Managing and motivating for Marketing

Later on today I will be talking, together with Franco Azopardi, at a seminar organized by the Malta Institute of Accountants as part of the Institute’s Continued Professional Education program for its members. We are going to talk about professional service firms and while Franco will be covering the strategy and organizational angel I will be talking about what effect technology has on the industry and what small firms can do about it.

One of the things I will cover is how search engine friendly your site really is. One fast and easy way of knowing what text Google has indexed from your main page is to make a search for your URL, for instance "www.zebcon.com", click on the link "cached" and then on the link "cached text". 

The PowerPoint in full can be viewed here: Managing And Motivating For Marketing

Also take a look at this speech by Thomas Friedman , the author of "The world is flat" had at MIT. He speaks about how the world has changed and what effect that will have on our society. 

 What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about manipulating a web site's structure, content and presentation as well as its relationships with other sites on the Internet, in order to increase the number of visitors. Successful Search Engine Optimization centers around three things that are easy to understand but harder to implement: (1) Create great value for users; (2) Make your site search engine friendly; (3) Make others aware of it.  SEO is about defining and implementing all three. 

Create great value for users 

You got to give in order to get. When search engines rank sites for any given keyword, they attempt to do so with content quality and keyword relevancy in mind. This means that site with the best and most relevant content for the keywords being search will reach the top. So without giving away a lot of value to your users, it will be impossible to get to the top. Value can come in many forms and will depend on the audience you are trying to reach, but it can generally be divided into information and tools.  So it is not only about telling how good your company or product is, you need to show it!

 Make it search engine friendly

Many sites are developed without search engines in mind. They might be  beautiful work of art and have great content, but are difficult or impossible to index.  There are some techniques frequently used by web designers  that hinders search engines to find your site and others that completely blocks your site or content from being indexed. On the Internet you need to be indexed in order to exists, or to paraphrase Descartes: I'm indexed - therefore I am. 

 Make others aware of it

Search engines are naturally skeptical of what site owners say about themselves - and rightly so. Therefore it is imperative to get others aware of the value your site provides and get them to tell this to the search engines and the rest of the world. You need to get people in blogs, communities, forums and other places of interaction to talk about your site - and for that you need to give them something of value to talk about.

Consumer buying behaviour and your site

Most people, including those in the developing world, should by now be aware of Internet’s potential to transform the way we live, work and do business. The fact that I sit in Malta and work with programmers and designers from India is a case in point. What is fascinating is that these Indians often do a better job promoting themselves than many companies here in Malta. It is striking to still come across even fairly large organizations with a very sketchy or sometimes complete lack of on-line presence. It should be obvious for any organization that being on the Internet is a necessity in order to keep up with global and local competitors.

However, many Maltese businesses still don’t seem to get it. This leads to a colossal waste of new business opportunities. No wonder people are complaining business is hard in Malta. I will try to give a helping hand by looking at how a web site can match the different stages a consumer goes through when making a purchase and where to start if your company is in the eternally damned off-line category.

Consumer buying behaviour is often split up in five basic stages: 1) need recognition, 2) information gathering, 3) offering evaluation, 4) purchase and 5) post-purchase behaviour. The model should not be viewed as a strictly liner depiction of the actual purchase process since consumers often jump back and forth between the different stages. But it can be very helpful when analyzing how your site fulfils the different phases in the purchase process.

Create a need

In the need recognition phase the consumer recognizes a need or a problem. Blogs are excellent way of helping people to recognize needs by giving them new ideas or present them with better solutions to known problems. Cooking with Amy for instance is a great place to get inspired and run down to the local food store.

Online, it is important to be generous and get rid of the idea that you shouldn’t give too much away. The increasingly noisy world we are living in is making it harder to catch a customer’s attention unless you can give real value - instantly. The recent decision by the New York Times, to give free access to all their content is a clear example where we are heading. But we don’t need to look further away than Scan Computers to see a great example of need creation. Some time ago the company started having weekly special offerings online; an easy, cheap and effective way of evoking a need among your consumers and making them come back.

Help in the information gathering

The information-gathering phase is probably the one that site owners in general are best at fulfilling. In this stage the objective is to give the consumer enough information that she - women are more often than men making the actual decision - can move on to the offering evaluation stage.

The Internet truly has revolutionized the way we shop and empowered us to make in-depth research about virtually any product or service. A range of companies has sprung up offering specifically this service; one of my favourites when it comes to electronics is review.cnet.com . But even in this well developed area many organizations in Malta lack behind by not providing enough information. Try for instance finding info about new sofas in Malta. I’m in the process, so I know.

Make an offer

The sites that win the battle in the offering evaluation stage are the sites that are the most intuitive, well-designed, transparent and informative. How could Amazon grow to become one of the world’s largest bookshop within 10 years? Simply because they understood the consumer buying process well enough, to give us everything we need to know before and after buying a book. Even without Amazon’s budget, many organizations can do far better simply by paying more attention to consumers. Putting an email address or a telephone number on your site is not maximizing the full potential of your site. The lack of specific offering information, the lack of prices and the lack of decent designs simply strike out many organizations as contenders for the consumer’s money. Again, Scan Computers has understood this well, which together with its great customer care has made the company a local leader in the field.

Make it easy to buy

The web has provided a unique opportunity for business to almost merge the offering evaluation and purchase decision. By giving the customer the ability to make a purchase online at the time of evolution, greatly improves your chances of winning the business. DigiPrint for instance has understood this and offers online digital printing by integrating their web site with their ordering system making it to possible to fulfil all your digital printing needs directly from their site.

Coming back to my Indian programmers it should be a wake-up call to us all: globalization is here to stay. What we see today is only the beginning of a reality where the role of geographical location becomes irrelevant and competition truly global. No matter the size or offering of your business you can benefit immensely from this as long as you are prepared to do some lateral thinking and put in a little bit of imagination.