Image: Francesco Marino

As we approach the end of the year and the close the of decade, a number of people and organizations are rolling-out retrospectives on 2009 and the last ten years. If you didn’t do it as part of your budget process (you definitely should have), now is a great time to conduct your own online marketing program ‘year in review’ by looking at what worked and what didn’t.  Remember, you ‘pull yourself out of trees’ so you can see the forest.  In other words, don’t just look at numbers but really give some thought about why some activities worked and why some didn’t.

In looking forward to 2010, consider questions such as the following:

• Have your business objectives changed?
• Have your customers changed – what they want, how they shop, who influences them, what they prioritize, etc.?
• What critical factors are influencing your business?  For example, the economy, social media, mobile, changing values, etc.

In answering those questions, make sure you talk to other departments – sales, customer service, product development, etc, looking at what your competitors are doing and looking at innovators outside of your industry.  Also, don’t forget to challenge current assumptions and policies.  It never fails to amaze me when I ask why something is done, how many people answer, ‘I don’t know.  We have always done it that way’.

Ultimately, every initiative you undertake and ever dollar you spend should be justifiable and correlate directly to a business and marketing objective.  You should be able to explain why you are focusing on one tactic versus another (i.e. alignment with business goals and expected return compared to alternatives).   If you can do that, your chances of having a successful 2010 are greatly improved.  If you can’t, don’t worry –  it’s not too late.

A relatively recent study of corporate blogging practices found that about 20% of Fortune 500 and almost 40% of Inc. 500 companies have public-facing blogs.  While Corporate America has been relatively slow to adapt, many who have implemented blogs have found the effort rewarding.

Corporate blogging can be a great way to interact with your customers, build brand awareness, and attract new prospects, but it requires an investment (more in people time than anything) and planning.

The following are some keys to launching a successful corporate blog:

1. Blog For The Right Reason. Don’t do it just because your competitor is or your CEO read an article about blogging in BusinessWeek.  Set clear objectives and ensure that everyone understands the purpose of the blog – the raison d’etre.  A corporate blog that just hawks product or is another outlet to publish traditional press releases will likely fail.
2. Content Is Still King. Whether it be Twitter, email marketing, or a blog, good content is still the key to success.  Be certain you can provide something of value – insights, hints, etc.
3. Develop A Social Media Policy. Even if you don’t have a corporate blog, it is good to have a social media policy.  A good policy is not about control but instead gives clear guidelines about what employees can and can’t talk about (e.g. competitors, future products, etc.).
4. Make It A Priority. Find someone at a senior level who is going to champion the blog and make sure that the people who are involved get recognized for success.  In most cases, those who should contribute already have a full plate and encouragement and recognition will only help.
5. Cultivate A Stable Of Authors. Sometimes companies are nervous about letting the ‘rank and file’ employees blog so they limit the pool of authors to senior management.  In most cases, I think the more people you can get involved the better. The more authors, the more perspectives, the more the workload is shared, and the more diversity in subjects covered.  The real criteria for someone to post should be that she has something to say of interest to your audience (i.e. blogworthy) and she is going to be passionate about what she writes.  Don’t be shy about recruiting people, as some may need a small nudge to get started.
6. Figure Out the Process. Are authors going to be able to publish immediately or will there be an editor that approves all posts before they go live?  Your process depends on many factors such as who is blogging, how sensitive your material is, and the purpose of the blog.  If you do need an editor, make sure whomever is responsible for that role can be responsive.  You don’t want blog posts setting in limbo for weeks before they are published.
7. Discuss What Makes a Blog Post Good. Don’t assume that because someone has written marketing copy, a press release or a Facebook post, she will inherently know what makes a compelling blog entry.  Get your pool of bloggers together and talk about your audience, the blog’s purpose, and the type of content that people will find interesting.  Share examples of good blogs and discuss what make them interesting.
8. Measure, Learn, and Adapt. Track which posts get high viewership and generate good comments and determine what differentiates them from those that don’t.  Do the successful ones get picked-up by search engines, tweeted, digged, etc.?  If so, why?  You might be surprised what types of blog entries your audience finds engaging.
9. Embrace Comments. Comments are one of the best things about blogging – they help create a real discussion with the audience and you get great feedback.  You do need to decide whether you are going to review (moderate) comments before they are posted live.  Ideally, you will have comments posted immediately because that provides a better experience for the reader.  However, there are valid reasons to review comments first, and if comments are moderated, ensure that comments are reviewed in a timely manner.  Also, make sure the authors know they should respond to comments and they understand the best way to do that (e.g. don’t get defensive).  Also, before the first post is published, discuss how you are going to react to negative comments.  Make sure everyone is clear that you will get some negative comments and those shouldn’t be deleted if they are just critical of the company (vs. use profanity, etc.).
10. Develop a Schedule. I think about corporate blog entries in terms of scheduled and impromptu posts.  Scheduled posts are those that are planned in advance – the topic, author and date are all set.  Scheduled posts help ensure that you will have a steady stream of blogworthy updates (e.g. one a week) and key topics are certain to be covered (e.g. seasonal items).  Impromptu posts complement scheduled posts. They are any blogworthy idea that employee wants to write about.  One of the challenges is to get people thinking “I should blog about that”.
11. Promote Your Blog. Don’t forget to promote your blog and posts in your email marketing, through other social marketing (e.g. Twitter), on your website, in print publications, within your organization, etc.  Also, remind authors to promote the blog and their posts to their own network.

