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Blogging for Black Friday – Turn your Black Friday Green

Although 2009 is a difficult year for making new sales, what opportunities there are may appear the Friday following the Thanksgiving Holiday.  This day marks the single best opportunity to attract customers prepared to purchase.  How do you access customers who are ready to buy?  Of course appearing highly ranked on a search engine result is extremely important. Studies have shown that up to 80% of all consumers considering a big-ticket purchase, will research that purchase on line prior to visiting a store or making the purchase. 

Customers want a slightly different shopping experience during the holidays.  For some, the excitement of visiting shopping mall is worth the effort and outweighs the inconvenience of dealing with large crowds.  Others prefer watching football at home and doing their shopping on line.  The key to making ‘Black Friday’ work for your business is to present quality products or services to the customer at the time the customer is looking to buy. 

There are three considerations then to Black Friday marketing.  These aren’t much different from marketing themes throughout the year, but there are a couple twists worth discussing.   So before examining how these considerations should impact your business blog, take a moment to review them.  The main considerations are:

• Understanding what the customer wants
• Offering Immediate Value (adjusted for seasonal impact)
• Deliver (make sure you have inventory and availability to meet demands)

Customer Desires:
Understanding what the customer is really seeking requires examination of your customer base with special attention to changes in past buyer behavior during the Christmas shopping season.  Some shoppers who would never venture to a major shopping mall during the year enjoy the color and excitement of the Christmas season.  These folks are willing to fight for a parking place once a year to hit the mall.  Here, the shopper is after the excitement of the experience – not necessarily a specific product or deal.

Identifying exactly what customers want is frequently ‘guesswork’ though.  Some businesses work for years to find the right formula for attracting customers during the holiday shopping spree.  Free cookies or cider attract families with kids, a holiday sale tradition might bring in those that fancy themselves to be “king bargain hunters.”    What works throughout the year may not work as well during the holidays, though, so keep in mind what changes occur in your customer base during this time. 

Value:
Of course this is a ‘no brainer.’  Without significant value either in the product or service element, it will be difficult to convert a prospect into a customer.  The perceived value may change through the holidays though along with changing customer behavior.  Understand the value you offer in the context of the Christmas shopping season.

This offers an interesting challenge for service industries and b2b organizations.  Salespeople working the insurance industry are challenged by lower customer cash-availability.  Prospects may be less likely to make a purchase of a common good, choosing instead to use their disposable income on holiday shopping.  Service and support industries that can identify unique customer needs to serve during the six weeks or so between Thanksgiving and the new year can keep their sales moving.

Delivery:
This also is a ‘no brainer.’  Once you make a sale, ensure that the customer is happy afterwards.  And be prepared to tell customers how you will keep them happy after the purchase.  Also, make sure you have the service capacity or a plan to meet all sales requests.  Nothing is worse than luring a customer to your place of business and being unable to serve her/him for a period of weeks.  Holiday shoppers want immediate value – not a promise of value later.

So after considering these elements, what now?  By converting these into blog posts about your product or service, you can reach out to potential customers in the context of the holiday season.  Here are three tips that might set your organization up for good ‘Black Friday’ business.

• Compose and release blog post on Tuesday and Wednesday of Thanksgiving week.
• Blog on other sites about it Tuesday and Wednesday
• Carefully target each composition with title and headline tags

Posting your article or statement of value to the blog on Tuesday allows the search engines to read fresh content in time for Wednesday and Thursday of Thanksgiving week.  Having a fresh message to customers in place elevates the chance that search engines will pick up your post when shoppers are planning their Friday excursions.

Once posted, set back links by blogging other sites on the Tuesday and Wednesday of Thanksgiving week to strengthen your overall web presence.  These changes and improvements will be noticed and should improve your traffic.

When composing your article, carefully include keywords and phrases within the title of your post.  This is a common rule, but for this season, considers something like “After Thanksgiving Sale in Spokane.”  This will make the article currently relevant and users searching for Thanksgiving sales in Spokane will be more likely to see your page.

In the end, marketing via the internet simply requires acknowledgement of the traditions and consumer behavior surrounding the holiday season.    Carefully compose your message to work with these traditions using your business blog and you could develop your page into a powerful sales tool.

