Business Basics and Marketing Magic for Small Business Owners
From the monthly archives:
This is what it’s really like to work with clients, especially corporate clients.
Thanks to Alan Weiss who offers this video as the reason why he doesn’t do OD consulting. Obviously, when working with clients, we all face the same challenges whether you’re a blog theme designer, a graphic designer or an freelance writer.
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One of the GREAT things about being involved in a “social networking site” such as Biznik is that people can communicate PRIVATELY with you.
I recently got a question privately there from someone who visited my blog and read my post Business Success Isn’t Determined by Your Alexa Rank. A well respected marketing expert, he wasn’t familiar with the Alexa tool and asked me to blog about it. Since I’m all about educating my clients and other readers, here we go.
What is Alexa?
Alexa is a product developed by Amazon (yes, the internet book selling giant and internet retailing pioneer). It’s a way to “spy” on the traffic of other competing websites.
Alexa “ranks” websites in order based upon traffic from 1 to 24+Million. (I’ve seen TWO sites in the past 2 weeks that were in the 24 Million range.)
The last time I looked, Yahoo was #1, Google was #2 and YouTube was #4 according to Alexa.
If your Alexa ranking is above 1Million, you can congratulate yourself. You’re in the top 5% when it comes to rating traffic of the 24+ Million sites indexed by Alexa.
With that said, Alexa doesn’t get real interested in your website until your site breaks into the top 100,000. Once you break into the top 100,000, you can see your daily reach, rank and page views.
A Brief History on Alexa
The way Alexa used to collect the information it needed was via a plug in for MSIE (Microsoft Internet Explorer), Window’s internet browsing software. The plug in installed a toolbar in the user’s browser. While it offered a way for users to “spy” on the traffic of other websites, it also provided a way for Alexa to TRACK toolbar users movements on the web.
If you think about it, it makes sense that the only people who really CARE about what kind of traffic other websites are getting tend to be part of the techno-geek crowd. Very few sales training professionals CARE about the web traffic of any particular website. On the other hand, people who create websites are PASSIONATELY interested in the traffic ranking for a site. As a natural progression of events, in the early days the Alexa tool bar was used almost exclusively by web professionals or devoted web amateurs.
As the web has grown, so have the number of “non-tech” users. Many of these “non-tech” users didn’t have the Alexa toolbar installed in either MSIE or any other browser. As a result, the results of Alexa’s ranking became rather “skewed” statistically. Sites targeted towards technical users tended to do much better than websites that dealt with non-techy matters such as organic foods.
Meanwhile, new Web 2.0 businesses are popping up left and right. With the explosive growth of blogs has come advertising management services which will allow you to sign up and place ads on your blog via their network. Since ads are sold based on the number of impressions, many of these networks rely heavily upon the Alexa ranking of a website to determine traffic. (Log files can be altered, but Alexa is an unbiased third party.) Also, bloggers are popping up who aren’t blogging about the latest Tech Toy who are developing quite a following. These popular “non-tech” blogs were crying “foul” when it came to Alexa’s method of collecting data.
Recent Changes in Alexa
Back in April, Alexa responded, either to these cries or to the increased competition they were facing. (Compete.com comes quickly to mind.) Alexa changed the way it gathers data for its rankings to try to reflect what was happening in Web 2.0, where it’s not only geeks who roam the web for hours on end. ( Read more here Alexa’s New Ranking System Hurts Some and Helps Some.)
If you go to Alexa, you too can install this tool bar in your web browser. When you do, you’ll be contributing to Alexa’s data collection efforts. In other words, you can spy but you’ll also be spied upon.
There’s actually a plugin for Wordpress which will display your current Alexa ranking in your blog if you want the world to see. (Personally, I’m waiting to break into the top 100,000 to activate that one.)
If you don’t want to install the toolbar, you can always go to the Alexa.com site and type in the URL you want to check.
The most important thing to remember with Alexa is:
a) It’s an estimated traffic count
b) It’s a NUMBER and nothing more.
There are people whose blogs were ranked in the Alexa top 100K who have shut down their blogs and gone on to get real jobs because they weren’t making money from the traffic they had. On the other hand, I recently wrote about a business who is RAKING in the dough whose website is ranked in the 24 Million range.
For me, checking Alexa rankings could be called an addiction. I have a similar addiction to Diet Coke and coffee. (Caffeine FREE Diet Coke… I’m trying to be in “balance” because I drink a pot or two of coffee every morning. Screw moderation, I’m seeking “balance”.)
It’s only recently that I’ve come to recognize NEITHER my drinking habits or my Alexa checking behavior is productive. So before you install the Alexa tool bar in your browser, proceed with caution!
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The television show Family Guy parodies this phenomenon by telling the story of Peter’s stone age ancestor who invented the wheel. Unfortunately, the caveman Pater can’t seem to sell his wheel until he strips his wife down to her undies and places her next to the wheel. This inspires the cavemen in the audience to utter such things as “Pretty lady stand near wheel. If I buy wheel, maybe pretty lady will stand by me!”
