The Gilman Company Blog

SEO: Things that Matter

Here, a few search engine optimization considerations that matter when it comes to your site. These are some of the considerations that web site owners often overlook.

1. Size Matters: most advanced search engines take font size into consideration.

2. Placement Matters: generally, the content that you have toward the top of the page is given more importance. However, this blogger has seen cases where content from the very bottom of the page is grabbed by Google as a site description (the words just under the link in Google search results).

3. Bold Matters: Search engines recognize bold text as text that is more important than text that is not bold.

4. Page Titles Matter: Look in the title bar of the web browser when you visit your web page. Whatever content you have there will show up as the link text in your Google search results. Example: Visit The Gilman Company website. In the title bar it says, "Welcome to the Gilman Company" Now search Google for "Gilman Company." On the first page of results, you'll see "Welcome to the Gilman Company".

5. Sentences Matter: The days of simple keyword use on your site are over. Google and other search engines wised up and now look for actual writing, actual sentences.

Note: Search engine technology is very smart. Trying to beat the system with overdoing any specific technique typically doesn't work. Also, don't forget that your visitors still have to consume the information on your site and going overkill with one or more technique can turn your visitors off.

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Customer Experience: The New Battleground

Interested in a new way to measure your success with consumers in a market? Several directly competing firms have begun to bash it out on "customer experience". No, it's not about product satisfaction, it's not about environmental friendliness and it's not about trust or economic viability. It's strictly about customer experience, not to be confused with customer service.

How do you measure customer experience? Think interactions in terms of usefulness, ease of use, pleasantness and general customer satisfaction with interactions.

Here, a recent fray and a worthy match up between Dell and Apple where Apple takes the day.

But, what does beating out or losing to your competitors on customer experience mean? That depends.

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Passion vs. Desperation: $100K/year

I learned something from someone who approached me at a department store recently. Waiting on a friend, I was browsing a selection of watches. He asked me about watches, then asked me about the one I was wearing. Not a bad way to engage conversation. He made it about me. Eventually, he changed gears quickly and asked me if I would like to make an additional $100K every year. Bonanza!

My response, taking a few long strides forward: "I'm not particularly interested in non-traditional business models," which is not entirely true. "What do you mean," he asked.

"You just walked up to me in a department store, we had a brief and friendly exchange of thoughts on watches, then you asked me if I wanted to make an additional $100K a year. If you're pitching a traditional business model to me, standing next to the watch counter, I'll hand over my wallet now." Then this precocious entrepreneur said what led to this post: "You're right, I'm really looking for people who are more passionate and enthusiastic about doing business." This, as he walked away.

The title of this post says it all. Otherwise, this guy's approach was great. He had me engaged in a conversation and I was open to discussion. He had already won 90% of the battle. Clearly, however, he was looking for low hanging fruit (in an economy where there's not much of that). Another observation: he may have been standing in front of the best business opportunity that he's ever had, but he was short sited. Engaging through intrepid cold pitching without batting an lash may not be the best approach. Finally, with low hanging fruit at the core of your business model, opportunities to realize greatness are very close, yet so very far.

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Your Technology: Who Benefits?

Nine times out of ten, corporate technology based solutions are designed to improve processes internally, to make thing easier, more efficient and productive. The next time you're sitting across the table from your IT director, ask about applying your technology in a way that directly benefits your customers, not just your company internally. The knee jerk technology based solution is what makes you're life easier, what makes you look good. An alternative analysis for a technology based solution is what might benefit your customers.

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Existing Customers vs. New Customers: Marketing and Sales(Part II)

If your only marketing goal is to source new customers or members, you’re losing out on sustainable growth. That means you’re not optimizing the lifetime value of each customer. Unless you’re running a lonely gas station in the middle of nowhere that caters to the occasional passer by, existing customers should be a priority.

Because the attention span of consumers can be short and because consumers love trends, marketing efforts to retain existing customers or members should focus on the reason why your existing customer became a customer in the first place: “value.” If you keep a close eye on your competitors, this marketing focus might need to change to “added value.”

