With today's financial market in flux, the Wiley book Asset Allocation for Dummies makes a great holiday gift for the 'do it yourself' investor or for anyone who wants to better understand investment vehicles. Murray is thrilled to have designed and launched this microsite for author Jerry A. Miccolis, partner at Brinton Eaton Wealth Advisors.
In typical Wiley 'break it down' process, Jerry reviews every aspect of asset allocation and management of taxes, finance, investing, stocks, bonds, retirement strategy, corporate benefits administration, generational wealth, foundations, trusts, and much more. The Asset Allocation for Dummies book makes an affordable gift and a great investment for a loved one, or for yourself!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Sparta Systems New Site focuses on Quality
http://www.spartasystems.com The launch of Sparta Systems website leverages Ektron CMS for a quality website matched only by the TrackWise Quality Management Systems by Sparta Systems.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Google reinvents the Internet, again
They dare other search tools to keep up! Install Google Sidewiki to your browser today and enjoy the power of wiki on every site you touch. http://www.google.com/
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Mobile Media: interesting and useful
Things are starting to move in mobile media.
www.jott.com converts voice-to-text to update facebook and twitter through voice translation on your mobile device.
www.layar.com was recently featured in Advertising Age highlighting their developer platform that allows layers of statistical information to integrate with any media. Geotagged information will feed through real-time mobile video, seeing links, photos or text projected over specific locations, pulling information from flickr, wikipedia, twitter, yelp and more.
www.jott.com converts voice-to-text to update facebook and twitter through voice translation on your mobile device.
www.layar.com was recently featured in Advertising Age highlighting their developer platform that allows layers of statistical information to integrate with any media. Geotagged information will feed through real-time mobile video, seeing links, photos or text projected over specific locations, pulling information from flickr, wikipedia, twitter, yelp and more.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Deloitte Ethics and Workplace Survey Highlights Social Media
"While the decision to post videos, pictures, thoughts, experiences, and observations to social networking sites is personal, a single act can create far-reaching ethical consequences for individuals as well as organizations. Therefore it is important for executives to be mindful of the implications and to elevate the discussion about the risks associated with it to the highest levels of leadership."
Sharon L. Allen
Chairman of the Board
Deloitte LLP
Deloitte has recently released a 2009 survey on Ethics and Workplace in relation to Social networking and reputational risk in the workplace. With the rapid growth and acceptance of social media and networking, the ways people choose to communicate and collaborate are varied and beyond the normal control of business. Even workplace policies banning the use of FaceBook or MySpace cannot stem the personal use and chatter existing on the Internet.
"Deloitte LLP’s 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey shows that there is great reputational risk associated with social networking as 74% of employed Americans surveyed believe it is easy to damage a brand’s reputation via sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube."
The Deloitte survey reveals that only 15% of executives have elevated this discussion to the board room, although 58% agreed that it was necessary to do so. And, more importantly, one-third of employed respondents never even considered how their boss would feel about content posted, indicating that it is none of their business (freedom of speech anyone?)
Although our natural response, as communicators, is to put policies in place to serve as guidelines for social networking and publishing, only 50% of respondents indicated that such guidelines would impact their behavior.
How does your company manage the new rules of social media?
Wendy Flanagan
Chairperson, NJ MarCom Council
Board Member, NJAdClub
Member AMA, MENG
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Where sales and marketing converge
Sales and marketing have a great deal of overlap. From a business operational view, sales is viewed as a revenue center and, sometimes, marketing is viewed as a cost center. This is seen in times of economic downturn as costs get cut and marketing is tasked to do more with less.
However, logic and metrics demonstrate that the impact of marketing and advertising increase the funnel volume for sales, provide consistent messaging, and help target the right audience for conversion. Sales force management tools and CRM systems are a great place to start in establishing the ultimate question, “Who is our best customer?”
Typically, there is not a single answer. And, the road to converting a prospect to a customer can be more difficult if there are many decision-makers in the process. I've used salesforce.com, and one thing I particularly like the designations of a prospect’s role in the decision-making process on an opportunity.
More than just a label, a persona is a demographic and psychographic profile of the ideal customer that is used to help envision how that type of person will respond to a statement. This can save a great deal of money prior to focus groups or even sales calls on the wrong prospect. The key to a marketing persona is that it is based on the statistically significant audience data. If your decision-making buyers are 98% Hispanic males age 56, then don’t portray a 30 year old Caucasian female because you are afraid that this picture might be perceived as biased.
Who is currently buying and in what volume is a statistical fact. By seeing that picture, you are able to develop a strategy to engage untapped audiences… prospects that might be attending very different industry association events, or who might respond to a different advertising campaign.
