that apply to your product or service. In some cases, the answer may be “all of the above.” However, remember that general marketing is expensive. The more specific you can be about whom you are trying to reach, the cheaper and more cost-effective your online marketing campaign will be.
Gender
[ ] Male
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