Seems like there is an acronym for just about everything these days and I admit that I use them from time to time too. Especially in situations where there’s a need to quickly articulate the underlying concepts of a more complex topic in a memorable way. Over the last five years, I’ve been fortunate to be a regular speaker at many WMW and SES events. I always look forward to the conferences since they allow me to connect with old friends and visit intriguing places.

There are certainly a lot of different topics at these conferences, but I generally participate on sessions related to some form of research and/or analysis of web site behavior and/or marketing performance. As a small research and web site development firm we are often asked to perform pre-site research to formulate designs and navigation, as well as post-site analysis to document performance results.

At search conferences the majority of the attendees seem to be familiar with quantitative measurement such as those provided by web analytic and business intelligence applications, but a lesser number of people have actually conducted qualitative research such as usability testing. I’m ask to present the executive summary on the latter topic and many times I need to recount different cases studies based on audience participation.

To present an overview on the topic and the many different case studies, I devised the acronym GODS FUEL as a memorable way to present the executive summary of web site usability testing. There’s really no religious connotation here, just an easy way to remember several important elements of the process.

This reminded me of my years teaching piano at Washington Park Piano Studio since we used acronyms with the kids to associate a musical staff to the notes on a keyboard. Does anyone remember - Every Good Baby Does Fine or All Cars Eat Gas? It makes you wonder if the mind of an adolescent is actually similar to an executive, but I guess that is beside the point.

So here’s what to remember about GODS FUEL. The first word (GODS) is used before you conduct your analysis and the second word (FUEL) is used after your research is complete. Clearly, the participants of the research should match the profiles of the users that visit your web site.

G is for Goal: Your goal is what you are actually trying to accomplish. The more granular you are the more specific your tactics will become. EXAMPLE: Our Goal is to increase the number of leads coming from our web site.

O is for Overview: Present any background information on your company or division with any relevant strategic research. EXAMPLE: Acme is the 2nd largest real estate firm in Hometown, USA. We specialize in commercial properties and our research has shown that the web is a good way to acquire new leads.

D is for Description: Describe your usability research. EXAMPLE: Standard in-house lab session with 10 participants using a computer connected to the internet. The testing will be conducted in a single day and remote monitoring will be available using WebEx.

S is for Scenario: The collective tasks of the test are considered scenarios. Ask each participant to complete your scenarios, observe and document the results. EXAMPLE: Participants will find the least expensive 5,000 square foot office space near I25 and contact a broker using the web site. Secondarily, users will be asked to create a personal web page and save a property to it.

As you prepare and conduct your usability testing keep in mind the 2nd word of the Acronym (FUEL).

F is for Findings: Focus on several high level findings and aggregate the data into categories if possible. EXAMPLE: 75% of participants were able to find the identified property and contact a broker via eMail in less than 5 minutes. Only one participant thought it would be useful to save the property to a personalized web page customized just for them.

U is for Usability Issues: Document and categorize any usability issues encountered (positive and negative) EXAMPLE: Users had little trouble locating the identified property, however, there were numerous usability issues encountered when asked to register and utilize the personalization functionality.  Many users said they would use immediate broker property chat if it were available on the web page.

E is for Effects on the Goal: By correlating the usability issues encountered during your testing to the goal of your research you can develop a list of action items for web site redesign and/or cost/benefit analysis. EXAMPLE: Participants said that having a personalized web portal would only be valuable if they had already established a relationship with a broker.

L is for Lessons Learned: Sum up the results of your research and identify any action items. EXAMPLE:  This research showed that immediate access to the brokers online would be the most valuable functionality to increase leads from the web site.

The acronym example above can be modified to meet just about any usability research. I can tell you that I’ve found it helpful in discussing the benefits of a variety of different case studies in a conference setting. So now you try it and please let me know if it comes in handy the next time you need to quickly deliver a high-level executive summary of your usability testing.

One inherent problem with most blog applications is the duplicate content issues associated with categorizing and displaying a single blog post in several different ways. Search engines have always tried to eliminate links pointing to the same content from their indices. Most blogging software allows you to display content by author, archival date and category, but informing the search engines that the listings are actually the same has always been a problem.

