Tag Archives: Online Marketing

Creating Sales vs Creating Connections

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Eric Van Cleave

There’s a constant dilemma that comes up when you’re working with marketing and sales: how do you do business and sell your product or service without coming across as a smarmy salesman? In this age of online research and savvy consumers, you’ll get called out for inauthenticity in a heartbeat. It seems like there’s always someone goofing up with their online properties – from promoting their own irrelevant book during remembrance holidays to the latest social media meltdown. The internet never forgets, and it rarely forgives.

It comes down to this: in order to run a successful business, sales are part of the package, and you can’t make sales without, you know, trying to make sales. But what do you do when potential customers hate your ads, no matter what you try? How do you make your way into conversation without it being about how horrible your marketing is? What can you do to help people view your business in a positive light?

Photo Credit: brad montgomery via Compfight cc

This is often where we see a lot of disconnect in marketing, particularly social media marketing. Many business owners expect to pump out marketing and watch the sales roll in with minimal effort and no additional attention paid to ad creative or strategy. For small and medium-sized businesses that can’t afford their own advertising department, it can be extraordinarily difficult to create campaigns that hit on the right level. It’s simpler and more affordable to throw up copies of the print ads on Facebook and hope someone sees it.

A key factor in breaking out of the mold of yet-another-business-on-Facebook is the ability to give your company a human voice. This is so much easier said than done. You hear the advice over and over again – talk like a person, not a robot. Connect with your users. Incorporate personality. But that advice can be frustratingly vague and unhelpful.

Really, what all of these recommendations are aiming at is to try and get you to find that humanity in your business. Don’t tell people they should buy the thing. Show them why the thing is useful to their life. Connect on the human level. Will this make their life better? Improve their relationships? Connect them to loved ones?

We don’t want to say “find your angle,” because this shouldn’t be about finding an angle. This should be about discovering the heart of your business in a way that people can respond to.

So think about it. It’s okay to try to make sales, but also try to make connections. Consider what makes YOU want to purchase a product and apply it to your own marketing. Remember that many of the best businesses don’t forget their humanity.

Stephanie Wargin is the Social Media Strategist at Zenergy Works, a web design and SEO company located in Santa Rosa, California. Her friends like to brush her hair into her eyes whenever she talks about Facebook.

The Importance of Storytelling in Marketing

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Eric Van Cleave

Too often, we forget that people connect to storytelling. No matter the medium, your business has to tell a story. It can be written, visual, audio, or anything else you can think of. Don’t be afraid to take a risk and be innovative!

Recently, a story of a man and his wife went viral. Through photographs, the man documented his wife’s battle with, and eventual death from, breast cancer. The story told through those photographs was moving, emotional, and powerful. Similarly, a short commercial from a Thai company made waves with its incredibly moving story that unfolded in only three minutes. It’s even possible to incorporate humor into an irreverent storyline that still manages to conjure up memories of family and spotlight employees.

There’s a reason these things go viral. People crave that human connection, that feeling of rising and falling with another person. Ever since our species could create symbols and form words, we’ve been storytellers.

What story does this scene tell?

Photo Credit: goldsardine via Compfight cc

Unfortunately, this is a step that many businesses tend to skip when it comes to marketing. It’s all well and good to create an “About Me” page with bios for your staff, but is that all your website has going for it? We think you can stretch further. But where do you start?

What’s your unique story? Everybody’s got a story. You just have to find the story that fits with your business and will appeal to your customer base. Easier said than done, right? Maybe it’s the way your business got off the ground, or the inspiration for starting it, or the way your employees interact every day.

How can you best tell that story? What resources do you have available? Do you need to hire outside help? Your opportunities are as big as your imagination. You can tell the story with photographs, video, text, artwork, audio… what speaks to you? Perhaps more importantly, what will your audience respond to?

Utilize all your online resources. In today’s marketing age, you don’t have to rely on television and radio to be heard. It’s certainly not as easy as posting a video and sitting back to wait for views, but you can now streamline your marketing efforts with a little of your own creativity and elbow grease.

Have fun. Don’t be afraid to test out all those wild and kind of ridiculous ideas that you have floating around. Ask your staff for their ideas. Work together to create something amazing!