SEO Consultants of Denver is currently setting up its blogroll of SEO Experts, SEM Consultants and Small Business Marketing enterprises.  If you would like to be included, please click the ‘Contact Us’ tab and provide your website or blog information. 

SEO Consultants of Denver has also converted its blog to a ‘Do Follow’ format to provide a little additional strength to listed links. 
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Setting up the Blogroll – Benefits and Techniques

Connections with others via a blogroll in your industry niche are very important not only in building website traffic, but in establishing your on-line leadership reputation.  The blogroll is also an important part of a link-building campaign as you can offer a ‘hard’ or semi-permanent link to those in the web world that have helped you get started or assisted in the generation of new business.  Of course, the purpose of the blogroll is to create an avenue for a fair exchange of information and traffic.  One doesn’t want to link to direct competitors unless there is a very good reason to do so. 

Building the Blogroll isn’t complicated but can be time-consuming as it involves communicating directly with other site owners.  The ultimate objective is to inspire good sites within your niche to link to you as part of your link-building campaign.   Reaching out to other site owners is usually best executed after you’ve commented on their blogs over a period of time and have established yourself as a reasonably thoughtful and reliable partner.  You can also look at who has commented on your blog posts to see who might be interested.  Repeat visitors are very good targets.

Another good technique is to establish a blogroll of sites that you would like to be linked to on your blog or website first.  Then when you write to ask for links, you can provide your URL and show that you’ve already posted their link on your site.  Even if yours is a new site or one with a low page rank, others will be reluctant to say ‘no’ if you’ve already taken the initiative to set them up.  Larger established sites will have their own internal rules and regulations, but you should always at least ask for a link in return for setting an outbound one. 

Blogrolls take time to build.  (This site has that process currently underway!)  But they can provide a strong source of traffic and link power to your SEO efforts.  And if you are willing to help others in this same endeavor, you will identify several that will help you.  Here are a few other considerations and ideas for setting up your blogroll:

Categorize:
 Just labeling a blogroll “Blogroll” might not be helpful should you list many different sites.  Categorizing the types of pages in your blogroll might be a useful way to help readers sort through a great number of sites.  One might separate the list into “supplier,” “retail” or “service” sections.  This helps readers find links classified by useful category or type rather than scrolling through the big list and guessing which would be relevant to their interest.

Relevancy:
Ask your respondents how they want their link labeled – this is important to their SEO efforts and makes your site a more powerful contributor to their success.  In return, make sure you ask your respondent to set a link to your site that would utilize a keyword or keyword phrase.  These become much more relevant links the more page rank power the pages involved achieve over time.

Strength:
When looking for sites to include in your initial blog roll, it is a good idea to reach out to sites that have a good or strong page rank.  Several free tools are available to provide a general idea of the relative Page Rank.  The stronger the site that links to you, the more powerful the reference in the eyes of search engine robots.

Some sites just might not lend themselves for inclusion in a formal blogroll or within a category that you have arranged.  This doesn’t mean that you would ignore them.  Other places for links include footnotes and left-rail or in-article links. 

In the end, if you assist other site owners in improving their site, they are much more likely to help you.  Remember that internet marketing may utilize the latest in technology and communication tools, but all business is interpersonal – meaning that the better you work with others on a personal level, the easier success is achieved.

Do Follow Blogs – SEO Consultants Denver is Now a ‘Do Follow’ Site

After some consideration, we have decided to pull down the ‘no follow’ parameter on the blog to provide a bit better value to the SEO community.  A ‘Do Follow’ link allows the search engine robots to swim through all the links placed on this site and pay them a visit.  This can be an important part of your link-building strategy – especially as the page rank of this site improves. 

Of course this also invites the SpamMeisters to take advantage of the site.  We will just be operating on the honors system here and will manually delete comments that appear to be spam.  Should this effort become too time consuming, we will reconsider the ‘Do Follow’ policy.

For now, please leave us a comment and add SEO Consultants Denver blog to your list of external links!

Cheers!

Matt

SEO Consultants Denver assists business in constructing relationships with those in your niche community – many of whom are likely to become customers if what they receive is useful, informative and convinces them that you are the best organization to meet their immediate need. 

