It’s no secret that satisfied customers bring you more sales, while unhappy customers can prevent sales. People who feel strongly about a service they receíved or a product they purchased are likely to tell others about their experience.

Before the internet, this effect was limited to word of mouth. A customer could tell his family, friends and co-workers about his great or terrible experience with your company. It took some effort on the customer’s part to get the word out, though, and many of them wouldn’t take the time. Very few of them took the time to write a letter to the business or even tell friends about it more than a few days after their interaction with a business. Only if they were extremely pleased or displeased would the word get out.

The growth of the internet has made it much easier to praise or complain about a company in a public place. There are many online directories that allow anyone to post a comment about a business. Not only does this allow a customer to make their opinion of your products and services known to many more people, it also opens the door to abuse. Business owners pretending to be customers can post positive reviews. Disgruntled employees can post negative reviews. There is no verification that the information posted is true.

All of those reviews are about to become ten times more visible to potential customers who are looking for a local business. Google Places, formerly Google Local Business Listings, has displayed reviews entered by users on their site and a number of other directories. Now Google is integrating information from the Google Places listing into the organic search. That’s right. You’ve worked hard to make sure that you are one of the first few listings that shows up when customers are looking for the services you provide in your area. Now, right next to the organic listing is a link to customer reviews. Immediately below your URL is your address and phone number from your Google Places listing. Often a snippet of a review is there too. If this happens to be a negative review, the potential customer will almost certainly click on a different listing. It’s the online equivalent of someone standing in front of your business with a sign telling people not to shop there.

What can you do about it? Google won’t remóve a negative review just because you ask them to. And they won’t take the time to find out whether the information is accurate. You must encourage positive reviews and address negative ones – with the customer and/or online.

Encourage Good Reviews

If there are more positive reviews than negative, there’s a better chance that a review that shows within the body of your listing will be good. Also, if a customer takes the time to look at several reviews, they may be swayed by the happy customers. You could encourage all of your customers to write an online review, but that will result in more negative reviews as well as positive. How can you approach only the satisfied customers with a request for an online review? Here are a few ideas.

Many businesses already have a system in place to solicit customer feedback, often in the form of a telephone follow-up or written questionnaire. You could sort out those who have responded favorably and send them a request for an online review. If your request is in the form of an email, you could provide links to your business’s listings on various sites that accept user reviews. You could provide something to your customer in return for taking the time to post a review. A free ice cream, 10% off their next purchase from you, or some other prize could entice them to make the effort and make them feel good about your business at the same time.

Address Damaging Reviews

If you can contact the unhappy customer and solve whatever problem he had, he may be willing to remove the negative review. Whether or not you think his complaint is valid, it’s in your best interest to fix it. This may cost you money, but not doing so could cost you even more. Think about how much you spend to bring in new customers. Don’t let a relatively small amount of money get in your way, even if the customer is wrong and you’re right.

Sometimes it will be impossible to get the customer to rescind his post. You can still mitigate the damage by responding to the complaint online. Post yóur own comment explaining the situation or apologizing to the reviewer and stating your offer to fix the problem. If a potential customer takes the time to read the whole story, they’ll see that you are trying to make your customers happy.

Occasionally, a review will violate the terms established by the review site, for example using foul language. If this is the case, you can flag the review and it may be removed.

Other Tips

Don’t enter multiple positive reviews yourself. Online directories try to prevent fraudulent reviews because they make their site less useful to their visitors.

Google Places displays reviews from sites such as Insider Pages and Yelp, as well as reviews posted directly to Google. If you ask your customers for positive reviews, give them links to a variety of review sites. It will look more natural if reviews come from more than one site.

It has always been important for a business to cultivate a good reputation, but not ever before has a dissatisfied customer been able to reach the public right alongside your advertisement. More and more consumers are bypassing the yellow pages and turning to their favorite search engine to find a business instead. You can no longer afford not to know what reviews are out there or to ignore dissatisfied customers. They have more power than ever before.

Soft-sell marketing is a subtle yet persuasive, low-pressure method of selling your products or services. The basic premise of soft selling is that your focus is on developing relationships instead of aggressively pitching your wares from the moment (or even before) you’re introduced to your prospect.

