5 Secrets to Customer Loyalty & Repeat Business

By Stand Out Results · Comments (0)
Monday, May 20th, 2013

 The secret to customer loyalty and repeat business is exceptionally high customer experience.  That’s it.  I know, you’re thinking you can stop reading now.  You’ve been told this millions of times.  You already offer good customer service.  But do you?  Do you really know what outstanding customer experience looks, or more importantly, feels like?  An experience is the internal feelings that brings your customers joy to work with and purchase from you.  It’s the perception they have of your company.  And no matter what you think you’re doing for your clients, if they don’t  perceive it, it doesn’t exist.

No matter what you think you’re doing for your clients, if they don’t perceive an exceptional customer experience, it doesn’t exist.

Examples of Exceptional Customer Experience

  1. Make your clients feel special on their own terms - A National Speaker blogged recently about the hotel he stays at during training seminars.  They greet him, by name, from the valet to the front desk.  In addition, they have a bottle of scotch waiting for him in his room.  Creature comforts when you’re away from home is always appreciated and remembered.  Give your employees the empowerment to be flexible with your procedures.
  2. Acknowledge your clients, each and every time - While on a long weekend Birthday getaway at a regional spa, my husband and I were treated as the only guests in the place (believe me we weren’t!).  At every interaction with staff; front desk, massage therapists, wait staff, etc., we were greeted by name, “Mr. & Mrs. James, how is your stay?”, “Mr & Mrs. James, how was your massage?”, “Mr. & Mrs. James, I noticed at dinner last night you preferred a later reservation, would you like me to take care of making another at that time for tonight?”, “Mr. & Mrs. James, what else can I do to make your stay more enjoyable?”, etc.
  3. Anticipate your customers’ needs - At the same spa the wait staff remembered us from day to day and the front desk offered to make reservations for us without us initiating the process.  At a local diner where I attend a weekly networking meeting, the waitress knows everyone’s drink order and brings it around without having to ask.  These little unexpected things are what set them apart from their competitors.
  4. Be flexible with your processes - Being flexible to the point that doesn’t completely alter your processes will gain your business added respect and loyalty among your clients.  A customer wants their dessert before the main meal?  Sure! What’s the harm?  A client wants to pay upfront rather than your usual fee schedule – why not?  Creating that cultural mindset within your business will allow your employees the empowerment to make the judgement calls that will provide the highest satisfaction among your customers.
  5. Walk in your customer’s shoes - Create a process that if so many people are cued in a line, automatically open a new register – no one likes to wait.  Make your website and phone process easy to navigate for your client.  It may be more convenient for you to have 20 prompts before a live individual comes on the line but a prospect or client will be in a much better mood if they can reach the person or department they need less time.  And happy people buy more than angry, frustrated people.

When talking about differentiating and creating the core essence of a company, it’s the little things that you may not even know you’re doing that makes the difference between a one-time customer and a life-time loyal one that will pay a premium for your services, refer you often and only use you for their needs.

Want to learn more about creating an exceptional customer experience that builds loyalty and repeat business?  Download our FREE ebook, How to Build a Remarkable Business by Focusing on the Total Customer Experience.  Can’t wait and want to talk to someone now?  Email, Vicki@Stand-Out-Results.com, or call us, 585.67BRAND.  We’re here to assist you any way you need to create the customer experience processes that will set you apart from your competition and allow you to maximize your profits.

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Creating New Marketing Habits

By Cidnee · Comments (0)
Friday, May 17th, 2013

One of the best ways I know to get something new done that really matters in your business is to give it the importance it deserves. There are few ways you can do this.

The first is to understand the role it plays in your business and/or life. You may have come across this grid before, but it’s always a good wake-up call.

