Customer Service Rule #1: Be Easy to Do Business With
After a lengthy bike ride last Saturday, I had some serious neck/upper back pain. It’s somewhat common for me after longer rides (3+ hours), but I somehow aggravated the injury while I was (of all things) taking a shower the next morning. I figured it was muscle fatigue or a mild strain that would disappear after a couple of days. Didn’t happen. After three days, it was time to bite the bullet and visit a professional.
There’s a new chiropractor/massage/rehab facility that opened less than a mile from my home so I figured I’d pop in on them to see if they could help me. There was even a sign in the front window stating “now accepting new clients.” Excellent! Not only are they convenient, they’re actively seeking people like me right now. Or so I thought. I entered and told the girl behind the desk that I thought I needed a massage to work the kink out of my neck. She said “great, let me see who is available and if we can get you in today.” Mind you, NO one else was even in the place from everything I could tell, and I saw three doctor/therapist types walking around as if they had some free time on their hands. After the girl looked at the computer schedule, she sheepishly looked up to tell me they could fit me in two weeks later, but they had nothing open until then. Another girl walked over as if she found that bit of information a little erroneous and suggested they might be able to fit me in the next Tuesday (today). The other girl said “no, that’s not right because he’s on vacation (meaning the therapist) so that wouldn’t work either.” They both agreed then looked at me like “sorry about your luck pal.”
If I had agreed to go through testing with a doctor and undergo x-rays, an hour questionnaire, poking and prodding, I could have seen someone the next day, but I couldn’t get anyone to help me with my immediate problem–the damn kink in my neck that was making it difficult to move my head around to see. If I had agreed to sign up for a treatment “program” (read: more expense), they might have magically found a massage therapist available. I left the joint a tad amused and a lot put off.
This incident was a further reminder that if you’re going to open the doors and welcome in “new” business, be prepared to take it in whatever way it comes to you. Suggesting that you welcome new clients is suggesting you’re not booked solid. Judging by the parking lot (I was the only car) and the doctors shuffling around as I stood there waiting to see if someone would be able to help me was further evidence that they definitely had room to take on more paying clients. They just don’t have room to take on new clients that don’t do things THEIR way (setting up an appointment weeks in advance, PLANNING for nagging injuries or aches, going through an insurance carrier, etc.) I was a walk-in customer that was prepared to turn over my credit card to receive immediate attention. I essentially had an open “budget” when I walked in there because the pain was strong enough, and I wasn’t in a mood to haggle over pricing or fee schedules. To me, immediate attention (time constraint) was more important than what it might cost (budget constraint). I had no idea what quality might come from being a walk-in, but I was willing to roll the dice to get rid of the kink so I wasn’t a difficult customer to please at that moment. They couldn’t even mildly accommodate me though.
Having read all of this, what are the odds I’ll return? They weren’t prepared to do business on my terms–take my credit card, some information, and administer a damn massage. They wanted me to jump through their hoops at their pace JUST to do business. I wasn’t a complicated case–just a simple massage today, please. Tomorrow I may decide I need x-rays and doctor assistance, but let me make that decision. Your policies and procedures shouldn’t prevent you from taking someone’s money and giving them what they want (within the broadest objectives of your overall business) as quickly as reasonably possible.
I worked in outside sales for two technology companies that I frequently challenged during sales meetings with this question:
“If a customer walked through that door RIGHT NOW and offered us cash to buy something we have in stock, could we sell it to them in less than 20 minutes?” You’d be shocked at the answer each time–it was “no, we’re not setup like a retail outlet like that. They’d have to fill out customer information, a credit application, references, etc.” What?!? To pay cash, they’d have to do all of that? Asinine and utterly amazing yet extremely true. That’s how some businesses set themselves up though. Don’t be one of those–be prepared to make it easy for someone to do business with you. Complicating things just to have a process or system in place is one of the dumbest things you can do if it doesn’t make it easy for someone new to do business with you. That’s common sense, but it’s amazing how uncommon that is anymore.
