Everyday
consumers commonly think of online businesses as high
technology enterprises. In the eyes of a common consumer,
websites that do not exhibit high technology design are
probably failing or disreputable.
Today
we want to talk about keeping up-to-date and building trust
with your website through the means of video. A few
smatterings of high tech applications can give your website
design reputation a good boost.
In this Issue: 1. Featured Article
- Video To Increase Trust. 2.
Featured Article - The Three Worst Marketing
Mistakes You Can Make 3. Picture of the Week -
Huh? 4. A Video Tutorial - You Have
Reached...
Featured
Article
SUBJECT: Video To
Increase Trust.
Everyday consumers commonly think of online businesses as high
technology enterprises. While there are indeed some websites
that deal in high tech merchandise, most vendor websites trade
mostly mundane materials like clothes, beddings and linen and
other ordinary stuff we use in our daily lives. With common
enterprises like these, the website is only another selling
point for their inventory.
What will be mostly displayed in these websites are pictures
and short text descriptions of products. On the other hand,
vendors that deal with high tech materials design their
websites in such a way that it reflects the level of
technology they work with.
In the eyes of a common consumer, websites that do not exhibit
high technology design are probably failing or disreputable.
When browsing consumers find your website somewhat lacking in
style and technology, looking for another website that will
satisfy their expectations is highly probable.
While it would be considered crass and distasteful to make
your website look like the command center of the starship
Enterprise, a few smatterings of high tech applications can
give your website design reputation a good boost. In the
beginning days of the internet, people tried to make their
websites attractive by using lots of blinking and animated
pictures in their websites. As website design matured, a more
professional and modern feel gradually took over the blinking
internet kaleidoscope world.
Today, website design is usually patterned or themed after the
owner’s profession or business. Simple but tasteful and
professionally elegant are now the norm in designing websites.
However, this norm, like technology, is fast becoming
obsolete.
As
internet availability, data transmission speeds and bandwidths
increase, the more options people have for designing a web
site. In the beginnings of video streaming, video vendor sites
were those that usually contained audio-video streaming
capabilities. They used video clips or trailers of a movie to
entice a customer to buy the whole video. Today, almost all
vendors of video and audio have portions in their websites
reserved for viewing movie trailers and listening to audio
teasers.
Of
course, it would be a mistake to discount or limit the use of
video streaming to video and audio websites. Common vendor
sites like Amazon.com can surely use video streaming to
further enhance the shopping experience of a customer. After
all, a customer would like to see the merchandise before she
actually makes a purchase. Video streaming provides this
specific aid to both vendor and consumer. Aside from viewing
videos of the product from different camera angles, a short
demonstration of the product can be included in the video just
like they do in TV shopping channels.
Outside
of video specific and trade merchandising businesses, video
and audio streaming is also useful when it comes to other
industries such as medical transcription, online education,
medical facilities and personnel interconnectivity, online
tutorials and instructional modules recorded in video
format.
Most
importantly, the spread of internet video streaming usage
signals an advance in technology. With advances and
discoveries, opportunities for new ideas and enterprises
abound.
To Your Success,
Bryan Jones
P.S.
While it is great to have new technology available to, we need
to put it to good use for it to be beneficial to us. In the
case of websites with video streaming, the customer is assured
that the products they sell are workable and crafted with
quality. As internet shopping becomes more and more
popular, vendor websites will have to see to it that they
provide their customers a good look at their
product.
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SUBJECT: The Three Worst
Marketing Mistakes You Can Make
Marketing is what we do that puts us in a
position to make a sale. Good marketing makes selling
easier. Bad marketing may make selling impossible.
We market to strangers so some of them will raise their
hand with at least potential interest in what we have on
offer.
We market to our clients and customers in order to move
them up to the next level of products or services.
Most of us put a lot of time, money, and effort
into marketing. For must of us it is the key activity we
use to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.
But when we don't deliver on the promises we make in
our marketing we unleash the deadly 3/33 viruses on
ourselves.
The 3/33 virus will destroy the marketing we have
done in the past and it will make it very difficult to
successfully market - at least to some prospects - in
the future. And for the most part the 3/33 virus is a
do-it-to-yourself process.
The 3/33 virus is word of mouth marketing on steroids -
in reverse. Here's how it works.
