« September 2004 | Main | November 2004 »

Getting Started With Bloglines

Have you made the jump to a newsreader? Many people use bookmarks for their blog reading. Some rely on a service like blogrolling to show them when blogs update. The problem with either of these systems is that it's slow and inefficient. Both require you to load the full page of each blog simply to read the latest posts. The advantage of using a newsreader is that it automates the process of reading just the latest content from your favorite blogs.

I often recommend those just starting out with newsreaders try a free web based reader to get their feet wet. Bloglines is the service of choice. Steve Ruebel of Micro Persuasion points to this fine tutorial that will help you get started.

The conversations are happening. Bloggers are talking about your company, product and customers. Shouldn't you participate?

October 29, 2004 in award winning design, award winning magazine, Blog Outsourcing, Blogging Tools, build credibility, Building Customer Community, Business newsletter, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Going, Going, Gone!

Consider this, a study by U.S. News and World Report once revealed how
and why companies lose customers. Customers are lost because:

-1% die.

-3% move away.

-5% form other friendships or business relationships.

-9% switch for competitive reasons.

-14% are lost because of product dissatisfaction.

-68% quit doing business with a company because they perceive an
attitude of indifference toward them by some employee.

That's right, 68 percent of your customers may stop doing business with
you, not because your product is inferior or your location is
inconvenient, but instead, because you or your people, simply look,
sound and act like you just don't care.

A customer makes one buying decision at a time, but this "decision" is
made repeatedly. For months, years or even decades. Unfortunately, a
lost customer seldom or even never returns.

What's the lifetime value of your customer or client?

What's the lifetime impact of that loss?

Remember, a long-term, profitable business...is all about customer
acquisition, satisfaction and retention.

October 27, 2004 in award winning newsletter, Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, Brand enhancement, Business newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Marketing Like A Sailor

David Wolfe over at Ageless Marketing makes a great analogy for marketing in today's market conditions. He describes the differences between marketing like a powerboater vs a sailer.

Marketers will increasingly find greater success by acting less like powerboaters slicing their way through their watery environments paying little heed to others. They will learn that the sailor’s mindset works better in today’s markets than the powerboater’s mindset.

Reflect a moment on differences between power boating and sailboating: Except in extreme conditions, powerboaters can ignore the forces of wind, wave and current, and reach their destinations. However, sailors can only reach their destinations by collaborating with the forces of wind, wave and current.

Interersting. Perhaps one of the best ways to market like a sailor is to be aware of market conditions just like a sailor would read the wind and sea conditions. At BeTuitive we work with freelance writers who are themselves dialed into their specific industries to provide content that is relevant and valuable to our clients and their subscribers. Beyond industry knowledge we can intuit exactly what customers are interested in by knowing what elements of the e-newsletter they read. The combination of these two strategies provides extremely valuable marketing intelligence to our clients helping them learn to sail through both the good market conditions and the challenges faced by today's savvy business marketers.

[read]

October 27, 2004 in Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, build credibility, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Community, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, business credibility, Business newsletter, Business publications, Business relationships, CMO | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Solving Problems vs. Selling Products

Remarkable customer service always makes for a good story. The point of this story is building a customer relationship that transcends transactions and addresses solutions to customer problems. The story details the manager of one business taking a customer to a neighboring competitor to solve her problem even when she did not profit from the sale.

Does this happen in your business? Do you solve customer problems or simply vend products. What about your marketing communications? Do your opt-in email newsletters tell stories of problems solved or just features and benefits of your offerings?

The power of solution stories positions your strategic internet marketing as a resource not just advertising.

October 26, 2004 in audio publication | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Intuiting Email Marketing Behavior

Marketing Vox points to a Double Click study that finds:

DoubleClick published a massive tracking study on email habits, showing that more and more people are becoming slaves to their email (33 percent versus 20 percent from the previous year). The average email user now gets 308 emails a week, up 16 percent, and about two thirds of that is spam.

Some other tidbits:
- 57 percent report getting permission-based emails from offline stores, and 45 percent report the same for catalog companies.
- Almost a third - 32 percent - have made an immediate purchase due to an email (up from 28 percent in 2003).
- Perhaps more importantly, another 30 percent report clicking through an email to learn more information that resulted in a later purchase. Also an additional one in eight people reported clicking through, learning more and then making an offline purchase.

It's important to monitor developments and studies that examine how consumers interact with strategic internet marketing especially opt-in permission email marketing because B2C relationships create a comfort level with online transactions that will translate to the building B2B relationships. Intuiting how your customers interact with consumer oriented email marketing will give you valuable insights that can help you shape your business marketing.