Another dynamic with blogging and SEO is that the individuals that typically write the posts are usually unfamiliar with the underlying principles of SEO and don’t really pay a lot of attention to things like: page title nomenclature or creating unique metadata for descriptions and keywords. The end result can be missed opportunities for web site traffic from organic search because of low page rank for your blog postings and links in the search engine result pages (SERP).

Along comes “All in One SEO Pack” from uberdose. This WordPress SEO plugin is a must-have for anyone using WordPress. It is designed to give you several basic SEO best practices as soon as you install and activate it. Our favorite feature is the automatic creation of noindex tags for the duplicate content on your web site blog. The installation is moderately painless, however, uberdose does seem to update the software more than most WordPress plugin developers, so it can be challenging to keep a consistent version for all your customers if you maintain a lot of blogs on multiple servers.

Behind the scenes of any good web site implementation is a solid marriage between Marketing and IT. There’s really no playbook here, every company seems to have a little different process for how the two departments should work together and it’s really interesting how the interactions between the two have a lot of similarities to a real world marriage.

Let’s not kid ourselves; every marriage has issues, the ones that last for a long time just figure out how to make the best out of the ups and downs. The ones that don’t, move on and start the process all over again. I actually got married when I was 19 and divorced at 24, we were just too young. I remarried when I was 40 and we are still going strong. Now my parents, they have been married for over fifty years.

I think the things that make a good marriage can be found in similar beliefs, goals and a genuine friendship for one another. Some people say that couples that last a long time have a lot in common, others say that opposites attract; in either case, there needs to be mutual respect from both parties in the relationship.

In business, vendors often work with only one side of their client’s house and it sometimes feels like there is a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy in affect. Many companies, as odd as it might sound, actually utilize vendor services because they can remain “under the radar” for some period of time.

The Marketing folks think that IT doesn’t understand their business goals and the IT folks think that Marketing doesn’t have any long-term technology vision. Well, I can tell you from personal experience that this can put the vendor in a rather precarious position.

In a real world marriage, this sort of extracurricular relationship seems to begin in a similar way. You can easily imagine someone confiding with a friend on how their spouse doesn’t “understand their needs”. This innocent discussion could progress into a relationship when the acquaintance tries to help out their friend. Eventually, the outside faction is exposed and often made out to be a rogue charlatan.

To avoid this sort of situation in business, I guess the vendor could insist that their activities be fully disclosed to all other parties in their client’s company, but can this really up to the vendor? In many cases, to win the business the vendor needs to present assets not currently available from inside the prospective company and that might directly compete with other parties involved.

This brings me back to the marriage metaphor. My observation is that good chemistry between Marketing and IT is rare and the exception, not the rule; afterall, the relationship isn’t built upon the same underlying principles as a real world marriage. Still, it may be said that “Marketing is from Venus and IT is from Mars” or vice versa of course.

Obviously, it is important for Marketing and IT to have clear communication paths, but sometimes the biggest problems are solved by the most minute details. This morning I got up and ask my wife to be my Valentine and I can tell you that even with all life’s ups-and-downs this small gesture confirmed that we are in our marriage together.

Recently, we were asked to look into the best ways of displaying mathematical symbols and formulas in a WordPress blog posting. The author was having trouble generating all the necessary elements for their post using the available functionality in WordPress so they ask us to look into the options and provided us with an article formatted as a Microsoft Word document.

At first, we tried to use the Microsoft Word document. We started with a simple cut and paste from Word to WordPress. This has always been unpredictable and this time around was certainly no exception. Converting the file to a standard text file worked better, but we lost the special characters and formatting in the process.

Next, we tried saving the Word file as HTML, but then we were presented with the challenge of sifting through an enormous amount of extraneous code and files for input into WordPress. This was frustrating because our formulas were converted to a series of files and images that didn’t display as they did in Word.

A simple search on the phrase “displaying mathematical formulas using HTML” will give you all the links needed to get the background on this topic. At some point, you’ll find that TeX is semantically superior to HTML and that LaTeX is widely used in the scientific community for blog postings similar to ours.

