Questions about multiple websites, or mini sites, are common from our customers, so we ought to write about it!

First of all, there is no rule that says that an organisation shouldn’t have more than one website.

Inevitably, this question is about whether multiple sites are good for search engines, and good for the visitor. But in many ways, ‘what is good’ for search engines and people is one and the same thing.

Search Engines do work really hard to discover what is good for searchers, because if they get it wrong consistently, there is nothing to stop us all using a different search box in the future. And let’s face it, they tend to do a really good job of it…it is amazing technology.

What’s good for the visitor?

If we’re considering a different group of visitors, with different tasks, then the answer is easy. Think seriously about doing different business on different websites. The example would be if we had two separate divisions, that happen to share the same building.

As you are still reading, then we should think about that single organisation website.

But as an service provider focussed on our own client’s success, we like to think more (only?) about those visitors who might buy at some point in the future. It makes it easier to decide what might best help visitors make ‘the right decision’.

What do they need to know

This really does focus the mind – because if you had 100 people stood in front of you every day (because we’re doing your marketing)  then how many different questions might you get.

Each visitor has a different set of questions

Lets help all those people by covering everything they might want to know, and put that information under their nose. In our experience, it just works best. Remember that most untamed websites convert at less than 1% – or in other words, just one out of those 100 visitors decide to do something. There’s room for improvement.

So, following this through. Being successful in converting website visitors into sales conversations does usually mean having more information on the website than originally anticipated. Visitors just have such a wide remit, especially early on in their investigations.

How come our website ended up so large

It is easy to sell left handed widgets if that’s what people are looking for, but sooner or later, we’re going to have to explain to other people what exactly they are and why they might want one.

As long winded as this is – it goes to explain why people’s websites will always end up much larger than originally planned.

There are literally thousands of ways to describe the same thing, especially when even slightly complex. When people want their teeth straightened, for example, you couldn’t guess they might use 1 out of 2-3000 different search phrases, at least.

Whichever way that you present the information, whether on long pages (which does work well), or splitting it up into easily navigable sub areas on a website, this will appear messier the more subjects you have.

Can we do anything other than have multiple sites

Strategies will be to ‘turn the website upside down’ so that every sub landing page acts as a visitors personal home page, with everything pertinent to their decision being put under their nose. This is a fine principle, and works great for paid search, and to an extent it is a great principle for unpaid search too. But it eventually presents challenges to Search Marketers when nearly every inbound link you might get from the outside world comes into the home page, and needs distributing.

It’s not impossible, but it gets harder to prioritise content when different parts of the business are all screaming at you to get their stuff to the top.

But inevitably, at some point, it is going to occur to someone to have a different website.

The benefits of mini sites

• Domain words are quite heavily weighted if they are keywords, which works if enough people look for them
• Sites are more specific, and visitors feel you’re focussed which helps conversion (big point)
• Visitors don’t get distracted from your mission. It is obvious what you want them to do
• Links can weigh more heavily when aimed at less competitive ’sub’ market material

The downsides of mini sites

• You literally have to double your marketing efforts
• Splitting marketing efforts could be like splitting a political party in two, when neither would get into power
• Not as much cross fertilisation of customer types
• If owners don’t take them seriously, mini sites can feel unloved and put people off
• Age is a factor, and new sites take a while to get going with the search engines
• Depending on where visitors come from, it can be hard to track visitors between sites

This last point is important.

If all your deals come show up on Analytic Software as referrals from SITE A, then how are you going to hone your search marketing efforts. The returns available from search marketing often only come after the results have been fed back into the machine a few times, and if you can’t attribute the success, you also won’t be able to turn off the most expensive half of the marketing. Which, by the way, could quadruple the profitability.

How to decide on a mini site

The bottom line is that the more important a particular sub section of the website becomes, then the more likely it should be spun out into a separate website. It will often follow that your organisation will reflect this move and if a complex subject area is important enough to split off your marketing, it will probably be important to focus the sales and operations too.

Alternatively, if there is a very tight focus on one particular goal, and it is a non-complex goal, then it may be good to have people land on a page that takes people directly to the action button.

It would surprise some that I (matt) am a big fan of telemarketing. Given our belief in the internet and it’s capacity for lead generation.

But way back in the day, when a previous company was selling Telephone Systems, the only way to generate a constant source of business was to carry out consistent telemarketing.

Having developed a very healthy respect for what it can do, and for the people who can do it well, we know there is a definite and still growing need for quality services. We’ve been looking around.

