Big Picture: Social Media Tasks

One way to think about social media marketing is to divide it up into two basic functions:

1. Leadership
2. Execution

Leadership tasks include things like –

• Defining goals
• Building internal consensus
• Leading and managing personnel
• Coordinating outsourced relationships
• Developing marketing strategies and content ideas
• Managing projects
• Analyzing data and continually improving activities

Execution tasks include things like –

• Writing content
• Sharing content
• Conducting contests and promotional activities
• Brand monitoring
• Community building
• Communicating with followers
• Collecting data and generating reports

Big Picture: Social Media Skills

Just by looking at the tasks, you probably have a good idea of what skills you’re going to be looking for. The following are qualities that seem particularly important to me.

Leadership skills include things like –

• Vision
• Imagination
• Patience
• Written and verbal communication skills
• Organizational skills
• Social media and online marketing experience

What would you add to this list of leadership skills?

Execution skills include things like –

• Attention to detail
• Organizational skills
• Written communication skills
• Conversational skills
• Experience in web analytics and programming
• Ability to juggle multiple tasks
• Ability to work odd hours (some social communities are most active at night or on weekends)

What would you add to this list of execution skills?

How Many People?

Naturally, the size of your social media team depends on your budget and how ambitious a program you envision. Generally speaking, it’s possible to find all of the skills you need in one person on the leadership side, although you may not have someone on staff with social media experience. On the execution side, finding everything you need in one person can be exceedingly difficult. The skills that make someone a great conversationalist may not be at all close to those that produce a great organizer.

For midsize companies in social startup mode, the need for multiple skill sets can be addressed by leaning on other internal departments. For instance, handling analytics for social media will be nowhere near a fulltime job, so you can lean on your IT department for assistance. In the same way, if you have web developers on staff or work with a flexible design firm, they can create graphics for your Twitter page background, Facebook cover, and Google+ page.

In-House or Outsource?

A question that comes up all the time is whether to do all the work inside, all the work outside, or split it up. There are a lot of factors that weigh into this decision, but here are a few thoughts that may be helpful.

100% In-House. This is a tough way to go unless you have on staff, or are ready to hire, people with social media and industry experience. Unfortunately, with the way the economy is, few companies have people on the payroll looking for something to do. Trying to make social work when the staff is handling it as a sideline probably won’t get results.

100% Outsourced. This approach has serious downsides as well. There are plenty of agencies and freelancers around with superb social marketing intelligence. What sometimes gets in the way is when your outsource isn’t familiar with your industry or the communication style that’s appropriate for your business. It’s important for your social media presence to be authentic and natural; if it’s perceived otherwise, it could drive away your best contacts rather than attract them. Another issue with outsourcing is chain-of-command: if an outsource is managing your Twitter account, how will they field sales leads and complaints? Issues like this can be extremely problematic, and can crop up anywhere, any time.

In-House/Outsource Blend. As you may have guessed, this approach to team building is my preference. Start internally, by identifying the skills you have, and then look to an outsource to fill in the gaps. In particular, companies just getting into social media often need help from the outside in developing strategies, and establishing objectives and metrics. Writing and other creative work are also things that many firms aren’t completely comfortable handling themselves, at least initially.

The only team-building requirement I would throw out to you is this: make sure to have an in-house champion. Your champion can be hands-on or hands-off, but without someone on the inside driving social media forward, your team will be in for some very tough sledding.

Learn more about our social media marketing services. We specialize in the middle market, with clients that do everything from food manufacturing contracts to booking a tee time.

(IMAGE CREDIT: © Kirill_M # 31544340 – Fotolia.com)

Don't Let This Be Your Customer

You don’t have to look at many corporate websites to see the one thing they all have in common: they’re boring. In fact, if you can stay awake reading a typical corporate website, you probably have insomnia.

Why is this?

Is it the subject matter? Everyone knows it’s easier to make celebrities or current events interesting than it is to talk about corrugated carton packaging solutions or rotary lift parts. So when an industry isn’t already popular to the public, does it have to be dull? Or is something else at work?

The truth is, when it comes to Web content, there are many factors that can make it dry and stale—many of which have nothing to do with the subject matter. So to help you evaluate your own site, here are 7 of the top reasons website content misses the mark and loses readers.