What do you think?  Did I leave anything out?

Too often there is a discussion about which is the ‘best’ online marketing tactic or channel (e.g. Facebook vs. Twitter or social vs. email) as if we can only choose one.  As marketers, we need to focus on having conversations with our consumers how they want and where they want.  For some, that is still email and for others it might be Twitter, Facebook, or something entirely different.  The more places we can be providing relevant content and useful information, the more successful we will be.

We recently conducted a number of online surveys for one of our clients in order to get a better sense of the audience overlap among their Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and email newsletter subscribers. What we found was interesting:

• 40% of Twitter followers didn’t subscribe to the email newsletter and 60% weren’t Facebook fans
• 50% of Facebook fans didn’t subscribe to the email newsletter and only 5% were Twitter followers

While there is some overlap, our client is getting a much greater reach by embracing all three channels than if they were only using any single one.

So instead of focusing on the ‘or’ (e.g. is Twitter or Facebook better), think about the ‘and’ – how we can best use all of channels and tactics like Facebook AND Twitter AND email AND video AND ….

I can’t count the number of Website redesigns that I have been involved with over the years, but I find them to be a little like renovations to a house: the process can be painful but when you are done, the results can be spectacular.

We just passed the one year anniversary of the launch of new website for one of our clients, Wilton.  Wilton is a leader in cake and dessert decorating, cookie making and celebrations, and throughout its 80-year-history, one of Wilton’s primary goals has been to educate and inspire dessert decorators of all skill levels.  The company’s Web site, Wilton.com, has played an important role by offering a vast collection of decorating ideas, recipes and techniques.

This website redesign had a number of challenges (thousands of pages of content that needed to be reorganized, integrating new functionality, etc.) but the redesign was critical to the success of the online marketing plan we developed for Wilton.

Quite honestly, the results surpassed our expectations – we have seen significant improvements in almost every key metric that we track, including the following:

• 190 percent increase in the volume of projects and recipes viewed by Wilton consumers
• 35 percent increase in total number of Web site visits
• 50 percent growth in returning visitors
• 20 percent improvement in product views
• 32 percent increase in the number of new visitors
• 82 percent growth in the number of searches for local Wilton Method classes
• 35 percent decrease in search results page abandonment
• 20 percent increase in estimated Web site driven revenue

One of the reasons why I think we achieved the results we did is that everything was tied to an online marketing goal or objective and those were connected to the overall business strategy.  In other words, we justified everything we did by showing how it was going to positively impact the bottom line.  I can’t say that all web redesigns will provide the results that Wilton’s did, but it does serve as yet one more example of how well a new website can pay-off.

Twitter is growing like gangbusters (45 million visitors in June according to comScore), but there are a number of people who believe Twitter is a fad and are relatively dismissive of it.  I don’t have a crystal ball, and I have no way of knowing whether Twitter will become the next Second Life.  However, I do know that given the number of people currently using Twitter and the results I see from our clients and other companies, every marketer needs to seriously consider what role technologies like Twitter play in the mix. 

The reality is that there are probably people tweeting (a twitter post) about your company, your products, and your categories and you need to, at a minimum, be listening to those conversations.  Beyond monitoring, it may not make sense for your company to be engaged in Twitter but more thought needs to be given to that decision than just dismissing it because someone just doesn’t get Twitter.

With more than 10 billion searches conducted per year, search engine optimization is still one of the most important online marketing techniques to drive traffic and conversions.  However, a relatively common mistake that companies make when redesigning a website (or even creating a new one) is to only think about search engine optimization after the new site has been launched. 

Whether search engine optimization is done in-house or outsourced, it needs to be considered from the beginning of the website redesign process for the following reasons:

1. You need to ensure that the website is architected in a way that makes it easy for the search engines to crawl your pages.  If the search engines can’t find your pages, you obviously aren’t going to show-up in search results.  Making technical changes after the website is launched can be very difficult.