Once you have started to create a real relationship, and you have learned about what he/she needs AND it jives with what you’re selling, you can suggest your solution. It’s less forced, more natural and conversational. It can also be more effective because you’ve taken the time to form a connection before giving a sales pitch.

Here are some tips to help you soft sell for improved results.

Believe In It – Make sure you are trying to sell something you truly care about. Passion can be infectious, especially when it comes to soft selling.

Relaxed Networking – Try to network with the main purpose of forming relationships, nothing else. This is also a great way to remove some of the “networking pressure.”

Build Relationships – Make relationship marketing the foundation of your marketing activities, so your relationship focus goes through all elements of your business.

Open Networking – Be open to networking with everyone, even those outside of your defined target. If your focus is on relationships first, you never know when a connection will turn into a business relationship.

White Glove Treatment – Treat your existing clients like gold to set the stage for referrals that support your soft selling approach.

Make It Emotional – Try storytelling to appeal to your prospect’s emotions, make yourself more memorable and share a personal anecdote.

Give It Away – Share valuable information for free, no strings attached. Try sponsoring teleconferences, webinars and other open-to-the-public events that teach first, sell later (if at all).

A Quiet Approach – Use a gentle call to action when you do make a pitch that’s passive, non-aggressive and conversational.

Subliminal Branding – Create meaningful customer touchpoints that are effective without being “in your face”.

Do Your Research – Get to know as much as you can about the prospect and their needs. This will not only strengthen your relationship, but it will help you determine if your product/service is appropriate for him/her.

Join Forces – Be open to collaborating for the networking and learning benefits, even if there is not a guaranteed financial gain.

Open the Door – Provide access to your marketing information but let your prospects digest it on their own.

If you struggle with the marketing side of business and feel uncomfortable when it comes to sales, soft-sell marketing can be a great way for you to overcome that hurdle and adopt a sales technique that’s within your comfort zone.

Do you use soft selling in your marketing activities?

It seems like Facebook is controlling more and more of users’ online time, and that doesn’t appear to be on pace to change anytime soon. Facebook is already on the path to controlling more content, online retail, and online identification, and who knows what all announcements we’ll see come out of the company’s F8 developer conference this week? To what extent Facebook will dominate these aspects of our web use (it’s grown a great deal in search too by the way) is yet to be seen, but the point is, Facebook is giving users a lot more reasons to use it, and in some cases it’s not really even a conscious decision. See the recent South Park episode for a good illustration about how Facebook continues to suck more people in. Facebook is where the people are online.

We’ve written several times recently about Facebook’s role in e-commerce. WebProNews spoke with Christian Taylor CEO of Payvment, which has been offering a Facebook storefront application to retailers since the beginning of November, and is now giving them a way to get people more interested in buying from them. It’s simple really – if a Facebook user comes across one of the retailers utilizing Payvment, they will be able to get discounts on merchandise for becoming a fan. That ought to drive some interest in Facebook e-commerce and user engagement with retail brands.

“As Facebook’s F8 conference approaches, many companies still wonder how they can transform Facebook from a “soft” relationship and marketing tool to something that will actually have an effect on their company’s bottom line. ; For the first time, this new e-commerce solution will allow that to happen,” Pavyment says.
First, it’s important to understand how Payvment’s Facebook storefront app works. Unlike some of the other Facebook e-commerce apps out there, Payvment:

A. Doesn’t take users away from Facebook, and lets them pay via PayPal or credit card through PayPal (most likely Facebook credits as well before long)

B. Is completely free (in fact, Taylor tells me “it will always be free no matter what happens.”)

C. Acts as a network of retailers from which customers can make multiple purchases across, all in one checkout process (money is then divided up among the retailers on the back-end)

D. Provides users with a way to discover additional retailers on Facebook as each retailer’s page provides a gateway to additional brand pages for shopping.

Now back to that new incentive feature. A retailer using Payvment can go in and simply set a certain percentage they want to offer as a discount in exchange for the user becoming a fan of the page. Here’s what a page utilizing the platform might look like to a fan and to a non-fan, respectively:

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I raised the point that when a Facebook user “fans” a brand, Facebook automatically alerts that user’s friends that they have become a fan of said brand. I wondered if that might be looked upon as something of an endorsement, and if a fan is getting an incentive in the form of a discount to for being a “fan” of that brand, how would the FTC view that in light of its much-publicized guidelines on endorsements?

