If you haven’t already, it’s time to change your marketing perspective, it’s time to embrace and market at the Zero Moment Of Truth. In the past, marketers had to rely on pushing ads at people, pushing TV spots, pushing Billboard ads, pushing print, etc.. Today, more than 70% of ALL purchases made by Americans were made AFTER reading an online review or investigating the product online. That changes everything. That changes the PUSH to a marketing PULL.

Think of the last time you made a major purchase, let’s say a TV for example. Did you stroll down to SEARS first or did you hear about a Samsung, go online and research it? Most people are doing their homework way before they buy, they already know the exact model that they want before they even get to the store. So, what does your business need to be doing to sell at the Zero Moment Of Truth?

- First: read this free E-Book from Google, it will change the way you look at marketing, period.

- Online reviews. Make certain that your e-commerce web site has a product review tool. This is where consumers are gravitating towards, they want / need to see what others are saying. Important tip, PLEASE don’t make up product reviews thinking that you are going to trick or manipulate people. Consumers see right through BS.

- Product SPECs, information. It’s critical to provide solid information about your products and services online, not to mention, it makes for great search engine food.

- Testimonials. If your company has some solid testimonials, are they on your web site or social media venues? Be certain to implement a testimonial capturing technique at your store or business and it wouldn’t hurt to say thanks to those folks some how.

- Blog, Blog, Blog. Blog about market conditions in your sector, blog about your passion for the industry, offer useful tips and insight and do it often. The more you feed your flock, the more endeared to your brand they become.

The key today is to PULL people to your brand, to your web site, to your social media venues and ultimately, to your store. This demands a change in marketing strategy and perspective, your business has to be consumer focused and HAS to feed them what they are looking for before they will even consider buying from you.

To learn more about marketing your business online via SEO, social media and web design, call me. In Orlando: 407-830-4550, Nationwide: 866-998-6886. www.OnTargetWebSolutions.com

I was at the gym last night on the treadmill watching the local news when the weather segment came on.  The weatherman dove into his intriguing and thought provoking forecast telling all of Orlando that the temps would be hovering around 82 degrees for the next couple of days: no rain, no sleet, no hurricanes, no tornadoes in the forecast, just sun for the next few days.

How long would it take you to relay that message? About 25 seconds maybe? Not this weather guy. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this forecast took so long with so many words that after 4 minutes, I finally changed the channel.

When it comes to communication these days the challenge is to get your message out quickly and to be memorable.  This especially holds true for the Internet.  While online, your prospects have the attention span of a two year old. Seconds count. Take a quick glance at your web site, your tweets, your facebook updates, your blogs: Do they deliver your marketing message quickly?  If you are over delivering words, messaging, sending mixed signals, your audience or potential prospect is gone and on to the next.

Call me today to discuss your online marketing message: In Orlando: 407-830-4550 or toll free: 866-998-6886. Or visit my web site for more information about Internet marketing and web design.

The family and I drove up to Savannah Georgia this weekend for a a little R&R.  Out of sheer boredom alone, I started to glance at billboards as I navigated the highway: one billboard stuck out like a sore thumb…. I can’t tell you what that billboard was selling, I can’t tell you who was selling it, and I can’t tell you the web site address where you could go and buy the product if you had the slightest inkling. What I can tell you is that they completely failed at capturing me as a client or prospect.

This particular billboard had three web site addresses you needed to visit as well as an email address at a web domain that didn’t even match the 3 web site addresses given. If you managed to remember ANY of the addresses which I obviously have not, you may be fortunate enough to stumble upon their product and purchase it then.  If you happened to have only been going about 32 miles on I-95 and had a pencil and paper handy, you probably could have jotted down ALL of the web addresses and the email to pursue this company even further. The point: WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION in way too short of a time span.

The more information you throw at people, the less they remember.  The more you confuse people with where to go and how to get there, the more people you alienate. The more information you cram into a piece of real estate that people fly by at 80 miles an hour, the higher the likelihood of a marketing failure.

Keep your message clean and clear whether it’s on your web site, your Google Adwords, your brochures, your billboards and God forbid your yellow page ads. With so much competition in the marketplace, it’s time to simplify your message, keep it clean, keep it simple, keep it memorable.

Need help simplifying your web presence? Call me, let’s discuss your vision, let’s devise a plan.  Call 407-830-4550 today.

Many moons ago, I worked for a t-shirt clothing / apparel company. As a company, we had brilliant marketing initiatives. We would send out amazing lumpy mail, we would perform crazy antics to get our prospects attention, we would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to show our audience that we were unique. We were at every major trade show and convention in our arena and had no problem EASILY gathering hundreds of prospects who actually filled and inquired about EXACTLY what they were shopping for….The fully self qualified leads were a sales person’s dream.  We would get leads for 8,000 shirts orders, leads for custom embroidery, leads for huge organizations.  We would get all pumped up, would high five and celebrate… The marketing team would gather the leads, assign them a grade (based on their potential value) and hand them off to the hungry sales team who were ready to jump right in.  Days would go by, weeks would go by, months would go by and the same stack of leads sat there collecting dust and post it notes. No calls, No emails, no snail mail, no carrier pigeons, ZERO communication efforts.

