I had a discussion about this with a client last week – he’s a marketing manager for a large IT services mob in Melbourne.

Here is the definition of marketing from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing:

“Marketing is the process by which companies create customer interest in products or services. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business development. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves.”

It also goes on to explain the trends in marketing over recent history – and suggests the marketing orientation from “1970 to present day” is still the same!

If I was to read this 6 months ago, I’d have thought it was ridiculous – with the introduction of the Internet (on a side note – ever wondered what we did with our time before the internet? Anyway…), surely marketing fundamentals are now completely different compared to 40 years ago?  I’m certainly no marketing expert (far from it), but have learnt something about it over the years of helping run & grow Salsa – I sometimes wondered whether the fundamentals of marketing have changed at all?  I recently decided they haven’t. Even though the tools are different, all marketers are still trying to achieve the same result.

Here’s why:

If you’re a marketing manager, for example, don’t you need to still adhere to the same rules? Here are some simplistic examples of how the principles haven’t really changed.

Communicate clearly – the same goal applies today as it has in recent history.  If you can’t clearly communicate what you do, you’ll quickly turn prospects away to someone who can.  We used to use radio, tv & newspapers.  We now also use websites.

Build relationships - a marketers goal is often to get a sales person in front of a prospect to start to build rapport.  The call to action of most marketing media (whether it’s radio, tv, websites, or whatever) is to have someone call, or visit a showroom, or a website (which often then sends them to a phone call!!).  Get in front of someone, build a relationship, sell them something – still the same.

Create value for customers – facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Websites, whatever – the most successful are designed to actually serve a purpose.  Educate the prospect, allow them to gain value from reading what you have to say.

The list goes on – the fundamentals of marketing haven’t changed.  There are a load more tools to use to drive traffic to your marketing material (Google Adwords is a revolutionary tool for generating traffic), but the basics haven’t changed.  Marketers don’t need to intimately understand how Google Analytics works – they need to pay an Adwords professional to run a campaign for them that gets them loads of relevant traffic.

The marketer then needs to worry about what happens when the client finds their website, and makes the phone call – how well is the prospect communicated to, how good is the person on the phone at building instant rapport, and what value can they add right away?

So don’t obsess on learning every detail on how online marketing works.  I say leave that to “online marketers” and worry about the marketing basics of your own business – for a maximising outcome.

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Use our experience and knowledge to your advantage! (Image: Miika Kumpulainen)

In my 12 or so years in the exciting, yet often wild and rugged terrain of the Creative Management landscape, I have become all too accustomed to the regularity and reality of working with clients who have very specific, highly subjective ideas about how they want their website to look.

Being a former business owner myself, I completely understand the intense relationship one can have with one’s business.  There are undoubtedly certain parallels that can be drawn between owning a business and having a baby – particularly if it is your ‘brain-child’ and the recipient of a large proportion of your life savings, the new and likely unwieldy tenant in your house or the relentless force responsible for keeping your brain ticking away throughout the night.

That said, as a Designer, I do feel an obligation to stand up for and vocalise the virtues of my vocation, just as any other trained, experienced and knowledgeable professional would and should.

Whilst it can be argued that ‘design’ is in itself not a skill that can be officially labelled or accredited (although I personally believe the introduction of an official, widely recognised accreditation program for Designers would be worthwhile) in such a publicly resonant way as say that of a Doctor, Accountant, Solicitor, Chef or even Hairdresser, being a good Designer involves amassing an awareness of, and an ability to do a multitude of things.

We are so much more than technically-apt personnel through which creative solutions are realised, and can and do often wear multiple hats including those of psychologist, philosopher, business advisor, anthropologist, mathematician, problem solver and project manager, amongst many others.

Design is all about finding the right solution that will help an individual or business exceed their clients expectations.  And in doing so, it is fundamentally important that the solution is not just highly functional, but that it delights in delivering to the client or user an innovative experience, or a means of communication, that not only takes them where they want to go but inspires them to want more.

It is this amassing of experience – of searching for, experimenting with and exploring new ways of resolving communication problems, that provides us with the expertise that you – the client – come to us seeking.   It is also what we pride ourselves on offering you.

