Jed's Blog

Market segmentation is the art and science of dividing your customers into groups, or segments, in order to better target the right ones with the right advertising message and/or media. In fact, in some cases the results of a segmentation analysis can even suggest that you should completely “step over” or avoid certain customers or prospects altogether.

Market segmentation has gotten a lot more sophisticated in recent years, due to:

1. the advent of proprietary psycho-behavioral segmentation systems like Prizm, Mosaic, and Personicx
2. the increased sophistication of quantitative analytics techniques
3. the sharp increase in the sheer amount and detail of information that market research firms keep about each adult in the United States

Request: If you own, run or manage a business-to-consumer (B2C) business, I am interested in your thoughts on market segmentation. Here is a one-question poll I would like you to answer: http://polls.linkedin.com/p/70962/qhfcj. Thank you for your input!

Quick note: here’s a great article on where to find the best Cyber Monday deals:

http://tinyurl.com/ydg4u8k

If you are using Twitter already, you know that the name of the game is getting yourself more followers. Here is a great way to do so. Try this software: http://www.massive-twitter-followers.info/.

It’s a $69 investment (last time I checked), but that’s a drop in the bucket relative to the value of time you will save yourself. There is no easier way to get Twitter followers fast. I get 100-150 new followers each day I use it, with minimal effort.

Once you install the software, here’s what to do (be sure to set up a Twitter account first at http://www.twitter.com):

1. Launch it. Then, login to Twitter through the software itself (rather than through your browser).

2. Now, to start building your massive follower base: click on “Tools” then “Find Targeted Followers.” Type in a keyword that matches your business or interest area (e.g., accounting). For the first person that comes up on the results list, click on their Twitter page (the link). Then, click on their Followers list. They will have 2,000 to 20,000 or more followers. Now, click on “Follow All” button at the bottom, right of your screen. The software now goes to work, automatically following other people. Go about your daily activities and give the software some time to do its thing.

Now, once you are following about 2,000 people, the software will cut you off from following more until you get around 2,000 followers yourself. This will not all happen in one shot. You will notice that not everyone will follow you back, however. So, every once in a while (every 2-3 days), you will want to “Unfollow” those people who didn’t follow you back. Just go to your own “Following” page and click on “Unfollow All” button on bottom, right. (It will only unfollow those who haven’t yet followed you).

Also, every day or so, be sure to go to your own Followers page and “Follow All.”

I am seldom ever asked (but should be) the question, “Should I be blogging in order to promote my website?” Basically, people just naturally fall into one of two camps on the issue. They either: 1. assume it’s a good idea. Or, 2. they’re too intimidated to try blogging because they feel they’re not good enough of a writer.

My answer? Well, since I clearly blog myself, you can probably guess that I think blogging can be a good idea under some circumstances. But, in what situations should you spend your time blogging, and how can it help? Here are my thoughts on the matter:

Blogging can help you:

1. Build more relevant content for your website (search engines love content!).
2. Remain focused on your core competencies and keep your skills sharp by writing about what you already know and love to do.
3. Keep your customers, colleagues and prospects informed about what you are doing, thinking and feeling about your area of specialization.
4. Send more (but not necessarily tons more – see below) traffic to your website.

However, blogging is not likely to help you:

1. Get famous. (In fact, it won’t even help you get “Internet famous.”)
2. Instantly get thousands of visitors to your site.
3. Stir deep public debate.*

* Yes, there are people out there doing all of these latter 3 things via blogging, but they have been blogging practically since the Internet was the ARPANET and Seinfeld was barely into its 3rd season. Nowadays, there are tens of millions of blogs out there – the compeition is stiff, to say the least.

So, set the right expectatations and get blogging!

Good search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) require that you get comfortable with what I call the “SEO Math.” As I’ve stated in previous entries, many of us are simply math-averse. But, once you can get over any fear or trepidation you have about math, you will realize the importance and power of having a mathematically-sound approach to your work.

Two tools I recommend to help you out:

1. Brush up on your Microsoft Excel skills.  This is a fine piece of software that 98% of computer users have free and ready access to (yes, even you Mac users!). Learn it, master it, use it.

2. Access a good PPC calculator.  You need to be able to calculate such vital numbers as:

a. The maximum amount you are willing to spend per conversion

b. The total net profit per conversion

c. Your monthly PPC ad budget

Get your SEO math right and you will be able to sleep well at night knowing your SEO and SEM strategies rest on a solid foundation, not just guesses and good faith.

Just One Number

As someone who is interested in promoting your website, you no doubt are convinced of the importance of two things:

a. getting traffic to your site.

b. enticing people who visit your site to take some specific action once they have arrived there.

