Buzz On Biz

According to latest research by Ipsos, Google’s survey partner, over two-thirds of smart phone users use their phone for Internet access daily. What does this mean for your website? Even if you’ve never thought about how mobile users interact with your site, now is the time to start. But how? What is it that makes a mobile website different from a standard website? I’ll briefly cover 3 main items: interaction, speed, and optimization.

Interaction: On a desktop you have the ability to design your site for the large wide-screen monitors. This allows you to fit your content and design on a single screen without scrolling. For mobile, you must plan for smaller screens to prevent users from zooming in and out constantly to use your website.

The best starting point for this is your website navigation. How big are your navigation links? Is there enough space around them to allow people to click the one they want without accidentally hitting a nearby link? Did you give extra space on top and bottom of the link to allow some wiggle room so users don’t have to be 100% accurate with their click?

All of these questions are essential to mobile websites to insure visitors have the best experience possible.

Speed: We designers have said for years that load speed is very important, but for mobile websites it’s critical. Robust animations and effects, while fine for desktops, are potential bottlenecks for mobile users. Additionally, now that new data plans cap data usage, you don’t want your website to use a large portion of a visitor’s data plan.

Be creative in your mobile websites. Think of ways your site can be simplified, yet retain your design and branding. You want a visitor to be instantly familiar with your site and connect with your brand, but at the same time you want to show them you understand phone requirements and are being conscientious of their time.

Optimization: If it takes a visitor more than a 2 or 3 clicks to get to the information they’re looking for, then they will probably leave to find another site that can help them faster.

Mobile users are on the go. When they’re looking for information, they need it right then. Don’t make them jump through needless pages to find what they need. Give them quick and easy access to the information they’re looking for.

Mobiles websites are an indication you understand your website traffic and will cater to your customer’s needs. Every month you should review usage reports for your mobile traffic and adjust your site accordingly. Additionally, don’t be fooled by cheap hosted solutions. These services are typically hosted away from your website and require you to update it separately from your standard website. That means for every change to your website, you have to update two sites.

Remember, the easier you make it for visitors to get what they want, the more likely they are to contact you or complete the goals you’ve established for your website.

Jeff Asselin is Director of Sales & Marketing for Powerserve, a web development company that focuses on Websites, Custom Business Software, Search Engine Optimization, Graphic Design and Social Media Marketing. Let Jeff put his more than 16 years of advertising and marketing experience to work for you helping grow your business. Click (www.powerserve.net), Email (jeff.asselin@powerserve.net), Visit (961 Broad St, Augusta) or Call (c: 706-691-7189, o: 706-826-1506, Ext 122). This is a sponsored article.

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It seems to be just a fact of life: being smaller means having to work harder; and smarter. How do you first survive and then thrive when you can’t afford to put into practice most of what we talk about here?

Let me start by sharing a magazine cartoon I’ve carried with me for a lot of years. It’s a single panel drawing in which we see a city street stuffed with pizza joints. In front of one it says, “Best pizza in America!” In front of another the sign reads, “Best pizza in the world!” Next door we see, “Best pizza in the universe!” And on the far right, so we’ll read it last, is a small place packed to the rafters with customers and a sign that says, “Best pizza on the block.”

Welcome to the Pebble in the Pond Principle. In this case, the ripples are your advertising dollars. No matter what your line of business, you have to win over your block first; then your neighborhood; then your side of town. How? Could be as mundane as stuffing mail boxes. And should you go that route, don’t even think about cutting corners. Make certain that card or flyer of yours doesn’t look homemade.

Collect emails from every customer or potential customer you can. A single page web site may be necessary, since we’re into our second generation now that divides the serious from the non-players by a business’s degree of online presence. If you can afford the thousand-dollar-or-so monthly cost of a nearby billboard, get it…and have the billboard company’s designer do your work. Beg them to be brutally honest about what will work on it and what won’t. Or call me.

