Giraffe Communications, LLC

Click-to-Chat -- Do You Have It?

• Do you have a product site?
• Do you have "Click-to-Chat"?
• How is it working for you?

I almost always use the click-to-chat feature whenever it is offered. I, like most shoppers, am inpatient and if i have questions I want the answer as soon as possible. Service sites can also benefit from this feature, but if you are an eCommerce site selling merchandise...it is essential.

The best I have found so far is http://www.liveperson.com. They offer a lot of great features plus complete reporting tools. If you know anything about Giraffe Communications, we are huge on metrics.

The great thing about live chat is that you can be logged on during business hours and show as available for chat, but if you leave for lunch or log off...the button shows as unavilable. If you want coverage around the clock, you can hire someone to be logged on during the off-hours. If you step away from your computer momentarily, the feature has a ring tone when a user submits a chat. When you hear it, just go back to your computer and click to accept the chat. For large volume sites, more than one chat can be going on at the same time and more than one CSR can be logged on at the same time.

Businesses that I know would benefit from the click-to-chat feature, yet don't seem to be taking advantage of it.

- car dealerships
- retail sites (meijer, walmart, etc)
- pharmacies/pharmacists
- domain/host sites (i.e. godaddy.com, which I love by the way)
- shipping sites (i.e. usps/fedex, ups, etc)

Click to chat offers a way for you to interact with a customer online...before they come into your store or make a purchase. Being able the interact with a user allows a relationship to start, which we know is the key to earning trust. And of course, earning trust earns the sales as well as customer loyalty.

Some business owners choose not to have a website or choose to do very little with it because they feel it is inpersonal and rather do business face-to-face. This is common with car dealerships because you physically have to enter the showroom to buy a car. However, there is A LOT to be said for methods that bring those customers in the door and it is proven by research that websites can bring in business. Think of your website as a passive sales person for your company. Now add the live chat feature and your sales rep has just become a little more aggressive or as we call it in the biz...interactive.

If don't have a live chat feature on your site or have not given it thought, go to www.liveperson.com (or any other provider) and take a look it how it can enhance your business. I highly recommend it!

Thanks and have a great day!

Amy

Website Tips that Help Convert Traffic...

Is your website user-friendly? Don't answer right away...think about it. If you were involved in the development, it may be hard for you to have a clear perspective. Now really, is your website user-friendly?

If it is great! If you not sure then perform this test...or better yet as a someone who has not spent a lot of time on your site to perform this test. Go to the site as a visitor and browse through the entire thing, clicking on all the pages and all the links as the site leads you. While your doing this, ask yourself these questions;

1. Do I have to think?

2. Does the site lead me through it or do I get stranded in the midst of clicks?

If the answers are 1.) No and 2.) Yes...then you are off to a great start. Research has proven that visitors do not want to have to think when they are on a website. They do not want to think "what page was I on when I saw that link I wanted to click on..." They want all the buttons to be available from every page and they want a clean and legibly designed site. your site should be taking visitors through a path that you have created. I idea is to get the user to buy something or make contact with your company. Depending on where they come into your site, there should be a path that leads them to purchase. if you don't know what the pat it...that is a good place to start work on your site. A visitor should not come into a site a find the one element of information s/he is seeking and then be stranded to click-off the site entirely. The idea is to bring them in for the piece of info they are seeking and then lure them to other enticing information (your service/product) and then appeal to their emotion until they keep clicking through to the shopping cart and click "buy now". At any given point a user enters your site...this path should be clearly laid out for the visitor -- DON'T make them think! :-)

6 Other Tips for a User-Friendly Site:

1. Is the main menu available from every page?

2. Is there a short contact form/contact information on each page?

3. Is there a call to action on each page?

4. Do have a click-to-chat feature?

5. Is your shopping cart easy to find, view, operate and labeled as secure?

6. Is your customer service qualified to follow-up order and verify customer satisfaction.

The click-to-chat feature is becoming quite popular, especially for those of us who are impatient and want answers quickly. A more detailed post regarding click-to-chat features will come this week.

Thanks for stopping by! Do yo have any comments?

