by Todd Hyten

Is your marketing message as good as a Fenway sausage vendor’s?

Walking back home from the Boston Media Makers’ tweetup behind Fenway Park last night I passed a sausage vendor. Usually there’s an entire fleet of sausage vendors around the park, but the Sox were out of town that night and this one was the only one in sight. As I walked by, the sausage guy said this:

“Yes sir, what can I do for you now? “ – with a cock of the head, his tongs poised over the gently sibilant pile of meat that was calling my name.

“Wow,” I thought, “is that a good pitch or what?”

The more I thought about it, the more I found to admire. Is your ‘s marketing message as good as this guy’s pitch? Consider the three elements of what he said:

1. “Yes sir” — This is an affirmation that says: Welcome, you are in the right place. His first words were assurance and positivity. Does your do that — in the first seven seconds of a user’s experience? That first impression counts, and remember, psychological resistance is a big factor in most first-time visitors’ minds. They don’t really know who you are, what you’re really selling, and why. They have a boatload of questions. But if you’re speaking in the vernacular of your target customer, you’ll find the right words to assure them they’ve found a solution.

Are you affirming to your target customer that they are in the right place?

2. “what can I do for you” — A polite call to action. Remember the visual here — his tongs were poised above the sausages. Call to action + great image = sales potential. By phrasing it as a question, however, he was not hammering the message. Which I’m sure he does on busy days. “Get hot sausages here!!!” is probably what he says when there are 30,000 people milling around. But he tuned his call to action to the solo passerby.

Are you providing your visitors with a clear call to action, that’s tuned to the buyer/client you want?

3. “what can I do for you NOW? ” — Timeliness and urgency are a huge part of marketing message success. How many times have you seen offers for “free” this and “free” that … which left you cold. But attach timeliness to an offer and urgency and you’ve raised the temperature and interest level. Are you more or less inclined to act on buying something on sale if you know it’s just a two-day sale? You know the answer.

Are you using timeliness or urgency to boost the attractiveness of your offerings?

Now I bet you’re wondering if I bought a sausage. Well … that’s between me and my bathroom scale, thank you very much.

07.20.10

by Todd Hyten

7 ways a bakery gets business from its website and social media

Here’s a great example of a small company, a family-owned bakery, that does a great job with their online marketing presence, from company to social media.

I discovered Three Brothers Bakery of Houston, TX, while doing some research, and the more I looked, the more impressed I became.

Their web presence consists of:

A deep company with ordering forms and a blog
A Flickr account featuring photos of their wedding cakes
A Twitter account
A Facebook business page

This is what I would score as a nearly complete online profile for a small business. But their success is worthy of emulating not because they’ve created a web page and social media accounts – its how they use them to get customers.

After looking at their online presence, I can identify 7 ways their and social media work for them. Consider it a “best practices” list for a small business like this:

1.) A deep company that goes beyond basics. First note that their has all the basics covered: Home, About, Location & Hours, Contact. They also have an extensive and useful FAQ. Then they have a great photo gallery — which is just an embedded version of their Flickr photo stream. Then the real “deep stuff”: they have three nav bar items devoted to cakes: Build A Cake (a form), Wedding Cakes, Custom Cakes. It’s not hard to guess what they specialize in.

2.) A company blog onsite. The company blog is not updated very frequently, but the point is that they have one, and they do post meaty content when they do. This is important to remember: the blog serves to improve their Google ranking. A static site, no matter how good it is, usually won’t rank as high on Google as a site with refreshed content.

3.) Clear calls to action on their homepage: At the top of their site is a box with large images inviting the visitor to order or call about their award-winning cakes. To the right of that is another box wedding cake promo box asking the visitor to “Contact Us for Your Appointment.” Below that is a small email newsletter sign up. This is all inviting action, and that’s what a retail business should do whenever possible on its home page.

(Tip: I’d like to see those contact buttons in the image boxes bigger and bolder. They are well designed – but as Ann Handley of a MarketingProfs said at a recent webinar, call to action buttons should always be BIG.)

4.) A huge phone number on their home page: How often is this incredibly simple thing not done on a company ? How often is a phone number nearly hidden by a retail business? This is simple and easy to do — and the bigger the better in my book.

5.) A Twitter account with custom background: Three Brothers’ Twitter account is a mix of thank-yous, mentions of “what’s selling now”, photos, and shout outs. Sure, it could be more active, and they should be following more people and businesses, but they seem to be doing everything right. Notice, however, that they have a nice, customized background image, complete with a clear contact box. This is something too many businesses on Twitter miss: A simple contact box, a nice background image.