As usual, I only have space here to get you thinking. The thought I’m asking you to take away is, spend your ad dollars close to home first, and then work outward. Finally, never lose sight of the certainty that word of mouth is, and will always be, your most powerful marketing tool, and I don’t have to remind you that cuts both ways.

Good luck!

Next: The “Just Give ‘Em What They Ask For” Syndrome

DON MACNEIL is a traditional media expert, having spent more than 30 years on-air and behind the scenes in Media and Marketing. If you have any comments or questions, email Don at windsorway@ comcast.net

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You’re going to want to cut this one out and keep it where you can return to it.

It’s marketing’s Rule Of Threes. No, I don’t know who decided what I’m about to share with you, but until I have my own better idea, here’s the Smart Guy Marketing Orthodoxy:

For your advertising message to have any impact or hope of working, a given viewer, listener or reader must see/hear your message three times in the space of a week. Fewer than three per week and you run a high risk of little or no response. Translated? You could be wasting your money. Television and radio refer to these interactions with your advertising as impressions.

The most egregious offenders of the Rule Of Threes are unsuspecting small business owners who purchase all of the TV/radio time they can afford and then carefully spread it out evenly over the entire month. See? There’s that hope, that wishful thinking again. The average small business owner hopes that in one hearing/viewing, a listener/viewer will leap to her feet and head straight for his door. When did you last do that?

The better way? Start with a single week in the month and get as close to that three impressions benchmark as your money allows. (Your sales rep can generate these stats.) Only after hitting or exceeding a “3” in that week should you move on to a second week. Can’t fulfill a single week? Pick a show or daypart within a station or cable network and appear there, and only there, repeatedly. A smaller audience will see/hear your spot, but chances are much greater you’ll have your “3”.

Next: Being Really Small: The Pebble In The Pond Principle

DON MACNEIL is a traditional media expert, having spent more than 30 years on-air and behind the scenes in Media and Marketing. If you have any comments or questions, email Don at windsorway@ comcast.net

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I’m all for hope, just not in advertising.

Hope is buying a broadcast schedule called a “wide rotator” (6am-midnight, for example) and hoping your commercials play when someone’s actually watching. Hope is getting a “deal” on a billboard no one else wants, and hoping it actually gets noticed. For your wide rotator “deal” you’ve just handed them money for inventory they couldn’t sell AND you’ve given them permission to run your commercial anywhere they want. Ready to stop hoping?

Realize instead there’s a reason that time or space is cheap, and make that negative thought the first of many that clears your pathway to sharper, more realistic thinking.

“But that’s all I can afford!”, you protest. Understood. So you need to hear two things that, while they won’t constitute handing you a simple answer, will start you thinking.

First, a marketing orthodoxy: be the strongest in your field in whichever of the media you choose, or get out. Seems a little melodramatic and at first discouraging, but think about it: the author of that thought feels that marketing step #1 for you is not getting the snot beaten out of you every day on the air or in print by your stronger competitor.

Second, get your brain around the vital idea that “just being out there” isn’t enough. You have to be “out there” to a certain minimum degree or you might as well walk your money to a furnace and throw it in. Knowing those minimums and sticking to them are the central point in any marketing strategy, and that’s what we’ll talk about next time:

Next: How Much Is Enough

DON MACNEIL is a traditional media expert, having spent more than 30 years on-air and behind the scenes in Media and Marketing. If you have any comments or questions, email Don at windsorway@ comcast.net

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Our 5 year anniversary is just several months away and it has been such a wonderful and different experience than my first 25 years in the restaurant business. In my early years, things were more predictable, especially what days of the week would be busy and what days were slower. I’ve been through short term tough economies before including the months immediately after 9/11. As I’ve been fortunate and have had the opportunity to lead seminars around the country as well as writing an advice column in Pizza Today Magazine, I have learned a lot while I was teaching others. As our current economy has deteriorated over the last few years, I’ve been forced to think outside the box when it comes to spending our marketing dollars.