 

URGENT

NOT URGENT

IMPORTANT

 Crises
Client Deadlines
Proposals
Year End Tax Submissions		 Long Term Planning
Marketing
Business Analysis
True Recreation
Learning & Empowerment
Relationship Building

NOT IMPORTANT

 Email
Broken Printer
Many phone calls		 “Busy” work
Junk Mail
Some Phone Calls
TV, Gaming – time wasters & escape activities

Normally, we address what is urgent and not-important over what is important but not urgent. When we are trying to make changes to our marketing this typically falls into this “important, not urgent grid.”  So the key is to first RECOGNIZE its IMPORTANCE and then obviously find a way to MAKE it URGENT which leads me to my second point.

Think about  treating this new activity like you would an important client or prospect and schedule it in your Outlook (or Google, or whatever you use) calendar. If you had a meeting in your calendar with a client, or potential client, you wouldn’t cancel it to check emails or answer a call or to get paper for the printer.  So start making appointments – real appointments that you keep and don’t allow distraction. Be careful though. Making one BIG appointment in the week (e.g. many, many hours)  is dangerous for two very good reasons.

Reason 1:   If you do have to cancel it (for something that falls in the urgent/important category) you have now lost an entire week’s worth of productivity.

Reason 2:   Long hours for anything new might seem daunting, especially for a new habit, so it can make it unproductive and “un-fun.”

Look instead to breaking it down into multiple, manageable chunks over the week, then monthly and quarterly appointments as well.

Finally, the third way to ensure you will begin making headway on a new marketing activity is to stop trying to go it alone.  Accountability also breeds urgency. Consider hiring a coach and/or announcing to your followers or friends your intended new path. You can also work with another like-minded peer and form an accountability partner model. This latter model is highly effective as long as the two partners involved state the ground rules ahead of time. In other words, look at how often the two of you want to communicate, what level of information you feel you should be sharing and what the consequences are if the deadlines are not reached and what the rewards are if they consistently are.

Here are few habits I intend to change to help me transform both myself and my marketing through more writing:

  1. Put “time to write” in my Outlook Calendar as a 1 hour appointment – 2 – 3 times a week and don’t cancel the appointments and don’t divert to phone or email…just as I would with a client.
  2. I personally enjoy writing on the weekend AWAY from the computer so commit to one hour of writing on the weekend
  3. Once a quarter – get away to the mountains and commit to 3 hours of writing while away.
  4. Start a “notes” file on my smartphone and tablet – and amalgamate thoughts/ideas when they come to me.  I have a lot so if by the end of the week I don’t have at least 3 – 5 jotted down, I’m not doing this!

Feel free to hold me accountable.

So what new marketing habit do you want to integrate this quarter?

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Categories : Advertising, Consulting, Lead Conversion, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy, Referral Marketing
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Is Your Website “Soooooo 2008?”

By Cidnee · Comments (0)
Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

2008 may not even seem that long ago to some of you. But so much has changed in marketing since then that quite frankly a website even developed in 2010 can seem – well – “old school.”

According to Pew Internet & American Life Project back around 2008, only about ½ the North American population even used online devices and a mere 8% were deep users of the web. Today North American internet users have climbed to 79% (US Census Bureau) with a whopping  90% of these users claiming they use the web to help them make purchasing decisions (Fleishman Hillard 2012 Digital Influence Index).

So it’s no wonder that a website that acts like a static brochure of your company is now a dinosaur in the digital world. Here are some criteria to help see if you’re website is hip and happening or pathetic and passé?

Do you have user friendly navigation and quality content?

There is so much that can be said here and they say a picture can say a thousand words. This wonderful infographic is a must when deciding on effective web design.

Are you coming up on Google (at the very least locally) for key search terms?

To have a site that no one can find is devastating. While it’s great to have a nice looking site, if it’s not being found it’s useless from a marketing perspective. You need to focus on your Title Tags and Headers Tags and ensure they have the right keyword search terms (keyword research here is a MUST). You need these keywords in your content, you need new and fresh content with your keywords in them, you need links to your site from other credible sites, you need to make sure your pictures use the keywords in their alt tags, you need to be registered on Google Places, you need a sitemap, and this is just the beginning! If you want to see how you are doing, try many of the free website grading tools available online, then start making the necessary changes.