Amy

Niche Business- Scratch Your Customers Itch

Do you consider your business a niche? If so you can capitalize on it and create a significant amount of business, not to mention loyalty.

Don't fret...if you don't think you offer a niche think a little more creatively. With the appropriate spin and marketing campaign, any business can be a niche. A niche isn't always the untapped market, sometimes it is just the under-tapped market.

As entrepreneuers starting a business we often make the mistake of going broad out of the gate, trying to get all of the business and make all of the money, right? :-) If you change that line of thinking you can prosper from going narrow before you go broad. You may find you are doing just fine in the narrow market and never go broad. Just the same, if you have already gone broad and your looking for new business, spin your business model to focus on the smaller sectors.

A couple ways to spin your business into a niche are;

*1. Change-up Your Price-Point/Strategy:* Price it differently than you have been in order to attract your niche market and/or price it differently than your compeition in order to attract the market. *2. Unique Packaging:* By this I mean group services/products in a way that makes sense for your niche market. This also ties to point #1 too.

An online business that has done this very well is www.buyequityads.com. Equity Ads is a search engine optimization and pay-per-click management firm. How many of those are out there? Yes, tons of them! But most of them cater to big business, those companies spending 5 figures a month or more to market online. Equity Ads spun their service and priced it for the small business and start-up market and packaged it based on various levels of monthly spending budgets. Genius!!

I happen to have had experience with www.buyequityads.com too, they are excellent at what they do. So you are getting the same quality of service (probably better) as the big companies, but for a much, much lower price. Although your level of spending directly impacts your level of results, this program allows the smaller businesses and start-ups with smaller budgets to gain traction on a progression basis and still compete with their larger compeitors online.

Niche Business. Niche Marketing.

Which must come first? The answer...it doesn't matter, the right marketing team can run either one both ways so your business is successful no matter what. At least that's our focus at Giraffe Communications LLC ( www.giraffecomm.com)

Where to find Giraffe?

Well the zoo of course! And Africa. In addition to this blog, you can find Giraffe Communications LLC at the following locations;

www.giraffecomm.com

www.myspace.com/giraffecomm

http://www.linkedin.com/in/amybeltz

Giraffe Communications is a freelance marketing services company that is made up of a group of freelancers that have specific markerting expertise and work under a united banner to help small businesses and start-up grow and prosper.

Have Your Vote Counted!

For this entry, please open this link in a new tab/window and click to rate the photo. and come back to read the rest. http://www.cutestpetcontest.com/bigpic.php?img=http://cutestpetcontest.com/photos_beta/2008-02/100321375.jpg&enum=100321375&t=newpetentry

I'll wait a few moments for you to that before I go on.....

Okay, by the way THANKS!! If you indeed opened that page and placed a vote, you have some idea the impact that a contest can have on your products or services. I selected this as an example though, because it was not related to Giraffe Communications, although I must admit...that is my dog. I selected this example also, because I wanted you to actually perform the task without worry that I was attemping to collect your contact info, which is a prime objective when running a contest for promo purposes. I was only asking you to make 3 clicks and that's it. A related contest site wants verification of unique voters which requests you fill in your first and last name and email and click to submit. And this is what I would suggest for any small business or start-up promo contest.

1. The key to running a contest to gain hype for your event, service, product website, or otherwise are prizes with mass appeal as well as decent value. For example, people probably won't enter your contest for a free pen or a cheap t-shirt, but definately would for an iPod or trip voucher or a decent value in your products/services.

2. The contest with the best results usually requests entrants to submit a video, photo or something that other users can vote on to determine the winner. This is successful for you because you just have to attract the entrants and they spend their time and energy getting people to your site to vote for them; thus multipling your exposure and clicks by thousands and thousands.

Contests can be a great way to create a buzz before a product actually launches too. There are many things you can do with online contests that deliver an excellent ROI. That said, I always recommend contests be a supplement to your other online advertsing and not a sole driver of traffic. You want to build a following and a loyalty. While you may have some "prize pigs," if you blend a contest with your overall branding and message you are likely to walk away with more customers and less pigs. ;-)

Have a great day! And of course...comments welcome.

Amy

Car Dealerships Repelling Marketing Technology - Why?

