This process is pretty wrapped up in genius. It works on me all the time. However, even the best have room for improvement, and their conversion process could use a little refinement. In the words of their Facebook fans:

Reading on, you see that HubSpot expresses a desire to be sensitive to their Fans' feedback. This is a great example of a good conversion path resulting in a complex problem that isn't obvious right at first: it works well the first time a prospect comes through, but the third, fourth, or tenth time? Annoying.

I'm interested to learn how this problem gets resolved. There certainly isn't any advantange to HubSpot to continue this practice: it simply requires extensive de-duping on their email lists. But it does require a bit of technical finesse to identify existing subscribers when they can come from a variety of sources. Possible solutions include persistent cookies, URL tagging, and user registration. They already register their users, so why not offer a login form in addition to the email capture form?  Let's watch to see how it all works out.

In the meantime, I will continue to click through to their compelling educational material and add to their fabulous traffic stats.


 

Web 2.0 is fueled by content. And while not everyone who can talk has something to say, removing the requirement for technical ability as a barrier to online publishing has made the content more appealling to a mass audience. Content management systems (CMS) are a part of that brilliance. Somewhere, a frustrated IT employee got tired of having to change a page for the 100th time and gave a marketing manager a front-end editting interface so she could change it herself. Given the freedom of self-publishing, the marketing manager when away and created her own content...er, um, contentedly, while our hapless IT employee finally got to enjoy his lunch in peace. That's how I like to imagine it, anyway.

Given the ability to manage their own content, corporate employees and small business owners alike began opening their minds to the possibilities of what could be done on the web: direct communication with customers means a new avenue for service; ease of adding articles means becoming a useful, responsive resource to your community; and having a public voice means one person can hold a big corporation accountable for results, quality, and service, to name a few examples.

For you, maybe it's Wordpress or Drupal. I recommend Joomla! to my clients and any sites that my company builds are in Joomla!. I love training my clients on how to use a CMS for the first time...they are astonished at how empowered they feel. A light goes on. They start to realize that, for the first time, their website can truly be an extension of their business, because now they can have control over their content.

Welcome to Web 2.0.

There are two ways you can approach this whole, "businesses encroaching into social media" thing. You could:

1) Get mad that the places you consider your "virtual playgrounds" are "selling out" for commercial gain; or

2) View it as a sign that the age of the soulless corporation is over.

I prefer number 2. Here's why. First, I'm a realist. This internet thing has been around long enough for us to figure out that online businesses, no matter how entrenched they may seem, will not survive if they don't have a revenue model--that is, a routine way to make money. So, I'm a grown-up and I get that they have to make a living. So do I.

Second, I see this as both a sign and an oppportunity. I hope I don't sound too idealistic when I say that maybe this is the end of the soulless corporation. Once upon a time, we were taught to minimize our personalities at work and success was distributed in direct proportion to how well you conformed. Today, differentiation has taken on a whole new tone. We've figured out that our employees are our biggest asset, and it's okay for businesses to have a personality. In fact, it's encouraged.

So I don't mind inviting businesses into my social world, as long as they are represented by people. In fact, I would prefer to do business with companies that have a face, because I think that give more accountability for service, more reason for loyalty, more opportunity for authenticity. I am open to the idea of being more than a customer. I'm open to the idea of being a Fan.

Congratulations, it's a baby brand!

On Monday, digMarketing will be introducing a new brand, digology, and we couldn't be prouder. digology is the brainchild of the intersection between the unique value that digMarketing offers and the unfulfilled needs of a market. Beautiful.

What is digology? It's both a concept and a product; a methodology and a service. On the one hand, digology refers to the science of internet marketing and all the pieces that go into it: competitive and behavioral analysis, websites optimized for customers and for results, testing ad campaigns, landing pages, and shopping processes to deeply understand what works for your customer base and what doesn't, and continually improving the program through the thoughtful application of reporting and analysis. It is, at once, different for every business and controllable enough to allow us to apply a consistent methodology and disciplined processes.

A digology project: the path to internet marketing success

On the other hand, a digology project, while customized for your industry and markets, for your particular business, is an approach that has gotten down to a science. It's a very deliberate series of steps that build on one another to create the most profitable and efficient possible outcome by focusing on the customer and on your business goals. We'll be talking more about digology in the coming weeks, as we reveal our clients' experiences with digology projects, so you'll be able to get a better feel for whether you would like to have you're very own digology project.

