I’m reading and/or have ordered the following books:
I’ve actually read the Millionaire Mind one twice now. It’s a great book, highly recommended.
April, 2008
...now browsing by month
Recent Book List
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008Customers Suck – Who Needs Them Anyways?
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008With your business doing great, and the revenues up, who has time for customers? I mean, all they do is complain and ask you to show them things – and you’ve got better things to do, right?
Truth is, you’d better make time for customers. Beyond the obvious ‘They’re the ones paying the bills‘ there are many other reasons to pay attention to them.
Take Seth Godin’s post today about answering the phone. True, the most important job in a business just could be answering the phone. I’m the first to admit that I don’t always do this right, but I’m getting better. The phone answerer for some small businesses is also the owner, so what Seth says about the lowly being the ones doing the groundwork isn’t always true. Nonetheless you get the idea.
Customers come to you for a reason. Perhaps they liked your storefront. Perhaps they thought your sign or a recent flyer was pretty. Maybe they were referred by a friend who told them to ‘just go up there’. Maybe they stumbled across your website and liked what they saw (and by that I mean physically liked it, the layout, the colors, the ease of navigation). The reasons may be fickle, but as soon as they walk in, your opportunity is huge.
No matter the reason, they came – and they want (in most cases) to give you money. And in many cases, this may be their first time to your store. You’ve been coming there for years, day after day. You’ve noticed (but ignored) the cobwebs on your AC unit. You’ve seen the dirty and scuffed floors from all the product you’ve been moving in and out. (Those darn boots!) You’ve noticed (but ignored) that odor that the furnace puts out every winter.
But the customers notice. They aren’t just there to purchase something, they are there for the experience. The shopping experience (particularly for higher value items) is an adventure. Spending any amount of money needs to be pleasant and fun. It’s exhilarating to spend, and you should cater to that.
Mr. and Mrs. Small Business Owner, take a minute to step back today. Check out the place from a customer’s point of view. Start in the parking lot, examine the front door, and enter with your eyes darting around. Try to see what they see. Visit your business as an experience, not as your job. Ask customers to fill out a survey, not just about the satisfaction of their product, but of the entire experience.
And speaking of satisfaction, if you really want to be proactive, ask them for suggestions.
The board members at Starbucks, the uber cool coffee company, noticed a downward trend in their customer satisfaction (probably judged primarily by their declining sales). So instead of selling off their stock, or going to some marketing company that can pull together a whiz-bang campaign, they went to their own customers for ideas. They launched MyStarbucksIdea.com, a site where their customers can visit and submit new ideas to the coffee giant. The website is doing great, and the ideas are pouring in.
Starbucks is listening to their customer. And you know why? Because as you’ve said a hundred times before, they pay the bills.
Buying a House: Most Realtors Missing Big Opportunities
Friday, April 4th, 2008My wife and I are in the process of purchasing a new home. This will be our first ever, and we are very excited. We’ve settled on a beautiful two-story – one we would not be able to buy had it not been for Internet marketing (but that’s another post for another day).
For several years now I’ve been teaching free Internet Marketing classes at our local library. Up until this past year, there were two other guys teaching there as well. One was a local PC-fix-it guy, teaching classes on memory upgrades, anti-virus software, etc. The other guy was a local realtor. Oddly enough, he was teaching Excel classes. Nonetheless, we all became friends with a common thread, helping out the community.
So when it came time for my wife and I to get a house, we already had someone that we wanted to use. But had we not, most likely we would have gone online to find someone. I’d probably type in something like ‘real estate agents in arnold mo’
Besides Google’s ‘Local 10′ listings, this page really only shows me one ‘actual’ real estate agent – Gwen Reynolds (result #5). Looking through Gwen’s website, its obvious that the page is not at all search-optimized, but rather she was just lucky enough to have a title tag that worked for her. This is very typical.
As local search continues to grow, realtors that haven’t optimized their websites are missing one of the biggest opportunities to get new clients. At an average 3% commission per house sold, they are passing by a huge amount of money every day that their website goes on unoptimized.