Contact Matt at 303.506.1158 today or visit our SEO and SEM Home Page to find out how to start turning your internet pages into a sales-generating machine!

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SEO Consultants of Denver Blog Post for October 29, 2009

Blog Message Strategy – Using the Blog as Your Main Business Page II

Using your blog as the main interface between your organization and prospective customers on the internet requires understanding the prospective buyer’s level of internet activity.  Do your customers use the internet frequently? Do you have a consumer profile?   Smaller businesses may have to do some one-on-one research with current customers to get an idea, but a general understanding of how your customers use the web is important for structuring your communications strategy.

A good communications strategy will establish:

• Credibility
• Leadership
• Depth of knowledge
• Confidence

Understanding how your current customers use the web, you can build your messages to address points that establish you as the leader in your line of business.  Here are a few techniques.

Credibility:
Little known facts about your business or industry are useful to the consumer.  Areas and news about product features, lifespan, durability etc. are all important to the buying decision.  Putting these out in your blog messages puts you on the same side as your customer – in effect arming her/him with information helpful to a purchase decision. 

When future questions arise, these readers will remember your ability and willingness to provide useful help and information.  If your customers frequently use the web to research product features or location, you can address concerns about product reliability, ease of acquisition (shipping or delivery features that you provide).  Understanding the reasons your customers use the internet is important to structuring the credibility message.

Leadership:
Customer case studies or statements from satisfied customers establish your organization as one that has experience meeting consumer needs.  References are also helpful to offer. (You don’t have to post the reference’s contact information, but just ask the viewer to contact you for the names of a few satisfied customers)  For newer businesses just starting out, a lack of sales history could be a problem.  Still, you can provide references of those who have worked with you in the past and can speak to the level of personal commitment you bring to the relationship. 

Story-telling is very useful in establishing a leadership image on your business blog.  The downside is that the story has to be told and retold in different ways to keep the content fresh.  But….if you focus your story telling about your accomplishments or the ability of your product to solve customer problems, the story shouldn’t get old.  Besides, over time you will acquire more and more testimonials that will make useful content for future stories.

Depth of Knowledge:
This can be difficult to establish with the reader without boring him with details.    Still, building trust with your reader that you have the depth of knowledge to solve her/his problems is essential.  Again, story-telling or case studies are useful.  Occasionally, technical details may be discussed, but a particularly useful technique is to simply answer your customers’ questions on line.

Customer questions regarding your product or service are probably very meaningful to prospective customers as well.  Your ability to handle customer concerns of course builds confidence that you are both able and willing to stand behind your product/service and are able to clearly define its value. 

Confidence:
Nothing establishes consumer confidence more than successfully delivering value.  Defining that value I a useful technique here.  For instance, if you provide a business service, find out from your customers exactly what using your service meant.  Did you deliver a solid Return on Investment?  If so, what percentage?   In what time frame?  Making bold statements on the results you deliver are important, but must be backed-up by facts and by customers willing to validate your claim.

Customers don’t mind making investments in products in service if the purchase can deliver value.  Stating what value you’ve achieved for others is a good starting point in establishing confidence in the minds of prospective customers. Telling these stories communicates the results your prospect may expect by purchasing from you. 

By focusing on one of these objective areas in each blog post, you can keep your page fresh and accomplish at least one communication strategy objective.  In the next few days, we will review techniques to keep your communication strategy organized, discuss a good structure and volume for each individual post and review ways to post your information to attract the most possible traffic from the search engines.

SEO Consultants Denver provides expertise in driving new business sales to your organization via the internet. We carefully analyze your product offering and craft a web outreach solution unique to your organization.  Contact Matt at 303.506.1158 today or visit our SEO and SEM Home Page. 
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SEO Consultants of Denver Blog Post for October 28, 2009

Building an Effective Business Blog – Using the Blog as Your Main Business Page – Part I

SEO is the essential ‘art’ of presenting your company and organization to the world over the internet in a fashion that enables your business page to appear as a result to a user-provided search or question on common search engines.  The search engine connects potential customers with your web site.  This establishes a unique position for your company to both provide useful information and to build credibility.   A company that is knowledgeable, helpful, has credibility and conveys useful information is first in line to make a sale to the consumer reading the page.   SEO Consultants of Denver utilizes a blog environment to attract client business and can put this experience to work for organizations of all sizes. 

