87 Octane gas is a commodity. No matter where you purchase it. It is offered per gallon at about a 5-cent range within a given area. Some fuel marketers may feel that they can charge an extra cent or two per gallon based on other incentives such as a preferred location or cleanliness of the store. However, no matter where you get your gas, it is essentially the same gas you can get at any convenient store or gas stop.

Cars are not a commodity. A Kia Sephia will never sell for the same price as a Lamborghini. Why? Let me list some reasons: performance, features, reliability, luxury, brand recognition, just to name a few.

Boost ROI with a Customized Online Marketing Plan

For the same reasons, online marketing is NOT a commodity. Business owners often tell me, “Oh yeah, we have SEO .” “We do social media.” “…and we got it at a good rate” or “much cheaper.” Savvy business marketers know that the important number to focus on is ROI. How much money did your online marketing investment make your company in terms of business results (PROFIT)?

Don’t invest in online marketing as if it’s a product on the shelf to check off your marketing shopping list. Be sure that your online marketing plan  is customized to your business’ unique goals. Measure the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts. Ensure that you’re getting a return on your investment that justifies your efforts. Not all online marketing is created equal.

Learn how an online marketing plan from Xcellimark can help you get a return on your business investment. Contact us today.

Online success is becoming a key driver of business growth in today’s environment.

However, there are many challenges that businesses face when implementing and managing an effective Internet business strategy and plan.

The Most Common Challenges to Online Business Success Today are:

• Obtaining an acceptable ROI for your Web marketing efforts.
• Differentiating your business online from your competitors or other competing interests.
• Determining the most effective means and methods of communicating online to your target audience.
• Establishing credibility and presenting a compelling image online.
• Providing continuous resources (time, money, people) to your online initiatives.
• Effectively identifying and then managing different Internet service suppliers, many with competing interests and conflicting strategies, to deliver the tactical elements to a desired holistic online plan.
• Integrating your online experience with your off-line operations of the organization.

These “challenges” need to be an integral part of your Internet business plan and continually managed for ongoing success. For many organizations, that means getting the help you need to really succeed in the online space.

Help Is Available to Manage Your Online Marketing Efforts

Most companies hire accountants to handle their accounting and tax issues and lawyers to handle their legal issues. In the same way, Interactive Agencies like Xcellimark are designed to provide you with the help you need to receive the highest ROI on your marketing efforts while establishing and maintaining a compelling image online.

Contact Xcellimark today  to find out how you can benefit from the help of a professional in the online space. You make back your investment many times over when your online marketing efforts are handled by professionals who have the experience to know the market, technology, and best practices to provide you with the greatest success.

It’s Friday night and you’re ready for a nice relaxing weekend with only two questions in mind: What do I do? Where do I go?

Maybe you finally want to try that barbeque place you’ve heard your friends talk about or maybe you want to go racing with some serious go-cart action.

But how do you find the places closest to you or the best places to go?

Local Listings Help Searchers Find Local Businesses

The solution is simple - “Local Search listings.” With a local search  listing, you can find restaurants, go-cart tracks, eye doctors, and even where to get your shoes repaired.

A local search listing is a comprehensive business listing that business owners control.

Reviews Help Businesses and Searchers Alike

The local listing also links in reviews from consumer review sites so searchers can read other people’s recommendations or warnings about a business or service.

Reviews are critical to the success of not only the local listing itself but they also determine whether people choose to do business with a company or not. If a business gets lots of positive reviews, then more and more people will want to do business with that company. Therefore it’s important to have a strategy to help build your online reviews.

Professional Help Makes All the Difference

There are many things that businesses need to do correctly to get the most out of your local listing. Simply claiming your listing is not enough.

As more and more businesses realize the importance of their local listing, it will become more difficult to show up in the “local pack”.

And just like SEO was once thought to be a simple thing to accomplish (not so anymore), your local listing is not something that should be left to chance.

If you are not increasing your business success in the local community through local search listings, contact Xcellimark  to find out how our comprehensive Local Search program can help.

We might have all heard the saying, “It’s not about where you’ve been; it’s about where you’re going.” It points out the importance of our future and what we’re doing to get there, compared to the significance of our past.

