The Marketing Den

I met up with Dave Radparvar from Holstee, a sustainable apparel company in Manhattan, New York.  Because the start-up is growing quickly and gaining attention in our community, I was curious as to how they managed their online presence and marketing.  Here is a video interview explaining who the company is, and how they are using the web to spread the Holstee message.

Major Take-aways:

• The Holstee team uses Twitter as a major communication tool in dealing with customers.  They manage this communication through a tool called CoTweet, which allows multiple users to easily interact under the same name.
• They update their blog 2 – 3 times per week, and find that writing in a natural, personable tone is the most effective style.
• Being green is something that the team has believed in from day one.  Using sustainable materials and production processes, Holstee sends the message that fashion does not have to equate to waste.
• The Holstee website uses a variety of tactics to replicate the ‘in store experience’ and convert sales.  These tactics include using large, high-quality images of products, having multiple views, showing models wearing the clothes, and including descriptive text.  Possibly the most important tactic they use is connecting with the consumer through a story.  As Dave explains, they bring the products to life by relating to the customer through experience.

This company does a tremendous job of communicating its green mission and connecting with the online green community.  Through Twitter, blogging, and other social media channels, Dave and the rest of the team are finding their target market and generating significant buzz.  To see Holstee in action, visit their website at www.holstee.com.  Also, drop by and say hello on their Facebook and Twitter pages.

Filed under: Branding, Online Marketing Business Interviews, Social Media, Web by Sean McVey on Friday, April 16, 2010 | Social tagging: interview > small business > twitter > Web > website
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I recently had a chance to catch up with Steve Davis, co-founder of Mr. Yogato, to discuss how the DC-based (now also in Jacksonville Beach and Baltimore) yogurt shop manages their online world.

One of the things that stands out is the atmosphere in Yogato (They tout themselves “the FUNNEST yogurt experience you’ll ever have”), how do you try and translate that vibe online?

I’m not sure that we do.  I think for a lot of stuff the main thing for our site is we wanted it to be unbelievably simple.  No flash stuff, no 10 minutes to load, just very basic information that you can quickly find about the store.  You can quickly find the rules, you can quickly find games.  Some people say “you guys should do interactive flash games where you can shoot a yogurt cup with toppings”, and we have these conversations all the time, but decide not to.  We wanted to keep the site really simple, which also matches the store, which looks like it was decorated by a bunch of 10 year-olds.  That’s pretty much the feel of the website, very, very simple.

Anyone who really gets involved with the yogato store, the 30-day champions and people who do really goofy stuff, they do get their pictures on the site.  It’s kind of a reward there, for being a 30-day champion or dressing up like Bjorn Borg.  You’ll go up on the website and be able to show your friends, it’s kind of cool.

Did you ever consider going for the 30 day challenge?

I did, it would have been tough with travel for work.  I would have had to find a stunt-double to come in on the off-days.

You’re allowed to have a proxy 1 day as long as you’re on the phone…

Good to know for the future…

Rule #3 in Action

You use Facebook and Twitter, do you have any rhyme or reason to the content? Any guidelines for these mediums?

We never, ever do promotions.  We’ve never done, “come in today, get 50% off”.  And we never do any kind of advertising.  The only time we ever do posts is when we have a new flavor coming out or if there is some absurd event going on at the store like a birthday party, a concert, or Seinfeld trivia.  What happens is we end up only posting one every 1 and a half weeks, maybe about 3 times a month, which I like, because I don’t like getting bombarded by any store.  Which fits into this Yogato thing, of, you’re not going to post once a day with some silly offer.  It’s “these are the flavors” oh, look we’re doing this cool thing, and hopefully nobody gets annoyed.

I wanted to make [Yogato] the store with everything that I wish all stores would do.  In our store, all of the prices come out even.  I have no idea why every store doesn’t do this.  It boggles my mind that things cost $5.10, so that’s one thing.  The other is constant free samples, and any time a topping is suggested, we accept it.  Why would you not?

With the ad thing, people don’t like getting spam, and it’s really hard to decide what’s spam and what’s not spam.  Some advertising is really good, some is really bad, so I settled that by saying “we’ll do none”.  That way there’s no chance of us doing any bad advertising.  We rely on really simple word-of-mouth and luckily it happened to work.

