Take a long hard look at your site. How often do you use words that only someone very familiar with your industry would understand? If your readers cannot easily understand what you are saying, they will leave your site rapidly.
When we use jargon or industry specific buzzwords without explaining their meaning, we can lose a huge number of potential sales.
If your company offers services, take a look at the list of what you have to offer. Will your target audience understand? You would be shocked to find out how often they do not understand because we use words that they are unfamiliar with.
As an example –
Let’s say you are a writer and I am browsing through your website because I need someone to help me write content for my site. I know that I am looking for a content writer. If your list of services only says copywriter, and this is the keyword you have targeted, will I know that is what I want? Will I know to even search for it?
As another example –
Let’s say you are a web designer and I am browsing through your website because I need someone that will set a site up for me. If you are busy telling me that your work validates with the W3C, will I know what that is?
Will I care? Have you told me why it matters? If you are talking to me about domain names and hosting, do you assume that I know what this all means? Do you have an FAQ (frequently asked questions) section that will explain it to me?
Go ahead and use buzzwords if you must, just make sure it is not your only focus, and that your target audience understands the meaning. One way to verify this is to have someone read through your website who is not familiar with your business. Ask them tell you if they do not understand sections.
Finally, keep in mind that if our target audience does not know the industry specific buzzwords that we keep focusing on, they are also unlikely to search for them either.
This is a story of a young girl who recently moved to Paris, where she discovers her budding sexuality…
Oops, sorry, wrong book.
Most folks reading this blog have most likely already read Seth Godin’s Purple Cow (aff link). Aaron Wall first recommended it to me, years ago, and since then pretty much everybody in this industry has recommended it sometime or another. It’s one of the few “must-read” books, along with maybe four or five others.
This review is intended for those who have not yet read the book.
It’s morning here. I often take walks in the middle of the night. I like to explore neighborhoods in the middle of the night. I found a park and tested the swing set.
I also dropped by a convenience mart. There were magazines. Maybe 70 or 80 different publications. Comics (manga), mens fashion, womens fashion, cars, motorcycles and every other topic under the sun.
I picked up one magazine at random and flipped through the pages. Lots of advertising. A few dull articles. Then I had a eureka moment.
There is better content on V7N than there was in that magazine, but that magazine is monetizing its content much more effectively than V7N.
The Internet, as a medium, is crap for content publishers.
People love to say that the Internet is a godsend for writers. Maybe it is. You got an opinion? Get a blog for free and publish it. Congratulations, you’re a writer. But it’s an incredibly saturated market. Your opinion shares space with millions of other opinions. Your doctoral thesis has just been published alongside (in the same space as) Bobby Runningnose’s opinion on Britney Spear’s navel lint.
Publishing a magazine and you’ll share the rack with 50, 60 or 100 other publications, not 17.9 billion websites.
Here at v7n we like to track everything. Numbers are awesome for analyzing and improving every aspect of business. Employee performance, lead generation, lead closing, repeat rates, etc. Numbers lets us know what works and what doesn’t.
When it comes to the V7N Contextual program, there are some interesting facts in those numbers. Quality traffic is defined by those numbers.
For the last 30 days, the vast majority of our orders come from repeat customers. Mostly large SEO companies.
Running an Adwords campaign has brought in a few customers, but the number is minuscule in comparison to our #1 source of new customers: Referral by existing customers.
It’s a hard fact to accept. You see all that search engine traffic, and it looks like a pot of gold, but it isn’t. A lot of window shopping, even for those uber relevant terms like “buy links“. I do appreciate the fact that a lot of those Adwords referred customers are bookmarking the landing page and may become conversions some time in the future.
But for now, I am just in absolute awe of the power of a good recommendation by existing customers.
It seems to me that many - or perhaps most - online companies dread refunds. They fight refunds like they were the plague. They expend massive energies fighting refunds, and drawing up contracts and terms of service agreements that do not permit refunds.
I’m in the office now. It’s past midnight here in Tokyo. The staff ( see pictures here ) have all long since gone home, and it’s affording me some peace and quiet so I figured I’d write a few blog posts.