In these two types of actions is embodied the ENTIRE process of all-things-Web. That’s it. That’s the whole enchilada. That’s the game. That’s the thing you need to do.

Well, as anyone who has been doing “stuff on the Web” for any length of time knows, getting those two all-important things to actually happen isn’t always easy. And, after having tried a few tricks you had up your sleeve that might or might not have borne fruit, you may have already realized that you’ll need to actually get serious about using metrics to measure your site’s performance.

And by metrics, of course, I mean numbers. Many of us – businesspeople alike – are a bit numbers shy. Others are just plain math-phobic. However, I strongly encourage you to get over any math aversion you have and start working with the numbers a bit at a time. Getting metrics-savvy is your first step toward really managing your Internet activities toward better performance.

Here’s a first step in your journey to a metrics-centric view of your online activities: figure out the One Number that is arguably the most important number you need to know about your site. And that One Number is this: the conversion breakeven point.

Put simply, the conversion breakeven point is defined as the maximum amount of money you are willing to spend to get someone to take that all-important action (i.e., buy something, sign up, call you, etc.) on your site.

Once you know this number, a whole slew of additional things flow from that. For example: how much you are willing to pay per conversion (and even per click) for your PPC campaign. How much you are willing to pay for SEO. And even how much you should charge for your time, services and products. All of this information is in part a function of this One Number.

To simplify your life even further: you can figure out the One Number for your business using my free conversion breakeven calculator at: http://www.jcjinteractive.com/ppc_seo_conversion_calculators/.

(Be sure to read Part A below before reading this).

Okay, so what’s the best way to think about these different types of traffic that could potentially visit your site?

Here is how to prioritize your traffic in terms of capturing them (with SEO) and converting them (with good site design).

Top Priority: Type III: people who want a service like yours but who don’t know you exist

These folks should be your primary targets. Think about it this way: you want to conduct your SEO campaign (and design your site to capture, inform, impress and incite to respond to your call to action) for those people who aren’t yet aware you even exist on the planet but who are already motivated to seek a service or product like yours. Make your site all about these folks. The biggest mistake webmasters and site designers make is to assume that site visitors already know: a. who they are; b. what the value that they offer is; c. to whom they offer that value. Don’t make that mistake. If you do, you’ll miss these vitally-important Type III folks.

Second Priority: Type IV: people who want a service other than yours but who, if they learned about your service, may consider using your service as a substitute for the service they are looking for

Your site should also make provisions for these folks. This is a bit harder of a sell only in that it can be tricky to change a prospect’s thinking from believing they need some other type of product or service to believing that yours might do just as well (or better). Still, very much worth the effort. Hint: you can explicitly state on your site something like, “Looking for an X Widget? Try my Y Widget instead.”

Third Priority: Type II: people who want your services and have heard of you – but who can’t quite remember your name

These folks should pretty much take care of themselves once they reach your site.  But, in order to increase your chances of getting them to your site with SEO, make sure that your site’s meta tags (keywords, in particular) contain common misspellings of your company or site name.

Fourth Priority: Type I: people who want your services and already know your name

With any effort at all, you should be already ranking within the top 5 positions on major search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google, Yahoo! and Bing for your own company or site name. If so, Type I traffic should take care of itself. If not, do some SEO for your own name using blogs, backlink creation, etc.

Bottom Priority: Type V: people who don’t want your service and likely never will, even as a substitute for something else they do currently want

Basically, you can ignore these folks. Still, occasionally they will stumble across your site by accident. Or, maybe they are doing research on your company and find you that way. At any rate, for these folks, just supply an informative “About Us” page to explain who you are, what you do. That should do the trick.

Make the conscious decision to intelligently target your potential site traffic in this order of priority and you will in the process be making the best use of the time and resources you put into capturing and then converting your site traffic.

It is a big day in an Internet marketer’s life when she realizes that she really doesn’t want everyone in the world coming to her site, despite what she had been telling herself all these years. It represents a quantum leap in her thinking when she admits to herself that it is actually to her advantage to keep certain people away from her site (especially if she is doing pay-per-click marketing, but that is another story).

This realization is both liberating and a little bit scary. For, by recognizing that you don’t want everyone out there “on the Internet” coming to your site, you are forced to look more closely at exactly whom you do want and how you should treat them once they get there. And, then of course you may find yourself going back to your old college marketing textbook and flipping to that long chapter on market segmentation. Market segmentation, as I define it, is the art of dividing your prospects into meaningful categories so that you can go after them in different ways.

