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    Internet Marketing

    Thursday, November 19th, 2009

    Today’s article will be dealing with a phenomenon we take for granted – the Internet – and marketing possibilities it provides. The inspiration were yesterday’s Wednesday Morning Meeting of Vizuarna and Ocampo’s Effective Internet Marketing tools post .

    Internet marketing emerged as a whole new business strategy and has developed its very own marketing tools, approaches and techniques. The most common are auto-responders, SEO software, link-building systems, content management programs and related software. Ocampo states that the simplest and the most unnoticed marketing tools are also the most effective. Therefore, he lists:
    1.    Domain name – a brief and memorable keyword-related one is the best. It will trigger the recall in visitors mind as well as improve your performance on search engines.
    2.    Keywords – the fundamental building blocks of the Internet that are considered to be the most essential element in any kind of internet marketing.
    3.    Articles – considered by many as the simplest and most effective organic SEO technique, article writing and submission has become one of the most often used SEO approaches.
    4.    Lists – the mailing list is fundamental in any internet marketing system. Keeping in touch with your present as well as past customers will give them the feeling that you care. A durable and strong relationship with your customers is crucial for your growth and expansion.
    5.    Blogs and RSS feeds – less formal tools to reach out to customers, prospects and leads. Blogs can also easily build content-driven sites and RSS helps blogs get the attention of search engine bots faster.

    And let me finish with the final thought of the author: “You don’t have to think outside of the box, or come up with something new. You just have to know what makes up the box.«

    Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Effective-Internet-Marketing-Tools&id=3274479

    Lea Lipovšek, business design assistant at Vizuarna, strategic design consultancy

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    Explanation is the key

    Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

    We don’t think much about speaking until we have to connect with the audience to explain benefits, challenges and to set some expectations. Communication expert John Baldoni states that explanation is the key attribute to leadership communications. What does it mean and why are we doing it are crucial questions that each leader must answer with straightforward explanation that should not lack persuasion or excitement.

    To become an effective explainer, Baldoni suggests that we define 3 aspects:
    1.    Define what it is.
    2.    Define what it is not.
    3.    Define what you want people to do.

    Nevertheless, great explaining is much more than listing benefits. Find a middle way between too much detail where audience will lose interest and too little, where audience just won’t be convinced. The explanation should be a reasonable, easy to apprehend rationale. And never forget to ask yourself the three basic questions.

    Source: http://blogs.bnet.com/harvard/?p=2790

    Lea Lipovšek, business design assistant at Vizuarna, strategic design consultancy

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    Sales Professional

    Thursday, June 11th, 2009

    My today’s contribution is based on two articles of Mark Stevens and Tom Hopkins.  They are both giving some advice on how to become a better sales representative and I’ll try to make an informative summary.

    Here are some of the characteristics of sales pros:

    1.       There shouldn’t be salesperson and civilian version of you. There should be only one you.
    2.      Be you. Imperfections are not a reason why people won’t do business with you, they only give you transparency.
    3.      Tell your prospects/clients even what they don’t want to hear. In the long term, you’ll be seen as the reliable one.
    4.      Always be proud. Salesperson is the “prince of the company”. Radiate confidence and strength with everything that you do.
    5.      Prospect are not doing you a favour by meeting you. You are the one that has experience, knowledge, ideas and solutions. They need you.

    I find this one interesting and snot so common in our area:.

    1.      Sell yourself before the initial meeting. Send a prospect a copy of your article, award, a media clip – anything that distinguishes your importance.
    2.      A burning desire to prove something to someone.
    3.      Interest in others and empathy
    4.      Focus on goals
    5.      Be enthusiastic through difficult situations. Avoid anger, negative thinking and jealousy and focus your energy on positive attitude.
    6.      Understand that people come before money.
    7.      Never stop investing in your mind.

    Sources: http://www.entrepreneur.com/sales/salescolumnistmarkstevens/article199540.html

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/sales/salestechniques/article82708.html

    Lea Lipovšek, business design assistant at Vizuarna, strategic design consultancy

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    “Dialing for Dollars”

    Thursday, February 12th, 2009

    As a business development assistant, I am subscribed to many news, pages, blogs, etc., one of them is also BNET, a website for business management. And there, I came across an interesting article about sales. Geoffrey James posted a poll titled “Is Cold Calling Really Worth It? People in sales know how stressful and weird can cold calling be is it is very hard to be equal and strong if you are practically begging for an appointment. There were many answers and comments, one of the impressed James (and me) so much, that he decided to make it an official post.

    Ron Silver, sales coach, states that cold calling does not work, because people sound like they are making a cold call. Even the expression itself is unpleasant so Silver suggests we switch it with “Dialing for Dollars”.
    Source: blogs.pcworld.com

    When cold calling, most people want to get something from somebody. They are trying to get an appointment or an order. We are in nature reluctant to give something to someone we do not know, therefore many salespeople fail in their attempt. At this point, Silver makes a statement that “to get” is not the purpose of cold calling.

    Dialling for dollars is a disqualifying process. Your objective is to disqualify as many people as possible and as quickly as possible. That saves us time and money.