The change thing is all the copper lobby.  Tin and copper, they’re very powerful.  They’re just trying to keep that change in our pockets.

[Laughs Politely]

Have you guys thought about introducing any kind of e-commerce to the store?

We do sell shirts through the online store, and the whole purpose of that is if we’re out of something in the store just say “you can go on the website and buy it there” so you don’t have to come back in.  The only reason I did that is to save people a trip.

Yeah, ordering the actual yogurt would be tough.  You’d have to give people a 30 second window to come in and pick up their orders.

[Laughs] Exactly.  I don’t know how Chipotle does it, but it’s cool that they do.

We’ve had people recommend electronic orders…but everyone changes their order at the last minute, and it’d become a disaster.  Even when you come to the register they’re going to goof around and give you samples, and it’s going to make everyone’s wait time longer, but luckily it’s a fun place to wait in line.  That’s kind of part of the experience.

When Yogato started, was there something you had in mind for the store, a manifesto?

There are two things there.  I wanted it to be a really, really fun store.  I didn’t really know what that was going to mean, so we started with the rules.  That was there from the beginning.  Then two things happened, one, when lines were long, I said “this is garbage” because I hate waiting in line and so we had to make waiting in line fun.  That’s when we started handing out samples, and go start playing games, at least it’s fun to wait for a while.  That was step 1.  Step 2, our customers all have ideas, so step 2  was accepting all customer ideas, and eventually some of them were going to hit.  Almost everything in the store is not my idea.  A lot of the new rules are customer ideas, a customer recommended the Nintendo, a customer recommended the karaoke machine and we try all of them.  Of 80, maybe 2 will work, but it’s cost free to try an idea, and the store optimized itself.  A customer will say, why not banana-grams.  Okay, why not?  And the second you listen to every idea, the store naturally becomes fun.

In the winter it was boring in the store, and somebody said “remember the power pad from the old track and field?”…so I called my mom, had her send me my Nintendo, and ordered a powerpad on ebay and then I was playing with that customer.  That was it.  We have it in the back, but we bring it out in the winter.

That could get dangerous.

Remember you could cheat on the hurdles by jumping off the powerpad and jumping back on?

I was a stand-up Nintendo player, I can’t empathize.  I always hated cheaters like you.

[Laughs]… Have we talked about the honor code?  The whole concept of the honor code…If somebody comes in and doesn’t have any money, they just promise on the honor code they’ll come back and pay.  And if somebody gets their free yogurt on the honor code, you’ll have them get for free what they normally get.

[In the case of people redeeming their free yogurt] If anybody asks, “what can I get” we tell them, “on the honor code, it’s what you normally get”.   So we have this honor code which I think people like.  We’ve had hundreds of customers forget cash, we just say “come back and pay us later” and maybe half do but it’s still kind of cool, and better than saying “you can’t have your yogurt” which would be awful.

Agreed.  Thanks for taking some time with me, Steve.

No problem.  You’ll have to stop by next time you’re in DC.

End of Interview

Quote of the Interview: “I wanted to make [Yogato] the store with everything that I wish all stores would do.”

Hard to argue with that.

Lessons of the Day:

1)  Set some ground rules – The options for online marketing are endless and starting off with some simple, intuitive ground rules goes a long way.  By committing to basic principles like having fun, and only doing things that you as a customer would like, it makes decisions a lot easier.  If too many tweets from a company bothers you, now you’ve got a baseline for how much you’re going to tweet.  Maybe you’re somebody who relies on a company for fresh industry content, and tweeting 10 times a day makes more sense.  Lay some ground rules, try them out, and you can always adapt them later.

2)  Simple can be, and often is, the best option – Simple store, simple website, good user experience.  How much do people really need to know about you from your website?  Figure out the goal for your site, meet your basic customer needs, and try not to distract people.

3)  Even with social media, less can be more – A major selling point of social media is that many people have tuned out traditional media, and now want to interact via social media.  Guess what?  People are tuning out social media too, because there’s just too much content.  By only sharing major events, people are more likely to pay attention when you actually say something.

Note: The author has not been compensated in any way for this interview.

Filed under: Branding, Online Marketing Business Interviews, Promotions, Social Media, Web by Eric Ast on Friday, April 2, 2010 | Social tagging: Simple > Yogato
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One very important part of getting your website to rank in search engines is obtaining quality incoming links from other websites.