Next time you come in to Salsa, I’d recommend coming equipped with three things to ensure you get the most value out of our expertise.  Firstly, do develop your own ideas about what sort of interactive design solution you’re looking for.  In doing so though I suggest you ask yourself the following questions:

1.  Does this tie in with my branding?
2.  Will it resonate with my target audience(s) and make clear the objectives of my business?
3.  Will it differentiate me from my competitors? If so, how?
4.  What is the functional basis for my aesthetic decisions? (Ie:  If you think pink should the predominant colour used throughout the site, why?)

The second thing would be to adopt a willingness to be challenged. After all, you are paying us for our expertise, so get the most out of us.  We have worked with clients with requirements and demands similar to yours time and time again, so keep this in the back of your mind.  We also have a thorough understanding of the bigger picture – what design trends might be better to steer clear of and what other creative approaches might be worthwhile investigating.

Thirdly, have fun and remember good design has been proven to place you in a position of significant competitive advantage!  I highly recommend checking out the Design Victoria website for a great (and practical) read on how this does so.  Amongst many other resources and tools, you can also assess how well your business is embracing innovation.

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I had a meeting today with a potential new customer, and they were just getting out of a bad relationship with their previous developer.  They mentioned that he’d “oversold” them on the capabilities of his organisation.  In fact, he didn’t even have an organisation – it was only 1 person.  His website, and the way he presented his business, made it appear as though it was a more substantial business.  Anyway, it turns out he’s going on a long holiday, and their site is supposed to have gone live in 2 weeks, and is not near ready… needless to say, they’re now looking for a new developer!

I  guess the point I’m making in a round about way, is that your site can be used to allow people to see who you are (in the above example he was lying, but let’s assume you won’t do that!).  It’s not only my opinion, but I’ve seen it time and time again – if your website visitors can see who you are, what your team is like, and get a feeling of comfort that they’re dealing with real, honest, people, your enquiries will go through the roof.  Not only that, the quality of the enquiries will be considerably better.

E.g. We run a marketing site using another brand name (email me if you want to know what it is).  This particular site is a brand that only generates leads for Salsa – there is no real business behind it.  The site itself ranks its butt off in the search engines – gets twice as much traffic as the Salsa site, however the leads are generally very bad in comparison.  There are about the same number of leads (in fact maybe even more) but they are much, much lower quality, and equate to about 5% of our sales, while the Salsa site generated about 40%.  I butted my head against the wall for years trying to work out why, and one day a client actually told me – after mentioning they’d actually come across the other site, but decided not to enquire; I asked why they did choose to enquire with us?

Their response was “because I felt like I was dealing with real people.  The other website didn’t look real”.  The site itself is as well designed as the Salsa site, however it does not contain any people – no staff page, no photo’s of clients, not even a stock photo of one of those ladies you see on every 2nd website!  Nothing that gives the user the feeling they’re dealing with real people, and so they don’t have any confidence, and don’t waste their time enquiring.

Get your staff onto your website, and watch your enquiries improve.

Here is our staff page: http://www.salsainternet.com.au/about-salsa-staff.html

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WordPress and Joomla are by far the most popular open source CMS tools available – we’ve built hundreds of sites using these technologies, and so are intimately familiar with their structure, limitations, pro’s & con’s.  Until about 2 years ago, most clients didn’t really care what CMS was used, most didn’t know what a CMS was, but these days people are coming to us with some idea of their options, and often need a little guidance to ensure they make the right choice.

1. Content structure

If the site is just a simple brochure site, with a straight forward menu system (top/side menu), simple content pages, for example, use WordPress.  Similarly, if it’s just a Blog – use WordPress.   This site, for example, is built in WordPress.

If you’re looking to build a larger, more complex site, with a more sophisticated content structure (multiple levels of content), more than 1 menu system, more modular content (in left/right columns for example), and would like more control over what menu appears where, then use Joomla.

2. Community/larger more complex site

If you want to build a community site, including member login functionality that provides users with members only content, or create a feature rich website including user polling, banner advertising, user profiling, etc – then use Joomla.  Likewise if you want a corporate site that is more feature rich, including categorised content for case studies, or whitepaper download capabilities with integration into a 3rd party CRM database, use Joomla.

3. Administrator technical capability

If the website administrators are less savvy, use WordPress, if you can get away with it.  Joomla, while not hard to use, is hard-er to use than WordPress, which is just a bi-product of it being so much more sophisticated.

