Google search is a powerful thing, and for almost all of us it has completely replaced the yellow pages, our rolodex and any need for business cards. It is our go-to source for shopping, eating, entertainment and even dating. There are people looking for you or the services that you provide right now, but can they find you?

While in a meeting, I have heard the question ‘can you make me number one on Google’ more than once. The answer is always the same, ‘it depends.’ Google’s job is to take a search term and pair it with websites containing the most relevant information to that term. So, the real question is, is your website relevant to the search terms that your customers are using?

How blogging can help

The key to matching your website with good search terms is learning to think outside of the immediate borders of your product. You may come up perfectly for the name of your product, but will you come up if someone is searching for general terms in your business sector?

For example, if you sell snow shoes, you might rank number one for your particular brandname, but how well will you rank if someone searches for buying advice on new snow shoes?

What if you had a blog post titled “What to look for when buying new snow shoes.”

Now, you just grabbed that search and exposed a potential customer to your brand.

Perimeter topics

The reason that blogging works so well for Google is because it is perfectly tuned for catching perimeter topics like this. Since blogging is a more casual type of writing, your copy is much more likely to hit on the writing style of your customers. On top of that, blogging demands frequency and the more frequently you post, the more you are driven to start covering some of the perimeter topics that you wouldn’t normally include in your sales copy.

Blogs live forever

Once a blog post, always a blog post. Often times, we treat our blog like a news feed. We post very timely announcements that are dead and useless in a mere matter of months. This is fine every once and awhile, but if it becomes your go-to effort it probably isn’t going to serve you very well. You see, Google doesn’t really have the same sense of time that we do when it comes to a blog. If Google finds a matching term in your blog, it will link to you. So, writing blog posts for eternity rather than currently is a pretty big deal.

Blog marketing

There are so many great reasons to be blogging, but Google page rank and search term capture are amongst the top benefits. In the end it all comes down to understanding your core marketing and your core audience. Your blog should be written for them and should be focused on connecting the pain points of their lives or jobs to your product.

In closing, I would like to send out one last reminder that today is the last day to register for our social media workshop. If you have been thinking about it but haven’t committed yet, now is the time. We will be covering more on blogging there and better answering that pesky question of ‘what should I be blogging about.’

Another great week in January has come and gone. Here’s what you missed.

Monday

Well it was a pretty good day for a Monday. We answered all of your questions about why your social media just didn’t work out the way you had planned.

Five reasons why your online marketing feels flat

Tuesday

Online tracking, measurement, and analysis is definitely one of the most powerful tools in the web marketers toolkit, and of course we told you all about it on Tuesday.

How using analytics can help you monitor and track your campaigns

Wednesday

Wednesday was an important one, especially if you do cold calling. If you don’t do cold calling in your business then great, here are a few reasons why you are brilliant.

How social networking has changed business forever. No more cold calls!

Thursday

Great marketing has a purpose. On Thursday we did our best to help you find yours. Does your social media marketing and website have a trackable goal? This post was a great compliment to our online tracking post from Tuesday.

Does your online marketing have a point

As if one great post wasn’t enough, we also published the first episode of our new Be Better at Marketing Podcast! In this episode we talked about how to talk about your business using benefits an all too important lesson for us all.

The secrets to marketing with benefits.

Friday

This Friday I started a new series called ‘Fix-it Friday’ where we will be giving you some immediately actionable items that can do immediately to improve you marketing. This week we started with a few ways to be better at blogging with better headlines.

Three things you can do right now to boost your blogging.

It was a great week! Next week we will be hosting our first ever Social Media Field Training workshop in Bismarck. You can also look forward to Monday’s email article. If you aren’t signed up for that you definitely should be! We will also be posting our next episode of the Be Better at Marketing Podcast next week. In the podcast we went even deeper into the world of website analytics, conversion, and goal tracking. Good stuff. We surely hope you are better at marketing than you were last week! See you Monday.

Blogging is definitely more of a marathon than a sprint, so it can be easy to get winded. But, blogging is worth it. In fact, it is probably the most important aspect of any good social media plan. It can provide huge benefits for your Google search results and should become the anchor for you social networking strategy. It is also a great way to provide valuable resources to your customers.

Chances are that you have either considered blogging or have already given it a try, only to fall short. Don’t worry, it happened to me too. I had three our four false starts before I finally got a blog to stick.

So, here are a few things that you can do right now to kick-start your blogging and/or get yourself back into the blogging groove.

Learn to write better headlines

Headlines are absolutely crucial to great blogging. I have written good headlines and bad headlines and I can promise you that they make a huge difference in blog traffic. Each line of your post should encourage your reader to read the next line and it all starts with the headline. I have learned everything I know about headline writing from Copyblogger, so I would of course highly recommend their 11 step guide to better headlines.

