GUEST POST - 10 Strategies to Avoid Online Suicide - By Ayat Shukairy
After running my consulting practice for the last three years, participating in many online forums, and advising companies on online marketing, I have seen some of the pitfalls that both small and large companies make. Following are some of the most common mistakes I see:
- 1. Lack of focus: Who is your web site targeting? I thought that only small companies fell into this trap. They don’t know who they should target, of course. But then I worked with a multibillion dollar company in creating an online marketing strategy and realized that they don’t always know the answer either. When I asked the VP of ecommerce about the target market they were trying to reach, he said, “Well, everyone. Every online visitor is fair game.” Targeting the masses or “everyone” is essentially targeting NO ONE.
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Not outsourcing: Larger companies learn this fairly quickly. It is impossible for your business to do everything really well. You should focus on what you are good at and outsource anything else to companies that are good in those other areas. Eventually, you might decide to do things in-house, but that means attracting the right talent, building a real team and offering them competitive compensation to keep them happy.
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Outsourcing to the wrong firm: This is the universal mistake. I have experienced local government paying $250 an hour for a consultant who just learned about online marketing. Similarly, I’ve seen a Fortune 500 company pay $350 an hour to an SEO expert who didn’t really know SEO. Do your homework and make sure you are getting your money’s worth from any company you hire. And remember, more expensive does not necessarily mean better quality.
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Forgetting about hidden costs: Most marketing activities are full of hidden costs. I’ve heard too many people say, “Start a blog, it doesn’t cost anything.” And I think to myself, at a minimum, there is the time investment you have to put into it. Before you make a business decision, write down everything it will take from the moment you start planning it until you are done with it. Put a dollar figure next to each activity. That will be an eye opening exercise.
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Measuring your success (or failure for that matter): Before launching any activity online, clearly define ways to measure its success. It is not enough to say, we will launch a website, start a branding campaign, or run PPC. How do you know if these activities are successful? And ask yourself: What timeframe should you expect to see a good return on your initial investment?
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Launching your site and expecting visitors will come flocking: Eventually, everyone learns that if you build it, visitors will most likely not come. You might have the greatest idea in the world, build the latest and greatest tools on your website, and produce high quality content; that’s all great. But if you do not market it correctly, your efforts will go to waste. Not only do businesses have to worry about search engine optimization (SEO), but unless you have a great, strong brand you will most likely have to come up with a full marketing plan to attract visitors to your site.
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Building a single dimensional strategy: So, we agree that you need to market your business online. There are too many alternatives to market your business online; you can invest money in SEO, PR, or conversion optimization amongst many other things. The right strategy will most likely contain an element of each.
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Inflexibility: A multi dimensional strategy is necessary, but a flexible strategy is even better. Whatever plan you come up with, you should be able to respond quickly to changes in the market place. If your major competitor is running an online campaign, you must be able to respond quickly.
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Lack of community: Online shoppers are fickle. They look for deals all over the place. To succeed online, you have to convince visitors to order from your site, refer their friends and family to your site, and come back to it in the future. The best way to do that is by building a real community around your website. Why do I buy books from Amazon although I know they might be more expensive than some of their competitors? Simple: I enjoy reading the reviews they offer. Think of a reason to bring people back to your website for more.
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Flushing money down the toilet: Online marketing is the most transparent marketing activity of all. You can easily measure your success or your failures. You can get instant feedback on what works and what doesn’t. And there is always room for improvement. We’ve worked with ecommerce websites that were converting at 2%. By the time we got done, they were converting at 11%. Can you imagine how much money they were leaving on the table? How about an un-optimized PPC campaign? Ultimately, it is about lowering your customer acquisition cost. LOWER IT any way you can!
Ayat Shukairy is a managing partner at Invesp consulting, an ecommerce conversion optimization company. She also blogs regularly on topics related e-commerce, conversion optimization and web usability on the Invesp Blog.
www.invesp.com/blog
www.invesp.com
Tags: Ayat Shukairy, hidden costs, online suicide, outsourcing
October 17th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
The biggest point in this post is the importance of targeting a niche….and further when you try and target everyone you get NO ONE.
October 17th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Ayat - Great content. You and Scott are correct. I learned the hard way. I tried to be all things to all people and market to everyone. Once I began to focus my target demographic and outsource, things became easier and more profitable. My rule for outsourcing is, if I can not do it at an excellent level then outsource. If I can do it at an excellent level and another top notch person/company can do it for less than my hourly cost…you guessed it…outsourced.
