What are you doing with your website?

If you run PPC campaigns, landing pages are critical to your success. If you run email marketing campaigns, landing pages are critical.

In fact, landing pages are critical to organic search engine marketing, press releases and just about all Internet marketing efforts. This SAP campaign targeting small & midsize business is a great example....LINK

Internet pimps know to spend as much time developing the landing page as they do on the offer that drove their visitors to that page in the first place.

1. Know When To Keep It Simple: Some direct response practitioners like an exciting if not circus-like - atmosphere in a landing page. Perhaps for some consumer categories it works well. But my experience in the b2b space tells me otherwise.In today's "give-it-to-me quick-or-I'm-out-of-here" world, you need to keep your landing page very focused and pretty simple. Let's face it, staring into a light source and reading long tracts of information is stressful and hard work. We all do too much of it as it is.Help the visitor to your landing page digest what you are offering quickly and easily. Use short paragraphs and bullet points. Offer crisp value propositions to readers that pay off the question in their minds, which is: "Why should I take the action you want me to take?"

2. Tell Them Where They Are: Think about it. When people click on an ad in a Web Digest For Marketers email newsletter, for example, or a link in a solo email, they're being transported from one medium into another, namely, the Web. Putting language at the top of the landing page telling them they've landed in the right spot takes away the first question that any visitor understandably has.Some advertisers in my newsletter will actually put the words "Welcome, Web Digest For Marketers Subscribers". Other advertisers have been known to reiterate the offer that caused my readers to click on the link that brought them to this particular landing page.

3. Don't Take Over My Computer: I've seen some landing pages get too tricky and try to wow their visitors. Often this frustrates visitors because they've lost control of their own computers. They may well get that control back by simply closing their browsers - and you are a goner.Yes, yes, there are some categories such as online video gamers who will appreciate the whiz bang effects. But many landing pages tend to go over the top with special effects because some agency told the client it's a cool idea and it meets with branding objectives. Don't do it.Remember, many computers aren't running the latest apps. So your brand image then becomes a dialog box that says you can't view this site because you don't have the latest version of whatever. Also, many computers and networks have firewalls that prevent such programs from running. Again, keep it simple and stay on message.


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Online Pizza Parlor

When my dry cleaning is done, I get a real time alert from the dry cleaner via email. The first time I recieved such an alert, I was so excited I sent a copy to everyone in my office.



Some creative thinking, and an investment in his business has made me a loyal customer. Hell, on top of that, my man had me sending a bunch of people a copy of his branded service alert with my own glowing review of his customer relationship management. Home run. I really do appreciate the alerts.




A client of mine called me with the application of the week.

He is a big Mitel reseller who offers consulting and solutions related to voice and data. His client has 15 pizza parlors in a metropolitan market. This small but profitable pizza chain hopes to use technology to enhance sales & brand identity.



On the Mitel side, they will be creating a small call center to manage ordering and distribution to each of the 15 shops for preparation and fullfillment.

On the web side they will be creating a site that will allow orders to be taken, and automatically distributed among the 15 locations for preparation and delivery. The site would allow online payment, or the customer can pay upon delivery.

The online orders get spit out of a printer at the individual restaraunts so they can handle preparation and delivery.

In the world of technology these simple applications are not earthshaking. To these creative small businesses, however, the results could be.


More to the point, it is about small business embracing technology in a creative way to make business better. Shazaam!

What is VOIP?

Update:
I did recieve a solid response from the founder of a highly respected Cisco Partner that I would like to share with you...

Evan Powell
VP, Founder at Clarus Systems
(nice guy, met him at a Cisco IP Telephony Users Group meeting)

"I have worked with VoIP for several years. VoIP is a critical part of the move in telecommunications towards a more open, software and internet based approach to technology and technology services.

With this openness end users have much more flexibility and SMBs especially can now cost effectively have access to applications that previously were only available to call centers of enterprises. For example, enabling your sales team to make calls directly from Salesforce.com or other applications. The challenge is that with this flexibility comes increased responsibility. VoIP means that voice runs over the data network. So different traditional areas of responsibility, like server, network, voice and application focused IT resources must work together seemlessly to insure that the benefits of VoIP are delivered without increased total costs of ownership. "


Original Post:
I recently posted this question on LinkedIn. I wanted to know about the implications of VOIP on small and mid-size business. I wanted to learn about people who had experience with VOIP as an enabling technology. Saving money is a tired story. I want to hear about integrating your website with your POS to process online orders, or your phone system with your CRM to make your reps productive everywhere at all times.

So back to VOIP. Dont tell me about making cheap calls. Tell me about some killer-application "Star Trek" solutions that you mashed-up with VOIP acting as the integration platform.

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