Every company has a unique sales process with a certain number of touch points to get a formal meeting and proposal. A sales organization’s goal is to shorten the time it takes to get to proposal and convert the sale to commission. Mailing lists, cold calls, sales letters, networking events, trade shows, industry events, stopping in at the front desk of a prospect, emails… these are all ways to identify and get the attention of the prospect. Marketing supports those initiatives by identifying list resources, helping write sales scripts and letters, providing visual support before, during and after an event, providing collateral to hand out, and email templates that support brand.
Your Website: Sales and Marketing 24/7
The most accessible place where sales and marketing converge is your Website. With economic pressures, many companies look to cut corners and I get asked, “How cheap can I get this done? We’re really facing budgetary constraints.” I’m not so much put off by that statement because I know everyone is facing economic pressures today.
But I am put off when I consider the power and automated metrics of the Website and the many jobs it is actually doing 24/7: brand and product message, lead generation, e-commerce, customer service, recruiting, investor communications, competitive differentiation. When that unknown prospect is really interested, the Website is the first place they are going to go to qualify the company. What would be the combined salaries and benefits of the people the site is helping to support? In any company that has a marketing person, a salesperson, a person to answer the phone, a PR person – how can they effectively do their job if the very best Website has not been created to support them?
A site can be ‘designed’ to ‘look’ like anything: clinical, economical, friendly, elegant, rugged, techie, etc. But is the design a reflection of the designer's preferences, or the marketer's preferences, or is it a true reflection of where the identified persona interests are? Does it match the overall brand and the business goals, vision and mission? Is it generating leads? Are they leads that match your desired prospect/customer profile?
The rest of the Internet
A good Web presence goes beyond the Website. It extends to blogs, myspace, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so many other social media sites that are picking up tidbits of information on your company.
For example, a financial salesperson did a seminar in our area which one of our partners attended. Using soft pressure engagement, he pushed to meet with us right away since he had time, but was flying out on business in a couple of days. We did meet with him, and it was the perfect sales pitch: he was comfortable, seemed trustworthy, knowledgeable about the financial market, could articulate his knowledge, used supporting collateral and articles torn from renowned news sources, and even hand drew diagrams to help us understand. After he left, we talked about the perfect sales performance and outlined the techniques he had used: economic factors beyond anyone’s control (pressure to act now), identifying our personal goals for wealth, understanding our personal loyalties, well-timed quality collateral support, and more.
Then, we went online and did our homework. The only information available on the company was what had been seeded by the marketing department. The articles published were, in fact, written by the company. The company had gone through a recent name change for no apparent reason. There were three BBB complaints, two of which had been resolved. What was striking to us was the lack of information. Right or wrong, we declined to convert on lack of trust in the company because of the way they presented online.
And, the perfect salesperson, he moved on to new prospects, just as a perfect salesperson should.
Closing
This post has rambled on a bit, but it is a blog, so please forgive me if it was all over the place. The point is: sales and marketing have to work together every day to identify customer point of pain, changing trends in the sales territories, emerging competitors, and where sales might feel a need and why. Sales should be looking at the company Website and asking themselves, “Is this helping me? Where can it be better?” Then they should let marketing know where they are feeling a disconnect. Marketing has to attend sales status meetings, shadow calls, and attend the sales networking functions to experience first-hand what reps are encountering. Marketers are the conduit for verbal and visual expression that combines the best-of-the-best in the field, and the attributes of the brand, to make it most appealing to prospects and customers.
However, logic and metrics demonstrate that the impact of marketing and advertising increase the funnel volume for sales, provide consistent messaging, and help target the right audience for conversion. Sales force management tools and CRM systems are a great place to start in establishing the ultimate question, “Who is our best customer?”
Typically, there is not a single answer. And, the road to converting a prospect to a customer can be more difficult if there are many decision-makers in the process. I've used salesforce.com, and one thing I particularly like the designations of a prospect’s role in the decision-making process on an opportunity.
- Business user
- Decision maker
- Economic buyer
- Economic decision maker
- Evaluator
- Executive sponsor
- Influencer
- Technical buyer
More than just a label, a persona is a demographic and psychographic profile of the ideal customer that is used to help envision how that type of person will respond to a statement. This can save a great deal of money prior to focus groups or even sales calls on the wrong prospect. The key to a marketing persona is that it is based on the statistically significant audience data. If your decision-making buyers are 98% Hispanic males age 56, then don’t portray a 30 year old Caucasian female because you are afraid that this picture might be perceived as biased.