Why would a search company be interested?

We meet people who are in businesses that can’t use our services. If that’s the case, we tell them.

1. If you have a niche, and you know where the prospects are, then someone should be picking up the phone.
2. If there are lots of people looking for what you do, but you don’t know who they are (capital equipment is once every 7 years on average), then we may be able to help.
3. Even so, a number of our clients benefit from follow up calls to their warm lists, generated from Search Marketing campaigns.
4. We offer a ‘holistic’ marketing service. If our clients grow, so do their budgets, it’s in all our interests to do the right thing first.

A lot of us ‘ less superhuman people‘ find scheduling telemarketing regularly hard work, and if that includes the dear reader – I would give this advice:

If you don’t like doing something, it is worth paying an expert to do it for you. Otherwise it is likely to stay at the back of the queue, you will feel terrible about yourselves because you know it should be done, in an ‘important not urgent’ kind of way. But you will forget, in favour of something you enjoy more. Human nature gets to us all.

Even if, when the business is small, it is tempting to try and do everything yourself, stop, look in the mirror, and then start asking around for someone to recommend a person they know. It is a false economy, and practically you will find out the limiting factor in progressing the business is YOU. I learnt the hard way when trying to learn how to do book-keeping many years ago. Not a good idea!

Face to face with telemarketers

So trying not to make the same mistakes in other areas, I found myself in the office of a true professional this morning. It was the buzzy smiley office of Xen Consultants in Wolverton Mill, Milton Keynes, and I met with Michaela Graham, the boss.

There’s a reason for blogging about this, and it’s the time Michaela afforded to go through the telesales proposition. I’m always impressed at meeting fantastic sales people, because they achieve things seemingly effortlessly, but you shoud know it takes a massive amount of preparation and thought. I’ve always aspired to being better in face to face sales than I am – it is one of the most valuable things you can do for any company. One of…no wait, it is the most valuable thing.

We choose to generate leads, helping ‘the great’ to generate more business. It is ‘our calling’ – I’ll just wait for that joke to sink in. No Marketing, No Sales, No Business.

Back to the meeting. Michaela was kind enough to show what worked (which was impressive), and to give some crucial advice

• Never promise more than you can deliver
• Always share and be as transparent as you possibly can with clients regards results, even on a bad day (who has those?)
• Have prospective clients speak with existing clients as often as possible (That means having happy customers)
• Employ people
• Create good relationships between staff and clients by taking the time to understand each other
• Making sure it happens – that was a key message for me.

As Conversationware enters a new phase, the advice felt extremely useful.

We’re inspired by the level of Xen Consultants success and growth, the advice is backed up with some evidence (credibility is persuasive). We’ll try to go about things in the same way, and we look forward to our own first campaigns.

If you’re thinking of telemarketing – this might be useful.

Try telemarketing

Talk to Michaela and you might find out something, like how many similar businesses to yours have tried telemarketing already.

And do you need one?

Many marketers talk about the Unique Selling Proposition, the USP.

If you’re wondering if they’re useful, you are not alone, or unique, even. Most clients bring it up, so we thought we’d examine whether there is a ‘point’ to them.

Is a usp a silver bullet

Depending on your world view, you may or may not agree with this article.

USP description

The USP was conceived as a way to help people, consumers, to make up their minds by having advertising that articulates a specific benefit of the product.

USP based advertising is definitely more to do with sales than with any previous form of advertising. And because our world view is that (web) marketing is just sales, but to a wider audience, we applaud the sentiment!

What if we don’t feel unique

Most clients have trouble with the USP concept, they feel ‘dishonest’ by claiming they are unique (hold onto that thought). For those who struggle, a USP doesn’t have to be unique to your product, just unique to your marketing, with no other local competitor claiming it.

This construct pre-supposes that people will be persuaded by the USP’s specific benefit, and it will make up their minds for them. Will it work?

What’s the proposition?

Here’s what we discovered about the humble, old fashioned USP and it’s influence on prospect decision making.

The concept of the USP was originally from the world of advertising in the 1950’s, and its key protagonist was Rosser Reeves who is the basis of one current hero of ours – Don Draper of the tv show MadMen uses his accomplishments, it says here in Wikipedia.

The thinking behind USP’s is that people will weigh every aspect of a product or solution, and will make a perfectly balanced judgement based on ‘the truth’. Of course, your version of the truth will include that thing that ‘only you do’, the thing, the slogan, that makes it overwhelmingly likely that people will make the right choice.

Effectively, this is where the idea of the slogan came from.