Installing LaTeX in WordPress was not easy. There are a lot of steps, the files are big and it takes time. It’s also important to have the latest version of WordPress running since we ran into issues moving our installation from our development environment to our client’s production server without synchronizing our WordPress versions.

In our WordPress post there were various symbols that could be addressed with character entity reference (i.e. the Greek small letter mu (μ) has a character reference of (ampersand-mu-semicolon) in HTML 4.0). Several parameters were subscript and superscript, but it was simple to nest the character entity references in the HTML tags as needed, but for the more complex equations we needed to enhance basic HTML functionality with LaTeX.

Here’s one of the equations from the blog post:

Here’s the TeX code for the equation in the post:
$latex \displaystyle S_q = \sqrt{\frac{1}{MN} \sum_{k=0}^{M-1} \sum_{l=0}^{N-1} [z(x_k,y_l)-\mu]^2} $

Here’s a link to the final post:
http://nano.tm.agilent.com/blog/2008/02/04/rms-roughness-the-measurement-that-may-sometimes-be-skewed/

For us, LaTeX worked great. It is ideal for WordPress authors that deal with mathematical formulas and don’t want to be bothered with the tedious tasks associated with generating HTML and images to support their postings.

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I suppose it doesn’t surprise me that a recent report noted that marketing effectiveness is now at an all-time low. According to the World Advertising Research Center “…The marketers surveyed said that 65% of their marketing spend had no discernible effect on consumers in 2007.” However, it goes on to say, “The report suggests the main cause of the waste can be largely attributed to lack of measurement…”

“Media clutter, sophisticated consumers and intense competition go some way to explain the wastage…(but) tracking every marketing dollar spent would mitigate the effect and feed critical real time analysis back into marketing strategies” it went on to say.

They covered a lot of ground here. Let’s examine how multiple channels, time and measurement play into the situation.

If the statement “no discernible effect on consumers” is true, how would they know if as they say they have not sufficiently been able to measure it? That’s been the core problem for marketers since the Stone Age; understanding what marketing actions cause a direct reaction. (And to further complicate things, there are various intended reactions - not all of them are outright purchases).

It is rare that one message delivered through one media will bring about an immediate consumer action. Short of a Super Bowl ad or a guy handing out flyers for lunch coupons on 6th Avenue in Manhattan at lunchtime, it’s going to be difficult to understand how an ad (or any single marketing driver) specifically affects behavior.

“Traditional” media has wrestled with this conundrum for decades. Magazines and newspapers relied on circulation figures, which were extremely general. They assumed readers saw the ads, but without some sort of tie-back (coupon, 800 number and the like), you really didn’t know if any eyeballs saw your ad. For that matter, they factored-in a “pass-along” percentage which estimated how many other eyeballs saw the magazine after the original reader passed it on. In other words, it was not necessarily a true reflection of who else saw the magazine and, hence, the ad.

Television was (and is) still wrapped up in estimates. The early days “diaries” (written accounts done by the honor system) drew from a representative sample of the viewing universe to jot down what they watched. Researchers made the assumption that whoever watched the show also watched the commercials. Radio measurement? Don’t even go there.

Things took a change for the better when the Internet held out the promise of being able to track the effectiveness of all online marketing efforts; and to a large degree it can. Specific tags and other mechanisms can be placed on virtually all online marketing drivers and followed through the path to online purchase (and in some cases telephone or coupon purchases). However, all the stars have to align just perfectly for that to happen. First, the company’s privacy policy has to allow such tracking if the sale consummates online and customer information is given. Secondly, a marketing message (driver), a purchase decision, and an actual transaction have to occur in a relatively short period of time. There are many and varied reasons for this, such as expired browser “sessions” and/or “cookies,” etc. Additionally, toll-free call centers have to be able to correlate incoming calls directly back to a driver (sometimes it can be a unique offer code), but that relies on the caller forwarding the code, when possible.

But for the moment, let’s assume that the Internet is the most measurable medium we have in terms of cause-and-effect. Many firms have made a solid business of connecting-the-dots between a paid placement campaign on GOOGLE, or a banner ad in a syndication network, and traffic to an online store. However, I submit that most marketing analysts are assuming that one driver equals one sale. That is, you see an ad somewhere, then make a purchase based on that message. Unfortunately that does not occur in real life. Often, marketing is the accumulation of messages that, once a need arises, a purchase decision is made and completed.

