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Archives for May 2011

Make your website SHINE with Suzanne McDonald, a Spark and Hustle presentation

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By Julie Woodside

It’s time to have your website break through the clouds of the millions of websites on the Internet and SHINE. Eliminate guessing: Today’s websites should be driving key business decisions.

Drawing on her newsroom experience at The Boston Globe and her current online marketing practice, Designated Editor’s President and Chief Content Strategist Suzanne McDonald shares her insights on website creation at the Spark & Hustle conference in Boston.

Suzanne provides valuable knowledge that will get your website to stand out and truly SHINE!

How to make your website SHINE

The web is 16 years old: Websites are more sophisticated now

  • You have 3-5 seconds to engage when someone lands on your page.
  • Websites aren’t just about a pretty picture anymore.
  • Your website should always be a work in progress.

Get serious about your website

  • Your website should be a key data point that will drive business decisions.
  • Using free or low-cost tools, you don’t have to guess anymore about what’s working.
  • Your site should reflect your passion  & the value you bring to your customers’ lives.

Focus on

  • Words
  • Meaning
  • Engagement

Websites: 4 key areas to address

Design

  • No clutter: Make it navigable
  • Websites age in dog years
  • Usability + simplicity: Clear with call to action
  • Don’t fall in love with pretty art
  • Low-cost tools:  Theme Forest, WordPress, 99 Designs

Audience

Engagement

  • Speak to specific people: Replace they/customer with who/what that person really is, eg full-time mom
  • How do you relate?
  • Integrate social media with your website: need a cohesive look
  • Listen & learn to what your target audience is saying & adapt strategy from there
  • How can you add credibility? Media mentions? Reviews? Google Checkout
  • Low-cost tools:  bit.ly, HootSuite, Radian6, Social Mention, Facebook, MailChimp, Twitter, Yelp

Analysis

  • Check your fear
  • Look at your competitors for insights
  • Heed criticism & learn to love it
  • Give yourself time to think & be creative
  • Ask your customers for feedback always
  • Sometimes have to throw out old site and start fresh, no matter how much you spent on it
  • Low-cost tools:  Feedback Army, FiveSecondTest, bit.ly

Competing with over 180 million websites on the World Wide Web can seem as depressing as a cloudy day.  But, if you use these wise tips from pro, Suzanne McDonald, your website will be like the sun breaking through the clouds.

Shine on…

Cross-channel success: Converging digital and traditional marketing at OMMA Metrics

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With marketing spending migrating to online channels, the role of analytics is changing drastically across both online and offline channels.  The new market must focus on integrating offline and online channels and learn how to leverage both.

OMMA Metrics keynote speaker, Yuchun Lee, Vice President and General Manager of IBM Enterprise Marketing Management Group Unica, discusses measuring behaviors across channels and the future of analytics. Lee also presents real-world examples of how marketers are adapting to achieve success.

Marketing dollars and sense

  • 98% of marketing dollars are wasted
  • No company has enough marketing budget to overpower earned media, such as blogs/reviews
  • Earned media 10-15 times more influential than advertising

What’s happening with brands?

New marketing

  • Agile
  • Servicing rather than selling
  • Coordinated
  • Customer-centric
  • It’s really service, and service is marketing
  • Marketing messages should make the customer feel as if she is receiving a service from you
Omma metrics yuchun_lee  

CMO’s new role

  • Keeper of customer experience: not keeper of the brand anymore
  • Technology makes marketing messy
  • CMO needs to remember: “Good Marketing Is Service” and “Service is Good Marketing”

Brands need to integrate

  • Plans & budgets
  • People & processes
  • Data & assets
  • Measurement & performance

Web analytics

  • Need to assess & digitize all channels
  • Move from traffic to behavior analysis
  • Analytics should comprise online optimization, e-commerce, marketing & enterprise
  • Universal tags are about to have their day in the sun & IBM will put out the killer solution

Digital behavior

  • Purchase histories
  • Past actions
  • What are you looking for with a predictive core

Marketing pros are becoming tech decision-makers

  • Control $1 trillion of annual marketing spend
  • Decide or lead 2/3 of marketing technology decisions

Business success tips

  • Be relevant
  • Provide superior customer experience
  • Understand customer needs
  • Need to be great at listening & need technology to do it well

Online marketing brings an age where traditional channels are melding with digital ones.  In the new digital channel, customer needs are openly expressed.  To succeed businesses must listen and understand their customers’ needs using their senses and analytical data.

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