Does your market understand your message?
This weekend I ran across an ad that had me scratching my head. A local real estate company had a full page ad that said “A Balance of technology and tradition” with a picture of a young woman typing on a laptop, and images of the world wide web, smart phone, iPad and cell phone hovering over her. At the bottom it said, “Using innovative technology, sophisticated business systems, and the broad appeal of lifestyle brand, x Real Estate Company embodies the future of the real estate industry while remaining grounded in the tradition of home.”
What does that mean?
3 Web Design Tactics that Turn Visitors Away
Most people can suffer through unprofessional looking websites if they’re able to easily get to the information they’re looking for. But there are some web design tactics, many of which are advocated by marketing gurus that can cause people to leave your site.
Forced Registration
Sites use this tactic to get visitor’s contact information before letting them see the good stuff. While it’s true that building a list is an important part of a profitable online business, forcing visitors to give their information is counter intuitive to the idea of “opt in”. Sure they give their information, but they did it to see the next page, not to continue to get emails from you. Many visitors (myself included) often simply leave a page if I have to give an email address before seeing the content. Without knowing what the site has to offer, how does a person know if they want email?
Are You Follow Worthy in Social Networking?
Everywhere you go for current marketing information you’re told to join social networking sites and network your way to riches. The problem is that too many people purposefully misuse or don’t understand social networking much to the annoyance of everyone else. So how do you make yourself follow worthy in social networking?
1) Realize that social networking is SOCIAL. You can’t use traditional one-way communication and be successful on social networks. Being social means that communication goes two-ways. That means that you can’t be ego-centric and post only about you.
Give Your Clients More
I think I’ve told this story before about when my family had MCI for long distance phone services (remember MCI?). The company ran all sorts of great offers for new customers, but when I’d call and ask for lower long distance rates (this is before unlimited LD), MCI wouldn’t give it to me? In essence, they treated strangers nicer than customers. Many companies do this. You know who they are because their special offers have small writing that says, “For new customers only…”.
Am I the only one that thinks this is backwards? Instead of giving strangers more, give your customers more. Happy customers tell people how great you are and you’ll get more customers. In fact, you’ll probably get new customers more easily because they’ll be referred.