Taylor made the point that Payvment and its retailers aren’t actually giving the user gifts or paying them anything. They’re just taking money off for becoming a fan. He equates it to becoming a member of a club or joining a mailing list. Mailing lists don’t alert all of the friends of the person who signs up that they are fans, however. Taylor maintains that Payvment does not create such alerts, implying that this would be more on Facebook to address, if it were considered an issue at all. As we see more Facebook e-commerce platforms become available as I’m sure we will, and others copy this strategy (which also seems likely), this may indeed become something Facebook would want to address.

Either way, Payvment has a pretty interesting concept on its hands. “While Facebook has become an excellent platform to build or strengthen brand awareness and communities, companies and their enthusiastic fans have been unable to take that final step between being a fan and being a buyer,” says Taylor.

The new version of Payvment’s Facebook e-commerce application lets Facebook users add comments and reviews to Payvment-enabled storefronts. The feature includes spam protection, so sellers can control inappropriate content in the comment and review section of their storefront.

Due to Facebook’s terms of use, Payvment users are not permitted to sell questionable content, alcoholic beverages, tobacco product, ammunition/firearms, items that promote hate, criminal/terrorist activities, or items that infringe upon the rights of a third party.

On a related note, Facebook recently partnered with two offer providers so users can earn Credits without having to pay directly. As InsideFacebook’s Eric Eldon noted, “For users, this means another way to get Credits without paying — this may increase spending on Credits for social games and other applications on Facebook.” (emphasis added)

Taylor expects a lot of talk about Facebook Credits to come out of Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference this week, and he said that Payvment would definitely integrate Credits into its system.

Whether you are going to use an app like Payvment or not, it shows you that monetizing Facebook fans can be done, and if social media ROI is one of your concerns, here is a good example to look at. Again, I would expect this kind of thing to become more commonplace within the Facebook ecosystem, which is growing across the web in general.

Author: Chris Crum

Not so long ago, the relationship that brands had with their customers was a one-way street. The brand was the boss. They told their customers what to like and how to like it. The only say the customer had was the decision to buy. This is no longer the case. Customers are very publicly talking back and it is making the management teams of some brands very nervous. Web-based social networking platforms give customers power not seen before. Now one voice can be heard by thousands of people. Brands need to learn to deal with this evolution, so here is a primer.

First, some background on how the internet has altered consumer behaviour. The internet, and particularly the rise of social media, has allowed people with similar interests to connect. This becomes obvious when one trawls through Twitter, where the common social network model of simply connecting with people you know tends to give way to people connecting in groups according to interest. Indeed, people interested in any topic imaginable from all areas of the world are connecting. It’s like subject-based forums on steroids. People are forming tribes.

Humans have always formed tribes. Religion, family, sports and fashion are all examples of tribal behaviour. The difference now is that any interest group can form a tribe almost instantly. Social media has allowed any fringe idea to become the basis of a tribe and a movement. People want desperately to be connected, but, even more importantly, they want to be led. We are in a time of massive change, which is driven by everybody’s desire to do things in a new way and to be heard.

Barack Obama’s recent landslide victory is a good example of this. He promised change, he communicated differently and led with integrity. He connected to his audience through social media. He started a movement, formed a tribe and then he and his followers charged to victory. What the world discovered is that you can now make an ad campaign as slick as you want, but if the product is poor then it simply doesn’t matter.

So “advertising is dead” in the sense the old methods don’t work the same way they used to. Obama’s opponents didn’t fully understand the impact that social networking has had on society. They continued to use the old and trusted methods of marketing. These transparent methods are diminishing in influence as social networking begins to infiltrate every media touch-point. In two recent articles I wrote for Anthill I talked about how this is already happening to television and how the newspaper industry needs to change to avoid becoming irrelevant.

Social media is much more than a passing phase. Human civilisation is built around social interaction. It’s what the people want and this new media is only going to get bigger. It will eventually become part of everything. Individual social media companies might fade away (MySpace seems to be in that category) as better designed products come onto the market, but the world has spoken and it wants to be connected. Brands that don’t adapt to this reality will be left behind. They will become the guy at the party that no one wants to sit next to because he just keeps talking about himself.

