Blue Tent Marketing

“They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” - Oscar Wilde

When you consider the price versus the value of your internet marketing initiatives – which is more important? The price is the most obvious thing to analyze first. Can I afford this? Does it fit into my marketing budget? How does the price of this initiative compare to my other marketing efforts?

However, over time, even more important than the price of a program – is its value. Do you have a clear understanding of the value of your internet marketing efforts? If you spend $400 on an email marketing campaign, that may seem like a lot of money if you’re only sending the message to 1,000 people. But what if that same campaign generates ten times that amount of revenue – would that be a good value? Are you measuring meaningful data to determine the value of your internet marketing programs? If not, then a “rate hike” for services can certainly be a little hard to swallow.

From both the business and the consumer perspective, rate hikes have become an inevitable part of doing business. The questions that every customer inevitably asks is “what do I get for that” and “why is the price increasing”?

Services that have incurred recent rate hikes include Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click Campaign management and Email Marketing services. Over the past five years, the fees for these services haven’t changed much, if at all. Over the past 6 months, we’ve been evaluating our costs and revenue structure to determine whether our services are priced accurately and competitively. And along the way, we’ve realized that we have some things that need to change, and it’s important that our clients understand “what they get for that.”

Our growth has been predicated on providing outstanding, personalized service, and that will certainly continue. Because our client list has grown exponentially, our costs and overhead have increased as well. In a sense, we’re faced with a dilemma: Do we keep fees the same and reduce the level of service? Or do we raise fees to cover the costs associated with highly personalized service that has brought so much success?

The answer is clear: Keep doing what has made you successful, and that which has delivered exceptional R.O.I. to the client. If it costs a bit more, but R.O.I. continues to exceed expectations, then there is value in that. Becoming the lowest cost, commodity-based service provider will not provide our clients with valuable internet marketing programs.

As you hear from our account managers and department heads about potential rate increases, keep this in mind: Blue Tent Marketing cares about the price of your internet marketing programs – but we care even more about their value.

– Andrew Vick
Director of Sales

This past week our COO and I headed down to Denver (again) to meet the new Netsuite office team. As part of our goal to help our clients better run and understand their business, I thought this would be a relevant topic for our blog. Netsuite is a SaaS provider and has proven to be a major help for our business and customer relations. We started using just the sales force automation (SFA) components of the software about 4 years ago. Since then we have dumped Quick Books and are running our entire business on this platform. Very cool! The Netsuite team has just opened an office in the Denver Tech center, quite an impressive group. We got to meet a few of the sales engineers and mingle with their team. Netsuite then threw a nice party for customers and prospects at the downtown Ritz with an appearance from their CEO and some customer break out session to rap with the geeks that really know how the software works. It’s always nice to get “free” training, although I must admit the free food and drinks were worth the trip. At any rate, we are pretty excited to have them open an office in Denver. If anyone has any questions about Netsuite, feel free to comment here or drop me and email through our contact form.

- Peter Scott
President

This week, six of us attended the OMS ( Online Marketing Summit) in Denver, Colorado. We packed up the Honda and set forth in hopes of getting a fix on the ever-elusive “best practices” currently espoused by the Internet Marketing illuminati. This year’s summit had speakers covering all topics regarding internet marketing strategies and subjects. A few highlights:

1. 80% of usability lies in a website’s information architecture – Before redesigning your site or starting from scratch on design, spend some time optimizing your site map. A tip: write out the name of each of your pages and a one sentence description of that page on index cards. Then have three people (one from outside your business) organize the cards in the manner most intuitive for them. Furthermore, allow them to suggest other names on the cards if they have something simpler or something that better encompasses the information underneath. Also have them put a star on what they think is the single most important page other than home. Take the feedback from this little card trick and reorganize your information.
2. Make sure you have a strong search tool in the upper right hand corner of your website, assuming it’s deeper than 5-6 pages. Users expect this functionality on every site these days. This tool is especially helpful for return visitors as it gives them the ability to tap in the topic they were viewing previously without needing to navigate to it again. Consider installing Google site search for your website if you need a cheap and effective solution (http://www.google.com/sitesearch/).
3. Facilitate scanning on your site. Users are scanning for information, not reading it. So make it easy for them to draw out interesting information on your landing pages by bulleting the information, allowing some white space around it so it pops to the eye. Divide information up into short, and hierarchical chunks. Putting tons and tons of content on a page can be good for SEO, but not really for your users. In order to win at both games, organize the information and then break it up so it is easy to scan.

