Use Them at Conferences and Events

QR codes can be used by marketers at conferences, events, and trade shows. By using it, visitors can easily gather information from your business quickly without having to jot anything down. The next time you are participating in an event, make sure that you add a QR code to the content you are producing. Configure the QR code to send people who scan it to your landing page, preferably one with a form to help you with your lead generation efforts.

Use Them on Your Business Cards

It’s difficult and can be a hassle to transfer a person’s information from their business card to your contact database. You would need to manually input their name, title, email address, and phone number. However, with a QR code, all the information from your card can instantly be transfered to a database just by scanning your code. Placing QR codes on your business cards will certainly be helpful in capturing leads you get from in-person communication.

Print Advertising

When people see advertisements on newspapers and magazines, they usually ignore them. However, when it’s a QR code they see, they become interested as to where the QR code will lead. With a QR code, you will be able to gauge the success of your ad by knowing how many people scanned your code and visited your landing page. With millions of ads people see everyday, placing a QR code can help your ad stand out and make a good first impression.

What other ways are you using your QR codes?

A recent study* on radio advertising showed that 80% of listeners who heard a relevant radio ad with a web address mentioned in it went on to visit the website. We postulate that the same would hold true for other forms of volatile advertising like TV and outdoor (including billboard advertising and car, van and truck signage).

Warning: When advertising, make sure that your web address is memorable.

If your web address is not relevant to your advertising message, it may be too hard to remember. So make sure that your web address relates to the key theme of your ad. Think about registering a domain name specifically for you advertising campaign.

For example, for one of our clients - Superior Mobile Mechanics – we registered www.superiormobile.com.au for use in advertising and vehicle signage in addition to the domain www.superiormobilemechanics.com.au.

The first domain is easier to remember and spell correctly, but the second domain was better for search engine ranking… so we use both.

* Source: commercialradio.com.au

Talking about the Yellow Pages® he says, “Their old slogan, ‘Let your fingers do the walking,’ was all about how easy it was to use the print directory compared to wandering around downtown looking for a store, a lawyer or a doctor.  Unfortunately, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and all the rest of the search engines are letting our fingers do the walking today.”

Newt’s statement perfectly explains the biggest challenge for the Yellow Pages® today. For many years the Yellow Pages® was the only way to find things easily. Those days are long gone.

Here in Australia, the Yellow Pages® is run by a former government monopoly called Sensis (part of Telstra), and it appears from Newt’s review that our Yellow Pages® does a much better job than the local Yellow Pages® in Florida.

According to Sensis, the Yellow Pages® book in Australia yields around AUD$1 billion of advertising annually and the Yellow Pages® Online a further $100 million.

Access is the key to Yellow Pages® success.

The Yellow Pages® is actually a massive repository of content. In the information age, what will make or break it is access to its content. Traditionally it could only be done through the book or the website directly.

A company of this size is typically slow at responding to market trends, however there’s too much at stake for them not to take action fast.

Yellow Pages® in Australia have responded to the challenge of access with initiatives like:

• Yellow in the Car – A small directory for use in the car
• Yellow Mobile – Online Yellow Pages® for mobile phones
• Go Stay® accommodation guide
• Yellow at Home portal website
• Choice buyers guides on the Yellow Pages® online
• Partnership with NineMSN and mylocal.com.au.

They’re making some good moves.

For what it’s worth, here’s what I’d do to make the Yellow Pages® Australia into a $2 billion guide and to massively increase the value that it delivers to its customers:

1. Open up the category pages to Google

Imagine if the Yellow Pages® category pages came up number one in Google.

For example, search in Google on “Restaurants Melbourne.” Yellow pages are nowhere to be found.

Would you be interested in advertising in the Yellow Pages® if it was number one in Google?

A quick review of the Yellow Pages® robots.txt file shows that they do not allow any search engine indexing of their content. This seems to be a legacy of pre-information age thinking about content (keep it all to yourself).

What if they simply created search engine friendly pages of content for each of their categories? They don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

2. Optimise the Yellow Pages® websites for conversion

The current Yellow Pages® online listings are set out very poorly for lead generation. Smart application of simple conversion techniques could massively increase the number of leads generated, and overall change the perceived benefit of the Yellow Pages® online from cost to investment.

One Melbourne business that we deal with gets over 400 leads from its website each month compared with 20 or 30 from the Yellow Pages®. However, this would be very different if the Yellow Pages® took these ideas on board.

