Marketing Playground

SEO Competitor Analysis Tools

If you can’t afford SEOmoz…then these are some good free tools to use…

•  http://www.alexa.com - not the most accurate tool in the world, but gives you some good background information, ranking and inlinks
• //www.google.com/adplanner/ - great tool showing estimated unique visitors, page views, total visits, sites also visited and target audience
• http://siteanalytics.compete.com - estimates US traffic
• www.opensiteexplorer.org - good free tool from SEOmoz, information on page/domain authority and total links
• http://tools.seobook.com/general/website-comparison/ - lets you see competitors keywords, meta titles and description
• http://www.seomoz.org/term-extractor - another great keyword gathering tool

Hope these help

Ryan :) 

Internal operations to customer satisfaction

I think some companies are forgetting basic marketing theory - customer satisfaction! (BT!)

The service profit chain (SPC) is a great model for identifying areas which need more investment and attention. 

The SPC establishes relationships between profitability, customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, loyalty and productivity. 

Each element of the model effects the next:

• Internal quality processes drive employee satisfaction
• Employee satisfaction drives employee loyalty and productivity
• Employee loyalty and productivity drive service value
• Service value drives customer satisfaction
• Customer satisfaction drives customer loyalty
• Customer loyalty drives profit and growth

The SPC is circular, all links are interrelated and therefore interdependent. 

Moral of the theory - customers are value-orientated, so make sure your staff are given the correct process, motivation and support they need to be happy and deliver customer satisfaction.

Developing Brand Loyalty

So, in the last post we talked about human branding, but I thought I needed to added a few more things about developing the overall goal of brand loyalty. 

 Developing brand loyalty

Why do we want loyal customers?

• They become active supporters of your brand/product or service
• They cost less to service
•  Positive word of mouth

So, developing loyalty to your brand has 4 major components

Human Branding

First of all, what is a brand?

Nice fancy logo? An awesome looking new website? An office? Products and services?

Nope…your brand is everything…including you

It’s more than a logo or a website, it’s a way of thinking, acting and performing. If you like, it’s the soul of your company. Branding is the way you treat and value your customers, how you respond to their wants and needs, and how you go about your everyday business.

Everything you do either adds to or detracts from your brand and the way people perceive you and your company. Bad customer service gives a bad impression to the customer and a bad brand perception…which leads to negative word of mouth. People trust their friends, one of mine told me about a bad customer experience with an insurance company, I switched and told at least 10 people about the story.

Your brand isn’t the sole responsibility of the marketing team, it’s an internal culture, which every member of staff must be behind, especially the employees that are customer facing. You are your brand, care about it! Get emotional, so people will be emotional back…

Where do I start?

Starting to write a brand strategy can seem…challenging, but here are few simple steps to get you going…

So, where is your company going? Who are you? What do you do? Why are you different? What’s your purpose?

These are the first set of questions you need to ask yourself. They will get you thinking about your company and why you are different, specifically helping you to recognise your competitive advantage.

Brand promise?

What are you committed to doing? What is your commitment to your customers? Write it down, put it on your website, be responsible to this vision. Look at this everyday and make sure all your actions live up to your promises. This will create brand trust and loyalty, it will take time and needs commitment, but it will help you.

Brand positioning and vision

How do we want to be perceived? What’s competitive advantage? What do we want our brand to become?

Describe what you want to be known for and how you are different. I work for a new start up web agency, there are thousands of web agencies out there (and really great ones!) so why did we start up a web agency in the middle of a recession? Craziness… no, well a little bit, but more because we think we can provide something that no one else can and provide them to a under provided market.  

We’re committed to helping companies develop through education and a full web agency service. We have the tagline “we speak web”, this represents our attitudes towards business, lets keep things fun, friendly and human…we won’t speak to our clients like corporate machines, people want to connect to people and you are linked to your brand. Our attitudes and brand perceptions are demonstrated in our job titles, we don’t have them… you look like an ass Mr/Miss senior business management consultant executive etc etc. What will you find on my business card? “I speak marketing…” that’s it… we don’t over complicate things, we keep it human…

So, why are you different? How are you benefiting your customers?

Something that Pharell Williams says in the song Hot n Fun, “people don’t want to think, they want to feel”, make your customers feel something for you. One of my favourite brands is Acne Jeans (a Swedish fashion company), why do I love them? They provide quality products, great customer service, they exceed my expectations and they engage with me. Products I’ve ordered arrive before the estimated date, they come in nicely packaged box, which oozes quality and they respond and interact with me.

Engage with your customers by speaking human 

Marketing Plan

Just writing a marketing plan and strategy for Angel…

This is the best way I’ve found to cover all the points:

What do you think?