    Salesperson has up to one minute to express a specific reason for the prospect to wish to continue the conversation. You will be the most effective when your minute causes the prospect to identify the problem they need to solve. People will talk to you if you help the illuminate the problem they need to get fixed. Problems in business are mostly focusing on loss of money, wasted time, inefficiencies, loss of market share, etc. If the potential client (and not us) does not see something that has negative consequences for their business and seriously wants to get rid of the problem, we have the possibility of continuing the conversation. If there is a “fit”, we have a possibility of asking for a meeting where we could together with the prospect explore the possibilities of cooperation.

    Essentials of cold calling according to Silver:
    + Tell them your name and your company.
    + Ask for permission for one minute and tell them they can end the conversation after that if they want to.
    + Get right to the point.
    + Never try to convince the prospect, let them try to convince you it is worth your time and effort to meet with them.
    + Respect your agreement.

    He also gave an example, but I think it is better to give one for Vizuarna:
    “Hello, This is Lea Lipovšek from Vizuarna, strategic design consultancy. May I take one minute to tell you why I am calling and then you can tell me if we should continue speaking. Today in a time of fierce economic conditions we all want to downsize our costs. Not the best planned and structured website decreases its visit and increases communication costs. Corporate identity and brand architecture within it that with time become incoherent, diminish happiness of the employees as well as happiness and loyalty of the clients. Mrs. Novak, are you maybe dealing with some of these problems or is everything running smoothly?”

    In less than a minute we have someone on the line we can help or not. If they do not have any problems that we can fix at the moment, then it is over – for now.

    Silver recommends that calling is scheduled as an event in our calendar. As such, it will be easier to do it with consistency. The post is concluded with an optimistic thought. The best thing about cold calling is that we do not have to do it forever. Once we have a satisfied client base, they will become promoters of your business and there will be a far lesser need for cold calling.

    Source: http://blogs.bnet.com/salesmachine/?p=731
    Picture: http://blogs.pcworld.com/phoneconnection/archives/coldcall.jpg

    Lea Lipovšek, Business Development Asistant at Vizuarna, strategic design consultancy

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    Strategy is essential for successful design

    Friday, January 9th, 2009

    Quite logical title of an article from business development assistant in a strategic design consultancy company. Nevertheless, this statement is often not perceived as self-evident. My contribution is based on an article of Dmitry Fadeyev; Strategic Design: 6 Steps For Building Successful Websites that simply and clearly explains the core of strategic design.

    The article begins with a statement that design is not art; it includes whole spectre of different skills, from copywriting to layout and art. These skills merge on a website, interface between a company and user. This interface is far from being solely aesthetic but it communicates functionality and facilitates access to its contents. Clear focus is essential for converging these elements and leading every aspect of design towards its goals. We have to think strategically! We do not want to create user interfaces that are pretty and are useful and accessible. We want to create interfaces that help to achieve goals of the organizations. Design trends are of course important as they bring necessary inspiration and techniques but the implementation of these techniques has to be intelligent and focused. For example, if we are creating a blog, the focus will be on usefulness and readability. On the other hand, a promotional website for web game will be based on experience and aesthetics.

    1. Establish your goals
    Before starting work, we necessary have to know what the goals of the client are. We have to know what he wants to achieve with the website and what the main purpose of the website is. Meeting with the client are necessary, especially in the case of his priorities not being clearly defined. Clear focus is simply essential if we want for design to have its focus. As I stated above, website is not a work of art but it has its (very important) function and design has to be focused on achieving that function.

    2. Identify your audience
    Who is the key audience plays a major role in establishing how a website should look and how should it function. Website of a computer game would look very differently form a website of a serious business magazine. In case of elder and technologically less advanced audience usability is crucial. Disney website is a good example. Its audience is children and the purpose of the website is to entertain and include the young audience. Consequently, website is characterized with attractive colorful design with many interactive elements.

    3. Determine your brand image
    It can happen, that designer follows the last trends and with that, he loses the focus of what kind of image he has to create. Shiny background and colourful buttons may be an excellent solution, but they may not communicate the image of your company in the best way. Design has to encompass the character and personality of the brand.

    4. Goal-driven design direction
    At this point, we have found the purpose of the website, established our goals, identified our audience, determined the image of the brand, but the question is, how to synchronize design with strategy. Author gives an example how to increase the number of subscribers to a Web service. There are many solutions, from pointed out registration buttons to shortened and streamlined registration process. There are many ways to achieve the goal but the strategy is the same: Create and focus entire design towards achieving goals.

    5. Measure results
    When the website is designed and published, it is time for measuring results. We cannot know if the results have been achieved if we do not measure the effect. We have to be careful not to listen to every customer’s wish but to look for patterns and deal with these common issues. Measuring results gives us feedback also about mistakes and helps with their improvement.

    6. Kaizen
    Sixth step of strategic design according to Dmity Fadeyev is Kaizen, Japanese philosophy that is based on continuous progress with small steps. We have to be aware that published website is not the final version; we can easily introduce gradual improvements for achieving better effectivity.

    The core of strategic design is therefore common sense. We are making something with a specific purpose so the design as well should fulfil that purpose. We avoid the threat of going astray that path by questioning every decision we make. With that, the process becomes a lot more focused. The result is a website that really works!

    Source: Dmitry Fadeyev; Strategic Design: 6 Steps For Building Successful Websites in Smashing magazine

    Lea Lipovšek, Business Development Assistant at Vizuarna, strategic design consultancy

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