Skiilight Blog
Archive for April, 2008
The importance of your web presence
Would you take the sign off of your front door or over your store front for a year? Of course not, because sales from those walking by would plummet. Internet users are sort of the same way. When browsing the internet, millions of users are “walking by” and looking at what everyone has to offer. Do you really want to miss out on these potential sales?
Long-tail keywords are search engine queries internet user’s perform that are 5 words in length or more. For example, you own a cloud making shop (fake business) in Skytown, Skystate. Let’s say Skytown, Skystate has a population of one million people. Let’s also assume that 20% of the population moves in and around Skytown each year. (Yes, I’m pulling numbers out of nowhere to make a point). So when someone moves and they need to find a new place to make clouds, what do they do? The days of looking through the ad-ridden yellow pages are over, they’re going to sign online and search “Cloud Maker in Skytown, Skystate”, print off contact info and directions to the cloud making store and prepare their order. If each cloud costs $5 and the average cloud buyer purchases 10 clouds, your business could be missing out on 200,000 customers and $1,00,000 dollars in business each year in Skytown!! That doesn’t even include national sales from the national footprint that owning a website provides. This also doesn’t include the other 80% of the web-savvy population in Skytown that spends at least 1 hour on the internet a day. Now the question is, will your company be #1 on those search results for skytown?
Let us help you! Skiilight provides all the services required to make your company’s web presence seen. We provide programming, marketing, design, and many other services businesses like yours need. Send us an email and quit missing out on those customers that are surfing on by to your competitors!
Make Google your slave and the importance of RSS
One of the most important tasks for online developers and marketers is getting your content to the billions of people using the internet. One of the quickest ways of getting new websites online and in search engines is through RSS. I can make a website and have it indexed in the same day! How?? Let me tell you…
Before showing up in search engine results Google must index your site. Some times this takes days, weeks, or even months. I’m going to tell you how I do it in less than 6 hours! Search Engines are constantly battling for the most important/newsworthy/current content. For example, if the sky falls in California, people in West Virginia are going to want to know about it. So they’re going to search a search engine. Now ask yourself, how does Google learn that the sky falls quickly after it happens?
This is achieved through blog aggregators such as ping-o-matic. Let’s use the example of the sky is falling. Let’s say I’m in California and I see the sky start to fall. I text a blog post to my blog “OMG the sky is falling in California, there is no light anymore! I am floating on a cloud.”. My blog makes the post and adds the post to it’s RSS feed. As it’s posting the blog, it also pings a blog aggregator to say “Hey blog guys, I have a new post”. Now Google, being smart like they are, constantly scrapes these blog aggreagators indexing all the posts so that if the sky falls it will show up in their search results.
Now you get it! This will require a bit of programming (as most of my posts do), but once implemented will increase your traffic immensely. This obviously already works for blogs, but what about that new cool site about your computer business that you made? Easy! Make a fake RSS feed with content relating to your site and post the RSS feed to your site’s main directory. After the RSS feed is viewable, either make a php script (effective way) or use Ping O Matic’s manual form to submit your RSS feed. Now let’s wait for Google to come and do our bidding!!
Now that we’ve made Google and all our search engines our slave, how do we verify when they’ve indexed our site? There’s another cool free service out there that does this for you! As you can see, this gets easier and easier! Let’s mosey on over to MyPageRank’s Google bot last access tool and check it out. After filling out the forms, you’ll get the last exact date that Google indexed your website!
Hype-check: Online Applications
In the recent Digital 08 issue of Advertising Age, there was an article handed down from the marketing-pundit heavens delcaring that this is the year the consumer moves their workspace from the offline world to the online world. While its hard to argue that the evolution of working entirely online has been accelerated in recent years, this is not the year for it. Neither is next year.
The article reminded me of the perpetual push for “The Year of Mobile” which has been declared in each of the last 3 years.
Making news this week: Adobe released Photoshop Express which is a photo organizer that helps the user make simple edits like fixing your red eyes in that photo you want as you Facebook profile shot. While it is a great tool for the passive user, the designers of the world will continue to use programs based on their local machines for many years to come simply because the load times for large photos would be ridiculous. Adobe’s strategy here is to gain a foothold on the casual photo manipulator – and no other company is in a position to challenge.
Above: Photoshop Express Screenshot.
While online applications generate huge buzz, they have a long way to go to defeat their offline counterparts. A direct correlation can be drawn between how well a program performs and how long it has been around. Google Docs is a product suite that made waves when it debuted a few years ago. Google has continued to improve its products and the Microsoft haters of the world are quick to leap from their Office suite.
At this point, it is far too hard to move from offline to online applications. Hard drives capable of storing multiple terabytes (thats 1,000 gigabytes), faster than ever processors and slow internet provider upload speeds will hamper the adoption of online applications.
New product designers are doing the right thing by rushing online apps into production, because we know the first product to market has the best chance to hold the lead position for years to come. But let’s cut the hype, this isn’t the year your business moves from offline Office to online Docs.