Who is currently buying and in what volume is a statistical fact. By seeing that picture, you are able to develop a strategy to engage untapped audiences… prospects that might be attending very different industry association events, or who might respond to a different advertising campaign.
Every company has a unique sales process with a certain number of touch points to get a formal meeting and proposal. A sales organization’s goal is to shorten the time it takes to get to proposal and convert the sale to commission. Mailing lists, cold calls, sales letters, networking events, trade shows, industry events, stopping in at the front desk of a prospect, emails… these are all ways to identify and get the attention of the prospect. Marketing supports those initiatives by identifying list resources, helping write sales scripts and letters, providing visual support before, during and after an event, providing collateral to hand out, and email templates that support brand.
Your Website: Sales and Marketing 24/7
The most accessible place where sales and marketing converge is your Website. With economic pressures, many companies look to cut corners and I get asked, “How cheap can I get this done? We’re really facing budgetary constraints.” I’m not so much put off by that statement because I know everyone is facing economic pressures today.
But I am put off when I consider the power and automated metrics of the Website and the many jobs it is actually doing 24/7: brand and product message, lead generation, e-commerce, customer service, recruiting, investor communications, competitive differentiation. When that unknown prospect is really interested, the Website is the first place they are going to go to qualify the company. What would be the combined salaries and benefits of the people the site is helping to support? In any company that has a marketing person, a salesperson, a person to answer the phone, a PR person – how can they effectively do their job if the very best Website has not been created to support them?
A site can be ‘designed’ to ‘look’ like anything: clinical, economical, friendly, elegant, rugged, techie, etc. But is the design a reflection of the designer's preferences, or the marketer's preferences, or is it a true reflection of where the identified persona interests are? Does it match the overall brand and the business goals, vision and mission? Is it generating leads? Are they leads that match your desired prospect/customer profile?
The rest of the Internet
A good Web presence goes beyond the Website. It extends to blogs, myspace, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so many other social media sites that are picking up tidbits of information on your company.
For example, a financial salesperson did a seminar in our area which one of our partners attended. Using soft pressure engagement, he pushed to meet with us right away since he had time, but was flying out on business in a couple of days. We did meet with him, and it was the perfect sales pitch: he was comfortable, seemed trustworthy, knowledgeable about the financial market, could articulate his knowledge, used supporting collateral and articles torn from renowned news sources, and even hand drew diagrams to help us understand. After he left, we talked about the perfect sales performance and outlined the techniques he had used: economic factors beyond anyone’s control (pressure to act now), identifying our personal goals for wealth, understanding our personal loyalties, well-timed quality collateral support, and more.
Then, we went online and did our homework. The only information available on the company was what had been seeded by the marketing department. The articles published were, in fact, written by the company. The company had gone through a recent name change for no apparent reason. There were three BBB complaints, two of which had been resolved. What was striking to us was the lack of information. Right or wrong, we declined to convert on lack of trust in the company because of the way they presented online.
And, the perfect salesperson, he moved on to new prospects, just as a perfect salesperson should.
Closing
This post has rambled on a bit, but it is a blog, so please forgive me if it was all over the place. The point is: sales and marketing have to work together every day to identify customer point of pain, changing trends in the sales territories, emerging competitors, and where sales might feel a need and why. Sales should be looking at the company Website and asking themselves, “Is this helping me? Where can it be better?” Then they should let marketing know where they are feeling a disconnect. Marketing has to attend sales status meetings, shadow calls, and attend the sales networking functions to experience first-hand what reps are encountering. Marketers are the conduit for verbal and visual expression that combines the best-of-the-best in the field, and the attributes of the brand, to make it most appealing to prospects and customers.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Getting Social Media to Work
This week has proven to be the one where people want to know about social media and what can be done with it. Thanks to all the inquiries that motivate me to write and share!
Social media is a group of tools that engage conversations about a person, product, company, movement, attitude, and anything else people are willing to share. Before you start your social media engagement, there are decisions to make, especially if you want to use the tools for marketing (and, the tools and their popularity change all the time). Since the popular tools are free to use, sometimes they don’t connect well on any given day. So the amount of time allocated to using the tools can vary wildly for any number of reasons. You will need to decide which of the tools are important to your business, how much time you will allocate to the initiative, and what results you hope to achieve.
When defining your success criteria, think about what can logically be achieved:
I’m an advocate of social media. It is driven by the decision of an individual, which when compounded, creates a movement for a society that is too darn busy to actually get ‘out in the streets’. But stats representing followers don’t necessarily equate to sales, so it’s important to maintain your strategic focus and integrated marketing approach. A balanced and reinforced message will get better results than a single initiative.
