Wednesday - May 11, 2011
In tough times, paying the rent or mortgage takes precedent over most other expenses. It was no surprise then that a friend’s family therapy practice was hit hard by the recession. But business has picked up lately. Almost every week brings another client or two. How do they find him? On Yelp, the review site.
It seems that satisfied patients are spreading good words about him, resulting in new clients.
The takeaway for any business, small or large, is that in a Webbed world, customer reviews matter. But what happens if they post bad ones?
The most extreme action you can take is to threaten or actually file a lawsuit. Before you even consider this, analyze the review dispassionately (if you can). Is it false or misleading or is it a matter of opinion? (If you’re still hot under the collar, ask people you trust to weigh in.)
In the U.S. and many other countries, voicing one’s opinion is protected speech. While you might intimidate someone with a lawsuit, it’s expensive, you probably won’t win in court and you may make the situation worse by stirring up the pot.
A better tactic is to contact the disgruntled customer. Try to address his or her concerns. Was there a misunderstanding? Was someone just having a bad day and you got in the way? Now that the heat of the moment has dissipated, maybe he feels differently and will agree to change or retract the review.
But what if the reviewer refuses to budge?
Many sites like Angie’s List, TripAdvisor and Yelp now let businesses respond to reviews. A persuasive explanation from “management” can go a long way to educating prospective customers. At the very least, they see that you monitor reviews and take them seriously. They also get to read two sides of the story and then make up their own minds.
All this takes time and effort, which is always in short supply. But the stakes are too high for most businesses to just do nothing. People have loads of options these days, so don’t give them a reason to write you off.
Monday - Aug 16, 2010
Although it’s the dog days of summer, with September quickly approaching, take some time to create or review your social media marketing strategy. With the economy in the dumps, connecting with your customers is more important than ever. Even if you already use social media, find out if it’s paying off.
With upwards of 500 million members, most people assume that Facebook is the place to be. While it can’t hurt to have a presence on Facebook, many other options exist, like YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr. Which ones are right for you? The choice depends on your goals. If you’re new to all this, you may already feel overwhelmed Don’t be.
Start by making a plan. The above slides outline six steps, from identifying who your customers are to tracking your return on investment. Read through the slides to understand the general concepts, then go back and tackle each of the action items.
Once you begin to implement the plan, closely monitor the flow of information you’ll receive, plugging it into your plan. That’s the beauty of the Web. You can make continual adjustments to see what effect it has. If you keep at it, you’ll eventually hit on a strategy that works for you.
Friday - Jul 2, 2010
Here’s the second part of an e-mail interview with Michael Tasner, author of “Marketing in the Moment”. (Read the first part.)
What are the top five things someone should do to market her product or
service or idea online?
#1 Attain expert status. This is done by getting a book out there, or flooding the market with educational materials and aligning yourself with other experts and partners.
#2 Build an easy to web site that is treated more like a portal in of itself. Populate this site with content until your fingers turn blue from writing. Content is and will remain king on the web – forever, period.
#3 Develop something to give away for free to capture leads. My favorite is a free DVD. In return for the DVD they get access to try out your materials online.
#4 Hire a good search engine optimization firm. In the long haul being in the top ten for all your key search phrases is essential. Search engine optimization (SEO) should be an ongoing strategy.
#5 Locate and do business with affiliates and joint venture partners. The quickest way to get traction for your business is to provide a commission to someone else in return for any sales that are generated from them promoting you. The best part- once you capture these names you can up sell and cross them into other programs and services! One word of caution here. Don’t “pimp” yourself out here. I know that sounds crude, but the biggest mistake I see companies making is doing promotions with everyone under the sun. Only promote (or allow others to promote you) that you and your audience will be aligned with.
In a typical day how do you promote your book online? Describe the tools and services you use and the amount of time you spend.
Since I run a web marketing firm, I’m able to cheat a little bit in terms of the time that’s spent. For my book launch, I’ve had three people devoted to this launch for the past six months. Here are some of the key things they having been focusing on:
#1 Online PR. Getting featured on the top blogs and sites in the world. We’ve gotten some amazing reviews and some great press for the book as it’s a solid practical book. They locate the blogs and then contact them to see if they would like a free copy of the book
#2 Lining up people to promote an email blast campaign. July is the month that I’m formally launching the book to my networks. We have been lining up hundreds of people to send a blast to their email list on a given day. In return, I’ll do the same for them over the course of the year and feature them on one of our ten or so blogs.
#3 Massive social networking and Web 3.0 Marketing. We’ve expanded our social networks like crazy (over 50,000 people) and are doing almost daily videos, live streams and presentations on sites like SecondLife.com. The objective is to show them that the tactics and steps presented in the book actually do work.
Let’s say your interview has appeared online and you want to promote it. How would you go about doing it?
The first thing I would do is blast the interview to the 175,000 people across my social networks telling them to check it out. Since I’ve established a solid relationship (key to social marketing) with these networks they actually read and act on what I send. I would also get 100+ people to retweet the tweet I would send out on Twitter promoting the interview. Lastly I would submit a press release to a site like PrWeb.com for under $300 that would go out to tens of thousands of places, thus creating more and more links talking about the interview.