The way I see it, there are five types of traffic out on the Internet insofar as they relate to your products and services. Here they are:

Type I: people who want your services and already know your name

Type II: people who want your services and have heard of you – but who can’t quite remember your name

Type III: people who want a service like yours but who don’t know you exist

Type IV: people who want a service other than yours but who, if they learned about your service, may consider using your service as a substitute for the service they are looking for (oh yeah, and they, too, don’t know or don’t yet care that you exist)

Type V: people who don’t want your service and likely never will, even as a substitute for something else they do currently want

There you have it. As you start to think about the implications of all of this, you’ll realize that the way you should go about targeting these five types of people is (or should be) very different.

In a future post (Part B), I will discuss more about why and how you need to target these potential visitors differently – both from the perspective of SEO/SEM and from the perspective of once they arrive at your online doorstep (your site).

So, you have a website. Now you are finding yourself in the position of wanting more visitors to your website. Okay, you share a common problem with tens of millions of other people.

Now, if you have done some research on the topic, you are probably aware that there are two primary ways to get more traffic to your site: organically (a.k.a. naturally) or via paid search.

In Internet marketing lingo, the study and practice of getting more traffic via organic search is known as search engine optimization, or SEO. Meanwhile, the practice of paying for your traffic is called search engine marketing, or SEM.

So, which should you choose? Here are a few benefits of each:

Benefits of going all-natural:
1. You do not need to pay for each action (ad impression or click) that gets someone to your site
2. The effects of a strong SEO campaign can last for a long time
3. Often, the off-site content (e.g., in blogs, etc.) created to drive traffic to your site creates a higher value for would-be visitors, potentially leading to a higher conversion rate once they reach your site
4. The content you create online (out on the Internet) with backlinks to your site might last for months or years, unlike with paid ads which go away the minute you stop the campaign

Benefits of paying for it:
1. Takes no time to build up its effect: you get instant traffic with paid ads
2. Due to the large amounts of traffic you can “turn on” all at once, you can use that reliable, steady stream of traffic to do testing (e.g., conversion or A|B split testing, whereby you see which types of messaging, images, pricing, etc. help drive more desirable user actions, such as purchases, on your site). This can help you draw conclusions about how to build a better, stickier, and more user-friendly website.
3. The cost of getting the traffic to your site can be measured very precisely in dollars and cents, such that it is very easy to calculate return on investment (ROI) of your campaign
4. You can experiment easily with different types of paid traffic and then quickly and accurately measure the effectiveness of each campaign

Which do I recommend? Well, of course, it depends upon your situation. If you need traffic – like – today(!), then I recommend at least starting with a paid traffic (SEM) campaign. But, on the other hand, building up a solid SEO campaign does take time, so the sooner you start, the better.

One final note: SEO and SEM are by no means mutually exclusive. Rather, you can (and probably should) implement both in tandem – and if you do good job, they will complement each other very well. For example, doing good SEO work on your website can actually result in your paying less for clicks with your SEM campaign due to your site having a higher “quality score.”

Yesterday at the local grocery store I noticed two Coin Star machines placed side-by-side. The machines were almost identical, save for the style and size of the font used in the title panel that displays the name “Coin Star.”

It is likely that the company’s product manager did this on purpose in order to see which machine attracts more users by experimenting with the two different types of signs. (Or, maybe one machine is just an older model!). Either way, this photo serves as a great real-world reference when explaining the Internet marketing technique called “split testing.”

Split Testing: A Proven Way to Increase Conversions

If you are like most website owners or webmasters, you want more traffic surging to your website on a daily basis so that you can make more money (or get more exposure to investors, etc.). But, have you given much thought as to what happens once the traffic gets there?

Identifying such desirable actions that your visitors take – often called “conversions” in Internet marketing lingo – is a key step to building a solid online strategy.

In fact, finding ways to increase your site’s “conversion rate” (i.e., # of people who take the desirable action / # of visitors) is a very worthwhile endeavor that should pay for itself many times over in terms of your time investment.

This is where split testing – sometimes called A|B split testing – comes in. This practice involves creating two similar landing pages (either on your existing site or hosted at two independent Web domains). The key is to make both pages identical in almost every way – save just one element (e.g., a certain image, a choice of wording, a price point, etc.).

Once you have set up your two pages this way, start driving traffic. Then, using your analytics package (I prefer Google Analytics), track which page brings you a better conversion rate. Once you have determined this, you simply start over again: make both pages identical (using the highest-converting page as the model), and then change yet another element – and so on. You can repeat this process forever. Provided that you have given each configuration enough time (or visits) such that you have gathered statistically significant data, split testing is a sure-fire way to improve your conversion rates.

Hint: be sure to only change one element at a time. That way, you can know for sure what it is that has contributed to the better conversion rate on one landing page versus the other.