But what is more important in the world of online marketing? What would you rather know about those visiting your website? Do you know how they’re finding your website? Do you know what they’re doing once they’ve discovered your brand online?

I admit, it’s a trick question. The answer is that BOTH are important: where people are coming from and what they do once they’ve engaged your brand/website online. To be able to decipher these behaviors, the installation of analytical  tools and diligent monitoring of these metrics are required. This allows online marketers to make educated decisions on how they can better increase their site traffic and increase conversion rates  for those that do visit their website.

Once you answer questions like these….

1. How did people find my website?
2. What did they do once they came to my website?
3. How long did they stay or how many pages did they view?
4. How far down the purchase path did they pursue?
5. Where are they abandoning my website?

You will be able to answer questions like these….

1. What keyphrases should I target in my SEO and PPC effort?
2. How can I better optimize my conversion path?
3. Is my landing page effectively communicating my value proposition?
4. Am I attracting the right audience?
5. Is my messaging appropriate for those finding my site?

Xcellimark can help you find answers to all these questions. Let us know how we can help you.

Image is a fuzzy term. It means different things to different people. Your online image is driven by buyer behavior. Buyer behavior is deeply rooted in:

• Internal or psychological factors such as personality, attitudes, and lifestyle.
• Personal or demographic factors and social factors such as friends, family, opinion leaders, etc.
• External factors such as marketing. 

There was an interesting study done a few years back that outlined the elements that make up a customer’s buying decision. Their research outlined the most critical elements customers evaluate in order to decide who to buy from.
The elements were:

• Price
• Product Quality
• Service Quality
• Image

What they found was very interesting. It is somewhat easy to compare price between vendors. Yes it may take some work in order to compare “apples to apples”, but it is a rather straightforward process.

The difficulty comes when a potential customer is trying to evaluate Product Quality and Service Quality. If they are not a prior customer of a business, then they do not have experience to draw from in order to make an informed decision of Product Quality and Service Quality. Every vendor says they have great products and services.

So what do prospective customers do?

They use Image as a substitute for making a decision on a company’s Product Quality and Service Quality.

In other words, your Image is the determining factor for Product Quality and Service Quality for your prospective customers.

There are books that go into great detail on Image and Image-related topics such as branding and buyer behavior. I will not go completely into that here other than to give you a little deeper perspective on how elevating your brand impacts your business .

Online Image and the Effects it Has on Your Business

The study suggests that if your website looks cheap, potential buyers will think your products and services are cheap, have low value, and are low quality. If your website is difficult to navigate, people think that you will be difficult to do business with. If there are errors or content missing on your website, perspective clients will think you will not deliver a working product or service.

Your online image is primarily delivered by your website and the resulting experience. Over 70% of people will review a company’s website before they make a purchase decision. In fact, I read where over 80% of all people will visit a church’s website before they visit a church.

Your Website Image is Important

There are many reasons why you have the website you have – money, vendor’s capability, your personal preferences, etc.

Many businesses develop a website that they like, but it is not driven by the Image that your prospective customers are looking for. How do you stack up against your top online competitors? What kind of online experiences is your website delivering versus your online competitors or even other market leaders? 

Sometimes the evaluation bar of Image is not set by your competitors. It is often set by your prospective customers’ experiences in other online markets or providers.

Maybe your online market is lagging other industry leaders. You should always stay abreast of the online trends and experiences. If you have evaluated your website closely in the last 2-3 years, you are going to be shocked. Much has changed while you were asleep online. But the good news is that you can wake up your website with an online image makeover. Contact Xcellimark  to find out how.

What if this country was not in a recession? Would you still be on a budget?

What if healthy food was affordable? Would you still eat off of the value menu?

What if life was about choosing door #1 or door #2?

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

In every decision of your life, you will come to a crossroad where you are presented with various options - some are good and some are bad. And with every decision comes consequences that shape your future decisions and ultimately the path in life you’ll take. My Dad always told me that “A bad decision is better than no decision” because you can learn from bad decisions. I try to keep the bad decisions to a minimum.

Just as in life, your business is the cumulative efforts of the decisions you made and how much effort you put into it. What kind of decision have you made about advertising your company? Are you getting any online exposure? 

