To revisit the core principals of effective website design and development we are putting together this series, “What Makes a Good Website”. This first post is dedicated to design.

We spend a great deal of our time advising our clients on the best marketing tools to use and what tools to ignore. But, a constant in every conversation with clients is that a website is still very important and should be the hub of their marketing wheel of influence…

No matter what the latest and greatest tools are in the outer areas of the wheel, your website is always the focus. Assuming that your website is a tool that you need to succeed online, shouldn’t it look good, function well and convert a visitor to a client?

Design still matters. The look of your website sets the tone for the user for the type of message and experience they can expect. In a hurried search for information, effective design elements are the hooks that grab the user’s attention.

So, what are the elements of a good website design?

1. Content, yes content
2. Visual cues
3. A beginning and an end

This list is probably not what you expected in an article about the importance of website design. But, this is not a beauty contest. A pretty website is not always a successful website.

Content

Website design starts and ends with content. And more importantly, website design and content are not mutually exclusive. A website needs content because it’s what people are looking for.

So, when designing a website, it makes sense to start with a content strategy. Your design needs to support your content and should lead the user to the content they need.

Take some time and answer these questions before you jump into design…

Visual Cues

Now that you have your content strategy in place, it’s time to put your knowledge of your “buyer persona” to work. What do these people respond to? What are they like? What are their needs and how can you solve their problems?

The visual elements used in design are the guides that lead the user to specific areas of the site and its content. I am not talking about design for design’s sake. Pretty does nothing without strategy. But, a strategy without design to support it is just more jumbled noise.

You want to develop a design palette that will speak to your target audience – colors, fonts, textures, imagery. These are the pieces of the design that will act as visual cues that lead the user to specific bits of information.

Taken as a whole, the elements in your design palette do nothing unless you align them with your content and goals. You will want to decide what content and which goals are most important. Then you can use the design elements as well as spatial arrangement to layout your message in a way that makes this happen almost subconsciously…

1. They stay. They stay on the website and looks for more content. The design, whether they know it or not, speaks to them. They feel they have arrived on a website designed for them. Why? Because you took the time to consider who they are and what they are looking for and you assembled visual information that speaks to them with color, design and layout.
2. They click. They click because they are compelled to click. By what? Your layout directs their eye where it needs to go. Your colors draw attention to important pieces of information. And they click.
3. They convert. They convert because they believe that you understand them and you have shown them what they need to see. Your website is designed and your content is written for them. They know this, mostly subconsciously, and therefore they feel comfortable. This website has them feeling a sense of confidence.

They stay, click and convert not because your website has the best content in the world, although content is important. And not because you were number one in Google, although that’s important and we’ll discuss it later in the series.

They stay, click and convert because they feel comfortable that you will provide them with what they need. This is a result of content, ranking, AND visual cues leading them along this path.

A beginning and an end

Navigating a website is a process but it is rarely linear in nature. It is more stream of consciousness. The user is in a constant state of being overwhelmed by lots of stimulus. They need direction.

We’ve already talked about content and using visual cues to get them to that content. But ultimately what is the goal? You could certainly place a link to every page on your website right on your homepage. You want them to find everything they could possible need right? Yes and no.

As we’ve already discussed, it is important to lead the user where you want them to go. A website should be a series of short paths with a beginning and an end. In Google Analytics this is referred to as goal tracking and can look something like this…

Homepage –> Blog post –> Product/Service page –> Contact Form –> Thank you page… Success!

Sometimes this is a much shorter path and could be as simple as…

Landing page –> Form (maybe even on the landing page) –> Thank you page… Success!

On each of these pages, there should be an obvious call to action. The user needs to know what to do. The best way to do this is to design the page with minimal distractions. Take out anything that is going to come between the user and the desired action you wish them to take.

You want to design your website and each page taking into considering how the user got to that page – search engine, link from your site, advertising, referral – and where you want them to go next. Visually mapping out the beginning and end of the user experience.

As you can see a discussion about website design is not necessarily about Photoshop or design composition. This is about the user experience and what success looks like when the user comes to your site. Take a look at your website and compare it to the list above. Where can you make improvements in the design?