Forgive us for going on and on. You know how new parents can be. We won't give evolution the credit for this one. We think it's a textbook example of intelligent design.

The fascinating thing about marketing is its ability to force you to think hard--about your products, your markets, your value proposition, about why you're in business in the first place. If you're lucky, you have customers who will engage you and and help you think about this, too. Your marketing keeps you up at night, asking annoying questions like, "what makes you better than anybody else?" It sits on your shoulder like a little, truth-speaking demon who says things like, "Look at that bounce rate...your content isn't really delivering is it? You're going to have to try harder."

Extra! Extra!

I worked in the newspaper industry, so I understand intimately the fervent hand-wringing that accompanies discussion of the fold. For a newspaper, it mostly matters for "single-copy" sales, where all the customer can see in the box on the street is above the Fold until he/she actually purchases the paper. In urban areas, single-copy sales can be quite a significant portion of overall circulation. And in the newspaper world, circulation is everything.

Creating a Value Proposition

The conundrum of a competitive value proposition is that it is forged at the crucible of your customers' needs. You don't just get to make it up in an ivory tower and unveil it to the world: you have to propose, test, tweak, throw it away and start over. There just isn't any other way to figure out exactly what will resonate with the marketplace. This is a process that requires a willingness to subjugate your ego and be vulnerable to feedback...not always easy to do when it's your business we're talking about, your baby.

What's almost more difficult is communicating that value proposition. Again, beating the tired economic drum: your prospects have to believe that it's worth their while to part with their hard-earned cash, their security, in favor of the value you have to offer them. Not an easy task.

And in the world of the internet, they have to believe it in the blink of an eye.

]]> djjones318@gmail.com (Deb J. Jones) Deb J. Jones Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:17:52 +0000 http://www.digmktg.com/index.php/blog/20-new-twitter-account http://www.digmktg.com/index.php/blog/20-new-twitter-account
When you first set up your new Twitter account, you will find that Twitter has automatically set you up with a handful of news outlets to follow, so you'll have something in your feed.

Social media is all about listening, first. If you listen to the right people (i.e. the people you are interested in) you will start to understand how to leverage the network or medium for your objectives. Here are some ways to find interesting people to "listen" to.

1. When you click "Home" you will see a search window on the right. Try searching for keywords to see who is out there in your field. If you "friend" these people, they will likely friend you back. They will then see your Tweets and may be interested to "retweet" them to their followers. Try searching for some terms with a hash mark in front. For example: #rva will yield tweets that have been indexed has having to do with Richmond, VA. A good rule of thumb is to follow people whom you would like to have follow you.

]]> djjones318@gmail.com (Deb J. Jones) Deb J. Jones Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:16:38 +0000 http://www.digmktg.com/index.php/blog/19-design-landing-pages http://www.digmktg.com/index.php/blog/19-design-landing-pages

Designing Great Landing Pages

I have some bad news. You have your competitive value proposition in hand. You've carefully researched your Ideal Customer and done all your keyword research. You're finally ready to start designing your landing page. But I can't tell you how to design the perfect landing page in one blog post. No one can. Designing a landing page is a complex melding of science and art that really cannot be boiled down into a handful of how-to tips. What I can do is to help you avoid many of the mistakes that are so, so common in the design of landing pages.

 

5 Myths for Building a Landing Page

I admit that the title of this blog post is a bit of a "bait and switch." It should have been called, "How NOT to Design Great Landing Pages." This is going to be a bit controversial, because you're going to find conflicting information out there.

 

]]> djjones318@gmail.com (Deb J. Jones) Deb J. Jones Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:44:27 +0000 http://www.digmktg.com/index.php/blog/18-ppc-campaign-optimization http://www.digmktg.com/index.php/blog/18-ppc-campaign-optimization That's what I often hear from smaller clients who don't have a huge online ad budget, but don't give up too quickly. Careful organization of your pay-per-click advertising can yield fast and amazing results. Google provides much of the information you need to optimize your campaign at their Adwords Learning Center. Consider this client who had been running a tiny campaign, yet he really felt like it could be doing more. He contacted me to optimize his existing PPC campaign, to see if it would make any difference at all to the results he was getting on his own.

 

]]> djjones318@gmail.com (Deb J. Jones) Deb J. Jones Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:34:18 +0000