Perils and Promises of Technology in Online Communications

• 1. NIRSA National Marketing Institute Hilton Head, South Carolina November 20, 2008 Communicating Effectively Online: Promises & Perils of Technology Robert E. Johnson, Ph.D. 2008

2. 8 top tips about the Internet

• People are impatient

• People are impatient

• People are impatient

• People are impatient

• People are impatient

• People are impatient

• People are impatient

• People are impatient

3. 7 topics to review today

• Website Design

• Search Optimization

• Writing Right for the Web

• Web Analytics

• Video

• Blogs, Message Boards, Social Networking

• Staying Up-To-Date

4. 1. Website Design The Most Important Elements 5. Toward a simpler web design

• Wikipedia is a Top 10 website in popularity

• Basic web design

• Designed to quickly find content

6. 10 very visible program choices http://admission.emerson.edu/graduate/ 7. An almost perfect page design http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/iMBA.shtml

• Easy to scan content

• Links from center of the content section

• Restrained use of image that doesnt fight primary content

• Video element

• Action steps in right hand column

8. Simple online forms http://www.mbaregis.com/

• The shorter the form, the more people will complete it

• Resist demographic surveys

• Phone number if part of marketing plan

• • Phone number will qualify interest intensity

9. Special landing pages for campaigns

• Never drop someone on your front page

• Repeat and reinforce the message that brought people to the landing page

• Keep the inquiry form simple

10. 2.Search Optimization Make Your Web Pages Easier to Find Organic Search more important than paid search Simple steps have high impact 11. 1 giant among 4 players Google has 60% or more of the search market 12. Imagine how organic search works

• Millions of ants leave the nest each day in search of HTML content

• They travel over HTML links, one link after another

• At your website, an ant crawls over your links, tasting your content each page is visited

• At end of day, the ants return to the nest with the tastiest content found creating a database

• Key question : is your website tastier than your competitors?

13. 4 elements most important to the ant

• Danny Sullivan on eternal SEO success points:

• • Good title tags on your pages

• • Good body copy

• • Great content

• • No barriers on your website to block the search

• • • No broken links

• • • No links that dont go to an expected content

• Content important to your audience is important to the ant

14. Important organic search elements

• HTML page title

• HTML text visible on the page

• Inbound links quality and quantity

• Anchor text links within your website

• Age of domain name, but .edu less impacted

• Various other factors hundreds or thousands

• • Update frequency, popularity, keywords in meta tags, image ALT tags, URLs

15. Identify web pages important to SEO

• For the conversion activity you want, where should people start at your website?

• Never assume its the home page

• • Most often it is not

• Think of entry pages or landing pages

• • Content will vary with the conversion goal

• • Always an obvious connection to the starting point

• Your most important pages define where to start creating strong search marketing pages

16. Check the results of a Google search

• The search for NIRSA results in 9 entry points to the website

• Track use of these pages and optimize the most popular first

17. Free tool to check on keywords http://www.freewordtrackertool.com/ 18. Recreational sports vs. Intramural sports 119daily searches vs.9 19. Two results for recreational sports Michigan State University University of Michigan 20. The top writing points Recreative Services = no search results

• Use at least one key word in every page title

• Repeat that key word in the primary heading on your web page

• Put subheads in bold

• Use keywords early in the first sentence on the page

• Use keywords again about 3 times for every 100 words

21. Dont stuff keywords The page title and description, primary headline, one subhead, twice in the text More and the page might not seem well written 22. 3.Writing Right for the Web Content people can scan in 2 or 3 seconds Carewords to engage people when they scan 23. Easy to scan for MBA content 24. Web readers scan for care words Use headlines that capture attention and engage the visitor Write from the viewpoint of your audience What are the Carewords that get attention? 25. Carewords for Executive MBA prospects UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School

• Words people cared about

• • Advance your career

• • Balancing work, home, and school

• • Career advancement

• • Cost

• • Best school possible

• • Prestigious, well-recognized degree

• Words that didnt rank high

• • Accessible faculty

• • Experience of faculty

• • Corporate sponsorship

• • Shaping leaders

• • Class diversity (industry or experience)

• • Format of program

26. Make them obvious for visitors http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/programs/emba/index.cfm 27. Direct marketing style helps people scan

• Short sentences 5 to 10 words

• Short paragraphs 50 words or less

• • One sentence paragraph is OK

• Sub-heads

• • Active words, not labels

• • Flow from the primary page heading

• Bullet points

28. Direct marketing style helps people connect

• Newspaper copy words

• • walk not ambulate

• • confuse not discombobulate

• • beat around the bush not prevaricate

• Emotional language

• Real stories about real people

• • Best told by the people themselves

• Visible prompts to take an action

29. Repeat the call to action http://www.mbaregis.com/ 30. Write about the real experience

• Rolls-Royce has an obsession with quality appreciated by discerning customers

• • Rolls-Royce campaign before David Ogilvy

• At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock

• • Rolls-Royce campaign after David Ogilvy

31. 4. Web Analytics Important Marketing Information from How External People Use Your Website 32. What does a marketer need to know? Google Analytics has 80+ programmed reports about website data More data than you need to know 33. Do you need to know 47 screen resolutions? 34. Lets make a list from this page

• Where did visitors come from?

• How many were new?

• Average time on page?

• Bounce rate?

• Where did they go?

• • Track navigation possibilities

• • Learn whats popular and whats not

35. Check point to startset goals

• Your web goals might include

• • Watching a video

• • Reading a blog

• • Registering for a sport

• • Paying for a membership

• • Subscribing to a newsletter

36. KPI: Percent of new vs. returning visitors

• Are your marketing efforts bringing new visitors to your website?

• Where did the new visitors live?

• • Cities?

• • Regions (states)?

• • Countries?

37. KPI: Average time on your site

• Average time on site is 1.38 minutes

• Is this good or bad?

• • Depends on why they visited

• • These visit were to see Link of the Week page

• • Bounce rate: 72.9%

• • • Looked at one page and left

38. KPI: Popularity of individual web pages

• What pages are visited most often?

• • How long to people stay on them?

• • Do they exit from these pages or move to other pages?

• Identify pages youd like people to visit that are being ignored

39. Getting started with Google Analytics http://analytics.blogspot.com/ 40. 5.Video Capturing the Power of YouTube 41. Videos to tell your story http://www.recsports.berkeley.edu/videos.aspx?uid=1380400369 42. Especially on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvQoXEC4i2M&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOu92xQ67NI 43. And further into the social network arena http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1030494727651 44. 6.Blogs, Message Boards, Social Networking Dont Forget Old Online Friends 45. Blogs to introduce people & sports http://vcurecsports.blogspot.com/ 46. Sports message boards http://www.csusbrecsports.com/mb/index.php 47. If your goal is this http://recsports.software.umn.edu/alumni/ 48. When will you have this? http://boston.sportsvite.com/ 49. 7.Staying Up-To-Date 50. ClickZ http://www.clickz.com/ 51. MarketingProfs http://www.marketingprofs.com/ 52. Thank You! Bob Johnson, Ph.D. President and Senior Consultant Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC 226 Chauncey Court Marshall, MI 49068248.766.6425[email_address] Customer Carewords Research for Online Marketing Success:http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/customercarewords.html