Does Your Business Have a Unique Selling Proposition?

by John Eberhard

In marketing, whether with website marketing or offline marketing, it is important to develop what is called a “unique selling proposition,” or USP, for your business. This is defined as a way of presenting or selling your business that makes it unique or makes it stand out from the competition.

Decades ago, marketers discovered that as more and more competing companies came into the marketplace, that it did not work well to try to be all things to all people. If every company did this, then how could the customer decide which one to choose?

Marketers discovered that it worked better to find a way to differentiate themselves, to say that their company was unique in some way, to put themselves into a certain niche.

You see this a lot with big companies today. Car manufacturers have nearly all defined themselves as manufacturing a certain type of car, i.e. luxury cars, rugged cars or trucks, economy cars, etc. BMW is “the ultimate driving machine.” Audi is “progressive luxury.” Lexus is the “pursuit of excellence.” The VW Jetta is an inexpensive car with lots of safety innovations. The Ford F150 is the best selling truck in America for X number of years.

Beer companies have been using USPs for a long time. Coors is brewed with Rocky Mountain water. The Bud Light Playbook positions them as the beer you drink while you’re watching football. Heineken is the premium imported beer. Corona is apparently the beer you drink while on the beach, with a twist of lime of course.

We’ve all seen these examples and I’m sure you can think of many more. But what about your small or medium sized business? Does it have a unique selling proposition? Do you have a way of making your business stand out from the crowd? Or does your business fade into the landscape?

The more competition there is in your type of business, the more vital it is to develop a USP. I’ve worked with a few dentists over the years and there is an awesome amount of competition among dentists. And the problem is that most dentists do not develop any kind of USP. They are the “friendly, caring” dentist. But so are the other 45 dentists advertising in their small city. So with a dental practice it is important to develop some kind of USP. With a practice based just on referrals, it doesn’t matter as much. But as soon as you start to advertise, you have to find a way to stand out, to make your advertising effective.

Real estate is another area where there is a ton of competition and where most agents or brokers have no USP.

With home improvement companies, I think it is easier to develop a USP because most home improvement companies tend to specialize in one or more aspects of their particular trade. You have the company that does copper repiping, or the company that specializes in home foundation repair, or the company that is expert in chimney repair and cleaning. Or among landscape companies, you have one that does high end design, another that does installation and maintenance, or another that works mainly with commercial properties.

However you do it, to the degree that you separate your company out from the competition, you will be more successful.

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More on Content Management Systems (CMS)

by John Eberhard

A Content Management System (CMS) is a system that allows you to log in online, and through an online interface, make changes to your web site.

I have observed that over the last year this concept has become more and more popular with companies, and many of the people I talk to about having a web site designed or re-designed want it done with a CMS. They want to be able to make changes to the web site themselves, without depending on a designer who is often busy.

When clients want a CMS, I typically put their site into Wordpress, which is a blogging program but is also very workable as a CMS and has become quite popular in the last two years for this purpose. I like Wordpress because by and large it is pretty easy for people to learn and use.

I spoke to a fellow designer recently about CMSes, and we agreed that many people seem to have a misconception about what they will be able to do with a CMS. So I thought it would be good to talk about what you can and can’t do with a CMS, or more precisely, what level of knowledge and expertise you would need in order to do certain things with a CMS.

Here are things you can do with a CMS like Wordpress, with limited or no knowledge of HTML:

1. Edit text on the site

2. Add new pages

3. Add pictures

4. Add a video from YouTube

5. Add posts to your blog if you have one

Here’s what you can’t do with a CMS unless you have an intimate knowledge of web design and the use of programs like Photoshop and Dreamweaver:

a. Change the masthead graphic

b. Change the number of columns on the page

c. Change the colors of the background

d. Change the content of your sidebars (you might be able to change some content)

Pictures

To make pictures appear correctly and ensure that they are the right size, you will need some sort of program to edit and resize your pictures. Most digital cameras today give you pictures that are huge by the web’s standard, between 8 and 12 megapixels. If you uploaded and tried to place a picture of this size on a web page it would cover the entire page and then some.

