Internet Marketing

I couldn’t miss this sign on a local hotel chain (name obscured to protect the innocent) - “WELCOME: WE PATIENTLY AWAIT YOUR ARRIVAL.”

While I can kind of see what the manager responsible for this message was going for, all it did for me was conjure an image of dozens of happy, smiling employees sitting at the desk in a merrily-lit, but bleakly empty hotel lobby, as rooms upon rooms sat empty and the phone gave nary a ring.

Maybe it’s all the Seth Godin on the brain lately (I recently listened to “Small is the New Big” and have been chewing on different ways to be remarkable…), but this just seems all the wrong way to go about your business.

If you’ve got staff, use them! As much as I would love to be welcomed by your happy, patient people… it ain’t likely to happen, since I’m not probably not going to visit at all.

What makes this place better than the Marriot Courtyard down the street? Does it have better amenities? Stellar food? Better transport service? Room attendees that won’t steal my towels when I try to hang them up and use them more than once?

Sorry, your patient staff doesn’t make you any less forgettable among dozens of mediocre lodging experiences.

Unfortunately, I think this attitude prevails on websites, too. Many people seem to have a “build it and they will come” mentality when it comes to their website, all about pleasing what the business owner’s personal tastes are, but without a glimmer of attention for that of the customer’s.

You know what? I don’t care how much you love your eccentric design and cryptic navigation - I’m going to your competitor’s website because I can find what I’m looking for!

This same model applies to the marketing side of things, too. Building the coolest website in the world and just putting it out there, with the expectation that droves of interested customers will crash down the gates without any cohesive marketing strategy, is… well… not much of a strategy at all. A

nd if you’re just thinking about marketing your site as it’s ready to go live, it’s way, way too late.

So what’s the message here? Stop waiting around!

There are a million-million things in our modern digital lives that scream look-at-me-look-at-me-look-at-me-look-at-me. Your website needs to be a product of and exist in that world — but at the same time not be the “stick the foot in the door” salesperson of the last century.

Instead of patiently awaiting your customer’s arrival, concentrate on making your website a destination.

So after the success of webinars such as “Way Beyond SEO” and the two we just did in June — Redesigning Your Website and Understanding Search Marketing — we’re proud to announce a new line-up for web marketing webinars that will last into perpetuity.

To keep things simple, we’re having them every single Tuesday at 2PM EST, and lest you ask, they’re as free as free can be.

So why should you attend?

5. It’s summer, and what do you REALLY have to do on a Tuesday afternoon?

4. Play “stump the SEO” during our Q&A at the end.

3. Hear Fred’s crazy radio voice and Chrystie’s good-natured humor.

2. Get out of boring company “strategy” sessions to learn about how to REALLY grow your business.

1. Because if you don’t, your competitors will.

So what are you waiting for? Register for one of our webinars today!

As a lover of all things audio (and the podcasting format in particular), it was with great joy that I read a SiteProNews newsletter article on “Enhancing Web Effectiveness with Sound Design.”

Audio has a powerful effect on an audience. The internet has a powerful effect on an audience. And whoever said “ne’er the twain shall meet?”

We’ll be talking more and more about using web video to make a powerful impression, but let’s not forget that even though the moving pictures make a movie, an, uh, “move”-ie, the audio is just as important.

If not more.

The thing about audio is that it captures your mind and is cheap to produce. You can put it on your ipod and take it with you to the gym, take it on the bus and enjoy it while driving. Try the same with a movie and you run into problems.

Also, the file size of audio is much smaller than video, which in turn lowers the bandwidth expense of adding video to your site… and increases how many people can effectively enjoy it with a primitive connection.

Audio is not for everything, but for the right offer, it can be transformative. For example:

• Have your actual customers voice their testimonials
• Create a voice-version as an alternative to text on your website… great for people with limited patience or with a vision impairment
• Jazz up descriptions of your products with professional narration of key selling points and some tactfully used effects and music
• Create a weekly podcast covering hot topics about your industry (hey, it works for us)
• Use audio as training or learning materials to accompany webinars, webcasts, or PDFs

And that’s just brainstorming for a minute or two — the point is, there’s a way you can use it on your site, and the uses of audio are only limited to your imagination. Which, by the way, is the canvas of audio.

Last week, I wrote a blog post about Twitter, the fast growing microblogging platform that allows users to blog 140 character ‘tweets’ to their closest friends, followers and yes, even strangers. Twitter, although, originally created to keep up with what your friends are up to, has quickly become an easy way for companies to monitor their reputation online.

Zappos.com, one of the largest online shoe merchants, known for its outstanding customer service and amazingly large selection of shoes (personal experience) has recently taken to Twitter. They have set up a Twitter feed page on their site which follows online mentions about the company and ‘tweets’ made by their employees.

Zappos.com has been the online sweetheart of many bloggers. With amazing customer service stories like, I Heart Zappos, this one and one more, it’s hard to NOT love them. Zappos.com did not set out to win over bloggers, they set out to win over their customers…and some of them just so happened to be bloggers. With one flower bouquet, Zappos.com managed to win over thousands of bloggers and fans. According to Yahoo Site Explorerr the “I Heart Zappos” post currently has close to 2,000 inbound links! Talk about free publicity!

As a company committed to customer service, it is a smart move for Zappos to embrace Twitter. Following their company’s brand online will help them pro-actively remedy any negative mentions online and humanize the company by following their employee’s tweets.