This can only be achieved with a dedicated social media plan that encourages intelligent dialog from participants to adjunct your offering. Social media participants want knowledge, resources, and the ability to contribute and be recognized for their contributions. You need writers and editorial staff that ‘get it’ and time the releases according to your overall marketing and PR schedule.
Social media is a group of tools that engage conversations about a person, product, company, movement, attitude, and anything else people are willing to share. Before you start your social media engagement, there are decisions to make, especially if you want to use the tools for marketing (and, the tools and their popularity change all the time). Since the popular tools are free to use, sometimes they don’t connect well on any given day. So the amount of time allocated to using the tools can vary wildly for any number of reasons. You will need to decide which of the tools are important to your business, how much time you will allocate to the initiative, and what results you hope to achieve.
When defining your success criteria, think about what can logically be achieved:
- Brand awareness reach
- Brand perception
- Buzz about a product
- Traffic to your Website
- Subscribers or followers
- Knowledge about your customers
- Brand champions
- Lead generation and sales
I’m an advocate of social media. It is driven by the decision of an individual, which when compounded, creates a movement for a society that is too darn busy to actually get ‘out in the streets’. But stats representing followers don’t necessarily equate to sales, so it’s important to maintain your strategic focus and integrated marketing approach. A balanced and reinforced message will get better results than a single initiative.
This can only be achieved with a dedicated social media plan that encourages intelligent dialog from participants to adjunct your offering. Social media participants want knowledge, resources, and the ability to contribute and be recognized for their contributions. You need writers and editorial staff that ‘get it’ and time the releases according to your overall marketing and PR schedule.
The Social Media Plan
- Define success criteria and how it will be measured
- Identify your ideal audience(s)
- Define and implement social media guidelines
- Research what social media currently says about your industry and company
- Build a project plan and timeline, including review schedule for metrics
- Review what technologies and tools should be considered
- Establish a budget (time and money)
- Document performance criteria and responsibility as part of job description
- If you want to invite employees to participate, create an editorial calendar making it easier for people to budget time and participate
- See if your social community wants face time. Some people enjoy the ease of communicating remotely, never developing the relationship. Others, however, can be developed into die-hard brand advocates if you take time to meet them in person.
Social media guidelines
- Guidelines should be a natural extension of existing business guidelines and should follow the rules already in place
- Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws
- Protect your privacy and the privacy of your colleagues and clients
- Don’t disclose confidential or proprietary information
- If you are making a statement as an industry or company expert, indicate clearly who you are, why you are relevant, and your role at the company.
- When you make your statement, indicate that the postings are your own and not necessarily representative of the company’s offering, position, opinions or strategies
- Don’t cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval. Link back to the source whenever possible
- Respect your audience and your company
- Make a record of where and when you have posted. Whatever you publish will last a long time on the Internet and you might want to revise your position at some point in the future.
- Don’t be antagonistic unless that is your job
- Be the first to correct your mistakes and indicate when you alter a post or admit that you stand corrected
- Research who else is publishing on the topic and cite them. Link back to the source whenever possible
Tools for work
This does not mean that I do, or do not, endorse these tools...
Flickr
Digg
YouTube
FriendFeed
Technorati
Icerocket
Google Blog Search
Twitter yes, I do
Facebook here I am
MySpace
Del.icio.us
StumbleUpon
LinkedIn here I am!
RSS - your site issues the feed, the user reads through an aggregator
Blogger NJAdClub NJ MarCom Murray
SecondLife
WordPress
PitchEngine
Wikipedia
TypePad
Diigo
Gabcast
Flickr
Digg
YouTube
FriendFeed
Technorati
Icerocket
Google Blog Search
Twitter yes, I do
Facebook here I am
MySpace
Del.icio.us
StumbleUpon
LinkedIn here I am!
RSS - your site issues the feed, the user reads through an aggregator
Blogger NJAdClub NJ MarCom Murray
SecondLife
WordPress
PitchEngine
Wikipedia
TypePad
Diigo
Gabcast
What does social media success look like?
- We learned details about customers that added to their purchasing profile and tendencies charts
- We told our brand story and it was shared with others
- Our brand has the confidence to allow for a self-supported online community that allows for innovation and reduces help desk costs
- We learn through use of technology and are not caught off-guard by customers and competitors
- We create brand champions with a handful of customers as they talk back and we listen, respond and act
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Tips for Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an initial and ongoing process that involves tweaking various aspects of your website. It deals only with organic search results (not paid positions). How sites are ranked by Google, Yahoo, and other engines involves elaborate, independent, and constantly-evolving algorithms. Murray has put together ‘best-in-class’ suggestions that can work (this month ;) to improve your positioning in organic search results. Keep in mind, how frequently your site is ‘refreshed’ by engines is affected by the number of pages your site has, your site traffic, referrers to your site, and frequency of content updates.