It will be interesting to see if the Yellow Pages® can catch up to the massive market shift that happened when Google became the dominant search engine in early 2000.

What I do know is that you’ll see the Yellow Pages® around for many years to come. It’s a question of what form it will be in. Just don’t expect it to be in the form of A-K and L-Z.

Over the last year we’ve had a chance to to try out the Yellow Pages® Online Platinum Ad concept with our clients. As illustrated below, the Platinum Ad is a group of 3 small ad tiles that sit above the search results.

If one of the 3 spots is available you can take up pole position in the search results for a selected keyword in your geographical area. The ad tiles link straight through to your website. Sounds good right?

Well, you’d think that having such a high position in the search results would mean guaranteed success. However, we’ve found a number of businesses who have been disappointed with the results of Platinum Ads. So we decided to examine the ads to find out why.

We reviewed 44 ads in the Yellow Pages® Online platinum ads system and we asked the following questions.

• Are the ads customer focused or self interested?
• Will the ads be affected by banner blindness? i.e. Do the ads look like ads?
• How effective is the website behind the ad?

The results show that there is plenty of room for improvement.

Are the ads customer focused or self interested? 

Good ad design, like good copywriting is focused on the client. That means, it targets their needs, pains, problems or wants and offers a solution.

Looking for references to the customer in the 44 ads, we found the following ratio:

Self interested : Customer focused 

40 : 4

We found that many of the ads we reviewed were accompanied by claims like:

• Largest range
• Best quality
• Lowest prices
• Best value
• Number 1

But what do these claims really mean? They might mean something to the advertiser, but what do the mean to the customer? Since the claims lack any specifics they are easily dismissed.

“Need help selecting…?” was the only customer focused question that we found in any of the ads.

A large number of the ads appeared to be solely focused on brand, offering little reason to click through. Others ads seemed to be designed in the hope that just saying “click here” would do the job.

Will the ads be affected by banner blindness? i.e. Do the ads look like ads?

One of the big problems that we found with Yellow Pages® Online platinum ads is that they typically look like ads. It’s well established that website visitors are becoming increasingly blind to online advertising, particularly banner ads. The phenomenon demonstrated by Jakob Nielsen is know as banner blindness.

Now I know what you’re thinking… Aren’t all Yellow Pages® Online listings ads?

Of course the answer is yes. All Yellow Pages® Online are paid ads. But most of them don’t look like ads, they look like search results. So we reviewed the ads in the study to determine if they were likely to be subject to banner blindness.

Look Like Ads : Don’t Look Like Ads

42 : 2

In reviewing the 44 ads, we found that 42 of them looked like banner ads. With only 138 x 95 pixels to play with, you don’t have a lot of room. However, the more heavily formatted the ad is the less likely it is grab attention.

How effective is the website behind the ad? 

When we looked at the websites behind the 44 Yellow Pages® Online platinum ads we found an even bigger problem. Most of the websites were poorly designed for lead generation.

We reviewed each site to see how easy it was to find the company’s contact details, and how easy it was to make contact with them. We rated it this way:

Poor: Contact details only available on contact page, if at all.

Average: Contact phone number on each page with a contact form on the contact us page.

Good: Contact phone number on each page with contact forms used well or a call to action used throughout the content.

What we found was:

Poor : Average : Good 

19 : 20 : 5

So even if the ads were getting clicks, the websites would be converting visits into enquiries poorly.

How to make your Yellow Pages® Online platinum ads effective:

Make your ads customer focused

• Write your ad text with customer in mind
• Address their common needs and problems
• Use a question if possible
• Make claims that are specific and that show how you can help

Avoid banner blindness

• Design your ad to look like content, not an ad
• Don’t dominate the ad with your logo
• Use pictures sparingly and carefully
• Test different ad designs.

Make sure your website is converting effectively

• Make sure your contact details are easily available
• Ensure the contacting you is easy through the website
• Use contact forms effectively
• Test and measure your website and Yellow Pages® Online platinum ad results weekly
• Most importantly, measure your conversion rates!

It’s manifest in their website copy that is usually laden with self references (We are the leading, We offer blah blah blah). For example have you ever seen a company with their mission statement on their home page? Who cares right?

All to often, the customer is brushed aside in their communication. It’s a one way street, and it only runs their way.

Coincidentally, Gene Stark from Stark Reality Marketing sent me a cool video about this very thing this afternoon. It’s a online video ad that was made for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions by Belgian Geert Desager. Check it out:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heSudg-tfIk[/youtube]

John takes web marketing seriously, but what we found was that his website was not supplying critical information about the leads that came through to him. To follow up his website prospects he had practically wrestle with his content management system for the information (like their phone number).

