The Teckki Says

Why do larger companies devote huge resources and budgets to marketing?

They are either trying to protect their turf or gain market share.

Why do smaller companies believe that they can market on shoestring budgets to successfully advertise?

It's all we have.

I think that we were smarter when our enterprises were farming, fishing and hunting. There was an obvious connection between resources and yield. Bigger and better land (or water space) meant more production capability, thus more yield. If you had more land, you could plant more crops, or graze more animals. If you had a bigger boat and net, you could fish deeper into the lake and catch more. In order to obtain more, you clearly had to start with more.

Today's wisdom says that technology can equalize advantages. As a small company, I want to believe that. As one trying to grow larger, I know that this wisdom is flawed.

Web development is rife with marketing magic. Some of the claims of web marketing, with all flash and pizazz are something right out of Hollywood. The problem comes when customers realize that they’ve been to the movies.

I think it is a good time to be realistic about our marketing capabilities and resources, and if we can reach our targets on the cheap. For too long, we have believed that we can look like something we are not, and accomplish things we cannot.

There is a saying that 80% of all advertising dollars are wasted, but no one knows part the 80% is. In understanding this, we have to face up to realizing that if we think it takes "x" dollars to effectively reach our target market, the 80% rule says that we have to spend five times that amount to ensure that we do in fact reach it. For all of those who have tediously crafted their marketing budgets down to the penny, you are going to have to add four more shoestrings.

I'll offer an example to demonstrate proof of this. If you are reading this post, you are one out of every four persons on my email list who have read any part of the email. My stats are slightly higher than the average, but the mix is not always the same. While the percentage of readers remain fairly constant, the fact that you are reading this post doesn’t mean you have read the last issue post, nor guarantees that you will read the next issue’s post. In line with the rule, 75 – 80% of you don't read my newsletters at any given time, and I won't know who has until after I've sent the notices out.

So, make your budgets, set your targets and craft your campaigns. Then multiply the amount of resources you’ll need by five. You may realize that you have to purchase a pair of loafers to go with those shoestrings.

Yes!

You should advertise in a recession.

I know that this is one of the first items to go during a recession. It should actually be one of the last. I know the logic – in a recession, customers aren't buying as much, so why advertise more than you have to?
One answer to that is the other guy’s customers.

You have competition in good times. In bad times, two things are happening. First, someone is going out of business. This is not the case of vultures circling a dead carcass. Some firms will lose customers at a rate that is unsustainable for the business they have built. They will starve at the level they are at. Additionally, they may not be able to downsize fast enough before they starve to death, or figure that if they can't eat at the level they’re used to eating at, then they won't eat at all. This doesn't bode well for the customers left behind. Advertising makes you a potential suitor.

Another reason is that in every recession, organizations make decisions regarding current services and products they use. In many cases, they use less products or different services. In other cases, they change suppliers. Again, you can be the beneficiary.

These things are happening to you and your customers as well. You have to decide how you are going to resize your organization, and if you don't do it well, your suppliers lose a customer. Customers are also deciding whether you are going to be their supplier going forward. This is where you increase your customer service efforts, but that is another article. However, you can do your best and still lose. It won't be your fault, but it will be your problem. You'll have to replace a customer with another customer, and in recessions, they are not sitting on shelves waiting for you to pull out on a rainy day. You're going to need to advertise.

In good times, some of us are too busy to advertise. In recessions, we've got more time than we need to advertise. By then, we do it as a matter of survival. Or, we cut it, hoping to pick it back up during an upswing. If you take that approach, consider something you may have never thought of during your good times.

Organizations go out of business in peak periods, too.

This is a multipart series on websites that will discuss what pages common to many websites should contain. This article discusses the About Page.

In the last blog post, I went over what should go on the home page. To summarize, the Home page is the page that introduces a visitor to your site. It has the primary function of capturing interest and compelling visitors to go further into your site.

The About page, which can include a number of things, such as mission, goals, history, and staff pages, describes who you are to the outside world. It is not the place visitors seek, but it is an important section as visitors who are looking for a closer relationship turn to for assurance that values, philosophies and experiences mesh with theirs.

The About pages are some of the most underrated pages of a website, and I will argue that most organizations under utilize these pages. It's not hard to figure out what these pages display – "This is us, this is our history, these are our values, this is our mission statement and this is our staff". I assert this because just about every website I've done says this, and those whom I've read do the same. The about either gives a historical timeline of birth to now, or staff capabilities and credentials, and vision statements in terms of what the company wants to accomplish. I would also argue that your visitors are greeting this information with a big fat "So what!"

One of the best mission statements I ever read was one from an automotive company that stated from the customer's perspective how she was pleased with the professionalism of service rendered, the quality of the repairs and the price she was charged. She also said that she would recommend her friends. Although websites weren't in use by many businesses back when this statement was developed, this company's "About" page would have revolved around this statement. Would it be easier for someone to identify with a customer-quote-like mission statement, or one of the traditional statements that start with, "We will provide…?"

About pages should be something that the site visitor can relate to. Once someone knows your name and what you do, they want to know who you are. Your about page should say, "I'm like you", or "I'm what you are looking for because you understand who I am," or something that gets a light bulb going that relates back to the visitor.

Your about page is really not about you. It's about getting your visitors to relate to you.

This is a multi-part series on websites that will discuss what pages common to many websites should contain. This article discusses the Home Page.

Although a visitor can enter you website at any page, there are things that make each page what it is. The Home Page is the entry to your website, and it is the most likely page that visitors will enter your site, either directly from the browser, or through a search. Many visitors will click on your logo or home page button after entering your site mainly to see an overall view of who you are.

