There’s nothing wrong with any of the steps taken in this scenario but there’s a vital ingredient missing which often leads to client disappointment. Being focused on graphic design and showing something artistically pleasing, web designers will rush off to design a website without client-reviewed content, save perhaps an established tagline and some corporate identity. Let’s take the simple example of a coffee shop. In all the zones where the right words are needed to convey your precise message, you see something like this…

Image source: hilecreative.com

Now, you the client are expected to fall in love with the colors & visuals, approve the “look and feel” and begin the hard work of replacing the meaningless “Lorem Ipsum” placeholder text with your own expertly written, compelling messages so the designer can develop a functional website.

The ball is in your court and the process is stalled. 

You may not even like the initial design visual because the verbal messages for the website were glossed over and not provided for in your meeting. The designer’s incomplete understanding of your business and brand identity can result in a design do-over with frustration on both sides.

Do you have time to write your entire website – headlines, storytelling and bullet points – or would you expect your agency/designer to help produce a strong message in both words and visuals… at a minimum, something to kick start the process with the initial design comps?

You may wonder at this point why the website design process isn’t better defined – particularly in the small business arena. Small web boutiques and freelance designers often struggle with the content provision aspect of web design during the early development stage, instead relying on their clients to come up with it.

Need a good web designer? Ask a content specialist!

Great web development firms apply consistent processes and systems to their clients’ projects which includes specifying responsibility for launch-ready content. This manages both expectations and workflows. But for many small businesses, affording the top tier services of such firms can be an issue.

There’s an alternative web design approach that allows small businesses to work with talented web design pros combined with the creative direction and business acumen you find at elite marketing agencies.

You begin your design process with content. 

A website design that begins with the actual words and messages that it will ultimately display, rather than a bunch of placeholder gibberish, is starting out much more true to the brand. When you see the words and images working together from the get go, you will be further on your way to approving the design, completing development and launching the website. Editing text and images here and there on a live website can be done on the fly.

Finalizing the design becomes enjoyable as you see it all come together in a beautiful and fully functioning website. You cannot wait for your customers and the public to see it, engage with it and act on it’s messages.

The post Reverse engineer your website design appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

This very thought goes through the mind of your prospects after you share a great blog article from someone else’s website. If the article is relevant to their needs, your prospects will be immersed in someone else’s branded online environment, reading their unique spin and losing sight of your company in the process. Thats why you need to own your content or fade from memory.

The post Create your OWN content! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Google gets bored and turns away from old content just like you do. That’s why their spiders or “bots” are always out crawling through websites, including yours, looking for the latest relevant information that their consumers (most people) are seeking.

What’s new? When you ask that simple question, you really do want to know the answer because what’s old is irrelevant. Is there anything less interesting than old news; stuff you seen and heard before?

Frequently updating website content tells the search engines that you are at least an active publisher of information. The more relevant the information is to your business category, and the more valuable it is to your target audience, the better Google and other search engines will rank your pages organically. Provided that your website is coded well enough, quality content is pure SEO gold.

The more often you add fresh, high quality information to your website, the more Google’s crawlers will come back around to see what’s new. As that new content is determined to be relevant and valuable to searchers, Google will index it and raise your pages’ visibility. They are looking for authoritative sites that will deliver the right information to the searcher. Freshness and frequency combined with relevance and quality build authoritative status into your website. Again, this is SEO gold!

Effective SEO is not complicated but it’s extremely competitive. Maybe we should just leave it at that.

The post Entertain Google! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

One key word or turn of a phrase in the subject line catches your eye as you go through the daily delete routine in your email. You “mark as unread” so you’ll go back to it. A similar thing happens as you glance at the notifications on your phone. Someone commented on one of your LinkedIn posts and it’s a person of influence. You immediately open the message. This is what relevancy is all about. If something relates to your current interests or issues, you first pay attention and then likely take action.

Content driven marketing is taken to extremes by some marketers and the Internet is cluttered with mind-boggling volumes of information. How much of that information has any value? More importantly, to whom might it offer value and why?