I thought these three points were some very interesting bits of information especially for those clients who are looking to freshen up or completely start over on their website design. If you feel your design might be outdated, it most likely is. Keep your busiest office, you website looking sharp and take the time to think about it’s usability – not only will it boost conversions, it will help make the shelf life of your site a little longer. Stay tuned for more from OMS.
Robyn
Director of Account Services

Packin’ up and movin’ out. We’re heading out to attend the Online Marketing Summit in Denver, CO.

This gig has been traveling throughout the country all summer long - getting high reviews across the board.

It will be interesting to hear what other’s in the biz are thinking & share some of our own thoughts to the mix. . .

Panel discussions and Summit review to come post-OMS. In the mean time, check out the action as it happens on Twitter. If you’re attending, we would love to catch up with you - just look for the black Blue Tent Wrenchin’ shirts.

Cheers :: Blue Tent

Google Apps can provide an intriguing replacement for Microsoft Exchange server. Not only can you host your domain name, but all of your email will be stored off-site in Google’s redundant facilities unsusceptible to outages with your local ISP.

Google Apps provides solutions for small and large businesses by giving your employees the next-generation communication and collaboration tools they need to manage electronic communications, share and publish information and stay connected while on the go. Sharing calendars, docs and email from your reservation system or real estate contact forms all hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software to download, install or maintain. With Google Apps, you can afford to provide each and every employee with the tools they need to succeed. Google Apps gives everyone at your organization a custom email address, tools for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, a shared calendaring system and access to a flexible intranet system. Standalone security and compliance services are also available.

Google Apps currently has two available editions Standard and Premier. Standard Edition is Google Apps free edition and Google Apps Premier Edition is $50.00 / per user account / per year.

If you would like more information about Google Apps please contact us and we will follow-up with you soon. Or post a comment with any thoughts or questions about how Google Apps could work for your business or organization. I would love to hear from you.

My next blog post will compare the Google Apps Free Standard Edition and the Premier Edition. What’s involved to set up Google Apps for your domain – stay tuned …

- Moira Meyers
Director of Technology

Over the past couple months there has been a distinct buzz over the use of blogs to complement one’s business. Business owners and marketing leaders alike are beginning to recognize the power of a blog. You may be thinking that blogs are nothing new, they’ve been around for awhile now. Yet blogs continue to evolve and are becoming even more interactive.

One of the biggest issues small business owners have with their website is how to leverage a small amount of content to their best advantage.

The most important rule to not lose sight of the reason for a blog. What is so great about ranting about the latest Jazz Festival coming to town, if there is no one there to read about it? [People - We are talking Web 2.0 here] If you are not willing to develop a blogosphere of your own, where you take the time to give thoughtful feedback and comments to other blogs, then don’t expect to have visitors drooling at the RSS feeds waiting for your next post. Commenting on other blogs not only gives the chance to make a meaningful contribution to someone else’s post, but you are also encouraging visitors who read the comment chains to follow you back to your blog.

The second most important rule is to post and to post often. If you are not keeping your blog up to date with what is happening in your vertical, then you will most likely lose readership over time and be forgotten about In reality, one post a week is nothing. But I understand, as a small business owner or marketer, finding the time to brainstorm a meaningful post can feel overwhelming. I am here to give you some Blog Food inspiration.

What is Blog Food? Simply, an article, review, testimonial, interview, picture gallery or opinion that you feel would be attractive to your audience. Anytime you have an idea for a post, write it down and use it later on. Here are some tips to leveraging your small business through Blog Food.