Do you have Google Analytics installed and do you monitor your traffic at least once a week?

To have a website and not know how it’s performing is like investing a ton of money into an ad campaign and not caring if it provides you with results.

The good news is that Google Analytics are still free and luckily most web developers can easily add the proper code to the pages on your site and even set up a report to arrive in your inbox once a week. I like to look at the following at least weekly and then deep dive twice a month in to other areas:

How many unique visitors am I getting?  How long are they staying on the site?  What is my bounce rate?  Where is the traffic coming from, including referring sites, what are the most common search terms, and what pages are the most popular?

Do you have multiple forms of media (video, photos, audio)?

To assume that everybody is going to read the content on your site is a bit naïve in today’s market. I recall a leader in web trends saying that before long websites will become mostly video in format instead of text. Why not start preparing, by climbing on the YouTube express and even creating a few Infographics of your own. Not only do multiple mediums appeal to different tastes, but they can then be strategically used on other online sites like YouTube, Pinterest, Slideshare and more. This again gives you more online exposure as well as valuable links back to your site.

Do you treat your website as just the hub to your entire online presence?

John Jantsch the fearless leader of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network of which I’m a part  introduced me to this great concept of the hub and spoke model of your online presence. It’s important you claim your online real estate and then post various forms of content to these other sites, encouraging them to visit your website. According to Universal McCann’s Wave 6 study, company websites are losing ground to social media sites in terms of credibility and popularity. These other sites, are places people will be seeking valuable information and engaging with your brand (see below) coming then to your website to show them how you can help them solve a problem or achieve a desired result. Implementing the hub and spoke model  increases you online presence tenfold if not substantially more!

Are you allowing prospects/customers to ENGAGE with you? 

Websites used to be a one way street. You shared information with readers and that was it. Not in today’s world. Now people want the ability to communicate back. Your website should encourage conversations by including a place for people to comment, share ideas and become part of a community. You should promote downloads of quality information via eBooks, Subscriptions to your newsletter, Surveys or Forms that help visitors find answers to their problems. Finally you website should definitely include some calls to action.

Can you easily change the content on your site and are you? 

Needless to say, if Google relies on content to help with their search engine results, you better be adding to and updating it on a weekly  or (at a bare minimum) monthly basis. This means you need to be able to change your own content and not rely on an outside source.

Did you know that according to HubSpot, sites that blog at least 20 times per month generate 5 times more traffic than those that blog only a few times per month?

Content is king in today’s online marketing world – it’s time to claim your throne if you aren’t already.

Is your site mobile and tablet friendly? 

Just like landlines are giving way to mobile phones, so are PC’s losing ground to tablets and smart phones.  In fact Fleishman-Hillard found in their  global 2012 Digital Influence Index that 2 of the 3 consumers they surveyed, use a mobile/smartphone to gain information on a brand, product or destination at least 3 – 4 days a week.

That makes it a no brainer that your site better pull up quickly and be easy to navigate on these devices.

To be clear, this doesn’t just mean your site comes up on a mobile device. It means that instead of a tiny, tiny, miniscule version of your site, there are nice big buttons that allow me to get what I need easily and even call you in one easy click of a button.

If you want to see an example of what your site should look like – go to Dudamobile.com and type in your URL.

That’s why today’s websites are now built with what is called a responsive theme that automatically adjusts the site to different sized devices.

If you want to get a quick idea how your site is fairing on some of the above elements, check out HubSpot’s free Marketing Grader.  It’s a great quick snapshot of your current website’s performance.

So how do you feel you did?