Using sex to sell products to men is nothing new. However, angering the other half of the population, now that’s a bold and inspired move being made by BMW’s recent offensive campaign.
Progressive Gold says in the post For now you can still buy a Beemer with your dignity intact. The question is, should you?”
The air of innocence suggests virginal chastity, yet the pose of passive abandon says ‘here, take me’. The makeup is deliberately designed to accentuate the dewy skin, pouting mouth and cherubic curls of extreme youth; yet the direct gaze gives an implicit promise of sexuality. It’s all very carefully done and just to make sure you get the message, it’s made explicit in the slogan. “You know you’re not the first”. Oh well, that’s all right then. Lech away at the child.
Pedophilia is not sexy- PERIOD!
Salon doesn’t question the model’s age in the post Used Women are like cars but does state:
Plenty of delightful messages are implied: Used BMWs are like soiled sexpots — dirty but fun to drive. Or: A used BMW won’t tell you to go faster or slower. It lets you drive. Maybe even: Driving a used car doesn’t require protection!
Tracy Clark-Flory ends the post with this simply MAHVELOUS dig: ” You stay classy, BMW.”
To quote another campaign: PRICELESS!!
Yes, it seems there’s quite an uproar brewing over the particularly distasteful ad by BMW. (Follow the link to see the visual and if you’re a man, have a Kleenex ready.) The print ad is an obvious attempt at generating free PR for BMW. It’s got to be. There’s no redeeming value to the ad otherwise.
The ad was brought to my attention initially by Yvonne over at Lipsticking-Marketing to Women Online in the post BMW - No Woman’s Answer to Transportation: Please Leave the Dealership. Yvonne got the heads up from Andrea over at Muse Communications, who doesn’t think much of the advertising executives who created the campaign. Her post inspired me to post a tongue in cheek post The Lazy Ad Executive’s Path to Success: Using Soft Core Porn to Sell Cars
But this party is just getting started. The Ask Patty blog is on board with the post BMW’s Shameful” Greek Used Car Ad as is Copyranter in my car is a woman, my right foot is my penis.
Sarah left a helpful comment coming to BMW’s defense, but alas Sarah doesn’t give a way to check on her identity. Probably a way for BMW to slip on a robe when they discovered they had wandered into a cocktail party dressed in the same attired as the woman in the Bluefly ads. (a.k.a. Naked at a Cocktail Party) Besides, if the ad is a FAKE then why, oh why doesn’t BMW sue the dirty bastards who are slandering their brand?
Mary Schmit calls the ad Very Tacky and Very Stupid. I couldn’t agree more.
This type of advertising has very limited endurance. Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. How many affluent women will think twice about purchasing a BMW in the future as the result of this ad?
I really, really, really hope the approval of this campaign wasn’t the case of a man’s blood to the brain being reduced and his IQ being reduced to 1. When the brain BELOW the belt is allowed to make the decisions - things to badly no matter which gender you are.
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Surely Joe Hage had his tongue firmly in cheek when he wrote the title for his blog post of OMG! It was so easy to set up a blog site!
Joe starts with
I started this article as I was learning how to set up a blog, to share it with you here. It seemed like an intimidating effort but it was SO EASY BECAUSE a GoDaddy.com representative stayed on the phone with me for 63 minutes and took me step-by-step through it.
Joe spent over an HOUR on the PHONE to set up a Godaddy blog site for his kids. I’m stunned!!!
I’ve followed Joe on the social networking site Biznik and I’d have to put Joe’s hourly rate in the $225 an hour plus club. He’s a Wharton MBA whose list of clients is impressive. His skill at quickly seeing how to make a marketing positioning statement which is tightly targeted AND easily understood literally blows me away. (A skill he demonstrates on Biznik with surprising regularity. The man obviously never sleeps!)
I guess what I’m getting at is that Joe’s time is extremely valuable which means that was one very expensive and extensive blog set up session.
I will confess here that I have absolutely NO experience with Godaddy blog hosting services. My experience with Godaddy HOSTING services on behalf of website clients has not made me willing to brace for the challenge of trying to tame their blog option. Joe’s post only clarified that for me.
In contrast, I set up a blog for my son last night. He’s wanting to earn some income and his passion is video games. So I picked up the domain name Best Video Game Cheats and in the course of an hour, I was able to
Admittedly, I’ve got everything set up to plug and play when it comes to setting up Wordpress blogs but it certainly wasn’t “easy” the first few times I did it. (There’s more to a Wordpress blog installation than simply clicking “install” in Fantastico. Plug ins, which are what make Wordpress ROCK, vary in their ease of use, effectiveness and compatibility with other plug-ins.)