Find the Right Internet Marketing Path for Your Business

I’m not going to bore you with statistics about what percentage of consumers start the buying process online nowadays but, what if you decided you wanted to increase revenue and get a piece of the online business pie? Wouldn’t you want to know the best way to get it done?

You’ve worked hard to build a quality reputation in your community over the years. Is it worth trusting a novice to build your company’s website for pennies on the dollar only to need it fixed a few weeks later? I think not!

Just as your company is composed of people with diverse talents that have kept your company thriving since its inception, you need the right people in your corner to market your business online. 

Xcellimark works with all clients on an individual basis to provide custom web-based solutions  that will fit your needs and goals.  Contact us  today to see how we can help you make the right decisions for your business.

You’d be surprised by how many businesses don’t have an answer for that question. Or maybe they do, but it’s not a good one. For instance, “Impressing people” is not a business goal for having a website.

A friend asked me to check out a new website for her high-end salon. They wanted to show me how cool it was. It had all the bells and whistles: smooth, flashy transitions, custom photography, the latest fonts, and hip music. The design was interactive and clever. To be honest, it was a lot of fun to navigate. I was impressed.

She explained that the website cost over $15K to create. I suddenly thought to myself, “Wow, they must have big plans for the website in terms of growing their customer base and increasing profits.” But when I clicked on the link within the website to make an appointment to get my haircut, the interface was cumbersome and I soon gave up.

To make things worse, I noticed that when I clicked the link to make an appointment online, I was redirected to an entirely different website. I was confused.

Days later, I tried to find the salon’s new website again. But when searching the salon’s name in Google, I noticed that their Google Local listing had the wrong URL and was directing people to an inactive web domain. People could not find this $15K website, and when they did, they could not easily become a customer of the salon. What was the goal of the website?

Do you have a clear, specific business goal for your company’s website? Are you achieving that goal? If not, contact Xcellimark today for a FREE, no-obligation consultation to help .

Everyone needs some type of Internet Strategy and Plan. Typically businesses skip right to a shopping list that looks something like: develop a website, find a hosting company, set up email and maybe some vague notion of being found in the search engines. Done, right?

Not quite. Detailed Internet planning is a migraine waiting to happen for a Type A Driver personality. In fact, just about every type of personality, with the exception of an analytical, would as soon go to the dentist for a root canal than to take the time to do a little bit of analysis and planning.

It doesn’t have to be an award-winning three year business plan. But you should address the following areas at the basic level:

• Define Your Goals and Objectives – You must define a measurable goal or set of objectives that serve a primary business function such as sales revenue, subscriptions, lead generation, cost savings, service improvement, etc.
• Define Your Target Online Market –Define your primary target customer’s demographic profile or business type, primary needs, how they make decisions, where they are located geographically, and how many people or businesses fall into this profile.
• Define Your Online Competitive Market – Define your top competitors online. This may be different than who you traditionally face on the street. What are their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, etc.? Define their value proposition if they have one, any incentives or promotions they are running, and conduct a thorough website analysis on at least your top two online competitors.
• Define your Value Proposition – This may be the hardest thing you do. Why should someone do business with you over your competitors? You need to be able to communicate this in two versions – one that is less than 250 words and another that is one sentence, maybe two at the most.
• Develop An Incentive – You need to inspire someone to do something now. What can you provide that is of perceived value with a time element that would inspire someone to contact you now?
• Define Benefits – While developing a product or service feature set is nice, you need to be able to communicate the benefits that your product or service provides for your customer.  So what is really in it for them? Why should they care about you?
• Develop an Internet Strategy – Once you have done your basic research and definitions, you need to develop a strategy that defines how you are going to reach your target market, the image you need to present to your market, how you are going to present a compelling value proposition, your call-to-action, what online functions will help serve your prospects, customers and company, and how you are going to track performance to know whether you are achieving your goals and objectives.
• Develop an Internet Plan – Your plan should identify the required Internet marketing channels, website development requirements, communications requirements, performance management systems, company operations integration, a budget, and some idea of a timeline to start the process and when it needs to be completed.

If you really want to put yourself in the best position to win online, you must develop an effective Internet strategy and plan. While I realize that for some this is a no-brainer, for others it is like climbing Mount Everest. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. The more you do of it, the smoother things will go throughout the implementation process and the more successful your online marketing efforts will be.