With today’s overwhelming collection of media channels, you can imagine how difficult, if not impossible it is to follow each and every marketing driver toward an ROI. Let’s look at an example:

A computer software manufacturer holds a seminar at a conference center that lets prospective customers “test drive” their product. Prospective clients learn about this seminar via a combination of direct mail, banner ads, and eMail blasts that the company has planned for in advance. Once at the seminar, users who like the software are given a coupon for a “seminar discount” to purchase a copy either at a local reseller, via toll-free 800 call center, or on the Web. The coupon is good for 90 days.

Can you spot the measurement dilemma? Which marketing “driver” would you say caused the purchase? The coupon they handed out at the seminar? If that was the case, the coupon would get all the credit and the ROI for the seminar would literally be zero. Same can be said for the banner ad or the eMail blast. How would you calculate and ROI if the user held-off cashing it in for 60 days? What would be optimal is a weighting of the relative importance of each driver (for that specific interaction), in combination with the duration between first exposure and purchase. Remember, time plays an important part here too. How?

Take big ticket purchases. I won’t run out and buy a car solely because I see a banner ad or a television commercial. As a consumer I must have a need (my current vehicle is old, ugly or unreliable), and a motivation (price, sales or rebates). Unless I’m Malcom Forbes I probably won’t buy a car on a whim. So it stands to reason that Honda can run all the banner ads or direct mail it wants to; but I won’t buy until I have a need and motivation. So, does it follow that all the marketing efforts Honda throws at me goes to waste? I think not. If those messages have convinced me that Honda is the brand I should choose, then when I’m ready to buy I’ll buy Honda. Can you track the ROI? I cannot.

In a perfect world you would follow each and every marketing effort and its contribution to the intended goal. But since such measurement is still difficult to track and hard to determine, it is no wonder that marketing executives don’t understand what the real problem is, and believe that some of their efforts have no discernible effect.

Agree? Disagree? Have a success story? Have a question? Share it with me at: bob_chernet@viewmark.com

View a complete list of Bob’s Marketing Insights articles.

© 2008 Bob Chernet
Reproduction in any manner is unlawful, without the written permission of the author.

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Just imagine how much time, effort and money goes into strategically, developing and deploying an outbound message to a customer, client or associate. No matter if it’s an eMail campaign, print ad, direct mail piece or television spot the collective brain cells and bank account required to bring the campaign to a successful client engagement is enormous.

Yet, all to often a critical component to the process is left out, forgotten or considered inconsequential. This missing link, the fluid cross-platform process, can mean the difference between success and failure of a marketing program.

Today, there are basically two actions most marketing programs seek to achieve. The first is to have the customer make an immediate purchase. They can do that by either going directly to the store, or by calling a company representative and calling-in an order (the variation on this might be calling the rep and beginning the process of estimation, negotiation and P.O., but you get the point).

The second action is to move the customer to a Web site where they either seek more information, or immediately engage. In most cases, visitors look for more data to support their interest before committing to a purchase decision.

The enormous disconnect comes most frequently in the second instance when the message does not align with the call-to-action. That is, this highly-crafted marketing driver simply lands you on the home page of a company with little or no similarity between the offer and a way to investigate or fulfill it.

You’ve probably seen an ad, a banner or an eBlast that you are really interested in. You click on the ad and are taken to a Web page that 1.) doesn’t immediately repeat the offer somewhere prominent on the page, 2.) has no graphic continuity with the marketing driver, 3.) is cluttered with messaging unrelated to the reason you clicked the banner in the first place. In frustration, most people click away and leave the site, which is unfortunate. All that time and effort has been wasted.

In my opinion, one of the highest priority items in the online marketing transaction process (aside from the message itself) is the seamless transition from driver, to Web site (hence, cross-platform). It’s critically important to preserve the intent, message and environment all along the marketing path. Especially when you’re asking the user to jump from one media source to the other. In a perfect world, make the offer and don’t allow distraction anywhere along the journey until they reach the successful conclusion.

The operative concept here is message and environment continuity.