Contents

1. Exec Summary
                                                                       

2.   Introduction, Mission Statement and Values                         

3.   Current Market Position

4.   Market Overview

5.   SWOT Analyses

4.1 Strengths and Weaknesses

4.2 Opportunities and Threats

4.3 Key Issues and Opportunities

4.4 Competitor Overview and SWOT analyses

5. Assumptions

6. Objectives

7. Strategy

7.1 Target Market

7.2 Positioning Statement

7.3 Branding Strategy

7.4 Product Strategy

7.5 Pricing Strategy

7.6 Distribution Strategy (Place)

7.7 Promotional Strategy

7.8 Services Marketing

8. Appendix

How to Find Thousands More Prospects for Your Business

Really great post by Sonia Simone, written for www.copyblogger.com

Ever wonder why conversion rates are so low?

A “good” sales page will usually convert between 1 and 5 percent of its readers. Those numbers vary wildly depending on about a zillion factors, but that’s the middle of the bell curve.

So that means between 95 and 99 percent of people reject what you’ve got to offer. Seems a little depressing when you look at it that way, right?

 So are those 95–99 percent just a write-off, a necessary cost of doing business? Do you have to do the work and/or spend the money to get nearly prospects to make 1 sale?

Not necessarily.

Note: No actual statistics were harmed, or even used, in the writing of this post. In other words, these numbers are theoretical. Use them to illustrate the principle, and for back-of-the-envelope planning. The real numbers always come from your own business and your own individual situation.

The desperate buyers strategy

According to sales strategist Chet Holmes, at any given time, about 3 percent of your market is in active buying mode. So if you sell furniture, about 3 percent of adults in your town are looking for some piece of furniture right now. If you sell fancy cages for naked mole rats, about 3 percent of naked mole rat owners are in the market for a new cage.

Traditional internet marketing is all about finding this 3 percent. The smartest Adwords, SEO, and affiliate marketers are all trying to selectively find that 3 percent and weed out the other 97. You can call this the Desperate Buyers Only strategy, which is the title of a very solid program by Alexis Dawes on writing and selling ebooks.

The trouble is that the desperate 3 percent are expensive, because everyone wants them. What are called the “converting keywords” (the keywords that are proven to attract the 3 percent who are ready to buy today) are expensive to buy with pay-per-click. Those same keywords are usually highly competitive for SEO, and getting more so every day.

You’re competing with thousands of hungry internet marketers for that 3%. It can be done, but you have to be at the top of your game.

But there are more buyers out there, if you know how to treat them.

The conquer-the-universe strategy

Holmes’s research goes on to say that about 7 percent of any given market is receptive to the idea of buying, even if they aren’t actively looking. Given the right offer, they could be talked into it. We could call these our Not-So-Desperate buyers.

If you can pull them in, you’ve more than tripled the size of your potential buying pool, going from 3 percent to 10 percent.

Another 30-ish percent will buy one of these days, but it’s not on their radar right now. Call them the Not Yets.

About 30 percent are mildly turned off on the idea of buying your product. Holmes calls them the Soft No.

And about 30 percent are highly turned off. They hate something about your company, or they never pay for information, or their spouse has threatened them with grievous bodily harm if they spend any more money on what you sell. They’re the Absolutely Nevers.

What happens if you start creating marketing communication that entices the Not-So-Desperate, the Not Yets, the Soft Nos, and even a few Absolutely Nevers?

You can scoop up all of those potential buyers and keep them close until they’re ready for you.

• You can develop enough trust and rapport to warm up the Not-So-Desperates, and even light a bit of a fire to get them moving today.
• You can make yourself the natural choice when the Not Yets are ready.
• You can answer objections and reverse the risk for the Soft Nos, which often turns them into Yeses.
• And you can even get a handful of Absolutely Nevers to act as your unpaid salespeople.

While Absolutely Nevers might never buy themselves, if you’ve set up your marketing correctly, a surprising number of them will pass the word along to someone else who will buy. The product may not be right for them, but they know someone who can use the content.

The key is the content net

What kind of marketing attracts all the potential buyers, rather than the ones who are hot to buy right now?

It has to be marketing that doesn’t look like marketing. Advertising that’s too valuable to throw away. Communication that delivers a real and compelling benefit, with the sales message presented only after you’ve earned the right to sell.

And what kind of marketing keeps them around and engaged until they’re ready to buy from you?

It has to be marketing that’s delivered over time. Advertising that arrives on a predictable, regular schedule. Communication that’s repeated enough times to develop trust and rapport.

And the two best tools for that at the moment are probably a blog combined with an email autoresponder.

A content net weaves a nice, friendly web of communication around all the categories of buyers, and keeps them interested.

It’s a terrific tool for your Desperate 3%, because it educates them about why you’re the unquestionably perfect choice. But it also takes the other 97% and nurtures them, training them to become your ideal customer.