Facebook Offers a Sweet Deal Sucker Punch
Posted on 09. May, 2012 by Bridget Ayers in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media
Facebook recently launched their newest deal portal, Facebook Offer, and as usual they are letting Facebook users and businesses frustratingly work out the kinks for them.
Please don’t get me wrong, I think it is great that Facebook is allowing businesses to share “Offers” on Facebook and it is smart for Facebook to try and get some of that LivingSocal/Groupon pie, but as usual they have given no warning to the users and no direction to the businesses. The results – pure pandemonium.
In a recent post from The Next Web about a little Irish hotel, Roe Park Resort, picking up 28,000 users in 24 hours with their Facebook Offer they point out what a great platform this new tool can be for businesses, but they also show how it can get a bit out of control quickly:
As Simply Zesty point out, while this means big bucks for the hotel, to the tune of over £1 million, it also means that no money has actually exchanged hands and that if every single person who claimed the offer actually shows up, the hotel would have to accommodate over 3,500 guests per month until the expir[ation] date in December.
Now how many people are going to actually purchase that offer really, so who cares if it goes viral right? BUT what if a good majority did and the hotel couldn’t accommodate…… can you imagine what those 28,000 people would be saying on Facebook then?
Well let me show you a little glimpse of what it looks like when Facebook users are displeased, recently a boutique online travel agency that handles timeshare rentals, ResorTime.com offered a great deal on one of their resorts:
Looks good doesn’t it? Well quite a few people thought so too and clicked to get the offer. ResorTime posted the offer Thursday May 3rd at around 4 P.M. and was tickled by the response, within minutes they had 1900 claims and their Facebook fan count was quickly on the rise. By Sunday they pulled the offer, not because they booked up the resort, but because blood was in the water and the sharks were in a frenzy….
ResorTime got thousands of new Facebook fans, incredible traffic to their website, a few condo bookings, and 95 Facebook messages calling them a spammer for posting the “claimed” offer on Facebook user’s walls and trying to get Facebook user’s email addresses. One person even reported them to the Better Business Bureau for shady marketing practices, I kid you not.
Better Business Bureau Complaint
The details of this matter are as follows:
Complaint Involves:
Advertising IssuesCustomer’s Statement of the Problem:
I would like to file a complaint about Resortime.com’s facebook advertising. I believe their current practices are deceptive and violate my right to privacy and control of my shared information online. I will explain why and hope that they move quickly to address these issues:1. I clicked on a link on my facebook feed from a friend who ‘redeemed and offer’ from resortime, thinking I would see the offer she redeemed and have the opportunity to opt in myself if I chose to.2. The site didn’t offer anything I wanted so I closed the browser window and went on with my life.3. The next morning I noticed that on my facebook feed, a post had been added claiming that I had redeemed an offer from Resortime. This is the first violation– I redeemed NOTHING from Resortime.4. The second violation came from the fact that I wasn’t able to delete the post, since it appeared on my news feed and not my wall. Even by accessing my Activity Feed in facebook, which SHOULD show everything I do on the site and allow me to delete or edit posts and how they appear on my feed. Right now the unauthorized, untrue and deceptive post sits on my newsfeed for my friends and family to see, and be deceived by themselves.I believe this tactic shows all the signs of a phishing scheme, where unwitting consumers are duped into clicking a link, only to have their personal info used without their consent. In this case, the false claim posted to my facebook feed that I redeemed an offer when I hadn’t.I understand that this might be an accident or a result of sloppy coding or a dodgy third-party referral site, but I am dubious and believe that it instead represents a deceptive and manipulative business practice. I hope Resortime will immediately update their facebook functionality to remove this phishing scheme. I will be sharing this complaint with facebook as well, so that they can better track and police unscrupulous practices like this.Desired Settlement:
I would like the post removed from my news feed and Resortime to change the way they share facebook users’ information by following these common-sense guidelines:1. Your social posts should not say someone redeemed a deal when they didn’t.2. Nothing should ever be posted to a newsfeed without express permission from a user.2. Any social post MUST be able to be deleted or edited at the user’s discretion.
Since when did the Better Business Bureau start handling Facebook advertising complaints. I may need to look into this a bit further.
Now 95 comments is not 28,000 people, I didn’t mention the angry tweets about them – they don’t hit tens of thousands either, but even this small percentage has reeked havoc with their social profiles and online reputation. The spammer here is NOT ResorTime it is Facebook, when you click on an offer it automatically posts to your activity feed that you “claimed” an offer. Actually it is defaulted to post publicly to your activity feed, but if you are clicking quickly you may not see it at first. Just remember when you click first and think later you get some surprises.
After you click to get an offer a pop up box appears telling you that the company does not get your email address (this may be something Facebook just added, we tested it after the deal went out), in the bottom left hand corner the text “Post offer to timeline” is visible (this has always been there), and the default is Public. The user must select “only me” if they want the post to be private or move away from the page all together if they do not want it to post at all.
The other BIG issue for people is what posts on their timeline, the post says “claimed” offer. Most people are clicking to get more information about the offer to decide if they want to claim it or in this case purchase it. It does seem shady OF FACEBOOK to post on people’s timelines that deal has been claimed when it has not.