For the record, I did miss posting on blogs, and forums, but I was just swamped with other stuff. I hope those of you who consider me a friend will forgive me absence from the blogosphere.
I want to write a bit about excellence.
In marketing, we use words and they often don’t mean a damn thing. The word excellence is a victim of this phenomenon. You can explain it until you’re blue in the face. You can quote dictionary definitions until you’re blue in the face. It still just sounds like marketing BS.
Up until now, when asked to define excellence I would say stuff like, “better than others”. Now I have a real good definition, in the form of an example of excellence. The example involves my father.
My father is dying. He is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s. He was a great man in his day, for the record, and a great father. Due to the peculiarities of his disease, he needed to be placed in a home where he could receive 24 hour care. It’s stressful enough that he had to be placed in a home, but the homes that were available to a person with his condition were horrible, awful and dreadful. From the reports I received from my sister, most of the homes were obviously run by money grubbing entrepreneurs that would be better suited to running maximum security prisons.
Then, about a month ago, my sister called and reported that they had found a different kind of home. This home was fun. They visited the home, and the other patients, all of them with similar conditions to my father’s, actually enjoyed their days. There were games, activities and social events.
As I heard my sister describe the place, my heart was put at ease, and I knew my father was going to be okay. I also knew I found a new way to describe excellence.
Excellence is the kind of service that goes above and beyond, the best, and it makes the recipient feel sincere gratitude.
I am inspired by that nursing home. Think what a great place the Internet would be if every dot com owner shrived for the same level of excellence!
Watching YouTube bloopers is addictive. I like to watch a few and have a good laugh before going to bed each night.
I noticed, most bloopers are due to misplaced faith. The kid who skateboards off the roof of his house, he has misplaced faith in his own abilities, or perhaps misplaced faith in the benevolence of gravity.
Some people would say that faith is empowering. I cannot disagree more. Taking charge of your life, that is empowering.
Microsoft, Google - they’re in the media business now. Which is also the reason why the newspapers are fighting back, although probably too little, too late. These powerhouses are pretty much unstoppable.
“At Advertising Week 2006 in New York, Microsoft is set to unveil a new unified global advertising initiative. Under Digital Advertising Solutions, advertisers will be able to more easily reach customers by packaging Microsoft’s products, including Xbox, MSN, Windows Live, Office, Windows Mobile, and Microsoft TV under one advertising solution“
Yeah, but can they please get AdCenter sorted out soon, please?
I’ve always found that the geek sector responds well to non-marketing (which is really just marketing, but pretending not to be) and allowing room for the audience to make “their own” smart choice.
Geeks hate being marketed to Truth: Geeks hate being insulted. If geeks hated being marketed to, the tech conferences wouldn’t be teeming with iPods and Macs.
Geeks are logical and rational, and don’t care about superficial “sexiness”. They care only about the specs Truth: There’s no such thing as a “logical and rational” human, geek or otherwise.
If the product is high quality, the packaging shouldn’t matter.
Truth: For many of us, the packaging is part of the experience. Just because you’re going to be naked soon doesn’t mean the shirt you’re wearing right NOW doesn’t matter.
Seduction is evil
Truth: Seduction without a genuine concern for the seducee probably is evil, but seduction-as-part-of-a-fun-experience is one of life’s great pleasures.
Enquisite have released a beta version of the stats service. This package is geared towards search referral and market trend analysis, and looks quite interesting. Best of all, it’s free (not sure how long that will last)
Features include:
Find out how well your current keywords and phrases work at converting traffic to your site.
Discover where your best customers are coming from.
Learn which markets are your most lucrative.
Build a better, more profitable marketing campaign. Organic search will drive 10 times more qualified customers to your site than pay per click if you understand organic search traffic and user intent. This is the purpose of Enquisite.
My father is dying. He is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s. He was a great man in his day, for the record, and a great father. Due to the peculiarities of his disease, he needed to be placed in a home where he could receive 24 hour care. It’s stressful enough that he had to be placed in a home, but the homes that were available to a person with his condition were horrible, awful and dreadful. From the reports I received from my sister, most of the homes were obviously run by money grubbing entrepreneurs that would be better suited to running maximum security prisons. 