Is “find a need and fill it” bad marketing advice?
Posted by Michael Cage on Friday, May 18, 2007
Just because marketing advice is repeated often … doesn’t make it true.
“Find a need and fill it … that is the key to successfully marketing a business.” – Someone who needs to be slapped around a little bit.
Truth is, follow this “find a need and fill it” advice and you are inviting commodity pricing.
Think about it…
People NEED to get their roof repaired … but they WANT on-time, courteous service, clean workers and a guarantee their roof won’t leak again.
People NEED a computer network set up … but they WANT someone who understands their business, will suggest things to make it run smoother before a breakdown prompts it, and won’t make them feel stupid by talking geek to them.
People NEED to have a cavity filled … but they WANT to look good and have a pain-free experience in a friendly office with warm people.
People price shop for what they need, and even that makes them grumpy.
People pay premium prices for what they want, and they love it.
Go to an Apple Store. Play marketing anthropologist. Really observe the people. You’ll “get it” in less than an hour.
Service business, retail business, business-to-business, whatever your business…
…if your business struggles with commodity pricing or if you have to “justify” your price more than once in a blue moon … betcha an iPhone (ahem, another example) you are focusing on what your customers or clients need, and aren’t paying attention to what they want. And that makes them begin to not want you.
Forget find a need and fill it.
Find a want, touch your market … and lead a movement.
I talked about this in today’s Aggressive Marketing & Entrepreneurship Daily Podcast (along with a discussion about when to release version 1 of your product or service, true entrepreneurial competencies, and how to stay passionate and energized in your business). If you haven’t listened yet … what are you waiting for? … I’m on Episode #4. (Subscribe in iTunes.)
Whether DNC or RNC, Political Candidates need SEO
Another great post over at SEOMoz.org by Scott. This discusses how political candidates need SEO. I couldn’t agree more, and I was contacted by a couple of candidates just before the KY gubernatorial primaries went to the polls. It was too late (one or two months isn’t enough time for a good SEO Campaign in a political race), but I would strongly suggest the survivors consider SEO as part of their marketing campaign if they haven’t incorporated it already.
Another great post over at SEOMoz.org by Scott. This discusses how political candidates need SEO. I couldn’t agree more, and I was contacted by a couple of candidates just before the KY gubernatorial primaries went to the polls. It was too late (one or two months isn’t enough time for a good SEO Campaign in a political race), but I would strongly suggest the survivors consider SEO as part of their marketing campaign if they haven’t incorporated it already.
Whether DNC or RNC, Political Candidates need SEO
Posted by great scott!
Due to the first round of Presidential Candidate pre-primary debates occuring recently, I decided to have a poke around and see what the State of the SERPs is like for the major 2008 Presidential hopefuls. I was surprised to find that, despite Howard Dean’s major success with online fundraising in 2004, and the vast popularity of political blogs and web-centric PACs like MoveOn.org, many of the 2008 Candidates are committing huge SEO blunders.
I know SEO is a fairly young industry and not everyone is hip to optimization techniques, but considering the reach and importance of the internet to young, vocal, passionate voters, writers and opinion leaders, one would think the masterminds behind these multi-million dollar marketing schemes campaigns would know of and appreciate the importance of search marketing.
Take the mind-boggling case of John McCain, a likely GOP front-runner: McCain’s active campaign site currently ranks #68 at Google for “john mccain” and just as abysmally for other terms and iterations of his name. How could this be? Well, behind his senate.gov profile page (which he can’t use for campaigning) and his Wikipedia entry, we find www.straighttalkamerica.com, Mr. McCain’s campaign site from the 2000 primary.