What do you think? How does design affect your experience on a website? Does it matter? Let us know in the comments below.

Coming soon is Part Two – What Makes a Good Website - Navigation and Usability.

While I or my spouse may like the morning paper with our coffee, our twenty something sons go online with tablets and phones to get the daily info with their java mocha latte. Also, we’re naturally wired from birth to give our attention to another human face talking to us whether it’s live or recorded. It’s instinctual.

Back in the seventies, DARPA (the military research guys) was tasked with figuring out how to best to teach soldiers so that they remember what they learned for a long time. What DARPA figured out was that to get people to understand and remember any information for a long time, it must be conveyed in an interactive audiovisual format. Why? Because it’s the way we all learned to do anything as a child; Monkey see, monkey do.

Any message, whether it’s commercial, educational or political, that’s presented in an interactive audiovisual format will generate among its viewers comprehension and retention rates well above 90%. Text by itself is in the low 40%.

The only media form that enable both audiovisual AND interactivity is the web!

Resistance is futile.

Video on the web used to be too hard and too expensive to do. Most web designers were formally print designers and most webmasters feared video would clog up their data networks. All of that is no longer the case.

The digital piping of the web is wide and getting wider; video signals are tiny yet still deliver excellent image quality and the cost of high definition video production on a per minute basis is very low, just a few hundred dollars, much more affordable than a four color print ad of any size placed anywhere.

Half the battle of making your website effective is getting it seen. Web search engines give preference to sites with video on them. Why? Because searches engines know that people prefer to watch video over reading text.

So they’ll list the sites that SHOW you how to make a cake above those that only tell you how. Why do you think YouTube is the second most popular search engine?

Pull vs Push

The web has changed the marketing paradigm. We all hate commercials and advertisements because they interrupt us from what we were doing; watching our favorite program or listening to music or a discussion.

But the web enables us to pull to us the information we want about a product or service when we want it. We pay more attention to information we’ve asked for and ignore unrequested information pushed at us.

And because we have a natural inclination to pay attention to another human face talking to us, we create familiar trust relationships in our minds with the personalities we see/hear on the screen in front of us.

We’re five to six hundred percent more likely to do what a talking face tells us to do than we are to take action from a print ad; particularly when we’ve asked for the information presented in order to satisfy a pre-existing need or desire.

People buy from people

Video on the web can:

• Capture your enthusiasm for your product or service,
• Display your deep technical expertise in the field and
• Convey your professionalism directly to that prospect’s desktop, tablet or smart phone.

Short, concise videos really help to extend your company’s corporate image directly to your client’s or prospects personal space; starting that one to one relationship before they ever step foot into your office space.

Imagine a sales person that conveys your company’s value proposition in the most effective manner possible 24/7/365 with no days off.

About the Author

Paul Farrell is the owner of Frederick Digital Media and a digital media specialist. Paul writes, shoots and edits video for the web, commercials for broadcast television and digital media for corporate applications. In addition, Paul serves on the faculty of Hood College where he teaches digital media production. A twenty year veteran of media production, Paul has been nationally recognized for his work by such groups as the New York Film festival, CIO magazine and Frederick’s Entrepreneurial Council.

But what is design without content? A useless layout. Content is what people want. Good content will…

• Solve problems
• Answer questions
• Convert a prospect to a client and a client to a rabid fan

But with all the small screens out there and the constant noise you’re competing with, its hard to get your content to grab the user’s attention. Enter Responsive Content.

I found a great description of responsive content from Seattle web developer Hans Sprecher…

Responsive content fills responsive design. Like the design, it is flexible—expanding based on screen resolution and medium to match the user’s context.

To understand responsive content, let’s take a look at newspapers. Yes, newspapers – the print kind. A great newspaper article has 4 elements that make it effective. These same elements are what make responsive content work…

1. Headline – the attention grabber
2. The lede – the hook
3. Body – the meat
4. Conclusion – the wrap up

Let’s look at each of these as they relate to responsive content and responsive design…

Headline – the most crucial part of the content

Volumes have been written about the importance of the headline. A good headline will work for you in so many ways. A good headline will:

• Grab the attention of the target audience, getting them to click
• Set the tone for what the article is all about
• Contain some keywords for SEO (search engine optimization)

Copyblogger, a leading authority on content marketing, has written many blog posts about the headline. In fact they dedicated an entire week to “killer headlines“. It’s that important. To paraphrase Copyblogger, the keys to writing great headlines are to:

• Know what the audience needs and write to those needs
• Pick the style – the how to, the list, the topical, the controversial
• Test it – try using 2 different headlines in an A/B split test, see which one works better or simply ask some people you trust

The headline is also important when talking about responsive content. The headline is what transcends all device restrictions.

