Watch social media explode!

If you don't believe social media is having a huge impact on marketing, watch this chart for a few seconds.

7 SEO Tips for Better Search Engine Rankings

If you’ve done the obvious things on your website for search engine optimization (SEO)—like sprinkle keywords through your home page and have a value proposition that says what you offer that others do not—you can further increase your website ranking using some of these ideas.

1.      License your domain name for multiple years.  This tells search engines you plan to be around for a while.

2.      List the geographic areas you serve.  This lets search engines know what “local” means to you, so they can bring the right “local” customers to you.

3.      Give your pictures “alt tags.”  Alt Tags are HTML elements that let you describe a picture.  Use them because search engines cannot decipher pictures (or other types of rich media, like Flash and videos). 

4.      Use cascading style sheets (.css).  Cascading style sheets let you put all the formatting in one file so the search engine does not have to interpret it—and accidentally rank “font”  or “cell” as your most frequent keyword!

5.      Use simple sentences and use keywords as the noun in your sentence.  This is the easiest, most direct way to talk to customers and to search engine.  “Marketing for Software Companies that Want To Grow” communicates more clearly than “Could Your Marketing Use A Boost?”

6.      Put a local phone number on the page even if you use an 800-number.  Without it, rival companies in your immediate area could out-rank you in searches conducted by local prospects. 

7.      Change something on your homepage frequently. This tells the search engines your site is not static brochure-ware, which also helps your ranking.

MultiPlanet follows the work of SEO researchers carefully to keep our clients up-to-date on the latest search engine advantages.  

Contact me directly to discuss your company needs.

--Paige

MultiPlanet Marketing, Inc.

Aligning the stars for you.

3 Business Benefits of Social Media for Software Companies

People often ask me about the benefits of a social media.  If your business is going to invest in something, you want to know what you get in return, right?  Basically, social media offer several benefits.

First, social media helps your search engine ranking.

The bigger your website, the better your search engine ranking. Most software companies don’t have extremely large website.  Social media lets you add posts and blog items that rank like web pages.   Blogs and social media posts also help your sales effort.  You can alert buyers to the latest upgrades and features quickly.  This is important because buyers today want to learn all they can about your product before they contact your company. 

Social media give your sales people more sales material.  As they speak with prospects, they can refer them to your blog, Facebook page, etc., for more information or discussion about a feature.  They can also show prospects a presentation on YouTube or SlideShow about a particular feature.  This is especially handy when talk with prospects over the phone.

WordPress, Google+ page, YouTube, FlickR and SlideShow are popular platforms for storing company information.  They are free, easy to use and indexed by the search engines.  Facebook and Twitter are good mechanisms to use to let people know you have new information available.

Second, to aid lead generation, you can embed organic keyword in your posts.  Using the same keywords in your blog items and posts that your prospects use in their online searches helps your prospects find your product.  Put a tagline describing your product’s benefits and the geographic area you serve at the bottom of your blog/post and you now have a free ad online.  Be sure to include a click to a contact form on your site.  

Third, lead nurturing is a natural use of social media.  Social media lets you contact people without disrupting them the way a phone call, or even an email, does.  In effect, a prospect can ask a question without inviting a 10-minute sales pitch from you.  Just be sure you are diligent about answering questions.  And, yes, every question deserves an answer.

Prospects don’t want to be sold.  They want to find appropriate product for their needs, kick the tires, get other people’s opinions about the company’s reputation, expertise and how they treat their customers, and maybe even use the product for free before they start a sales conversation.   

Social media lets you publicize your attributes in all these areas.

See you on the net.

--Paige

MultiPlanet Marketing, Inc.

Put your marketing on steroids

Need help starting your social media program?  Just shoot us an email, call or comment below.

pmiller@multiplanetmarketing.com, 610.687.2690.

The Answer to January 10 "test yourself" question:


In January 2010, Disney World’s “Give a Day, Get a Day” promotion offered a free one-day pass to Disney World to anyone who signed up and worked on the National Day of Service celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday.  More than 600,000 people took advantage of the offer.  

Anatomy of An Amazing Marketing Deals

Marketing people are creative, and they often earn their stripes by solving business problems with creative marketing. 


The Philadelphia Inquirer illustrates this perfectly with their marketing campaign to increase subscribers. In November 2011, they began offering a tablet PC for $89 with the purchase of a one-year subscription to the digital version of the newspaper ($10 a month).

Stroke of Genius!
This is a stroke of genius. What does the Inquirer (an all other newspaper) face? Younger readers aren’t buying newspapers because they get their news from the Internet.

Let’s look at what the Inquirer did. You may have heard the phrase “a problem in search of a solution.” If you tweak that phase a little bit and think of it as “a problem in search of another problem” you have a marketing perspective that can result in amazing deals. Someone at the Inquirer was smart enough to think that way.

Think of the Customer
Instead of thinking about their own problem, the Inquirer thought about the problems of their desired client. What do young people want? Education, jobs, family….Ok, those are too big for even the Inquirer to solve. What do young people want for Christmas? Now that’s a more manageable problem.

So, what do young people want for Christmas? Kindles, music, iPhones, Uggs, Wiis, North Face jackets, digital cameras, iPods, video games, iPads. iPads…iPADs! Give the Millenniums iPADS . . .wouldn’t that be cool?

Give it a WOW-factor!
Note that last line above. Whatever you use as an incentive must have a WOW!-factor.


An iPad fits the bill perfectly. It lets the Inquirer apply another old marketing adage, “give them the razor for free and sell them the blades” (or the more modern version of “sell them the printer cheap and make money on the ink cartridges).

