Peter Grandstaff Web Engineering

• 31May

  Videos for Your Lazy Memorial Day

  Marketing No Comments

  It’s a lazy day around here with Memorial Day. We’re having a block party later on, and I’m guessing you’re probably not terribly focused on work either. So, this month I’m not going to write a long, original article. Instead I have some videos for you to check out if you have some time to kill and want some good business brain food.

  First, a video of Seth Godin talking about standing out. Some of you might remember a previous newsletter on this topic. Well, I don’t think I ever included this video. It’s worth watching just to find out how Silk brand soy milk tripled its sales. Running time: 17 minutes Seth Godin on Sliced Bread & Soy Milk

  This next one is a bit off topic. It’s an interview with Richard Stallman. Never heard of him? I’m not surprised. He’s sort of an underground hero. You see, when he was a student at Harvard and working in the MIT artificial intelligence lab, he started creating free software so that academics could freely modify it to suit their needs. What he started back then, in 1983, was called the GNU project. You’re probably familiar with it. Most people just call it Linux. The correct title is GNU/Linux, as it’s a combination of Stallman’s work and a kernel by Linus Torvalds. Anyhow, Stallman recently gave an interview to Mashable that I think should be required viewing. Running time 3 minutes Stallman on Software Freedom

  Finally, for you copywriting geeks out there, here’s a video presentation by Drayton Bird, who, according to David Ogilvy, “knows more about direct marketing than anyone in the world.” In it he breaks down and analyses four advertisements — two by him, one by David Ogilvy and one by Claude Hopkins. If you’re a student of the persuasive power of language then you’ll love this one. The link is to a summary, just click through to watch the video. They won’t try to sell you anything. Running time 50 minutes Drayton Bird’s Ad Crunch

  Sorry, I can’t embed this last one, and I don’t think it will be available forever. It seems kind of hypocritical to post this non-free video after Richard Stallman, but hey – I’m not perfect.

  Tags: copywriting, newsletter, video

• 24May

  Do you use your prospect’s favorite color?

  Marketing No Comments

  When someone visits a new website, picks up a paper, or glances at a brochure stand they make a snap decision.  As quickly as possible they will decide if what they’re looking at is what they’re looking for.  It might take them 20 seconds or happen in an instant.  Either way, it happens long before they’ve had time to make a well thought out judgement of the whole of what they are looking at.

  Think about it.  When you pick up a newspaper you glance at 80% of the headlines and read about 20% of the articles.  Why?  All those unread stories weren’t what you were looking for, and you decided that in a few seconds.  So, in the newspaper business headlines are vital… actually in every business.

  Websites have a lot more going on than just the headlines.  So does a brochure or a full-color mailing.  There are colors, photos, graphics, and even video (on websites, not on brochures yet.)  All of it can contribute to a prospect’s decision to stay or leave.  All of it, but I’m just going to talk about colors for now.

  Keep reading »

  Tags: color, design, newsletter

• 30Mar

  Conversion Tracking You Can Do Yourself, Cheap

  Small Business No Comments

  This is a follow-up to Is your business converting as well as it could?.

  To figure out your conversion rate you need two numbers.  You need to know how many total times you had the opportunity to make a conversion – e.g. website visitors, phone calls, or walk-in customers.  I’ll refer to this number as impressions for the sake of clarity.  You also need to know the number of successful conversions.

  Note: Be sure to measure these over the same time period!

  Then there’s a little math.  Don’t worry, I’m a professional.  Whip out your calculator and key in:

  
  That will give you your conversion rate.  Bump the decimal place to the right two spaces and you’ll have it as a percentage.

  Example: Your website got 328 visits and you made 16 sales.  16 divided by 328 equals 0.04878.  Bump the decimal over and you have a 4.878% conversion rate.

  Okay, that’s the math.  What about getting those numbers?  Obviously, if you have an ecommerce site it’s pretty easy to figure out the number of visitors and the number of sales.  It’s a little trickier if customers visit your website, then call in an order or visit the store.

  The answer here is training.  Train your staff to ask callers how they found you.  Train your clerks to ask while they ring someone up.  You can keep a clipboard by the register and the phone where your staff can mark down the answers.  Heck, you could even use a fancy spreadsheet.

  Spend some time figuring out how to phrase your question.  Be specific.  You probably don’t want to ask your regulars “How did you hear about us?”  You’ll do better with “How did you find us today?”

  If you’re tracking phone conversions be sure to tally how many total calls there were in addition to the number of sales made on the phone and how people found your number.

  Another option is to get an 800 number that forwards to your main line.  Then put that number on your website instead of your regular number.  Now you can track the number of calls that came from your website.  Of course, that’s another monthly expense.