The headline will appear on any screen. The headline is what the search engines will use to list your content in the search results. The headline is what people will copy and paste when sharing your content with their fans and followers. Yes, it is that important.

The lede – the hook, the first sentence or two of the post

This is the element that makes or breaks responsive content. The lede is the piece of the article that sucks you in and keeps you wanting more. On a smart phone the lede is the element that is seen the most second only to the headline.

A responsive website will use media queries and semantic markup to determine what information will appear on what device. The lede is generally the part of the content that makes the cut on all devices.

A good lede should be both an extension of the headline as well as the hook to get you into the rest of the article. The lede should tell the user something they didn’t know. Or it can ask a question and offer part of the answer.

The harsh reality of responsive content is that sometimes the lede is all that will be read. Some will simply read the lede and move on. Some will actually determine the quality of the article based solely on the lede and share accordingly.

Body – are you still reading this?

This is tricky because attention spans are very short these days. But, the body is still important. If you’ve managed to grab them with the headline and the lede hooked them then maybe they will read a little further.

The body is where you can breathe a little, but not too much. The body is where you want to make your detailed points but you need to do this with a little brevity…

• Use images, charts and video – optimize these for quick loading and SEO
• Bulleted lists – these are easy to scan and should contain usable information
• Short sentences – write it, then go back and take out anything not completely essential

Save the long drawn out content for white papers. In fact, avoid long drawn out copy altogether.

The reader, especially on mobile, is still scanning in a way. They are looking for the bits of content that answer the question that got them there in the first place. Keep your copy scannable.

Conclusion – this is where you convert

Conclusions in responsive content are bit different from a traditional newspaper article in that you want the user to do something. A good conclusion to the content on any web page should do the following:

• Reinforce the main points of the content
• Ask a question
• Have a call to action

You want to remind the reader why they clicked on the article in the first place. Take them back to the lede knowing that they’ve learned something since they first read it.

Reinforce the message. These pieces of content are not simply there to fill space, they need to educate, entertain, inspire.

Ask a question. This is so underutilized. By asking a question you turn a passive reader into a willing participant. Get them thinking about what they just learned and how they can apply it in their world.

And finally, include a call to action. This is very important when it comes to responsive content. Some websites will add a call to action to the side bar of every page. This is great and it converts, on a website.

But, what if that side bar gets stripped out by your responsive design?

Panicked yet? Responsive coding will often remove elements of a page that are deemed unnecesary in order to save space for smaller screens. The extra buttons and navigation elements usually get the axe.

Don’t worry, there is a simple fix. Just include a call to action in the content. Use the last sentence to ask the reader to do something. What do you want them to do when they finish reading? Well, there’s your call to action. These are busy people and they are distracted. Get to the point.

How responsive is your content? Does it work on any device? Need help? Let us know, we have the team to make you a content marketing superstar.

Here are three BIG mobile marketing opportunities often overlooked by businesses and non-profits:

1. Traditional Media

With all the buzz about digital and online marketing it’s easy to forget about “old fashioned” traditional media.  It may be easy to forget about traditional media even if you’re currently spending some of your marketing budget there.

Traditional media includes TV, radio, print, direct mail, and outdoor.  While these channels aren’t getting much attention right now they are still getting plenty of eyeballs.  If you’re currently using one of these why not incorporate a mobile marketing call-to-action?  Chances are your target audience will have a phone within inches of them when they see or hear your latest ad.

• Have your audience text-in for a coupon, giveaway, or future product update.
• Have them scan a QR code to watch a video about your product or service, or testimonial from a recent customer.
• Have them interact with the ad, give them more, and collect their data if possible.