Alt Tags
Images can’t be read by a spider unless labeled with ‘alt tags’ that are representative of the content of the image as well as the corresponding keyword(s).
Anchor Links
Anchor links helps users to navigate between pages and helps the spiders track a content thread.
Content and Descriptor Tags (i.e.: bold)
The content of your webpage needs to contain primary keywords of density between 2.3-3.5%. Many sites push this envelope, and some have demonstrated the value of loading keywords. However, you want content to be reader-friendly and not repetitive.
Heading Tags
Heading tags are designated in the code to represent the content headlines and subheads on a page. Heading tags rank in order – h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6. These tags should only be used as appropriate.
Meta Description
The Meta description (part of the unseen HTML) gives a brief description of the page content. An expert copywriter should minimize this description to less than 160 characters including keywords and relevant content from the visible page.
Meta Keywords
Meta keywords (part of the unseen HTML) should relate to content on the page and ‘bubble to the surface’ those words that people might use to search for your offering on that particular page. Keywords should be coordinated with the Meta Description.
Page Redirects
Page redirects for outdated, renamed or retired pages of a Website prevent broken links to already indexed pages. Also prevents broken browser bookmarks.
Page Title
Page title or ‘title tag’ of each page should be unique. This tag is cross referenced by search engines against other descriptions on the page and behind the scenes. It should be short and concise to tell visitors what that particular page is about.
Robots.txt
A robots.txt file is used to stop a page or folder or entire site from being indexed by spiders.
Sitemap
Use of HTML and XML sitemaps help spiders to easily crawl and index your website.
URL Structure
Many Content Management Systems (CMS) automatically generate dynamic URL strings with random alpha-numeric sequences. For pages you want ranked by search engines, it’s important to create a friendly URL structure using appropriate filenames and folder directory on your Website.
Website Navigation
Our first real question of possible visual compromise… the most SEO-friendly navigation structure is created from descriptive ‘live text’ that helps search engines index pages. Most drop-down menus and Flash-based menus are not necessarily indexed.
Website Promotion
Driving traffic to your site with keyword links from other sites is an essential part of organic SEO. The volume of traffic and credibility of the site generating the traffic ‘counts’ toward the validity and ranking importance of your content.
Alt Tags
Images can’t be read by a spider unless labeled with ‘alt tags’ that are representative of the content of the image as well as the corresponding keyword(s).
Anchor Links
Anchor links helps users to navigate between pages and helps the spiders track a content thread.
Content and Descriptor Tags (i.e.: bold)
The content of your webpage needs to contain primary keywords of density between 2.3-3.5%. Many sites push this envelope, and some have demonstrated the value of loading keywords. However, you want content to be reader-friendly and not repetitive.
Heading Tags
Heading tags are designated in the code to represent the content headlines and subheads on a page. Heading tags rank in order – h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6. These tags should only be used as appropriate.
Meta Description
The Meta description (part of the unseen HTML) gives a brief description of the page content. An expert copywriter should minimize this description to less than 160 characters including keywords and relevant content from the visible page.
Meta Keywords
Meta keywords (part of the unseen HTML) should relate to content on the page and ‘bubble to the surface’ those words that people might use to search for your offering on that particular page. Keywords should be coordinated with the Meta Description.
Page Redirects
Page redirects for outdated, renamed or retired pages of a Website prevent broken links to already indexed pages. Also prevents broken browser bookmarks.
Page Title
Page title or ‘title tag’ of each page should be unique. This tag is cross referenced by search engines against other descriptions on the page and behind the scenes. It should be short and concise to tell visitors what that particular page is about.
Robots.txt
A robots.txt file is used to stop a page or folder or entire site from being indexed by spiders.
Sitemap
Use of HTML and XML sitemaps help spiders to easily crawl and index your website.
URL Structure
Many Content Management Systems (CMS) automatically generate dynamic URL strings with random alpha-numeric sequences. For pages you want ranked by search engines, it’s important to create a friendly URL structure using appropriate filenames and folder directory on your Website.
Website Navigation
Our first real question of possible visual compromise… the most SEO-friendly navigation structure is created from descriptive ‘live text’ that helps search engines index pages. Most drop-down menus and Flash-based menus are not necessarily indexed.
Website Promotion
Driving traffic to your site with keyword links from other sites is an essential part of organic SEO. The volume of traffic and credibility of the site generating the traffic ‘counts’ toward the validity and ranking importance of your content.
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