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Marqui's Web Marketing Blog is brought to you by our marketing and consulting team to share ideas, best practices and trends from the world of web marketing. We aim to cover a broad array of topics relating to web marketing including content management, conversion optimization, SEO, email marketing and lead nurturing.

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Upcoming webinar: Growing Your Business with Social Media July 15th at 10:30 am

Web Marketing Digest - July 8

Jul. 09, 2010

Under: Web Marketing

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This week's post has a presentation on building brand relationships, two great infographics and some ways that social media is helping the Gulf Coast Benefit get some added support.

This presentation by David Rollo discusses why it's important to connect brands with customers through social media and how this can help companies to develop stronger relationships.

Have you ever wondered what the economy of Facebook looks like? This infographic from visualeconomics.com is what you're looking for!

The Gulf Coast oil spill is a terrible tragedy, and to help mitigate the lasting effects, the Gulf Coast Benefit was created. The benefit was a a series of 60 concerts which were presented across the USA and the proceeds went towards the community's Gulf Future Campaign. This post from Mashable highlights some of the ways that the benefit used social media to supplement it's promotion efforts and gives some good ideas for how other benefits can do the same.

We've mentioned the World Cup 2010 a couple times over the last few weeks, and wrote a blog post about FIFA's use of social media to promote the event. This infographic from Inside View, a company which provides sales intelligence to help improve productivity, shows how economic productivity has gone down during the event.

Have a great weekend!

Improving Your Email Clickthrough Rates with Segmentation

Jul. 08, 2010

Under: Email Marketing

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Nobody wants to receive emails that aren’t of interest to them. Non-targeted emails and spam are a common occurrence within the B2B industry and are one of the fastest ways to decrease your email conversion rate. One of the best things you can do to ensure that your emails are going to be relevant for your recipients is to break your email list down into smaller segments for more personalized, targeted campaigns. The more a recipient can associate with the content of an email campaign, the more likely they are to act on it.

How can you get started?

The basis of segmentation involves achieving a better understanding of your subscribers. Segmenting, by definition, requires that you learn what makes your subscribers individuals and how you can group them into subsets. To determine the ways in which you are going to segment your list, you need to do some research into how your product is perceived by different groups. For instance, segmenting by gender is irrelevant, if gender has little to do with how buyers react to your product.

To get started, a good idea is to choose one single attribute to divide up your house list and to then continue to segment into smaller and smaller like-minded groups. A good example of a starter attribute might be, subscription date (older subscribers vs. brand-new ones). Once you’ve done this initial segmentation, then you can further break down these two groups based on more specific attributes like:

Demographics (age, gender, occupation, income etc.)
Geography
Interest-based preferences
Acquisition channel (where did you email subscribers come from?)
Purchasing history (what product lines have they purchased in the past?)
Past email open or clickthrough rate (CTR)
Online behavior
Customer type (repeat, inactive, new etc.)
Event-based
Interest-based preferences (interest preferences chosen by the subscriber during the subscription process)

One of the easiest ways to segment your groups is by activity history. Breaking down your list by subscribers who have acted on an email campaign in the past (read, opened or clicked-through), is an easy way to target your subscribers based on their interest. Once you move into more advanced segmentation you can begin to break these lists of interested subscribers into smaller segments based on which campaigns they interacted with and which they didn’t, to make even more specific target groups.

We know that it sounds a bit complicated, but proper segmentation is actually one of the simplest and easiest ways to create relevant interest from your house list and to increase the CTR for your email campaigns. Our advice is just to start small, and then to slowly graduate to a more in depth complicated segmentation process and remember to always test, to determine which segmentation methods work best for your organization.

Image source: www.emarketer.com

Creative Commons 101

Jul. 07, 2010

Under: Web Marketing

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Undoubtedly most bloggers and other web content developers have at some point in their careers come across Creative Commons Licenses. While different people use these for different reasons, most content creators agree that there are definite benefits to this type of license. Unfortunately, while many people have heard of Creative Commons, few have a really clear understanding of what they are or where they come from.

What are Creative Commons Licenses?

In response to a need for an alternative to classic copyright licenses, Creative Commons was created by a group of copyright and intellectual property experts in the United States in 2001. The project created several user-friendly licenses which enable content creators to share their work while retaining their copyright(s) under certain conditions.

Why should you use a Creative Commons (CC) License?