Do a topic storm

Now that you know how to write great headlines, let’s put that skill to good use. Open up a blank document and start writing headlines for you blog. These should be new ideas. Really try to push the limits of your thinking. For today, write at least 20 new headlines, or more if you have it in you.

Post something

Good blogging takes action, so get to it. Do a post while it is fresh on your mind and at the tip of your tongue. Start with a good headline and then just let the words roll out of your brain. Maybe you could write about your renewed zest and commitment to blogging or possibly an apology for all of the bad headlines you wrote before you learned to write them better. If you don’t have a blog yet, just open another blank document. There is no time like the present to get started.

So, there you go. Three to-do’s for a lazy Friday afternoon. Let us know how it goes or tell us all about your blogging false starts in the comments. We would love to help!

How are you making your customers life better? In this episode, Todaymade’s Justin Walsh and Garrett Moon talk all about using benefits rather than features in your marketing materials. This is a particularly important topic for online and social media marketing. In the podcast we discuss why.

Lets play a fun game, and see if your online marketing mix has a point or if it is being lost in the inter-tubes. Fill in the blanks:

• The point of my online marketing is to _______________________.
• The point of my Facebook fan page is to _______________________.
• The point of my Twitter account is to _______________________.
• The point of my blog is to _______________________.
• The point of my website is to _______________________.

Checking your score

So, how did you do?

If answering those five questions produced either confusion or multiple answers for each, then we have some work to do. Each of the five points above should have one clear and concise answer.

Good marketing is focused like a laser beam. Bad marketing looks like this.

photo credits: jurvetson

You see, there is really no point in doing any sort of marketing without having a direct and measurable goal. The other day we talked about analytics and site statistics, but these tools aren’t very helpful unless they are used to track a set of pre-defined goals. Let me ask you this, the last time you viewed your website statistics, were you tracking direct goals or just merely perusing the numbers?

At the end of the day all marketing is about making connections to people who may be interested in buying what you have to offer. So, your website and social media strategy need to be completely focused on making this happen.

Let’s fill in the first three:

• The point of my online marketing is to provide potential customers with valuable resources and the benefits of my products or services.
• The point of my Facebook fan page is to direct traffic to my blog or website.
• The point of my Twitter account is to direct traffic to my blog or website.

Here, our over-arching marketing strategy is to provide value. Now, obviously Twitter and Facebook would inherit this strategy but their ultimate goal is a bit different. Their end-goal is to drive traffic to our website. This doesn’t mean we spam them with links. We still need to cultivate conversation and community.

So, if social is about creating links and connections to your website then what do you want them to do once they get there?

• The point of my blog is to drive potential leads to becoming a long-term contacts through an email newsletter signup.
• The point of my website is to directly connect a current contact with product solutions for their needs..

You see, our job as Internet marketers doesn’t stop when we get visitors to our site. Once they are there we either need to convert them to a buying customer or we need make a long-term connection to them, that could eventually turn them into a buying customer. This is why pageviews are so overrated. Sure, they are nice to have, but the goal should be conversion not just eyeballs.

Now is as good a time as any to sit down and review the point of your online marketing. This new-fangled approach can be very powerful when executed even remotely correctly. This entire approach is something that we are teaching in even more detail with our exclusive Social Media Field Guide.

Do you cold call in your business? I sure hope not. It isn’t very fun, productive or something that should be a part of the modern sales strategy. Buyers, after receiving years of abuse from commission driven salesmen, have finally taken charge.

The power has shifted from the seller to the buyer, and this shift makes good sense when you think about it. Today’s market offers a level of choice that is completely unprecedented in our time. Just a few years ago your biggest competition was located within a few blocks of your front door, but now they could be in New Jersey or Tucson.

I have no idea what this picture means, but it just seems to fit doesn't it?

The bottom line is, customers don’t need you nearly as much as you need them.

What they do need

Now, don’t go and get all worried on me, capitalism isn’t over yet. There is still something that they need, a friend. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Social networking has opened up a sales channel that goes far beyond calling every single listing under the letter A in the yellow pages.

I think I have mentioned before that business is done based on personal connections. If you are business owner, then you know exactly what I mean. When a buyer needs something they call the people they already know. If they don’t know anyone then look for recommendations from their own personal network. Their last resort is looking in the yellow pages, and their very last resort is sitting around waiting for a cold call.

So, if business is all about who you know then what you need to realize is that social networking has created an avenue for you know six billion people. Wow, speaking of unprecedented.

Making connections

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all examples of social networks that allow for you to make connections with other people, but lets break down exactly what this connection looks like.

I am not merely talking about adding them to your friends list or following them on Twitter. I am talking about talking to them and making a connection with them. Getting to know them. You know, mingling. As marketers we need to stop looking at every follower as a person that we can broadcast our message to and start seeing them as a person that we can get to know, and become connected with.