If you aren’t conducting tests on your website, then you need to be. If your website isn’t performing at its optimum level, then you are leaking revenue. But I’m not writing to convince you that you should be testing. I’m here to explain what makes a test valid.

The most important component of running a test on your website is defining what you are testing. You must clearly define your test with a question (i.e. Which layout design will have the lowest bounce rate? or Which call-to-action will drive the most conversions?).  If you don’t define your test, then the results will be meaningless and you will have wasted your time.

After you’ve clearly defined your test, you will set up each version (we call them treatments) of your test. Then, you need to define your goal, or the desired level of improvement that you want to see.

Statistical formulas are used to decide how long a test must run to produce valid results, and whether the results have indicated a winning version or treatment. Every test will not have a winning treatment. This is a key principle of testing that you must remember:  a test does not have to have a winning treatment in order to be a valid test.

It is important to record the results for each test, even if there is not a winning treatment, along with all of the insights you gain from each test. Sometimes a test without a winning treatment will give you more insights than one with a winning treatment.

As you continue to test, you should begin to build a testing history that will lead to valuable insights and ideas for new tests. So start your testing history today and see how much you can improve your website results.

I recently read the book called “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Health. It’s incredibly insightful about how to make ideas stick. “Ideas” include presentations, advertising, value propositions, training and so much more.

How many times have you watched or read an ad, maybe even multiple times, and later you really couldn’t tell someone what it was about? But if I asked you if you could tell me who “Jared” is associated with after losing hundreds of pounds on a diet consisting of sandwiches from a fast food restaurant, most of you would recognize the guy in the Subway commercial.

How to Make Ideas Stick

Chip and Dan identify six (6) principles that help make ideas stick. They are Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions and Stories. They didn’t simply think these up off the top of their head though.

In 1999, an Israeli research team reviewed 200 highly-effective ads and found that 89% of them could be classified into six (6) basic categories. The same researchers attempted to classify 200 other ads that had not received awards into the same six (6) categories. They found that only 2% of the less-effective ads could be placed into these categories.

Clearly there are very deliberate things that need to be done to make an ad, presentation, training, or any other idea you are trying to communicate worth remembering. You can study and learn these concepts and then work on putting them into practice.

The Curse of Knowledge

However, there is also a major obstacle that keeps many people from successfully pulling off these principles. Chip and Dan call it the “Curse of Knowledge”. At Xcellimark we see this all the time when working with clients. They know their product or service so well that they believe they are communicating it effectively, but many times they leave out key elements that pull their idea together. They don’t see the gap because it’s just so natural for them they believe everyone understands the subject in the same way they do.

To help illustrate this concept the Heath brothers tell the story of a study done in 1990 by Elizabeth Newton as she earned her Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford. It was a simple game called “tappers” and “listeners”.

Reach the Tappers and the Listeners

After receiving a list of 25 well-known songs such as “Happy Birthday” and the “Star Spangled Banner,” the Tappers were asked to tap out one of the songs to a Listener. The Listener was supposed to guess the song based upon the rhythm being tapped.

Amazingly, the Listeners were only able to identify 3 out of the 120 songs that were tapped. However, when asked ahead of time how many songs the Tappers thought the Listeners would be able to guess, they speculated that the Listeners would get it right 50% of the time. So even though the Listeners only guessed the correct song 1 time in 40, the Tappers thought they were getting their message across 1 in 2 times!

That’s the perfect example of the Curse of Knowledge. We believe we are being so clear when actually people have no idea what we are talking about. That’s one reason some people are not very successful with Internet advertising, or with converting people on their website. They may believe they have presented a very compelling message when in reality people either don’t get it or are not moved by it in the least.

Create a Message that Compels People to Act

Knowing how to effectively write an Internet ad that will get someone’s attention and then associating it with a landing page that helps clarify the message in a way that compels the visitor to act is a much more daunting task than most think. And even when you find a recipe for success, you need to ask yourself if you are doing as well as you can be. Is it as good as it gets?

Getting people to act involves creating a message that resonates with people and following it through with enough understandable and interesting information that clearly helps them see how your product or service will fix their need. Make sure you create a message and website that sticks and then test that message and website page with something you think may be even better to see if you can improve your results.