Each time another website links to yours, Google counts it as a vote.  Therefore, websites with more incoming links generally rank higher in search engines.  It is important to note however that not all votes are equal.  A link from an authoritative website like CNN.com is worth more than thousands of links from low profile or spammy sites.

Here is a quick and easy way of finding out which sites are linking to yours.  Visit yahoo.com and type in linkdomain:www.yoursite.com and hit enter.

The results will tell you how many websites are linking to you and present a list of those links in a list format. 

This list includes links from external sites, but also includes links from within your own site.  To filter out the internal links, simply use the drop down menu titled ‘Show Inlinks’ and select ‘Except from this Domain.’

As you can see, the number of total links decreases significantly.  This is the number you are looking for when judging the authority of a website. 

Of course the number of links alone will not tell you how well you are doing.  But it does give you a starting point and an overall idea of the website’s authority.  To really understand how you are doing, you must find more information about each of the links linking to you.  How old are the domains?  How are these sites ranking in search engines?  How much traffic are these sites getting?  After evaluating the sites linking to you, you will start to get an idea of how you stack up in the search engine world.  Try plugging your url in right now and see what happens!

Filed under: Search Engine Optimization by Sean McVey on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 | Social tagging: link building > seo
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As a marketer, you’re always trying to catch the attention of customers.  One of the best ways to do this is with humor.  One of the worst ways to do this is with stale humor.  Currently plastered on some NYC subways trains is a campaign by Jameson’s Whiskey which continues the tongue-in-cheek superhuman characters popularized by Chuck Norris, and The Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World“.  This time, Jameson’s founder John Jameson is the super-stud du juor.  According the Jameson’s ads, a bear once tried to steal a barrel of whiskey from John Jameson and was subsequently turned into a rug.  Awesome.  Do I now want a Jameson’s on the rocks?

Yes, when he does push-ups he pushes the world down, not himself up.  Got it.

I appreciate Chuck Norris jokes.  The fact that The Most Interesting Man in the World can speak Russian in French amuses me as well, but enough is enough.  This joke may be new to some 21-30 year old-males who buy things because ads make us laugh, but not likely.

We talk about unique value and grabbing customer attention a lot on this blog.  This is a good example of looking beyond the scope your industry when asking the question “is this different from what my customers are seeing elsewhere?”.  Start asking this at the most detailed level of your product, then work outward.  The process for Jameson’s might have looked like this:

1)  Whiskey – Other whiskeys like Maker’s Mark are not selling humor.  Check.

2)  Liquor  – Don’t see Mr. Cuervo cracking jokes.  Check.

3)  Alcohol – The most interesting what?  Oh crap.

Beyond competing products, it’s important to look at the other media your target audience is consuming.  Even if Dos Equis didn’t exist, this strategy might break down because people are too familiar with Chuck Norris jokes.  You’re not just competing against other products for unique value, but all other forms of media as well.

If you have any suggestions on judging or avoiding the point where media becomes overdone, please share.

Filed under: Branding, Creative Development by Eric Ast on Monday, March 15, 2010 | Social tagging: Competitive Research > Media Competition > Unique Marketing
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More and more companies are ditching standard html websites and building dynamic, easy to manage sites in content management systems (CMS).  A CMS is your solution for creating an online presence if you want to avoid working with an ‘IT guy.’  CMS’s such as Wordpress and Joomla allow easy editing and layout redesign without having to touch any code.  As a result, you can manage your own site without paying someone to make changes!

I hear so many great things about Joomla and Wordpress, the two most popular CMS’s right now, but I was curious as to which is better.  As usual, the answers I found all started with “It depends…” but I sure did learn the pro’s and con’s of each.  I asked a question on LinkedIn and got some terrific answers as you can see.  My favorite was from Katy Keating, the founder of a design company called Tricalyx. She puts it so well, there is no need to paraphrase:

“You need to decide which has the features that better serve your clients.

If your clients are small businesses with straightforward website needs and little technical capability, you would want to specialize in Wordpress. Wordpress is wonderful if there is a single point of contact making changes for the client, and the pages are straightforward. Wordpress has limitations regarding Widgets (all show on all pages) and menu (this is pretty much hardcoded, if you want to remove something, you have to reallly work hard). I have to code a lot of Wordpress templates to achieve what I want sometimes.