Hip and Happening
Better than I thought
Retro and proud of it, or
Definitely time for a new site

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Categories : Advertising, Blogging, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy, Social Media
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How to Lose Money with Groupon

By Stand Out Results · Comments (0)
Wednesday, May 1st, 2013


If you talk to many of the small businesses who decided to try to Groupon to increase business.  They will tell you that they received a generous spike in sales however, hardly any of them converted into lasting, repeat customers.  The success to making Groupon work for you depends on your follow-up marketing process.   Groupon seems like a great idea at the on start; sign up and receive an influx of customers resulting in higher sales.  However, are they really customers or just one and dones taking your staff away from your current clients and losing money for your business.

Groupon, for many businesses, is an exercise in bending over to pick up a $1 and dropping $5 out of your pocket.

If you want to lose money while using Groupon, then continue down the “no customer conversion strategy” path.  However, if you’re interested in making Groupon work for you, increase your sales and create lasting clients; then read on.

Strategy Before Tactics

If you’ve been reading my blogs, heard me speak or had a conversation with me, you know that I preach “Strategy Before Tactics” endlessly…and for good reason! – The above is a prime example.  If you have no plan, you have no path.  Without a path, you have not opportunity to obtain the end goal.  I’ve outlined an effective Groupon marketing strategy for you so your next campaign can be both a spike in sales and a lasting, consistent influx in customers.

  • Decide what you are looking to achieve with your Groupon campaign.
  • Understand who your target market is and what type of people come from Groupon campaigns. – This will give you insight into what they value.
  • Create an educational experience for your Groupon prospects. – This includes educating them on what you do, how you do it and what benefits they value that you can provide.
  • Determine what your next stage TRY is going to be for your Groupon redeemers – Groupon is great for getting people to KNOW & LIKE you but they are still trying to build TRUST with your business.  By offering another, longer TRY package, such as “Groupon redeemers only – Sign up today for an unlimited drop-in month pass” or “Sign up today for six additional sessions”, will allow them to gain that familiarity with your company even further.
  • Develop your final offer to fully convert your Groupon prospects into full fledged clients.  - You already have packages that your loyal customers partake in, make sure to let your Grouponers know about them.  Remember to explain the solutions that you are providing for their desires and frustrations so they remember it’s about them.
  • Work with a professional Marketing Consultant and Graphic Artist to create your package flyers so they accurately reflect your company brand so that your business continues to build authentic credibility consistently across every touch (employees, phone message, showroom, website, logo, business sign, cards, etc.).  Remember:  Nothing erodes sales faster than eroded trust and when a brand isn’t consistent, you loose trust extremely quick.
  • Train your team. – If your employees don’t understand the end goal and the strategy attached, they won’t follow the plan you’ve created.  Help them get on board by including them with the process, training them on how to use each step and offer an incentive for each Groupon prospect they convert.
  • Follow through when the Grouponers use your service.  - It’s easy to create the plan and marketing pieces but if you don’t follow through, it was wasted effort.
  • Listen.  - Listen to your employees on the reasons why the prospects didn’t move to the next stage, re-evaluate and adjust accordingly.
  • Track your conversions. – To determine if Groupon is a viable lead generation for your business, you need to track the conversions.  Within your CRM system, mark your Groupon prospects and analyze how far within the conversion process they got.

That’s it!  By adapting a marketing strategy, I know you can make your next Groupon campaign really work for your company and bring in more lasting clients.  And, I want to hear about it!  Share with us how your Groupon strategy resulted in more loyal customers and continued increased profits.

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How to Earn More Money by Using Effective Time Management

By Stand Out Results · Comments (0)
Monday, April 29th, 2013

When you set out for business for yourself, you have plans, goals and expectations.  After the thrill of start up has passed, you start to review where you are at, what you have accomplished and where you want to move towards.  Within this reflection you’ve probably realized that the secret to your success is truly on how well you manage your time.  Why do I say that?  Well, most business owners want to tackle the most number of tasks within the limited amount of time they have for the biggest payoff.  The problem is that often the low hanging fruit projects have the least amount of financial gain for the company.  So, how do you break the cycle of doing what is easy over what will bring in the most profit?