This is the email that people received when they clicked on the offer……
I see almost everything that should be in the offer in this email. What may be misleading is that in the email you recieve when you “get the offer” (you are not actually getting the offer here, just more information about it) the address listed for ResorTime.com is in Carlsbad, CA which is their corporate offices – the condos are actually in Lake Tahoe. This shouln’t be too big of a deal, by clicking on the offer you don’t pay for anything or share any information, but that is not how Facebook users see it. Since the email comes with the company’s information on it they are assuming that the company has their email. They are also upset that they had to click to find out if the resort was near them and that it posted on their timeline that they “claimed” an offer.
ResorTime did not know that their corporate address popped up under their name, the preview you get of your Facebook Offer when you are posting it doesn’t show this part. Your offer text can only be 90 characters long and like any good marketer they wanted the deal information in there. The terms and conditions area in the email has the link for more information and the booking page has all of the pertinent information on the property. If you think about a pay per click ad, this is all pretty standard, so ResorTime.com thought that they were covered.
It is a shame and I feel really bad for ResorTime, they had a legitimate deal that they wanted to offer on Facebook, the pricing was correct, the landing page for the link was correct, the image is from the resort, and the expiration date is clearly visible.
I know they are shaking their heads right now wondering what they could have done differently and the only advice I can give them is do not be one of the first to try a new Facebook advertising product. Let someone else take all the bumps and bruises for you. Every time Facebook rolls out a new advertising service they step on users. When will Facebook learn??
Now if they dare to do this again, they need to make sure that the location of the offer is in the headline, but even with that the main complaint was that it posted to people’s timeline as a “claimed” offer so how do they deal with that? I really don’t know.
You are probably asking yourselves why they would dare to do it again after all of this? Well it did result in 4,000 new Facebook fans, significant traffic to their site, 200,000 people clicked to get the offer, there were purchases made and nearly 800 people signed up on their website to be notified of hot deals and resort updates. ResorTime.com offers timeshares at great prices that are perfect for that frugal traveler, or the family trying to take a vacation without taking a second mortgage on their house, why shouldn’t they be able to use Facebook Offer to promote their product?
For those Facebook users that had the “claimed offer” hit their timeline you can hide it by…..
To hide an offer from your news feed, hover over the top-right corner, click the drop-down menu 
and choose what you’d like to hide:
-
Hide story will remove the offer you’re looking at
-
Hide all by will remove the offer you’re looking at, as well as all future stories from that Page
http://www.facebook.com/help/offers
Read about the Facebook Offer craziness in detail on Resortimetravelers.com: Resortime and Facebook Offers Hiccup or see it in action on their Facebook page.
Full disclosure: We work with resortime.com on some of their digital marketing needs, we were not involved in posting this Facebook Offer but if we had been I don’t know that we would have done much differently aside from putting the location of the offer. This may have saved them from getting maybe 5-10 nasty comments, but the bulk of the comments came from the offer posting to Facebook user’s timelines and there is no way we would have seen that issue coming.
It’s Not SEO Anymore, It’s Marketing. Deal With It.
Posted on 29. Feb, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Optimize For Customer Experience
When people learn I’ve recently written a book called Optimize they usually ask what it’s about. I say it’s about optimizing customer discovery and engagement with content. The response I usually get is something like, “Oh, cool. I thought it was about SEO.”
Well, in a way optimizing content and customer experiences is SEO. That’s because what most of the better SEOs practice today is really more about the promise of marketing: attracting, engaging and inspiring customers to buy.
Whether it’s Google, Social Networks, Online News Media, Digital Assets or any other channel/format for content – best practices optimization is in effect for smart companies that want an advantage.
2005 Called, It Wants Its SEO Back. If your SEO is still overwhelmingly focused on massive keyword lists, ranking reports and directory/social bookmarking style link building then you’re stuck in 2005. It’s time to evolve with an optimized state of mind.
Optimize Throughout the Customer Life Cycle. To “optimize” in the search world may have traditionally focused on keywords and links but has changed to focus holistically on the journey from prospect to customer to advocate. At least in my view it does. When companies look at the entire customer life cycle, it will reveal a tremendous opportunity for optimization, not just for the top of the sales funnel.
Modern Optimization is Adaptable. When Google, Bing and Ask implemented various media and data sources into common search results (Universal Search) SEOs adjusted with digital asset optimization. When Google evolved their place pages, SEOs adjusted with local, mobile and geo-specific optimization. Panda? Better quality and less duplicate content. Personalization? Better title tag and meta description writing to inspire greater CTR. Social? Say hello to a tirade of G+ SEO. Conversions? Check. Pigeon Rank? If was real, check.
Helping Search Engines Helps Our Optimization. Technical SEO will have it’s place as long as there is an opportunity to create advantage by doing so. Search engines are imperfect in their attempt to crawl, index and rank all of the digital content that exists online. Making that process easier, more efficient, more useful and meaningful for search engines is something website owners must pay attention to regardless of how the search experience evolves ala universal, personal and social.
Optimization is Art and Science. Process, continual data analysis and tools are also persistent characteristics within the world of SEO because they enable some science into the art of optimization so it can scale.