Joomla is more full-featured and allows for simultaneous content management and word has it that the next version will have more robust security roles. Joomla separates the content from the menu, so you can easily place content into the menu at your desired location (or hide it). Joomla’s module capability allows you to schedule widgets onto pages wherever you want to. Joomla templates are a lot easier to build.“

As you can see from Katy’s answer, although Joomla touts more functionality, Wordpress may in fact be the best solution for a simple website.  In my experience with the two CMS’s, I would have to agree.  Wordpress is a quality solution and is one of the easiest platforms to figure out (ever).  However, there are limitations and therefore you need to investigate whether or not Wordpress can handle your website requirements.  Is your website more than just informational?  Do you need user login systems, content for registered users, slide shows or ecommerce?  If so, Joomla will make your life easier.

These answers are great, but I want to learn more about this epic matchup.  Do you have experience with one of these platforms or both?  Please leave a comment below and let me know why you like or dislike Wordpress and Joomla.

Filed under: Web by Sean McVey on Friday, March 12, 2010 | Social tagging: cms > joomla > linkedin > wordpress
3 Comments »

A flood of brand icons, company names, and logos overloads our senses every day.  After a while you come to flat out ignore nearly every advertisement you see.

• 100 different cell phone companies?  Ok, I no longer care.
• New Internet retailer?  Big Whoop.
• An app for that?  Droid does what?  STOP VIOLATING MY SANITY.

So the question is, if you are a small business owner and you want to get noticed, how can you compete?  How do you set yourself apart from the crap cluster?

The first step is understanding how little consumers are willing to invest in learning about your company.  Assume that you have somewhere between one and five seconds to convince them of your value.  And that’s generous!  You need to get your point across in as few words as possible. Hence………the tagline.

A tagline sums up your company’s unique value in a quick phrase.  For example,

“Join the Navy.  See the world.”

In one second you perceive the benefit of being in the Navy.  Or how about,

“When it Absolutely Positively Has to be there Overnight.”

This one is a bit long but you instantly understand why FedEx is better than the other guys.  In contrast, many taglines are generic and don’t point to a specific unique value.  Instead they say pretty much nothing and as a result are not set apart from the crap waterfall.  Here are a few:

“Driven To Excellence”

“Passion to Achieve”

“Doing what we do best”

Can you guess what industry these are from?  Probably not.  As you can see, these taglines can be substituted for any company and do not explain how the companies are any different from the competition.  So how to you avoid a generic tagline and instead communicate differentiation?  As explained in this post about building a brand, the first step is understanding what unique value your company offers.  In other words, what is your competitive advantage?  Try filling in this statement for your brand:

[My brand] is the number one choice for _____________(your specialty).  That’s because only [my brand] ________________________(A unique reason why: a superlative ingredient, process, or service that others don’t).

As an example: Hefty Bags are the number one choice for tough, unbreakable trash bags. That’s because they’re the only ones made with triple-polymer plastics.

You won’t get this on the first try.  Write out 10 or more different versions of this statement and narrow it down to the few that communicate your specialty the best.  Test it out on your friends, partners, and anyone that is willing to help.  The more feedback you can get on these statements the better.  Once you have one that you are confident in, it is time to transform it into a tagline.  The idea here is to take your statement and make it into a concise and catchy phrase that people will understand instantly.

When coming up with ideas, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does it directly state or specifically support your specialty?  (Does it promise a difference I want to buy?)

2. Is it ownable?  If another company could substitute its product name for yours and say the same exact thing the answer is no.

3. If the answer is yes to 1 and 2, then is it evocative, colorful, or phonetically memorable?

I tend to spend a fair amount of time with a thesaurus, substituting different words in and out until I have a phrase that both rolls off of the tongue and conveys the specialty well.  And of course after I have some ideas I’m happy with, I test them!  Again, ask people both inside and outside of your company to choose the best tagline and use these responses to help you with your decision.  As small business owners we don’t have all of the funds to do massive testing on unbiased samples.  However, we can test out our taglines on human beings and this will often give you great feedback on how your tagline is interpreted.