And this doesn’t mean that we look at everyone online as a potential sales opportunity either. We need to look at people as people. Just be friends, play nice, and let the sales come to you.

This works

Last week I got cold called twice, by buyers. That’s right, they didn’t want to sell me a thing, in fact they wanted to buy something. And the amazing thing was that both of these connections were 100% driven by online presence and social networking.

And you said it couldn’t be done.

It was really an amazing thing. Not only did they call me out of the blue with money in hand, but I had to use very little of my minimal sales training to convince them of anything. They already ‘knew’ me. They were very familiar with my business and how I worked. All I needed to do was continue developing the connection that we had already started online.

Stop bothering, start engaging

Think about it, when was the last time you bought something from a cold call? Never? Yeah, me too. Now try to figure out a situation when you would… you wouldn’t would you?

It’s ok, the proverbial they have been telling us that this is how business is done for years. Well, don’t believe the lies any longer. Stop bothering people and learn to engage in the social web and make meaningful, practical, connections.

Todaymade.com’s traffic is up. In fact, it is up 129.14%. That is pretty cool, and it is the result of a few things. One, we merged our blog traffic into our company site, and two there has been a lot of traffic directed toward our training workshops. A 129.14% increase is a nice thing to have in just about anything, but it is particularly fun to watch it happen.

Online tracking, measurement, and analysis is definitely one of the most powerful tools in the web marketers toolkit. These are hard numbers that just can’t be argued with. So much of what we do in marketing is based on guessing, so it is always really nice to come back and see the unarguable facts. The problem we face is actually taking the time to check them. Sometimes it is easier said than done, right?

Why analytics are important

At Todaymade we use a lot of tracking tools. Online marketing has the amazing ability to give us instant feedback on our efforts. We can instantly see how changes or campaigns are performing and can connect user engagement directly to our marketing efforts. Tracking it in itself isn’t new or overly unique, the trick is learning to use the data.

For example, we sent out and email yesterday using our Todaymail system. I know that we had a 42.47% open rate and a 25.81% click-through rate. Both of these numbers are well above industry standards. With Todaymail’s tracking and statistics tools I can also see who opened the email and who clicked which links. It pretty incredible, but there is something even more interesting at play here.

A story of stats making sense

Take this morning as an example. We had a new registrant for one of our field training workshops. It was a new name and face, someone that we did not have any previous contact with. The cool thing is that through our statistics and analytics software we were able to see where their journey started and how exactly we made the sale. I will walk you through it.

1. We sent an email

We sent out an email to our Todaymail list. The email contained valuable content to help you do better marketing (if you don’t get this weekly article, you should). Several of the folks on our list forwarded this email to other people they knew. Keep in mind that this probably wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the valuable content that we provided.

2. Forwarded recipient receives email

Several people receive the forwarded email, which has turned from a valuable piece of marketing information to a valuable piece of marketing information with a personal recommendation for our brand.

2. Forwarded recipient makes purchase

And that is how it happens. It is a very interesting chain of events and really important for any business to realize. Understand, though, that we would have never know this without proper tracking. We were able to follow the email directly into our site’s analytics. I know how much time people from the email spent on our site and what they were looking at.

The numbers are easy

This is a cool little story, but it is important to realize that the numbers and statistics alone aren’t enough. The ability to properly analyze and connect data together is really important and it isn’t something that comes easily. It takes work, and it take brains to make sure you are getting good clean data. Need help making that happen? Well, of course, you could always give us a call.

Chances are that one of the things at the top of your to do list this year is to be better at social media marketing. Good for you, and good for Facebook. But the first thing that you need to do is identify why things didn’t go so well in 2010. Here are five of the most common reasons that online maketing goes flat.

Too broad

There is a pretty good chance that your marketing message and publishing goals are far too broad.
Online advertising and social media costs so little that we just don’t put the usual thought and effort into identifying a true audience and niche for our product or service. It isn’t hard to publish aimlessly into the blogosphere, but with a bit of focus and a plan you will see real results.

Too pushy

Our first approach in Social Media is always to take our existing product or services and regurgitate them onto the web. This is the product centric approach to online advertising, and it is what we call push marketing. If you are only pushing out your usual sales banter, then your Facebook wall is probably looking like a pretty dull place.

Too sporadic

Consistency is key and it probably takes even more than you think it does. Posting and involving yourself in social media ‘when you get around to it’ just isn’t enough to make an effective campaign. You have to have more than a presence, you need regular and consistent interaction with the audience you are building online. You don’t form a community when you are never there.

Not valuable

Does the content you are publishing online provide any value to the customer? This goes back to our point about push marketing. If you are pushing your message on them then you are definitely not providing value. Your product alone is not valuable enough to build a community unless you are bigger than life… and you’re not, right? Ask yourself, ‘what’s in it for them’— what does your online marking give your readers?