I was recently doing some research to prepare for a prospect meeting, a car dealership. I found that locally, many dealerships were not taking significant advantage (if any) of the online platform. This seemed quite strange to me. Being heavily involved in the medium, I have seen it work 10-fold and deliver enormous revenue. Who wouldn't be interested in that?!

After meeting with the prospect I had a better idea as to why this mentality existed. It was "Old School Syndrome". I asked the client if his goal was to dominate the local online market or simply be seen in the mix with his competition; he actually opted for the ladder. While this puzzled me for hours, it finally occurred to me that the manager (feeling a bit forced into the technology) only viewed the expense as a hard cost to staying in business. Why was this thinking wrong? If implemented correctly (even mediocre), online marketing can't help but deliver a return. The expense of the effort was designed to increase qualified website traffic which would then convert to car sales. Therefore, the expense would be paid for with the first 1-5 sales (depending on the profit margin).

You see, the manager is from the era that sales are made face-to-face in the showroom or on the lot; while that thinking is true, never discount opportunities to bring those faces in the door. That is precisely the purpose of online marketing. Approximately 80% users use the Internet to pre-shop autos and seek a preferred dealership -- don't just be there...be dominant. That's my theory anyway.

I'll leave this entry with one more thought...when the Internet first hit the scene, it was meant to be an informational resource, a learning tool, if you will. The original vision wasn't even intended for eCommerce and do you have any idea how many millions are spent online in a given year? It will make the investment in online marketing look like prices from the 1800's!

Thanks for stopping by and as always, feel free to share your thoughts.

Do You Own the Company AND Do the Marketing?

I am just curious about how many business owners/entrepreneuers are handling their own marketing inititives. Of those answering yes, how many have any formal experience and/or education in marketing?

It has been my experience that small businesses that are led by the "visionary" who insists on micro-managing marketing inititives and/or performing them him/herself end up behind the game instead of on top of it or even in it. Has anyone else noticed this trend? I think businesses owners that do not have significant marketing knowledge (and sometimes even when they do) should allow room for their designated employee/company to exercise their expertise - that's why they were hired!

Although I have been personally affected by this trend, the issue has a lot to do with wasting valuable time and even more valuable...money. If it is not your forte, you are liking wasting your time doing it poorly. Time that you are spending doing these things could be and should be better spent strategizing the direction of the company as well as planning for growth and expansion. Although it seems like overhead, you actually will save more time and money hiring a skilled employee or an outsource company to effectively and efficiently perform these tasks.

Two areas that business owners are known to attempt themselves are marketing and human resources. These may seem like incidental departments, but they are actually very crucial to the viability of a company.

For instance, I know a company that wasted approximatly 6-figures by trying to run "his/her" own pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) tasks. Let me clarify wasted. They did see a return and that certainly made them happy and therefore they didn't understand just how much they were loosing. When I referred them to www.buyequityads.com, the expert strategythat was implemented produced a 300% increase in businesses within 30-60 days. Had they just outsourced to someone that knows the platform inside and out in the first place, they would have produced much better results, much faster and been a lot further ahead in profits.

I also know a company who tried to get away with having a close family member do their HR task because "anybody can be a secretary." Let me just say, Human Resources is not rocket science, but it is certainly NOT a secretary. Needless to say, they were audited and received some pretty hefty penalties for several mismanaged items. There was also at least one (usually more) every pay period that had an incorrect paycheck. Once again, if you want to minimize overhead for HR, look into a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) like Premier HR that delivers a team of skilled HR pros for the price of one manager.

There are ways to minimize cost and get the top of the line talent. Most of time it can be found via a Google search, but you can always check back here too.

Your Thoughts are Welcome!

Amy

Giraffe Communications Website Blog

My blog contains information for business owners and professionals regarding communication strategies, whether it be B2B, B2C or within your 4 walls.

This blog will cross media and address strategies for Internet, Print, Direct Mail and/or email marketing...whatever happens to be the hot topic of choice.

Amy Beltz

Owner/Giraffe Communications, LLC

Email: abeltz01@gmail.com
Skype: abeltz
Phone:          1-586-206-2716