You might be asking yourself, “What does anxiety have to do with my website?”  The answer:  A lot.

Before I tell you how to detect anxiety on your website, it’s important to define the question, “What is anxiety?”  Anxiety is a psychological concern in the mind of your visitors that leads to a fear of entering information. Anxiety always takes place in the buying process.

Fear Factor

The most common fears in your customer’s mind include: “how good is the quality of service or product I am buying?”, “Is my transaction going to be secure?”, “will my personal information be sold or given away?”and “Am I getting a fair and accurate price for this product or service?”

It is our job to first detect and then minimize these concerns as much as possible.  The best way to start is to look at another company’s website and list out anything that could cause you to question their credibility, or to second guess whether you want to provide your e-mail address, home address, phone number, credit card info or other personal information. Then go back and analyze your own website with a critical eye. You’ll be amazed at how clearly you are able to identify anxiety on your own website.

How to Reduce Anxiety

Some common ways to reduce anxiety include adding security seals or credibility indicators to your site, including product ratings or testimonials, and limiting the information you ask for from your customers whenever possible. 

Don’t stop there.  Look at your site again in a month and see if there is anything you missed, and continue to do it again every month.  There is always room for improvement.  I once heard Flint McLaughlin, the Director of MECLABS, say, “Adequacy is the Enemy of Excellence” and I believe him.

I went to the dermatologist yesterday, and because it was my first time at that office, the nurse asked me a ton of questions:

• Questions about my medical history.
• Questions about any hereditary diseases that may run in my family.
• Questions about any pre-existing conditions.
• Questions about possible allergies.

The questions took some time to answer, but I was relieved that they took the time to ask, because only then could the doctor effectively prescribe the solution that I needed.

The same rings true with Interactive Agencies. Be weary of Internet marketers that don’t ask enough questions. There are too many Internet marketers that make wonderful claims of high page rank and conversion rates, but don’t take the time to ask the right questions. Instead, they hope that their pre-packaged solutions and routine tasks that may have worked for one business will work for yours.

That’s why a partnership with Xcellimark starts with a healthy dose of questions:

• Questions about your business’ specific goals, regarding your business’ online presence.
• Questions about your business’ value proposition and what makes your business different.
• Questions about your business’ competition.
• Questions about your business’ previous and current marketing efforts.

Contact Xcellimark today  to answer these questions, and receive an Internet marketing solution that is tailored to your business’ unique challenges and needs.

For years I have heard leaders and managers claim that the Internet does not work well for their business. “We have a website and it does not produce business” or “We did search marketing and lost money” are typical comments when they first engage us.

There is not a single “silver bullet” that determines online success. There is also a factor of not only what you do, but how well you do it in each of these key strategies.

Online success is achieved by effectively implementing these 10 Internet marketing strategies:

1. Strategy and Planning - Determine how you are going to reach your target market most effectively and beat your competition by developing an Internet marketing plan. This plan identifies your primary business goals, communicates your value proposition, analyzes your top competitors, and determines how to best reach your target market.
2. Custom Website Development - Enjoy a competitive advantage by developing an effective website plan that is targeted to your market and differentiates you from your competitors. The plan addresses key areas such as creative design, digital marketing, analytics and conversion optimization.
3. Search Marketing - Receive the most qualified leads and customers by developing and implementing a search marketing plan that will reach your most qualified prospects, analyze your results and be optimized to deliver the greatest ROI possible for your business.
4. Testing and Optimization - Increase your ROI by developing and testing various incentives, layouts, content and “call-to-actions” in order to determine which ones convert to leads and customers the best.
5. Blog - Establish yourself as an expert by blogging and publishing articles on your industry, market, customers and services to improve your image as the leader in your market.
6. Social Media Marketing - Engage your target market to interact with you more by implementing a social media marketing plan.
7. Online Press Releases - Enhance your image and the awareness of your company in the media by writing and publishing press releases and distributing them online.
8. Online Video - Make yourself standout from your competition by incorporating rich media such as online video in your marketing to engage your target market more and reach more people.
9. Email Marketing - Increase your repeat business and customer loyalty by implementing an email marketing system that keeps your customers continuously engaged with your company and updates them on the latest news and promotions.
10. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - Strengthen your existing relationships and conversions by implementing a customer relationship management system that keeps track of your interactions with your leads and serves your customers through their lifetime association with your company.