1. It Forgets the Reader. Too many companies make their content totally product- and company-focused, neglecting what’s in it for the audience and making what Michael Brenner of B2B Marketing Insider calls the “biggest mistake marketers make.” Don’t assume readers will automatically be interested in your product—SHOW them why they should be.

Takeaway TIP: Think about what your product offers to customers. Then, look for ways to build your content around those benefits—showing readers exactly why they should want what you’re selling.

2. It Doesn’t Know the Reader. Who are your typical customers? Hospitals or grocery stores? Parents or business managers? In order to reach your audience, you need to know them: who they are, where they are, what they want and what they’re interested in. This is where customer research is so valuable. Your content should target the type of customer you’re trying to reach by showing what you offer and by taking their interests and preferences into account.

Takeaway TIP: Whether on your own or with the help of an Internet marketing company, research your audience before writing your content, using the research to inform your style, tone and perspective.

3. It’s Too General (and Filled with Fluff). Filling your website with empty content does nothing for you or your readers. Rather than crafting general paragraphs just to fill pages, design your content to communicate real facts and information about your company and what it offers.

Takeaway TIP: Ask yourself if your site answers the basic questions of who, what, where and when for readers. Will reading your content give them a clear sense of what you do and what you offer, or will they leave with questions?

4. It’s Too Detailed (and Heavy on Jargon). Just as content that’s too general can turn off readers, so can content that’s too detailed. To best connect with readers, companies need to get outside their own heads, so to speak, so they can write about their services and products in a way that appeals to their potential clients. Aim to write in clear, concise sentences that get to the point quickly.

Takeaway TIP: Write your content to appeal to your customers, not to your executives. When in doubt about using too much jargon in your site, get the perspective of someone more outside your industry.

Who Needs Sleeping Pills?

Takeaway TIP: Rather than working to make your content longer, work to make it more meaningful. See what you can take out without losing your message to tighten your content and make it more concise.

6. It’s All in Third Person. Remember in high school how every academic paper needed to be written in third person? In order to be credible and authoritative, you had to stop writing with “I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours,” etc. But now with the Web, where you’re writing to attract customers and build connections, it’s the exact opposite: third person often feels stale, stuffy, boring and disconnected from readers. In fact, for most companies, writing in third person is a classic symptom of focusing too much on themselves and not enough on readers—but speaking to your reader, on the other hand, makes you instantly more personal and thus more effective.

Takeaway TIP: Instead of writing your Web content in third person, which communicates distance and formality, try writing instead in second person, addressing your customers directly.

7. It’s Sloppy and Unprofessional. For many companies, it’s not a lack of understanding that limits their Web content but rather a lack of resources. The fact is, it takes time and energy to create the kind of writing that draws customers and holds their interest, and for many small to mid-sized businesses, that time and energy is already allocated to other necessary projects. So what can result is sloppy, unprofessional, half-finished content.

Takeaway TIP: If your company lacks the internal resources to create and manage its Web content, enlist the help of an Internet marketing company with professional copywriters who can help you make your content more effective.

Image Credits
Asleep at Work — © Hanik #13723723 – Fotolia.com
Sleeping Businessman — iStockphoto

Brad Is Getting Upset

A Pro-SEO Rant

If anybody tells you that SEO is a shell game and great content naturally gets found in search, do not listen. These people are wrong, dead wrong, and dangerously wrong if you want to be rewarded for the great content you are producing.

Basically, this school of that says that great content “naturally” rises to the top (top of what?) and therefore writers do not need to soil their hands with “manipulative” SEO techniques such as inserting keywords in text and acquiring inbound links. Great content speaks for itself, and that’s all there is to it.

As a writer, I wish this was true, but it isn’t. Here’s why.

What Is Great?

Actually, let’s start with what is right about this point of view. Any SEO knows that Google wants to deliver the best and most relevant content to users of its search engine. This is only common sense: who’s going to use a search engine that gives you horrible, irrelevant links when you perform a query? Answer: nobody. Of course Google and every other search engine on the planet wants to reward great content and ignore — or even punish — bad content.

Problems set in when we start to think about how to define quality and relevance. How does Google know what “naturally” great content looks like? Google’s complex algorithm is the criteria it uses to evaluate markers of content quality. Is it original? Is it authoritative? Is it popular? Is it useful? What is it about? Try answering these questions in a precise way. You’ll quickly see that identifying great content isn’t a “naturally” easy process by any stretch.