2. Decisions such as the directory structure and URL naming convention (e.g. 12345.html vs. tennis-shoes.html) have SEO implications and those type of changes can be extremely involved to make post-launch.

3. Keyword research (i.e. understanding what phrases related to your business are being used in searches) can help inform decisions regarding navigation and content organization.  For example, you might refer to a line of product as ‘automobile insurance’ but consumers might be more likely to search on ‘car insurance’.  If so, you may want to use ‘car insurance’ in your navigation since that will help in optimizing for that phrase (and match the phrase that consumers actually associate with the product).

4.  You need to factor SEO copy requirements into the content plan for the new website (new pages and existing pages).  A redesign is a great time to review title tags, meta descriptions, inbound link text and on page copy for existing pages and confirm that all are optimized for search.

5.  If the URL of any existing pages change (e.g. a page is moved or the name of a directory changes), you want to ensure that you have the proper redirects in place so that the search engines know where the page has moved to and you can (hopefully) keep any good rankings/page rank that you have obtained.

Speaking from countless experiences, if you are considering a website redesign project, you will ahieve better results and avoid post-launch headaches by involving your SEO team in the process from the beginning.

As a society, we are very focused on first impressions:  clothes, good looks, jewelry, etc.  It’s not much different in the business world.  First impressions in business are obviously important because without a good one, you may not have a chance to make a second impression and those good impressions are needed to make a sale.  However, the value of that first impression only lasts so long and is eventually replaced by the combined value of all impressions. In fact, the benefit from the good first impression usually lessens over time and customers start determining your value based as much, if not more, on your latest impressions.  That’s why companies must focus as much attention on ensuring a positive latest impression as they do on creating a great first one. All of your company touch points – customer service, account managers, internal sales, receptionists, invoices, newsletters, participation in social networks, etc. reflect your company and the value you provide and any one of them can be an asset or a liability. I have worked with software companies that had great products and were wonderful courters during the sales process only to be ultimately undone by very poor customer support and follow-up services.  For example, how often have you met a senior executive during the sales process telling you how important your business is but once the sale is closed, you never hear from that person again? The following are ways to help ensure your latest impression is as good as it should be:

• Have a clear understanding of what your brand promise is with respect to the customer experience.  Even if you aren’t trying to be Nordstroms, there is some minimum expectation from your customer in terms of follow-up, support, etc.
• Ensure that you aren’t so focused on getting the sale that you sacrifice the post-sale experience.  For example, in b-to-b situations, salespeople are sometimes incented only to close the sale and there isn’t focus on creating long-term customers.  This can create situations in which the salespeople make promises that the implementation and support teams can’t keep.
• Review all of your touch points and decide if any are a liability.  Don’t forget to review each and every touch point and that includes the person who answers your phone and welcomes your clients, invoices, security guards, website, etc.  This is more difficult than it might appear because touch points usually span several functional areas.
• Implement metrics that help you measure your success at providing a great latest impression and review them on a consistent basis.
• Continually remind all key parties of the importance of that latest impression.

What other ways can we help ensure that we are providing a great latest impression?

Photo: Sharyn Morrow

No matter what type of marketing you are engaged in (search marketing, email marketing, social marketing, etc.), the first, and perhaps most important, thing you can do is ensure you are providing relevant and useful content.

Most companies could benefit by spending more time thinking about what they can do to continually provide value to their customers, followers, fans, etc.  Marketing is made so much easier if you have something of interest.  Content is still king.

In order to drive traffic from search engines, those search engines have to be able to find your pages.  Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all provide free webmaster tools that help you determine how much of your site is being crawled and indexed and identify potential problems (plus other valuable information).

If you haven’t checked them out yet, you should:

• Google Webmaster Tools 
• Yahoo Site Explorer
• Microsoft/Bing Webmaster Central

With all of the mortgage and credit card issues today, much attention has been given to an individual’s credit score.  Our credit scores are extremely important because they determine whether we can get loans, what interest rate we will be charged and even cab impact the ability to get a job. 

As email marketers, we need to be equally focused on our email reputation which is essentially our email sender credit score. Our email sender reputation is the most important factor in determining whether an email is going to be blocked, end-up in a junk folder, or reach the inbox.  ISPs and others looking to prevent spam use your email reputation to determine how trustworthy you are just like lenders use credit scores.

If you aren’t checking your email reputation, you need to be.  A great and free resource to determine your email reputation is senderscore.org, which is provided by Return Path, a leading email services provider.  The sender score is a relative ranking of your email sender reputation with ‘0’ being the worst and ‘100’ being the best.  The senderscore.org website also provides additional information that helps to identify what issues can be negatively impacting your sender score.

Don’t forget that your email reputation can change, and so you need to continue to monitor it.