How a Small Oregon Wedding Venue Used Facebook to Grow

by Lisa on October 13, 2011 · 0 comments

in Facebook

How a small wedding venue used Facebook to grow

How a small wedding venue used Facebook to grow

With more than 750 million users, Facebook as an advertising medium is becoming a standard marketing line item for big business. But what about small business? This interview with Sheryl Sandberg highlighted Facebook’s strategy for engaging small business in social. Facebook announced a push to share their ad messaging with small business, offering $50 certificates for small business first Facebook ads purchase. 

Here’s one case study of how a new small business used Facebook and social marketing to have an impact on their bottom line.

RESULTS

500+ Likes of FB Page
Tripled instances of downloading the wedding guide
Nearly doubled wedding bookings
Natural search Improvements

THE PROPRIETORS STORY

Jeff and Samantha Irwin fell in love with the Historic Balch Hotel in Dufur, Oregon. They set to work continuing the restoration of the 1907 two story brick building, stripping and refinishing wood, glazing windows, learning plaster repair, and the like. The 18-room (inclusive of a beautifully appointed Bridal Suite) sits on a gorgeously hardscaped and landscaped property in the small town of Dufur, Oregon (population about 650).

The Irwin’s wanted to raise awareness about their moderately remote, beautiful Historic Hotel and wedding venue and the amazing weather just a bit to the east. Dufur has over 300 days of sunshine a year and only 9 inches of annual precipitation. The Columbia Gorge is a destination wedding area for Oregon; Dufur is just 40 miles from the heart of the gorge in Hood River.

“I cannot believe the amazing weather here. Both Jeff and I grew up in Hood River and never realized that just 40 minutes drive there is nearly perpetual sunshine. I just LOVE it here! We fell in love with the hotel and its history and have been having a blast on our new venture. We’ve had such great support and made wonderful connections with such quality businesses in our area,” Samantha Irwin, Balch Hotel Proprietor.

THE GOAL

The goal was to raise awareness about their remote location by offering one lucky bride a wedding with 50% all the elements of a traditional wedding (venue, photography, make up, rentals, etc.)   The other goal was to create long-lasting relationships with quality local vendors.

The Irwin’s created community by inviting other local, high-quality vendors to participate.

HOW THEY DID IT

The 4 month Primp My Bride Sweepstakes campaign offered the prize of 50% off all products/services unless otherwise indicated (in this case, all but catering).

They created a sweepstakes page on the Balch website and Facebook, and encouraged sign ups for the prize as well as encouraging Facebook “Likes”.

After hosting a successful first annual campaign, the Irwin’s just launched their 2nd Annual “Primp My Bride” Sweepstakes.

Using North Social (a social marketing applications company) they will use the app to process the entries, gather more data and make it easier to follow Facebook criteria for sweepstakes (the rules are already baked into the app).

As they identified booking priorities from their past campaign (brides who visited locations were 4 times more likely to book) they’ve also included monthly prizes to encourage visits to their venue.

They’ll also be trying Facebook Ads this year. With Facebook Ads, it’s possible to identify and target all engaged women in Oregon (about as good as marketing segmentation and targeting gets.)

The Irwin’s also use Facebook to announce their menus for their monthly Supper Clubs, lodging specials and to share success stories from their brides and other visitors.

WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT

Social marketing for small business is getting easier than ever. Small businesses who start now will have a jump on their competition because they will gather knowledge after each campaign.  Using Facebook, The Knot and other great social sites is a fantastic way to create awareness and engagement for a small amount of money (just remember that the tool is free, but your time is not). Not sure where to start, read Marty Weintraub’s “Killer Facebook Ads”.

5 Steps for Making Product Data Feeds Sexy

by Lisa on October 13, 2011 · 1 comment

in Data Feeds

5 Steps for Making Product Data Feeds Sexy

5 Steps for Making Product Data Feeds Sexy

Search is sexy (maybe not to everyone, but certainly to those in the industry).

Optimizing product data feeds is an oft ignored strategy of search.

Yet product data feeds can contribute an additional 5-20% lift in revenue for paid product listings and shopping results.

It’s time to bring sexy back to product data feeds.


5 Steps for Making Product Data Feeds Sexy

#1 Get to know your data feed guy-Make him/her a hero when things go well.

#2 Keep up to date on data feed changes-Adding your data feed to Bing or making sure you’re in compliance with Google’s new product data feed changes can have big impact on top line revenue. Make it a part of your monthly educational goals.

