• services
• blog
• buzz
• home
• portfolio
• speaking
• resource center

The Buyer’s Process

May 14th, 2012 by Mardy Sitzer

Translating what you do in person to an on line experience is the challenge of creating an effective website. Web designers have to understand the Buyer’s Process and marry that to a client’s Selling Process.

Knowing your ideal customer – building a Persona Profile is the first step to understanding what motivates a prospect, what is appealing or interesting, and understanding their life style and cultural proclivities.

People buy – either out of need or desire. Your website should first and foremost identify the need or desire that your product or service fulfills and visually and contextually deliver this message immediately. This applies to both consumer and business buyers.

Those needs are born out of emotions. The emotions that trigger a buy are basic: Fear, Love, Pride, Guilt, and Greed. Now you get to the juicy part of the buyer’s process. Which emotion is most likely to trigger a sale for your goods or services?

The next challenge with your website is how well and how quickly you help a visitor answer the question ‘are you right for me?’.  And finally, incorporating usability features that facilitate the buying process at every step. Some people decide more quickly than others so you don’t want to suspend the buying fun. Read more…

A Case for Customer Service to Report to Marketing

May 7th, 2012 by Mardy Sitzer

I was fuming – disgusted how a big ISP (Internet Service Provider) company could consistently provide some of the worst customer service and worst solution service I’ve experienced in all my years of providing web design service. And that is a lot of years my friends – a lot.

It was a few Sundays ago when we began noticing some difficulties with a client’s site and by Monday the site was down while another client’s site using the same provider was now in distress – we spent hours trying to diagnose the issue – the sites were loading so slowly that molasses on a cold day runs faster.

Request for tech support emails went out first thing when we noticed on Sunday, separately for each account being affected. There were issues with their MySQL servers and since both of these sites were running off of WordPress themes reliant on MySQL databases, both sites were experiencing the same problems. No database means no website. Read more…

Why Guess When You Could Be Wrong?

April 30th, 2012 by Mardy Sitzer

As a fan and promoter of email marketing and even direct mail marketing, I salute those of you who endeavor to grow your business with these tools.

The key to any successful marketing campaign or program is knowing your audience. You can keep track of important points of reference about your clients and prospects using a CRM system. CRM – known as Customer Relationship Management software or system, a best practice for any company.

I’ve mentioned CRMs before, so why now? Why again?

I just received a letter in the mail congratulating me for membership in an organization. I thought that was really nice and it even included a certificate with my name in big letters. A certificate that is made to be framed and proudly displayed, but there is a problem – it says Mr. Mardy Sitzer.

So how well could they really know me? After all, to my family and friends I am known as a woman – 100% certified female.

Two things could have happened here. An intern or someone not familiar with the members generated the certificate and didn’t bother to verify details. The other possibility is that it was just assumed that I was a man and their database doesn’t track any details about its members other than when they paid. Read more…

I Need To Do Social Media

April 23rd, 2012 by Mardy Sitzer

I get calls with the request to ‘do social media’ and I pause. I get this call often enough, so I respond ‘okay’ and ask ‘why’. The most common response is ‘I need more sales’.

I’d like to begin by saying that to ‘do social media’ is not the most productive way to perceive this form of marketing. Hiring a company to tweet and post for you might be more detrimental than helpful if you haven’t worked through a strategy and tactical plan that supports specific goals beyond just obtaining leads. Equally as important is to evaluate if your company is ready for social media and if you are ready to commit company resources and time – and possibly even your own time.

Successful social media marketing comes from a shift in how you think about your company, yourself, and your customers and prospects. Your beliefs dictate your behavior.

I would like to share an analogy that comes from military combat training. Military combat tactical training uses language to depersonalize the enemy in hopes that soldiers will not have a conflict of morals when it comes time to pull the trigger or push a button. They create words and terms to objectify the enemy. While this might be necessary in warfare, I believe it is dangerous in social media marketing. Read more…

Social Media’s 4Fs

April 16th, 2012 by Mardy Sitzer

Friends + Fans + Followers + Fatigue

Have you and your audiences reached saturation or social media fatigue? If not, prepare yourself as I believe it is a natural course of events.

Something like a dance party where everyone shows up ready to move and shake, show their stuff, dance all-night, party ‘till dawn, meet new people, and hang with friends.

While dance parties are loads of fun, at some point in the evening a few too many cocktails and too many turns on the floor may begin to wear you down. At this point in the evening, the music may feel too loud, the room too stuffy, and all you can think about is putting your feet into a cool tub of water or squish them into some cool grass outside as you soak up the evening air. Well, I think that is where social media is heading.

Wait, don’t leave, the party isn’t over.  Social media is here to stay, but friends, fans, and followers are actively setting their social streams on mute and culling their herds. Heck, I’ve been hearing about some folks who are abandoning their profiles all together.

The tools and trend to use third party apps and features from within the various social sites has been continuing to improve and become more widely adopted, allowing member’s the ability to organize their friends, fans and followers into more manageable lists. Read more…