As you’ll notice, the Title Tag directs us to go to his new site, but, since it doesn’t rank, we can’t click through to it from the same SERP. If we go to his old site, we’re not 301’d, but rather instructed to click through to his new site. If ever (EVER!) there was a case for 301-ing a domain, this is it. Granted, McCain’s new site has its own problems, most glaring is that every single page uses the same title and meta description tags, and navigation is primarily via drop-down java script menus. As such, most of his pages are likely ending up in the Supplemental Index making his internal links worthless. Let me also point out that even the search “john mccain 2008” puts his new site #3 behind www.stopjohnmccain2008.com and his Wikipedia page. He does, however, have AdWords for his new site on the SERPs for every imaginable incarnation of his name.
On the flip side of this equation is Barack Obama’s site which is a redesign of his domain from his 2004 Senate bid. Nicely designed and fairly well optimized, he is the only candidate that ranks for such lofty keywords as “ending iraq war” (#10 on Google) and “2008 election” (#11) [Update: as of this morning, 5/10, Google is showing Dennis Kucinich at #8 for “ending iraq war”]. However, for these and other campaign specific keywords such as “candidate,” “2008 election,” “united states presidential election,” and “democratic candidates” or “republican candidates,” none of the current contenders are even in the top 50 at Google. Two notable exceptions are Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich (possibly carrying links and domain strength from his ’04 run) who both rank in the top 15 for the term “president“.
Fine, it’s early, maybe people are still looking for candidates by name only. After all, dark horse candidate Ron Paul (R) and Mike Gravel (D) have gotten tons of attention on the social media sites lately. Unfortunately, the data just doesn’t back it up. Despite 12 stories on Digg featuring Ron Paul in the headline, each receiving more than 1000 diggs, since he announced his candidacy on March 12, 2007–Mike Gravel’s been featured in nine 1000+ digg stories since announcing on March 9th–the search queries for his name pale in comparison to the big players who, oddly enough, get almost no love from Digg (Obama’s headlined in only two 1000+ digg stories since March 9th, same with Clinton).
While “Hillary Clinton” and “Barack Obama” get significant daily numbers as search terms (Clinton currently getting about 50% more volume than Obama), the rest of the candidates don’t get much love at all. John Edwards gets about 1/3rd of Clinton’s search volume, as does McCain. Even social media darlings Paul and Gravel are averaging only a relative handful of name searches daily. As far as traffic goes, things are pretty much the same, with the exception of a distinct inversion between Obama and Clinton. The chart below shows the relative search volumes for the names of the major candidates (data from Keyword Discovery) as well as their relative Alexa Traffic Rank (3 mos. avg.) to their official campaign sites.
Granted, the search numbers aren’t huge for the more general, campaign-related terms, but in most cases they’re more popular than candidate names and have a much longer tail.
So what’s it come down to? It seems the vast majority of candidates have little to no idea of the importance of keyword research, keyword targeting or even basic, on-page SEO practices. I strongly believe that the Internet is going to play a huge role in the 2008 election. I also believe, after examining the current offerings by the major players, that the candidate that attacks the SERPs now, and positions themselves to rank for campaign-related and issue-related keywords will have a huge advantage in disseminating their beliefs and dominating the conversation.
UPDATE: Jonah Stein has published a great follow-up to this article, Political Search Marketing: Electronic Grass Roots, over at Alchemist Media. He offers an excellent analysis of how political campaigns and operatives could and should use the power of SEO/SEM to market their campaigns, marshal grassroots support and inform voters. Perhaps more importantly, he discusses how the campaigns, the engines, and the public need to be vigilant to avoid the potential for unscrupulous use that could make the internet the most effective catapult for political mudslinging and disinformation.
The Ranking Roller Coaster Cause And Effect
Search rankings roller coaster explanation.
How to Market a Website on a Budget
I found this via SEOMoz.org which directed me to the following on SEOish.com by Patrick Sexton. It’s a great article/interview to take into consideration if you’re new to SEO or web marketing. Enjoy!