#3 Report on data feed activity-Sharing impact on Google for product search, product extensions, product listings and/or shopping results illustrates to the boss or client the importance of data feeds to overall efforts.

#4 Leverage this bonus for text ads-Product ads include images (which often includes a lift in conversion).

#5 Get more coverage-Get more links and coverage on page 1 (which can help decrease cost per conversion).

Morsel of the Story – Having optimized data feeds is like having sharp knives in your kitchen, you don’t notice when have them, but you miss them if you don’t.

What You Should Know About Google Spam Reports

by Lisa on September 27, 2011 · 0 comments

in Google, Google Spam Report

The Google Web Spam Team is hard working group with one of the hardest jobs in the algorithm, identifying and removing spam from its’ SERP.

This job is so important because it weighs very heavily on the user experience. Their leader, Matt Cutts, does a great job of sharing with the search community and taking feedback (even if there isn’t always agreement on the outcome).

The process for reporting spam has become much easier over time. It’s as simple as completing this Google Spam Report form.

The most difficult aspect of spam reporting is that there is no transparency into the process.

Google’s answer to questions related to spamming is “We don’t take action on individual sites but we use your information to make our algorithm better. Thanks for your report.”

There’s a very good reason for this response. Marketers would spend all day submitting competitors sites as spam in hopes that Google would de-index them. Totally makes sense so far. Right?

What happens when Google has very clearly posted their policy in a particular strategy (in this case, Doorway Pages) and a site has clearly violated the Google Guidelines, yet they continue to be rewarded top of page one placement for a strategy that is clearly outlined as forbidden?

Vanessa Fox wrote these guidelines in 2007 which very clearly state

Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

So why every month for the past 3 years have I had to tell a client, “I’m sorry our competition is winning because Google is valuing a tactic they frown upon”.

I can hear my search marketing brethren saying, “Quit whining and go beat them on your own terms.” Agreed. And yet…

Doorway Pages and Google Spam Report

Doorway Pages and Google Spam Report

This page is #1 for the keyword term “base plates”. It very clearly has “little or no original content” nor does it “stand alone”. This site (www.baseplates.com) is exactly one page and it links solely to its’ owners website at AdventureRV.net and their product page for “base plates”.

What possible value does this page have to users? None

What possible reasons does Google have for continuing to give it love for a strategy they’ve condemned for 4 years? Don’t Know.

But would love to get an answer.

What you should know about Google Spam Reports is that you may not ever know.

Domain Purchasing and Protecting Your Brand

by Lisa on September 26, 2011 · 0 comments

in Domain Purchasing

I’m testing some competitive analysis tools and inadvertently typed in the URL for AdGooRoo (my spelling was www.AdGuru.com) and this is what I got:

Protecting Your Brand and Domain Purchasing

Protecting Your Brand and Domain Purchasing

You can click on the image to expand and see the content at AdGuru.com but here’s the text:

AdGuru.com

We have put Adguru.com on hold for now due to horrible reviews we received from our users. We are hoping to redesign our interface in future but until then please visit other sites for your needs. Search for your needs on Google or Yahoo or MSN or AOL..

By the way, we have been tracking ValueClick (Nasdaq: VCLK) stock since January 2006, currently it seems like a great value. One of us bought it at $13 and change so currently there’s some money lost on it (on paper).

-AdGuru support

(Yes, this is the umpteenth time we have put our site on hold since we originally started this website in 1999. We have a very poor track-record but hey we’re humans.. Plus beggars can’t be choosers so just be happy with whatever you get)

Copyright © 1999~2008 AdGuru.com

Though it’s impossible to prepare for every potential reputation management situation, purchasing domains that your potential visitors my inadvertently search on is a good place to start. The domain (according to whois.net) was purchased using GoDaddy, is owned by Dinish Patel and the site was created with Google Sites. It would be worth looking into whether or not this is a competitor or someone who wants to sell the domain.

Using a misspelled domain name generator can show you top misspellings of your domain so you can choose which to purchase. In traditional marketing this is called “defensive marketing” it doesn’t necessarily generate revenue but protects your brand. Use SEOBook’s Spelling typo generator to find misspellings of your domain and make sure your visitors end up where you intended.

There are also a lot of changes coming up for TLD’s (top level domains) that businesses should be aware of to protect your brand (here’s a great article on Search Engine Watch about the new TLD changes.)

The Localization of Social Marketing

by Lisa on September 21, 2011 · 0 comments

in Social Marketing

Localization of Social Marketing

Localization of Social Marketing

I ran across 2 great sites today that are fantastic examples of localizing social efforts online:

TaskRabbit.com
It’s only operating in a handful of cities at this point (Portland and Seattle are coming soon), but their tagline of “Get just about anything done by safe, reliable, awesome people” is very compelling.