Not in the right places

Sometimes you are just talking in the wrong place. Different sites are great for different things. You need your content to match your audience. Sites like Twitter work really well for some, but not that great for others. Facebook works for just about anyone and sometimes you just need a longer format, like a blog. Finding the right social media mix is important. Doing it wrong can lead to disappointing results and discouragement.

The solution

Well, obviously, the solution is to stop falling flat and try harder, but if that doesn’t work, you just need to sit down and make a plan. You don’t go about marketing without some sort of plan, so why should online marketing be any different? Developing this plan is exactly why we have developed—just for you—our Social Media Field Training Workshop and it’s corresponding Social Media Field Guide. These tools have been designed to help you get out of the rut and make a plan. Finally you will know what to say, where to say it, and how to engage your online community.

Social Media Field Training

Bismarck, ND – January 25th

Minot, ND – February 17th

Sturgis, SD – February 23rd

Every week we publish a bunch of tip, tricks, and strategies to help you improve your marketing. It is valuable stuff, and we don’t want you to miss a thing. Here is a re-cap of the week. Use your Saturday and Sunday to catch up so you can come to work on Monday morning being even better at marketing than you were the week before.

Monday

On Monday we started off strong with a post about social media. Social media is not just a fad or a fluke, it is actually the biggest shift in consumer thinking in decades. It is fundamentally changing the way your customers think about you and your products. It IS the new marketing and you better catch up!

No one wants to know what you had for breakfast. Why should you care about social media?

Tuesday

On Tuesday we had serious discussion on benefits, and why you need to be using them to talk about your business. This is the first lesson in our Social Media Field Training and was also the subject of our talk at this weeks NDTweetUp.

Learning to speak in benefits. The first step in great marketing.

We also introduced you to a handy little tool for social media search.

Socialmention.com, a handy little tool for social media search.

Wednesday

On Wednesday this week we unveiled our Social Media Field Guide and announced that we will be hosting two more workshops. One in Sturgis, SD and one in Minot, ND.

Write your own social media marketing plan: Two more workshops announced!

Friday

On Friday we talked about super-fans which are, incidentally, the best kind of fans. This post cataloged our own story with Lulu.com and gave did a great job of backing up our previous post about why customer service is marketing.

How to turn your customers into super-fans, and why you should want to.

Even further back….

Incidentally this was the first week that we have officially been called the Be better at marketing blog. If you were left wondering what happened to Width by Height you can surely update yourself with this post:

Things change, good business adapts: Be better at marketing.

Coming next….

Next week we have several marketing tips and tricks for you to take and make your own. On Monday we will be sending out our weekly email with a great article to help you identify five reasons that your online marketing feels flat. Make sure you sign up to get your own copy. After that, you can look forward to our first episode of the Be better at marketing podcast. It will sound familiar, and be more focused than ever on great marketing help.

See you next week!

You can learn a life lesson from just about anything, but on my last experience with Lulu.com made it really easy. I have previously written about how they proved that customer service was marketing, now I want tell you how they turned a happy customer into a super-fan.

If you aren’t familiar with my Lulu.com vs. Createspace saga you can catch up with it here, but the long and short of it is that Createspace blew it while Lulu was more than happy to exceeded my expectations. I tweeted about my experience, I blogged about my experience and @luludotcom liked it so much that they offered to expedite my order at no charge. Get that!

So, I ordered 30 books on Friday and expected to wait up to eight days for them to be printed, and another two for shipping. On Monday, there were already on the courier truck. By wednesday they were at my doorstep. Four days total. Wow.

Lulu has put into practice a few big lessons in business that I think we could all learn from them.

They realized that their current customers are their best source for new business.

This is fairly simple actually. You have already convinced your current customers to do their business with you, so, when it comes time for them to buy your product you have already jumped one big hurdle right? People hire people they know, but all too often we take this for granted and spend a lot of time and energy trying to find new customers. We are busy trying to wow new customers while our current customer’s are still waiting to be wowed. Keep in mind, people usually won’t tell you if they aren’t being wowed.

They know that great customer service leads to great customer reactions.

There is a big difference between meeting and exceeding your customers expectations. It is easy to evaluate what we are doing and conclude that we are doing enough in terms of customer service. Sure, your customers are happy and there are no common complaints. This isn’t bad, but it isn’t as good as it could be. I bet there is more that you could do, I know we could. I think there is always more. You see, amazing customer experience create amazing stories, and we love to tell our friends.

Lulu is a clear winner in this. Sure, I got my order faster, but they got a lot for that money. They have turned me, a happy customer, into a super-fan. This is a big win considering I am guy that doesn’t mind talking about it and needs a few good stories to tell on my blog an in my Social Media Field Training.