[read]

October 19, 2004 in award winning newsletter, Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Intuition, Business Marketing, Business newsletter, Business relationships, CMO | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Finding History

HbotlogoSometimes historical dates and facts can just slip the mind. Here's a tool to help find the answers to historical queries. When did Columbus sail? Who discovered America? Who shot JFK? You can through these and more at the H-bot and though the wonders of fancy pants algorithms the answers quickly appear. Good help for the homework questions your kids hit you up with?

October 14, 2004 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Connect by Defining Yourself

22901_4434Speaking of words. Are there industry terms or acronyms that you find yourself defining over and over for your clients and customers? I found this to be the case when I worked for an architectural firm. We constantly had to define our terms and jargon. Clients often didn't want to admit that they didn't understand a term we were using to describe some aspect of their project. Many were image conscious and not wanting to appear uninformed or worse stupid. Others felt they would insult us by asking too many basic questions.

Defining terms, lingo and jargon needs to be a staple of your marketing communication. Definitions make a great regular feature in each issue of your opt-in permission based email marketing newsletter.

For the next two weeks keep a notepad with you during phone calls and meetings. Every time you use jargon, a common industry term or acronym write it down or add a tick mark. Every time you are asked to define or explain a term make a star by that term. At the end of the two weeks you will have a prioritized list of the industry terms that your clients and customers need to understand.

If you really want to connect with customers you need to have a common language with which to converse and express yourselves. Defining your terms is a great first step.

October 11, 2004 in award winning newsletter, Building Customer Community, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, Business newsletter, Business publications, Business relationships | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Finding the Right Word

Sometimes when you are wordsmithing your marketing materials or preparing that important presentation and you are trying desperately to think of just the right word. You know what you are trying to say you just can't pull that elusive word off the tip of your tongue.

OnelookreverseOne Look Reverse Dictionary is just what you are looking for. Enter a concept and it returns a list of words and related concepts. Go now. Play with it. Bookmark it. Come back soon.

via

October 7, 2004 in Business newsletter, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Intuitive Marketers Turn to Keyword Buys in Times of Crisis

CBS/Marketwatch reports that the Vioxx news of this past week is mobilizing lawyers, who smell blood in the water, to buy up adwords to find new customers.

From the article:

As people search for credible sources online, marketers realize that there is an opportunity to target potential customers by sponsoring keywords associated with news as soon as it breaks.

It's exactly what happened when Merck's (MRK: news, chart, profile) $2.5 billion arthritis and painkiller drug was recalled last week. As soon as the news broke, law firms seeking Vioxx takers to represent in lawsuits against Merck began bidding on the term Vioxx. It was $2 per click last Friday, when I wrote about this story.

That could be chump change when compared to the money that a lawsuit could reap for attorneys and plaintiffs.

At last check, that keyword Vioxx is attracting swarms of lawyers and driving the word up to $11.88 on Yahoo's Overture network.

It's bidding frenzies like this that's putting search increasingly on the map.

The point is customers are turning to search in times of crisis. A marketer with polished customer intuition will see the opportunities and jump on opportunities to put search engine marketing to work to find new customers.

[read] via

October 6, 2004 in audio publication, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, build credibility, Building B2B Relationships, Business Marketing, Business newsletter, CMO, Current Affairs, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google Hack for Printed Materials

Google Print is developing search capability for offline printed books and magazines.

Google's mission is to provide access to all the world's information and make it universally useful and accessible. It turns out that not all the world's information is already on the Internet, so Google has been experimenting with a number of publishers to test their content online. During this trial, publishers' content is hosted by Google and is ranked in our search results according to the same technology we use to evaluate websites.

This will take some time to develop but it's worth knowing about if you want to search by keyword for a book or magazine article.

It takes some Google-Fu to do this. Enter a search string like this:

keyword site:google.com (inurl:isbn | inurl:articleid)
Where
-keyword=your desired search term
-site: google.com= limits the search to pages within the google system
-(inurl:isbn)= will return books because the pages have "isbn" in the page url
-(inurl:articleid)= will return magazine articles because the pages have "articleid" in the url
-(inurl:isbn | inurl:articleid)= will return books and magazines.

This is just one example of the advanced search hacks available on Google. It really is amazing all the things Google can do. The more you know about using Google the better you will be at using Google to develop your customer intuition.

via

October 5, 2004 in award winning newsletter, Blog Outsourcing, build credibility, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack