Underground Web Designs Blog

Where does your target market hang out?

Different markets spend time in different places, both online and off. With the advent of the social web, it’s now easier than ever to reach people where they spend a lot of time… but do you know where to look?

YouTube is loved by young people and teens, but few people who are out of highschool spend much time searching the site for the latest cool videos to watch.

Likewise, Facebook’s user base is mostly highschool students, college students, and young adults.

While I won’t argue that both Facebook and YouTube can be great potential marketing opportunities, I would suggest first thinking about who you are trying to market TOO. If your message is great for college students, then by all means, get an ad on facebook. If your target market is teens and pre-teens, make a super-cool YouTube ad. But if your ad is targeted at working class parents or baby boomers, YouTube and Facebook probably aren’t going to show a very high ROI.

The social web has more than anything divided internet users into groups. Different people use different services and get their news from different places. Different demographics spend their leisure web-surfing time in different places. So before you spend a ton of money on the next hottest YouTube vid, do some research into where in the online universe your target market hangs out, and advertise there.

You’re almost guaranteed a better ROI than just taking shots in the dark.

Every site uses images, after all “a picture speaks a thousand words” right? Well, now it may bring a thousand visitors as well. Rosanne from net business blog writes: 

until recently, the images found on your page played no role in search engine optimization. However, this is no longer true.

Farther along in her article Rosanne points to several stats that show that more and more searchers are searching for images, or using Google’s “universal search”, which turns up everything from web pages to images to weather reports. With such an increase in search beyond text it is becoming increasingly important to optimize your images for the search engines. But how?

Rosanne offers some tips in her article:

1. Use some keywords that relate to your image in the image’s filename.
2. Use some keywords in the alt tags of the image as well.
3. Make sure the text near the image contains the same keywords. This gives the keywords in the image filename and alt tags more credibility.

If you aren’t optimizing your images for the search engines, you’re missing out on potential traffic, plain and simple. With this thought comes a serious revelation. How well are your optimizing the rest of your site’s content? Are you doing all you can to optimize the videos, flash content, and even RSS feeds on your site? If search engines are now taking images into account, maybe they’ll soon be looking more closely at other kinds of content as well.

Something to think about.

James of Copyblogger wrote an interesting post yesterday about the power of optimizing your website not just for your target market’s demographics, but for their shopping style as well.

As James points out, different words reach different buyers. Some people are all about getting the best deals, whereas others care about the customer service, the environment, or simply getting their shopping done ASAP. Once you’ve figured out which category your target market falls into and optimized your copy to cater to them, is there more you can do to increase conversions? Sure there is!

Your copy isn’t the only thing that influences different visitors different ways, so does your website design. How big is the price in relation to your product descriptions? Do you prominently include customer reviews and ratings on the product page? How easy is it for your clients to find your newsletter? Take a good look at your website from with an eye for your target market’s shopping style and make a few changes to make the things they care about stand out.

If your target market is all about saving a quick buck, be sure to highlight your prices and especially highlight any special offers you’re running. If your audience cares more about a relationship with you and with others like themselves, be sure that ratings, reviews, and your newsletter signup box are prominent. And if your audience just wants to buy quick and go home, make sure the checkout process is as simple and pain free as possible!

Your website is much more than just the sum of the words on each page. Whenever you’re optimizing your site for a certain group of demographic, be sure to evaluate not just the copy but the design as well. The best web stores offer a unified experience, where the design, functionality, navigation, features, copy, and products all work together to create a powerful experience that reaches a certain type of customer.

How unified is your message?

As a small business owner funds are tight, so the last thing you want to do is invest in lots of new software. Fortunately, you may not have to.

A growing movement in the online world is the Open Source Movement. Open Source developers write programs, plugins, and internet scripts and distribute them, and the source code used to create them, for free. Chances are you’ve already heard of some of them. For example, Wordpress is open source, as is Open Office (an open source clone of Microsoft Office).

As a small business owner open source software can be a tremendous asset. Because it is free it gives you a chance to spend your limited resources elsewhere, instead of investing in expensive software. However, open source software isn’t without it’s drawbacks. Here are 5 things you should always check when investigating a promising piece of open source software:

1. Does it have the features you need? Because open source software is developed by individuals or small organizations, it often does not have all the same features as similar commercial applications. If you don’t need those features, then this isn’t an issue. But don’t take the time to download, install, and learn a new software if it isn’t going to meet your business needs.
2. Does it have good documentation? Another result of the part-time nature of open source development is that even some of the best open source softwares do not have complete documentation. When looking at a new open source project, take a good look at the documentation offered and try to get a feel for whether it will answer your questions about using the software. Other things to look for are project forums, wikis, and FAQ’s. All these places can provide answers to questions you may have, or allow you to ask your own. If you can’t find enough documentation for an open source project, it may be worth looking elsewhere. No matter how good a program is, it’s worth your time if you can’t figure out how to use it.
3. How easy is the program to edit? What do programmers have to say about the code? One of the greatest strengths of open source programs is that the source code comes with them. This means that if you find a piece of software that you really like, but need just one more feature, chances are good you can hire a programmer to add that feature for you. Be aware, however, that some programs are written better than others. If the source code you get is messy, inefficient, or just hard to understand it may not be worth your money to hire a programmer to make even small modifications.
4. How does it communicate with other programs or formats your business uses? Even if a program does exactly what you need it to do, it may not communicate with other programs your business has to use every day. For example, a word processor would not be much use if it could not read and save Microsoft Word Documents. If there are programs or certain formats that everybody in your business or industry uses, be sure the open source program you are looking at supports them.
5. Finally, What do other users think of the program? Take some time to browse the web and look for reviews, critiques, or discussions about the software you’re looking at using. Sometimes open source programs may look good, but be filled with bugs. Others may work, but have poor user interfaces that make it hard to work with them. The best way to get an idea of whether an open source program is worth using in your business is to find out what others are saying about it. If you find lots of positive reviews, especially from people in a similar industry to yours, than you’re likely on the right track. If all you find are complaints, steer clear.

Open source software is a great thing for small businesses. It’s free, easy to acquire, and usually works well. Don’t just dive right in though. Make sure you understand what it is you need, what the software is capable of, and whether or not it works as advertised before you invest your time and effort into installing and using it. Even if it doesn’t cost you any money, poorly made open source software can still cost you time and effort. So do your research before you download!

No one denys the wisdom of diversifying your investments. By investing your money in several different ways, in different places, you may not be guaranteed a good return, but your chances of loosing everything suddenly are drastically reduced. 

The same could be said for your website.

Most business owners put up a website because they expect it to help them make money. Unfortunately, many people don’t use (or just don’t know about) all the ways that their website could be making them money. Because of this their website is like a single investment in only one company. It’s great if that investment does well, but if it goes bankrupt you’re going to loose money.

Instead of placing all your eggs in one basket, look at these other options your website might be able to use to bring in some extra money and diversify your web presence:

• Google Adsense and onsite advertising.
• Affiliate programs.
• Online contests
• Forums and community sites (with ads).
• An e-mail mailing list or RSS feed.
• A free give-away with a powerful upsell.
• Social media (youtube, facebook, delicious, etc)

You’ll notice that not everything on that list will make you money by itself. The biggest key to being successful online is not to focus only on money, but to diversify your efforts. Have a strong focus, and then try many things to accomplish your goal and build your brand. By spreading out your efforts to gain traffic, build your brand, and yes, make money you may not become an overnight millionaire, but chances are you’ll slowly build a successful site.

When running a bricks and mortar business your marketing options are limited by time, manpower, and cost. Online you have much more freedom to explore different ways of advertising your business, making passive revenue, and communicating with your market. So do a bit of research and try something new. You may be surprised at the results.

(Watch future articles for more details on setting up an affiliate program, google adsense, and more).

Yesterday I wrote about how so many marketers abuse the power of the social web by marketing AT people instead of realizing that the social web is a conversation. Well, today I have the perfect example of the power of the social web, and the lengths some people will go to to make a little extra money.

Ian of Conversational Marketing wrote today that LinkAdage is selling blogging space on a .EDU domain name. Why is this such a big deal? Because not just anyone is allowed to own a .edu domain name. In order to own a .edu domain name, you have to be a verified educational institute. In turn, because only educational institutes can own these domains, they are trusted by both consumers and search engines to provide useful and accurate information.

Now LinkAdage has spoiled all that by offering anyone access (for a fee, I might add). Even though technically they’re allowed to do this, (see Ian’s article for details), that doesn’t make it right.

The Lesson:

There are many things you can do online to market your business. And there is nothing wrong with using social media, Search Engine Optimization, and other aggressive marketing strategies to do it. But don’t be one of the people who cuts corners and abuses the system just to make a few extra bucks. It never pays in the long run.

And as I pointed out yesterday… when the blogosphere hears about someone who’s trying to cheat the system… we’ll make sure the world knows all about it.

Everybody is talking about social bookmarking, social media, social networking, etc. So what’s the key word in all those names? It’s SOCIAL. Marketers: Remember that!

The whole idea of the social web is that everyone is involved, and everyone can make their feelings heard. As a marketer or business man, this sounds like a dream come true. Countless opportunities to get your message heard! Just don’t forget that the social web works because it’s a two way street. You get to say what you want to say… but then everybody else gets to say what they think of it. If what you offer isn’t up to par you’ll be ignored, or maybe even labeled a spammer.

Now maybe people are quick to judge. But in the social web, nobody really cares. All it takes is one person who’s ticked off enough to write a negative review, and suddenly your integrity is in question. In the online world, one negative review can and WILL be seen by many, many people thanks to the power of Google.