The quality of information you develop or share carries far more importance than the volume or frequency of material you blast out. One really interesting article might reach one key audience member who then shares it. His network could be full of new business prospects who can actually do business with you and refer clients. Exciting new ideas and demonstrable best practices spread fast without the need to invest lots of media dollars.

As you determine what content to offer your target audience, ask yourself first: If intheir shoes would I want to consider this or learn more about it? Better yet, run it by a couple of customers and get their feedback to help assure its relevancy and value. It’s important to run such mental tests or surveys before you produce and publish content.

The extra time is well worth it. When other people start talking about your ideas and how much they appreciate you as a resource, you become the go-to guy or gal. You’re the authentic authority on your product category within your market. Doing business with you becomes the natural choice and might even be considered fashionable in your commercial sphere.

The post Relevancy Attracts Viewers appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

The inbound marketing model is working well for the companies that have discovered the successful formula. The formula works in B2B as well if not better than in B2C markets.

The first question that comes up is what do we talk about? The simplest answer is anything that might come up in a business conversation with customers and suppliers in your industry. In most industries, that covers a wide range of topics!

Offering favorite family recipes in your newsletters is nice but what can you offer that’s valuable to the recipient and relevant to the business? If readers like the recipes, go ahead and include them – along with the valuable business information your readers can use; compelling material that keeps your brand relevant to them.

There are many more questions to answer. What topics are interesting to people? Are there experts available to interview? What about using video and audio podcasts versus the written word? What about mailing lists, frequency, social media and web integration?

Perhaps the most important question is, how do I plan, develop and implement a successful content driven (inbound) marketing strategy?

Okay, I’ll give you all the answers right here, right now. The best part for me? I’m letting someone else do the heavy lifting to provide an excellent how-to book on successful content marketing. The book is yours free. Just click for an instant download of It Takes a Content Factory – A Guide to Creating and Delivering the Content Your Company Needs to Attract and Retain Great Customers by Open View Labs.

The post Content Marketing: Time + Quality = Money appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Engaging your audience is easy when you know what motivates them. You can grab their attention, hold it and then persuade them to take action with more ease if you use one or more of The Six E’s of Audience Action.

Way back during the dawn of social media marketing development (like around 2010) I worked for a marketing agency that talked about the “3 E’s of social media engagement.” They were Ego, Entertainment and Education. I knew there was more to it than those 3 things so I’ve been striving to come up with a short yet comprehensive list of motivators that would cover all or most of what moves us humans to take action, and maybe even buy things.

Striving for simplicity, so I can understand my own concepts, I wanted a simple guide or formula that could make business communications resonate with target audiences. I wanted a set of guiding principles which work across a broad spectrum of constituencies and media. Serendipitously, the 6 best keywords I considered happened to start with E. Therein is the simplicity of my new guide to audience engagement.

When you examine each of the motivating factors that move people to action, you’ll see that each one fulfills a strong human desire or need. Beyond basic survival (food, clothing, shelter) these motivators are all part of our instinctual nature. In a manner of speaking, we were born to respond to them, and so they are very effective when used for strategic communications. Let’s take a look at the 6 E’s:

Ego

Empathy

Education

Enrichment

Enthusiasm

Entertainment

These are not in any particular order other than making a word pyramid, but Ego being at the top is actually quite helpful. We all have an ego! To discount it’s power over the individual would be remiss. Everyone loves to be recognized and we love hearing our own name called out in a positive way.

So, let’s look briefly at all 6E’s of Audience Action:

1. Ego – You make it happen. Thank you!
2. Empathy – I totally identify with you and know exactly how you feel.
3. Education – Understanding this material is the key to your success.
4. Enrichment – This will bring you security, comfort, fun and enjoyment.
5. Enthusiasm – You are delighted by my energy and excitement.
6. Entertainment – You will enjoy passing the time this way for hours.

• Egos aren’t stroked by manipulation.
• Empathy can’t be faked. You have it or you don’t.
• Education should edify or it’s meaningless.
• Enrichment can’t be given if you don’t have value to offer.
• Enthusiasm can’t be put on or faked because it’s an internal gift.
• Entertainment is the result of real talent, creativity and skill.