There are several benefits associated with placing this type of license on your content:

It allows you to share your content within a community while retaining your creative rights
It allows the spread and promotion of your content across the web without the loss of copyright
It allows you to place a visible license with regulations on your content rather than just an assumed, “all rights reserved” license

Which license is right for you?

It is important to understand that by placing your work under a Creative Commons License you are by no means giving up your copyright(s). The CC Licenses allow creators to mix and match certain “allowable conditions” according to their specific personal and professional preferences. There are six different types of licenses and each one reserves different subset of copyright(s). The license is generated by the Creative Commons website and then attached to the creator’s work. You can view a full list of the creative commons licenses on the Creative Commons website here.

The licenses fall under four different license categories based on the following conditions:

Attribution – You let others make free use (distribute, copy, perform etc.) your work, and its derivative works, as long as you are given credit.
Noncommercial – Follows the same rules as attribution, except the works aren’t to be used for any commercial purposes.
No Derivative Works – You work can be copied, distributed or performed verbatim only. In other words, no derivative works can be created based on your original creation.
Share Alike – In this case you’re allowing others to distribute derivatives of your work but only as long as they use an identical license to the one that was put on your original work.

Creative Common Licenses are an excellent way for content creators to share their content while protecting their copyright(s). Thus far, Creative Commons has been a successful, user-friendly alternative to traditional copyright licenses on the web. While it is by no means a perfect solution, it addresses some of the issues that web content creators have faced with traditional copyright licenses in the past and continues to grow in popularity.

For More information on this topic you can visit the Creative Commons Organization website, or the Creative Commons Canada website at:

http://www.creativecommons.org
http://www.creativecommons.ca

Image by AJC1 on Flickr

Growing Your Business with Social Media

Jul. 06, 2010

Under: Social Media

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Many of our bi-weekly presentations from our web marketing webinar series have related in some way to social media. Social media usage is pervasive to many of the different aspects of web marketing and we know that it is an important issue for many of our webinar attendees. We’d like to help clarify some of the many ways that social media can help you develop your business so our next webinar, on Thursday July 15th at 10:30 am Pacific is called, “Growing Your Business with Social Media.”

This informative webinar will last for 45 minutes and will cover:

The history of word of mouth marketing
Which social media tools will work for your business
How to create a social media strategy that will work for your business
How and what to measure to determine the ROI of social media for your organization

You can register for the webinar here. We hope to see you there!

4 Ways that Publishing Your Pricing Can Increase Your Conversion Rate

Jul. 05, 2010

Under: Content Marketing

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Publishing your pricing for your products or services can be a bit of a touchy issue for many B2B companies. There is always a fear that putting your pricing “out-there” on your website can scare potential customers away if the price isn’t right, or that it will allow your competition to use that information against you. We’re here to tell you that, we don’t believe that. We actually think that publishing your pricing on your website can have significant benefits for your organization, we have our pricing published and it has helped us discover some of the key ways that it has helped our website conversion rates.

Web usability expert, Jakob Neilsen, has stated that not publishing prices on your B2B website is one of the number one mistakes that company’s make and, according to Jakob, “Price is the most specific piece of info [sic] that customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost and reduces their understanding of a product line.”

We agree with Jakob and to help you understand why we agree, here's our list of 4 ways that publishing your pricing actually helps increase your website conversion rates:

It builds trust and brand confidence. If you publish your pricing on your website, it shows that you’re not afraid to stand by your products. If you are willing to publish a price (whether it is on the high or low end of the spectrum for your industry) it shows that you believe your products are worth that price. Displaying your prices with confidence breeds that feeling in potential customers.
It allows you to comment on your pricing. Publishing your pricing gives you the opportunity to explain how your prices are built-up. You are able to tell your customers which features they get for which price, differentiating your products within the market and keeping the buying cycle as simple as possible. Nothing is worse than reading about a product and finding out you can’t get what you want for a price you can pay.
It makes your promotions' value obvious. Publishing your pricing allows you to put on effective price-based promotions. Offering someone $200.00 off your products (for example) has little or no relevance if they have no idea how much your products cost in the first place. Communicating the value of your promotions can increase the leads they bring in.
It forces your leads to qualify themselves. If a lead comes to your website and can’t find the pricing, they may take the time to contact your sales team for further information, only to find out that they don’t have the budget for your products or services. This wastes valuable sales cycles and time. By publishing your pricing, potential customers have the ability to qualify themselves as hot leads (if they like your pricing) or to go somewhere else if your pricing doesn’t work for their budget. Don’t be afraid of scaring people off! Customers that aren’t able to afford your products, or who are looking for the cheapest solution on the market, tend to be the ones who leave as soon as some less expensive option comes along.