Tribal Behaviour

Blogs have become socially and commercially influential. From what started out as individuals chatting on about their lives, blogs have become business tools and revenue producing ventures. They influence groups, buying patterns and fashion. They are modern tribal leaders.

Not so long ago commentators speculated that blogging was simply a passing fad. What these commentators didn’t realise was that it was yet to achieve maturation and once it had it would signal big trouble for the large media organisations. Now anyone with a camera or a desire to write is ‘the press’. This pattern is being repeated for micro-blogging, a category in which Twitter is the current market leader. Some commentators question the relevance of utilising Twitter to listen to people “drone on about their lives”. But Twitter, and other micro-blogs, are in the early stages of their development. They too will mature, most probably much quicker than the original blogs, and enable much bigger tribes to develop around even more specific subject matter.

The tribal leaders of these new social media can be reached and persuaded to support you, no matter what platform they decide to use. Unlike the old ‘one way’ approach however, they need to be interacted with on their own terms. Provided they have a group of true fans, they can influence hundreds of thousands of people – in a matter of hours. This is what gives them such power.

And this is what marketers in the current environment have to understand. The ‘mass-market’ model is on the decline. What is needed now is a pattern of marketing to the ‘early adopters’ – the ones at the front of the bell curve who have a true interest in what you have to provide – and form a base of evangelists that will market for you. You no longer have to aim to connect with everybody. This really leaves the field wide open for the smaller brands to break through – the ones willing to challenge.

The Age of the Challenger

In marketing speak, a ‘challenger brand’ is code for ‘the small brand’. A challenger brand is one that is meant to be fast, flexible and innovative in its communications. But in my view the word ‘challenger’ should instead be short-hand for ‘emerging leader’.

Emerging leaders challenge the status quo, they challenge themselves and they connect with others who have similar ideas – those people who need a leader to show what to do and inspire them. The market leader wants the status quo to remain just that. They want to speak and be heard in a mass market. No discussion thanks. The challenger realises that, in order to create a movement there needs to be systems in place for everybody in that tribe to be heard, and they commit to leading that tribe with everything they’ve got.

Traditional advertising is not about interaction with the individual. It is predominately a one-way conversation to a mass audience. But no one likes to be forced into making decisions. This is why the traditional advertising model is beginning to fail. It relies on mass media, and this media is itself being transformed by social networks.

What can Social Networking do for Your Brand?

All of this may sound a bit scary for brand managers. It’s true that it does take time and effort to build a community. And to be truly effective, you have to obey some rules. Even so, it is not a hard thing to do. It takes far more time and resources to build that fan base with traditional advertising. Be honest, be helpful and contribute to the community and you’ll get supporters fast.

Social networking is far more than having a Facebook profile. It is any platform that gives the end user an ability to contribute. Many companies have realised that developing an internal social media platform can aid in communication but have yet to work out how it can help shape their brand personality

Getting traffic to your website is hard work and can be expensive. So it’s cost-effective to get repeat visitors not only first time visitors.

Getting repeat visitors is all about giving value to your visitors. You need to give them what they ask for, what they are searching for, and then dazzle them when they get to you. That way, they will come back for more time and again.

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So how can you please your visitors so they return to your site?

Here are my top ten suggestions. Some of these overlap with how to encourage visitors to tell others about your site, so increasing your traffic that way too through viral networking.

1. Keep your site fresh.
Update the content on your frequently. Dormant sites are dropped by some search engines as well, which will reduce all your traffic anyhow.

2. Offer extra value to your visitors.
You can identify related complementary sites and put links to these additional products and services. Ask those sites to do the same for you.

It won’t necessarily increase your page rank but it does add value to your human visitors. You can also advertise books and videos that relate to your business and are not in competition with your own offers.

3. Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your site.
Offer a free report or video training or to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite visitors to ‘opt in’ to get a monthly newsletter or valuable coupons.

4. Add a link to your primary page for a RSS feed or other social bookmarking links so they can get updates automatically. Suggest they ‘Add this site to your Favorites’.

5. Add a link ‘Recommend this site to a Friend’ so that the visitor can email your website link, with a prewritten title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.

This expands your traffic as others share your site info with their network of contacts.

6. Brand your website with a friendly, attractive scheme, so that visitors always recognise when they are on your site’s pages. Use a clear logo and consistent ‘look and feel’. Always include a ‘Contact Us’ link in your navigation bar.

