Vox Fortis Communications

I have come to a realization recently about my career path that has started living and breathing on this blog. (Ok, I know it hasn’t been breathing much lately…I told you to give me some time.)

Since I went freelance last year, the bulk of my work has been in SEO. How this happened, I’m not entirely sure, given that I was originally a web copywriter and project manager type. Don’t get me wrong, I have an extensive background in online marketing, but it wasn’t really what people were hiring me for…however, it’s served a unique purpose it seems, in SEO.

Looking back on some of my entries, it might sound like this is the end-all be-all of what I believe online marketing should be. Believe me, it’s certainly not. As good as I’ve gotten with SEO, I find myself missing the other avenues of online marketing that I used to do daily when I worked for bigger companies. From time to time, I encounter companies that are pursuing these other mysterious worlds on their own: email marketing, blogging, social networking. The list is practically endless.

And also, from time to time, they mention in passing they’re trying one out now, or that they tried one in the past and it didn’t work at all.

That said, because I’m getting tired of writing about SEO in here, let’s examine some other avenues. Today’s topic? Email marketing.

It’s just spam. No one uses email marketing effectively.

Boy, it would be nice to have some form of monetary something-or-another every time I heard that.

Let me assure you, email marketing DOES work…but like any form of marketing it has to be done effectively. A lot of the clients I’ve heard this from will drop ten times as much on a direct mail campaign as they will on an email one because they have a preconceived notion that it’s physical and somehow more effective.

While you can certainly track many forms of direct mail success, one of email’s strengths (like any online marketing vehicle) is that you can measure e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. It’s also its downfall, because people will try and send one or two, and get frustrated and give up when they don’t get the open rate they want, the website traffic they want, or the number of sign-ups they thought they’d have in a few weeks. (It’s also worth noting that just because a medium is less measurable, it doesn’t mean it’s less effective)

So what’s the deal with email? Why do companies invest millions in the people, the technology and the patience? Let’s review the basics to a strong email program:

Don’t expect what email marketing won’t give.

Email marketing is primarily a retention tool. So many companies get frustrated when they spend thousands on an email list, send a generic blast and get bupkis in return. Guess what? Those people might have unknowingly missed the little checkbox on whoever’s site they signed on for that said, “Yes, I want to hear third party offers” or something of the kind. They don’t want to hear from you. (I’m sorry, I know that kinda sucks to hear.)

Approach email as your friendly salesperson if you had a storefront. (Maybe you do. And if your store people suck, now’s your chance to raise the bar!) Reach out to the people that have purchased, let THEM invite others to hear what you have to say…which obviously means, you better make it good.

No one opens my emails.

What do you see when an email pops into your inbox? Two things, usually: a “from” field and a subject line. If your subject line is the same everytime, or has zero compelling copy in it, I wouldn’t open it, either. Take a step back from your email and look at it later. What’s the most compelling thing in it? 80% off your entire stock? 10 secrets to withdrawing from the Satan-creator of Starbucks’ addictive recipes? Think like a consumer. What would make them care enough to doubleclick on YOUR email?

Test it. One of the most frequent tests done in email marketing is subject line testing. Split your audience in half, send the same creative version of the email but with two different subject lines. Your consumers will tell you what they care about if you take the time to gather some data.

No one clicks on my emails.

Um, ok. I know this is going to sound really lame and obvious, but I have to ask it: are you giving them something to click through on? If you’re trying to drive traffic to your recipe website, don’t fill your email full of recipes. If you give me everything in the email I need, I have zero reason to click through. Use it as a marketing vehicle for your site. Give teasers for the dishes that have recently appeared on your site with photos. Give the START of a recipe with a link to click on to see the rest.

People want a reason to come to your site, you just have to give it to them.

I’m not acquiring emails on my site.

I have to start by saying that if your traffic stinks, then don’t worry about the rate at which you’re acquiring (or not, acquiring, apparently) email addresses. Remember, we’re approaching email as a retention tool….there have to be visitors there to retain! But let’s pretend you’re pretty happy with your website’s traffic, in general. Why aren’t they signing up?

First, where is your email capture field? Is it below the fold? Check click overlay patterns on your site and see where people are going the most and position the field there.

Second, do they understand what they’re getting? You can’t just have a capture field in there with generic text about “sign up to receive updates.” I don’t know what that means, and if I don’t know what it is, I don’t want it coming to my inbox.

This sounds basic.