Holistic Optimization for the Win. At the same time, the notion of optimization with a holistic view extends to all aspects of the customer experience with brand content. Whatever can be discovered, consumed or shared can be optimized for better performance – both for customers and for achieving brand business objectives. That means marketing, public relations, customer service, investor relations, human resources/recruiting and any other content a businesses publishes online.
Optimization Follows Search Engine Innovation. The best practices of optimization mirror many marketing best practices and in the end, the best way to view business investment in modern SEO is as an investment in marketing and all that marketing tactics can achieve. Optimizing the search experience works concomitantly with changes in search technology and how search engines work. There is no death to SEO, just a shift in what to optimize in order to improve performance.
Continuous Optimization Is Forever and Profitable. Just because Google masks keyword referrers for logged in users, emphasized Google+ content and signals, elevated content quality standards and changed how links are evaluated doesn’t mean opportunities to optimize have gone away. For companies that employ optimization as a process of continuous implementation, assessment and improvement, there’s nothing closer to effective online marketing than the practice of optimization.
Don’t Tread on SEO, Elevate It. For those who think SEO is dead. It’s just your limited understanding of SEO that’s dead. For web developers that treat SEO as a one-time task during web design and only focus on marketing content (vs. ALL of the website content), and no ongoing content promotion, you’re only touching the surface and may be causing your clients to lose revenue in the long run. For bottom feeding SEOs that continue to over-promise and under-deliver with sensationalized accounts of traffic boosts, rankings and links, you’re short sightedness is hurting companies and our industry.
SEO is really just marketing, so deal with it. The evolution of customer centric content marketing and it’s intersection with social media and optimization represents the kind of online marketing that companies are really sinking their teeth into in 2012 and beyond. To be a great SEO, be a great marketer because that’s what SEO is.
Learn More at Search Congress, Barcelona. I am very much looking forward to presenting on this very topic at Search Congress in Barcelona this week. I may not speak a lick of Spanish or Catalan, but hopefully my enthusiasm for the topic will make up for my Midwestern accented English.
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Planning Your Content Marketing: Bricks vs. Feathers
Posted on 15. Feb, 2012 by Chris Sietsema in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, content marketing, infographic, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media strategy
Chris Sietsema is Social & Digital Operations Lead at 
Convince & Convert. He also runs a digital agency called Teach to Fish Digital where he provides insights on search, social media, email marketing, and analytics.
Do you remember this trick question from grade school: Which weighs more – 5 lbs of bricks or 5 lbs of feathers? Some of us (self included) were initially fooled by this obvious test of common sense, but as it relates to your content marketing, should you be focused more on building substantial content productions or presenting your audience with a steady array of minute snippets that define your brand and message?
Defining Bricks & Feathers
Bricks are larger content productions such as research reports, events, white papers, video series, mobile apps, etc. They typically require decent budget and time to produce but have the potential to make a larger splash when executed and promoted correctly.
Feathers are comprised of simple text and photo content published via popular social media tools like 
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, etc. Less intensive than bricks from a production budget standpoint, feathers are created consistently to maintain an ongoing stream of communication between a brand and its audience.
Deciding Between Bricks & Feathers
The graphic below illustrates the key differences between bricks and feathers for content planning and production. Here’s an more detailed explanation of the attributes you should consider.
Position / Identity
While there are varying degrees of thought leadership, larger productions allow you to position your brand as a reliable resource for superb ideas. By continuously sharing small bites of information, you would likely be considered a news maker by the audience. Both positions are attractive in their own right, but businesses which have the capacity to create and share short, informative posts on a daily basis are more inclined to go the feathers route. Those brands that simply cannot provide entertaining, enlightening and/or educational content on a daily basis (e.g. law firms, insurance companies, some medical facilities, etc.) should focus more on building bricks for the purpose of conveying their value to prospects and influencers.
Content Life Span
Video series, graphic illustrations and even research reports have a greater chance of becoming evergreen compared to your everyday tweets and Facebook posts.
SEO Potential
One key reason to consider incorporating more bricks into your content mix is their propensity to attract high quality and relevant links, a “must have” for any organization focused on improving activity from natural search. To a lesser degree feathers can be utilized more as a social signal or as a link to key content on your website/blog. If shared by key influencers, shorter posts can have a noticeable impact.
Required Resources
Simple posts merely demand the attention of a dedicated community manager to create and measure impact. Bricks, on the other hand, are typically more involved. Due to the various skills required to produce an event, a podcast, a high quality infographic or a mobile application, you could potentially include creative, technical and other marketing resources in your development process.
Opportunity Cost
One potential issue with bricks is that there is really no way to predict what will resonate. Your organization may have research to support that there is a demand for a specific piece of content within a particular medium. However, there are no guarantees that your bricks will generate interest, links, traffic, leads, sales, etc. Thanks to the time and resources needed to create bricks, there is a much higher opportunity cost when compared to feathers.
Primary Metrics
Success for feathers is often gauged by how many audience members saw a posts and, more importantly, how many of those people actually took some action (i.e. clicked or shared). In addition to those important metrics, you may find other crucial means for reporting the impact of bricks such as downloads of content, number of event attendees, leads collected in exchange for access to content and so on.