I think it’s fair to say that 90% or more of local real estate agents use some sort of proprietary website that their company gives them. Every page on their site is just like every page on their co-worker’s website, minus the very few personal things they’ve changed. These pages are usually cheap (or free from their company) and the real estate agents use them as just another way to show their houses. There is little or no personalization, no mention of local events or pictures of local landmarks.
Interestingly, a search for ‘arnold mo realtor’ produces similar results. There’s Gwen at the top (once again, I’m betting this is because of her title tag and not because the page is optimized). Why aren’t any realtors optimizing their websites for local terms?
LocalOnliner recently mentioned the real estate agent v search conundrum as well. The most interesting thing to me there is that the process of selling a house with use of online tools isn’t all that great either. My wife and I used our real estate agent’s MLS program, but ironically enough the house that we found wasn’t even listed in his system.
A while back my real estate buddy mentioned to me that he was considering purchasing domain names for each of his listings – ie 456MainStreet.com. I thought this was a phenomenal idea. Some agents are doing this, because I remember seeing signs with URLs at the bottom of them in some yards. This isn’t a very widespread idea yet, but could be a great way for agents to rank for tons of local terms including small towns, community nicknames and even street names. Load up a nice virtual tour and some unique content and your chances of selling (and ranking) go up dramatically. Take some pointers from sites like Trulia and you’ve got a home run.
Online search for homes is only going to grow. Newspaper ads, untargeted direct mailing and real estate magazines are going to dwindle as Gen-X house buyers grow. Throw in mobile search and real estate agents have a very untapped market at their hands.
Note: Interestingly enough, shortly after posting this, I found a great conference for real estate agents: Kelsey’s Drilling Down on Local ‘08. Looks to be a great conference, particularly for REA’s.
Orbitz 21 Contest – Missed Opportunities
Friday, April 4th, 2008Orbitz is a pretty well known little website, so I’m really surprised at the amount of mistakes I came across today when signing up for their 21 Prizes in 21 Days promotion. I orignially heard about the contest on the radio. “Orbitz.com slash twenty-one”, the commercial announced. Easy to remember, at least.
The Lead-in Page
The first thing Orbitz does is ask me for my email address – unmistakably the most important piece of info for the contest (for Orbitz). Get the users email and you have a lukewarm lead. But then they screw up and don’t ask for permission to market their wares to you in the future. Big mistake.
(click to see larger version on flickr)
The Contest Signup Page
Lots of mistakes here – mistakes that I wouldn’t expect a reputable company like Orbitz to make.
(click to see larger version on flickr)
Next, the ‘more information’ links on the left. As I said, I would have put them on the first page where it asked for my email. Put them under the email box and have them already checked. Personally, I think this is the biggest mistake Orbitz made. They asked for the email address, then on the next page didn’t give themselves permission to use it. Why not let the user uncheck the boxes instead of checking them? This is a hugely missed opportunity.
Since that was IMO their biggest mistake, the rest are minor but noteworthy. Look how long the pages are. There are so many distractions and escape routes that it’s not even funny. If they are there to collect information about users which they can use in the future to market to, why are they giving them so many opportunities to not submit their info? Classic landing page mistake. Don’t give the user any ‘outs’.
Finishing Up
Upon completion of their entry, they provided the user an opportunity to play a little ‘card counting’ game. Personally I didn’t get it and closed the window, but some other geniuses might find it mildly entertaining. The game really has no purpose beyond entertainment, and they probably should have just dumped the contest entrant to their $50 off Vegas sale instead.
Show Some Love
Now Orbitz did do a few things right on here. On the first page (email page), the links to the various hotels and the LV Visitors Convention do open in new windows. Good move, don’t lose the user altogether. I still think they could have provided most of this info after they got the users information, but that’s me.
The ‘click here to learn more about the prize’ is a javascript that opens a new, small window. Good move, assuming most of your users have JS turned on.
Internet Marketing is a Learning Process
I’m no marketing genius, but this little contest could have been a bit more thought out. The marketing team at Orbitz missed a big opportunity on the first page, and then continued their errors on the next few pages.
Take these errors into thought for your own site. If you’re running a contest, or just selling a product, get the email address (and permission!) at the very beginning. All the rest is just a bonus. You’re there to get leads.