TaskRabbit declares that it is an online and mobile marketplace where people go to outsource their daily errands and Tasks – everything from grocery shopping to house cleaning to IKEA furniture assembly to website development to photography, even wedding planning.

Companies like Angie’s List have also helped us find great, reliable vendors with stellar performance records, but Task Rabbit allows a user to identify their own, very specific needs and find a resource for help. A model is also available for businesses.

The site is set up to take bids for your projects and then you chose based on price, experience and other factors.

The interesting part is that Task Rabbit dedicates an entire section to “Do More. Live More”. The concept that, if you could outsource the stuff in your life you’re not good at or don’t want to do, you’d have more time to dedicate to the things that are most important to you. Fairly compelling.

The other site is EpicChange.org.

Epic Change amplifies the voices and impact of grassroots changemakers and social entrepreneurs.

They share stories in ways that raise visibility and funds to support their extraordinary efforts to create hope in our world.

Epic Change believes that people’s stories are assets that can be used as resources to improve their lives. We help people in need share their “epic” true stories in innovative, creative and profitable ways to help them acquire the financial resources they need to create positive “change” in their communities.

The landscape for how we live our lives and engage with each other is changing every day. What great examples of change for the positive!

Trey Pennington’s Suicide Brings Up Marketing Etiquette Questions

by Lisa on September 6, 2011 · 2 comments

in Uncategorized

Trey Pennington wasn’t a household name, but he was a maverick in the social media space. His suicide and death has inspired great sadness in his local and online communities, but it has also dredged up a very negative side in regards to reporting, search and social marketing.

Forbes accused Mashable of shoddy reporting and “cashing in” on the untimely death.

WY44 posted this coverage.

One of Mr. Pennington’s important value propositions was “making sure your marketing connects with the hearts in your marketplace.” Though I never knew the man, I’d be willing to bet this isn’t what he had in mind.

Trey Pennington

Trey Pennington

Though these comments are primarily supportive and loving notes to friends and family grappling to come to terms with the tragedy, did ALL of these people know that their sadness and intimate comments would be shared with the world, not just Trey’s friends and family and the friends in their own Facebook network? Maybe not.

Do you believe the coverage was ethically questionable or entirely appropriate?

How we get news is changing and our expectation of privacy is changing. Define “appropriate” when sharing social content in news.

Daina Middleton, CEO of Performics, pointed out at last month’s Search Engine Strategies San Francisco Conference that our children don’t have the same privacy concerns we do. Is inclusion of social content in the news the bridge to making our lives entirely public?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Condolences to his friends and family in this difficult time.

Charter Customer Service: Using Tech & Social Media for Improvement

by Lisa on September 1, 2011 · 0 comments

in Social Media Marketing

I recently moved and as I was setting up utilities had an interesting customer service experience I’d like to share.

The home owners already had Cable & WiFi through Charter (I was happy to use Charter, but only want WiFi). I started with a search on the Charter website. They had this special:

Charter Customer Service

Charter Customer Service

And a button for Live Chat. I got on Live Chat with Aldo (nice guy) told him I wanted to transfer service into my name, he gave me a phone number to call. I called the phone number and my only options were “You’re already a customer” or “What’s your order confirmation” since I had neither I just kept talking to the automated voice until it got exasperated and sent me to a real person. I gave the real person my address and she informed they couldn’t find that address. I assured her the owners had Charter service there, after a few minutes she realized she was typing in the wrong zip code. I would think she could use other primary key (Customer Name?) to look it up, but we figured it out. She asked if I needed to lease a reuter, I told her equipment was still at the house. She was sure we needed new equipment but I assured her I would use what was there or buy another, I don’t want to lease a $49 piece of equipment for eternity at $7 a month. Then she proceeded to tell me service for Internet only would be $61 a month (a lot higher than their advertised price, I’ve never been a customer so I should qualify). I told her I could get new service from a different company (that already has a good track record with me) for less. She said, “Great, have a nice day.”

Then I decided to check for Charter’s social media presence, they have a new team of Social Media Specialists, I reached out to Eric (@Umatter2Charter) and he was delightful, knowledgeable, helpful and followed my transaction even after he passed me on to their sales team. Wonderful experience. I choose to go with a local provider because it was better pricing, but they tried to help, the social media specialist team member stayed connected until it was resolved.