Google Can’t Rank What It Can’t See

A big problem with the anti-SEO viewpoint is that it oversimplifies the practice of SEO. Obviously — but apparently not obvious to SEO critics — Google must be able to read content before it can do anything with it. One of the most important SEO activities, and one totally overlooked by critics, is to make sure a website’s architecture clearly communicates what the content is about and how pages of content relate to each other and to the most relevant search queries.

I don’t care if you’re Ernest Hemingway or William Shakespeare: if Google can’t read it, it can’t rank it. And there a lot of websites out there that are so poorly built from an SEO standpoint, my statement isn’t as much of an exaggeration as you might think. Decisions about how to set up navigation, what text to use for page titles, and where to interlink pages within the domain, along with many other considerations, have a huge bearing on Google’s ability to ascertain the value of the content.

If You Can’t Join Them, Beat Them

Another problem with the anti-SEO viewpoint is it that it is self-defeating. By stereotyping all SEO work as manipulative, people not only do a disservice to SEO — they do a disservice to themselves! Yes, it’s true that black hat SEO practitioner bend every rule to sneak lousy content into positions where it doesn’t belong. But this is not an argument to ignore SEO, it’s an argument to excel at SEO! It seems to me that any great writer would want to work overtime to push his or her content up in the rankings, and push the black hat crap down.

If we cede the search ground to the black hats, the only content people will find is the worst content. Knowing the anti-SEO argument is well-intended and rooted in principle, I’ll make my own moral appeal: as true believers in meaningful content, we have an obligation to work as hard and ethically as we can to motivate Google to share our work.

Speaking the Language of the People

A third problem with the anti-SEO viewpoint is its inward focus. Pardon me for saying so, but I think writers should pay attention to the words people use in their search queries. If, for instance, I’m writing a post with SEO advice, I think it’s good to know that in the last month, 74,000 people searched for “seo tips”, 2,900 searched for “seo advice”, and 1,300 searched for “seo ideas.” Now, as a writer, maybe I prefer the term “seo advice,” but so what? Wouldn’t I be a smarter writer to use a term that’s far more popular?

Paying attention to keywords helps us write in a way that is more clear and relevant to readers, which strikes me as a very good thing. Ignoring keywords is just as bad as abusing keywords … maybe worse.

Authors Will Rule SEO

The thing I love about the anti-SEO viewpoint is its delicious irony. Nobody places a higher value on great content than Google, and now, finally, Google’s technology is catching up to its ideology, in the form of Rel=Author links. What Google is trying to do here is associate content with its author in addition to where it was published. Google wants searchers to be able to find the best authors — exactly what purists are after.

In the long run, the author will have as much or more influence over rankings than the publishing sites. This is a big deal. It means we have to update our SEO practices rather than ignore them — now more than ever.

I Feel Better Now

(Image credits: Angry man screaming in extreme rage — © dundanim #9379976; Happy man on couch — © Ambrophoto #28703895, Fotolia.)

Learn more about our search engine optimization services. We work with midsize B2B companies in specialized niches such as corrugated pallets manufacturing and fire rated glass blocks.

Another Blog Puzzle

For many small to mid-sized businesses, the answer they end up turning to is a third-party comment manager—one of those comment platforms such as Disqus, LiveFyre or IntenseDebate that replaces a site’s standard commenting software with one offering more interaction and a greater sense of community. The only question is: Do third-party comment managers really work?

When a reader comes to your site and has to log in to leave a comment, for instance, does that establish credibility, or is it a turnoff? Will a comment manager help encourage interaction, or will it just make it harder for readers to engage? How can you know when you should implement a commenting platform or just leave well enough alone?

Below, let’s consider some of the pros and cons of comment management systems:

To Log In: Some of the Big Benefits of Comment Managers

Using a third-party comment manager can offer several benefits that the built-in comment blog software does not, from easy sharing on social networks to effective spam protection.

(+) Connection with Other Social Networks

In a nutshell, here’s the best thing about third-party comment managers: they usually make it super easy to connect with major social networks like Facebook or Twitter through automatic integration. What this means is that when a reader leaves a comment at your blog, he or she can easily share that comment and your post with their full scope of connections—expanding your Web presence and bringing new people to your site.