Best of Both Worlds?
Does your organization (or do your clients) produce both bricks and feathers? How do you determine what kinds of content to produce? What methods do you utilize to manage production and promotion of all that you create?
Early Bloggers
Posted on 20. Oct, 2011 by Sean D'Souza in Blog, blogs, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
When did blogging begin? Earlier than you think!
Like it? Well don’t be shy: Tweet or Facebook it, or Google+ it 
If you aren’t already on the ‘Friday cartoon list’ then here’s a link to make sure you don’t miss a fun cartoon
P.S. Also winners for the Bat Cartoon Contest. And the winner is: Justin + a consolation prize for KC Ramsay!
Cartoon: One Day In Junior High
Posted on 11. Aug, 2011 by Sean D'Souza in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Remember how we all wanted to be astronauts and teachers when we grew up? Well that hasn’t changed a lot, but there have been some changes for sure. Have a look below, and be sure to leave your comments. 
Like it? Well don’t be shy: Tweet or Facebook it, or Google+ it
If you aren’t already on the ‘Friday cartoon list’ then here’s a link to make sure you Don’t Miss a Fun Cartoon
Grow Your Social Network But Not On Facebook
Posted on 22. Jun, 2011 by Bridget Ayers in Blog, Facebook Ads, facebook terms of use, Featured, grow your social network, growing your facebook page, increasr, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social ads, Social Media, twiends, twimates
If you are growing your social network with outside networks like Twiends, Twimates, or Increasr getting Facebook page likes just got A LOT harder. Over the last week Facebook has shut down access for these networks, which means that the members of these networks can no longer link their Facebook pages or like another Facebook page from these sites.Why would Facebook cut these networks and their users off from promoting Facebook pages? Well the short answer….MONEY.
Sites like Twiends allow users to grow their social profiles outside of the social networks through incentivized reciprocation or through paid placement, this takes ad money away from Facebook. Facebook says that sites like these that charge or offer some sort of compensation to “like” a Facebook page break Facebook’s TOU. But if Facebook were being honest this is really about lost ad dollars from those few individuals that do not want to pay to advertise on their network.
How much money could a network with 600 million users really be losing from communities like Increasr? These sites get tens of thousands of members – maybe 100′s of thousands but not 100′s of millions and the majority of users of these sites are people that do not purchase PPC or CPM ads. Facebook wants you to promote Facebook but only on their terms and monetary benefit….at least that is what the conversations in the forums about this news are saying.
What do you think?
What do these networks have to say about the Facebook blockade?
Most are saying that they are working on the issue, Twiends has taken it a step further by removing Facebook tabs from their site.
It’s with great regret that we have decided to close our Facebook features.
Unfortunately, Facebook are not happy for Twiends to promote Facebook fan pages in the way that we have up until now. After a fair bit of discussion this week with Facebook we have decided that changing the feature the way they have requested will not lead to a good experience for Twiends users. Our goal is to help people grow their social networks in an ethical and compliant way. We want to be a great discovery engine for users, and we always want to make sure that we conform to the policies of the networks that we integrate with.
Although we would love to have Facebook on board with us, we see this as an opportunity to expand the Twitter services we offer. We have some exciting features planned on the Twitter side, such as competition features, and with the removal of Facebook from Twiends we’ll now have the capacity to roll these features out. We see this as an exciting new chapter for Twiends, where we can hopefully become an even more valuable contributor to the Twitter ecosystem.
We’re very sorry for any inconvenience caused. In many ways this was out of our control. The Facebook profiles that are on the site will be removed over the course of the next few days and a small redesign of the site will be made to make space for the new features we’ll be rolling out..
If this is the first time you are hearing of these networks let me walk you through what they are and why people use them:
How do you grow your social network?
- Put out good content
- Connect with like minded people
- Consistently post and interact
- Have fun and be creative
- Buy community favor
I absolutely believe that if you create quality profiles by implementing the first four points in your strategy that you will grow your social network, but is good content and consistent communication enough to build a robust community? Unfortunately, it is not.
When looking to build up website traffic most people understand that they will need to implement a plan that includes paying for placement, whether that is a Google Ad, a banner ad on a strategic website or blog, or backlinks it’s about getting visitors that can be converted into business and buying those visitors is a necessary part of search engine optimization. These same individuals and companies that are willing to pay for SEO often do not understand why they would need to pay to build their social profiles.
What does it mean to buy community favor?
- Network Ads
- Contests & Giveaways
- Social Growing Networks
I think most people know that you can buy ad placement on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, etc. to help you promote and build your social profiles, and those same people may know that if you want people to ‘like’ your profile giving them something like a discount or a freebie will get you more love, but what you may not know is that you can join outside networks to grow your online communities. There are networks that are free to join and to use and then there are networks that are free to join and use but also offer paid ways to grow.
Most of the networks focused on helping you grow your social networks started with blog, website, and/or Twitter building. These networks are based on reciprocation and paid placement. Twiends, Twaffup, Twimates, and Increasr are just a few of the networks available to help you grow your networks. These networks are unique in that you get rewarded for liking or following another user. Through the distribution of credits, seeds, or grains you are rewarded when you visit, like, or follow another user. You can buy better placement on the site to get the members to like you, you can buy their “currency” to offer to users to join your community, and you can get more points/credits by joining other user’s communities which you can then turn around and use to build your profiles.