Visit the article here: SEOish.com
I found this via SEOMoz.org which directed me to the following on SEOish.com by Patrick Sexton. It’s a great article/interview to take into consideration if you’re new to SEO or web marketing. Enjoy!
66 Ways to Build Links in 2007
I came across this while doing some research for a book I’m writing for a SEO class I am to teach next week and the week after. It’s excellent!
Link Building Step 4
Step 4: Post Properly Formatted and Relevant Comments
A blog lives on its overall popularity. A popular blog tends to have multiple people contributing to the online “conversation,” therefore the blog owner wants people to participate because that means the blog is effective. A blog with few comments either means the content isn’t interesting or not that many people are reading it. Knowing this, it’s easy to leverage this dynamic to gain an advantage by simply participating. We need something in return for that participation, however—a link back to the site we’re looking to promote or optimize.
A “raw” link, http://yourdomain.com for example, doesn’t do us as much good as a link with our keyword phrase as the anchor text. Anchor text usually gives the user relevant descriptive or contextual information about the content of the link’s destination. The anchor text may or may not be related to the actual text of the URL of the link. For example, a hyperlink to the main English Wikipedia page might take this form:
The anchor text in this example is Wikipedia; the complex URL http://www.wikipedia.org displays on the web page as Wikipedia, contributing to a clean, easy to read text or document.
Popular misuse
Webmasters tend to misuse anchor text quite often this way:
Today our president has signed another treaty. To know more, click here.
The correct way of coding that would be:
Today our president has signed another treaty.
Search engine algorithms
Anchor text is weighted (ranked) highly in search engine algorithms, because the linked text is usually relevant to the landing page. The objective of search engines is to provide highly relevant search results; this is where anchor text helps, as the tendency is, more often than not, to hyperlink words relevant to the landing page.
Webmasters may use anchor text to procure high results in search engine results pages. Google‘s Webmaster Tools facilitate this optimization by letting website owners view the most common words in anchor text linking to their site.[1]
In the past, Google bombing has been possible through anchor text manipulation; however, in January, 2007, Google announced it had updated its algorithm to minimize the impact of Google bombs.[2]
When considering commenting on a blog, browse over others’ comments before doing so. See whether their names have been linked back to their websites or not. If they have not, work your link into the comment somehow following the formatting guidelines in our example above. Be sure you comment something relevant to the original blog posting and if you do have to work the link in with the comment section, make it part of a sentence if at all possible. This will reduce the risk of getting the comment rejected by the blog moderator. Some blogs don’t allow links within the comments so beware of them, and simply move onto the next blog if you can’t get a link back for commenting. There are too many blogs out there to get hung up on trying to get one link out of one specific blog.
Branding Trivia
We don’t have extra time, but we’ll always make some for branding trivia…
•Coca-Cola was originally green.
•Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
•A can of Diet Coke will float in water while a can of regular Coke sinks.
•7% of Americans eat McDonalds each day.
•Colgate faced a significant obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command “go hang yourself.”
•All hospitals in Singapore use Pampers diapers.
•Levi Strauss first intended to sell his denim material to the miners who were searching for gold in 1850, in order to make tents and covers for their wagons.
•The wristwatch was invented in 1904 by Louis Cartier
•Ben and Jerry’s send the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo.
•The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
•American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each
salad served in first-class.
•When KFC first translated its advertising slogan “finger lickin’ good” into Chinese, it came out as “eat your fingers off.”
•In 1921 advertising manager Sam Gale of General Mills created fictional spokeswoman Betty Crocker so that correspondence to housewives could be sent with her signature.
•Pepsi spent a lot of money on an advertising campaign in China with the slogan “Pepsi gives you life” – unfortunately, it was translated as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.”
•Over 275 different PEZ heads have been designed, with some 48 models on the market at any one time. The most popular dispensers of all-time are the Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus models.
•Inventor Joshua L. Cowen, created the first battery, which spawned American Eveready. He also created Lionel trains.
Genuine Business Improvement 