When you fulfill a promise, deliver excellent
service, come in under budget, and save your customer more
money than you said you would - they might tell 3 people.
And that usually is because you asked them for referrals.
But if you screw up, don't do what you said you would
do, or fail to deliver in any way - in your customer's
mind - they will tell at least 33 people. This can be
disaster.
You know I am speaking the truth. Remember the last
time you got poor service in a restaurant and how many
people you went out of your way to tell about it?
Here are three ways to guarantee that all the
marketing you've done will backfire on you.
Don't Do What You Said You'd Do
In 2006 I met the author of a marketing book at the
Search Engine Strategies event in New York City. I had
been receiving his email newsletter and had heard a few
things about the book. A table where he could autograph
books had been set up for him at the Search Engine
Strategies meeting. When there was no one around I
approached him and found him to be a very insightful
person, someone whose book would probably be of value to
our readers.
He offered to send me a review copy and I thanked him.
After the event I emailed him a note with my mailing
address. I never received the book. I received several
emails to the address I had given him, but they were
solicitations sent to everyone he'd come across at the
search engine event.
I don't know if he never intended to follow up with his
promise, or if he turned it over to someone else, or what.
The bottom line is that I will never have anything
positive to say about him, his organization, or his book.
That can't be what this marketer had in mind when he went
to the time, trouble, and energy to come to New York.
Disappear With Your Customer's Money
The Internet makes it possible to hire people you will
never see to do something you can not do and really have
no way of knowing it will work until it's too late, and
pay them via your PayPal account before they've even begun
to do the work.
I have done this several times without incident.
Recently however I hired someone, on the strength of
another person's recommendation, who kept my money and
disappeared. He had promised to do the work within 48
hours of receiving my payment. But instead I heard nothing
from him for six weeks, at which point he contacted me to
see if there was some way to make up for his failure to
follow through.
I was astounded, but since I'd already paid him
I asked him to do something that was worth less than half
of what he'd already been paid. Hey, we all deserve a
second chance. What happened? Nothing, I never heard from
him again.
It's hard to say if I would have ever needed his
services in the future anyway - so it was just a tedious
time consuming event for me, getting someone else to do
the job and so forth. But what did it do to the
relationship I had had with the person who recommended
him?
This was someone I trusted. Now I have to think twice
about anything he has to sell me. And I am not going to
tell my friends to do business with him in the future. Why
would I take the chance he will recommend something or
someone whose lack of performance comes back to bite me?
Embarrass Your Boss
Everybody's got to serve somebody was a line in one of
Bob Dylan's songs. So no matter who you are or the
position you have in your outfit - you do have a boss,
maybe many of them.
Prior to events where I am registered as part of the
media horde, I receive a stream of emails from companies
that are making presentations or have exhibits there. A
week before the 2007 Search Engine Strategies meeting in
New York I received an interview request from the PR firm
representing an organization I wanted to learn more about.
Actually I received three emails from them, each with
open time slots, so I could chose one of the remaining
times for the interview.
This is the way it's always done. By the time I
get to the site I have several one on one interviews set
up with people whose message, I think, will be of value to
our readers. So I emailed my choice of day and time, from
one of the remaining time slots.
In this case however, the PR person never go back to
me. How was that possible, that was his job?
I was curious about the lack of follow up, from a PR
person no less, so I printed out the email I'd sent and
took it along with me to the meeting.
On the second day of the search engine
conference I scoured the exhibit halls and eventually
found the person I had wanted to interview. I still wanted
to talk with him if we could work out the time.
You can imagine his response to my story and the copy
of my email when I presented it to him.
You can also guess the fate of the PR firm who had
mishandled their account. It seems I was not the only
person affected by this - one of whom was an industry
leader the boss really wanted to meet.
So, who's your boss? Whose opinions are important to
you? Who do you serve? Are you doing everything you can
and more to make sure you aren't disappointing or
embarrassing them?
How can you be sure to avoid the three worst
marketing mistakes? Only make promises you can keep, and
keep the ones you make. It's as simple as that.
About the Author:If you want to leverage what you
are already doing right visit the
21st Century Peer Groups for Wayne Messick's report
based on his experience as a business consultant who
offers a wealth of free information at
http://www.iBizResources.com.