7. Create a ‘Terms and Conditions’ page that clearly defines your business principles. Have a privacy policy too, so visitors know what happens to their data on your site and that they are secure from spam when they opt-in.

8. Create a Frequently Asked Questions page which answers most of the concerns about your business, product or services that people generally ask.

This helps to allay the main doubts people have when they first visit your website.

9. Use clear titles and keywords and a clear navigation so that your visitors can find their way back to your site if they lose their bookmark.

10. Never spam a visitor, who has opted for newsletters with third party emails. If they decide to unsubscribe, make sure you honor their request and take them off your broadcast list and any autoresponder series.

They may still come back if they like your products and opt in again, perhaps if there’s a different offer from time to time.

Author: Jay Allyson

Building a great landing page should be on top of your priority list if you want your website visitors transformed into customers.

While a great looking website can grab the attention of your visitors, a strong landing page will keep them involved and get them to buy your products/services.

Wikipedia defines a landing page as:

The page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.

Wikipedia’s definition sums it up nicely but there is certainly more to a great landing page then relevant and keyword rich content. Here’s 10 things that you should be looking at when optimizing a landing page:

- Relevant Content

A landing page’s content should be directly related to organic search results, PPC campaign, anchor text in inbound links and any other targeted inbound advertising, online and offline. If people don’t get what they expect, they will be more likely to leave.

- Multiple Landing Pages

A landing page shouldn’t necessarily be your homepage. In many instances a homepage is a good landing page. However, for more targeted traffic and better results, you want a landing page to be focused on specific offer and specific call for action. To accomplish this, a given website should have multiple landing pages. Create some deep link landing pages that will focus on specific offer and your conversion rate will be higher.

- Focus on Functionality

More and more visitors seem to judge the professionalism and credibility of a site by its design. To satisfy this, many website owners concentrate on the design aspect instead of focusing on its functionality. A well-designed landing page is essentially worthless if the prospect can’t accomplish anything. While I wouldn’t suggest skimping on the design, it shouldn’t be your priority. Focus on the exact steps you want your visitor to take and design a page with that in mind.

- Call To Action

You got visitors to your landing page, now direct them to take action. Make it clear and highly noticeable without overwhelming your audience. Whether it’s a sign-up form or a “buy now” button, make it the focus of your page.

- Send a Clear Message

Keep your landing page clean and clutter free so your visitors stay focused on your message. Emphasize the biggest reasons that they should carry out the applicable call to action with larger text, contrasting colors, images. Make it easier for them to scan the content by using lists and getting right to the point.

- Offer Incentive

Bribing your visitors with freebies and samples is a proven method of enticing them to sign up. Offer more than your competition but don’t sell yourself short either. Provide a list of reasons why your offer is better and what exactly the visitor can expect. Provide references and testimonials.

- Make Visitors Stay

Avoid sending your visitors to another page unless it is absolutely necessary. That includes any internal navigation as well as external banners. If you remove all distractions and limit navigation options, you stand a better chance of keeping your visitors around.

- Simple is Better

Make it easy for your visitors to complete the action you want them to. Less confusion and decision making for your visitor means better conversions rate for your landing page. Don’t offer multiple choices and throw in optional extras. Focus on the offer the page was created for.

- Power of Freebies

Everyone likes free offers. They are hard to resist and can be a powerful conversion tool. Whether a call to action is free or something free is received as a result of carrying out a call to action, it certainly doesn’t hurt. If your competition charges for something and you offer it for free, you’ll win the customer. Remember, just because you make a free offer doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be quality.

- Testing

In a recent post “How to Turn Website Visitors into Buyers”, I’ve stressed how important testing is in finding out what your visitors like. Testing various text, call to action forms, layouts will give you true idea what produces the best results as far as conversion.

Using a tool like Google’s Website Optimizer you can easily monitor the conversion rate, bounce rate, and tons of other useful metrics found in most modern day web analytics apps. Using these metrics you can easily figure out which version will be your optimal page, one that maximizes the results.

Creating a successful and effective landing page takes a lot of work but should be the focus for anyone involved with a website. Whether you are a website owner, web designer, web developer or a web marketing specialist you must be aware of the components that comprise a solid landing page. After all this can mean website’s success or failure.

Author: Joanna Colek