If you’re already buying media the cost to add a mobile marketing element is insignificant.  Stop making them remember your website address and send them to your mobile website, now!

2.  Events

Does your business or non-profit hold, sponsor, or attend events?  Does anyone at those events have a phone? Ok, that was a stupid question; of course they have a phone!  Give them a reason to use that phone to engage with your organization.

• Hand out fliers encouraging them to text-in for information on future events, to enter a contest, or to voice their opinion on the spot.
• Put up signs at your next tradeshow that let them scan a QR code to learn more about your people, product, or history.
• Stop using clipboards to capture data!  It’s time consuming, inaccurate, and a pain for your attendees.  Use text messaging to capture email address, zip code, and more.  Use QR codes to send them to your mobile website to donate or purchase on the spot.

Everyone at your events and tradeshows is standing around with a phone in their pocket or purse.  Give them a reason to get it out and do something!

3.  On-site

Just as your audience has phones with them at your events, they also have phones with them when they’re at your place of business.  If you have a store, entertainment property, or anything with foot traffic you have a great opportunity to take advantage of mobile marketing. And it will only cost you a few printed signs.

• Put up signs where your customers congregate; eating areas, waiting areas, etc.
• Have them text-in or scan a QR code to join a loyalty club, enter to win, or save on their next visit. Build a database of repeat customers.
• Provide an exclusive behind-the-scenes mobile video about your business.  Give them something entertaining, be creative.
• Answer their questions, or get their feedback, via text message or mobile website.

There’s no better time to interact with your audience than when they’re immersed in your brand experience.  Take advantage!

In Conclusion

Text message marketing and QR codes are the easiest drivers of interaction, but with all three opportunities above, your mobile website and any videos you have can play a big part.

Content is crucial to strengthening the relationship your audience has with your brand, and mobile is the key to getting them to that content.

Need some help integrating SMS, QR or other mobile marketing with your traditional marketing? Let us know.

Of course, this is not a new idea. Entire industries exist to make sense of loads of information through better site design, functionality and analytics. This can get so complex and multi-layered that even the most technically savvy marketers will glaze over.

But don’t worry, there are lots of geeks out there to handle this stuff for you. We have a few ourselves. Make no mistake, you still play a vital role in all of this.

Our clients come to us looking for answers on the best ways to improve the quality of online leads. As we work with them (with Jason’s mantra ringing in our ears) we often ask the same question – who is your audience and what do they care about?

When it comes to content marketing – using tools like blogs, email newsletters, eBooks to drum up business – you need to ask yourself, “am I solving my client’s problems or simply creating more noise?”

There is so much content out there today. Access to this content through the web and mobile devices is at an all time high. Conversely, a typical user’s patience is at an all time low. If something isn’t obvious it is often ignored.

In order to be successful you need to be a hero to your clients. Heroes solve problems. With your blog, your web content, your mobile app, whatever content you produce, are you solving some problem for the intended audience?

Think about it this way. What do you offer that someone couldn’t find with a simple Google search? Remember, you are an expert at what you do. Are you sharing expert tips and advice with your target audience through your content marketing efforts? Or, are you simply pushing out more of the same information?

Organizations are continually increasing their content marketing efforts. According to a recent report from Joe Pulizzi over at the Content Marketing Institute, 9 out of 10 organizations market with content. And their adoption of some content marketing tactics are increasing…

• Blogs (27% increase)
• White papers (19% increase)
• Videos (27% increase)

With all of this content out there, how does yours stand out and get results? You are unique, there is no other organization quite like yours. The content you create should be an extension of this and not more sales speak and jargon filled drivel. Take your knowledge and expertise and apply it to the information. Offer insight and a unique perspective.

Write content with a purpose. The reader should walk away with something useful. Take another look at the list from above…

• Blogs – should be on one topic and offer a solution to a problem your client has.
• White papers – go deeper with studies, activities or implementable solutions.
• Videos – inform, entertain and educate with visuals. Keep them short and to the point. The viewer should want to watch it twice.

So, the next time you create some content, ask yourself, “does this solve a problem for my clients or simply contribute to the noise?”

Do you need some help with your content marketing? Contact us today and we can help. Are you having success with content marketing? Share your experiences in the comments area below.