Web Marketing Digest - July 2

Jul. 02, 2010

Under: Web Marketing

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This week's post has a presentation on social customers, a report on social networking and some Canadian social media news (it was Canada day yesterday after all!)

This presentation from Ryan Turner, highlights the ways that technology has changed businesses interactions with their customers by creating distance. The presentation goes on to discuss why we need to take the time to understand our new "social" customers and to bridge the gap. The presentation is insightful as well as entertaining and includes some statistic gems on social media and internet usage by the general populace today not the least of which is:

"If we added up all the time people have spent playing World of Warcraft it would total approximately 5.93 million years. That's the same amount of time that Homo sapiens have existed."
-- Jane McGonigal, TED 2010

The 2010 Social Networking Report from Experian has some great statistics (complete with graphics) on how social networking has changed in 2010. Some highlights of the report include:

Social networking continues to grow with 88% of people between 18-34 years of age visiting social networking sites in the last month
43% of people use social network sites multiple times a day

Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia (the province where we're located) has officially designated June 30th as Social Media Day in honor of media becoming social. Did you celebrate?

You can see a copy of the signed proclamation from the City of Victoria here, via Mashable.

Happy belated Canada Day (and Social Media Day) everyone!

5 Ways to Keep Your Sales Hot this Summer

Jul. 01, 2010

Under: Demand Generation

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In honor of Canada Day, and the beginning of what will hopefully be a beautiful summer, we’ve put together some of our best tips on how you can keep your sales pipeline full in the slow, hot months. Often, during the summer, many B2B businesses find that their lead generation beings to lag. Fewer consumers during the summer months leads to less demand which in turn makes many marketer’s lead generation tactics less effective. So--how can you keep your organizations sales up this summer?

Build relationships. A great way keep your sales up during the summer is to focus on developing relationships with your house list. This allows you to spend marketing time and budget renewing relationships with people you already know, who are already interested in what you have to say. This is a good opportunity to start a lead nurturing program. Don’t just stay in touch with current customers and prospects, but grow those relationships to see if you can upsell to your existing base.
Revive old leads. Summer is the perfect time to create a campaign to drive older leads which have lost interest back to your website and to restart conversations that have fizzled over the last year.
Get better at selling. When business is slow, your sales teams have the chance to re-learn best practices for selling and to refresh their skills and tactics. When there are less sales opportunities and prospects it’s important that you are using the best selling tactics out there to connect with your leads.
Use seasonal promotions. By starting summer promotions, you can reach out to the businesses that are still looking for product and services like the ones you sell. While there may not be as many consumers available to you during the summer, this can certainly help you drive the ones that are out there to your site.
Optimize your landing pages and calls-to-action. While this is an important tip year-round, the relative downtown during the summer is a good time to do a complete overhaul. When there are fewer customers it’s more important than ever to ensure that you are getting the most conversions you can.

Effectively Manage Your Brand Through Social Media

Jun. 30, 2010

Under: Social Media

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We’re sure by now, that many of you have heard about British Petroluem’s (BP) fake PR account on Twitter (@BPGlobalPR). The account, which now has over 10 times the followers of the real BP Twitter account (@BP_America), has gained internet notoriety for its satirical criticism of the way that BP has handled the Gulf oil spill crisis, and despite attempts by BP to get the fake account shut down, the account remains active. Why? Because according to Twitter the account is classified as a parody and therefore doesn’t infringe upon BP’s rights.

Unfortunately for large corporations, Twitter has the power to not only highlight a company’s successes, but also open them up to the opportunity for customer criticism on a large scale, exhibit A and B being the new parody for AT&T (@ATT_Wiresless_PR) and the fake Steve Jobs account (@ceoSteveJobs). Since the release of the new iPhone 4, and the slew of problems and customer complaints that followed, AT&T, the iPhone 4-carrying company, and Apple have come under some serious social media attacks most of which have been leveled at them via Twitter and other social media.

Seems a little intimidating right? Well, before you all get scared away from using Twitter or any other social media site altogether, we have some tips for you on how you can manage your brand and handle a crisis successfully through social media (and hopefully avoid getting your own parody account in the process).

