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Greetings!
Welcome to the fifth edition of The Maestro Monthly, an email newsletter published by The U.P. Web Maestro. The intent of this publication is to bring you news and updates on U.P. Web Maestro services, local business news, as well as general Web related business tips. (Please note: if you do not wish to receive this email or other messages from us, you can safely click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.)
Happy Thanksgiving!
(A few weeks early, but still said enthusiastically!) We're thankful for you, because without you our turkey would be cooked. Or goose. Well, you know what we mean. This edition is just like you after a thanksgiving meal... stuffed with goodness!
Nonaggressive Online Marketing
by Nathan Lyle (The U.P. Web Maestro)
One of the easiest traps to fall into when using your website for marketing purposes is attempting to collect too much information up front. The more you ask someone to do, the less likely they are to do it.
Rather than grasping desperately at each website visitor and trying to squeeze their demographic information from them on their first visit, you should instead build trust and respect by making their interaction with you as easy and painless as possible. You're just one of many who are trying to sell them on something, so stand out by being the most polite and decent. You might be surprised how far this can take you.
Aside from showing yourself to be someone people want to do business with, there is another advantage in practicing restraint. A list of 100 people who are interested in your product or service is much more valuable to you than a list of 1,000 who may or may not be interested. Beyond the potential waste of resources in marketing to people who have no interest, you also risk building a negative reputation as a spammer if you market indiscriminately.
Interactions on your website that give you valuable customer information include: contact forms, newsletter sign ups, online purchases, and member profiles. Lets take a look at effective ways using these tools...
[read full article]
Talk Directly to Your Customers
Guest Article by Lynne Saarte
If you are going to be sitting down to design advertising and get into poster printing the first thing you have to do is ask yourself who your target market is. Almost everything about advertising boils down to the target market and how you can best reach out to them.
No matter what kind of marketing you plan on doing this is always going to be one of the first things you have to ask yourself, and you certainly need a solid answer. Once you know your market you then need to do all the necessary research to find out what they like, what images they will enjoy, and what other things you can use to best reach out to them.
If you plan to print posters than you are going to need to find some solid imagery that will catch their eye, some great locations where you know your customers frequent, and anything else you can to get their attention.
Here is the thing I have noticed quite a bit though: does your audience know that they are the target market?
Sounds kind of silly in some sense, but it can actually have quite a bit of an impact, especially if they do not actually realize that you are talking to them.
What often creates this situation is when you are marketing something new or something that this particular market has not dealt with very much. When a person sees your posters or sees your other advertising they will not really connect it with themselves or realize just how much your product might be able to help them. That stuff is for someone else, they might think, and walk away without considering anything else.
The best way to avoid something like this is to talk as directly to your market as you can, and be sure you identify them explicitly in your marketing. For those companies choosing to print posters you want to be sure that your poster quite literally shows a picture of the type of person you are trying to market to, or mentions something about their lives that you can make easier.
Do not beat around the bush with this and do not assume that people are going to understand what you have to say. Assumptions are one of the worst things you can ever do in marketing. Never assume and always make sure that everything is clear and to the point. The more obscure you are, or the more broad you topic is, the greater the odds are of your market turning away out of disinterest, or a lack of understanding that you are talking to them.
When you are sitting there considering who your audience is, also consider the best way to help your audience realize just how much interest you have in doing business with them. The more open and direct you are the better the final advertisement you create will be.
About the author: Lynne Saarte is a writer that hails from Texas. She has been in the Internet business for some years now, specializing in Internet marketing and other online business strategies.
Miscellaneous Maestro Minutia
Spam, how we hate thee!
Those of you concerned about your email being blocked by other people's mail servers, may want to consider twice the practice of forwarding mail from an address hosted on our server to an AOL, Hotmail, or Yahoo email account. What we have found to happen is that when spam is forwarded (along with valid messages) to an account on one of those major providers, they report our server as the offending spam source, rather than the originator of the spam. This causes our IP address to be listed with websites that are used by many to filter out spam.
There are usually ways to get removed from these lists, but there are many of them, and there's no notification of having been listed, which means there are delays in being able to respond. Some of these lists also charge money to remove a listing (and since they are not regulated in any way this is basically blackmail) which further slows down the process.
One solution is to not forward mail, but rather use the email address as a full email account on our server. Most email programs like Thunderbird and Outlook will allow you to add many email accounts and check them all at once, so multiple addresses does not necessarily mean more work to maintain.
More Information...
That's it for this newsletter! Please feel free to let me know what you find useful or what you'd like to see us cover in future issues.
Sincerely,
Nathan Lyle
Phone: (906)228-5884
Email: nathanlyle@upwebmaestro.com
Web: www.upwebmaestro.com
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Business Tip
Reserve Your Name!
There was a time when you could have any .com domain name you wanted because hardly anyone had one. That didn't last long. After a frenzy of registration grabbing that made the early American gold rush look like a weekend sale at Shopko, it has become often difficult to get the domain name you want. A similar moment is happening now with social media websites like Twitter and Facebook. Even if you don't intend to use these sites actively, you may want to consider locking down your business (or personal) account names with them. If you're feeling aggressive about it, there are services like knowem.com that will help you pin down as much of the Web as possible. At the very lease, on the sites that let you create a profile, you can set up your business name and a link to your business website. (This will also help you with your search engine ranking.)
Web/Technology News
Is Software Licensed or Sold?
A federal judge in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington issued a ruling in cross-motions for summary judgment filed by both parties in the case Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc. regarding the matter of whether software is licensed or sold. The Honorable Richard A. Jones ruled in favor of the Plaintiff, Timothy S. Vernor, stating that his attempts to re-sell used copies of the popular computer-aided drafting software AutoCAD on the popular Internet auction site eBay were protected by the "First Sale" clause of the United States Copyright Act.
[read more]
Government Seeking to Regulate Internet
The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously on October 22nd to get the ball rolling on creating regulation that will keep the Internet open. On the face of things it seems like a good idea... to protect the Internet from being managed and controlled by a few big corporations. However, our opinion is that the Government is often not much better (if not a lot a whole lot worse) than a large corporation in its obliviousness toward the common citizen. We feel that a truly free Internet can not be centrally regulated. Whatever your own opinion, given the level to which the Internet has become a part of our lives, this is truly an important issue to watch.
[read more]
Computer Makers Seek To Banish Boot-Up Blues
The makers of the basic input/output systems (BIOS) used by PCs are working on bringing instant-on computers closer to reality. Many are pinning their hopes on the adoption of a new standard called Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, which is hoped will improve the intelligence of the BIOS so it can reduce the actions it performs when you boot your computer, resulting in faster boot times.
[read more]
Wife Bans FBI Head From Online Banking
The wife of FBI Directory Robert Mueller has banned him from doing online banking, after he nearly got tricked by an email phishing scam. Though he changed his passwords afterward, his wife still told him, "It is our money. No more Internet banking for you!"
[read more]
Growth of Facebook Keaves MySpace in Dust
MySpace is out, and Facebook is in, according to Experian Hitwise. They recently reported that Facebook grew its share of all visits to social-networking sites from 19% in September of 2008 to 58.6% just a year later. That's more than a 190% increase. MySpace is attempting to turn itself into an entertainment portal, but is still in second place without a bright looking future.
[read more]
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