This might seem like a small thing, but the last thing you want to do with your sales people is have them logging into your website’s content management system to find the information they need!

When a lead comes through from your website, make sure that it

1. Comes through by email to your sales team and / or
2. Goes automatically into your CRM
3. Contains all of the information that your sales people need to take action immediately
4. Is responded to as soon possible.

Ensuring that your lead information is actionable will give you the best chance of running a succesful radio campaign. Before your next radio campaign starts, make sure that you have these four steps under control!

I was surprised. There was no scent… nothing!

After a bit of digging, I found websiterescue.com.au, but that website did not show up on the first page of Google.

It turns out that the Radio Ad was run by Darius Mikolajewski and his company Allwelt. The advertising campaign was running on the Melbourne Radio station SEN (AM 1116). I’d met Darius previously at a networking event here in Melbourne and we’ve had a number of discussions about web marketing (Good move with the radio ad Darius, I hope it’s doing well for you!).

The exercise reminded me of the importance of thinking about how your prospects will interact with your advertising campaigns. Here’s a few examples of how they might respond:

• Calling your phone number
• Typing your web address into their web browser
• Entering keywords into Google.

Remember that radio ad listeners are likely to be hearing your ad in inconvenient places like in the car.

The people that called me could not remember the web address (even though it was a good address, pretty simple to remember), but they did remember the key theme of the ad, “Website Rescue.”

Radio Advertising and Web Marketing – Rule 1:

When you are running a radio advertising campaign, make sure that you are number one in Google for the words that form the key theme of your Ad!

Remember that radio ads are volatile, lasting only seconds. Your prospects and listeners will only remember a single key theme from your ad. It is likely that they will “Google” the keywords that they remember from your ads. Make sure you are found there!

The good thing that Darius and company have done with their website is including a banner promoting the ad on their home page. This is important since a great number of their website visitors are going to be looking for content that is relevant to the “website rescue” ad.

The banner links through to a simple pop up contact form with seven fields to fill out. It’s a good short form, but the site lacks any content to support the “website rescue” message presented in the radio ad. For this reason alone, the campaign will not be converting to its maximum potential.

Radio campaigns can be very effective, however, relative to web marketing they are expensive. Make sure that you use your website effectively with your radio advertising campaigns.

On a side point, it was interesting for us to note that a number of our customers listen to SEN…

Often B2B and professional services companies are created by people who are very good at what they do, but who are not necessarily good at articulating it. Sometimes they struggle to describe what it actually is that they do, let alone how and why it will benefit you.

That’s where a good marketing consultant can help. A marketing consultant can help you to:

1. Clarify your uniqueness and competitive advantage (USP)
2. Position your brand in the market (your perception)
3. Use advertising, direct marketing, PR and events effectively
4. Improve your selling tools and skills.

Without a clear, consistent and understandable message to offer, it is practically impossible to create an effective website.

How important is your website in the scheme of things? We’ve worked with Gene Stark of Stark Reality Marketing on a number of projects, so I asked him this question.

“Online Advertising is now the fastest growing media category that has overtaken Cinema and Outdoor Advertising. Your website has today become your most accountable and effective marketing tool, if it’s designed, built, promoted and maintained correctly.  If your marketing consultant doesn’t understand this then you are in serious trouble!”

Even for small businesses the opportunities for low cost, high return marketing will be on the web. And that’s why you should see a marketing consultant who understands websites intricately.

I thought I’d share my thoughts on how Yellow Pages® Ads can work effectively with your website here.

I often hear web techies heralding the end of the Yellow Pages®. The talk is that search engines like Google are going to replace the Yellow Pages® altogether.

But before you throw away your Yellow Pages® advertising, consider a few fundamental questions:

• Is the Yellow Pages® working for you currently?
• Does Yellow Pages® advertising work for others in your industry?
• What have you tried to improve the results that you are getting?
• Does you ad stand out from the crowd?
• Have you had your ad written by a professional?
• Have you tested your ad using other cheaper mediums first?

There are more questions that you should ask about all of your advertising including your Yellow Pages® ads. One of the most important ones that we ask is,

“Is your website working effectively to capture and convert leads from your Yellow Pages® advertising?”

Remember that a table does not stand on one leg, and nor will your marketing. If Yellow Pages® is an important part of you marketing, think about how you can make it work better rather than how much it costs.