(+) Single Sign-In & Profile for Readers

Not only are comment managers good at making it easy for readers to share information, but also they require only one log in across networks. In other words, once a user logs in to a third-party comment manager, he or she stays logged in across websites, so it’s easy to post from a Facebook or Twitter login to your site. Plus, all comments left through that manager are tracked in one place—so it’s easy to see one individual’s comments all over the Web.

(+) Effective Spam Filtering

Most bloggers would rather put their time into building content or interacting with readers instead of dealing with spam. This is where a third-party comment manager can be so helpful. Because comment platforms will require users to log into their established social profiles, they help eliminate spam from bots.

Not to Log In: Some of the Downsides of Comment Managers

Despite their potential benefits, comment managers can actually end up doing more harm than good—turning off readers, slowing down pages and subjecting your site to the instability of a comment management system’s server.

(-) Can Turn off Readers

Leaving a comment through a third-party platform not only requires an extra step to log in, but it also can be kind of confusing, especially to first-time commenters—and this may be enough to turn some of them away. While some readers may like using their profile to leave blog comments, others won’t want to set up a profile just to respond. According to a poll at Peter Pelliccia’s site Wassup, for example, as many as 48% of Web users have refrained from commenting on a site because it was a Disqus blog.

(-) Slows Down Page Loads

You don’t have to read blogs very long to notice this: longer load times are annoying. One big problem with third-party comment platforms is that they often slow down page load times, giving your readers longer wait times to see your content. And in many cases, those longer wait times will be enough to send readers away to another site.

(-) Takes Away Some of Your Control

When you rely on a third-party comment management system, you are at the mercy of that platform when it has an outage. If that provider has a system crash, all of your comments are out, too. This is not only frustrating to you as you try to manage your site but also obviously very frustrating to readers who are ready to comment and find they can’t.

So what do you think? When you go to a site and have to use a third-party system to comment, does it bother you? Or do you like the integration with your other profiles?

Do you utilize a comment manager on your blog? What have you found?

Links to Juicy Straight North Posts around the Web

We sure hope you enjoy these

Google+ Is a Content Marketing Gold Mine

And here’s why:

Google + is the linchpin of AuthorRank and AuthorRank is about to be something very, very important.

First, let me explain what AuthorRank is; then I’ll delve into the little bits of info that make me think it is about to be the next big thing.

AuthorRank was described in a patent last May by Google. It is essentially an author centric version of PageRank. Which means individual pieces of content will be weighed in large part due to the person writing the piece.

The patent itself is pretty long and complicated, but I have included it here for your perusal. There are a lot of components mentioned in the patent, like:

~ It will not replace PageRank but rather make it more accurate.

~ It will be harder to get authority with AuthorRank and easier to lose that authority than with, say, PageRank.

~ AuthorRank will be topic specific. That way a high ranking author in one industry doesn’t have authority outside his industry. Otherwise someone who knows how to build cars will rank for things like lasagna recipes. Remember, the whole point is to make search results more relevant.

And….

~ AuthorRank will require verification through items like rel=author and consequently Google Plus.

And that’s where the kicker is: AuthorRank will require verification and therefore Google will be relying on your G+ profile to verify you as an author.

Why does Google need verification? Can’t the algorithm tell it’s you?

At the end of the day, the Google algorithm is a complicated code, not a person. Which means where you and I can make connections via pictures or similar bylines, you shouldn’t rely on the Google algorithm to make those connections. Especially when that connection can make such a huge impact on your bottom line.

And frankly, it makes sense business-wise. Why would Google want to verify you through a third party like Facebook or Twitter? They can claim it is about security till they are blue in the face but in reality – they can make us do whatever they want. So why not “force” us to play by their rules. It’s not like we don’t already.

Now, all of that aside. Let’s talk about why I think AuthorRank is about to be something huge. For this I am going to provide a simple timeline and you can make the connection yourself:

1. 2010-2011 – Google rolls out Panda so there is no doubt that quality is important to rankings at the domain level
2. May 11, 2011 – Google files a patent for AuthorRank which details how it will impact rankings
3. June 7, 2011 – Google announces rel=”author”
4. This past week – Google removes the labs project that includes author stats

This last one is a little tricky, but Mark Traphagen points out that, “When Google removes a Labs project, it is for one of two reasons: the project has outlived its usefulness, or it is about to go mainstream.”

And lastly you see that Othar Hansson is the Engineering lead at “The Authorship Project @ Google.” Which after looking through the rest of his bio makes me think this is a VERY big deal.

