using internet marketing to grow your business
As many fields, products, and services are becoming commoditized, it’s become increasingly important to plan and implement a great customer experience. Much of this involves planning and gauging how your business makes your customer feel. Creating those “wow” moments aligned with your strategy is key.
Read on to find out what I’ve been learning from E-myth and Adaptive Path about how prototyping can be an effective tool for meeting these ends.
In my first major attempt to show, not tell, I’ve been working on a screencast series for the ColdFusion on Wheels framework. Once a week, I sit down for a couple hours to record and edit a 5-10 minute screencast demonstrating a feature of the project.
This series has led to quite a few compliments, and people are watching and subscribing to the videos on our site, on YouTube, and on Vimeo.
Read on for more details.
I wrote last week about showing, not telling. But I didn’t give any examples. Well, here you go.
They give us a sentence, 6 bullet points, and a dead-simple diagram showing what it does. They even show us a video demo that was created using the product itself. Brilliant.
Read on for 2 more examples.
Time and time again, I’ve been able to increase website performance simply by showing, not telling. Showing is a lot harder than telling. Presentations, graphics, videos, Flash animations, and demos are a lot harder than writing words.
Don’t get me wrong: the words are important. They’re what search engines see. People still need to read some.
But in this visual YouTube generation, people need to see that your product or service meets their needs, not just read about it.
Sometimes there just isn’t room for you at the top. If you’re in a field with experts and join late, then you’re going to have a hell of a time getting to authority status. It’s not impossible, but you’re setting yourself up for a tough fight.
I’ve been finding myself in that spot over the past couple days. I’ll talk a little about the options I have available and where I want to go. (Maybe you’ll pick an idea up too.)
A friend back in college always used to reminisce about the old days of playing with GI Joes as a kid. Why am I bringing this up on a blog about marketing? I think it’s interesting to compare the story to project planning, particularly in technology projects.
You may be unaware that you actually do pay for free services on the Web. The form of payment isn’t always obvious: your personal information.
There are a couple lessons to be learned here. Read on.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the business of software and how it’s changing. It’s expensive to produce software, but the rewards are there if you produce something special.
But what happens when your software becomes a commodity? It’s not quite as special as it used to be. I believe that you should release it as open source.
Read on to see my reasoning. You may still be able to pull ideas from this post, even if you don’t necessarily sell software. Other things can be “open sourced” as well.
Another E-Myth Revisited lesson that seems obvious (but isn’t always that obvious).
Customers want a consistent experience. If you are to be a rock star, they want a rock star every time. It’s not acceptable to give them a rock star the first couple times and then dial it back some.
If your customer experience isn’t designed with any forethought, you’re going to disappoint. If you offer coffee at one touch point and not at the next interaction, then you’re going to disappoint. If your website is a shiny example of excellence and your customer service rep sounds bored and hollow, then you’re going to disappoint.
Your customer experience needs to be designed, measured, and monitored. And it needs to be consistent and predictable. The customer wants to feel in control, not the other way around.
You are not your business unless you want for it to be that way. Can your business run without you being there? What if you want to take a vacation, are sick, or just plain aren’t feeling it for a spell? At that point, you haven’t signed up to run a business. You’ve signed up for a job.
I’m over halfway through Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited. It really is changing the way that I think about a lot of things that I do.
Sure, you must “be your business” at first (in a sense), but this shouldn’t be your end goal.
About MeI'm Chris Peters, and I'm an addict. I want to make this marketing and technology stuff less of a burden. I hope I can help you out with that.
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