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<title>Jan Kelley Marketing Blog - Richard Clifford</title>
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<pubDate>Sat, 19 May 2012 18:30:32 -0400</pubDate>
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<title>Decoupling and Single Source Content  Focus and Consistency</title>
<link>http://www.jankelley.comblog.php?blogId=189</link>
<pubDate>Fri, 04 May 2012 15:44:57 -0400</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[Decoupling and Single Source Content Management are two important principles in software design and content management &nbsp;&ndash; and following these principles can also help you organize and manage your digital marketing assets.
Decoupling is a term used in object oriented analysis and design, which speaks of removing unnecessary reliance between entities. The basic idea is to ensure that an entity is self-sufficient for its purpose and that the entity does nothing except for its main purpose.
Single Source Content Management states that content should flow from one source to avoid content anomalies. This principle helps to ensure that content is manageable and helps to keep messaging consistent.
So what&rsquo;s the connection with digital marketing? Let&rsquo;s look at decoupling first.
With the explosion of tools available to digital marketers, most companies now have a slew of digital marketing assets that they manage, for example websites, microsites, mobile sites, mobile applications, blog posts, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, etc. In following the decoupling principles, each of these entities should have a specific purpose, and each should focus solely on this purpose. Step back, look at your assets as a whole, and determine the basic purpose of each tool and ensure that each tool is focused on that purpose.&nbsp; For example, if your website&rsquo;s main purpose is to convert prospects into clients, then the entire focus of the site should flow from this purpose. Every page must address the opportunity to convert the prospect. Any page that does not help with this effort should be eliminated.
Now what happens if multiple tools have the same basic purpose? That&rsquo;s OK, but you need to understand why you have multiple tools doing the same thing. What are their differences beyond their basic purpose? Let&rsquo;s look at the fact that you may have a mobile site with this same purpose, converting prospects to clients. How should these tools differ (aside from the obvious design differences)? This is where you need to think about behavioral differences between these tools. &nbsp;Are there different intents of a visitor coming to you via your website versus your mobile site? Is there more of a sense of urgency from a visitor using the mobile site versus the website? Do your research and understand these differences and then design the functionality of each tool accordingly.
The single source content principle is probably a little easier to understand in terms of its benefits, but tricky to attain.
In a perfect world your brand message should remain consistent regardless of where it is or who is reciting it. OK, the theory sounds solid, but how the heck do you obtain that through the numerous sources that recite your brand message: website, mobile site, sales reps, social media - yikes?
For the tools that you control, a solid content management system (CMS) can help. Most CMS will handle pushing content out to your digital tools (website, email, mobile site, social medial posts) they can even interface with your customer relationship management (CRM) tool to help with your sales messaging.&nbsp; But, what about what others are saying about your brand through social media? While it&rsquo;s true that you cannot control what others say, it is still important to listen and understand. Social media auditing tools are a real asset with keeping track of your brand in the social media environment. You can search for comments about your brand, filter by tone (good or bad) and even target individual accounts, should you wish to respond.
In the end, it&rsquo;s all about focus and consistency. Ensure that your digital marketing assets are focused on their purpose and strengths, and ensure that these tools allow you to keep your messaging consistent.]]></description>
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<author>rclifford@jankelley.com (RichardClifford)</author>
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<title>Build versus Buy</title>
<link>http://www.jankelley.comblog.php?blogId=160</link>
<pubDate>Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:58:38 -0400</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[This is a classic implementation decision - should we build a custom solution or buy a packaged solution.
After the requirements are developed for a project, this is one of the first alternatives to look at. It involves researching application alternatives that can best meet your project objectives, followed by a gap analysis to determine what you can buy versus what you'll need to build, including any middleware that you'll need to develop to pull your applications together.
There are several advantages to buying a packaged solution:

The solution is often rigorously tested (fingers crossed) prior to being put on the market, which helps ensure a stable solution;
Package solutions often go through several versions at which point new features are added, enhancing the flexibility of the solution - &nbsp;these features are often requested from previous buyers, which makes the solution rich with sought-after functionality;
They come with a robust API (application programming interface) which allows encapsulated access to the application, simplifying the process of modifying the look and functionality of the tool.

It&rsquo;s not all roses however there are some disadvantages that can add hidden costs to your project, such as:

Some have rigid templates that require you to bend your business processes to accommodate how the application is designed, this is often the case when the developers attempt to satisfy the sweet-spot middle group, hoping to attract a larger audience for their application;
If the application is an open source solution, there may not be a lot of support for helping you solve obstacles as you merge the application into your system; the best solution for this is to ensure that it has a large enough community of users that you can draw on for support through knowledge forums;
Lack of documentation &ndash; yes trying to build an application with poor instructions can be a bit of a pain, especially when you need to customize the application to suit your needs.