Think of the landing page for your drivers. Does it clearly map-in to the message, look and feel of the campaign? Often times, it does not. (Frequently, a driver will take a user to a home page, or a product page within the site with not obvious reference to the campaign’s offer, nor any easy way to find it).

I hear the groaning already. “You’re telling me I have to create, in effect, a micro-site that is built around my outbound!” Yes. Precisely. You got the user to click to (or visit) your site; now it’s time to reinforce the journey, preserve the emotional bond you have initiated, assure them of your qualifications, and go for the close. If the process is seamless, your chances of success are much greater.

Consider one of my favorite recent examples, Prudential. Like many other personal wealth management companies, they offer products that specifically target people considering retirement; a very emotional “sell” since it involves money, well-being, happiness, hopes and desires.

In a recent magazine I noticed two huge ads for similar retirement products. One pictured a middle-aged man sitting in a small fishing boat with a headline that blandly talked about retirement and had a link to their corporate web site. The other ad, for Prudential, was surrounded by a sea of red (THAT studk out!) had a banner headline that shouted “The Retirement Red Zone” with short sub-headlines and sidebar stories on “risks,” “impacts” and “concerns.” Wow, got my attention.

To learn more, they encouraged me go to their microsite (it was NOT their Prudential home page!). www.retirementredzone.com not only preserves the message, campaign theme (red) and overall look-and-feel, but has three calls-to-action right at the top (learn more, download, and try…) that came directly from the drivers.

Why does this approach optimize the marketing transaction process? Precisely because Prudential has aligned the message, appeal, graphic design and CTA’s between all their outbound marketing, and the place where business gets done: the Web site.

Their messaging (the Red Zone concept) alone sets them apart from their competitors. Driving them to a separate web site (the micro-site) that continues that messaging while offering a variety of emotional connections between the user’s state of mind and Prudential’s solutions is the master stroke. There is an immediate connection between ALL of Prudential’s retirement-related marcom, and the engagement portal. The message is strong, it resonates, and it’s consistent. The user comes from a driver, is put into a different environment (the Web site) and immediately knows where they are.

Do you provide the same seamless transition? Do you make the journey simple, and the message compelling? Do you keep the user oriented in regards to your message?

While it may require additional time and budget, creating a landing page (or micro-site) that connects and resonates with your marketing program can be well worth the effort, and lead to better conversion rates.

Agree? Disagree? Have a success story? Have a question? Share it with me at: bob_chernet@viewmark.com

View a complete list of Bob’s Marketing Insights articles.

© 2008 Bob Chernet
Reproduction in any manner is unlawful, without the written permission of the author.

It can be fun to draw analogies between the real world and cyberspace. For most people, the acronym VIP means “Very Important Person”. The media, and especially the tabloids, focus a lot of time and effort on following their every move. We all seem to get in on the act; for example, when someone knows a VIP there always seems to be a tendency to name-drop them whenever possible.

In cyberspace, I think of VIP as “Very Important Page” and the analogy to a very important person can be made in an eerily similar way, but keep in mind, search engines don’t understand human traits like infatuation. Traditional advertising concepts like “celebrity sponsorship” are not familiar to search engines and don’t really work very well.

I’m glad search engines don’t seem to get “star struck” like humans and try to concentrate on web pages from topic authorities instead of the celebrity sites. It makes the search engine optimization (SEO) process a little bit more predictable. However, many web site owners and search engine marketing (SEM) firms still seek out web pages with high page rank (PR) in an attempt to get a link placed to their web site from them.

This reminded me of a time in my life when I was required to travel coast-to-coast a few times a month on business because our New York 3D graphics firm had been acquired by an engineering software company in Los Angeles. Well, I quickly became an American Airlines Advantage Gold Member and was upgraded to first class on just about every flight I took. As a result, I flew with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Keith Richards, Whitney Houston, Andy Williams, and Frank Gifford to name a few.

My colleagues were all excited about it since they got to hear a lot of interesting stories about the celebrities, but for me it was just too much time away from family and friends. Interestingly, search engines would have probably considered my Hollywood anecdotes valuable information if my business was celebrity gossip, but they certainly would not have indexed them in relation to engineering software design.