So why would people join these networks?
Well, it is fast and cheap (in comparison to a PPC or CPM ad) way to grow your social networks. You still have to spend time and energy on these sites, so it is not as simple as joining another network and then overnight you have a huge Twitter or Facebook community. You have to spend time checking out other member profiles to grow your credits, adjusting your keywords/categories for visibility, buying credits, and keeping up your social profiles so these new friends/followers don’t unfollow you.
Is this quality community building?
No, not generally it is a great way to give a new social profile a quick kick but to really grow a quality community the first four components mentioned above are imperative. If we are being honest though, social networking is like being back in junior high, if you look like your popular people are more interested in getting to know you. These social growing networks allow you to find other ACTIVE social networkers to help you build your social networks, but though you will get their like or follow most often you will not get engagement from them.
Moral of this story:
Never throw all of your eggs in one basket, diversify your efforts and you will keep growing. Building your social community takes time, creativity, and constant R&D. When new opportunities present themselves there is nothing wrong with giving it a whirl, but remember to stay true to the purpose of social networking – it’s about creating an authentic presence. Genuinely connect and engage with your community and in time you will reap the rewards.
Want to Maximize Your WordPress Website Fortin-Style?
Posted on 21. Jun, 2011 by Michel Fortin in Blog, cms, consulting, critique, feedback, interest, introduction, marketer, News, price, product, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Success Chef, theme, Traffic, training, WordPress
Many people have asked me for this, and now I’m seriously thinking about doing it. (Yes, I hear you, Mike Sigers.) I’m thinking of offering a WordPress training course.
No, not a basics course and not something too advanced. And not any old training course teaching stuff you would expect to find for free online.
But a “Fortinized” WordPress training. A “how-did-he-do-that” course that shows you how, exactly, I tweak, optimize, modify, and monetize my WordPress websites.
Let’s just call it FortinPress.com for now. 
It’s been on my mind for the last two years now. I was supposed to put one together with another marketer, but it never materialize for a number of reasons — being extremely busy being one of them.
I want to gauge your level of interest on this. I want to see if you would be interested. So here’s what I envision, what will be included, and the price point…
The course itself will be delivered over 4-5 weeks through a series of webinars.
I prefer live webinars because you get to see me do it, in front of you, live. I share my desktop with you, and you get to see what I do, how I do it, as I do it. You also get to see the innerworkings of my websites, warts and all, and any snags that appear, which is a perfect learning environment.
Here’s the tentative course synopsis:
1. Introduction and Examples
In this session, I will go over WordPress, how I specifically use it, how I turn it into a content management system (CMS), how I use it on my clients’ sites, and more. I will also give you a sneak peek at the admin areas and the tools I use.
2. Themes and Styles
I will go over theme tweaking, styles, and graphics — from making basic layout changes to more advanced modifications. When people ask, “Michel, how did you do this or that on this theme?” This session will answer that question.
3. Plugins and Functions
This session will focus on plugins — the plugins I use or recommend, and how to set them up. Not all plugins are usable out of the box. Some need tweaking. I will show how I set them up and offer a downloadable Excel spreadsheet of all my plugins and where to get them.
4. Tools and Shortcuts
In this session, I will go through some of my tricks and external (non-WP) tools I use to speed it all up. I will show you how I use Firebug, SEO tools, page speed tools, cheatsheets, social media integration, cross-browser tweaking, etc.
5. Money and Traffic
I’m thinking this may be something a lot people will love to know, and that’s how I monetize, market, and drive targeted traffic to my WordPress website. Without PPC or advertising. I will talk about list-building, content strategy, and social media integration.
6. Open Q&A Session
The final session will be an open question-and-answer session. This is where I will answer any and all of your questions related to the course content. If it takes an hour, I’ll take an hour. If it takes three, three it is. I want to take all the time needed to answer all your questions.
Bonuses
Not sure about this one, but I think a free trial to a one-month Success Chef University might be a good bonus. This is not going to be some forced continuity thing. If you like the free trial, you will need to re-subscribe to keep it going. Just sayin’.
Success Chef also includes the weekly Wednesday night classes and the derivative products, like List Whisperer, Marketing ESP, the Copy Doctor, etc.
Upsell
I do plan on offering an upsell. The reason I’m doing it is not entirely because I want to maximize sales, although that is obviously one of the reasons. But more important, I feel like this is one upsell people will actually ask for and buy.
What is it? It’s a private, one-on-one session with me.
This is an opportunity where the student can book a time with me, and I go through their website, theme, and plugins, and perhaps even web copy and strategy.
In it, I will review their setup, answer individual questions, and provide actionable recommendations. Perhaps even fix a thing or two while on the call, and implement a few tweaks right on the spot (within reason, of course).
Again, this is a tentative list. It might change, especially based on your feedback. All these sessions will be recorded and available online in a password-protected area.
The price point will increase once the sessions have been delivered and uploaded. I want to offer a lower price point before and while I deliver the course as a special introductory price.