1. Use photo’s in your post’s - Living in the Digital Age, it seems the ability to upload digital photo’s is easier than ever. Photo’s offer a nice break in the text, while also giving your audience a visual to help get the point of the post across. Screen shots are a super easy way to provide visual instructions as well. [Note: There are no photo’s in this post]
2. Provide a meaningful title - With the use of RSS feed readers, such as Google Reader, your audience is much more prone to skim the numerous blog post titles every morning as they drink their coffee, rather than hit each blog directly. The title is the first chance you have to reach your audience. Your title also provides a great SEO benefit. Giving your title a little SEO attention can go a long ways - simply do a little keyword research on your topic and optimize your post for a popular search term.
3. Diversify your posts - As a small business owner or marketer, it is your job to diversify the audience of your blog. Simple topics such as market tips, local events, or article reviews are a great way to diversify your blog.
4. Share your honest opinion & insight - Often times, the best blog post is one that comes from the gut. Post’s that are edgy and controversial give your audience something to comment on, but it also sparks a buzz throughout your readers. This can keep them coming back for more.
5. Be the expert - Position yourself as the expert in your vertical. This is huge to leveraging your blog to help influence your business , but also the most difficult. It takes time to prove to your blogosphere that you are the expert in the vertical, and this requires a high level of interaction on your part. Commenting on other blogs and posting meaningful articles will surely help point you in the right direction.
6. Share with Social Media - Most Social Media Networks, such as digg, del.ico.us & Stumbleupon, offer the ability to share content via your blog. By installing the social network’s logo to the bottom of your post’s, your readers can easily promote your content to other sources of the web.
7. Track pageviews/visits - Install a web analytics tool to help track the visits/pageviews for your blog. This sharp Google Analytics plugin for Wordpress blogs helps track all pageviews to your blog posts, giving you a sense of what works and what is flat-out garbage.

Once you have found a nice rhythm for blogging on your own, your small business website will surely feel the positive effects of a larger targeted audience. Happy Blogging!

Best,

Jonathan Georger
Director of Search Engine Marketing

Email marketing is all about building and maintaining strong relationships. The email relationship starts when someone opts-in to receive information from your company or organization. Start simple and build the relationship from there. In the beginning, most people don’t want to give out much personal information. Asking for to much right away decreases your chance of getting that initial sign-up. Even just asking for the email address is a great start.

What happens after you get their email address is where the relationship starts to build, and first impressions are everything to building a good and trusting relationship. It is important that these next steps are done right and not overlooked. There are three key parts to this process that help create a great opt-in experience. First is the opt-in form itself. Second is the subscription confirmation page and the third is the subscription confirmation and welcome messages.

Start by creating a “quick subscribe” opt-in form. A true “quick subscribe” opt-in includes only a text box for email address. This allows you to capture only the most valuable piece of information and allows the subscriber to sign-up in seconds. Make sure to place the opt-in form on your homepage and also include a “subscribe” link on every page of your site. This can link to a slightly more detailed opt-in from that includes other non-mandatory fields such as name, city, state, zip, etc. This main “subscribe” page is also a good place to expand upon your email program – identify what information will be delivered and how often. This is also a good place to include an archive of past mailings so the potential subscriber can see an example of your campaigns. Once the prospect hits the “submit” button, they’re headed toward your subscription confirmation page.

The subscription confirmation page can and should do many things. First, this will give your new subscriber the confirmation that they successfully opted-in to your program. It’s a good idea to include the “reply-to email address” that you use in your campaigns and ask them to add it their address book or safe senders list to ensure deliverability to their inbox. Also, if you’re using a double opt-in process (considered to be best practice), be sure to emphasize that a confirmation email has been sent requiring that they click on the enclosed link to confirm their subscription. Lastly, this page is also a good place to include a link to your privacy policy.

Now that you have the essential piece of starting your email relationship, you can now start to ask for more information. This can be done on the subscription confirmation page or within the welcome message. Either way, the information you ask for here is the starting point to segmenting your campaigns. Whether it’s by state, gender, products or interests, make sure you ask for what pertains to your campaigns and make nothing required. Make sure your subscribers can easily update their profile, as their interests may change over time.

