Monthly Archives: September 2012

Drive Intelligent Customer Loyalty With Forrester’s New Customer Loyalty Playbook

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loyaltyLooking to start a loyalty program that goes beyond promotional incentives are truly engages your best customers? The Customer Loyalty Playbook is a new “living tool” from Forrester, the research analysis and advisory firm, that is a resource for developing lasting customer loyalty programs. Emily Murphy a Forrester blog author says “Customer intelligence helps marketers create customer insights that improve their strategy and programs through targeting and segmentation, and customized offers.” It contains twelve reports that are focused on four key phase of program planning, starting with “Discover the potential of intelligent loyalty” and ending with “Optimze your loyalty program performance.”

Read Emily Murphy’s blog post entitled Drive Intelligent Customer Loyalty With Forrester’s New Customer Loyalty Playbook via blogs.forrester.com

-Michelle Crawford, Lexity

How Selling Patiently Can Increase Your Online Sales

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Site Sales

Patience is a virtue—and one that many online merchants find in short supply, especially when evaluating what works and doesn’t work with their website design. With insightful case studies, author April Dykman—guest blogger for KISSmetrics—investigates the effect on conversion that putting the call-to-action both above and below the fold can have for products at different price points. Dykman says that when selling products and services that are “[P]ricey and complicated…” merchants can increase conversions by having the patience to put their calls to action below the fold on their landing page, “[A]fter you’ve established the value of the service!”.

Call to Action Treatment Michale Lykke Aagard

Image from “How Moving the Call-to-Action below the Fold Generated a 304% Lift in Conversions” by Michale Lykke Aagard, read more about this case study at contentverve.com

Read the entire article How Selling Patiently Can Increase Your Online Sales by April Dykman via blog.kissmetrics.com

-Michelle Crawford, Lexity

Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner: Drew Houston, Dropbox

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Distribution

What is your distribution strategy? If you have only thought of traditional methods such as PR, AdWords and SEO for your startup so far, Dropbox Co-Founder Drew Houston gives some points to consider on the success of some of the “guerilla-style” successes the company had in their efforts to grow their user base in this interesting video from Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner. Hear how a “linkbait” video they made in their first year with viral video file names solved their distribution problem overnight!

Watch the video at Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner: Drew Houston, Dropbox via ecorner.stanford.edu

-Michelle Crawford, Lexity

Build Brand Awareness by Being Consistent

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awareness

Consistency is the key to building brand awareness says Caroline McDevitt, author of our featured article today. Making your brand recognizable by color, logo and catchphrase is just the beginning, though. You also need to make communication cohesive. McDevitt says, “Maintain consistency wherever your brand goes, whether it’s in an email, your email signature, your website or a letter.” Marketing and branding make a pattern that you want all your customers to follow, right to your door!

Read this article by Caroline McDevitt at Build brand awareness by being consistent via www.flyingsolo.com.au

-Michelle Crawford, Lexity

Three Proven Ways to Convert Visitors Into Buyers Online

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Can redesigning your website really make a difference in site sales? The answer is yes! Just ask the Braccis, the couple whose redesigned med-spa site was recently highlighted in Katherine Reynolds Lewis’s New York Times Small Business article. The Braccis moved their phone number into a more prominent position on their medical cosmetic services site and watched as their qualified phone leads increased and bounce rates from their site visits decreased. Katherine says, “[M]ost small-business owners know it is important to have an effective Web site and to find ways to attract traffic—or they make the mistake of ignoring Web conversions while spending money to build traffic.” Learn how to make your website’s design work for you with her three insightful tips.

To read more, visit Katherine Reynolds Lewis’s article in the New York Times Small Business Guide, Three Proven Ways to Convert Visitors into Buyers Online.

-Michelle Crawford, Lexity

5 Tips for Adding Humor to Your Social Media Strategy

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“Earlier this year, Forbes published a piece advancing the notion that funny people may actually have an edge in business.” By adding humor to your content, you increase your chances of being shared — and when you’re shared, customers begin to evangelize your content. Jason Boies recommends, “Your social media team should stay on top of what’s happening in the world of current events and pop culture.  What’s popular right now? What are people buzzing about?” Yet, more than that, you should be taking some time to make your content entertaining. It’s important not to overdo it and force the humor. But, when something witty pops into your head, chances are others will enjoy it too.

For 5 tips on adding humor to your social media strategy, check out Jason’s article for Salesforce’s Radian6, 5 Tips for Adding Humor to Your Social Media Strategy.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

Case Study: Using Contests To Build Links

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Regardless of how much you know about SEO (search engine optimization), it’s helpful to know that contest marketing can help improve the distribution of your site content — through the influx of back links, that is. In the case of a client, Debra—for LinkSpiel—praises the positive benefits of contest marketing for businesses who are entrenched in highly specific and highly populated markets (specifically where massive amounts of content can be found). She says, “[A] contest and the principle behind it will work for any industry, as long as you target a specific group and understand what motivates them. If you’re looking for a new twist or a fresh link building idea, consider hosting a contest. Everyone’s a winner if you do.”

But, how do you go about creating a contest?

To find out, check out Debra’s article, Case Study: Using Contests To Build Links.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

Social Media Marketing Tips for Easy Content Sharing

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One of the easiest ways to lighten the load of your content sharing and improve customer evangelism is to set up a Buffer account. Okay, so we’re not explicitly endorsing the application. But, in order to launch an effective evangelist strategy, your small business needs to maintain a cohesive schedule of posts, tweets and updates. It’ll free up the time you devote to managing your social media accounts, and give you some leg room to run other aspects of your business. “By sharing content via Twitterfeed or Buffer ensure that you have clear goals in mind like driving revelvant traffic to your website and setup applicable campaigns to track key metrics that matter for your business.”

For more tips on easy content sharing, check out TrendSlide’s article, Social Media Marketing Tips for Easy Content Sharing.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

Live Chat Can Improve Service, Sales

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Without seeing the products for themselves—in person that is—customers are oftentimes initially hesitant to make a purchase online. Adding a “live chat” feature, however, can easily solve this dilemma of last-minute hesitation and improve your site sales. Take, for example, this story posed by Armando Roggio (practicalecommerce)—”‘Laura’ wanted to buy a shirt for her husband, but did not understand how the color and size options worked on the retailer’s site. She liked the price and was pretty motivated, so she called an 800 number listed on the web page, a customer service representative helped her pick out a couple of nice plaids. A sale was saved.” If you realized that “Laura” didn’t engage in live chat, you’re absolutely right. Live chat, however, addresses this sort of issue just as well as (if not, better than) an 800 number. 

To read more about how live chat can improve your site sales, check out Armando Roggio’s article, Live Chat Can Improve Service, Sales.

-Christopher Lin, Lexity

LinkedIn is the Best Social Network for Improving SEO

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Short and sweet, being shared on LinkedIn improves the distribution of your site content. As Pam Dyer (Pamorama) notes, “According to an article on the SEOmoz blog, Zarrella compiled a database of 25,000+ URLs that had been shared at least once on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The URLs were all at least one month old and had a minimum of one incoming link. The study found that, while Facebook and Twitter users share the most links to content, the number of links directed at that content is higher per share via LinkedIn.” With these facts in hand, it’s important to recognize that your business should already have a LinkedIn page. If not, go ahead and set one up. As you begin to think about your SEO (search engine optimization) strategy, prioritize sharing content through LinkedIn while never forgetting to also share content across Twitter, Facebook and of course, Google+. 

To read more about LinkedIn and how it can help your distribution, head over to Dyer’s article, LinkedIn is the Best Social Network for Improving SEO. 

-Christopher Lin, Lexity