Here are a few great buy choices (I use the term buy loosely here, as some of these have free alternatives).
Google site search
I know that it&rsquo;s relatively easy to build your own search application, especially if it&rsquo;s a database driven application, just query the database and let the database management system (DBMS) do all the work, but it&rsquo;s the algorithms that Google adds on top of the query where the real benefit comes into play; adapting for spelling errors, plurals and returning relevant results based on their wealth of search statistics. Because of Google&rsquo;s massive grip on the search market, most visitors are familiar with how effective Google&rsquo;s search is, this builds up the expectations of visitors. So the bottom-line is - if your search tool isn&rsquo;t as good as Google&rsquo;s, then most visitors will be disappointed.
Google Maps API
Most sites are already taking advantage of this application, and why not, it has a great API that will let you bend it to your heart&rsquo;s content, it&rsquo;s fast and extremely reliable. If you can&rsquo;t build a better alternative, then why not use it.
MailChimp
I love this email marketing tool, it is rich with features and the developers have a great sense of humor, every screen has friendly links to YouTube videos to make sure that you can have a good chuckle while you work. It also has an extremely flexible API to allow you to hook into it via your application or website, and a strong following of community support with great developer forums.
Amazon Webstore
Built on Amazon&rsquo;s powerhouse retail ecommerce engine, this can be a great ecommerce solution. It has a rich set of templates to choose from and a lot of pre-existing widgets to allow you to add common features like a best sellers list and cross-selling tools. You will need to adapt to it however, which can be tricky if you have a unique business process.
There are plenty more out there, so feel free to add your own favorites in the comment section.
And oh, by the way, I did end up buying the INSANITY workouts, and all I can say is holy crap they are hard!]]></description>
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<author>rclifford@jankelley.com (RichardClifford)</author>
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<title>Wow has it been that long</title>
<link>http://www.jankelley.comblog.php?blogId=106</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 14 Nov 2010 14:59:30 -0500</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[Yeah, thanks I have been working out &ndash; a lot.
Have you ever noticed how awkward it can be trying to start up a conversation with someone that you haven't spoken to in years? In fact the less frequent that you speak to them the more difficult it becomes and then you simply avoid them all together.
Well if you look at the date of my last post, you can understand why I have been avoiding this conversation.
Building a relationship with clients is the same in this regard, but with gas prices rising (thanks HST), you can't always afford to jump in your car and go visit. So, what can you do?
Blast off a nice, personal email.
Don't do one of those plain vanilla emails that you CC every one of your friends with &ndash; hey everyone I'm doing swell, I hope you are. Take the time to personalize the message and add in some nuggets that only you and they share in common, something that let's them know that you remember them.
Email marketing has come a long way in the last ten years. Most email campaign tools will allow you to do a ton of sophisticated personalization right out of the box. And email is still a very effective means of communication.
Here are some of the advantages of email marketing according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_marketing):

An      exact return on investment can be tracked ("track to basket")      and has proven to be high when done properly.
E-mail marketing is often      reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online      marketing tactic.
Advertisers      can reach substantial numbers of e-mail subscribers who have opted in      (i.e., consented) to receive e-mail communications on subjects of interest      to them.
Over      half of Internet users check or send e-mail on a typical day.
E-mail      is popular with digital marketers, rising an estimated 15% in 2009 to      &pound;292m in the UK.
E-mail      allows marketers to reach out to consumers with personalized, relevant,      dynamic messages.
Transactional      e-mails allow businesses to respond automatically to important consumer      events like purchases or shop-cart abandonment.

Make sure that your friends can find you, and heck maybe they'll just drop by. I am not talking about posting up one of those garage-sale-type signs; I'm talking about search engine marketing.
There are three components for search engine marketing that you should keep in mind:

Google      Places &ndash; an extremely effective local search tool.
Natural      Search &ndash; both on-page optimization and off-page optimization (link      building).
AdWords      &ndash; beefing up your campaign with some well placed and well targeted keyword      purchases.