So you will need to be able to resize photos and set them at the size you want, at 72 dots per inch (DPI). Usually you want to have photos between 4 and 7 inches wide on a web page. Any wider and you will cover your entire page and any less and the picture will look too tiny.

Even if you successfully resize your photos, you may get some undesirable situations, such as where the text next to the photos is right up against the photos with no space in between. A web designer can fix such things but he would do so using HTML code.

Galleries

Wordpress has some really good photo galleries that allow you to upload files (of any size by the way) and create a fairly upscale photo gallery. You can see one I have created on my own site here.

Videos

YouTube gives you code for each video that you can use to embed that video on your web site or blog. Once you copy this code, then in Wordpress you will have to be in the HTML editing mode, then you can paste in the code where you want the video to appear.

They give you options for different sizes. If you paste in the code and the video is too big, you can go back to YouTube and select a smaller size, then copy the new code and paste it into Wordpress again.

Summary

A CMS allows you many options, but it is not a magic bullet that gives you unlimited options, unless you have some knowledge of the tools and software of web design.

Even with a CMS, you have to get used to the interface, you will need some kind of photo editing software, and you may have to use some HTML code now and then. Even then, you may need to bring your web designer back in to handle certain things for you, or to make broader changes to the site.

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Getting the Most Out of Your Web Site

by John Eberhard

The point of a web site and website marketing is that it is an online place where people can easily find out about your organization, but in most cases the goal is for people to respond. We want them to respond and give us their name and contact information, so we can contact them and sell them something, or at least send them repeated communications about our company (and sell them something later on down the road).

So how can we maximize the number of people that respond to our web site? Here are some tips you can use to increase response.

Navigation

You have to make sure your site navigation is set up so visitors can find their way around easily. Most site navigation is set up across the top or in the left hand column.

Over the past couple years it has become more and more common to have a fairly limited number of navigation buttons, with many of them having dropdown menus that pop up when you move the mouse over them. So your main navigation buttons define the categories or sections, and the dropdowns are the choices within those categories. This idea allows you to have one all-inclusive navigational structure that can go on all your pages, so you can find your way to any page from any other page in the site.

Make it Easy for People to Respond

You need to make it as easy as possible for people to respond to you, and to give them multiple ways of doing so.

I was talking to someone last week who only has phone numbers on his site. I think it is much better to include phone numbers, as well as clickable emails, and a form for people to fill out. One of the types of publics that you have to accommodate with your site is people who will search at night (even late at night) or on the weekends. They are much more inclined to fill out a form at those off hours than call. In general the more response options you give, the more responses you will get.

I recommend putting the phone number and possibly the address on the top masthead, or on the sidebar, so it is visible from every page of the site.

Google Analytics

It is vital to be able to see how many people are coming to your site per week or per month. You wouldn’t believe how many people I talk to who have no idea how many people are visiting their site.

The handling is much different if a web site has a ton of visitors but hardly any responses, compared to a site with hardly any traffic. If you don’t have some good web statistics program set up, those two sites will look the same to you.

Google Analytics is a free service, that allows you to see how many people are visiting, what pages they are visiting, what other sites are referring visitors to you, and what keywords they are typing in on search engines to find you. You have to set up an Analytics account, then put some invisible code on each page. Once that’s done you can really see what’s going on.

Offers

Many people think of an offer as “call us now for more information” or “call us now to talk to one of our salesmen.”

The problem with using only this approach is that there are plenty of people visiting your web site who are possible prospects down the road, but are not ready to buy right now for whatever reason. So they’re not going to respond to an offer like that.

If you can get them to respond and get onto your email mailing list, you can communicate to them regularly in a sort of captive audience type of way. You can educate them about your products or services, and more importantly, you can place your company into their mind so they think of YOU when they are ready to buy. This is called “top of mind awareness.”

You are definitely expending resources, either time or money or both, to get someone to your site. So placing items on your site that will entice people to respond and put themselves on your mailing list is very important. But this is getting harder and harder these days because people are deluged with email. So you have to give them a good reason to add one more email to their inbox.