WordPress admin - simply about managing content

Joomla admin panel - lots of options and functionality (although most only ever use about 20% of it)

4. Design

The design of a site can also lend itself better to either technology.  Simpler designs, using more traditional content structures (limited number of pages, less modular content, little interaction) are better suited to WordPress.  Either CMS is incredibly flexible in terms of being able to conform to just about any design, so that’s not really a consideration.

5. Future development possibilities

It’s painful to swap over (need to build from scratch – there is no “upgrade”, so make sure you consider the above points for future development also – if your needs are simple now, but they will grow later, you’re better off choosing Joomla right off the bat – it may cost a little more (5-10%), but worth it in my opinion.

6. SEO

You’ll read a LOT about which tool is better for SEO.  In our experience, the technology is only a very small part of the SEO story.  Both CMS’ offer the necessary infrastructure to effectively optimise a site, including (albeit with a free additional module or 2):

• Search engine friendly URL’s
• Ability to control meta data for each page
• CSS styling to support H1, H2, tags, etc
• And many more…

There are a bunch of other factors that weight into how well your site performs in the search engines (content, back-links, internal menu structures, etc) – so don’t let this affect your decision.  You can build the same site in either CMS and achieve the same SEO result.

The takeout – if your needs are simple, use WordPress, which is more geared toward Blog or simple brochure-ware sites.  Otherwise, use Joomla.

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Clients often wonder how “Link Building” works, why they need to have it, and how to get the most out of Link Building. There are a few basic guidelines that you need to follow to get positive results from Link Building campaigns and we’ll have a look at them in this post.

There are two main categories to consider when Link Building, On-page factors and Off-page factors.

On-page factors include the following:

The key here is volume of links and links that take advantage of targeted keywords.

Recently Google have placed a strong emphasis on frequency of content updates on a site as well as freshness of links.

When it comes down to the page rank for incoming links you have a number of choices. Typically, you’re able to get lots of links which have varying page rank at an affordable rate OR you’re able to get fewer links which have relatively better page rank at a higher cost.

Typically high pagerank links come via:

• privately negotiated paid links or;
• naturally occurring incentives for other high profile sites to link to you based on the value of your website or its information, or tools, or relevance to their audience or;
• paid links (text-link-ads or similar), or;
• link triangulation deals or reciprocation deals

It is very rare to be able to simply request a link to your site from a very high page rank 3rd party site or page – and get the link with nothing offered in return (who would have thought, there’s always a catch!).  We don’t engage in paid link strategies for clients, as if found out – Google may penalise you.

When you sit back and look at the way Link Building works, it does indeed make sense. Search engines such as google will review all the links coming into your site, along with the content on your site and give you a rank compared to other sites on the web. There are many factors that come into play to determine who should appear first, second, third etc but the main message still holds true…

Build targeted links to your site, do it on a regular basis, with content on your site which is keyword-rich and updated as often as possible. The more links, the better, and the more you can hone in on your keyword niche the better.

Happy Googling!

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As a digital agency, we often take over projects for clients that have previously been handled by a freelance designer/developer, and find us regularly coming across the same reasons for the switch.  It’s important to note, however that for some businesses, I believe it is a good idea to actually use a freelancer instead of a digital agency to save money.

It’s fairly obvious I suppose, but sometimes, freelancers are a good choice for sole operators, or businesses with smaller budgets.  They have much lower overheads, so can charge lower rates.  It’s important you’re aware of all the pros/cons of such relationships however.

Nimble – often a freelancer can be quite nimble in the way they operate – you get to deal directly with the operator/owner/designer.  Changes can often be accommodated easily, and work is done quickly (as long as they’re not working on too many projects at once).

Pricing – as I already mentioned, freelancers typically charge lower rates as they have lower overheads such as office expenses, project managers, marketing, etc.  You just want to make sure they’re highly experienced, so costs down blow out later (look for a fixed price quote, with a detailed inclusions list).

Support – some freelancers are able to provide really good support if they’re easily accessible.  If your freelancer has too many projects on the go, you may find that the support is poor, or non-existent.  A digital agency may also suffer the same problem, so it’s important to ensure they have a dedicated support infrastructure to provide the help when you need it.

Expertise – obviously using a freelancer means that you’re limited to the expertise of one person.  This may be suitable if you’re after a good designer only, or just an SEO expert, for example.  If you’re after a provider that can provide strategic input, a wider range of design skills (often they’ll employ more than 1 designer), online marketing expertise, larger scale development expertise (in case your business grows rapidly), high-end technical support, then you should consider using an agency.