For a more detailed description of how to write a tagline, I highly recommend Why Johnny Can’t Brand by Bill Schley.  This book walks your through the process of branding your company without spending a ridiculous amount of money on a branding company.

If you have any tips on developing a tagline that sticks, please share.

Filed under: Branding, General Startup Tips by Sean McVey on Wednesday, March 10, 2010
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Measurable ROI is one of the foremost topics in the social media world, and rightfully so.  It’s something that is extraordinarily hard to do, and has been covered extensively (sometimes well, sometime head-scratchingly).  However, one thing that doesn’t receive due attention is when your social media efforts turn zombie and start chowing on revenue from your core business.

Brains! Brains! I mean…Revenue! Revenue!

The scenario I speak of is when promotions are spread through social media, are accessible by anybody, and actually cost your company revenue.  The most popular stat I hear when people discuss the value of social media is Dell’s $3 MM twitter account.  It’s an old figure, but one that still holds up in many discussions.  Nowhere have I seen mentioned how Dell is estimating how many people are actually gaming twitter to get a deal on something they were already planning on buying.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t buy anything online without looking for promotions on Google or Twitter Search.  If I were to make a $60 purchase marked down from $80 with a deal on twitter, a standard approach would be to look at my $60 in revenue as a success for twitter, and a tally for it’s value.  However, I was going to buy anyway, now twitter has actually cost the company $20.  That’s an $80 dollar swing in recording the impact of that deal.  Gauging this impact is something that’s very difficult, if not impossible to achieve right now, but acknowledging that it exists and making an educated guess goes a long way towards discovering the true value of your online efforts.

If you’ve got any tips for weeding out the “gamers” of social media deals, please share.

Filed under: Analysis, Promotions, Social Media by Eric Ast on Wednesday, March 3, 2010
4 Comments »

Have you ever been in a situation where Google has totally let you down?  You have a question that you MUST know the answer to but that answer just won’t pop up?  This happens to me all of the time and I turn to a great feature on LinkedIn called Answers.  This feature allows you to reach out to industry experts and have them debate your question.  After your question is answered, you decide who did the best job and award them the highly coveted Best Answer Gold Start Award.  Here is a quick video to show you how easy it is to get answers from real live people within 24 hours!  For a larger version, click the link below the video and watch it on Vimeo.

How to Ask a Question on LinkedIn from Sean McVey on Vimeo.

Filed under: General Startup Tips by Sean McVey on Monday, March 1, 2010
7 Comments »

In life, go with optimism.  The glass is half-full, the sun will come up tomorrow, and you should always focus on the positive.  These are good things to do.

In analysis, go with pessimism.  The glass is half-empty, the data is limited and biased, and somebody probably pasted a number incorrectly somewhere along the line.  These are bad things that happen.

A storm is brewin’!

Think about the people you take advice from when it comes to your business.  Did you trust them right away without getting to know them?  Of course not, you only listen to their input and let it impact your decision-making because you are comfortable with them.  You know who they are, where they’re coming from, and their flaws.  This puts you in a good position to process their advice.

If you’re using data to drive decisions in your business, the same vetting process is necessary.  Data is not a purely truthful thing.  It is rife with limitations and flaws and can lead to some bad decision-making if used improperly.  When dealing with data, here are three simple questions you can integrate into your routine to reduce errors and improve your work:

How was this collected? Avinash Kaushik recently wrote a post on Competitive Intelligence Data Sources and hits on a lot of great issues that come up when collecting data.   Think about the actual moment at which this data was collected.  Was this measurement taken when a search was conducted?  Was it when a particular button was clicked or when a page was viewed?  When does the timer start and stop?  Putting yourself in that mindset will help reveal some places in which the collection methodology might break down.

Who were the subjects? If it’s data collected through an installed toolbar, think about what downloading that toolbar says about the people you just collected data from.  Are they likely to be more tech-savvy than your average audience?  Are they an accurate representation of the customers you are targeting?  Every step leading people to the point of data collection is an opportunity for bias to rear its ugly head.

Does it smell right? When dealing with data, it’s important to do a quick sanity check and make sure things look reasonable on a high level before spending time on more detailed analysis.  Take a look at the average values and distributions of your core metrics.  Are the values generally in line with what you’d expect?  Are there outliers and what might have caused them?  Are there any data types or figures that aren’t what you were expecting?  From the actual tools that collect data to the transfer to excel, errors are a part of the process.  They will happen, and it will help to find any major issues right away instead of down the line.