An email newsletter is a great choice, but of course you have to be prepared to create that newsletter and create quality content for it on an ongoing basis. I write mine and send it out once a week, but monthly or twice a month are fine.

Another great way to get people to respond is with information products such as “free reports” or “white papers.” These are written about topics related to your products or services so that everyone who requests it would theoretically be a prospect. Then you set it up so that the visitor has to give you his name and contact info in order to get it. I have used this technique very successfully over the years at a variety of companies.

You can offer a free online course, where the person gives you his name and email and then receives a series of emails with the information (via an autoresponder). It’s like a free report or white paper, but in a different format.

You can also create videos with information that would be useful to your prospects, and then require that people give you their name and email in order to access the videos.

The whole point of these offers is to get the people who are not necessarily ready to buy right now to respond to you and get onto your mailing list. Then to send them regular newsletters and/or sales information.

Hopefully these tips will help you get the most out of your web site.

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Internet Marketing New Year’s Resolutions for 2011

by John Eberhard

Now is the time to make New Year’s resolutions on how to improve your Internet marketing in 2011. Here are my suggestions for you.

Posting to the Blog: I resolve to post new content to my blog at least once a week in 2011, realizing that search engines give more weight or importance to blogs specifically because they usually have fresh content added regularly. I realize that the post doesn’t have to be a full blown article but can be just a comment and link to some other content on the web, or posting a video of interest from YouTube.

Pinging: I resolve to also, always and every single time I post something to my blog, to send a notification, called a ping, to the blog search engines. I realize that although I am witty and brilliant, my wit and brilliance alone will not drive people to my blog unless they can find me in the search engines. The pinging is what drives people to my blog. If my blog uses the Wordpress system, I resolve to ensure that it is configured to automatically send a ping to the blog search engines. Otherwise I resolve to use www.pingomatic.com after every single blog post. Did I mention to do this every time I post?

Link Building: I resolve to greatly increase the number of links to my site from other sites, knowing that Google says that the number of links is the most important criteria they use to determine how high my site will rank for my targeted keywords. I know that submitting articles to article directories and press releases to online PR sites are two excellent ways to do this.

SEO and Keyword Research: I resolve to get keyword research done in 2011, since I know that I should be targeting keywords that have high traffic, but a low number of competing sites. I know that with keywords with 15 billion competing sites, I won’t be able to rank for them at all. Further, if my site has not had search engine optimization in the last two years, I resolve to get it optimized in 2011. 

Web Statistics: I resolve to ensure my site has some sort of good web statistics program, and to regularly check the stats so I know how many people are coming to the site, what pages they are visiting, what sites are referring me traffic, and what keywords people are typing in on search engines to find me. I know that most free web stats programs that come with a hosting plan are total crap, and that Google Analytics is free and very good.

Google Maps: I resolve to get my business, if it is a local business, onto Google Maps, which will get me onto page one of Google. I, unlike many people, know that just because I have a Google AdWords or Google Analytics account does NOT mean I have a listing on Google Maps.

Web Design: I resolve to ensure that my web site looks modern and up to date, not like it was designed during the reign of Henry the VIII.

Email Newsletter: I resolve to create an email newsletter if I don’t have one already, and to ensure I get a new one out at least once a month. I resolve to offer the newsletter subscription on my site and build my email list.

Social Media: I resolve to use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter more often in 2011 to market my business. But I know that I also have to be engaged with my friends and followers, respond to their posts, and to sometimes post things about my personal life, not just hammer people with “buy my products” type messages. I resolve to significantly increase my number of friends and followers on social media sites in 2011.

Leads/Sales: I resolve to get my web site really producing leads and/or sales in 2011, so that the site is a real contributing force towards the success of my business and not just a source of frustration and embarrassment.

Consultant: I resolve to respect and take the sagely advice of my marketing consultant, and to pay him on time.

I wish you the best in keeping your New Year’s resolutions, and I feel confident that 2011 will be the best year ever for you.

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