How can Charter make this even better? Let your customer service phone department be empowered to please the customer and meet expectations and give them a great deal, no matter who they talk to in your company. I ended up going with local provider because monthly and install costs were less and install time was faster. Lesson is just to give the best deal you can to every customer. Like Eric did;)

PS Thought this was over, but Eric reached out to me again, matched and improved the other offer and they’re installing this Saturday. Very impressed with the tenacity. Morsel of the Story: When a customer raises an objection, say “How can we fix this” not “Have a nice day”:)

If Search Marketers Ran the Country

by Lisa on July 29, 2011 · 1 comment

in If Search Marketers Ran the Country, Uncategorized

If Search Marketers Ran the Country

If Search Marketers Ran the Country

Search marketers are some of the brightest and most innovative people in the world. Lately I’ve pondered how different things would be if search marketers ran the country. So I’m listing our top 10 woes and how search marketers might approach those issues.

#10
Debt Debate: Search marketers would assess the data, make recommendations, A/B test and report results.
A) Trickle down economics, keep current tax breaks.
B) Tax corporations and top 5% wealthiest Americans at the same rate as my 19-year old daughter or her college professors.

#9
Data Privacy: Search marketers would recommend aggregate data transparency with no individual data privacy invasion.

#8
Education: Search marketers would assess the future value of educating our countries children and create a plan that increased teachers pay, lowered cost of post high school education and maybe have the military do a bake sale for a change.

#7
Cash on Hand: Search marketers would point out that Apple has more cash on hand than the US government.

#6
Health Insurance: Search marketers would benchmark the world’s top 10 health care programs and recommend best strategies and tactics from each country.

#5
Military: Search marketers would announce the beginning and ending of military engagements and assess impact for future reference.

#4
Unemployment: Search marketers would analyze top 5 growing sectors of their economy and invest 10% in related programs and job placement. (BTW: Search marketers would also include the number of unemployed who are no longer eligible for unemployment in unemployment analysis;)

#3
Banking: Search marketers would have insisted that a bank bailout stipulate a mandatory percentage of investing in small business.

#2
Oil: Corporations like Exxon and Shell who are reporting record earnings would insist they be taxed at a higher level (see #10) and recommend that a percentage of profits be invested in finding more sustainable resources.

#1
Morale: Search marketers would get together as a group, share what they know, encourage each other to make a change for the better and recognize that any real improvement in the country is good for everyone.

Hood River U-PIck Cherries

by Lisa on July 18, 2011 · 0 comments

in Hood River U Pick Cherries

Hood River U Pick Cherries

Hood River U Pick Cherries


Hood River U-Pick Cherries | Edwards Farms

Anyone who knows me, knows I love food. Love to cook it, love to grow it, love to eat it;) Every year I come up with new recipes for our cherries; brandied cherries, cherry almond pie, cherry martinis. Come visit us:
Edwards Farms
4330 Royal Anne Dr
Hood River, OR 97031

Directions to Edwards Farms

1. Take 84 East.
2. Get off at exit 62 (Hood River)
3. Take Right on Country Club Rd. (that’s an immediate Right off exit)
Drive 3 miles down Country Club Rd. (it ends at a T)
4. Turn LEFT going towards Odell see sign [.2m]
5. Turn RIGHT onto Markham Rd. [.7 mile]
6. Turn RIGHT on Royal Anne [gravel road]

Drive about 250 yards and you are there.

Hood River U-Pick Cherries | Edwards Farms

Results from Landing Page Optimization Project

by Lisa on July 1, 2011 · 0 comments

in Landing Page Optimization

Tim Ash Landing Page Optimization

Tim Ash Landing Page Optimization

Hitchsource is a 7-year old online retailer of trailer hitches, rv accessories and hitch bike racks. The site had received only minor updates during that time and we began the process a year ago to redesign the site (they have been a client for 3 and half years). Tim Ash’s work has influenced many search marketers in understanding the path to improved conversion as well as guiding them through the pitfalls (and misunderstanding) of landing page optimization. Reading the book provided a great deal of guidance and invaluable advice and we wanted to share our results.

Maintaining and improving a website is always a moving target (like the analogy that it’s much like raising a child, you’re never finished;) It’s not “can anything be improved upon” its’ “what is the thing that should be improved upon first.” Tim Ash has long been a proponent of the Champion/Challenger theory that your landing pages can make great strides towards improvement in continual A/B testing with the current page as the champion and the new page as the challenger, may the best page win…lather, rinse, repeat.

Because the site hadn’t been redesigned in several years, we believed we needed to address more than just one issue.