Like the confirmation page, the welcome message can and should do many things. This is where you start to give your subscribers what they asked to receive. If you are promising “special offers,” why not include one in the very first message that you send? This is a sure way to start the relationship off on the right foot. Also, it’s a good idea to again ask your new subscriber to add the “reply-to email” to their address book to ensure delivery to their inbox.

These are very important aspect of an effective opt-in experience. Once these steps are setup in the beginning, it’s all automated from there. Be sure to moderate your opt-ins on a monthly basis to gauge its effectiveness and to look for ways to constantly improve, add value and enhance the user experience.

1. Don’t be ‘Mrs. I Don’t Know What I Want, But I’ll Know it When I See It.’
This kills budgets and…sometimes…graphic designers. Have a clear understanding of how you envision your site, including what you want and what you don’t want. With the help of the project team, nail down your aesthetic values and preferences. If you’re lost, start with 5 sites in your business vertical and make lists of 10 visual likes and 10 visual dislikes. Write them down. If there are several people involved in design decisions, you may want to hold a meeting with them beforehand to make sure there aren’t any internal conflicts. Have everyone do this exercise and then compare notes. This will allow the design team to better meet your needs and expectations and avoid wasted budget.

2. Don’t play “Stake-holder Surprise!”
Waiting too long to involve decision-makers can lead to costly changes, timeline extensions, and frustration for everyone involved.  If the words “time and materials” fill your heart with joy, then by all means wait to unveil the designs to your boss or your owners until the last moment.   But if you want a product delivered on time and on budget, keep all stake-holders involved from the beginning. Time invested upfront reviewing progress, will save these busy people more time later.

3. Don’t make design changes after design is approved.
Understand that once the designs are approved and build-out has started, it can be extremely costly to make any design changes. Any design changes to the site will involve more design time, and the developers may need to partially rebuild the site. Just as you wouldn’t tell your architect to add another bedroom to the blueprint after construction has started on the foundation, don’t change your website blueprint in the midst of development.

4. Don’t build that inscrutable moving-target, chinese character flash nav because it’s cool or edgy.  You are niether.
It’s great to come up with unique ideas and stand out from the crowd, but be sure your design follows established usability principles. Conventions are the good guy here. Your web designer should have a clear understanding of these rules, and should let you know if any of your ideas are breaking them. For more information on usability, read Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. It’s a one sitting read.

5. Don’t break visual hierarchy.
The basic hierarchy should go: Logo > Page Title > Body Copy.  Never enlarge body copy to a size larger than the page title to make something stand out, you will only confuse your users and your site will not look professional.

6. Don’t use long lines of text.
Magazines and newspapers use columns of text on a page because it is hard for the eye to follow a long line of text. The same holds true for websites. Keep the horizontal length of your lines of text short.

7. Don’t display more than one motion graphic on a page.
It is very distracting and confusing for a user to have two motion graphics fighting for their attention while they decide what their next action will be.

8. Don’t use more than 3 fonts throughout your site
(This doesn’t include your logo). Using more than 3 fonts will give the site a cluttered, inconsistent, unprofessional look. Also, maintain consistency in typeface and size for page headers and body copy. Pink, bold, 30pt text for that one event teaser (because it’s so important!) will only make people look to a more professional site for event information.

9. Shoot for a content-area with a width of around 900 pixels plus or minus
The 800 X 600 pixel days are gone. Those with screens at that resolution either live in  Baluchistan or an old folks home. For the latest stats on browser display sizes, visit the wc3 (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp). Similarly, if you’re on a gargantuan late-model iMac, don’t ignore the standard screen size of 1024 X 768 pixels. Many of your viewers will approach your site from laptops and will need space for scroll bars on either side. Gutters allow the page to breath. It may look small on your 30 inch monitor, but your site must cater to the status quo.

10. Don’t use drop shadows on navigation.
Heavy drop shadows (on just about anything) will make your site look so 1996. On navigation, it will usually make the text harder to read. Other lame 1990s tricks include glaring gradients, anything to do with rainbows, flashing gifs and garish backgrounds.