There are many instances where a link from a specific type of web site can quickly move your rankings higher in the major search engines, Sites like Wikipedia, Academic and Professional Associations deliver much higher value than any celebrity site ever could. Search engines pay very close attention to how sites link to you and how you link to them.

So this brings me back to the VIP analogy. Of course it is important to have links from sites with high PR value, but I believe it is more important to concentrate on links that are from authority web sites from within your vertical industry or community. Soliciting a link just because it is located on a web site with a high PR value is like grabbing a camera, jumping on a motorcycle and joining the link paparazzi.

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I often find myself examining at all sorts of marketing materials that come my way. Besides the obvious of looking at layout, appeal, message and such, I also look for the way the company’s Web address is positioned, highlighted and used. Such information tells me, as a marketer, whether the company “gets” it; that is, how important they view the Internet as not only a marketing channel, but as a method to retain top-of-mind awareness and solidify their relationship with new and returning customers.

Last year I wrote an article titled Using URLs to Support Marketing Efforts to help marketers understand that putting a Web address on marcom materials, and even packaged goods in the proper way can help drive interest, traffic and brand loyalty.

Some of the response I received from that article was in full support. Others thought I was getting too granular, or figured that most people would not go to a Web site of an underarm deodorant product unless they were sick in bed, bored and had nothing else to do.

My point was that there was no such thing as a bad URL, offer or Web site; only bad (read: lazy) creative writers. If you buy deodorant you either smell, don’t want to smell, or want to save money. If I can find the right way to appeal to one of those feelings, I can craft a message and include my Web address to help solve the issue (or at least try to). Plus, it exposes the customer to the brand again, and helps deliver a message (or an offer) that can drive another engagement.

That same approach goes for business-to-business marcom as well.

How many times have you been given a business card, mailer or other material from someone that buried their Web address? That didn’t give you a reason to visit the site, other than sheer curiosity? For me, the biggest criminals are in packaged goods where URLs are literally an afterthought. (Read my praise for Hewlett-Packard’s creative and engaging use of Web addresses in the article I mention, above).

Usually, if it’s not just a Web address under the company’s logo, it’s placed on a package with the words “visit our web site!” hidden somewhere on the back. To prove the point I went looking in my own medicine cabinet and came across an example of a typical company’s approach to promoting their Web site.

On the rear of the can of shaving gel, in between their marketing hype and the directions, were the words “Visit our web site!” At least they reversed the type over a pink (pink?) solid bar. In this case I agree with my reader; there is no reason to visit the site. There are better things to do with my time. They have offered no value statement, or reason I should make the effort to visit it.

As I’ve said before, when you’re talking about rather mundane products such as personal hygiene products, you’re going to be hard-pressed to offer a reason to visit a site other than to save money.

So, why not offer 50-cents off your next purchase by going to the site, and also delivering some good information why “Edge” is a better product than the competition? Why not use that exposure to reinforce their purchase decision in the first place, while they are getting their coupon? “Edge products are made from organic…” or “won’t harm the environment…” or something.

A slightly better example is Finesse hair spray.

At least they made the effort to tell the consumer why they should visit the web site (for “tips” and “talk”). Tips I can understand, but talk? I visited the site and they, naturally, have a lot of messaging about how great their product is. However, they offer a section on “trends” which might be a better choice of words. People love to stay on top of trends. And, what industry besides fashion is so dependent on trends?

The final example was the “best” I could find around my house. Smuckers jelly jar still doesn’t win my award for the most prominent use of their Web address, but they sure tried.

As you can see, they use bold type right under the nutrition information (these days, who doesn’t read nutrition information?) and provided at least three reasons to click: delicious recipes, hard-to-find flavors, gift ideas.

Once you’re on their site, the overt marketing messaging is acceptable, but many offers abound including RSS delivered recipes, the as-promised hard-to-find flavor finder, and other useful promotions.

Three products, three approaches to marketing their Web sites. Why do we care? Well, there are a few reasons. First, you probably have a Web site that you’ve spent time, money and effort in developing and maintaining. Shouldn’t you be driving traffic to it? Using it to build customer loyalty? Repeat business? Offering new ways and incentives to use your product?