My thinking is $297 is more than a fair price. I looked at other courses of this type, and $297 is actually on par or less than most.
The upsell will be $997 (total) for both the course and the full, one-on-one session. Considering that I charge $1,000 for critique consulting, and a minimum of $3,000 for any copy project, I think this price point is more than fair.
Now, you don’t have to choose the upsell.
You can buy just the main course for $297.
I only want to make the one-on-one session available to those who need more hand-holding and individualized attention.
But if you have a website right now, and you’re wondering how to tweak it but don’t know how, and if you prefer to save the hassle and expense — Mike Sigers said he was charged $2,500 to modify just one page! — this will certainly be a bargain.
So let me know your thoughts.
To answer a few of your questions in advance, let’s say I’m looking at next week as the launch, and the course will be delivered throughout July. Probably in the afternoons.
(However, if you choose the upsell, the one-on-one session can be booked at any time based on any openings on my schedule.)
All the sessions will be recorded and you will have access to the recordings. You can share your private session (if you choose the upsell) with a freelancer, partner, staff member, or designer, if you wish them to implement some of the things I recommend.
(Keep in mind, I will do a few tweaks for you, and do it live. This is only if the changes you need fall beyond the scope of our time together.)
Standing by and listening…
Want to Maximize Your WordPress Website Fortin-Style? originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.
Customer Relationship Management for IM Dummies
Posted on 09. May, 2011 by Daniel Levis in Articles, Blog, customer, intelligence, logic, pareto, relationship, resource, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, spending, spreadsheet, system, tracking
The Pareto Principle says 20% of your customers produce 80% of your sales and profits. This has profound implications to the wealth and wellbeing of ANY business…
Resources are finite. There is only so much time, money, and energy to invest.
One of the keys to increased conversion, customer value, and retention — and the increased profits they bring you — is the strategic application of your resources.
If you can deploy them with surgical precision… obtaining the highest possible return on resources invested… while avoiding their squander in places where they have negligible or negative contribution to your bottom line, you have a decided competitive advantage.
So why do so many online marketers pursue the quick fix, churn and burn school of marketing that treats all customers alike? Chalk it up to ignorance… temporarily too easy pickings… shoddy products that are anathema to repeat business… laziness… stupidity… pick your poison…
Despite the obvious logic and benefit of the surgical, systematic strike, few entrepreneurs have even considered it… still fewer pursue it. And as a result, billions of dollars are left on the table. Worse, businesses that flourished in cushier times are now floundering on the rocks of extinction.
The first step to avoiding this fate is to start tracking the behavior of your customers… and using that intelligence to take specific actions that encourage continued and increased spending…
Doesn’t it make sense to spend more money marketing to people with a proven propensity to buy from you?
What do you think might happen on your next product launch or promotion if you were to separate your best buyers from the great unwashed? What if instead of just sending them a series of emails you send these VIPs a series of print pieces as well?
What do you think might happen if you were to send your very best buyers a surprise gift in the mail once a year? Or your bread and butter buyers a free printed catalog once a quarter?
Do you think that might increase sales far and above your mailing costs?
Do you think it might also make these customers more responsive to your regular email promotions?
Does the Pope wear a beanie?
But here’s the real million-dollar question:
How do you know which customers are likely to respond enthusiastically to this special attention?
Here’s what I told one of my brightest coaching students who asked this question just the other day…
Your first step is to create an RFM value for each record in your customer file.
R stands for RECENCY (customer purchased within the last x days). F stands for FREQUENCY (customer purchases on average every x days). M stands for MONETARY VALUE (customer’s total purchase volume).
So let’s say Jill Customer made her first purchase a year ago. Her most recent purchase occurred 7 months ago. In between she made 2 additional purchases. And her total spend with your company is $2,780.
How do you compute Jill’s value in order to make a resource-leveraged decision about how much you should be willing to spend to convert her into a customer for your latest offering?
First, you need to create a few simple rules that make sense for your particular business. DISCLAIMER: Every business operates around different purchasing patterns and customer lifecycles so this is a purely an illustrative example…
Recency Rules:
- Customers who last purchased within the last 30 days get an R value of 5.
- Customers who last purchased within the last 30 to 60 days get an R value of 3.
- Customers who last purchased within the last 60 to180 days get an R value of 1.
- Customers who have not purchased within the last 180 days get an R value of 0.
Frequency Rules:
- Customers who purchase every 60 days or less on average get an F value of 5.
- Customers who purchase every 60 to 180 days on average get an F value of 3.
- Customers who purchase every 180 to 360 days on average get an F value of 1.
- Customers yet to make their second purchase get an F value of 0.
Monetary Value Rules:
- Customers who have spent $2,500 or more with your get an M value of 5.
- Customers who have spent between $1,500 and $2,500 get an M value of 3.
- Customers who have spent between $500 and $1,500 get an M value of 1.
- Customers who have spent less than $500 with you get an M value of 0.
You now have a system for ranking the relative value of your customers on a scale of 0 to 15. So what kind of customer is Jill?
Well she hasn’t purchased for 7 months. That pegs her R value at 0.
During her 1-year history as a customer she made 4 purchases. That gives her an F value of 3.
And her total spend with your company is $2,780. That gives Jill an M value of 5.