The end result: Marketing = FAIL : a colossal waste of time, money and energy on the company’s end AND an implied perception that the company just didn’t give a crap about those prospects OR their t-shirt needs.

To a business owner, leads are golden. To an average employee, they are simply a hindrance, or more work being piled on top of their desk thus interrupting their game of farkle or mafia wars. The average employee will never share your enthusiasm about new prospects or new leads and will therefore, never take the initiative to jump on those pile of leads or prospects.

Solution? What if you, the business owner called those leads yourself and personally thanked them for visiting your web site or trade show booth? What if you the business owner be-friended those prospects on facebook or started following and engaging them on Twitter? Will it take a huge chunk out of your day? Absolutely.  Will it require creating relationships with those prospects on the phone and through social media and email? Absolutely. Will it impact your bottom line and provide a sound ROI? Absolutely.

Bottom Line: THINK before you market. How will you handle these leads? How will you create a social media platform where your team can easily start engaging these prospects? How can you make your web site easier to get people into the sales funnel? A little bit of planning before any marketing campaign can yield a bountiful harvest. A lack of planning or a lack of a system in place prior to receiving leads is a recipe for disaster and can waste your marketing dollars quicker than poop through a goose. In fact, prospects will quickly get turned off if they don’t receive the attention from your company that they expect.  This can end up reversing any efforts your marketing team had done and giving your company a negative reputation.

Need help with your marketing plan? That’s what I’m here for.  I’ve been there, failed at it and won at it.  My company is here to help, sure, we focus on Internet Marketing, Web Design & Social Media, but I’m a business owner who’s been there, done that and worn the t-shirt.  Give me a call today: 407-830-4550 and lets talk.

I was fumbling through Seth Godin‘s Tribes book this AM seeking some inspiration when I stumbled upon this quote from his book:

“Organizations that destroy the status quo win.”

How very true is that statement? How can your company web site destroy the status quo? Perhaps it’s the transparency of your blog, maybe it’s your social media campaign or your viral marketing you tube video.  Whatever it is, the only way to crush it these days is by destroying the status quo.

If you’re seeking inspiration to ‘destroy’ the ordinary, give us a call. Let’s discuss your social media plan or your web site design, let’s discuss your Internet marketing plan of attack. Call us at 407-830-4550 or visit our web site today.

I was at a local tex mex chain enjoying some lunch with a good friend last week.  We were catching up on recent business hapennings and discussing strategy etc.  The restaurant was a bit louder than usual as the lunch crowd came rushing in, but we could still hear each other at a relatively comfortable level….

UNTIL…

The manager of the restaurant starts strolling through the close quartered restaurant and starts yelling at the top of his lungs that he will be giving away ONE FREE LUNCH IF YOU CAN TELL ME THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ALLIGATOR AND A CROCODILE. No one was amused, there were no takers, so he decides to do it over and over and over.  Just as my friend an I would start a new sentence, the manager goes back at it, interrupting EVERYONE’s conversation in the entire restaurant. He must have repeated his message 5 times in a row. Each time he yelled, he accomplished one thing only: he successfully annoyed EVERYONE in the restaurant.  We weren’t there for a free lunch, we weren’t there to learn about free beer night on Wednesday. We were there to enjoy their food, their hot sauce and each other’s company. We did not give him permission to yell at us.

How are you spreading your marketing message?  Are you pushing your marketing down people’s throats without their permission? Are you yelling at people?

If you aren’t shifting your marketing to the Internet and getting found by people in Google, Facebook, Bing, LinkedIn, etc., your message isn’t getting to anyone. People are using the Internet to find you, to learn about your products, to engage you and to buy from you. The point is this: They Come To You… if they can find you. Screaming doesn’t work anymore. Asking people for permission to share your message is the new marketing.

If it’s time to SHARE your story, call us: 407-830-4550. Orlando Web Design and Internet Marketing Experts. We build web sites that pull your prospects to you and convert.

You’ve got twitter in place, facebook, maybe some linked in. You setup your blog, you are composing amazing articles, you drive traffic to your home page and NOTHING happens. Sound familiar? So many folks go through all of the motions, are frantic about SEO and getting found, getting their message out, etc.  But when prospects come knocking on the front door of your web site are you converting them?  Do they know what action to take? Do you lead them to the contact form or instill confidence in them?

Before you embark on any online marketing initiative, take a close look at your existing web site.  Better yet, have a professional third party evaluate your web site. Make certain that your web site is offering site visitors the easiest possible path to convert them from a visitor to a prospect.  Call On Target at 407-830-4550 for a free web design and marketing analysis.