Stability – freelancers sometimes disappear.  A large number of the new customers we get from freelancers are the result of them disappearing into an agency, or taking a ski trip to Canada.  This can sometimes mean your site disappears, or you suddenly have no support.   Agencies can also disappear, but if you do a little research, and you see that they have a load of happy customers, have been around for a few years, and the owners have a stake in the day to day running of the business, then you should be OK.

Contactable – Agencies are often a lot more contactable than freelancers, with a team of people that can usually help you.  Freelancers may be in meetings, working on an urgent new project, or just too busy!

In summary, freelancers may be suitable if your business is very small/not well funded, if the web is not a huge part of your business strategy, your business is in an experimental phase, or your company has an internal infrastructure to manage the freelancer.  Otherwise, go with an agency.

Consider all of the above, and make a decision that best suits your business.

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A couple of years ago, users didn’t want to be “engaged” online – they wanted to go to a website, do something (enquire, sign up), fix something (solve a problem) or buy something (shop!).   We’ve seen an incredible shift in the way people achieve this over the past couple of years with people now spending so much more time online.  Users now want more from their website browsing experience.  The introduction of social media (I still don’t like that term, anyway…) tools means that people have now become used to using the internet as more than just a tool, but as a part of their life. And so, they naturally expect a website to be more than just a tool – it needs to make them feel at home, make them feel like they’re part of something – not just enquiring, problem solving or shopping.

How many times have you checked your web enabled phone today?  How many times a day did you check it 2 years ago? We spend a LOT of time online now.

Your clients and potential customers now want to know who you are, what you look like, what your office looks like, what you did at your last team event, what was the name of your first pet!!  They want to build a relationship with you, and feel that you’re actually interested in telling them about yourself.  It needs to be genuine of course, as any relationship needs to be, so you do need to be careful, because this new world of online transparency means that if you’re not honest, it will easily show.  Marketing hasn’t really changed, it’s still about being able to genuinely connect with the people who care the most; however the tools we used to make us look like someone we weren’t (websites are so good at making small businesses look like big companies) are not enough – there are just so many ways to find out more about a person or company now, that you can’t hide behind a website – so you might as well come out and tell the world about who you really are. If you don’t, someone else probably will.

An interesting side note: the staff page on the Salsa website is one of the most popular (top 2%)

Take the following examples (thanks to Avinash Kaushik from a “6 Pixels of Separation” Podcast I recently listened to).  2 competing companies in Canada, both selling laundry products.

www.vim.ca - not all that engaging, imo

The first example is quite a simple site – shows some products (ok, good start), has a voucher to save $1 (wow!), then the standard marketing spiel (“makes tough cleaning easy”). They have content on the site about how to use their products, cleaning tips,  and home decorating ideas. Yawn. www.vim.ca

seventhgeneration.com - incredibly engaging

This example is not only a much more beautiful site (an enormous part of the ability to engage in my opinion), but also absolutely tells the website visitor all about who and what they’re dealing with.  They become part of something much bigger. “Protecting Planet Home”.   One of the major menu items is “Learn”.  In here you can educate yourself on the bigger ‘green’ issues they’re passionate about, read an active Blog, visit the Forum, watch video’s.  You can also see where people have “Asked Scienceman” a question, and can read his response.  They of course also connect via Facebook, and Twitter – you can actually see in their Twitter account that they’re interacting with their customers, answering questions and solving problems! Oh, they also have some product information on the site of course. www.seventhgeneration.com

I can’t wait to re-design our website.  Keep your eye out for it.

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We find that clients these days are not just after a website.  The web is often such a crucial part of their strategy, that they can’t afford to just hire in the skills once-off; they actually need to partner with a company and group of people that can join them on their business journey, for the long term.  It’s about building a relationship, and then maintaining it.  And like all relationships, it needs to be built on trust and strong fundamentals.  Here are 4 things to consider:

1. Ensure you’re confident in their abilities

Obviously, you need to check out their portfolio.  Often they won’t have clients in your specific industry, which is no big deal – you just need to make sure they design beautiful work, are familiar with the technology they’re using, and the sites they build are well presented and work well!  You should also speak to a couple of their key clients (3 or 4 if you can).  It’s helpful if they at least deal with businesses of a similar size to yours also.