The hardest part of any story is making people care. There are lots of technical bits, too – pacing, structure, dialogue – but in the end, it means nothing if you can’t get anyone to care. Think of your favorite stories. Now think of why they’re so important to you. How can you create something similar for your business?

The effort involved in this process ranges from minimal to exponential. It all has to do with your manpower and time constraints. If you need some help, you know who to call! (It’s us. We’re talking about us.)

Sensory Marketing

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Eric Van Cleave

Many advertisers known that a clever visual pun or well-crafted print advertising can have a big effect on potential customers. But what about branching beyond the visual? There are ways to flesh out advertisements to involve all five senses and give people more well-rounded insight into your brand.

Experiment with Sound

There’s a lot of multimedia out there that allows you to play on the auditory sense. Historically, we’ve used radio to reach people with sound. Today, many users are migrating away from traditional AM/FM radio and going online to streaming music applications like Spotify. The past few years have also shown an increase in YouTube users, blending visual and sound in short video form. Can you use these mediums?

This is an ideal time to get creative. Spotify allows the option of creating, sharing, or collaborating on playlists, which is perfect for a music-themed contest. You can apply this to virtually any business or service by having people create themed playlists for holidays, product releases, and more.

Experiment with Touch

Touch can get complicated, but it’s not impossible to play with in your advertising. Instead of relying on tactile sensation, focus on creating engaging campaigns that inspire action in your followers. Community campaigns like flash mobs or eye-catching stunts that raise awareness are two potential ideas. Maybe stretch even further and hold an adopt-a-pet event at your store or office to bring in lots of foot traffic. Plus, fluffy puppies! Keep in mind that anything you do should somehow tie back into your business so it sticks in people’s memories.

Experiment with Smell

Again, you don’t have to work with literal smells, as that might turn off some customers. Instead, think outside the box. One of our clients recently held a Pinterest contest where users posted pictures of all the things their dogs “love to smell.” This sort of marketing could work especially well for a food or fragrance-based business. Smell is closely tied to memory, so think of ways to link the two. Ask people to think of smells that remind them of a certain time in their life, or a special person. That’s a powerful emotional bond!

Experiment with Taste

If you can create an advertisement that evokes the sensation of taste, that’s incredible. Taste is a sense of comfort and exploration for many people. Help them imagine their grandmother’s home cooking, or have them offer up a relevant recipe. You can always hand out lollipops! Everybody loves lollipops.

At the end of the day, experiments like these are really about thinking beyond the typical. While many websites are leaning more heavily on visuals and high-quality photography, multimedia is still playing a big part in how users are interacting with brands. Exploring other avenues may be just the thing that sets you apart.

It’s Okay to Ask for Help with Internet Marketing

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Eric Van Cleave

You may be at the point where you need a little (or a lot of) help with internet marketing. Many people don’t like to admit they’ve reached this point because, for whatever reason, anything done on the internet is still regarded as some combination of easy, unnecessary, or unimportant. This could not possibly be further from the truth.

We could list you off all of the various statistics about modern consumer internet use, but it’s likely you’ve heard it all before, so we’ll spare you. Here’s an infographic illustrating internet usage if you’re interested. Suffice to say that you cannot avoid it any longer. You can’t pretend it doesn’t affect your business and you can’t pretend people aren’t really influenced by what they find online.

Let’s break down these misconceptions real quick-like.

Myth: Internet Marketing is Easy

There’s a prevalent attitude that help with internet marketing is an unneeded expense because it’s all a bunch of smoke and mirrors, or posting on Twitter, or bolding the words you want search engines to find. Any teenage kid can do it, right? No. Search engines and other methods of locating you online have become exceedingly advanced. There are a million rules to abide by; dozens of approaches and experiments to test. If you’re not working with someone who knows what they’re doing, it could actively harm your web ranking.

Besides… if this were easy, everyone would be an expert and no one would be struggling to be found online. Sadly, this is not the case.

Myth: Internet Marketing Isn’t Necessary

Yes, it is. If you don’t have a website or are difficult to find online, you are quite literally losing business. Depending on your line of work, it can be anywhere from a few customers to lots of potential new clients. A huge percentage of consumers are now going online first to research businesses, read reviews, and perform a local search for nearby services. This is how people are finding new things to try today. If you’re not paying attention to your online properties, your name won’t be coming up in those searches. Or worse… it’ll come up with a dozen bad reviews you didn’t know you had. The things people say about your business online matter.