Now, admittedly, you will have an outlay of cash to have me set up your Wordpress self hosted blog. In Joe’s case, this was a blog he was setting up for his children, so I can see not wanting to launch a super charged self hosted Wordpress blog with all the bells and whistles which will make it a contender for top rankings in the search engines.
However, I learned a valuable lesson via a posting in a forum long ago (the source and link are long forgotten but the message remains) which stated,
“You can always earn more money- you can never earn more time. Money is easily replaced. Time isn’t.”
That has caused me to click the “buy” button more than once over the past few years. Can it save me time? Then it’s probably worth my money.
Lots of people waste valuable time and energy trying to figure out how to get something for nothing. There are tons of free and low cost website development tools which feature complicated and non-intuitive navigation through a labyrinth like maze that consume hours if not days of valuable time. That valuable time was invested on behalf of a less than stellar end product. I’ve not only gone down that trail personally, I’ve also worked with more than a few clients who later said, “Wow! I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time getting to you.”
I get the need to bootstrap. I get the need to conserve cash. But sometimes, you’ve got to spend money so you can make money.
I applaud Joe. I never would have called and hung in for over an hour trying to set up a blog on Godaddy. I’d have gone to Wordpress.com and set one up in like 5 minutes and then used URL forwarding for the domain name. Not the most SEO method, but then again… if that was my goal, I would NEVER use a Godaddy blog in the first place.
Am I missing something? Are Godaddy blogs the next big thing is search engine friendliness and ease of use? Or are they just cheap and readily available?
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As a web “professional”, I know the frailties that face Alexa. However, that darned tool bar is so easy to install and it’s literally become a habit for me to glance at the Alexa Ranking before the page has had time to load.
Over the weekend, I learned that there are successful businesses who are NOT using the web as part of their success.
I know.
I was shocked.
It’s funny how short sighted those of us who live and work on the web can get sometimes- myself included at the TOP of that list!
This revelation started innocently enought. I got a phone call yesterday from a friend of mine who has a “real” job. She’s the training director for a large company… you know, the type of company that has “divisions” which each are assigned a “budget.”
She began her call with, “I’m at this conference to be a certified-blah blah and I met this amazing woman who’s launching her own business and needs your help.”
“Wait! Certified– to be what? Did you quit your job? Are you launching your own business?”
“No, my division has budget to burn so I’m becoming a certified “blah blah”. ”
I’m not being coy or trying to protect an identity- I really can’t remember the program name- it was THAT generic! It was one of those made up words that people create so they are “guaranteed” top position in the search engines.
“What is a certified blah blah?” I asked.
“You know, I asked that before I left on Friday. No one at work knew either,” she said. “You’d think that someone would ask that question before plunking down $2500 for a 3 day seminar. But that’s how Corporate America works. By this time tomorrow, I’ll have another certification to my name.”
She then asked me to check out the website for the firm putting on the seminar. My friend is a business woman through and through and instead of paying attention to the presentation (which usually annoys her because she’s a real expert in training and sees the mistakes being made in the presentation instead of every absorbing the content), she’s counting heads and computing how much money this guy is bringing in.
She counted 300 heads in the room… and multiplied it by the $2500 her company paid for her seat there. She figured they made$750,000 in revenue from this seating alone and she knows there’s another seminar next month on the west coast.
I’m intrigued. I type in the website address and my attention goes first to the Alexa ranking. I’m STUNNED at what I see- I didn’t know Alexa numbers went above 24 million!
The Alexa ranking for the website is in the 24,500,000 range.
Talk about a billboard in the Alaskan Wilderness, this website is a wasteland. Oh, and it’s a mess both from a coding standpoint AND from a content standpoint.
The coding issue is obvious. I mean, you don’t reach the deepest darkest depths of 24 Million plus in Alexa without some serious coding issues at work. However, the content is what surprises me. I mean, it’s little more than a narcissistic rant tooting the horn of the seminar’s developer.
The site doesn’t follow ANY of the rules for website success!!! Lousy domain name, poorly coded, narcissistic content… I can’t imagine anything he could do to make the site worse.
Despite all of that, he obviously has a thriving business. I text my friend with a “you’ve GOT to find out how people found out about the seminar,” because one thing is certain, he’s not using the web to market it.
Turns out, he’s made connections with a national association and is offering this “course” at a substantial discount for members. The association sent out the communication to it’s members and offered them a half price discount.
The whole experience has shaken me a bit. It has forced me to admit a bad habit which I’ve developed - I tend to look to Alexa rankings to judge how “successful” a website is and by extension, the business which owns the website. This particular website destroyed that belief system of mine. It goes to show that you don’t need a great Alexa Ranking to have a successful business venture.
I should have known better. I mean, I tell clients all the time that a blog can be used as a powerful tool for business communication. Using your blog to communicate your marketing message is a GREAT use of a blog. Using a blog in that manner is actually using your blog to target the non-blogging community.
Do I think a great web presence would help this guy’s business - definitely. But the lack of one obviously hasn’t stopped him from achieving a level of success.
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