So when you put all these things together it looks very likely that AuthorRank will soon be a huge factor in our rankings. In fact, many SEOs believe it will be bigger than the Panda Update.

Of course, you have nothing to fear! As long as you are focusing on quality content and extending your brand in a meaningful way, things like this can only help. My biggest piece of advice? Make sure to get your G+ profile up as soon as possible and start claiming your content. Especially for those companies that use a writing service to create your content. Remember, if you paid for it – you own it. Now make it work for you!

(Image Credit: © Elnur #36430153 – Fotolia.com)

About Amie

Amie Marse is the founder and co-owner of Content Equals Money, an intimate and highly effective content generation firm in Lexington, KY. She writes on topics ranging from SEO to content marketing and small business conversions.  Follow her @Content_Money

This QR code Links to Straight North

Quick response (QR) codes are nothing new—developed over a decade ago, according to Marqui.com, QR codes have been widely used in places like Japan for years—and in North America, their influence is only expanding. Having increased by as much as 1,200 percent in late 2010 according to Mobile Commerce Daily and scanned by 14 million Americans in June 2011 according to ComScore, QR codes can provide innovative marketing opportunities for businesses looking to engage their audiences, generate new leads and expand opportunities to connect with business customers or employees.

What Are QR Codes?

QR codes are customized bar codes that can be scanned to smartphones for fast access to predetermined information or resources. Designed to link the online and offline worlds, QR codes give businesses a way to extend their influence beyond printed materials.

What Can They Do?

QR codes can accomplish specific actions and link to various multimedia resources. Among their possible uses, QR codes can link to website landing pages, call telephone numbers, send text messages or emails, download materials, display a Google Map location, take users to a social media profile and more.

How Can You Use QR Codes in B2B Marketing?

QR codes represent powerful marketing opportunities for the B2B market where information is so critical, particularly because research shows close to 40% of the mobile users scanning QR codes are business professionals who earn a household income of $100K or above. To determine which application is best for your business, consider what your audience would find valuable and make sure your idea is smartphone-friendly.

Here are Straight North’s top 13 ideas to get you started!

1. At Events
   When you take part in an event, be it a trade show, a conference or something else, look for as many ways as possible to integrate your QR code: put it on your marketing materials, on your display panels, with swag—and customize the code to take users to a landing page designed for event attendees, one which provides details about your business and includes a form for you to generate new leads.
2. As a Link to Video Demonstrations
   A QR code can bring users to a video demonstration of your product or services, something that would be hard to share in typical person-to-person interactions.
3. On Business Cards
   Easily share contact info through a QR code on the back of your business card. “Business cards are the simplest means of passing on your contact information, but including any sort of advertising makes them look cluttered,” says Martine Hunter of the Distributed Marketing Blog. “Instead, add QR codes that have promotional material already on them.”
4. On Company Logos
   According to Entrepreneur Community Online, “Essentially anywhere you display your company logo (business card, building, booth, stationery, etc.) should/will have a QR code so the user can find out more about your business/product.”
5. In Catalogs
   QR codes give you a way to make catalog and magazine ads interactive. “Imagine someone flipping through a print item, seeing a QR code, scanning it, and then learning more about your company,” says NotixTech. “[QR codes allow you to] Link to case studies, white papers, installation guides, specific tools, video media, and more. Connect the offline with the online.”
6. To Gather Opinions
   IT superstore Best Buy used QR codes last year to gather information about employee satisfaction. Through a campaign focused on mood-sampling codes, the major retailer asked employees on any given day to scan in a “good” or “bad feeling. The information then informed Best Buy about which stores had the highest employee satisfaction overall.
7. In Magazines and Newspapers
   Strategically using QR codes can be a powerful way to engage readers beyond print advertisements. According to Rachel Sprung of HubSpot, “When people see advertisements in newspapers, magazines, or signage, they often ignore them, but with a QR code, many people become interested in what other information it leads to.”
8. In Mailings
   QR codes make it possible to add all the multimedia resources you want to postcards, direct mail campaigns or other mailings—making these materials more impactful as they communicate a more in-depth message.
9. In Product Packaging
   QR codes in product packaging can link to relevant resources like product information, support, instructional installation videos and more.
10. On Handouts
    When was the last time you attended a lecture or workshop and remembered everything you heard? Make it easier for the people who listen to you speak by distributing handouts with simple highlights of your message—and a QR code that links to the full content, which they can view as they like.
11. On Trucks
    Follow the example of one electrical service supplier to commercial businesses, William Dyer Electrical UK Ltd, which took an interesting approach to using QR codes: print codes on your business vans and trucks to draw the public to your website.
12. For Contest Promotion
    Take a page from Conde-Nast’s Glamour Magazine, who used QR codes for promotions in its September 2011 issue. Your company could allow users to instantly enter a Facebook or other contest via QR codes or include contest QR codes in mailings or magazines.
13. In Troubleshooting Guides
    Amplify the support you can offer clients by filling your troubleshooting guide with QR codes that point to how-to videos on dealing with common problems.