As I’ve shared discounting ideas to some pizzeria operators in Las Vegas at the International Pizza Expo, I’ve had a small handful of operators share that they refuse to discount their food because they offer top quality ingredients and they simply would not discount. My thought was “Hey, if that’s working for you in this economy, God Bless you”! But having that philosophy and sitting there with an empty dining is only going to have them join the ranks of the thousands of operators who have lost their businesses.

Traditionally we as business owners, spend advertising dollars in a variety of places, like newspaper, magazines, phone books, radio and even television and billboards. While we can spend a whole lot of money in these types of advertising, we are only hopeful that we’ll get a return on our investment.

I’ve realized that people really aren’t staying home to eat now that they have perhaps less eating out money to spend. They are simply finding discounted ways to eat out. That’s why we have decided over the last year to shift our marketing dollars more toward offering discounts to our local patrons, through things like Augusta Chronicle’s Daily Deals, Living Social, Restaurant.com as well as most of the coupon books and cards that get offered through many different groups.

These newer methods have allowed hundreds of new as well as existing customers to come and dine in our restaurant sometimes dining at half price. My staff has learned to look at folks with coupons as ways to continue to build a stronger business not just for now but into the future as well. So many newcomers have come in with a coupon and have realized how reasonable priced our menu is to start with. They learn about our homemade, soups and dressings as well as our homemade lasagna, jumbo meatballs and our amazing homemade desserts and fall in love with the Garlic Clove. That’s why Columbia county magazine readers voted us “Best Italian Restaurant” over Carrabba’s , Olive Garden, Macaroni Grill as well as all the other independent Italian restaurants.

Of course we’re happy to accept coupons, but our goal is to win locals with amazing food, great service in a friendly atmosphere with reasonable prices. In a tough economy, by providing all the essentials and then some, we’re headed for our best year yet, and we thank all of you who have made it possible. I look forward to serving you!

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You’re smart. You take a skeptical view of most advertising you see.

And yet, every day you count on the rest of the world’s believing every word of your marketing. Welcome to the hard truth of advertising: that by the time the community sees your message, a large portion of your friends and neighbors have already made a buying decision about you. This means that what you’re saying in your marketing either reinforces what they already feel about you, or it triggers some degree of a derisive laugh.

Which is why long ago I adopted a personal creative rule to never write a “Talk Back” line…a sentence so outrageously misrepresentative that folks at home are driven to turning to their TVs and saying, “Not!”

For almost as long as I’ve been doing work for Windsor Jewelers I’ve been certain that what success we’ve enjoyed is directly traceable to the fact that what we say in our advertising is what you find when you get there. Sadly, this is all too rare.

Conversely, I’ve periodically been asked to do work for businesses who clearly were looking to their advertising to gloss over poor performance.

The takeaway is this: only your actual corporate culture and day-to-day performance counts. That’s where the buzz on the street about you comes from and no amount of marketing will ever reverse that. So on your way to seeking out an inspired marketer, do him or her a favor and look in the mirror first.

Next: The Positive Power Of Negative Thinking

DON MACNEIL is a traditional media expert, having spent more than 30 years on-air and behind the scenes in Media and Marketing. If you have any comments or questions, email Don at windsorway@ comcast.net

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When was the last time you copied a phone number from a billboard?

The last time you read a billboard?

Then why do you do what you do with your billboard?

It’s that hope thing again, isn’t it? The hope that if just one viewer pays attention and actually calls you from that number on your board it’ll pay for itself, even though that call has never come. Even though you’ve never made such a call yourself, or know anyone who has.

Watch my lips: a billboard is not a blown up print ad. It is not a place to tell your story…or make your case.

It is a place to remind. Remind folks you’re there, and reinforce the impression you’re a major player.

It’s where not so long ago you might have seen an enormous head shot of Ann Taylor flanked by the words, “And hey, we’re in North Augusta!” aided only by a Taylor Toyota logo. Or twenty five years ago with an equally large close-up of a middle aged woman waving a finger at you next to the words, “Wayne says sell it!” accompanied only by a Tennessee Furniture logo.