The USP and the time constraint

If you read the article in Wikipedia, and I recommend you do, there is a key statement

His (Rosser Reeves) greatest contributions were to express more clearly than anyone else the philosophy of a claim and to show how the philosophy could be applied to commercials that involve severe time constraints.

The USP is key when you have time contraints, and for us, that means it is specific to the advertising format.

It doesn’t apply to marketing, or to face to face selling and to a degree it doesn’t apply to the web – you wouldn’t use a USP in isolation.

A website is not advertising. People only turn up if they are looking for something, most often via a search engine, and these people are willing to give you more time, they’re not there to ignore you.

So USPs don’t work as well when time isn’t limited, but we’d suggest the home page is the one place where a slogan fits, and unique is good.

Do USP’s help people make buying decisions?

We don’t think so.

There is a new science that examines decision making, its called ‘behavioural economics’, and is more interesting than it sounds. We picked this up from discussions on SEOMoz, (hat tip) about nudges and a comment therein about Dan Ariely.

Behaviour is something we will come back to again and again in the future.

1. It is now accepted, by some people, that ‘facts’ are completely ignored if they don’t match what you already believe in, and if you don’t know what you believe in, then facts won’t necessarily help. This is supported by Congitive Behavioural Therapy, if you’re interested.

2. People will not believe you when you tell them your USP anyway. If you disagree, then you’ll understand the point.

3. But for a real ‘insight’ on decision making, look at the first video on this linked page from Dan Ariely, on making decisions. It is 17 minutes of joyous confusion.

Incredibly, this calls into question the ability for us to make balanced, lucid decisions. Of course, this doesn’t apply to the likes of you and me. It’s everyone else that has the trouble.

We firmly believe that the more complex the solution, the more money is involved, the more likely that USP’s won’t work. Simply, it is less likely that a single factor will convince a large proportion of the audience.

The final nail in the USP coffin

Would seem to be in the same article

In the 1960s Reeves’ techniques began to fail. Consumers became more savvy and learnt to tune out uninteresting commercials

This sort of advertising started to fail once consumers realised marketers were manipulating them. It went on to be replaced by emotional branding.

The key is that time on the web is not limited, and this is why long copy works, once again. Emotional branding won’t work on the web (on it’s own) for much the same reason. A combination would cover all the bases.

The product is the marketing

My friend Seth Godin promotes that the product is the marketing – he’s right. This is a long quote, but exceptional.

To work, advertising has to be honest. He insists the product being sold actually be superior, and argues that no amount of advertising could move inferior goods. He also disagrees that advertising was able to create demand where it did not exist. (edit: Sell what people are looking for)

Successful advertising for a flawed product will only increase the number of people who try the product and become dissatisfied with it.

If advertising is effective enough and a product flawed enough, the advertising will accelerate the destruction of the brand.

Similarly, it is a waste of money to claim uniqueness that doesn’t exist (you can let go of that thought now), because consumers will soon find out, and they won’t come back to the brand. This is important because historically fortunes are made from repeat business (edit: emphasis mine). Money would be better spent building some kind of meaningful advantage into a product before launching a costly advertising campaign to promote it.

The thing is, Seth Godin didn’t say the above originally, Rosser Reeves did in the 1960’s. Most people forgot, or didn’t learn it in the first place, that is until the marketing world shattered into little pieces and required that the product to be good again. Products get found out quicker with social media (Word Of Mouth on Speed).

I queued a long time to get this photo

(See, I do know him)

When given the choice, would you pick up the phone and talk to a sales person, or would you rather browse google.

The ‘Sales Process’ is changing into something called the ‘Buying Process’

You don’t get to steer any more.

The sheer volume of choice, and over capacity in every industry means a bewildering array of suitors. And there aren’t many of us that have more time than we used to, in order to talk to them all.

It’s easier, quicker and less stressful to use search engines for product and solution detail, than it is to call, wait for the right person to call back, and then get pushed into a sales pipeline. Especially if you don’t get the right answer first time.

So, these days, buyers won’t pick up the phone to find out if you’re an expert. Prove you’re an expert though, and then they might be more inclined.

At this point, there will be people who think their complex solution can’t be sold online, like some book or a camera from Amazon. But when we’re talking about process, it is clear that the point at which we get to speak to prospects is now later than earlier. It won’t get better.

Highly available and findable detail from the competition makes sure that these days we can’t just put a list of products on the website and hope it will be enough.

The competition is working hard too.

No sales person is hurt in the process.