It is important to keep in mind that these strategies can be implemented over time. A good plan will define at what point each of these strategies will be implemented based upon the client’s budget and ability to support.  If you effectively implement these 10 strategies, it will significantly contribute to your business growth and success.

Has your bottom line been feeling the economy lately? It seems that everywhere I go, everyone is talking about the economy - or the government – but that's an entirely different subject.

Put Yourself in the Driver's Seat

It's been interesting to see how people have responded to the down economy in the last year. I hear so many people say that they are cutting back because of the bad economy.

Sometimes it's cutting back employees, sometimes it's cutting back on marketing, sometimes it's cutting back on expectations.

I never hear anyone say they are cutting back on revenue. They like to blame that on the economy. But sometimes their actions, or inactions, can multiply the effect of the down economy on their revenue.

Here's what you need to understand. If all of your competitors are cutting back on their employees, or their marketing, or their expectations, where does that leave you? In the driver's seat!

Don't Run for the Hills, Take Over Your Competitors' Market Share

In tough times you can respond in two ways. You can cut back or you can take charge. If all your competitors have cut back on their marketing efforts, then it's a great time to take over their market share!

Tough economic times require that you have the nerve to move ahead of your competitors. Advertising costs decrease because competition decreases. It's the ideal opportunity to get ahead at a time when others are running for the hills.

What Do the Marketing Gurus Say?

Don't just take my word for it though. Top marketing gurus such as Jon Spoelstra and Roy Williams believe that tough times open wonderful opportunities for those who are willing to be bold and outrageous.

Those who are willing to market in the tough times will beat out their competitors who play it safe due to the economy. Be progressive and bold in your marketing efforts even when it may not make sense to do so. You'll find the revenue will follow.

Get Tough! Get Noticed! 

Of course, you can't just do the same old same old type of marketing. Tough times require tough decisions. You need to get out there where your potential clients are and be outrageous enough to be noticed.

Not sure how to pull that off? Get the professional help you need to succeed even in tough times. Your bottom line will thank you for it.

A lot of websites tend to waste more money than they make. That is because the majority of websites are thought to be nothing more than little electronic brochures gathering dust in cyberspace according to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).

The problem actually has its roots in the phase prior to launching a website. It starts with the 5 most common misconceptions business people should avoid when launching their website.

Mistake #1: An amateur website production will render professional results
Your business website is not the place to publish an amateur representation of your services. You are not just presenting your business to the local and surrounding communities, but to the entire world! Obtaining the services of a professional Internet Marketing Consultant can save you thousands of dollars in the development of your site.

Mistake #2: Developing a "Bargain Basement" site will make you rich
Ask any business owner who's ever purchased a cut-rate website if they were happy with their results. Focus on finding quality service at a reasonable rate rather than the absolute lowest price. Remember the saying "you get what you pay for".

Mistake #3: You're going to make thousands of dollars in your first month
Steer clear of anyone who proposes a statement like this. The truth is, once your site goes online, a good marketing strategy will result in a steady increase in traffic and growth each month. This is partly due to the time delay for search engines to visit your site, capture data, and index it. Only Internet marketing strategies that are tried and true will help make you successful for a long time.

Mistake #4: If you build it, they will come
One of the biggest mistakes today is the failure to recognize the importance of Internet marketing programs such as search engine optimization and online internet advertising. Obtaining a high volume of visitors to your site is a must for success. There is absolutely no "luck" involved in the process. Your website needs to be designed and developed with Internet marketing plans in mind from the beginning.

Mistake #5: All you can do is put up a site and hope for the best
Do not be satisfied with a service that only hopes for the best. A successful website is the result of a website marketing strategy that outlines how and where the website will deliver business results. Some Web designers never give much thought to your success once they have built your site.

Monthly detailed activity reports are essential for your success. The report should at least show detail on the number of visitors to your site, (not hits!) most popular pages, most popular search engine keywords, top-referring URLs, as well as top entry and exit pages. If search engine optimization is important to your success, then you should also have reports detailing your standings in each search engine.