Maintaining both a strong web page environment as well as a blog is very time consuming – frequently too time consuming for many entrepreneurs – particularly small business operators that do everything from invoicing to advertising.  Business leaders then must choose how best to invest their time to attract new business and improve sales.  Given your time constraints, what is the best use of available time and resources?

Over the next several days, posts here will discuss the advantages and techniques of using a business blog page to represent the organization on the internet.  Simply put, a business blog can be optimized to drive new business to the organization in the same ways a standard web page can.   For businesses facing the challenge of getting all the work done in a day, operating a blog can keep your business generating revenue by providing useful information to prospective customers and attracting readers – without a huge investment in time or personnel resources.

Operational Advantages of a Business Blog
First, a bit of background…  There are three main operational reasons to operate a blog to attract new business.  Specifically, good operational reasons for operating a blog include:

• Posting and updating a blog is relatively easy,
• A blog environment is easy to maintain– with little or no technical skill required,
• Blog platforms usually format your text so that it can appear as a search result – just describe your posts in the tag section,
• And a fourth little advantage would be:  it is usually free!

Standard Blog Functionality
Blogs are intended to be frequently updated, so most blogging platforms enable easy posting of new information.  These platforms then catalogue your posts and will optimize them to some extent so they will be searchable.  Main web pages are difficult for non technical operators to update and keep fresh.  As the search engines check for changes and updates, keeping the site updated is important to keep your page appearing as results on common search engines. 

Blogs of course allow frequent content posting, but they also allow the author to ‘tag’ or describe the article individually to specify the content.  It is important to think of each blog post as a separate web page that should be accurately described for users as well as search robots to easily understand. 

Attaching a blog to your business environment is as simple as opening an account with a blog platform provider.   There are other, more technical ways of establishing a blog on your home web server environment, but these usually require hiring outside help.  As we all know, ‘outside help’ can be expensive. 

For those that don’t currently have a business blog, it is relatively simple to build one include it in your web environment.  One complication will probably be in making the look and feel of your main web page match the look and feel of your blog.  If you have a custom webpage template and want to use that for your blog, you will have to ensure that it is enabled for the proper plug-ins and upload it to your platform.  This usually requires some technical expertise. If you are inexperienced at this, the help desk can usually guide you through the process.   Or… to keep it simple, you can select a standard blog template from your provider.  Most of these are free a well.

Three Common Reasons for Establishing a Business Blog
In deciding whether to use a blog to attract new business and revenue, consider the following advantages.  A blog can:

• Build credibility,
• Enable frequent communication with your customer base,
• Establish a leadership image as part of your company identity, and
• Ultimately, increase sales and revenue.

Blogging can be a successful way to attract new business if you can create a site that becomes known for providing useful information for your target niche community.   There is no substitute for being the business ‘expert’ or best source of information.  Build this over time and viewers will return often. 

A high number of returning viewers are an important strength, which pays of when promoting your product or service.  Especially if you established a network of folks in the niche community that have set links to your site, your site will appear to new customers searching for specific product or service information.  Your blog page then becomes the spokes-person for your company and also the ‘go-to’ industry expert.  Of course when readers become buyers, yours will be the trusted company to fill the need.

Will Customers Use My Blog?
Customers will generally use web pages as legitimate sources of information.  Still, customers have to know the page is available.  In deciding whether or not to operate a business blog, consider the buying behavior of your target customer group.  Generally, the more time customers take to consider a purchase in your industry, the better chance you will have of using a business blog to capture new revenue.  As readers often utilize the web for product research, a blog that provides product insight and information would be very valuable and may be configured to appear as a search result when the user is seeking information about a specific product or service feature.   Understanding customer behavior also plays an important role in constructing each blog message or post.

Please check back for Part II tomorrow where we will discuss a Blog Message Strategy and sound Structure of the Business Blog.

For more information, please contact SEO Consultants Denver - Matt at 303.506.1158