1. An international association – marketing for support, membership and awareness to members and potential members as well as political figures
2. A private high school – marketing their education solutions to students, parents and the community
3. A local fence company – marketing their fence products and services to builders, homeowners and contractors
4. A national IT firm – marketing cloud computing and IT consulting services to CIOs, IT Managers and business owners

These are not made up. They are all Wood Street clients. Our job is to help them understand who their target audience is and how to sell to this audience.

You are selling something. It could be a product or simply an idea. But make no mistake, you are selling something to someone. So, the question is, how do you get them to buy it?

Before you tell me you need a website and a blog or that you need to “do social”, I want to know about the who. Tell me about your customers. We want to identify your buyer personas.

Working together, we need to identify your customers. What do they care about? What are they really buying? Hint: people who purchase a car aren’t usually buying the “car”.

To paraphrase Adele Revella, founder of Buyer Persona Institute, a buyer persona is defined as…

A detailed profile of an example buyer that represents the real audience – the buyer that you hope to persuade to buy your products, services or solution.

This profile is the cornerstone of all your marketing and communications efforts. Let’s discuss some of the ways you can develop these personas…

Come up with some “characters” – Defining Buyer Personas

An exercise that will prove useful is also visual in nature. Basically, you chart out the “personas”. You can either use real examples of different client types or create characters around different client profiles. Have some fun with it…

As you can see these can be made up characters based on real data. The idea is to get to know them. Give them a name and a face so they are easy to remember and will readily factor into any marketing initiatives.

Who is Brad and what is he looking for from you? The more fun you make it the more memorable and useful this exercise will be.

You will want to consider certain pieces of actual data associated with these personas…

1. Demographics
2. Their value, in terms of money, reach and return business
3. Where they choose to interact with you – phone, email, website, mobile, social, etc

Take the hard data from your web analytics, CRM, sales reports, etc and boil it down to the core essence of each group. These are your buyer personas – the clients, consumers, advocates, members, etc. that you will target with every type of marketing effort you employ. You need to answer these questions:

1. Who are they?
2. What do they do?
3. Why should they care about your organization?
4. Where are they and where do they find you?
5. How do you convert them into a client or a fan?

Looking back to our example above (which is simplified for this example) we conducted an exercise to identify certain mobile users for a client. This client needed to figure out how to build a targeted mobile landing page for each user type.

We went as far as to give each user a name and look. This makes it easier to apply the data related to each persona to each marketing decision we made, i.e. “how would Brad react to this call to action?”

Integrating Social and Search – Casting a Wider Net of Influence

When you begin adding social and search to your marketing equation, you will want to build a supplemental list of peripheral groups to the personas you’ve already identified. You are looking for who Brad influences as well as who influences Brad, so to speak.

These are the connections that help to grow your audience. You do not simply want to have a laser focus on the personas and no one else. You want to cast a wider net of influence. To integrate search and social means to insert yourself into the conversation.

You do no walk up to a group of people at a dinner party, interrupt them and then start talking at one specific person. Same rules apply here. If you do nothing but pitch your solution to the target, you will alienate them in the sense that they will not feel empowered, they will feel pitched.

Marketing today is about empowering your audience. Empowerment is what converts a stranger into an acquaintance and an acquaintance into a fan. These fans will either become clients or influence those that become clients.

How often do you blindly purchase a product or accept an idea? With instant access to research data and social signals of approval or disapproval, this happens less and less. Consumers are constantly seeking the reasurrance that is just a click away.

Just think about Brad. Brad is a power user. More data about Brad could tell us that he is a heavy user of technology and social. He uses these tools to help him make decisions. If you want more Brads you need to be there when Brad is searching for what you offer.

Targeting the people around Brad as well as Brad himself will have a greater effect on the spread of your influence and the influx of Brads.

What do you think about buyer personas? Do you know who your customers are? Tell me about your Brads and how you connect with them in the comments area below….

Feel free to give me a call at 301.668.5006 x8452 or contact us if you would like to get a little deeper into this topic.