Secondly, your Web site is your storefront (or main office, or chief representative). You have a branch office everywhere in the world that is easy to get to. Not promoting it on each and every piece of marcom or product, in the proper way (READ: not just listing it) is a big marketing sin in my book.

Thirdly, promoting it can be inexpensive (as compared to P4P or other methods). You already have marketing materials, business cards, products, packaging and the like. USE IT to drive traffic to your site. FIND A WAY to make the Web address engaging. PROVIDE A VALUE STATEMENT why visiting your site will be worthwhile. MAKE THE JOURNEY RELEVANT by not dumping them on your home page and hoping they find something they like. GIVE THEM A REWARD for taking time to visit. Maybe it’s a coupon, or a free whitepaper, or a recipe. Get creative. FIND MORE REASONS THEY SHOULD RETURN. Once they’ve come to your site, get them to engage with you repeatedly.

Web addresses can (and should) be another weapon in your marketing arsenal that is easy to deploy, and have valuable impact.

Agree? Disagree? Have a success story? Have a question? Share it with me at: bob_chernet@viewmark.com

View a complete list of Bob’s Marketing Insights articles.

© 2008 Bob Chernet
Reproduction in any manner is unlawful, without the written permission of the author.

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I like to think that I can understand a bit of Spanish, French and German when necessary. But like most Americans, having the knowledge (and use) of a second language is not something we boast about.

Increasingly, whether we like it or not, the “melting pot” of America is speaking in foreign tongues other than English. In my neighborhood I routinely hear English, Spanish, Russian, Korean and Indian. These individuals have not only moved-in, but set-up shop and are actively doing business.

They’re not just selling, but they are buying: cars, lawnmowers, clothing, vacations, groceries, school supplies; you name it. They’re no different than you and me. They need and want things, and go to places that provide it.

Yet, have you noticed that they also prefer to go to stores that not only have their particular cultural or ethnic items, but speak in their language? For example, the Russian grocery in my area is a hub of activity; people chatting with each-other, buying meats and sharing stories. They feel comfortable there. Sure, they go to the “other” grocery stores and to Target when necessary; but being able to converse in a familiar language and comfortable surroundings makes things easier.

Now, step-back and look at the web site(s) you or your company are responsible for? Do people whose first language is not English stand to benefit by conducting business with these sites? The same can be said about your marketing programs. If it is appropriate, do you produce translated versions of ads, brochures and other media that is targeted to a specific language?

Today, if your marketing efforts and web site are only available in English, you’re effectively shutting the door on a large and growing audience segment.

Look around. Billboards are appearing in Spanish, Korean and more. Television stations are going on the air to serve Spanish viewers. Newspapers and magazines are popping-up in many other languages other than English, and are available almost anywhere.

With the increasing use (and importance) of these other languages in today’s society does it make business sense that non-English speaking people can be a natural part of your audience? More importantly: would they do business with you if you made it easier for them to do so?

A little extra effort, or re-adjusted marketing dollars might be well-spent if you’re looking at ways to effectively increase business for an audience that’s waiting for you to reach out to them.

Agree? Disagree? Have a success story? Have a question? Share it with me at: bob_chernet@viewmark.com

View a complete list of Bob’s Marketing Insights articles.

© 2008 Bob Chernet
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One tip we picked up from the Google Analytics (GA) folks at Webmaster World (12/07) was to update our GA clients’ page tags as soon as possible. It’s really not a big deal, the updated tag just points to the new (ga.js) file and the change doesn’t affect any past data. We made the change for all our customers before 2008 and have not seen any anomalies.

It turns out that Google has been using the (urchin.js) file since they acquired the San Diego based firm in March 2005, but don’t think this update is just cosmetic. There are several new features that are only supported if you update your code including analyzing form posts from search products like HTDIG. It also eliminates the redundancy of managing two sets of tags (http and https).

We have several sites using HTDIG for web site search. In the past, we have used customized code to breakdown unstructured searches for our customers. With the new (ga.js) file in place you can add the search parameters you use in your form posts to the Site Search settings. The searches are collected and the results are displayed under GA’s Site Search menus. It’s really as simple as that.