Dodgy website salesmen also sell 2nd hand cars & stereos from white vans

Companies that have been around for a few years are more likely to be around for a few more.  The web industry is famous for having low barriers to entry – so many small businesses, or sole operators go out of business, creating huge problems for their clients  (For the record, about 20% of our new customers have come to us from this exact predicament!).  Do they have a solid team of professional staff members?  Decent office?  Do they charge enough?

3. Do you have a realistic price quote

If you get a quote that is considerably lower than the others it may be a sign of inexperience (they aren’t familiar with what it takes to get a good site built, and so under quote). The project may then become contentious later, when the developer invests more time than budgeted, and are very hesitant to cater for any alterations – could also become expensive for you.   You should look to get a fixed price quote if you can, and ensure your proposal covers the important items you need.

4. Do you like them?

You need to be able to get along! Like any relationship, you need to understand each other, trust each other, and be able to rely on each other.  Do they respond when you email or call them? Do you enjoy dealing with them?  Can you get easy access to the company stakeholders or key staff members when you need to?  I know whenever I choose a supplier I often rely on my gut (it’s not always right, but has served me fairly well over the years!)

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Unfortunately we see it fairly often – clients come to us with visions of grandeur about their website marketing, and their plans to take the world by storm with their enormous marketing budget to drive thousands of people to their website every week, which in turn is going to bring in loads of new business.  I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t give my honest opinion, that unfortunately all that investment in online marketing is not even likely to return real value, unless the site or landing page the campaign is directing them to, is fantastic.  It’s something that some clients (or prospective clients) are pretty sensitive about, but it’s generally accurate – we’ve seen it time and time again.

When we launched a version of our website about 2 years ago, we made some fairly important changes, which increased our enquiries online by about 35%!  The changes were mostly aesthetic, but we knew that our prospects were looking to learn more about our client base, and how we differentiate ourselves, so we created a short flash animation to tell a bit of a story, and also improved the aesthetic.   You can see the difference below between the old site, and the new.

http://old.salsainternet.com.au

www.salsainternet.com.au

Recently we also implemented a new home page design for www.equusconnect.com.au (recruitment website for the horse racing industry), and their online registrations for job seekers went up by about 60% overnight!  Imagine what that could do for your business!

In most cases, the changes are only aesthetic – you don’t need to change the structure of the site, or the layout.  Just give it a ‘refresh’, if you like, and you’ll likely see an improve in results. And it will be much, much cheaper than just about any online marketing campaign.

Then, if you still need more business (let’s face it, who doesn’t), then consider investing in online marketing.

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We have had a few clients recently, eyeing off the big panel of links that appear under some Google search result listings, and asking how they can set these up for their business.   In this article, I’m going to briefly outline what sitelinks are, and what the factors are that help you get some!

Google site links appear in two main forms.  A full/large panel of sitelinks, which looks like this:

And a smaller mini panel of sitelinks:

If you are keen to achieve sitelinks for your business, there’s some things you’re going to want to understand about them:

1.    The links are displayed, or not – at Google’s sole discretion.
2.    They are not linked to your business listing in Google (i.e. they are not displayed consistently to all users), but instead are shown depending on the keyword the user searches on, and how “authoritative” your website is considered to be.

For example, if you type in “Salsa Internet” into Google.com.au, you will see our Salsa Internet listing show up with the full spread of sitelinks shown, as our business is considered to be an authority in Google’s eyes in relation to that keyword phrase.  If however you type in “Google Adwords Melbourne” then you’ll see us ranking at position #1 also, but with no sitelinks, as Google recognise we offer this service, but don’t attribute enough “authority” to us in relation to that keyword.

So this begs the obvious question – what, in Google’s eyes – determines “authority” ?

Your site’s authority in relation to a keyword is typically determined by:
a)    How many times that keyword, or words related to / on the same topic of that keyword, appear on your homepage, and throughout your website
b)    The number, quality and type of inbound links to your website (ie an inbound link is where another website contains a link to your website from their website), which contain words in the link that are match the keyword, or are related to that keyword

If you want to achieve these types of sitelinks, you need to engage in link building targeting for the keyword in question or words related to that word, in the link text.  You’re going to want to have a lot of strong / high ranking inbound links for that keyword in order to achieve sitelinks.   Sounds like hard work ay?   Well achieving sitelinks for your business name, is often readily achievable, but achieving sitelinks for popular common keyword phrases on Google – takes a lot of effort.

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