Now you have the “buy a subscription and get a tablet cheap” marketing offer.
When the iPad turned out to be too expensive, the Inquirer teamed with Arnova, which offers a great tablet on the Android Gingerbread operating system, the same OS as the Kindle. (My daughter has practically given up her MacBook in favor of the Arnova tablet.)

To recap: Think about your objective and what your desired client wants. How can you combine their current behavior, desires or wants with your objectives?

It takes brainstorming. It takes lots of “what if we….,” and “wouldn’t be great if…” thinking to devise a creative approach, but it results in great marketing.

Test Yourself
So, test your own skills. Answer this: How did Disney World increase attendance by African-Americans in 2010?

I’ll post a link to the answer in the next blog. In the meantime, post your thoughts.
–Paige
MultiPlanet Marketing specializes in creative thinking. Let us work with your management or marketing team to develop solutions for your challenges. Contact me at 610.687.2690. –Paige Miller

Five Steps to a Successful Marketing Strategy and Road Map for 2012

Which way is your marketing going in 2012? 
A strategy shows you the way.

Hope your holiday's were fun!  Now it's back to work and time to start the New Year right with a strategy to guide you through the next 12 months.  Here’s how to get started.

A marketing strategy sits between your business plan and your marketing plan.  Your business plan defines your market—the group of people who have a problem you can solve—and states the message you want to use to explain the benefit of your product or service. 

Your marketing strategy states how you plan to attract those people.  Your strategy depends on:

1.  Your Budget.  Set a budget, even if it is only a small amount.  Don’t skirt the issue by asking “what will it cost?” or saying “Tell me what we need and I’ll get the money.”  It’s a waste of time to develop a $5MM budget if you only have $50,000 to spend.  It doesn’t matter what you need if you can’t afford it.  The goal is to maximize the impact of the money you do have.  If nothing else, start with 15% of revenues.  That should get you into the ballpark.

2.  Your Purpose.  What do you want to accomplish?  Drive people to the website to buy your product?  Educate prospective customers to nurture them toward a sale?  Build your brand in the marketplace so you make the RFP and short lists of major prospects?  Decide now, so you don’t spread yourself and your staff too thin.  The more purposes you have, the less successful you will be at any of them.    

3.  Your Goals.  Determine what metrics will best mark your success: leads generated?  downloads? Free trials?  Sales?  Visitors to the site?  Sign-ups for the newsletter?  Next, set realistic and stretch goals for those metrics.  Use last year’s goals as a guide, if you have them.  If your company is new to marketing, set modest goals.  Better to succeed and feel a sense of forward motion than to set high goals, fail and drain the energy out of the effort.   

5.  Determine Your Strategy.  States how you plan to spend your budget and use your resources.  What will you emphasize and what will delay until later?  Which marketing channels will you use first?  Why? (Do the research to find out how other businesses like your succeeded.)  

6.  Build Your Road Map.  The final element of your plan is your Road Map, which says what you will do each month and who will do it.  Keep your budget in minds as you determine which trade shows you want to attend, which publications you want for your articles and which websites or social media sites are best for reaching your customers.

A strategy and road map helps ensure your budget lasts the full year.  Too often, “things” come along during the first half of the year that consume your budget, leaving no money for critical end-of-year efforts to meet company sales goals.  A strategy and an eye on the calendar makes marketing more effective.

What’s the biggest marketing mistake you’ve seen that a good strategy would have prevented?  I’ll  give a shout out to the marketer who provides the best example.

Happy New Year, --Paige

MultiPlanet Marketing

For help developing your strategy, contact MultiPlanet Marketing.

Meet the Press Loves Twitter

Interesting to hear so many marketing references on Meet the Press yesterday.  One of the commentators at the roundtable said one of the presidential candidates was an example of "as we say in marketing, resistant dependency.  When customer dislikes you but has to use you--like the cable company." 

(Ted Koppel tapped the guy on the arm and said something to the effect "don't bash the cable company--not on this network."  Everyone laughed.  NBC is owned by Comcast cable company.)  I never did find this sound bit on their website so you could hear it.  But I digress.

I hadn't heard the term "resistant dependency," but it's a good one, and I tucked it away for future use. 

Also, Dick Gregory (1) referenced a tweet sent by a viewer, (2) mentioned Ron Pauls "positive sentiment" on Twitter (wonder what listening software NBC uses), and (3) is seeking input on "What are your ideas for the debate?" on Facebook. 

Looks like Meet the Press Loves Twitter.  Fast, easy way to connect with your audience.  Good job.

How Good is Copy Cat Advertising?

The number of TV ads today that blatantly copy the ad concept of another company seems to be increasing.  Think of Kindle with the young man (Kindle in hand, white background) talking to the young lady about book reading.  Remind you of anything?  How about the Apple Mac ads with Justin Long and John Hodgman.

 

Or how about the Girl in Pink ads?

 

Hey, if it works for one, why not for others?  Obviously it's a low cost format--couple people, blank stage--but, if the actors and dialogue are engaging, that's all you really need or is it?

Quick, without looking back, what company does the Girl in Pink ad?  Sprint, T-Mobile, or Verizon?

I didn't get it right when I first looked on YouTube for the clip.  

So why was the Mac PC and Kindle so memorable, but the Girl in Pink less so?  Could it be the format works for tangible product but not intangible ones?  Did showing various cell phones with different screen confuse the message?  Or is this format losing its appeal?  What do you think?