Sure it does smartypants, but you’d be shocked how many people get really upset and give up after a month. That’s not to say that these simple things would solve everything for them, but in over half the cases I’ve seen fixing just some of these issues result in a dramatic difference. And you know what? I worked in a huge dot com, pushing millions of dollars through the email channel, and really….it all came back to basics. Yes, we had some pretty flashy resources and technology at our disposal, but we were held to the same metrics that any small business owner would be: open rate, clickthrough rate, and conversion rate.

Millionaire corporation or not, they’re still your customers - how are you talking to them?

Thanks to the popularity of My Puppy Can Teach You Marketing, it’s now time for the next lesson in the series: My Puppy Can Help You Understand Basic SEO - Lesson #1.

I’m not talking about crazy blitzing to get your site into the #1 ranking in some ungodly amount of time. I don’t practice that stuff anyway, though I’ve been asked to. What do you, as a business or site owner, need to understand about search? My puppy has the answer, thanks to her piles of sticks. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read the first entry already, wouldja?) Instead of how selecting her sticks is like marketing, let’s look at how it relates to search engines.

It might seem like the first question should be: Does Google even know you have a stick? It’s not. That comes at the end. Let’s start with the foundation.

What’s your stick all about?

The search engine only has a few precious ways to figure out what your stick looks like: what the site has on it, what other sites point to it, and when they’re pointing, what words they’re using.

The only thing you have absolute control over is the structure of your site and what you’re telling Google about it. When my pup looks at all the sticks in the woods outside (and trust me, there are plenty of them) she knows what she sees…some are bigger, some are smaller, some are brown, some are decomposing.

Don’t let Google think your site is of the decomposing variety…splintered, unfocused, and basically dead and useless. (Unless that’s your thing. Hey, on the Internet there’s room for everyone.)

Let’s assume you want to be brown and full of yummy bark (which, by the way, she skillfully peels off and spits out.) Your bark is that outside layer, the first thing the search engine looks at. It sees your url, which nowadays, can be very hard to make straightforward and relevant. It looks at your page titles, your meta data, and what your pictures are named. It’s peeling away the bark, and trying to figure out what pile you belong in.

The first thing I see a lot of clients rush toward is the body copy and keyword-stuffing in that regard. That won’t do you much good until Google looks at your site’s foundation first and figures out if you’re a log, a twig, if you fell from a Maple or a Spruce. Make the process easier for it (and better for you) by using those precious keywords here FIRST.

You’re reading one of the most impatient people on Earth, who wants to jump into customer-facing content like it’s a drug habit. I get it. But, you have to think bigger picture and in a more methodical manner when dealing with search engines. They were written by engineers for goodness’ sakes, so get in that mindset and make the behind-the-scenes foundation solid before you do anything else.

Stayed tuned for Lesson #2 of the Puppy SEO Series this week: finding your keywords.

In honor of the complete and utter neglect of my poor blog, I give you a photo of a jackass. That would be me. My promise to myself to stay updated got seriously sidetracked by some seriously crazy days leading up to the holidays and something had to give. Unfortunately, it was the task that doesn’t pay me money, which is coincidentally the one that can’t fire me if it’s neglected.Still, I’m a jackass for falling so far behind.That said, it’s time to get back on track. I spent the morning invoicing and catching up on also-neglected admin work. (Which um…I just got done saying my blog doesn’t pay me. My clients won’t either, if I don’t invoice them, but I managed to slack off on that too.)

To be fair, I haven’t taken days off in a long time. I went straight from corporate burnout to freelancing full-time, so I was bound to crash from the adrenaline of it all. Suffice it to say, I relaxed fully, enjoyed my holidays, but am totally ready to start getting my brain working again. Part of wiping the cobwebs off my brain included looking at where I’m at from a client and payment perspective.

I made the decision I seem to make a few times a year where I say, “Well, I’ll go ahead and cancel my membership at Guru.com.” Like clockwork, it gave me a reason not to. Let me first say that I recognize most people don’t have great things to say about freelancing sites. I’m in another camp, but I also think I use it differently. The people I see getting most frustrated are the ones that try and pin their freelance money-making entirely on sites like Elance.com and Guru.com. When Elance overhauled its structure last month, a lot of contractors were rightfully very upset because really, no matter how Elance wants to spin it, the providers were getting screwed and not the buyers. (Catalyst Blogger’s update can also be read here. I have to give shouts to a fellow Philly-native, of course.) I personally never had luck with Elance, so I’m in the Guru camp, but I can completely understand why they’re upset.I use freelancing sites for specific reasons, and I think they’re beneficial if you apply the tenets we all know as freelancers. I see these tenets get suspended when it comes to these sites, but they have to be treated like any other marketing channel. Here’s what I mean:  

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. 