So by all means, enter this strange new world of social media and spread the message of what you do. Just be careful how you’re presenting yourself. Give me a great product at a good price and I’ll sing you’re praises to the world. But if you rip me off, I’ll gladly trash your reputation forever.

Ye Have Been Warned.

No matter what business you’re in, Google is the reason you should have a website.

As a business person, you are in business to make money. In order to make money, you need people to find you. How do you do that? Do you put up a sign, buy classified ads, or put your name in the phone book? 

News-flash: I can’t even remember the last time I looked up ANYTHING in a phone book. I don’t even know if I have one.

When I want to find someone, I use Google to look them up online. If I want something and don’t know where to buy it, I look it up online. And I’m not alone. Why do you think the record companies are struggling? 99% of the time, I find what I want ad then buy it from whoever owns the website I found it on.

If you don’t have a website, you are choosing to ignore everyone who does a Google search for your products or services. 

That doesn’t sound like good marketing to me.

Everybody knows that you should color coordinate your wardrobe in order too look your best. Don’t wear clashing colors, pick one or two colors that complement each other, etc. In the same way that you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing socks in sandals *chuckle* you should be sure that each of the various components of your website match. I’m not talking about just each of the pages on your site — I”m talking about every step of the process ANYBODY could use to interact with you online.

In order for your website to fulfill it’s full potential every part of it should match. This includes the shopping cart, your affiliate program (if you have one), your e-mail campaigns, any videos you do, and even your advertising. In the offline world this is known as branding, and is practiced by nearly every company. Sadly, many websites are strongly lacking in branding. Even if you paid for a professional, brandable theme for your home page, you may have still kept the default theme in everything else, such as your shopping cart, which hurts your branding efforts (not to mention conversions).

Imagine you’re shopping at a large online retailer. Their site looks very professional, with a color scheme of blacks and blues. You like the site and browse around for a while until you find something you like. You click “Add to cart” and it suddenly looks like you’re on a totally different site! Everything is white and orange! Are you going to be quite as eager to give up your credit card number and make the purchase now?

How can you stop this from happening to you? First, ask your web designer if he’s familiar with the shopping cart system you plan on using, or the forum software, affiliate software, etc. If you don’t yet know what software you want to use, ask your designer if what he/she recommends. If your designer is familiar with the other software you plan on using he/she can usually create themes for your other software that match the theme of your website. If your site design is already complete, talk to your designer anyway. They should still have the working files for your design saved somewhere, and from these they can easily build a template for your extra software.

A large part of doing business online is establishing trust. Before someone will do business with you, you have to convince them that you are trustworthy and will give them a fair deal. Without the face to face interaction that an in-person meeting provides, your site has to work extra hard to develop that trust. Take a look around your site for anything that jumps out or looks like it doesn’t belong. Then remove it. Remember that on the internet people are looking for any reason NOT to trust you, and will judge you by the smallest things. For that reason, making each part of your site match will go a long way towards making a customer feel you care about them, and are serious about business.

Most small business owners don’t see the point in having a blog. Heck, most small business owners don’t even have a website. They know they should, they’ve just never gotten around to it. Usually having a blog of their own hasn’t even crossed their mind. But every small business owner should have a blog, and here are 5 powerful reasons why:

1. Traffic, customers, leads, clients, etc. Whatever you call people who do business with you, having a blog will bring you more of them if you do it well. As a blogger you have a chance to write to the largest audience the world has ever known, in a way that they can find YOU. If done correctly a blog can build you a following of people who believe in you and what you do. This following will do almost anything you tell them too… and will most certainly buy anything you sell them.
2. Interaction. Remember that group of people who follow your blog and are interested in what you do? Well, ask them questions and improve your product. Who says you have to pay a big company to do market research? Here is a group of people that has found and followed you — they’re interested enough in what you do to act. Now ask them questions! Ask about your products, your business model, what they think you could be doing better. Then do it. One of the surest ways to success is to do what your market wants.
3. It’s free. Everybody likes free advertising right? Besides a bit of your time to write in it, Blogging is free. Anybody can have a simple Blogger blog set up in about an hour, and then you’re ready to go. If you have a website even better… your web master can set up a Wordpress blog for you in about 15 minutes.
4. The blog itself can make you money. Once you have been blogging for a couple of months and are beginning to get decent traffic, put Google Adsense on it. It’s not hard, and you can soon be making  some extra money from the traffic your blog draws. At the very least it will soon pay for the time you spend blogging.
5. It’s easy. It takes maybe half an hour a day to write a blog — and that’s if you do it every day. Once you’ve gotten going writing every couple of days is still plenty. When you consider the huge benefits that blogging can have for your business, how can you afford NOT to blog?

The most important thing that most people miss about blogging is that it doesn’t have to be work. Write about what you’re passionate about, what you believe in. We all have things we’d like to share with the world, a blog is your chance to actually do it. And if it benefits your business and makes you some money on the side, who’s complaining right?