6.) A good default landing page on Facebook: Many business pages on Twitter simple set their “Wall” as their default landing page – the page first encountered by site visitors. This isn’t awful, but it’s so much better to set the default landing page to a custom page built using FBML. This can make your Facebook page display anything you want to your visitors. Here, Three Brothers use their “Welcome” page to display a link to a local “Best of Houston” contest where visitors can vote for Three Brothers Bakery, and a link to a recent expo they attended. The point is, they use that landing page to promote what they want to promote — which is way better than just getting the “Wall” on first visit.

7.) User contributions on their Facebook page: Three Brothers Bakery obviously allows fans to post content on their “Wall” — and they do! Including picutres of cakes! How great is that? One user recently used the ability to post on their wall to ask a question: “But do you do cupcake cakes? Like in particular shapes? Trying to find one shaped like a butterfly for niece’s birthday.” Three Brothers responded with “Absolutely! Please give us a call tomorrow at 713.666.2551 or email us with the butterfly style you like at orders@3brothersbakery.com – We would be thrilled to be a part of your niece’s birthday!”

Now … is there a better example of how a Facebook account can actually create business? And it’s not like it was hard — all Three Brothers had to do was write a couple sentences with their phone number.

All of these tactics and tools are available to most small businesses — at least the ones willing to put the time and effort into it.

07.19.10

by Todd Hyten

T-shirts and social media: How Threadless gets it right

I’m shocked that more people don’t know about Threadless, but often when I mention them as a social media success story I usually just get puzzled looks.

Here’s what gets most people’s attention: Threadless is a Chicago, Ill.-based T-shirt company that has more than 1.5 million followers on Twitter and more than 133,000 fans on Facebook. Their T-shirts typically cost $18. In a 2008 Newsweek article, revenue was estimated at $30 million (for 2007).

Got your attention now?

And here’s the kicker: they don’t even design their own T-shirts. Designs are submitted by visitors, voted on by the user/designer community, and the top-ranked get sold online. Founded in 2000, Threadless was making millions from “crowdsourcing” before anyone knew what the term meant.

It’s no surprise, then, that a company based on user participation is so good at social media and web marketing. And make no mistake, they are very, very good. They have a few keys to success when it comes to marketing.

Whenever possible, they use images of people modeling T-shirt designs
They use male and female “models” whenever possible
They emphasize images over copy to sell their products
They love user input at every level and encourage it

I’m going to focus on just three web marketing efforts they do well: Facebook, Twitter and email.

Threadless on Facebook: Threadless makes its default landing page their “New Tees” tab. On this page (no doubt built with FBML) you see latest designs, their scores by the community, and to the right of these images comments from fans. You can even click “add to cart” for each design. The page is linked to their ecommerce/catalog engine. Now I know a lot of people will say “But my company can’t do that!” Of course it can. If you make your landing page a customized page about your product and services, then you’re doing the same thing Threadless does here. On the company’s wall, you’ll find designers and slogan writers actively asking Threadless fans to vote on their designs. How cool is that? There’s also a ton of info on Threadless promotions and events too.

Threadless on Twitter: I still can’t get over that follower number: 1,530,962. And it’s all from 2,784 tweets. That means for every tweet, they’ve been rewarded with (on average) 550 followers. So why do they have so many followers? Well, if you’ve bought a T-shirt or subscribed to their email, you’ll know every week there are new designs released. Twitter is a great way to keep track of tweets about new designs. But Threadless heavily uses their Twitter account to promote events. What kind of events? Threadless is in the middle of a summer tour, and they have “pop-up” instant booths and stores wherever they go. They also do a ton of cross promotion with companies they like (Blik, for instance, uses their designs for wall graphics). They post a ton of pictures on TweetPhoto.

Here’s what I really love: see the post for July 12th: they gave out 12 free T-shirts to people who tweeted their shirt size and used a certain hashtag. Is there an easier way to get rabid, loyal fans than by offering to give them something for free just for tweeting? I know not every company can do this, but this is down-and-dirty, simple-as-a-rock promotion — at least consider it.

Threadless on email: If you subscribe to the Threadless email (See snapshot below), then you’ll be able to see the latest designs when they come out, every week, and you’ll know when $10 T-shirt sales are happening. That’s the “content” portion. Everything else about their email campaign is very simple: Large images of real-looking people wearing the design of the week. The text is minimal — and when there is text it’s usually a link/call to action. All of these design links go back directly to that specific design page on their catalog.

This is something a lot of email marketers may be missing: Reward the email recipient if they express an interest in a specific product. Take them directly o the ordering/info page for that item, stop screwing around trying to get people to visit your site. Get them to love the product first … then your site. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but think how you yourself search for products. First you look for what you want, and if you find it you then investigate the source (who am I buying from?). I see too many email newsletters from marketers who are all about getting people to their home page … when they really want is just a sale.