  • Make a list of all the projects you have to complete for the day.
  • Bring to the top of the list, everything that is an emergency issue, that has to happen today or your business will fall apart.
  • Next, list the projects that you have to complete for your paying clients.
  • Then, list the tasks that will bring in profit for the company – this could be lead generation campaigns or qualified prospect meetings.
  • Finally, address all the busy work that lands on the list – However, don’t sweat the small stuff!  If you can’t get to these tasks, don’t fret, they aren’t making you money and you can’t waste time on non-income producing projects.  In addition, these line items are often the ones you can easily delegate to staff or outsource to a virtual assistant or consultant.

Then start the day and follow your newly organized list line by line.  Don’t regress into your previous habits by moving off to something else because you know you can complete it quickly.  Learn what items you absolutely, must complete on your own, and allow yourself to delegate and outsource the rest.  By being more strategic with your time, you will keep your current clients satisfied and build your sales pipeline, all while keeping your sanity and increasing profits.

photo credit: mangee via photopin cc

 

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How To Build a Content Calendar

By Kelly Weppler · Comments (0)
Friday, April 19th, 2013

We’ve all written a content calendargreat deal about the value of inbound marketing and using content to pull in prospects.  But how do you make sure you’re planning your content to deliver the most value to your business?  With a content calendar.  The secret is to build a content calendar so that the content you’re delivering really maps to your core business objectives.  Otherwise, it’s like you’re going on a cross country road trip without a map.

There are 5 key steps to building a content or editorial calendar that will serve your business well.  Follow these steps and you’re certain to see how you can use your content to drive your business in the direction you want it to take.

1. Get the calendar out.  The best way to start building a content calendar is to physically start with a calendar and put all the holidays on there.  Start with the statutory holidays and the holidays that you plan to take throughout the year.  If you record your holidays now, then you’ll know where you’ve got to fill in content when you’re actually out of the office.

If you think about the calendar holidays and seasons now, you can actually plan out the content that makes the most sense for your business.  Regardless of the holiday or event, with a little thought you can create some content that’s relevant to those holidays.

2. Map Your Core Business Objectives to Your Content Calendar.  This is really important and suprisingly, so many business owners overlook this critical point.  The whole reason for creating content is to drive your business forward so let’s make that content relevant to whatever objectives you set for your business.

If you’re launching a new product or service, you can use your content to prime interest in this new offering.  Remember, rather than outwardly promoting your solutions, you want to demonstrate that you deliver a solution to the problem they’re trying to solve so create your content that way.  Use the same concept for any other parts of your business you’d like to promote.  The key is to produce content around your products and services that’s valuable, educational, and builds trust.

This is where you should also look to your marketing calendar and translate that calendar directly into your content calendar.  Be sure to reverse engineer any programs or special promotions you plan to offer so that you’re introducing the content early enough to spark people’s interest.

3. Strategic Partners.  After you’ve filled in your calendar to map to your marketing calendar and your business objectives, it’s time to look to what you can do with your strategic partners.  Look to see when they have events or programs you could promote.  Interviews with your strategic partners also make for great.

Guest posts have become very popular as well.  You could offer to write a post for a colleagues blog in exchange for one of your own.  If your partners have other content like white papers or ebooks, there is also opportunity to promote those pieces that have value for your audience.  At the end of the day, it’s about you being a high quality, complete source of information for your audience.

4. Developing a Series.  A series could take a number of different formats.  It could be a series of posts on a certain topic that is timely and relevant or it could actually be a type of content that you’ll post on a regular basis.  It could be a post that you write on a weekly or monthly basis about the latest tools or technology or it could be a video interview series that you’re doing with authors in your industry.

Some popular concepts for a series could be “Wordless Wednesdays” and that could be that every Wednesday you post some video content.  Maybe a CPA firm or law firm decides to integrate some humor into its content with a weekly cartoon.  There are a number of ways to add a series to your content calendar–it’s just a matter of putting it down on the calendar so you know what you need and when you need it.