Done right, search engine marketing can be extremely effective and affordable. When your marketing budget gets slashed you better make sure that you remember to keep this humming. It is an effective and track-able ROI vehicle.
If you really need to make amends, try jewelry, like a fancy PURL. PURL stands for persistent uniform resource locator &ndash; that's a mouthful for what I like to call a personal URL, or website.
I often use these in conjunction with a personalized email campaign. You set up a micro-site that is personalized for the recipient and you promote the site with their name in the address, such as www.yoursite.com/RichardClifford. Then you customize the content of the page for that recipient. Its one-on-one marketing - highly targeted.
You don't have to rely solely on email to promote a PURL site. QR codes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code) can be an effective way of getting visitors to their PURL. QR codes work like a barcode for your smart phone, download a QR code reader and then use your smart phone camera to activate the QR code (take a photo of it). The QR code provides your smart phone with the location of the PURL and takes the smart phone right to it, without any typing.
Well, I have done my bit to save our relationship, now it's your turn, send me a note and let me know how you are doing already!  ;-)&nbsp;]]></description>
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<author>rclifford@jankelley.com (RichardClifford)</author>
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<title>Have your shopping habits been affected by Integrated Marketing Communications IMC</title>
<link>http://www.jankelley.comblog.php?blogId=22</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:21:46 -0400</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[As Chris Sanislo points out in my bio, I am a bit of a home fitness junky. It started when my first son was born. I chose to stop working out at the gym. I felt an obligation to tend the nest and stay closer to home.
I am a different type of shopper. I take a long time to make a purchase. I analyze all the details of what I need before making a buying decision. But, once I have made my mind up the purchase decision happens pretty quickly.
I am a perfect candidate for an Integrated Marketing Communications campaign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_marketing_communications). I am constantly thinking about my buying decision, agonizing about it - you never know what will influence me. Anything related to my buying decision will catch my eye. A point of sale piece; an advertisement in a magazine; a TV commercial; heck I'll even sit through one of those Shopping Channel shows if it's related to my buying decision
For example, I needed a home gym. It had to provide as good a workout as I was getting at my gym, yet be affordable and compact enough to fit my budget and into my basement. I researched my options online, in catalogues, watched some clips on the Shopping Channel (http://www.theshoppingchannel.com) - I was so close to buying the BowFlex system (http://www.bowflex.ca), but when it came down to putting my money on the table, it was an everyday shopping adventure at Costco where I finally made my purchase. A Nautilus home gym (http://www.nautilus.com) with Olympic size bars and weights was on sale. It was exactly the same type of equipment that I used at the gym and was available at a bargain rate.
When I first started working in Internet Marketing we used to call this the triple play. You were encouraged to integrate your campaign through TV, print and online. Now there are a slew of options available to push your message through, and all have a chance of moving the buying decision along. That's why you need to carefully plan your campaigns across all mediums and be aware of how these campaigns push and play off each other. Continuity and simplicity are key; to keep your message clear. There is a lot of clutter out there that can confuse a buyer. It's the well thought out, well integrated campaign that provides an anguished buyer with some peace of mind and good advice to help them relax and be comfortable with what you have to offer.
Since then I have bought a rack of dumbbells from the Fitness Depot (http://www.fitnessdepot.ca), a boxing heavy bag and speed bag from eBay.ca and a slew of fitness DVDs. My favorite site to visit is http://www.beachbody.com &ndash; I am a huge fan of Tony Horton's P90X. I have both the standard version and the Plus version. I am getting a little bored of Tony however - waking up every morning at 5:00 am to workout 7 days a week and you would be bored too.
So I started a new venture to find the next greatest fitness DVD. I have been thinking about getting the Insanity program (http://www.beachbody.com/product/fitness_programs/best_sellers/insanity.do?code=BBHOME_CONTROL_INS) by Shaun T.
I almost bought it this weekend &ndash; I mean seeing those people killing themselves on the Shopping Channel; listening to Shaun T. yell out "keep digging, keep pushing". Then I take a poke at the Beach Body website to watch a few videos, man those people are sweating hard! I call the number on the website and within 2 rings I am on the line with a top-notch sales rep. I am ready to buy, but I need a little comfort from someone like me, someone that takes working out seriously. So I pepper her with questions about the program and she is doing great at answering them. I am just about ready to give her my credit card number, but I guess I asked one question too many and she referred me onto their Customer Service number. She rifles off a number and then hangs up. Snap, the buying decision is stopped.
The incentives for the sales rep conflicted with the integrated marketing message. She was encouraged to close as many sales as possible, as fast as possible. And, although she had a customer ready to buy on the phone, her performance metrics encouraged her to move on.
So, I will think a littler more. Consider some other options, I may return to purchase the DVDs, but there's an opportunity for a competitor to capture my interests in the meantime.
As the old saying goes advertising works &ndash; it works for you and it works for your competitors, so make sure your campaign is tightly integrated and focused on the ultimate objective - closing the sale.
See you tomorrow morning Tony!&nbsp;]]></description>
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