Straight North is a full service Internet marketing firm specializing in B2B. Our clients work in a variety of niches, including Chicago electrical contractors and custom molded thermoplastics.

PPC Tips and Techniques

This is a big mistake. Landing pages do a much better job of converting than regular web pages. Reason being, web pages are shotguns with many objectives: to inform, to impress, to engage, to encourage exploration, to sell. In contrast, landing pages are laser guns with one objective: to turn clicks into customers.

Characteristics of a Landing Page

Landing page design is a marketing sub-specialty that many firms don’t even know exists. At the end I’ve linked to posts that delve into it for people who are curious to learn more about it. In brief, a well-designed landing page will:

• Be 100% relevant to the text of the PPC ad.
• Include one or two powerful images that capture attention
• Provide enough information for the prospect to be confident about taking the next step.
• Display a primary call to action that is clear and compelling.
• Display a secondary call to action that is clear, compelling, and always easy to say yes to.
• Organize the information in a way that makes it super easy for the prospect to scan and understand.

Sometimes landing pages contain additional elements, such as testimonials, customer logos or certification emblems, to establish credibility and trust. Sometimes landing pages use long copy, which is useful when the item being sold is unfamiliar or complex. Other times landing pages use short copy, which usually works better when the item being sold is familiar or simple to grasp.

What landing pages typically do not contain:

• Links to external pages (they take prospects away from the pitch)
• Detailed information about the company (it blunts the focus of the pitch)

These last two things sometimes trip companies up, as they have a tendency to want to throw as much information at visitors as they possibly can. Companies must avoid this temptation in order to maximize PPC results.

The Immense Value of Split Testing Landing Pages

A well managed PPC campaign not only uses landing pages, it systematically split tests landing pages in order to continuously improve conversion rates. It is much easier to test landing pages than standard web pages: a landing page has a singular purpose and traffic comes to the page for the same reason, making it much more of a controlled environment. Many elements of a landing page are routinely tested, including –

• Testing different offers
• Testing different images
• Testing different positioning of calls to action
• Testing different form fields
• Testing different call to action buttons and colors

The challenge (and fun) of testing is trying figure out human behavior. What will make more people say yes to the offer? In our own testing, we are sometimes surprised that changes we expect to have a big impact on conversion have very little, and offhand ideas often produce incredible improvement. The unpredictability of behavior is why testing needs to be ongoing and systematic; otherwise you are just crossing your fingers, which is not a good strategy for an advertising spend!

Learn More about Landing Page Design

Here are six articles that provide great insight on and examples of winning landing pages.

1. 22 Creative Landing Page Designs
2. 20+ Examples of Perfect Landing Page Design
3. Beginner’s Guide to Landing Pages
4. 7 Quick Wins for High Converting PPC Landing Pages
5. Landing Pages for PPC
6. Your Landing Page Sucks! Here Are 10 Examples that Don’t

Example of a Landing Page Template

PPC Landing Page Template (designed by Straight North)

This template uses tabs for extended messaging. Visitors who click on the ad will come to the main tab, which is text-light and image-heavy. This is just one of many design options at your disposal for creating an effective landing page.

Learn more about our PPC management services. We specialize in B2B and have clients in competitive niches such as cheap gloves in bulk and GPS tracking for vehicles.

Learn How Remarketing Works

Say you’re an electronics company trying to boost the sale of flat-screen TVs. Which do you think would be more effective: advertising a “25% Off Televisions” sale to all Web users, anywhere; or, advertising the same “25% Off Televisions” sale only to those users who have clicked through the flat-screen TV page of your website in the last three months?

