Give the User What He Wants: Something for Free
July 15th, 2010 | 
Author: However, is that free item what they really want?
The internet is changing. More sites in trying to find ways to monetize their content are charging for what they have. Users still want to find bits of information for free. Well, more than bits. For most of us who are providing a service our knowledge is what we charge for, and giving it away for free seems counterproductive. Yet, we hear stories of those who have done just that with great success for their business. I began thinking about giving away something for free, because of two incidents yesterday.
I had been on a job the week before to examine a specific job done by a contractor. In fact, the contractor was the one who hired me. While going about my work, I noticed a problem which had nothing to do with why I was there. This was a potentially dangerous issue, so I informed the contractor’s client. This nugget of free information led to the client calling me about further work. In a way that is what I do with writing a blog post. A nugget of free information may lead to further work, but how many free nuggets should I give? Does there come a point where I have given too much away? I think that is where experience comes into play. I can mention what I do, but a user may not be able to replicate it exactly, due to the experience factor.
I received an email offering me a free trial of an internet service for a month. The problem is that there is a similar site which is quite popular offering this service always for free. This caused me to consider about what we offer. Free is good, but do we offer value? If we state that we are giving away something for free, did we actually offer something? Will the user pay for it at some point? Here is where small businesses may be failing.
Marketing is hard and expensive. Blogs provide a cost effective way to do marketing which can be quite simple for some. Lets face it, writing a post does not come easy to everyone. Going back to my job where I shared a bit of data. I obtained the call back because a gave a piece of valuable information away for free which demonstrated my experience, my knowledge. Would that work on the internet? Well, in my scenario, I gave a bit of specific data which struck home with a potential client. Internet users are generally faceless though. My information could help others. If I write the blog post in a personal way, and explain the situation as I did to the client, I may touch the user with this free nugget like I did in person.
Now consider your competitors. Are they providing such free nuggets? You may be reading several internet marketing sites to find ways to improve your business. How many of those sites are giving you free information which is entirely different from what you have read on another site? I imagine that few truly are. So do you read through your competitors’ sites? You should. Being in real estate, I looked through several sites from people in the same specific real estate field. I discovered that you will see the same topic come up on various blogs with much of the same thoughts. One way to break away from your competitors is to write content on one aspect of your business. For example, you could focus on writing about new products in your field. Maybe a more specific example. Alright, you are an accountant. Maybe you specialize in tax preparation. How about writing about new laws? Just that. Not how to prepare your own taxes, or your thoughts about taxes. Laws which effect the financial market and how they may effect income, which is a factor on tax. You have a niche which no one else amongst your competitors has tackled.
Can we take this further? You have limited the topic of your blog; you are giving away free content; but you could do more. Creating ebooks or resource documents for journalists or other package for the user, you can build up word of mouth, as long as you brand the resource. Let us jump back to real estate. Everyone has a mortgage calculator on their site. Offering your own does not make you stand out. Changing the language to Spanish is a first step to being unique. However, we could offer something else. We could have a utility bill calculator, or a calculator that shows how paying more of the mortgage’s principle will effect your mortgage over time. The utility bill goes in a totally different direction which meets a current concern, while the principle mortgage calculator offers a variation to the other calculator which can be a concern for the client/user.
Free works. Study your competitors. Provide something which shows the user something that they cannot find elsewhere, and which shows that you have value. Those are the take aways from this post. At least once a month find out what your competitors have done. Also find out who your competitors are. This can quickly change on the internet. Find a niche, and exploit it. This may be your experiences on the job. The soap drama that goes on behind the scenes may be what the user needs. You have to find it.
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Free WordPress Theme: Straight No Chaser
Blue toned, three column theme with a white background
It has been some time since I released a free theme, or written about my efforts. Too many other projects. Hopefully I will have time to complete work on a customizable theme. This is a striaght forward theme design, hence the name from the Thelonius Monk piece.
I noticed that as social media becomes more important to internet users, website owners have been looking for ways to tie in various accounts to their site. Blogs still have a place in this environment. They become the home base for business owners, which can bring their social media efforts together. This theme is no frills to meet the need of these businesses. The theme is designed for laptop screens (1000 pixels wide). The content is on the left side. The columns are in the center and the right. The menu has dropdown submenus. The menu style is more business website, rather than the typical flare associated with blogs. The blocks in the columns have a basic title with no fanfare.
Why is this better for being your social media base? What I am seeing on my travels is that site owners are adding many images to their sidebars for various reasons. If the theme has a busy feeling, then more images will cause confusion to the user. Social media buttons can be placed in one column, along with typical blog items like an Archive or Blogroll section. What I also noticed was that most of these sites have a block for a sales pitch ad for an ebook or other main product. The point of stripping the theme down to bare essentials is to allow these other features shine.
The header is 150pixels in height. I am imagining that this could be replaced by an image. I am planning on releasing a part two to this theme with the header split. Image for one side with social media buttons on the other side. This would leave more advertising room in the columns.
DownloadStraight No Chaser.
Guiding Consumers to Their Goal
Consumers want to be informed, but they also want to obtain their goal easily. How do you create a website which allows exploration while permitting a quick transaction?
I have a situation. I want to buy a product that is intangible, and I want to go through the process quickly; however, like many consumers, I want to know that I am getting something good. This could be any service product, but I am thinking a long the lines of electricity service, a website hosting provider, or a social community site. In each of those cases, I receive a service, but I do not really interact with it. They are services which are in the background of my life. I was specificly looking at the sites of various electrical service providers when I realized that one site appealed to me because its design allowed me quick access with three basic buttons.
Intrigued? Well, you could read on »
Lost Opportunities on the Steps to the Checkout
In your store, you may train your employees to upsell or suggestive sell, missing no chance for a sale, but does this happen through your website?