Hitchsource had trusted their link building to a less-than-scrupulous link builder and were de-indexed from Google and looking for help with a re-inclusion. We crafted a contract together that allowed for sharing a percentage of sales from Natural Search efforts as well as the re-inclusion and opportunity to continue another 12 month contract if it were successful. Ken attended SearchFest and Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz Founder, confirmed what we had shared with Ken as well as some recommendations for improving URL structure. He has had success with multiple projects with us and was open to a redesign knowing that we wouldn’t recommend a redesign without a focus on return on investment.

Many companies, large and small, are reluctant to hire search marketing and other online marketing services because the deliverable is often, well, squishy. Offering a Pay for Performance model allowed us to share revenue if we were providing exceptional results. This model (also implemented by our friends at Performix) encourages the client and vendor to both participate in the process that leads to increases in market share and revenue.

APPROACH

If I’ve learned anything in the last 13 years as an online marketer, it’s that there’s no “one answer” to any problem, but there is the “right way” in creating an approach and that involves consulting the experts. Online marketing is comprised of multiple disciplines and it’s really impossible to master all of them.

CHALLENGES

As with most projects, budget is often a challenge. Attending SES and SMX sessions is inspiring, but often times the services offered are outside of the budget range for many clients. I’m fortunate to have a client that focuses very heavily on the “prove the return on investment” theory for site changes rather than the “we could never afford that” theory.

RESOURCES

Besides reaching out to usability and design specialists, we carefully guided efforts of our developers to maintain best practice implementation. Tim’s book “Landing Page Optimization” was an enormous help and guide during the process, though there is still much room for improvement using his methods.

RESULTS

Overall conversion doubled due to our efforts. Using Tim’s Conversion Improvement Profit Calculator helped define for the client upside for a successful redesign (the hope was for at least .25% improvement which would have provided significant revenue improvements, our actual improvements were significantly higher.)

TAKEAWAYS

One of the biggest takeaways for the team was the understanding that getting the right advice helped us get the right results. It also provided us with a case study for the value of landing page optimization (raise your hand if you’re a search marketer who is always tasked with “drive more traffic” rather than addressing the needs of the traffic you’ve worked so hard to get.) Having proven the concept allows us the ability to recommend landing page optimization specific to a campaign now that we’ve proven the worth and potential value of the effort.

The other takeaway is being enormously grateful to an industry that embraces its’ practitioners and always puts great effort in the greater good.

The other takeaway is “Don’t let perfect get in the way of really good”. Can we do more to improve our conversion and site performance, absolutely. Would it have been wise to wait until all things were perfect? I don’t believe so. Having this success for the site allows us to begin doing more laser-focused testing to continue improved performance.

NEXT STEPS

Choosing a product line, Blue Ox Base Plates and focusing on A/B testing with very specific elements for testing will be our next step on the path to continued landing page optimization improvement (lather, rinse, repeat;)

Thank you to Tim Ash and the many search practitioners who choose to share their expertise that is gained through great effort, wisdom, experimentation and insight. Cheers to you!

BIOS

Ken Whiteman is the founder and President of HitchSource.com and founder and CEO of GreenShipping.com. Prior to his ecommerce career, Ken spent 15 years in executive, engineering, and marketing roles within the semiconductor industry. Ken holds degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering from Colorado College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute respectively.

HitchSource.com was founded in 2004 and serves the trailer hitch, bike rack, and RV accessories markets. HitchSource has built a strong reputation in the industry through best in class customer service, customer reviews, and detailed product information.

GreenShipping.com provides automated carbon accounting and transportation analytics services that enable businesses to measure, report, and reduce supply chain emissions and costs. Founded in 2008, GreenShipping now provides services to over hundreds of clients including Starbucks Coffee, Wal-Mart, and The North Face.

Lisa Williams is president of MEDIA forte marketing, an online marketing agency founded in 1998 with a focus on content development for the internet. Based in Hood River, Ore., the agency now offers a suite of online marketing strategies primarily for mid-size ecommerce clients.

Lisa’s previous journalism experience brings additional insight into an internet marketing background that spans 13 years. She first learned the ropes as a content developer for Surplus Direct in Hood River, Ore. (later purchased by Egghead Software) and then moved on to form her own agency. She has spoken at InnoTech, SearchFest, Online Marketing Summit, SMX and SMX Advanced. She is on the board of directors of SEMpdx (Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland Oregon) as the Membership Chair.

MEDIA forte marketing provides pay for performance search marketing with a focus on sustainability.
Contact Information: lisa@mediafortemarketing.com, 541-380-1547

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