If we don’t impress people with our knowledge, with our insights and customer stories, they’ll just click the back button. (that’s not a hint).

Within that context, the ability to educate themselves on the buying decision has put the buyer firmly into the driving seat. If we don’t provide quality information, people will find it elsewhere, in a heartbeat.

It is self service decision making, and sales are won and lost without anyone even being aware there was an opportunity.

Anecdotally from some customers recently, I hear that close rates are increasing.

It would seem that Customers are kissing less frogs and have ‘half made up their mind’ before they walk through the door. I firmly believe that once you’ve helped people understand what’s important, it’ll be your business to lose.

Marketing got longer and sales got shorter.

Turning Browser Caterpillars into Butterfly Leads

To compete effectively for prospect attention then, we need to share our hard won knowledge up front, on a website. It is counter intuitive, and all our instincts tell us to keep secrets, to worry about competitors, to worry that prospects ‘won’t understand’.  Just make sure they do.

It’s going to be an uncomfortable ride for many.

The good news

Once it’s done, the lead generation process gets very efficient indeed. Frog kissing was always a let down, and very expensive.

Information is as cheap as cabbage leaves.

After we’ve explained the reasons for using blog technlogy, far too numerous to mention again here, customers tend to call us with a blank sheet of paper after the first few coffees are long gone.

The best advice we can give is to go read something. Preferably something related to what you do of course, but for ideas there is nothing like ‘news’ to set people’s opinions going.

For the technical, they would use ‘Google Reader’ which is a fantastic tool for subscribing to relevant news from a google newsfeed.

You see, to generate your own personal news stream, head over to google news, search for something fundamental to your business, hunt for the RSS button and click. You’re done. Read once a week for instant idea juice.

So, why is this a good idea?

Blogs are publishing platforms, and one of the main reasons to publish is that you have some news. News is fresh, and Search Engines give this some credence by seemingly placing ‘news’ articles almost instantly into their index. Some higher than others of course.

To give a great example, one of the best case studies I’ve ever seen for Search Engine Optimisation has to be the Brent Payne interview recently over at the Wordtracker website. Kudos and links go to them, congratulations.

You couldn’t get a better example of how keywords and news mix to give exposure to those who work them hard. It sets an example to us all, you included!

Another example: when Google chose a new ‘doodle’ today to honour the invention of the barcode, I ’searched’ for bar code, and between the first time I looked and 20 minutes later, the Daily Telegraph leapt to the top of the rankings for a new article on bar code….above Wikipedia.

The reason Google did that, it’s ‘news’. See the google news feed…. and look for the orange button at the bottom.

The reason the Telegraph did that – it knows what people are looking for (from Stats or a keyword tool), and then writes about it. Just as the case study of the Tribune above, writing about things that ‘we know people are interested in’ is easier than trying to make it on your own.

Just I write this, I’m absolutely gratified to see one of my clients, who know a think about data capture and barcodes, have written an article on this very subject…spotting opportunities is a ‘key’ phrase for today.

My work there is done , oh wait, I don’t mean that.

“Right, we’ve finished our web re-design, now we need one of those search engine people”

Cue disappointed look from ’search engine types’.

Getting Search Engine attention is at least as much about what is done on the website as it is about external factors. These are far better thought about during the re-building of a website rather than afterwards. Not only that, it’s always difficult to propose changes to people who have waited a long time for their new site, hence the downcast feeling.

What to think about when re-designing a website

First things first: get some analytic software running on the site, so that you know which pages are getting traffic. This will help planning.

Do think about the existing ‘URL’s – the page addresses.

These are often changed, without a thought, to match the new schema. Of course, by ‘changed’ what we really mean is deleted and completely new pages put in their stead. They didn’t move them, they knocked the house down and built it elsewhere.

Redirects are important. Whenever you change an address, tell the people who send you things because if not, it will be ‘return to sender’.

How much that matters – probably depends on the page, but if visitors matter, then lets send them to a page that looks like something they were expecting, instead of a home page, or black holes.

The next thing is to check for Page Titles and Descriptions. Relevance is important, and if you were receiving visitors it was because Search Engines thought your page was relevant for ’something in particular’.  The ‘in particular’ is usually from the page title, content, and incoming links, but descriptions can help improve the number of visitors.

For the avoidance of doubt, here’s how Google uses page Titles, Descriptions and URL’s

All these things are inserted during the page construction, during the (re) building phase.

Yes, the external factors are important for SEO, but if the website isn’t properly organised, then it will never work as well as it could.