On the Home Page, visitors aren't looking for introductions as much as they are impressions. If form and fashion are ever in a battle, it is on your home page. This battle only lasts a short while. The "soon after" question is doe this site have what I am looking for.

Visitors no longer surf the web out of novelty. They are looking for something. I recently looked at a clothing catalog, and the impact the cover had was immediate: It had an item of interest to me, and grabbed my attention. While only a picture cover, it said a lot about what was inside. Home Pages work a lot like covers of catalogs, and should perform the following:

• It captured my attention
• It displayed an item I was interested in
• It compelled me to turn the page

I believe that successful websites have home pages that do these things. Many arguments have been made over usability, identity and branding, among other things. However, these play a supporting role to the central theme of satisfying a want or need. Much is also made of information, wording and style. Again, these are important items worthy of a discussion. If you could imagine your refrigerator as a home page, it stores food and drink, assorted across its shelves. Picking the cola over the water says nothing about the salad, but everything about the need to satisfy a thirst.

Depending on what you are presenting, a Home Page should attempt to captivate the imagination. It helps when a visitor thinks that the page represents what they would be doing if they were actually experiencing it. I think that this gets lost in the design phase. If I want to search for a site, I actually see that before I get to the site, and imagine when I find the page it will give me what I want. Home Pages are also good places to present value propositions. Television commercials do it all the time. They present a problem or aspiration. If you identify with it, fine. If not, then the next 25 seconds are spent on another channel.

Think about the commercial – it's the next 25 seconds that presents your options, and invites you to go further. Like the catalog I looked at earlier, the Home Page asks the question. If the answer is no, I move on. If the question is never asked, which happens with a lot of Home Pages, visitors do not vegetate for the next 25 seconds, they move off of the site.
If your Home Page captures a visitor, you will more than likely get well over 25 seconds to make your case with other pages of your website. If not, remember this, unlike the remove, someone’s hand is always on the mouse.

What happens when you perform an online search for something and your results are not quite what you want?

You refine the search with more keywords.

What happens when you still are not satisfied with the results?

You refine the search with additional terms.

What happens after that?

You page through the first two or three pages of results. If it's not too important, you abandon the search.

I believe that all of us have performed searches in the described manner. I'm making a point in terms of keywords. Away from the computer, we tend to think of search in, let's say, "Yellow Pages" terms. Want your drain fixed? Look under "plumbers". Are you hungry? Look under "restaurants". Are you in hot water? Look under "lawyers". End of search.

Online search allows for more. Not only can I look for a restaurant, but I can look for an Asian restaurant, priced between $30 and $50, and located within downtown Chicago. For those who are counting, that’s approximately five search terms. I can’t do this with the phone book without making a couple of calls.

This brings me to Search Engine Optimization, known as SEO. One of the features of SEO is the process of allowing your website to be found more easily by connecting the search terms visitors use to your website. When visitors use these terms, your site, which presumably uses these terms in a germane way, allows it to be found more easily, presumably pushing your page further up the results chain.

This works when your business fits neatly into a one or two word term. Noting my example above, many of our searches no longer yield usable results of a single term or two. Results are now the efforts of phrases. Want an Asian restaurant, type in "Asian Restaurant". Get a jillion restaurants, refine the search with "+Chicago". Oh, still too many results? Go back and add "+price" and "+$$" (rating sites use the dollar signs to indicate price range). I did not get a smaller number of results with this search, but as I added terms, I did get a slightly different mix of results.

As so many of us are using multiple terms to search for a single result, we may want to consider marketing with jingles or slogans. If it takes multiple terms to find what we want, you may need for visitors to sing along during the process. If you think this borders on the silly, enter in the phrase "you deserve a break today" and see what you get.

It happens every time.

I am in the doldrums. I can't see "up", because my hands are in my face. In these times, I'll bet that many of you have experienced this as well. This is one tough recession!

Then it happened.

The phone rang.

It is a prospect inquiring about services. That's my version of "saved by the bell".

Then, I remember the best business advice I ever got.

Hang in there.

When I first heard it, it was in the midst of the last recession, my first. I got this advice when I asked business owners who had been in business close to thirty years – they survived the recession of the early 1980's. I had also asked people who had started their businesses after that period, generally, after the early 1990's. If you remember, that was the longest economic boom in history. In all that time, a generation of businesses that knew nothing but good times faced their first downturn. Many of them did not survive.

Hang in there.

I thought to myself, "Is that all?" It was only three little words! No great pearls of wisdom, no game-changing speeches, no 3, 5, 7 or 10 steps, just three simple words.

Hang in there.

This was shorter than an elevator speech! What could this have possibly meant? I had already asked other businesspeople. Heck, they were asking me for ideas! All I could think is, "That's the best you've got!" These folks had been in business for over 30 years - that's why I asked them!

Hang in there.

I set out to find out what that meant. I did not want to offend those I asked by asking them again. Over the course of time, I discovered what those words meant. You see, they could not tell me how to run my business. Nobody can. What they were saying was find a way to stay in business. Keep the phone on. Be in a position to be contacted. Be in a position to do business with a prospect. In other words, "Hang in there."

When I think that this might be it, that I might be ready to hang up the shingle, the phone rings. This is what I am hanging in there for.

Many of you are reeling. Some of you won't survive. The economy we had will not be the economy we're going to get. Some industries will not come back. I'm not trying to further depress you. I am trying to get you to take a sober look at where you are. Many of you have a lot to offer, but not in industries that are going away. That's like trying to sail a boat in a lake that is going dry. You already know that this lake doesn’t contain all of the world’s water. My advice to you is to do all you can to find water.

And, hang in there.