You guessed it: the latter. And that, in a nutshell, is why you need to know about remarketing.

What is Remarketing?

Simply put, remarketing is Internet advertising to people who have visited your website but haven’t converted. It puts ads in front of unconverted website visitors in order to entice them back to your site to complete some action—be it donating funds, signing up for a membership or finishing a purchase.

How Does Remarketing Work?

What remarketing does is build a relationship with potential clients beyond their initial visits to your site, amplifying their impressions and sense of your brand. Also called retargeting, remarketing gives businesses a way to reconnect with users who came to their site and left without taking action. It targets ads directly to these tagged users, making advertising highly relevant and potentially more effective.  And because it’s specially targeted to people more likely to be converted, remarketing has great potential to not only make your advertising more noticed but also more effective—increasing conversions and boosting business.

Here’s how it works: A consumer comes to your site and his or her browser gets tagged —- which just means that the small text files known as cookies, specific to each particular computer, get added to your advertising list. As the individual continues surfing the web, clicking on various sites, your ads get displayed on their particular browser. Your ads are only shown to these consumers who have visited your site, which means you’re only advertising to people who already have some interest in your company, and the user is seeing ads for products and companies relevant to their interests. So essentially, remarketing targets relevant consumers and reinforces their exposure to your site.

When an article about remarketing was published last year in The New York Times, this advertising tool was already being used by retailers such as Art.com, B&H Photo, Diapers.com, eBags.com and the Discovery Channel store, with ads frequently appearing on major sites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace or Realtor.com.

“The overwhelming response has been positive,” Aaron Magness, senior director for brand marketing and business development at Zappos, a unit of Amazon.com, had said in that article.

Today, remarketing as an advertising tool is being utilized by brands as big as Google, which has integrated remarketing into its Adwords Program as an additional resource for its users. Remarketing has the potential to streamline advertising efforts, increase a company’s return on investment and improve overall marketing results by customizing audiences and targeting ads.

Example of Remarketing at Work:

Think of this scenario: Midwesterners looking for a ski weekend in Geneva, Wisconsin, visit the site of a popular Geneva hotel, browsing through its page of room rates. Some visitors leave without booking any accommodations. If the hotel decides to use remarketing, it targets those unconverted consumers by adding them to a browser list and then relevant ads, say offering discounted rates, are displayed to those users as they continue surfing online. This gives the hotel the opportunity to build a relationship with these potential guests, reaching out to them with a clear call to action or special offer that might entice them to make a purchase.

How Does Remarketing Compare with Traditional Paid Search Advertising?

Remarketing is a form of Internet-based advertising, as is traditional paid search advertising. Both display ads to targeted web users. But while remarketing targets users who have already visited a site, traditional paid search advertising targets users in order to get them to come to a site.

Paid search advertising works like this: A company selects key search terms related to its business — for a bank in Naperville, Illinois, that could be “Naperville bank” or “Southwest Chicago bank” or “Chicago community banking,” for example — and when web users, from any location and any computer, search for those terms, the bank’s advertisements appear. Search advertising is designed to focus on attracting interested consumers to your site, right when they’re already hunting online for services you offer. It’s made to increase awareness of your brand and extend your user reach.

But while search advertising is about getting interested customers to come to your site; remarketing is about reaching out to customers who have already come to your site so you can find a way to close to deal with them.

Are There Downsides to Remarketing? What are the Pitfalls?

As powerful and effective as remarketing can be, it is not without its disadvantages. The fact is, not all web users can be won back through repeated exposure to ads about your site — some may have come to your site by accident or were never interested. And some, when they start seeing ads targeted to their viewing history, might even be upset.

The New York Times article on remarketing told of the reaction from Montreal blogger Julie Matlin, for example, who, after noticing several targeted ads on her browser, began getting promotions for a dieting program she’d once used: “They are still following me around,” Matlin said. “And it makes me feel fat.”

To some consumers like Matlin, remarketing can feel like an invasion of privacy—as if companies are watching over their shoulders without their permission. In response to the phenomenon, there’s even a Facebook group called “Stop the Creepy Targeted Ads,” which was formed, as it says in its online description, as a statement of how “it’s a little bit creepy how well [advertisers] know us.”

Google has responded to these concerns with its new “transparency” feature, which gives consumers an explanation of why they’re seeing certain ads, believing that when individuals know ads are being catered to them for their own good, they’ll be less likely to feel uncomfortable.