Enthusiast Marketing Applied: Marketing the New Camaro
I was recently talking shop about automotive marketing, when we started to focus on what promises to be the most exciting thing to hit the domestic auto world in years, the 2009 Chevrolet Camaro. First, some history.
The Camaro’s main competitor has always been the Mustang. The Mustang’s latest design introduction couldn’t have come at a better time for Ford. Gas prices were low and it was the meatiest thing available. Dodge had yet to perk up as a dealer of muscle (they were still coasting on the PT Cruiser and killing the Prowler) which made the new Mustang was the hottest thing available. Ford generated alot of buzz by taking chances and putting great concepts into production (Mustang & GT40) much like the way Dodge came roaring back in the early 00′s – by blowing people’s minds at auto shows and putting production on the fast-track.
With Dodge rebuilding their stable of muscle cars, GM is currently shut out of the scene. The GTO re-introduction was one of the most miserably marketed cars in recent memory. There’s nothing like boring casual interest buyers while simultaneously insulting those passionate about the brand. Did they really think they’d get away with selling an Australian car as a rebirth of one of our first muscle cars?
Today, the playing field is more crowded than ever. Working against GM is the fact that gas is more expensive than ever and EPA estimates are changing soon so they’ll have to actually report that the vehicles in their ads are getting actually only getting 25 mpg instead of 35. With a coming recession, the Camaro may be on the wrong side of the spectrum for most buyers.
GM’s brands have no choice but to deal with the cannibalism of the other auto companies under the General’s hat. Pontiac has the G8, GTO, and Solstice while Saturn has the Solstice’s sister car, the Sky. These are all competing in the same demographic. The Camaro has one thing none of these cars have.
So, that leads us to the public that will accept this new Camaro despite those market conditions and become its early adopters. Enthusiasts.
When you buy a product or service, you want to become an enthusiast. The manufacturer (or supplier) wants to make you an enthusiast. A good example in the automotive world would be Saturn. Saturn made entry-level, some would say “boring” boxcars, but because of the way they built their brand, they convinced their buyers to drive thousands of miles to have a picnic with the corporation and other owners. These events cultivated enthusiasm and created brand ambassadors for Saturn.
Nothing embodies a person’s personality like his or her automobile. If you own a car, you are likely an enthusiast of that car at some level. To market the new Camaro, start with the enthusiasts and then turn the unconverted into an enthusiast.
Lets look at the Pontiac G8. Have you seen any commercials for that car showing groceries going in? Have there been any explaining features? The answer is no. The best commercial for that car (and for my money one of the best auto commercials airing right now) is the “Spy Hunter” G8 commercial. You’ll never dodge bombs dropped by a helicopter in your G8, but it gets you excited doesn’t it? Using a classic video game hits the targeted demographic perfectly. Many of them spent their Saturdays pumping quarters into the arcade.
Which brings us back to the main selling point to potential enthusiasts: emotion. Market the car using emotion, not features. A throaty exhaust hits on an emotional level. There’s no need to even say how large the engine is if you can make the viewer’s heart skip a beat with a simple rev.
Narrowing our target is essential because of the out-of-category auto makers’ stance as industry leaders. Take these examples:
Industry leaders by category
- Safety: Volvo
- Quality: Mercedes Benz or Audi (German Engineering)
- Reliability: Honda or Toyota
- Sustainability (MPG): Honda or Toyota
- Value: Hyundai or Kia
The point I am making is that these brands have spent years honing their position as the leaders of their category. Any other category than perfomance (where the Camaro lives) will be like a chisel to the marble that is the category leader. A tough row to hoe.
Camaro buyers will want and expect a fast, aggressive, escapist car. It will obviously hold a babyseat and groceries. There’s no need to buy commercials showing the Camaro starting when you turn a key, showing that it can drive in the dark or that it will shield you from the weather. Obvious functions of a car. A commercial showing a list of features is just as boring as the above example commercials.
The bottom line is this: an analytical mind already eliminates the Camaro as a choice for his or her automobile. It’s impractical. Chevrolet will and should target the enthusiast using emotional cues.
Thinking about Interactive Voice Response? Think again.
If you’ve ever called a large company for assistance, you’re usually in a jam, with your back against the wall, between a rock and a hard place, etc. Usually you’re really wanting to speak with another human. Unfortunately humans require a pay check every two weeks and computer systems do not.
That being said, today’s customer service experience is a hybrid of computer and human parts – interactive voice response. It combines the best part of humans (the ability to speak) and the worst part (the inability to listen).
Recently I was doing some travelling and I ended up missing a connection. To beat some of the others to the customer service desk, I phoned my airline to see what could be done over the phone. By incorporating IVR, the interactive menus suffered from the inability to differentiate between my voice and busy airport background noise. Maybe I should just buy a Jabra.
IVR is at its best when it works with touch-based menus. Simply offering the choice between the two at the beginning of a phone call would prevent losing your customers in an infinite feedback loop.
What you can do as a consumer:
Christopher Null (Yahoo Tech) has a great entry on getting around IVR. His suggestions include Bringo! and GetHuman.