Also, it’s almost always less expensive to keep an existing customer than it is to track down a new one. This is precisely why the sophisticated players in this game are often willing to pass a part of that savings on to existing customers in the form of loyalty based incentives.

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Forums Rule! Content and Product Providers Scratch Their Heads

Whether it's the music industry, book publishers, or product manufacturing, it's the forums and sales channels that are getting the best deal it seems. Google, iTunes, Walmart, Amazon, eBay, etc., just to name a few larger companies that have effectively leveraged the value of content and products produced by other companies or people.

Sure, nothing new about the chain in getting a product from a factory, a rock band or an author into the hands of a consumer, but this blogger will have to opine that the folks who are focused on working directly with customers, not producing products are getting better and better at taking a bigger slice of the pie.

Here, there seems to be a few significant factors in this balance. First, the companies that are converting the sales have a better grasp on technology and they're turning the screws on the major product and content brands. Next, the folks who control the sales channels have done a better job expanding markets and giving customers what they want.

Critics thought that the folks over at Walmart were crazy, because Walmart wanted to open giant mega stores in small towns. We've seen how that idea has worked out with about 1 in 7 dollars in the U.S. being spent at Walmart. Now Walmart will be focusing on bigger brands, reducing their margin comfort levels. Over at Apple, iTunes has effectively determined how much music will cost, leaving little choice to record lables. Amazon has book publishers on in sight at the moment witht the Kindle.

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Profits Up, Sales Down

A Forbes.com article yesterday noted that Toys 'R' Us 4th quarter profits rose by 11%. Pretty good performance on the profit side.

On the other hand, sales at the retail toy giant declined 6.3% from $5.83 billion. In light of the economic crunch, a decline in sales makes sense. But, how do you get an increase in profits in light of declining sales? With corporate and payroll expenses declining by $73,000,000 at the toy retail giant, it's not too hard to understand.

Clearly, Toys 'R' Us has undergone some operations streamlining over the past few years and has done a pretty good job of managing its e-commerce segment in light of the fact that it also has about 1,500 brick and mortar retail stores to funnel products through. When you cut $73M in costs and and operations still result in a solid profit, you've done a pretty good job managing operations.

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If You Can't Think of Anything Good to Say...

If you can't think of anything good to say, you probably don't have anything good to say.

I have worked with business owners and professionals who wring their hands all day trying to decide how to characterize their product or service to customer prospects who aren't taking the bait. These are the customer prospects who skip the bait time and time again and who will probably never take the bait.

The real problem may be that your bait sucks. And, with one pointing finger raised, the longer you pummel your customer prospects with bait that sucks, the greater your chances are of never getting that customer, because...drum roll please...now you're known as the company with bait that sucks.

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Top Ecommerce Retailer Searches

According to an Internet Retailer article, the top 20 ecommerce retailers in the month of February were as follows:

1. eBay
2. Walmart
3. Amazon
4. Target
5. Best Buy
6. Netflix
7. Home Depot
8. Circuit City
9. Sears
10. Costco
11. Walgreens
12. Macys
13. Bed Bath and Beyond
14. JCPenny
15. Kmart
16. Staples
17. Office Depot
18. Kohls
19. Barnes & Noble
20. iTune

Is it great to be as high up on this as possible? Absolutely! Is it everything? Probably not. However, much to learn about consumer habits online if you watch this list fluctuate month to month as it certainly does.

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Existing Customers vs. New Customers: Marketing and Sales (Part I)

One of the greatest marketing flaws I see on a regular basis occurs when a company focused marketing (dollars) on either existing customers or new customers, but not both. First, existing customers.

Focusing all of your marketing or sales efforts on existing customers is a great way to create a downward spiral in sales and growth. One of the reasons why a marketer’s job is never over in a relatively free market is because customers always move on at some point. On one end, a customer tries your product and doesn’t like it. That customer is lost. On the other end, they try your product, love it, buy it over and over again for several years and then they…well…die. Either way, if you only market to your existing customers, you will eventually fail.

Ignoring your existing customers, on the other hand is much like chasing your tail. Maybe “reinventing the wheel” is a better platitude. Either way, your existing customers should be coveted and marketing efforts that are uniquely designed to keep them coming back should be planned and implemented.

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