If you can introduce a healthy amount of skepticism into your analysis, it will go a long way towards improving your efforts.  It’s important to assume there are issues until proven otherwise.  It’s tedious and not particularly fun to dig into things in this detail, but it is 100% necessary.  There can be 99 things that are right about your data, but it only takes 1 thing that is wrong to ruin everything.  You need to poke, prod, and question everything that comes in if you want high-quality results.  It is worth it.

If you have any tips or tricks on gaining more trust from your data, please share.

Author’s Note: This is most likely an attempt to validate certain pain in the ass analytic behavior.  The author acknowledges this.

Filed under: Analysis by Eric Ast on Friday, February 26, 2010 | Social tagging: Analysis > Healthy Skepticism > Sanity Check
64 Comments »

You are in charge of marketing your company online.  You know what a blog is and you know that most businesses have one.  However, you are smart enough to not follow the rest of your industry without understanding why.  So you ask yourself……Does my company really need one?  What goals does a blog even accomplish?

The answer is that in most situations, a blog can really help your business if you use it correctly. Well thought out, targeted content accomplishes the following three goals:

1. Prove your expertise in a specific industry

2. Engage with customers and allow for a two-way conversation

3. Increase your chances of being found in search engines

With over 9 million blogs out there (and 40,000 new blogs starting every day), there is certainly a high volume of C-R-A-P out there.  Attention hungry publishers with poor writing skills across the world will continue to fill the blogoshere with a waterfall of useless information. Fortunately, search engines like Google have gotten pretty good at separating the good from the bad, which means if you are writing truly valuable content in your blog, you will reach your audience.  Customers in your industry most likely do read blogs for free information and there is a good chance they are finding your competitors’ blog entries as we speak.

Now before you go sign up for Wordpress and start pumping out your great blog ideas, take awhile to determine your focus.  Many companies will write just to write (because just like you, someone told them a blog is important), and ultimately accomplish nothing.  Publishing the latest news in your company is not going to attract a following.  Publishing how great your latest vacation to the Bahamas was is not going to get you a following.  You must think about your target customers and what is valuable to them.  If you are selling to green business owners, blog about how to green your business.  If you are a health food company, blog about raw food recipes.  Give the people what they want!  Your blog is not all about you.  It is about sharing your expertise with your potential customers, adding value to their lives in one way or another, and developing a trusting relationship.

You may be thinking, “This is great and all, I could see this working for a certain type of company.  But my industry isn’t exactly social. I don’t think my customers read blogs or use search engines to find us…”  I would say that you may be right.  Blogging isn’t right for every industry.  BUT, don’t jump to any conclusions.  Here are examples of companies in not-so-social industries that have successfully driven traffic to their websites via blogging:

-Immigration Options – Immigration attorneys that run a blog targeting immigrants.  Posts such as ‘How do I live and work in the United States’ bring value to their target audience and drive relevant traffic.

-Palomer Technologies – Specializes in automated microelectronic and optoelectronic packaging stystems….wow.  Yet they have a highly successful blog giving valuable information to customers interested in that specific niche.

-Graco – Specializes in parenting and child’s products.  Their blog does not tout their latest product, but instead engages with parents by offering advice on raising children.

-Catch the Wave -Sells pools.  Their blog will tell you absolutely everything you need to know about anything pool related.

As you can see, you don’t need to be in a glamorous industry to write engaging, helpful content and pull in relevant traffic.

When Not to Start a Blog

Creating a steady flow of valuable content is not easy.  It requires a full commitment from the top down in an organization.  Do not start a blog for your business just to say you have a blog.  It will waste your time and make you look like a fake.  As an example, the company Inmar is a shipping company, and probably a great one.  However, their ‘thought leadership’ blog has not been updated since Febrary 2009.  This makes the company look like they just don’t care.

As you can see, blogging can help your company achieve higher traffic as well as credibility.  Be careful before you jump in however; this is not a light commitment and can easily backfire.

Filed under: Social Media by Sean McVey on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 | Social tagging: blog > blogging
28 Comments »