5. Look to your most popular posts.  At this point, your calendar will have some remaining holes and it’s time go back and fill those with more content on the most popular topics you’ve written to date.  If a topic received a number of shares or comments, that’s proof that the topic is of importance to your audience.  Those topics that get shares and comments are helping your audience solve problems or answer the problems they’re experiencing.  Take the time to map out the topics that get the most traction with your audience and be sure to plan out those pieces in your calendar.

We all have a tremendous amount of content at our fingertips.  It’s just a matter of taking a strategic look at how you can deliver that content over time to help you accomplish your business objectives.  And putting these details right into a calendar will help you deliver the right content at the right time.

I’d love to hear about any other concepts you’ve used to plan your content and the success that you’ve experienced as a result.

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Categories : Blogging, Lead Conversion, Lead Generation
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Two Words: Fast Follower – Is It For Your Business?

By Stand Out Results · Comments (0)
Friday, April 12th, 2013
Stand Out Results Marketing Strategy Fast Follower

 News flash!  No one cares if you thought of the idea first.

The public is more interested in who is doing it better.  This is why so many companies take the “fast follower” business and marketing approach.

A fast follower company will pick a successful brand and model themselves similarly against it benefiting from the model company’s research, education and brand awareness dollars, all while swooping in and taking some of the main company’s market share by doing virtually the same thing.

For example, Wendy’s fast Marketing Fast Follower, Wendy’s, riding on McDonald’s site location heels food chains position themselves within a half mile, or most often across the street, from a McDonald’s.  Look at Lowe’s and Home Depot, they do the same thing, allowing the one to scout the market and area and then quickly follow with a location of their own in the same vicinity.  This type of market strategy is often seen by generic beauty products.  The name brand invested in the research of the product development, creating the overall brand value and created a demand for the product.  The generic brands, borrow all knowledge, package the product so similar to the original that many consumers don’t notice the difference and undercut the price allowing for more sales at very little acquisition costs.

Completely giving all your marketing strategy up to your competition to fast follow will result in disaster.

However, here is the note of caution.  Completely giving all your marketing strategy up to your competition to fast follow will result in disaster.  Think of this: Wendy’s positions themselves locally near McDonald’s because they share the same general target market.  However, that’s where the similarities end.  Wendy’s are looking to attract a more influential client that is looking for a more sophisticated taste and healthier food choices.  McDonald’s is about selling food fast and cheap for the consumer on the go.  This distinction is why narrowing your target market so severely is imperative in creating a successful business.  If they both were targeting the same exact market, their advertising and message would be so similar that the consumer wouldn’t be able to identify the difference between the two providers and loyalty would drop and price wars would ensue as that would be the only criteria that the customer would have to compare the two brands.

What’s your takeaway?  It’s OK to track and study your competitors but it’s more important for you to narrow your target market as much as possible and create a marketing strategy that fits within the market and your differentiation.  To find out more, download our FREE ebook, 7 Steps to Marketing Success.  Or if you want to learn how create an effective and successful lead generation marketing plan with a professional, call or email Vicki@Stand-Out-Results.com us today.

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So You Think You Understand Your TCE? (… It’s a Vital Pillar of Your Strategy)

By Kurian Tharakan · Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013

… or what a can opener can teach you about understanding the customer

The canning of foods was a novel and highly useful invention developed in the late 1790′s, prodded forward by a French military contest to develop a safe method for preserving and transporting food. One of the large constraints on military campaigns at that time was that the starting of wars was typically limited to the summer months as that was when food was most plentiful.

The military contest awarded the sum of 12,000 francs to Nicolas Appert, an inventor who discovered that food cooked inside a jar did not spoil until the seal was broken. Thus the canning industry and canned food was born. Over the next few decades, the processes became perfected, and canned foods became essential in military campaigns and in such expeditions as to the north and south poles.  Eventually canned food rose to become a high status item in the pantries of many European households.