Quick Tip: A great tool to start evaluating what really happens when a visitor hits your web site is Google Analytics, you can find a wellspring of information about where  your visitors came from, how long they stuck around, what keywords they used to find you, whether or not that twitter initiative is paying off etc. Monitor some sort of analytics is critical to your web site and overall Internet marketing initiatives.

The short answer I hear to the above question is normally “because my competition does”.  Oftentimes business owners have no clue why they need a web site or even further, what the purpose of that web site is once it’s live.   The small business owner then becomes easy prey for the $199 web site designers: they don’t have to worry about seo, they don’t have to worry about marketing, or professionalism, or first impressions, simply because they client doesn’t get it from the beginning. Spending that $199 could be the most costly mistake your company ever makes in the marketing department and can actually drive sales AWAY and to your competition.

Your web site should be doing the following:

:: Educating.  Educate your prospects and pull them near to you. Offer tidbits of information, show them how to use your product, offer an subscription based newsletter to keep them up to date.

:: Prospecting.  By pulling prospects to your web site, you can potentially unveil a whole new market or demographic that you hadn’t considered previously.  A web site can be a great tool to reach out to un-known or undiscovered markets.

:: Instilling Confidence.  We have a prospect right now who is paying thousands a month in pay per click and his web site looks like it was created by a third grader in 1992 with Front Page.  It is terrible.  Why throw money out the window in pay per click when your web site looks like you are a unprofessional organization? A professionally created web site instills confidence in prospects that your company has it’s stuff together.

:: Lead Them : A web site is all about pulling people to you: once you’ve attracted them to your site, tell them (the prospects) what you’d like them to do: a strong call to action is paramount to a successful web site. Call today, fill out our form, subscribe to our news feed, etc.

Once you have the foundation built, you can always expand. When a web site is built properly, it can be an amazing sales tool. When built by Cousin Bob twice removed who was the IT guy back in 1982 and loves to tinker with the old Amiga computers for $65.00, a six pack of MGD and some old SCSII adaptors, it can end up costing your company a fortune.

Ahhh, the season is upon us.  Peace and good will, egg nog with whiskey, twinkling lights and Santa spam in the inbox.  Seems like everyone is getting into the holiday spirit:

I took a stroll down to our office mail box and pulled out a letter with beautiful packaging, adorned with foil and splashed with Santa red coloring: it had a mailing label attached with my name ink jetted on the label. I tore the parcel open eager with anticipation… Inside, a lovely Christmas Card spreading holiday cheer, but who was it from? Who had thought of me at Christmas time?  I opened the card, read the inspiring pre-printed message and saw the STAMPED pre printed computerized name of one of my clients digitally inscribed on the card. Wow. How impersonal can you possibly get? Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful someone thought of me, but frankly, doesn’t it defeat the whole purpose of the season? Doesn’t sending something so impersonal send a clear signal to the receiver? We just didn’t have the time to actually put any thought into this card, but we thought you’d like it anyway.

I think being impersonal in your business, in your marketing, in your web site can send the exact opposite message of what you actually intended. Automation can harm how people / co-workers / business associates / clients see you. It may have been better to not even bother sending that card.

We were on a conference call with one of our non-profit clients the other day and they were asking us to change the color of their logo to match more of an earthen tone etc.  Not a big deal right? Wrong.  This client has used the exact same shade of green of EVERYTHING they have ever published, the same color is on their street sign, the same color is business cards and the color is the same color as the master organization that manages them.

I of course had to question why they were changing after 35 years of consistency: they replied, oh, we switch it all the time to indicate seasons, etc. on our newsletter.  Wow. Not the answer I was expecting.  Sometimes, the little things can cause confusion.  You are used to seeing CocoCola’s logo in Red, you are used to seeing NBC’s peacock, you WERE used to seeing this non-profits logo in green.

There is a lot to be said for consistency: There is NOTHING wrong with change, but change must truly be intentional.

One of our clients sent us some samples of web sites that they liked as a normal part of our web re design process.  The web sites that the client chose were are ‘award winning web sites’ and they (the client) would like their web site to be award winning as well, or in the same caliber.  

Well, of course, everyone would love to have a prestigious ‘award winning web site’ but my argument is this: That’s fantastic if your web site has one an award for design prowess, etc., BUT, does it sell? Does it convert? Does it lead people to the desired action? Does it call out and highlight what you sell? If it does, fantastic, but I often wonder who gives out these awards and to what criteria they are judged.  To me, an award winning web site is a web site that serves it’s purpose and improves your visibility as a company, a successful web site improves your bottom line and helps steer your market. A successful web site PULLS people in with a wealth of information and content.

Maybe we’ll start our own award process, everyone else is doing it!

Call us today to start growing your business online: less fluff, more dollars, end of story. 407-830-4550, or visit our web site to learn more.