  Now, on the web there are a lot of ways to track conversions.  For instance, you can define goals and funnels in Google Analytics or use Google Conversion Tracking. There are great click-tracking systems you can install like Crazy Egg or ClickTale. That’s a separate article though.

  This post first appeared in my e-mail newsletter.

  Tags: conversion, metrics, newsletter, small business

• 16Feb

  Is your business converting as well as it could?

  Small Business 2 Comments

  What do I mean by converting?  I mean converting browsers into buyers.

  A conversion is when someone looking at your offerings decides to take the action you want them to take, i.e. making a purchase or providing you with their contact information.  On a website, the conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who make a purchase or give you their e-mail address.

  

  When you know what your conversion rate is and what the average value of a conversion is, you can calculate return on investment, ROI, very accurately.  When you know your ROI you can make the most informed and profitable decisions about the allocation of your marketing budget.  The higher your conversion rate the greater your ROI.

  Next month I’ll get into measuring conversion rates, and I’ll have a special offer for newsletter subscribers who want some help getting a system in place to provide these metrics.  Now, I want to tell you about how to increase that conversion rate.

  Keep reading »

  Tags: conversion, newsletter, optimization, small business

• 05Jan

  Does your small business have room to grow, horizontally?

  Small Business No Comments
  

  The sky's the limit when you expand toward the horizon.

  There are two directions to grow your business, vertically and horizontally.  Vertical growth is selling more to your existing market and expanding your share of that market.  Horizontal growth is selling new products or services experiences to your existing market and adapting your offerings to fit new markets.  At least that’s the way I look at it.  An MBA would tell you that horizontal growth is all about acquiring companies in other sectors.  That’s not very useful to most small businesses.

  When you start thinking about growing your business horizontally it’s really helpful to properly understand what it is you’re selling.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m sure you have a masterful understanding of your products and the services you offer.  

  Keep reading »

  Tags: Marketing, newsletter, small business

• 11Dec

  Twitter Tutorial Two: 7 Important Twitter Features Explained

  Marketing, Technology 2 Comments
  

  Twitter’s weird.  It’s a bit hard to wrap your head around it.  My best advice is to worry about that later.  Whatever Twitter is and whatever it does, it’s evolving.  So, don’t worry about understanding it before you use it.  Through using it you’ll come to understand it, and maybe you’ll even figure out new ways to put it to use.

  That said, there are some things that are helpful to know.

  What is a Tweet?

  Let’s get this out of the way:

  A tweet is a piece of text no longer than 140 characters. Spaces and punctuation count. Think of it as a blog entry, a bitesized blog entry.

  For reference, that definition is 140 characters long.

  Keep reading »

  Tags: newsletter, social media, tutorial, twitter

• 17Nov

  Email Marketing Services & Their Ads in Your Footer

  Marketing 2 Comments

  I absolutely hate it when email marketing services advertise for themselves in the footers of their paying customer’s messages.  I mean, you’re paying them right?  Why the heck should you have to advertise for them too?  So, here’s a breakdown of email marketing services and their policy of intruding into your messages.

  • Aweber – No footer ads, ever.
  • MailChimp – Footer ads can be disabled easily in your account if you’re a paying customer.
  • Vertical Response – You’ll have to contact support to get the ad removed.
  • Constant Contact – Same, you’ll have to put in a support request… adding your logo costs extra.
  • iContact – Pay 10% extra per month (minimum $4.95) to remove the ad.  In their defense, iContact does have the least intrusive footer ad, plus they’re based right here in Raleigh, NC.

  While I’m at it, I have to tell you why I hate Constant Contact.  It’s the name.  Sure, you want to be in constant contact with your list, but I’ll wager you’re readers would rather not hear from you constantly.  Years ago, I actually unsubscribed from a local company’s newsletter because of that Constant Contact logo at the bottom.  “Constant Contact?  I don’t want that.  My in-box if full enough already!”

  Got a tip or something I missed? Share it in the comments below!

  This post first appeared in my monthly small business newsletter.

  Tags: email, email marketing, newsletter, small business

• 12Nov

  Twitter Tutorial 1: How to Tweet Well

  Marketing No Comments

  So, you’ve heard me rant about Twitter.  Some of you even went out and set up accounts, good work!  So now what?  What do you actually do with Twitter once you’re on there?  Why does it matter?

  image credit

  How To Tweet Well

  Well, Twitter became even more important this month.  Deals were announced with both Google and Microsoft to include Twitter posts — tweets — in search results.  So, before long, when someone searches for your company they might also see what people are saying about you on Twitter.  In my book, everything in search engine results matters big time, period.  Twitter also matters because it gives you another outlet to stay connected with your clients, donors, peers, etc. as well as to attract new ones.