Lead generation on the web is as much about the visitor as the website.

If you had a sales meeting, and your prospect walked out half way through the conversation then you’d be doing some pretty deep soul searching.

Pitching the right thing to the right person is obvious isn’t it, when you think about it.

Yet, on your website, we come and go without offending anyone. In fact, most of us leave your website without doing anything. Are you thinking hard about that?

How can I help you?

For most companies, the website is a sales tool. And the place to start with any sales process is to ask “What are you looking for”?

And you can’t sell me anything unless you know what I’m interested in.

Business served up on a plate

What if Google told you what people are looking for….and offered to send them over? Would you then go ahead and build a page specifically addressing those needs?

That would be better wouldn’t it? That way, you’re only selling to people who are already interested, and you don’t need worry about covering a range of subjects, not yet.

Most people just guess when building a website. But you can find out what people are searching for with a very impressive service from Google – cunningly disguised as the Adwords keyword tool.

Before you put words on a website, use the tool to see what words people are using.

We’re always surprised at how many words people use to search for the same thing, and even more surprised at the variations within phrases.

Be Careful out there

The hidden catch, the one nearly everyone misses, is that the terms you look up on the tool, well, they’re like inside out russian dolls. The most important paragraph was that last one above – the one about variations of phrases.

One short phrase includes thousands of others. Intuitively, this is the wrong way round and we would expect that a long phrase includes plenty of short ones, but no, that’s not correct.

Upside Down Marketing

The term “shoes” gets 100 million searches. Only, it doesn’t, because although those searches include the word shoes, there are millions of variations – many of which will have absolutely no chance of converting into relevant business.

Why try and sell to them all?

This is upside down marketing. Get specific first and go for the low numbers.

As an aside, the numbers of people searching for ‘terms’ is amazingly consistent, and without being completely sure why, we think it’s something to do with the law of large numbers. Ironically.

So, although you’ll be pitching to low numbers of people this week. It does mean you’ll be doing that next week, and the week after that.

If you’re worried about the low numbers thing. We would recommend you sell to large quantities of small numbers.

At last, a proper website plan

Knowing that people are looking before you build your page, does motivate and give you great confidence that the effort you put in will be worthwhile. You’d be amazed how much difference this approach makes to everything you do on a website.

With search engines delivering over 90% of traffic to a website, it pays to know how to use them properly.

Blog technology has huge business benefits, but the best in business say it’s about more than that.

In the last few days, several people, in quite different industries told me they felt integrity was crucial to their business. Pointedly, they also said they were competing with people without.

Underneath I’m not sure they really believe that’s true, but what if all the good people wrote blog articles regularly? I like to think it would help us all rise above the blaggers – and in a very literal way, with Google in mind, it probably will do.

When you write stuff down, good things tend to happen.

A friend sent this to me, I’m guessing it’s because I’ve been too busy to write lately. Perhaps if they would be so kind as to send this over about once a week or so?

A collection of inspirational web content is building on a hidden page in the Conversationware Web Vaults.

This time, a strange source. Not some wacky software entrepreneur, or some compelling life lessons for us this week -

Oh no….. it’s a presentation from Netflix, a monolith that is a publicly quoted company – they just shared a slide deck (meant to be read online) about HR.

Click image to Inspiration Page

Ok, so that shouldn’t be inspirational. But it sets out how it sees the development and most importantly the retention of talent within the company, and how to escape from HR as a business process…. their words, not mine!

It’s extremely interesting for those with 10 minutes to spare.

Internet marketing, or more specifically, search engine marketing, when done brilliantly, is the gift that keeps on giving.

It is most rewarding on a number of levels, and not least because enquiries are generally from new prospects.

But someone reminded me that levels of business generated over the last 12 months is important, but can be dwarfed when considering repeat business. Add to that any residual income such as support and training, those golden ongoing references and referrals, it is staggering how much more a happy customer can generate over and above the original order.

In search terms (sic), given that search engines give you plus marks for longetivity and credibility, your pages and content can improve their performance over time, and generate on an ongoing basis. Compare that to the cost of transient advertisements, as I heard someone do today, and the value becomes clearer.

I’m grateful to be reminded that I do important work, even if I was the only one who heard it that way.

Thanks to all at BNI Milton Keynes this morning, I enjoyed it immensely. See you next week.

I have set you a challenge. Why would I take this picture of my office for you?

From Conversationware

You would need to see it in more detail, but feel free to submit your entries in the comments, the winner might even get a prize.