You’d have understood. You’d have gotten it. And Ann and Wayne would have made an impression on you, which is all you can realistically – here’s that word again – hope for.

Build your board around no more than four elements: 1) a picture of the central focus of the board. 2) a logo next to the picture if the reputation of the maker of what’s pictured is important 3) a short, punchy headline. 4) your logo, as large as tastefully possible. No phone numbers. Allow only a street name (with no city included) if the business is in the community. Just the city’s name if it isn’t. If you’re known at all? None of the above.

We’re not through with this subject, but next time: What You Say vs. What You Do

DON MACNEIL is a traditional media expert, having spent more than 30 years on-air and behind the scenes in Media and Marketing. If you have any comments or questions, email Don at windsorway@ comcast.net

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I have been asked by a variety of businesses where they should be spending money through online advertising recently. This question always prompts my own, “Well, what do you want to accomplish?” Sometimes the business owner will have a good answer, but most of the time they will stammer and finally look to me for the answer. The most general answer is, “I want to make more money.” – however, this is a high-level, general answer that does not help us take any action.

Each business needs to have a clear objective before launching any marketing effort. Otherwise, there is no way to determine if the effort was successful. Decide what you want to accomplish and craft a plan that will allow you to measure your success. If you are a restaurant, you may want to bring in more evening traffic. If you are a online retailer, you may want to sell more of a specific item that has a larger profit margin. If you are service organization, you may want to drive customers to call you for a quote. Each objective will require a different combination of online marketing strategies.

Online marketing tools include, but are not limited to, branding elements (your logo, graphics and style), a company website, social media platforms and accounts, banner advertising, paid search ads, search engine optimization efforts (SEO), e-commerce tools, and email marketing. Some tools are initially free, but all require careful planning and execution. Other tools can require an initial investment to determine effectiveness and can then be scaled up or down to accomplish lead generation and traffic.

Let’s use a local restaurant as an example: After looking at their business model and resources, it became apparent that they needed a strong website that was enabled for mobile devices. We determined that Facebook was a great place to promote specials and community engagement, so we connected their website to feed any news directly to their fan page. Email marketing was not important for this local restaurant, since they were a part of a national chain that provided coupons through this medium. We also suggested using a new social media tool called Yelp! to promote visitor reviews. This combination of tools increased traffic and empowered this restaurant to reach more customers.

Another thing to remember is that online marketing tools should never replace traditional marketing efforts like radio, TV and print, but they should be used compliment and enhance these platforms. Using a TV commercial to drive traffic to a website that is effective in generating leads is a perfect example of how to accomplish this. Each element of traditional and online marketing forms a line in the net that will allow you to bring in customers. Step back and look at your net – do you see any holes? If so, start developing a strategy to fill in the gaps and put online marketing to work for your company.

JEREMY MACE This is a sponsored Tech Talk article. Jeremy is a founder and the Principal Media Consultant for New Fire Media. With over 15 years of experience in graphic design and web development, Jeremy is uniquely positioned to execute Social Media strategies and to implement real world solutions for companies and non-profits. Contact the self-proclaimed “Head Pyro” at jmmace@newfiresocialmedia.com and listen for his weekly social media segment on Fridays at 12:20 on the “Buzz on Biz” on 1630 AM and streaming on www.wrdwam.com. 803.640.8724. twitter @jeremymaceSocial Pyro

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Job losses, staggering unemployment rates, more workers and slow job growth rates have led us to a ratio of 3.3 job seekers per each job posted online (according to the Washington DC based Economic Policy Institute). With all of this competition you need an advantage. Here are some tips and secrets to use social media to land (and keep) your next job.