  Tweeting seems really simple.  Twitter seems really simple in general, at first.  It is a simple concept: write little messages no longer than 140 characters.  In theory each tweet should answer the question: What are you doing?  Dead simple.  But, actually doing this well gets complicated.  You’ll need to balance the amount you want to communicate with the amount of room you have, and still write something readable.  You’ll also need to stand out — catch people’s eyes.  You’ll want to elicit a response from the reader as well, e.g. click your link, reply to you, or just empathize with you.  Finally, you have to provide actual value in your tweets.  A few examples should help. Keep reading »

  Tags: newsletter, tutorial, twitter

• 06Oct

  Stand Out to Take the Lead – Newsletter 9/2009

  Small Business No Comments

  

  I have a question for you this month.

  How many marketing messages (commercials, phone calls, junk mail, web ads, everything.) do you think the average American encounters every day? Seriously, stop reading for a second, and take a wild guess.  Once you have your guess, read on for the answer.

  Marketing is everywhere.  Can you think of a single website that doesn’t have marketing in it?  They are few and far between.  You can’t drive down the street without seeing some marketing.  Check your mail or pick up the phone, and it’s there.

  Our brains have learned that there are many many distractions in our lives that will lead us to parting with money or at least wasting time.  We’re used to it.  So we tune the vast majority of it out.  We are all skilled at ignoring the noise.

  Ready for the answer?  First, let me guess what you guessed.  I bet you guessed somewhere between three hundred and a thousand.  The actual number is a bit hard to measure as you might imagine.  According to Bill Glazer (A very successful marketer for those who don’t know the name) the average American encounters 3,191 marketing messages and ads per day.  According to J. Walker Smith of Chapel Hill, NC based Yankelovich, in a 2005 USA Today article, the number is between 3,500 and 5,000.  Today, it’s likely even higher.

  So, why did I spend all this time just to get to that number?  Because, I want you to understand just how vital it is for your marketing messages to break through the noise and get noticed.  Before long you’ll be competing with ten thousand other marketing efforts every day.  To really get that, it helps to think about the question before you learn the answer.

  You have to stand out from the competition to take the lead.  That goes for websites and search engine marketing in addition to everything else.  When your website uses the same looks, lines and messages as your competitors you stay a part of the background noise.  When your page comes up in search results it has to grab the searcher’s attention to get clicked.  (Being the first result is a great way to get noticed!)  When your pay per click ad shows up it will be right next to other ads.  It has to stand out.

  Get the point?

  So, how do you stand out?  I say be creative, bold, and real.  Bill Glazer will tell you to be outrageous.  Don’t be afraid to do something different.  Make bold statements.  Never underestimate the importance of an eye-catching headline.  Whatever you do, be real.  We’ve all learned to expect phoniness and misleading statements from marketing.  Stand out by being yourself: honest and human.

  One last tip.  Stop copying your competition’s marketing strategies.  The best that can come of that is that you’ll keep pace, a little behind the rest.  The worst case is when they’re copying you too.  You’ll end up with marketing about as effective as a photocopy of a photocopy is pretty.

  As usual, if you’d like some help making your business stand out, get in touch with me.  You can hit that reply button right now and get your message straight into my primary in-box.

  Know someone who might benefit from this message?  Forward it on!

  To the Success of Small Businesses Everywhere,

  Peter Grandstaff

  PS: Hang Gliding is amazing!  I can’t recommend Kitty Hawk Kites strongly enough.  They also provide a nice example of standing out.  Once you pay for your lesson you get all of it, no matter what.  If you can’t make it, the wind won’t cooperate, or you just chicken out they will give you a ‘wind-check’ to come back and get whatever you missed at no additional charge.  Wind-checks never expire, and they are transferable!  Have you ever heard of such a thing!?

  Tags: Marketing, newsletter, small business

• 07Sep

  Community Website Launch: TriangleDogForum.com

  Life No Comments

  For the past year or so I have been working on a side project, a local community site for dog lovers.  Triangle Dog Forum is the result, and it’s now open to the public.

  

  There’s a ton of functionality here.  There are Lost Pet Alerts, discussion forums, free classified ads, and a directory of local dog and pet business and resources from dog trainers and vets to shelters and rescues.  The entire site is 100% free.  I do have a few ads running, but I don’t really expect to make any money.  I just wanted to create a useful resource for local dog lovers.

  Do you love dogs and live in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina?  If so, check out Triangle Dog Forum.

  Tags: dogs, website

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