This is common advice among freelancers, business owners, and contractors. Do not tie yourself too heavily to one client, because if they go out of business, guess what? You might, too. Keep a constant and spread-out roster so you are self-sustaining. Places like Guru.com and Elance.com are no different.”But Susan,” you say, “I attract many clients by using that one site.” No, you really don’t unless you’re evolving them into longer-term relationships that can stand on their own outside of that site. The best illustration of that is the changes Elance made. You might have 100 potential clients on there, but because Elance changed, now you might not if you don’t want to pony up what I believe is a ridiculous amount of dough. In that way, you are putting your eggs in one basket because you’re relying on a single conduit to get you in front of those clients.

 Don’t bid on a job. Quote it.

This is a mentality thing that you might have to work at. I read a lot of “when I bid on a project” talk. Yes, in the site’s world, you’re bidding against others. But the minute you do that, you’ll start to lose. You cannot worry about what other people are bidding, because all it does it tempt you to get into a price war.

Don’t think of it as bidding on a job. Think of it as providing a quote to someone who is interested in your services. Every job quote I provide is what I’d quote anyone for copywriting or marketing…it isn’t less because of the medium I do it through. Sure, I probably don’t get a lot of jobs because of my price compared to someone in a third world country but I don’t want the job anyway if it’s not going to pay me my going rate. I don’t go on there and bid on every job. I’m selective, and trust me, you can usually tell on the job posting if it’s worth trying or not. Apply the same standards you would to any job you’re interested in.

Build repeat business.

When I was first starting out freelancing, I accepted small, one-off jobs because it was just supplemental income anyway. Nowadays, I scan through latest postings quickly if I have some time I could fill, and I only quote a job if it’s obviously something that could lead to a longer-term relationship.

Two of my favorite clients are groups I found on Guru. The one plainly said it would be a long-standing project management role. The other was for blog writing, but the client and I get along so well that he’s giving me a HUGE project that he trusts me with. He gives me stuff every week, and is one of the easiest people to get along with I’ve ever met. My project management client that I mentioned now trusts me to do more hours, and has started letting me flex my muscles in the area of SEO reporting and PPC as well. It’s amazing what can come from working consistently with people you like.

These are the basic things I apply to any client, no matter if they come from a site where you pay to gain access to job listings or not. Obviously, it’s worth the $80 or so per quarter to find that one diamond in the rough for me, because I get way more business from them than pays for the membership there. I also get invited to quote many projects thanks to my rating and portfolio information on there. (I rarely accept those, but occasionally I’ll throw my hat in the ring.) It was a good reminder to me the other day when I came on a writing listing for a company that looked promising. I quoted my hourly fee, and they responded with wonderful examples of what they’d need, and the fixed price was way more than fair for the work involved. They were polite, buttoned up, and obviously concerned with quality and not getting the cheapest person they possibly could. It was a good reminder that it’s a viable marketing avenue for me.

But, it’s not the only one. And it shouldn’t be your sole avenue of jobs, either.   

I have a black lab pup who has an extraordinarily quirky habit: she makes piles of things. You let her outside, and she will literally spend hours nosing around in the woods, dragging sticks (and sometimes parts of fallen trees) into a designated area of the yard. (I have yet to figure out how she picks her coordinates). She will do this repeatedly, and you can’t distract her from it. She gets tunnel vision, and takes this personal task very seriously.

I was sitting on my front porch in the morning chill drinking that almighty first cup of coffee, watching her engage in her ritual. On this particular morning, she was working on two piles across the yard from one another as my gears were turning on a marketing plan for a client.

It suddenly hit me that her mystifying and endearing habit actually has some merit in the marketing world.

You make choices when you market.

Much like the aforementioned stick piles, you survey the landscape and pick certain things out of it to focus on:

1. What do you want your campaign to do? Sell stuff? Get people to hang around and comment? Entice people to pay your bills? (Good luck on that one.)
2. Who should you be asking to perform this action?
3. Where do you find those people?
4. How do you bridge those above three together?