1. Connect with people, instead of postings. Most jobs are not listed online. Hiring managers and HR professionals usually get a list of candidates before they even see a resume or post a help wanted sign. You need to know that 80% of jobs are filled through networking. Identify the companies that you want to work for and use a focused approach to connect with them, rather than just sending a form letter that will get stuck in an inbox with spam. Use search engines to track employees that currently work there and find out what type of people the company hires. Find out who the Hiring Manager is using tools like LinkedIn and connect with them. Send them a message that states who you are and your interest without asking for the job first. Have a conversation with someone first, then ask for any available opportunities.

2. Be proactive on Facebook and Twitter. Both of these social media platforms can be the ultimate tools to connect you directly with recruiters and employees of companies you want to work for. Using Twitter searches you can follow recruiters and then using the “@” sign to communicate with them – you will learn about their company – and begin building relationships. Remember that you must have a completed profile on both platforms to look legitimate. Many people have gotten job offers just by posting that they need a job.

3. Use LinkedIn. Most recruiters and HR professionals use this tool to research and find candidates. Make sure that you have a 100% completed profile with several recommendations – try to get one from a previous supervisor. Import your contacts from Outlook or Gmail and build your network. Use the tools on LinkedIn to search for jobs and then stay on top of communicating with your connections.

4. Build your brand. Start a blog, construct a video resume on YouTube, create an online resume, or become an expert in your field using other online resources. Use these tools to establish yourself as the top in your field. When recruiters and HR professionals search for you, they will find a record of professionalism and knowledge. Remove any undesirable activity from Facebook and Twitter (get rid of the college partying photos) and try to abstain from any “politically incorrect” language or posts.

5. Go traditional. Get a real resume and make it look great. Dress nice and show up for interviews on time. Make sure you reference your online efforts on your paper resume so that when recruiters are doing research they are led where you want them. It lets them know that you are capable of writing content and will help you stand out from the crowded job market.

For more information about using Social Media to get your next job, check out mashable.com and search for “job”.

JEREMY MACE This is a sponsored Tech Talk article. Jeremy is a founder and the Principal Social Media Consultant for New Fire Social Media. With over 15 years of experience in graphic design and web development, Jeremy is uniquely positioned to execute Social Media strategies and to implement real world solutions for companies and non-profits. Contact the self-proclaimed “Head Pyro” at jmmace@newfiresocialmedia.com and listen for his weekly social media segment on Fridays at 12:20 on the “Buzz on Biz” on 1630 AM and streaming on www.wrdwam.com. 803.640.8724. twitter @jeremymaceSocial Pyro

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The words to Nilsson’s 1969 pop hit seem almost Nostradamus-like when we realize that over forty years ago, Harry could see where we were heading in the future world of marketing communications. Today, with the multitude of multimedia assaulting our senses with thousands of messages daily, it is more important than ever to remember to “KISS”- Keep It Sweet and Simple.

1. Avoid “Me-Me-We-We” Advertising. Always remember that the number one radio station in the world is

WII-FM: What’s In It For Me? Initially, until she believes you have the potential to provide her with the product or service she wants, your prospect couldn’t care less about how big your company is or how long you’ve been around.

Focus relentlessly on the prospect in all of your marketing efforts; find out what she wants and then clearly communicate the benefits—not the features—she can derive from choosing to purchase from your company.

How? Ask her. Ask all of your previous customers. Ask your front-line people in sales and customer service. They’ll tell you.

2. Don’t Confuse ‘Em—One Idea at a Time, Please.

One of the biggest mistakes businesses, both large and small, make is trying desperately to be all things to all people. This folly leads to “grocery list” advertising, where radio advertisers spend the first ten seconds telling you how great they are, the next forty seconds listing every product or service they “specialize” in, and then close out the final ten seconds with a fast-paced, barely-intelligible litany of phone numbers, locations, and disclaimers.

That’s nothing but a shameful waste of one perfectly good minute.

Clearly communicate the benefits of one product or service in each advertisement. Your prospect will appreciate the clarity, and—if you can deliver what you promise—you may well land a new customer.

BERT DEAN Veteran marketing consultant and creative guru Bert Dean is president and founder of The Clarion Company.  You can reach Bert by phone at (706) 796-7795.

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