• You can’t read the text.
• The links are so tightly grouped that you don’t know what you will get when you tap one.
• The images are tiny. It’s a mess!
• You are frustrated, and you are gone! (or even worse, you smashed your phone but I recommend against this)

This is what happens when a site is not optimized for the user experience. This is what happens when your site designer does not use Responsive Web Design. So, what is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive Web Design

Smashing Magazine gives this definition of Responsive Web Design:

Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation.

The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and an intelligent use of CSS media queries.

Designing your website using this approach allows the layout to transform and adjust specifically for the user’s screen. So, instead of having a website, a mobile site, a tablet site, you have one website that adjusts for all users.

The coding of the website will allow it to expand and reshape to the device being used to view it. Try this:

• Open this responsive web design example
• Adjust the size of your browser window
• Note how the layout, navigation and page elements will move to fit the display window

As you can see, the design adjusts smoothly no matter the screen size. This means that this design will work seemlessly on a desktop, tablet, or any type of smartphone. Neat, huh? But, so what?

The Zero Moment of Truth

What is the Zero Moment of Truth or ZMOT? Google invented ZMOT and it is a moment you need to target. This is the moment when an idea is born and information is desired. A buying decision is about to be made.

This could be…

• A guy in a bar thinking about his future, looking up engagement rings.
• A woman taking the train to work, looking for career change.
• A hungry tourist, looking for the best places to eat.
• A dad at a playground, looking up charter schools in his community.

This is the moment before the so-called first moment of truth or FMOT when the consumer is staring at a shelf full of products about to grab one. This is the moment when the idea to look for that product strikes and they want to find out more about it.

ZMOT occurs now more than ever because of the easy access to information via tablets and smartphones. No longer do consumers need to make a phone call or jump in their car to find more information on a product, service, event, etc. Now, they simply reach for the device and start searching. Where are you in this moment?

Responsive Web Design and ZMOT

Simply applying responsive web design coding to your website does not mean you have a mobile marketing strategy in place. It means you have a site that will render appropriately for the mobile user. This is good and necessary, but it is simply the first step.

With ZMOT we now know that we are targeting these consumers when they are inspired and need information. They are on the go, impatient and expect answers quickly.

Instead of offering the mobile user the same pages, links and information that they would get on your standard website, offer them a page tailored to their needs as a mobile user. Consider their needs in this role. What information will they be looking for and what information will help you turn them into a client?

Your web developer can create a mobile landing page (or series of them if you are taking this to the next level) that’s geared specifically towards the mobile user. When this user accesses your page your site knows they are on a mobile browser and the page that loads will be the mobile landing page. On this page will only be information that they need (or that you want them to access first).

Here is an example of a mobile landing page next to the same page on a tablet. Same site, different access strategies…

See the difference? The number of choices and the information available is dramatically different. You can still access all of the same information. The difference is that the mobile user is guided to areas of the site tailored to the needs while in that ZMOT.

Of course all of this hinges on you knowing your target client. You want to identify the buyer personas and list out their needs and your expectations. But that is another post altogether.

What do you think about responsive web design and ZMOT? How are you using this as a client and as a marketer? Let me know in the comments below.

Are you looking for some help with Responsive Web Design or have some questions? Contact us and we will help.

More social media outreach contributors means more deadlines and consequently more opportunities for dropping the ball. An editorial calendar will assist you in keeping your content marketing on track and on time by:

• Keeping you on schedule when things are busy. When the daily grind of business starts to swallow up your time, your editorial calendar is there to remind you of what needs to get done so it doesn’t get put off.
• Holding other contributors accountable. What is expected of them with regards to content and deadlines is there in black and white. So, if they miss a date, the calendar is there to remind them of the date that was agreed to.
• Discovering other opportunities for creating content. For example, you may have a trade show coming up. This gives you time to outline the type of content you want created to promote the event before, during and after. It also allows you to contact the appropriate contributors for creating this content.

So what should you include on your editorial calendar? There are many more, depending on your specific company, but here are some ideas to consider:

• Events that will take place throughout the month
• Other marketing activities including: email newsletters, product launches, trade shows, blogs, etc.
• Social media publishing schedule
• Content contributors and due dates
• Time to create next month’s calendar

The format you choose for your editorial calendar is really up to you and how your company communicates internally. Just be sure that all contributors receive the calendar each month and have time to respond with any conflicts. Easy right?