You now add these figures together to determine Jill’s RFM value — 8. This is Jill’s relative value as a customer.
Your next step is to decide what action you will take in order to maximize that value. Maybe you sub-divide your buyer’s list into three groups — 0-5, 5-10, 10-15. And on your next product launch you send all three groups a couple of postcards inviting them to consume your pre-launch content online.
The 5-10 and the 10-15 group have proven by their past buying behavior that they are quite responsive to your offers. So in addition to the postcards, you send them a sales letter and a couple of follow up reminders by mail counting down to the deadline.
And the 10-15 group — your most responsive and therefore highest value customers — also receives an amazing shock and awe package that includes all of the launch content on DVD, an audio CD they can listen to in their car, and beautifully printed transcripts.
Result: More sales, more profits, more loyalty and retention!
Parting comment. This is not rocket science to pull off. You don’t need high priced consultants or fancy pants CRM software to do this.
Anybody with elementary school math can download a .csv file from their shopping cart and perform the above calculations in a simple spreadsheet.
Will you give it a try?
Until next time, Good Selling!
Customer Relationship Management for IM Dummies originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.
Web Wolves, Whores, Vagabonds, and Fools
Posted on 13. Apr, 2011 by Daniel Levis in Articles, authenticity, benefit, Blog, employer, evolution, guru, market, myth, scam, selling, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, trend, tweet, Twitter
The world is changing today so fast it’s really hard to keep up. Just a few years ago pretty much everybody worked for someone else. For most, it was the smart thing to do.
Safe, secure, benefits — the whole bit.
How things change. Today, manufacturing in the developed world is dead, toast, gone.
And so called "knowledge work" is now carried on by independent consultants, freelancers, and other entrepreneurs who come together virtually from the four corners of the earth. It’s cheaper, more efficient, and involves far less risk than the traditional everything-under-one-roof business model.
In this brave new world, only idiots still believe employment equals security. The average tenure in a J.O.B. is now, what… eighteen minutes?
The big, lumbering, vertically-integrated companies are failing like the dinosaurs they are, spitting out long-suffering employees like so much mulch. Since the vast majority of these employees were educated for a business world that no longer exists, they are now left twisting in the wind, clutching at straws.
And sooner or later — with the help of web wolves in sheep’s clothing — it dawns on these poor souls: Make Money on the Internet. It’s a fabulous idea. You absolutely can make money on the Internet, though most people who try don’t make a red cent.
Why?
It all boils down to a mindset that buys into these three big myths…
Myth #1:
Push Button, Make Money
From what I can tell, most newbies approach online business with the exact same mindset they bring to their jobs. They give no thought to the purposes of their labor, save a paycheck at the end of the week.
And this flawed thinking makes them prime suckers for every add-nothing-of-value-get-rich-quick scam that comes down the pike.
Multi-level schemes… auto-blogging… PPC arbitrage… software that automates some almost-useless function to such a degree that it squirts a little money… the exploitation of temporary loopholes that allow you to inject yourself into somebody else’s value chain, but without bringing anything useful to the equation.
These are the kinds of things that attract the employee mindset. Just give me some mindless activity — I don’t want to know the motivations or interests of anybody else — the less thinking I have to put into this the better.
The flimflam artists who dream up these schemes know that the less they explain about what it is they are actually selling, the more suckers they’ll enlist. No thinking person would buy from their sales copy because it fails to answer the fundamental business question: What value does this bring to anybody but me?
Contrary to popular opinion, the purpose of business is NOT to make money. The purpose of business is to fulfill unmet needs and desires — to add value to other people’s lives in some way. Making money is a byproduct of that process.
Myth #2
You Need a System, Blueprint, Roadmap, Formula, Method to "Duplicate"
Now don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with modeling. The problem is mindless modeling. The kind of modeling where Joe Newbie takes said model and applies it out of context and without adaptation.
In today’s world, there is no such thing as context. Things change much too quickly to expect that by the time a particular system, blueprint, or roadmap comes to market it’s still entirely optimal — even to the exact same situation it was originally developed for.
Let alone the inevitable differences of situation that exist between where it was developed and where it will be applied.
Yet this is exactly the expectation. The average employee expects his or her employer to show them step-by-step how the job is to be done. If the output is less than ideal, it’s the employer’s fault. And this idea gets carried over into the entrepreneurial world. If it doesn’t work, it’s the guru’s fault.
And so yet another disillusioned newbie begins wandering aimlessly through the Internet marketing streets like a hapless vagabond in search of something that actually works. There is no such thing as a plug and play business. Doesn’t exist, never will.
It’s up to YOU come up with your own system, blueprint, or roadmap that solves the specific problem that defines your business.
Myth #3
You Don’t Have to Sell, Just Make "Friends", "Followers", and "Connections"
The promise of social media marketing is this: Make fans, they’ll do your selling for you.
It’s all about authenticity and connection and interacting with your public on the same stage, where everybody gets an equal voice. While it’s certainly true that liking is important to persuasion, it’s just part of the equation.
The social media marketing game is at best foreplay that can never succeed without getting down the "ugliness" of direct marketing and actually asking people to buy stuff. It is this fear of selling that causes newbies to flock to social media marketing in the first place.