Other consumers aware of what retargeting does actually notice benefits. Take Libby Jacobson, of the Independent Women’s Forum, for example, who recently pointed out what she likes about ad targeting: “[R]ather than seeing ads for ‘Hot single women in your area’ or links for other male-centric websites like AskMen (where I can learn how to tell if my boyfriend thinks I’m too fat), I’ll instead see ads for clothing from a shop I frequently buy from.” This kind of targeting, Jacobson notes, is not only helpful but also smart business—no different than the fact that there are usually beer commercials during the Superbowl. It’s a simple case of advertising to those who are interested.

Remarketing: The Bottom Line

With its ability to target unconverted web visitors for companies, remarketing has been shown to deliver strong results, even boosting conversions by 50% or more. That makes remarketing even more than a second chance to sell—it makes it a powerful tool for increasing business.

Learn more about our remarketing services. We specialize in B2B, with clients in many niches, from merchant credit card processors for gas stations to web design widgets for podiatrists

Here are a few of my favorite Microsoft Word tools that can make a writer’s life so much easier!

1. Customized Default Font. If you’re like me, you gravitate towards certain fonts when you’re writing—maybe the font your website already appears in, maybe a font that adds serifs to pull the eye across the page. For months I manually changed the document font each time I began a project, but now I don’t have to. Through MS Word’s default font feature, I programmed my favorite font, size and color to be the standard option.
   HOW: Click “font” on the top menu bar and adjust the settings to your preference, and then click the “default” button to set it as the standard and clikc “OK.”
2. Split View. Ever get tired of scrolling back and forth between sections in your writing that are related or in some way reference one another? With Word’s split bar, you can view two parts of a complex document at one time, making it easy to copy and edit what you need.
   HOW: Rest the mouse’s arrow pointer on the split bar at the top vertical scroll bar until it turns into the “split bar” icon and drag it to the position you want. When you want to return to a single window, double-click the split bar.
3. Selective Word Count. When you need to have a certain number of words or characters in a section of your writing—say, the header or a certain paragraph—selective word count gives you the ability to count them.
   HOW: Highlight the content you want to count, click “tools” on the top menu bar and select “word count.”
4. Readability Evaluation. Word’s grammar tool gives you a way to measure the readability level of your writing, using two of the world’s most common metrics. It shows you how many passive sentences there are, what grade level the writing is at and, essentially, how easy or difficult your writing would be to understand.
   HOW: Click “tools” on the top menu bar and select “spelling and grammar” tab. If readability stats do not immediately display, click “options” and check the box that says to show readability stats.
5. Instant Auto Correct. The beauty of Auto Correct is that it can be customized—designed to automatically and instantly pick up words you frequently get stuck on or trip over, and to change them to what you like.
   HOW: Click “tools” on the top menu bar and click “auto correct.” Check the boxes you wish to utilize and add your commonly misspelled words to the “replace” section, with the words to replace them with in the “with” section.
6. Track Changes. Track Changes is one of Word’s most helpful tools for writers, allowing you to pass your work around to editors, colleagues or collaborators and have them share their responses.
   HOW: From “tools” on the top menu bar, select “track changes” and click “highlight changes.”
7. Protect Track Changes Feature. The only problem with Track Changes is that others can disable the tool, whether on purpose or accidentally, leaving you with a document filled with changes hard to pinpoint. Thankfully, there’s a way to protect it.
   HOW: After enabling Track Changes, select “protect document” from the “tools” menu bar and click for “tracked changes.” If desired, add a password in the corresponding opening, and hit “OK.”
8. Find and Replace. I sporadically used Word’s “find and replace” tool for quite a while before I thought to use it in ways like this: searching “ly” to see how often I use adverbs; spotting repetition of terms like “just,” “going” and “got”; removing words I tend to use too often.
   HOW: Select “edit” on the top menu bar and click “Find…” Simply type in the terms you want to find, and you can manually remove, edit and tweak them as needed.

YOUR TURN: What other tools do you find helpful in Microsoft Word, if you use it? If you use a different processor, why? What are your thoughts?

(Image Credit: © JackF #24185098, Fotolia.)

Straight North is a full service digital marketing agency with clients as diverse as gas station credit card processing in secure environments and a top dentist in New York.