The old way of finding new information from favorite websites was for you, the user, to go to that website and dig in. For example, just this afternoon, many Bluetenters continually went back to ESPN.com to see if Tiger or Rocco was winning and what hole they had just completed. If you went back too soon, you were disappointed with no news, resulting in wasted time.

Is there a better way?

RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication) are the answer. I’m sure you’ve seen the symbol, but do you know what it does or how you can use it? An RSS feed pushes new information to you from a page or site that interests you. Once set up, you’ll be automatically notified through an RSS reader.Google, Yahoo, Live and Bloglines are examples of web based readers and your subscribed-to feeds can be accessed from anywhere. What I find more helpful is that RSS readers have been built into many client software applications such as Opera, Sage, Safari, Internet Explorer and even Outlook 2007!

I live in the email world during the day, and always have Outlook open on its own screen. The Blue Tent Blog, Seth’s Blog, Forbes.com and SEO Book are a few of the RSS feeds that I subscribe to. Throughout the day, whenever something new is posted or something changes, I’m automatically notified just like I’ve received a new email. I can then decide to read it immediately or later, depending on its importance and relativity to what I’m doing at the moment. I no longer waste time digging through any of those sites to find new information: it gets sent to me automatically.

So what’s in it for you, and why should you care?

If you’ve taken the time to build a great site and genuinely believe in producing new content, blog posts or announcements, wouldn’t it be great to have subscribers automatically notified? It’s very helpful for them, and it’s also a great way to leverage the permission they’ve given you to contact them. RSS is perfect for delivering content because it empowers subscribers, protects their privacy and allows for no-hassle unsubscribing.

– Andrew
Director of Sales & Marketing

Last week, I announced that Blue Tent is Going Green. This begs the question, “why?” Why does Blue Tent care about going green? After all the company is profitable at its current business. This isn’t a revenue issue. Our clients are NOT asking us to become a more sustainable marketing company. So what is driving this action?

I think two reasons are inspiring our initiative. The first is the desire to take action on an issue that is being highlighted everywhere we turn. People want to do good. They want to change “some” of their routines that they see as detrimental to the environment. We all feel that we can do better at protecting our home (earth). Even the most jaded, self-centered, doubting-Thomas suspects that something is up when weather patterns across the globe are acting out of character.

So that’s the first reason- empathy with our planet.

The second reason is that we value green. We value the idea of being green while making green. Yup…it’s true. Companies are in the business of making money. Blue Tent is no different. That said, we are bullish that there is a real opportunity for us to help our clients to articulate their green efforts. However, its going to take us spending money to learn about green marketing to eventually make some green.

So what are we committed to learning? First off, where we are being wasteful and energy inefficient. We are doing a green audit so we can understand all the issues of reducing waste and energy consumption. The process which began a month ago sometimes seems like we are focusing on trivial items. After all, shouldn’t we address all the major issues such as electricity, building insulation, travel, paper consumption, etc.? We’ve discovered that this is true, but there’s more to it… unfortunately. The devil is always in the details.

It’s the small things repeated numerous times each day that sometimes become the largest issues. Are computers going in to sleep mode every five minutes or are they draining more power by remaining on for 30-minutes? How about the paper plates in the kitchen/break area? Are they made from post-consumer material? Shouldn’t we replace the styrofoam coffee cups used during client meetings? If we do that, what is the cost of using hot water to wash ceramic mugs? What do we do with all the plastic to-go lunch containers?

These seem like small items to be concerned with when you’re running a business. However, this is where the issue of unnecessary waste lives (and the production side of that dilemma- what energy was required to produce that disposable convenience).

Now back to earning green… our goal is to make Blue Tent green and be transparent about it (hence this blog). Once that is achieved, we can be the “green” partner for companies who require this of their vendors. We hope this will create new business opportunities for Blue Tent.

The next part of our green initiative requires more learning and money. We need to become fluent in the language of green marketing.

I’ll leave that topic for another post titled The Language of Green Marketing.

Cheers/

Charley Erdman