The strategy lesson in this story lies in the TCE, or Total Customer Experience. Although canning was invented in the 1790′s, the can opener WAS NOT invented until 1855 – a full 60 years later!!  Until that time, customers relied on knives, bayonets, and other sharp instruments to remove the lids from the can, sometimes injuring themselves in the process. Relief came when Robert Yeates invented the lever type can opener that greatly eased the customer experience of getting to the contents of the can.  It would be another 50 years before the double wheel design that we know today came into being.

Too often, businesses focus entirely on perfecting the product at the expense of understanding the Total Customer Experience SURROUNDING the product.  Things like:

  • How it is purchased?
  • In what quantities? (packaging)
  • What it is used for?
  • How it is prepared?
  • How it is transported?
  • How it is stored?
  • etc.

Items such as these are often sources for angst among your customers and allow great opportunity for you to differentiate.

In a previous post, we used the example of Apple’s entry into the crowded mp3 player market in 2001.  By itself, the iPod is just another music device, but with a PROPRIETARY integration into the iTunes ecosystem, the Total Customer Experience is transformed. Browse, select, buy, play, organize all in one system.  Other mp3 manufacturers are going to have a tough time breaching this moat.  And the more tunes the customer buys, the more playlists they create, the deeper and wider that moat becomes.By understanding the elements of the Total Customer Experience, entirely new opportunities for your business will open up.

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Categories : Marketing Strategy

Your Total Online Presence Affirms Your Credibility

By Kelly Weppler · Comments (0)
Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

You don’t just need an online presence. You need a quality total online presence. That’s true even if your business is strictly word-of-mouth.

total online presence

Does your total online presence make the phone ring?

Think about it. When someone gives you a referral or hands you a business card, what’s the first thing you do? If you’re like me, you go online before you make the call. I want to find out whether the company’s total online presence lives up to the expectations my colleague has created.

Does that company have good reviews on Yelp or LinkedIn? Does its website communicate the same warm, fuzzy feelings my friend has communicated about the firm’s business operations?  Will a visit to the website be more likely to encourage or discourage a potential client from contacting you?

That online check is akin to what my friend calls her “management 101 check.” When she goes to a business location, the first thing she does is check the restroom. The attention to detail in the restroom speaks volumes about the attention to detail in the rest of the business.

Don’t be left out. The hard facts are that 97 percent of consumers now go online when researching products or services in their local area, according to BIA/Kelsey’s  User View Wave VII, an ongoing consumer tracking study conducted with research partner ConStat.

You have to think of your online presence as a credibility platform.

So if you’re concerned about credibility (and you should be; credibility is the key to business success), here are five questions you can use for a self-audit. They will help you determine whether what you’re communicating online is useful to your target audience.

  1. Is what you do clear and easy to understand? Keep your language simple, and be diligent about translating industry jargon into layman’s terms.
  2. Does your website describe the kind of problems you solve? People need to know what you can do for them and why they might want to call you. Make it fast and easy to figure out, or they’ll go elsewhere.
  3. Is your site visually stimulating—or does it consist of long stretches of text? Provide some compelling eye candy to entice people, so they will stay on your site and look around.
  4. Are your location and contact information easy to find? You want people to contact you so make it easy for them. If you only provide limited access, such as an email address, that might suggest you’re aloof and unreachable.
  5. Have you made any changes or updates to your website in the past 30 days? If not—and if it’s clearly been years since you changed anything—it’s past time to start thinking about updating your online presence.

Of course, these five questions don’t equal a comprehensive audit. If that’s what you’re looking for, fill out our complimentary marketing audit form, and we’ll provide you with quality feedback.

 

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Duct Tape Marketing Consultant
1800 Central Street, Ste 203
Kansas City, MO 64108
866-DUC-TAPE (382-8273)
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