Pile of Sticks #1: Your objective

You can’t do anything else until you figure out what you want the consumer to do. Trudge into your Forest of Big Ideas, and force yourself to pluck out a few twigs or maybe one or two big sticks. Avoid picking out a ginormous shrub, no matter how pretty it looks…too much going on, and besides, they can attract bees. These piles shouldn’t be too big. Resist that urge to grab the branch labeled “branding,” the one across from it named, “buy stuff” and the other one named “all information possible in the world so that hopefully something will stick.” (That’s a big sucker and it’s probably rotting with maggots all over it. I think that makes it clear how I feel about that method, no?)

You waste energy trying to drag the whole forest when you just need a few logs. Pick what’s most compelling and don’t get tempted by the stuff around it that will serve no purpose other than creating noise.

Pile of Sticks #2: Who might want to do the action?

I know that all of us would like to think what we offer appeals to everyone. As a business, it’s hard to get away from saying, “But who wouldn’t WANT to do this?” The answer to that is: plenty of people.

There are obvious examples, like trying to sell palm trees to someone in Maine. If you’re reading this, hopefully you’re not that guy, and if you are, I refuse to help you. My apologies.

If you’re selling something like propane to residential customers (which, frankly, is on my mind because AmeriGas is an evil empire and I just want my fireplace to work…but I digress) then you’re not going to pass out flyers at an apartment complex. So, that automatically has you pick out the sticks in the Demographic Forest for homeowners. Seems pretty obvious, but there are some other twigs you should throw on that pile. How about homebuilders? Strike up a deal for the neighborhood they’re building where you’ll provide a discounted service if they recommend you. Talk to realtors that might be selling newly constructed homes, or those that are selling existing ones to put in a good word for you.  (I’ll touch on that in a future entry about how NOT to get another referral, ever again….for now, read SmallFuel’s advice on Ditching the Hard Sell.)

Once you start seeking out your big sticks, you’ll see a lot of twigs on it. Make your pile.

Pile of Sticks #3: Finding these people

Thanks to the Internet, this can either be really easy, or really hard, depending on how you look at it. There’s tons of information, forums, online communities and more to find these people. That’s also the rain pain-in-the-butt part. There are SO many. If you are purely trying to network locally, city sites and getting out there to give the handshake is going to be effective for you. Hire someone to draw up press releases for you and get them into the local paper.

If location is no object for your business, then you have a lot of digging you can do. Network with people online constantly. Have a website, and be sure it doesn’t make people weep. (I have a whole list of examples.) Refresh your content, participate in communities, and seek possibilities to get connected through others via sites like LinkedIn.com.

Pile of Sticks #4: Create your message and disseminate accordingly.

See these piles you have, now? You have your objective, your market, your methods. Planning’s over, it’s time for the true test. Hopefuly before all this you have set up your brand and have all of that locked down. Now all you have to do is communicate it. How do you do that?

Put those piles together, grab a match, and light the fire.

And I don’t mean by using their handy calendar applications. 

There’s something to be said for visionaries. The world is full of people with the Next Big Idea, and all the grand schemes on how it’s going to materialize. Unfortunately, things get in the way of that…some people are great at ideas, but poor on execution. Some don’t know where to start. Sometimes they KNOW it’s a great idea, but they don’t have enough background in the market to give it traction.

That said, look at a phenomenon like Google. It was a search engine, people. With plenty of early dot com ones out there to compete with, dreamed up by two young guys, blah blah blah, the rest is history.

Is it really, though? The history was their initial idea, not the cutting edge of innovation in Internet-land that Google has become. How did these two idea guys get it done?

They planned it. They thought it out. They did their homework. They picked what they knew would work and started with that, and the rest became gravy.

Sometimes it’s a simple lesson, but one worth heeding: test the water before you jump in. Well, maybe not always, but if you see the shark fins, then it’s probably good advice. It can be tempting to want to run the gamut of Internet wonder with clients sometimes because you see the potential, but it’s important to remember that sometimes YOU need to keep your feet on the ground to be the best advocate for your client. If Sergey and Lawrence, the founders of Google, had put together a plan that included all the services that Google now offers (”oh! oh! we could have document sharing!”….”dude, no wait….CHATTING”) do you think the core of Google would be as well-honed as it is?

Probably not. Don’t spread your clients too thin on a ton of services. Take the time to listen, and start with the basics. If you’re a consultant, that same advice goes for you too, young man/lady. If you spread too thin, you will wind up giving nothing to your customers.

It’s about vision. Keep it laser-focused, but be nimble about the methods you use to attain it.

If you doubt the power of vision, check out the paper written by the Google founders while they were still at Stanford. Look at where their company is today.

Now tell me it’s not worth the time to plan a little.