Whenever you’re ready to ask for help with internet marketing, you have options available. It’s always best to work with a professional agency or an internal hire that has been vetted through references. If you don’t know much about online marketing, it’s easy to be snowed by fancy buzzwords and someone claiming to be an “expert.” Because internet marketing is still a relatively new field, nearly anyone can claim to be a self-taught guru. References from clients or previous employers are vital.

Zenergy Works happens to be such a full-service agency, and we provide services ranging from web design to local SEO services. We’re good at what we do, but we hardly expect you to just take our word for it. Give us a call, stop by our offices, or check up on our track record.

Social Media Marketing-Right Versus Wrong Tactic

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Eric Van Cleave

Social media online marketing is a relatively new discipline, but practical experience has shown that some “shortcuts” have had little or no effect on truly improving social media presence. Below are some examples of tactics that work, and shortcuts that do not work.

Increasing Your Audience: Social media marketers have been tempted to purchase followers for their Facebook and Twitter accounts. This has led to a temporary illusion of popularity, but I have not seen a case of this strategy reaping long term benefits. The best way to increase your social media audience is with creative, valuable and unique content. Increased exposure of content can be achieved with sponsored posts on Facebook and creating strategic alliances with other related firms to trade information and content to reach related, but non-competitive businesses. (ie. Auto Repair Shops and Used Car Sellers and Test Only Smog Shops.)

Promoting Using Facebook Cover Photos: Facebook clearly outlines that cover photos should not contain price or purchase information, email addresses, mailing addresses or website addresses, and cannot be more than 20 percent text. If you must use the cover photos to promote a product, be clever, leave a lot to the imagination, and tease the viewer to read your page to find out how to get more information on a new product or promotion. These rules are for the good of the Facebook page owner as well as the viewers. Making your Facebook page look like an ad is a negative.

Automated Responders: It is the natural instinct to want to entice a new follower to your Facebook page to do business immediately with you by employing a responder that will send a new follower a coupon, offer, or some other enticement to begin doing business immediately. It might make more sense to post a different special to all Facebook followers on the same day of each week to train those interested in your business to check for incentives regularly at the same time. Social Media is about relationships with your customers and weaving your business into their lives.

Bottom Line: You should, by now, distrust most “shortcuts” to online marketing success. Whether it is link building, social media followers, or website content, taking the slow, sure, and hardworking approach will reap more benefits in the long term than any shortcut.

Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a Santa Rosa, California based Social Media, Website Design, and SEO Firm.

Facebook Mobile Internet Advertising is Growing Rapidly

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Eric Van Cleave

In Q4 of 2012, Facebook was able to show an increase in online marketing with mobile ads to comprise 23% of its total ad revenue. To illustrate the growth of Facebook mobile internet advertising, the ad revenue from mobile ads was 0% of Facebook’s advertising revenues as recently as February of this year.

The reason for the growth of online marketing is simple. Facebook is able to offer more targeted online display ads than the competition. AOL, Yahoo, Bing, etc. can collect your location, device type, operating system, connection type, and what you’re currently accessing. Google knows all of these things, but also can access your search history and your information from your Google + profile.

Facebook does not know your search history, but has access to your Facebook profile data, who your Facebook friends are, your likes and your Graph Search history. By tracking embedded Like buttons, Facebook knows what your web browsing favorites are. Facebook has the information to allow advertisers to pinpoint their web audience. Pinpoint targeting of mobile internet advertising is more important than traditional internet ads because a mobile ad can occupy the entire mobile screen. Irrelevant online display ads will frustrate mobile users and drive them to other platforms. Facebook claims that with the targeted ads on the news feed, engagement was reduced by only 2% this year.

Bottom Line: Facebook mobile internet advertising is are growing because they work. If Facebook can continue to deliver targeted ads in the face of challenges to their privacy policies, the platform will continue to grow. Google continues to refine targeted delivery of online display ads by using search history and as the sophistication of big data increases, Google + data and profiles will become more valuable in serving targeted online ads. Either way, online marketing will benefit.

Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, A Santa Rosa, California based SEO, Online Marketing and Website Development Firm.

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