Anyone who says “It doesn’t cost you anything”, clearly does not have a firm grasp on business. If you have an office and do nothing but stand there and breathe it will cost you in loss of labor revenue plus electricity, rent, etc for the time you are just breathing. Everything costs something in business and my time is the most expensive and valuable thing. I can buy more electricity and rent more space but I can not acquire more time in a day (I don’t own a Delorean with a flux capacitor).
October 17th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
One of the best guest posts ever on this blog. Ayat knows her stuff!
October 17th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
You give some great tips. I particularly related to the segment on the importance of building a community. Amazan is an expert at that and they have reaped the benefits.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:48 am
@Scott Bradley That’s one of the biggest obstacles I face with clients. It comes down to convincing them that targeting one person that represents a market segment is more effective than targeting hundreds of thousands within that same segment.
@Chase you’re absolutely right, everything you do will incur certain costs, and that’s why it is so essential to minimize the time and money spent on a particular marketing or sales effort. What I do with my team is prioritize all the items by LOE and monetary investment to determine which effort is most efficient.
@Ryan and @Sana thank you both for your kind comments. Amazon has indeed branded itself as a community building website.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:11 am
[...] was recently featured on the infamous Toilet Paper Entrepreneur blog. My post discussed the top 10 mistakes I’ve seen large and small online companies [...]
October 20th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Great advice! thank you!
October 20th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
@5 Ayat can you please clarify - You said “@Scott Bradley That’s one of the biggest obstacles I face with clients. It comes down to convincing them that targeting one person that represents a market segment is more effective than targeting hundreds of thousands within that same segment”
I understand about not targeting everyone in the world or multiple market segments. But you talk about targeting one person versus many in the same segment. My assumption is that the people within a market segment are generally the same and can be targeted in the same way. Is this not correct?
Thanks
October 20th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
@Carolyn persona development is all about moving beyond market segmentation. For a designer or copywriter, addressing a person with a name, face, and personality is a lot easier than addressing the masses that make up a specific target market.
The process of persona creation is complex and requires a deep look at demographics, psychographics, and the topographics that make up an entire market segment. It also should address the 4 main temperaments of aggressive, caring, impulsive, and logical. For a single site there may anywhere from 3 - 7 personas that represent the various market segmentations.
Take for instance a site like Best Buy.com, they are able to reach sky rocket conversion rates of 12 - 14%. There site is built upon a few personas like Jane, 38, the Soccer mom who makes up a large percentage of their ideal target market.
Jane is someone ready to make a purchase but doesn’t have a lot of knowledge and really wants to get in and out of the site as quickly as possible. Jane has a complete profile; her likes, dislikes, family life, web savviness and general struggles with usability aspects, etc.
So, again although people within a segment may be similar, putting a face, name, and the most competitive general characteristics to represent that market segment is a lot more effective.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:35 am
Great post! I agree that many don’t know how to outsource. I believe it’s because they don’t know what they are worth per hour. Once you determine that number, it is easy to break down tasks into those that will cost you less than your hourly rate by outsourcing.
October 21st, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Hi Ayat!
I always enjoy your posts. I would like you to elaborate on different methods for building community.
Community is definitely critical, but how do you suggest a small business build a thriving community from nothing to something substantial?
Yaro Starak has built an excellent community at his Blog Traffic School http://www.blogtrafficschool.com/forums/. However, much can be learned by examining how one does it.
Best,
Ayo
October 21st, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Great article Ayat and great comments by all on this thread. Reason # 10.5 that I am seeing more and more often:
People fail to keep it real.
As much as SEO strategies and all this targeted online marketing is great, there are lots of people who have forgotten how to connect with the ‘real’ world. Tons of people out there want to read a cleverly titled good old-fashioned speaks directly to them feel-good article. And they want to talk to you in non-sensationalized salesy talkie talkie.
That is just one of a number of reasons why I really love the TPE Community- Mike keeps it real and personal…sometimes a little TOO up close and personal, LOL, only kidding
http://www.teenentrepreneurblog.com
December 26th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Complimenti per idea del sito. Anche noi siamo amanti del trekking. Perche non organizziamo un incontro di appassionati per delle escursioni insieme? Magari non piu di 6-8 in tutto? Un saluto.
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