The post Motivate Your Audience with E’s appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

It can be the very best idea you ever had; one that will change everything and lead to fortunes… And it’s gone, probably forever!

This article is not what I had in mind to write about earlier this week. A flash of brilliance hit me while driving and I was so excited to write an article about it. It was perfect for the audience. It was an extremely important and valuable message. I had a list of instructions to include and I couldn’t wait to write the article so people could begin to benefit from it. That’s as much as I remember about it. Now it’s gone. GONE!

I intended to record the idea, got distracted and figured it could wait because there was no way I’d forget an idea that good. Well, I didn’t pull over to write it down nor otherwise safely record the idea. Now, no matter how hard I try to recall, it’s a total blank. This has happened to me before and it won’t happen again!

Writing about forgetfulness is the last thing I had in mind this week. This exercise, however, is good for me and it’s good for you too. The very act of drilling this notion so deeply into my subconscious by writing about it will help assure  that I act on my future good ideas.  This reminder about the importance of keeping a journal or recording device with you always will help you remember to catalog those great ideas that can help your customers and improve your business.

Some of our most creative and useful ideas occur to us when it’s least convenient to stop and record them. These situations include:

• The shower – ideas go right down the drain.
• In bed – ideas vanish like forgotten dreams.
• While driving alone – ideas go out the window and get run over in traffic.
• While jogging, biking or working out – ideas get weaker as your body gets stronger.

Figure out a way to record your good ideas in all of these situations and make it a habit to keep a journal with you always. Recording ALL of your good ideas the very moment they occur is the only way they have a chance at being implemented.

Some people are like elephants when it comes to memory and they can mentally index and classify ideas for recall when needed. Those people are rare exceptions in the population. As for you and me, lets’ make a pact right now to start writing down every good idea so more of them will be implemented for a better world.

And just think, when I start practicing this habit of recording ideas and keeping a journal, you’ll have more interesting articles to read and better tactics to implement for your business. Please stay tuned…

The post The best ideas are sometimes forgotten. appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

While analyzing the reports from our first round of email newsletters, my client instinctively knew where to focus on improving open rates and conversion results. Before I could begin to demonstrate my experience in this area, the client was already talking about the subject line and the newsletter content itself. The other part of our discussion concerned the mailing list – how it was gathered and the company’s relationship with the contacts on the list.

Noted in the previous paragraph are the three things on which you must focus for your email marketing to be successful.

• List
• Content
• Subject Line

We’ll offer a succinct overview of each email marketing success component. The technique I will mostly use here is to ask questions. The answer machine in your head will guide you toward improving your email marketing.

Who is on your list? Who should be on your list? Who should NOT be on your list? Are your contacts signing up or opting in from online and offline marketing and events? Is your sales team gathering prospect contact info with each conversation and at every networking event? Simply mentioning that you have an informative newsletter and would like to send a free copy will add willing new recipients to your list. Include as many prospects or potential referral partners on your list(s) as you and your team can gather in your prospecting work.

Your content must be excellent. Your target audience is mostly indifferent regarding how successful your email will be, so how can you reward them for opening the email and reading it? Promise them something in the subject line and deliver it the content. Ask a compelling question that exposes pain in your customer’s or prospect’s business. Deliver solid recommendations and solutions. Include research, strategy and tactics when possible – provide meat for carnivorous consumption. You may also want to veer off topic with something of general or human interest as your audience grows to know you.

The subject line must arrest and attract. A good subject line will make any inquisitive professional pause and read an email now or mark it for an edificationbreak when they have time. Examine your own behavior when it comes to scanning through your emails. Which sources do you consider authoritative? What in a subject line makes you pause from the delete button and think: “I better have a look at this one…”?

To close this article, thank you!  I’m extremely grateful that you took a few minutes with me today to read this blog post. I hope that you find value, even if just reminders, in the 3 success drivers of email marketing.

The post Email marketing success – 3 things you must do well appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

There are too many technology walls and filters against traditional sales calls for them to be effective today. Not only that, the buyer mindset has changed dramatically over the last 10 years. Cold calls were once respected, even appreciated by many buyers at a time when salespeople offered new product information and comparison shopping opportunities.