Be Transparent. Being authentic and genuine with your social media audience all the time can ensure that they trust you during a crisis. Building and creating trust on an ongoing basis can help you to manage a crisis when it arrives.
Address issues quickly. It’s important to take the time to consider carefully how you will respond to criticisms, but don’t take too long! Leaving criticizers to stew over an issue, only makes the situation worse. Respond quickly, and honestly and you should be able to calm an issue before it gets out of hand.
Don’t be afraid to apologize. Every company makes mistakes every once in a while. The best way to deal with them is to acknowledge the issue, take responsibility and apologize.
Make it up to them! When an issue does occur, make amends! Saying sorry isn’t always enough. Sometimes a situation requires proof of your contrition and your willingness to regain your customers’ good will.
Listen, but take comments in stride. It is important to remember that there are dedicated customers out there who will complain in a genuine crisis, and then there are those who just like to complain. Not all criticism is constructive and recognizing the difference is an essential aspect of brand and customer relationship management.

It’s important to remember that while social media is an effective medium for engaging with your customers, it is also a channel through which they can engage with you. Keeping this in mind can help you better manage your relationships with your customers and your brand through social media.

Webinar Recap: 9 Tips to Convert Website Visitors to Leads

Jun. 29, 2010

Under: Web Marketing

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We just finished our webinar, "9 Tips to Convert Website Visitors to Leads" and we think it went well.

As usual, we got a few more questions than we could answer during the Q & A period at the end of the webinar, and as promised, we'll address them here.

Does conversion rate have a direct impact on sales?

Yes. Increased conversion rate, leads to more leads handed-off to sales, which leads to more opportunities created. This is especially true if you're optimizing your website not just for increased conversion rates, but for targeted traffic since this leads to more qualified leads. Using some of the tips we suggested in the webinar, like publishing your pricing on your website, is a great way to increase the quality of your leads.

Which is more effective, a text link or a button for a call-to-action?

Both are effective in different ways. We usually recommend using both for variety as buttons usually draw a visitors attention more quickly, but a text link can be included in the body copy of you site to follow a logical flow.

Why is benchmark data for conversion rates important?

Benchmark data can help you establish how effective your website's optimization tactics are. If you are far below benchmark conversion rates, then you know you have lots of room for improvement. A good resource for benchmark conversion rate data is the Fireclick index.

We hope you found the information in today's webinar useful. For those of you who were unable to attend you can view the full recording here. Don't forget to sign up for our next webinar, "Growing Your Business with Social Media."

7 Effective Higher Education Website Designs from Around the World

Jun. 29, 2010

Under: Higher Education

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We know that finding inspiration for a higher education web design can sometimes be difficult. Whether you are updating a current site, or planning an entire redesign, ensuring that you get all the right elements for an effective site can be challenging. To help give you a creative boost, we've found 7 effective higher education website designs from around the world. Enjoy!
Emily Carr - Vancouver, CANADA
Let's start with Canada shall we? (We are located in Vancouver after all). Emil Carr's website has a nice clean layout and design, with bright highlight colors and rotating images on the homepage that emphasize some people of mention at the university and some of their artistic achievements.

University of Boston, Bostonia - Boston, USA
Bostonia is actually a micro site of the University of Boston. The website makes great use of large images and a magazine-style layout.

Bournemouth University - Dorset, UK
Bournemouth University's website has another very clean layout with lots of whitespace, bright accent colors and easy-to-use tabbed navigation.

Queen's College, University of Melbourne - Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
Queen's College is part of the University of Melbourne and the website has a colorful eye-catching design, and is the best on our list in terms of social media integration on their homepage. The site does an excellent job of pointing potential students to their social media accounts especially Flickr.

National University of Singapore - SINGAPORE
The National University of Singapore has another simple layout, with easy navigation for university news, upcoming events and galleries and good social media integration with a link to the university's Twitter feed in the main body of the page.

Universidad Europea de Madrid - Madrid, SPAIN
This website has a nice image rotator that depicts several of the degree programs available at the university and it makes a pleasing use of dark colors in it's design, the only website on our list to do so. The homepage also has clear social media links and a detailed news feed. For optimized usability, the site has obvious links at the top of the page to the webpages for other languages for the benefit of international students.

University of Madrid Homepage

Saxion University of Applied Sciences - Deventer, NETHERLANDS
Saxion University has the most minimalist layout on our list today. Despite it's simplicity, it maintains great consistency through the site and has nice bright hover states for the top navigation. The only drawback of their no-nonsense design is their lack of social media links, even though the university does have at least one social media account @saxion on Twitter.

Saxion Homepage