At its worst, social media marketing is prostitution. What was supposed to be a pristine oasis of authenticity and a sanctuary from blatant commercialism is turning into a cesspool of disingenuous opinion and endorsement — a media that is inherently unreliable, and therefore destined to devolve in value.
Case in point: Twitter now offers a revolutionary new suite of pay per click advertising services. With Promoted Tweets you can now buy celebrity endorsements at the push of a button.
The service is only available to large advertisers at present, but pretty soon the little people should be able to log on and use their plastic money to get plastic people to tweet about them.
It’s incredibly genuine. They’re keepin’ it real.
Or how about Promoted Trends? Yes, you can actually buy your own trend. Who’d have thunk it?
Or the ultimate in pimposity, Promoted Accounts. This is where Twitter will help you turn a quick trick by soliciting followers on your behalf.
The wonders money can buy. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned, honest direct marketing?
Until next time, Good Selling!
Web Wolves, Whores, Vagabonds, and Fools originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.
Why Email Marketing Doesn’t Work…
Posted on 30. Mar, 2011 by Daniel Levis in Articles, Blog, brand, buzz, email, hype, open, pitch, professional, promise, proof, publicity, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Traffic
Despite all of the buzz and excitement swirling around social media marketing — much of it driven by hype I might add — email remains the killer app for online marketers who demand an immediate and measurable return from their marketing efforts.
Given a choice between 100 visits driven by social media and 10 from email marketing I’ll take the 10 any day of the week.
My professional opinion is that traffic is only as valuable as the conversion (leads and sales) it brings you. “Buzz” should never be a primary aim, rather a by-product of generating leads and making sales. And in most markets, email driven traffic is 15 to 20 times more likely to convert than social media traffic.
So why are so many marketers struggling these days to make email marketing work?
One reason is because they’re wasting too much of their time with social media.
Here’s the pop theory…
Social networks are like backyard barbecues. You head on over and sit around the barby sippin’ a few proverbial wobbly pops, chatting up the locals, making friends, talking about the weather and the game and other idle gossip. And sooner or later somebody is sure to ask: So what do you do?
And that’s your chance to invite ‘em over to your place — your blog, I mean. And on your blog you’ve got plenty of hearty hospitality that proves you’re a swell guy or gal definitely worth knowing the next time your new-found friends ever need what you’re selling.
Now, even a hair-on-fire social media fanatic will tell you your next step in the long and winding road to revenue is to try and get these visitors to sign up to your email list. So you’ve got an email sign up box on your blog with a delicious free gift your new friends can take home with them. That way you can market to them on demand — well into the future.
Just one problem with all this awesomeness: Way too much work for too little return. You have to sift through far too many of these social media butterflies to find a serious prospect. I mean, why do people go on social media sites? To socialize! That’s why they’re called “Social” networks.
Why not start with quality traffic in the first place…
… People who are actively searching desperately for an answer to the problem you solve. Duh!
Beware the social media cool aid that says you can get all of the traffic you could ever want for free. Nothing’s free. You got into business to leverage yourself, not to become a $2 an hour social media slave.
Go out and buy yourself some decent traffic, or do some good old-fashioned joint ventures, or publicity. And build you list on a solid foundation.
Another reason marketers struggle with email these days — even those who understand that you need quality traffic to begin with — is what I call the curse of voluntary anonymity.
I see this all the time and it breaks my heart.
What am I talking about?
Simply this: Business owners hiding behind their “brand”… or their “product” instead of interacting personally with people.
There is an epidemic of distrust on the Internet…
Unless you’re a known brand like Apple or Amazon, the first thing a new prospect does when they come to your website or blog is try to figure out who the heck you are.
Before they engage with your promise and sign up to your email list, they want to know if you seem honest, competent, and sympathetic. And if they do decide to connect with you via email they want to be subtly reminded of these qualities each time you drop in to say “Hi”…
Yet you’ve seen it a thousand times before… flashy html emails from waxing poetic about — the whole piece written in disembodied voice.
This kind of an approach might work fine in the offline world, but it’s just not how email works. Think about it: email is the most personal marketing medium on the planet. You trade emails with your friends and family. And you do it in plain text. You read those emails. You trust those emails.
If you send flashy looking html masterpieces, instantly you go in the spam folder of your prospect’s brain. Your email looks and feels like an intrusion.
Even if someone does open your email, they’re ten times more likely to trash it. You failed to make a human connection. Email is a one-to-one medium. Get personal, or go home.
One more reason email doesn’t work (the last one I’ve got time for today)…
It’s when marketers become extremists. Instead of walking the middle road between providing valuable information and asking for a purchase, they’re either all content or all pitch.
You need both. If you run your list like a soup kitchen you’re just training people not to buy from you. On the other hand, if you’re emails are just pitch, pitch, pitch — nobody’s going to open them.
Mix it up for heaven’s sake.
Email may not be the idiot proof marketing money machine it once was, but make no mistake, it’s still the cornerstone of Internet marketing.
With a little ingenuity, it’ll work for you just fine.
Until next time, Good Selling!
Why Email Marketing Doesn’t Work… originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.
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