Since I used to train staff to make the most of every sale, I guess that I pay attention to the mechanics of employee interactions with me when going to a store. A way to keep my hand in the game I imagine. I noticed that at one shop, the five foot rule has come back (greet all customers within a five foot radius). At another, the simple can I help you find something was being reinforced. The last place to catch me is at the checkout. Clerks might ask “did you find everything alright?” to “is there anything else that you need?”. Try answering no to that first question, and you may find someone attempting to direct you to the product that you may have missed. There is more to the checkout than this last sale though. I stopped going to a store for sometime, because the clerks at the checkout where so unfriendly that I had a negative impression of the store. (Yesterday at a sandwich shop the two clerks behind the counter were so busy talking to the owner that I was being ignored; I blame the owner for that situation). The checkout becomes vital if you want a customer to come back.
I had two online checkout experiences this past week which made me consider how we handle this process. In the first, I was making a larger purchase, where I experienced a problem with my card not being accepted. I could have been quite mad at the website, but I knew what was happening from a past incident. My bank halts online transactions which are over $100. For the transaction to be approved, I have to contact the fraud department. The message from the website did not reflect that fact. The message was nice enough : “the processing of this card has failed” , which is better than having a statement saying your card was declined, but I think it would have been better if the message somehow stated the situation clearly. I know that when this happens in a store, there will be a message on the machine stating that the customer has to call a certain number to have the transaction process. At this point of the checkout, you have to be careful of what message you deliver, but the more information you can provide, the better for the customer.
The other checkout experience involved search. I needed new test equipment for my business. I have a standard supplier, and I was prepared to go to that store; however, I wanted to see what other models were available, so I conducted a search. There in the search results was a section containing the name of the store and model number of the piece of equipment that I was seeking. The first price was $60 lower than the cost at my supplier, so I clicked the link, where I was brought to a page describing the equipment, along with a noticeable checkout button.The unit had everything that I wanted, so I hit that checkout button, which brought me to a page, where I could confirm uantity, shipping, and personal information to complete the sale (like name and how I was paying). That page and another for card information led me to the thank you for your purchase page. Confirmation emails were sent with an invoice and tracking number. Great, right? At one point there was a button which asked “continue shopping?”, but I had obtained my goal, so why would I click? What would have been better? Well, a section with “other people who bought this item also purchased” would have been a start. My only problem with those also purchased items is that they are below the fold. Why not have them in a sidebar? How about mentioning other on sale items in related categories in the sidebar? Suggestive selling does not work unless you offer the customer something that he might want. How about showing off a more expensive model? You could say “for $30 more, you could buy this tester that has these twenty additional features”. That line may have made me curious before going onto the final steps.
The point is know your checkout process, and implement you sales techniques from the physical store into you website. The real estate above the fold is precious. Protect it. Use it wisely. “Above the fold” means what the client will see when logging onto your site on their screen. If they have to scroll down to see your sales pitch, you may have lost the opportunity. Go through your own checkout process to see how well you are selling.
Social Media and the Importance to Your Local Business
There are many articles about using social media, but I wanted to share an observation about an effect of social media, and clients finding your site.
I have been quite busy lately. One project that I have taken on is to revamp my marketing. Since social media sites play such an importance among internet users, businesses have to consider the effects of these sites on thier business. I was taking a look at one business that is doing well in its field each day for the past week. I wanted to see how they advertise with the internet, and what kind of presence they have. Since search is such of important aspect of how we interact with the web, I began my study by examining how a site shows up in the databases of different search engines, and this brought up the fact that more social media sites may need your attention.
I began by looking at the search engine results for a given business, like “general contractors in Houston”. The first thing a user will notice is the local results in the ten-pack. Often, the firms closest to downtown seem to have a predominate position. I was interested in firms that made the first ten, but were not near downtown. If they had a website, I examined the site for any useful information. This past week found me using the seoquake tool bar to examine these sites. This is a good SEO tool for the Firefox browser. I had never used it extensively before this week, and I need to play with it more, but I enjoyed using it. This put a good deal of link information at my fingertips. With this data collection, I also looked at the results below this tenpack. Again I did not focus on the top performers. I looked at relatively new sites that made it into the fist ten results. Then I looked at some of their links to compare to the earlier one.
This is when I noticed that user review sites and other social sites were helping these websites gain exposure. Some websites may have had little in the way of trafffic, links, or authority, but they were noticed by the search engines. Comments in forums from review sites appeared to carry a good deal of weight. Sometimes the links seem to be created by the business owners, but many came from clients. These were interesting, because negative and positive comments were treated the same. Another factor in these reviews is that many came from businesses that do business with you. For example, imagine you are a restaraunt owner. This type of business has a tendency to obtain more customer reviews than many others. However, what you may find that a supplier to that eatery posted a comment. In fact many active reviewers appear to own a firm, and they may be commenting about some related business or a firm that they have a connection to. A supplier is one example, but for related business, I can offer this example: an interior designer commenting on the products for sale at Target or Pier One.
This is all very well and good, but why bring this up. I want you to realize that you have to consider all of your contacts as “customers”. Your employees and their families, the companies that you deal with on a regular basis, and your clients all become witnesses to your business, and they may be writing a review. This could be an avenue of marketing to pursue. Why not write a review of a company you do business with? Why not write a review of the company your spouse works for? Why not ask them to do the same for you? You may find that this kind of review can carry weight with others.Consider this: on one blog, I have a post that is viewed twenty times a day. This post has maintained this view rate for five months now. There are only seven comments on this post. Many people view a webpage, but few write a response.
I came away for this experiment with the fact that part of marketing success depends on social media engagement, but you have to have a good social skill set offline to have this marketing work well for you. Look at everyone that you deal with as a person who can help further your cause, but you also have to be willing to further their cause.