Now it’s your turn, what tips do you have about using editorial calendars?

“It’s easy for a brand to assume that customers are alike. After all, they share the same needs, wants, and desires. They face the same challenges and hurdles in life, personally and professionally. They each follow the same routine in making purchase decisions. Customers equally subscribe to the same sources for information and idly wait by their smartphones, tablets, laptops, and TVs awaiting the next set of instructions from brands that reveal their next move.

Does this sound like you?

Of course not!”

Yet, so many businesses still market under these assumptions. Why? Because they are either uninformed or unispired and in either case unwilling to break free from the mold of business as usual to try something new.

In his book, Brian talks about the connected consumer. This is someone empowered by their unfettered and unfiltered access to information. They have at their fingertips all of the advice, tips, articles, research, etc that their bandwidth will allow them to uncover.

This is dramatically changing the landscape of business in the sense that consumers no longer adhere to the traditional sales funnel model – everyone -> prospect -> lead -> hot lead -> customer.

Now with smartphones, tablets and PCs, consumers are no longer allowing themselves to be lead down this narrow path. They are more elusive than ever. They are expecting that brands and companies in general “be there” when needed. Are you there?

Of course it’s difficult to be all things to all people. That’s kind of the point and being all things to all people is not what I am advocating here. What I am referring to is a new type of marketing – connecting. Instead of shouting from the rooftops, get down on their level and talk to them as you would a friend.

And engage in the conversation because that’s what business is today, one giant ongoing conversation. You are either the obnoxious loudmouth who interrupts and is in love with the sound of his own voice, the wallflower who is non-existent, or the engaged participant who listens and offers valuable insight to the discussion. Which one do you prefer to be around.

So, how do you participate in the conversation? By being there contributing to the discussion as it relates to the solutions you offer that solve the problems your clients have. It could look something like this…

1. Blogs – I love the example in Rebecca Lieb’s book, Content Marketing – Think like a Publisher. She talks about the soldering supplier who has 73 different blogs on soldering! The crazy thing is… they are wildly successful. Why? Because welders are passionate about soldering and these blogs all speak to that. This goes so much deeper than an ad in Welder’s Monthly (not a real publication but you get the idea)
2. Responsive design – Part of “being there” is being there appropriately and effectively. Responsive design is a term that refers to design that responds to the device on which it is being displayed. In other words, a website on a mobile device appears specifically for the mobile user, is easy to navigate, read, etc. That same website appears accordingly on a tablet and a PC. In other words, engaging in the conversation effectively and appropriately.
3. Content marketing – Another buzzword but an effective discipline nonetheless. Content marketing is the practice of using relevant, useful content published as blog posts, webinars, online video, podcasts, white papers, etc targeted to the connected consumer empowering them to make educated choices and pass their experiences along to others.

This list could go on. The point is to be the company you would buy from. And be in the conversation by staying active in educating and empowering targeted connected consumers through the use of the new tools available – social media, blogs, websites, mobile, location based marketing, etc.

Get involved and get active. What do you respond to as a consumer? What are you doing as a marketer to be the company that YOU would buy from? Let me know in the comment area below.

And of course Wood Street would be more than happy to talk to you about your blog, responsive design or content marketing efforts.

Silver Addy Award for Website, Consumer HTML, Products

Colonial Jewelers – http://www.colonialjewelers.com/ – “This website not only captured our brand essence but it also a great resource for our clients showing them our products, tips of gems, events and more” commented Sarah Hurwitz, Manager at Colonial Jewelers.

Silver Addy Award for Website, Consumer HTML, Services

Crossroads of War – http://crossroadsofwar.org/ – “We had a lot of fun with this design using themes, images and textures to create a Civil War era look and feel” remarked Jamie Stup, Creative Director at Wood Street.

In attendance at the AAF Addy Awards this year were Partners Jason Giuliano, Jamie Stup, Derek Jubach and Jon-Mikel Bailey, Developers , Adam Willard and Robert Kosek, and Designer Dave Porter.  “It is always great to be recognized and these clients were especially rewarding to work with,” stated Jason Giuliano.  For more information on AAF, visit their website.