There was once, on a certain level, a sense of obligation to respond to the persistent salesperson’s calls. Do you see that sense of obligation working for your selling efforts now? As a salesperson, do you feel it out there anymore?

Voicemail and automated call answering were first, the speed and reliability of the Internet were second, and the cultural shift toward “build a relationship and earn my trust before I will even talk with you” (resulting from the peer-to-peer socialization of business and commerce) is the final nail in the coffin of cold call selling.

Sidewalk canvassing doesn’t even work anymore because many business entrances are locked for security. I remember how awkward it felt ringing a buzzer without an appointment and struggling to offer a valid reason to be let in the door. Welcoming front desks and receptionists have been vanishing as fast as payphones.

Bottom line: Effective prospecting is totally different now and traditional, old-school prospecting methods will mostly fail. We’ve hit that tipping point much to the chagrin of many experienced sales pros who are reluctant to embrace technological and cultural business changes.

So what’s a salesperson to do these days? Here’s what: Transition your energy from making enough calls to make the numbers work, to building enough relationships so your calls are welcomed by enough prospects and they will call you when they need your product or service.

The good news is this works really well. The bad news is the work is just as hard, maybe harder. As B2B is the new retail, networking is the new cold calling. As networking is the new cold calling, content marketing and consultative selling are the new follow up and close methods.

Your B2B prospect has choices at his fingertips and doesn’t necessarily want to be educated on what’s good for him and his business. The business owner and decision maker of today still buys from whom she trusts and especially whom she both trusts and likes. At least that hasn’t changed!

Effective salespeople of today are constantly doing these things:

• attending events where prospects are numerous
• offering valuable information and advice to prospects
• providing leads and referrals to prospects
• building relationships on several social media channels
• writing, producing and sharing blog articles, newsletters & videos
• having coffees and lunches with customers and referral partners
• taking calls from interested prospects
• responding to requests for meetings by prospective clients
• closing new business on first meetings

Sound good? Notice how the bullet list starts with a few tough hurdles and ends with enjoyable, winning activities.

When a salesperson practices most or all of the above on a daily daily basis, he or she becomes like a bright, attractive storefront to the target audience. Buyers of big ticket purchases will be excited to “walk in” to this shiny, merchandise-rich store and get just what they’re looking for. Herein we see the metaphor of the title.

So don’t “go out and sell something!” Instead, go out, makes some friends and be a trusted adviser. Then stay in front of those new friends where they hang out physically and online.

The post B2B Sales is the New Retail appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Twitter is the place where industry thought leaders, celebrities and other news makers break their ideas on the public scene first. It’s the place to chronicle short bursts of thought, leading followers and the online public to a new video, website, landing page, blog post, news article or single idea.

Twitter has absolutely nothing to do with telling a group of followers what you happen to be doing, which is what most people thought it was at first. Sure you can try and use it for that but few will notice or care about your tweets. Twitter is really the driver of breaking news around the world as well as an amazing connector of people with the same or similar interests.

Of course, people tweet whatever they want and Twitter can be a great medium to share inspirational quotes and ideas whenever they occur. I very often use it for that purpose myself. I enjoy scrolling through my Twitter feed now and then when I’m in need of some ideas. There is never a shortage of them springing from the well of minds out there in the cyber world.

The hashtag (#keyword) makes Twitter the most powerful search engine for real-time conversations. When you include a hashtag in your tweet, it will automatically and instantaneously be indexed and bundled into a group of individual tweets using the same hashtag – every single one in the world. Hashtags are created for every big event going on – business, social and political.

Enter the hashtag in the search bar and you will see every single tweet using it in chronological order. Do you see the usefulness of this in connecting like minded people worldwide at any given time, including potential customers?

See the twitter feed here? It’s a snapshot of what’s being tweeted around the world about the recent Consumer Electronics Show #CES2014. Notice the big tech brands making hay over it.

Talking Twitter 101 can be a reminder to us marketers about how important this powerful social and business conversation engine can be for getting our messages noticed on a worldwide scale. The key to using it successfully, like anything else, is how relevant and interesting you can be to your audience.

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